Begin Again. Day 154. Closing on Abidjan — Plantation Camp, Côte d’Ivoire скачать в хорошем качестве

Begin Again. Day 154. Closing on Abidjan — Plantation Camp, Côte d’Ivoire

December 24, 2025 — Begin Again, Day 154, Duékoué to Plantation Camp, Côte d’Ivoire Weeks earlier, when I was in southern Mauritania, in the city of Nouakchott, I set a goal: to reach Abidjan, on the Gulf of Guinea. To do that meant crossing a wide swath of tropical Africa — into Senegal, then The Gambia, back into Senegal, through Guinea-Bissau and Guinea, and finally into Ivory Coast. By now, I’d been in Ivory Coast for three days. Two of them riding. I couldn’t see Abidjan on the horizon — not in any literal sense. But I could feel its presence. The way a machine might sense the moon without knowing it’s there, measuring gravity on Earth. My attention narrowed. I stayed with the riding, and let the details fall away. Still, there were moments. An espresso, taken quietly in a place that didn’t advertise itself, just after I turned off the main highway and onto a deeply degraded secondary road. In places, there barely was a road at all. Identical to the worst surfaces I’d ridden in Guinea. But traffic was light, and on a bicycle — two tires, like the motos — I could choose my line carefully. And that was enough. Along that stretch, children gathered at the edges of villages. In a small shop, I bought crackers. They asked me to share — in a language I didn’t understand. A woman stepped in and handed the crackers out herself. A small moment. One I’ll carry with me. I also encountered my second diurnal roost. A colony of slate-colored fruit bats. This time, I launched the drone. I sent the little bird into the air. What I captured was a closeness to wildlife unlike anything else I’ve recorded on this journey. Camp came late. After failing to secure a place to stay in the previous town, I turned onto a dirt road and found a rubber plantation. That would do. I pushed the bike to the back of it, far enough that I couldn’t be seen from the road cutting through the trees. It was Christmas Eve. I heard an occasional moto pass by. But otherwise, I was alone. In a new matrix — some of it crafted by human hands, other parts completely wild.