Why?

Ramon Sagués

It's four in the afternoon, a scorching sun is burning me down and a track full of corrugated iron is torturing me. Deserts are beautiful, but in their right measure. I've been crossing the Namib Desert for more than 15 days and I'm starting to get fed up with the sand, wind and loneliness. 

It is not easy to find a place to spend the night here, the roads are marked by an endless barbed wire fence. There are endless private properties. 

Behind a steep hill I see a large open metal gate. In the distance, about 500 metres away, there is a farm. A sign written in Afrikaans warns me of something, but it is impossible to understand what it is. 

I head towards the farm. The ranchers who populated these lands are friendly people, friends of solitude and accustomed to getting by in a hostile environment. Knowing the difficulty of surviving in the environment, they are always willing to help the traveler. I approach some buildings, there are some goats wandering around but no sign of anyone. I shout “Hellooooo!!” without much success… 

Just as I'm about to give up, someone opens a door. A man with thinning hair and a long white beard, blue eyes and pinkish-white skin appears.

-«Hi, how are you?» -he says to me with a big smile. 

When traveling with a bike, the 90% conversations always start with:

-Where are you from? 

-Where are you going? 

Almost a formality, which then takes different paths. 

I ask him if he has a place where I can camp for the night. He shows me a small courtyard with two trees and a gravel floor. The farmer, as if he did this every day, shows me a water tap and a simple stone and wood construction that houses a bathroom with a shower. With cold water, of course. 

-«It's drinkable!» -He tells me with a raised thumb and looking towards a tap. 

There is a table and four chairs in the shade of a eucalyptus tree. We sit down, and he, without even having to settle his ass on the chair, gets up and goes to get a couple of beers. 

Here time moves at a different pace, a life without a clock, the hands are the sun and the horizon. We talk about the country, the farm, life and finally the trip, until another of the star questions comes up. 

-«Why?» -he says to me. 

-«Why not? -I reply. 

After more than 10 months of travelling, this question has been one of the most repeated questions. Someone who seeks an explanation for something as illogical as crossing a continent on pedals: Why not by plane? Why not by car? Why not stay at home? I have tried to answer a thousand different things, with jokes, with cheap philosophy, with silence… But honestly, I don't even know why. 

Meanwhile, in the northern hemisphere, in an industrial estate in the Barcelona metropolitan area, in Ripollet, Juan looks at a clock hanging on the wall while thinking: There's only half a turn of the minute hand left to get out of this cage.

Juan has spent half his life with his gaze fixed on the piece that a lathe is transforming, those pieces that are gradually shaped until they reach the form desired by the engineer. 

Nine hours a day, five days a week, locked within these four walls. Only interrupted by the siren that marks breakfast and lunch. Here they are like a family, everyone knows everything about everyone, a life of putting up with each other, a life of listening only to first-person talk about football. 

She is 44 years old and has two teenage daughters whom she has to see on Saturdays from 3pm to 10pm. But the girls are getting older and are at that age where priorities change, especially on a Saturday afternoon. 

His ex-wife preferred her co-worker in the office, he had clean nails, a shirt and did not smell of cutting fluid. 

The siren sounds again, the needle strikes five o'clock. 

He walks towards the locker room, an old, dirty locker room with rusty metal lockers and a couple of wooden benches. 

His colleagues tell him that he should come to the bar in the industrial estate to have a few beers. But Juan has a better plan. 

-Not today, maybe another day... - he answers while glancing at his bike leaning next to his locker. 

-Every day is the same, what a desire! With the heat today... Why go home sweating when you can go back by car with the air conditioning on full blast? - answers his colleague. Juan looks at him with a mischievous smile. The answer would be so long that it would only serve to waste time. 

He carries his dirty lunch box, dirty clothes, wallet and house keys in his backpack. 

The days are getting shorter, and it's already dark at eight o'clock, but it's long enough to get lost on your way home. 

To get from Ripollet to the Carmel neighbourhood in Barcelona there are motorways, roads, paths and even trails. Juan prefers to get lost on the Vallés trails with his gravel bike, avoiding asphalt and crossing Collserola, then descending into the concrete jungle with the last rays of sunlight. His little bit of sky every day. His little bit of time to think, to put ideas in order... 

He leans his bike next to the glass door and greets Juan with a “Slav!” as he enters the shop. Osman is Kurdish and came to Barcelona 10 years ago, he delivered for Globo and with a lot of effort and more pedalling he managed to save enough to open his own business. A simple and small döner kebab establishment in the Carmel neighbourhood. Without asking, Osman prepares Juan the same thing he does every day, a chicken döner with little spice and a Coca-Cola. 

Juan is in no hurry to get home, no one is waiting for him there. He has endorphins pumping inside him and hunger caused by pedaling for three hours. The perfect combination for a simple döner to become a delicacy that is difficult to beat. 

He is always mesmerized by the television, the Kurdmax TV channel, tacky music videos with lively Kurdish music and men dancing holding hands and waving a handkerchief. 

Her mind wanders there, imagining him dancing at that festival of happiness.

Ramón, the electrician who sometimes comes to repair the machines in the workshop, went there by bicycle. Every time he comes, Juan asks him a thousand questions. Ramón only tells him how fantastic everything is there, encourages him to go, that he will be amazed, Juan's eyes light up... 

Juan, sitting at that table, his hands dirty with sauce and his mouth full of meat of dubious origin, can only think of one thing. 

And why not?