Last evening galvanized by an article published on the first page of the Daily Mail, Giorgia, Sydney and the children came to join me to take some videos as I cycle, today around two in the afternoon they called me and asked me ‘Where are you? We are in Sinda’. They had seriously overestimated me, I was missing still 35 km to Sinda! It made me laugh that the children were shouting to me, to encourage me. The same things I shout to them during the running races.
Other than my personal public of today, I have many supporters along the road, mainly children, often, there is one child on the look-out who as soon as he sees me shouts ‘musungu, musungu …’ and runs like mad to call friends and siblings who themselves come out running to greet me. Other times like today a large group of children from the fourth grade followed me running along a hill of 700 m. Today other than the usual ‘How are you?’ and ‘Muli bwanji?’ I heard twice ‘How old are you?’ … 43 I said …
Today I started off around 7,30, I had the idea to try and reach Katete about thirty km further from where I am now. But I did not consider the adverse wind! I hate the adverse wind, it makes me nervous, and it pisses me off when, like today, it is so strong that it stops you even on a downhill, all that tall grass at the sides of the road bent, leaning forward, it gives me a sense of suffocation. Irritated and blown by the wind 20 km after starting off in Chipembe, I entered a tavern hoping to find some water, there was no water, but on the other hand the wall was covered in an impeccable manner of articles of the Zambian football national team from the beginning to nowadays, among which a photo of the national team who had passed away in a plane accident in Gabon was heading the others, the same national team who had beaten a ‘touristic’ Italy at the Seul Olympics in 1988.
This evening I talked to my father dealing with a series of operations more or less serious, he asked me about the itinerary, and he was very involved, we made an appointment to see each other around the 15th August in Italy. I think that without some journeys we did in the 70s on a convertible Diane, with a small trailer behind where there was a huge green tent, or the expedition to Friuli where we went to drop the caravan after the earthquake, I would have had a much more sedentary life!
In these days that our ‘press officer’ is out of office the posts may suffer some slight delays, because in the bush internet connection is what it is.
Nyimba S 14° 33.473’ E 30°49.468’ – Sinda S 14° 12.985’ E 31°45.689’
116 km