14,000 KM | 5 COUNTRIES OF SOUTHERN AFRICA | 11 MOTORBIKES | 2 VANS | 16 PEOPLE | 2 MONTHS ON THE ROAD
The demanding motorcycle raid was part of the humanitarian missions of MotoForPeace, a non-profit organisation that has operated across the globe for nearly twenty years and is composed of members of both national and international police forces.
Southern Africa, 19 April 2018
Our long journey across the African continent begins — through South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and finally Botswana. A journey of almost 14,000 kilometres awaits us. The goal of Africa 2018 was to see with our own eyes and offer tangible support to the many Catholic missionaries working in communities burdened not only by poverty but also by social instability.
Two months on the road, from April to June 2018, travelling through five countries with eleven motorbikes prepared for the rough African terrain.
Sixteen people — eleven riders and the rest supporting the convoy.
Official website on DooG Reporter
The MotoForPeace mission ended just a few days ago and, as always happens when I return to Italy, I allow myself a necessary period of emptiness.
A kind of decompression process: fixing memories in place, organising notes, understanding with a cool head what escaped me, filtering what remains.
It was an intense two months — almost 15,000 kilometres across five Southern African countries — and, for part of the journey, I rode Luis’s motorbike, a Spaniard who fell ill with malaria in Zimbabwe (I’ll never stop thanking him for his trust in handing it over to me… for a motorcyclist, leaving one’s bike behind is the hardest thing of all).
Two months in which every single day seemed to last twenty-five hours — from fatigue, from the unexpected, from laughter and tension, from the people we met and the stories we gathered, from my travel companions (met for the first time in Africa) and the personal stories each of them carried; some searching for answers, others for questions. Some curious, some certain. For some, it was the first time; for others, a return.
Bernardo, Celes, Marco, Egidio, Luis, Valter, Davide, Alessio, Ecktar, Bert, Riccardo, Simone, Veronica, Elby, Simonetta, Carmine, Gabriele — seventeen human beings, men and women who chose to get off the sofa and come to this southern corner of the world to see with their own eyes.
My task was to document — to tell their stories and to tell what happens in that part of Africa: from the scenic roads of South Africa to the deserts of Namibia, from the dirt tracks, potholes, dust and mud of Angola to the immense, blinding wilderness of Zimbabwe and Botswana.
And in the midst of this world, them: the People — the Black ones (and sometimes white, by flaw or by nature) — their stories, their struggles, their indelible smiles.
