I love the work that I have chosen and do, amidst a thousand difficulties and impediments, but also amidst the many opportunities that Africa offers you.
Especially when you have to get back on a dirt road and raise the dust towards a new adventure from which a story to tell or even just a news story to spread will arise.

The road to a new story is a story in itself.
Because I already know that on this road I will encounter plants, trees, brushwood and bushes, goats with loose rope attached to their necks and cows walking like comrades.

I will see shacks, mud huts, tin fences, anonymous hovels and others painted in yellow ochre, red and green with fanciful lettering identifying a bar, a general store or a barber shop.
There will always be people sitting and talking animatedly, vendors and patrons separated by an iron grating, hauliers of grain, scrap metal and knick-knacks, men holding chickens upside down and women plaiting false hair.
I will pass thundering, noisy little motorbikes and dumb, roadside motorbikes, on whose saddle the driver often lies and sleeps.
They will languish under the ficus, the baobabs, the kapok, to shelter from the sun or the rain. By their side will be opulent women with their feast of fruit, fried sweets, peanuts or whatever, children with rudimentary toys or half-assed bicycles.

I will see young girls with large baskets or canisters on their heads, their backs straight and their gaze lost in the distance they have to endure every day, from home and the life they dream of.
I will pass carts heavy with potatoes or cabbage, pulled by donkeys or by men who sweat and when they have finished their work they drink, argue with each other and smoke, so as not to feel like donkeys.
Precarious, squeaking trucks that go beyond their limits and beyond the weariness of those who drive them.
I will greet shaky old men who will smile at me, women who will lift their headscarves as I pass, groups of kids who will shout something at me.

I will look for a moment, but several times, at the colours of the sky and the reflections of passing clouds on everything, before arriving at my destination, where the story I will be privileged to hear will begin.
And each time I don't know whether, in my heart, I am happier for what I already imagine I will see along the way, or for what new will surprise me and add to my expectations of the next journey.