The story of our trip

You dream about a trip like this for years. You mention it to people and they discuss routes and bikes and politics and reasons why it's impossible.
 
Then you turn 45 and you realise you're halfway through life and suddenly everything comes under the introspective scrutiny of time and meaning. So you call your best friend of 27 years and say you're planning that dream trip through Africa. He says when do we leave and you reflect on the meaning of 27 years. Mandela's 27 years in prison comes to mind and you think of the inner journey thát must have been. And you realise that you won't escape the inner journey of three months through Africa. That you will change in ways that are impossible to predict. You start watching videos of others who have done the trip and the images of drought and pollution and people walking miles for water hit you. Your mind circles back to the question of time, meaning and going back to basics and you wonder what's more basic than water? Where will we be 27 years from now, in 2050, if we continue wasting water at our current reckless rate? And suddenly something flickers inside you: What if this bike trip could serve as a wake-up call to leaders? To CEO's and headmasters and teachers and doctors and church and sports leaders and artists and poets and community members and leaders of households and Tik-Tok influencers? A wake-up call to reflect on the way we relate to water, the most basic of things that connects us with each other and with time itself. A wake-up call to reflect on the part of ourselves as a species that has become so far removed from the basics of life in our air-conditioned, time-managed worlds that we have become numb to the possibility of day zero. Or the part of ourselves as a species that has been so traumatised by decades of bad leadership that we just don't care about caring anymore. And then it strikes you: Just imagine if we could mobilise, on a large scale, another part of ourselves as a species: Our ability to take hands and make a plan to change things for the better, against the odds and regardless of whether the powers that be support us or not...
 
Then the phone rings and you hear yourself saying we are riding through Africa to make ourselves and our species aware of how we relate to water. That we need leaders from cities and villages around the world and across Africa to join our collective inner journey towards transforming this relation. Because we don't have another 27 years. And because it is, in fact, possible.

​JC