Somewhere Between Here and There follows our team, Wizard CC, on a journey through Senegal, documenting the work of Associazione Sunugal and the communities it supports. 

There were eight of us, from different parts of Italy, with different ways of riding, eating, complaining, getting lost and deciding when it was time to stop. Ten days together was enough to learn everyone’s habits. You knew who would attack a climb for no reason, who would always be hungry, who would complain about the heat and who would disappear whenever food appeared.

There were days when everyone was cooked, days when nobody knew where we were going, and days when the road opened up and the whole group started moving faster without anyone saying anything.

That was probably what we enjoyed most. Not the kilometres or the places we could put on a map afterwards, but the simple fact that we were there together, moving through a country we didn’t know, dealing with whatever happened next.

And for ten days, whatever happened next was usually enough.

THE ROAD

Riding through Senegal made everything feel closer. The heat, the dust, the smell of food coming from the roadside, the sound of engines and people shouting to each other across the traffic. Entering a city on a bicycle felt like dropping something into a river and watching the water find its way around it. We were clearly not supposed to be there, at least not in the way we were moving, eight cyclists taking up space between cars, horses, carts, goats, kids, mechanics and merchants, but nobody seemed particularly interested in making us leave.

The horns were the strangest part. We had expected the usual things you hear on a road: impatience, warnings, someone telling you to get out of the way. Instead, most of the time the horns were for us. A quick beep, a wave, someone laughing from a window or shouting something as they passed. We were visitors, and everybody seemed to know it, but there was very little hostility in the way people treated us. Even in the middle of all that traffic, we somehow managed to feel welcome. And, for whatever reason, we were usually faster than the horse carts.

OFF THE ROAD

The further we got from the main roads, the less useful the word road became. Asphalt turned into broken asphalt, then sand, then red laterite, sometimes within the same kilometre. Trucks passed close enough to cover us in dust and, after a while, you stopped trying to keep your clothes clean because there was no point.

We didn’t always know where we were going. Sometimes the road was obvious, sometimes it was just two lines through the dirt and somebody pointing in a direction. You learned to look at the person in front of you, keep your line and trust that the group would figure the rest out. There was something good about that. You stopped thinking about the whole distance and started thinking about the next corner, the next village, the next patch of shade.

WATER

The ocean kept appearing throughout the trip, sometimes right beside us, sometimes at the end of a road, sometimes behind a row of houses. A lot of life seemed to happen around it. People played football on the beach, danced, worked, fished, sat around talking. At sunset the fishermen came back and their catch was laid out across the sand to dry, with the ocean behind them and the light getting softer by the minute.

After riding all day, you started to understand why people stayed there. The air coming off the water felt cold against your skin, even when it wasn’t. We never went swimming. We didn’t need to. We would sit near the shore with a few beers, still covered in dust, watching the day disappear and feeling the temperature finally come down.

THE LANDSCAPE

Senegal could change in the space of a few minutes. You could be fighting your way through traffic with a truck throwing sand across your face and, after one turn, find yourself on a completely empty road with red earth on both sides and nothing on the horizon.

We had ridden through remote parts of Europe before, but this felt different. The distances felt bigger and the landscape seemed to have its own weight. The bikes looked small out there, especially when the road turned to deep sand and everybody started fighting for momentum.

Then somebody would make a stupid joke, somebody else would laugh, and suddenly the whole thing felt easy again. You could be completely exhausted and still be happy to be exactly where you were.