A Toubabou on the Horizon

"Who is better off? The person who looks for happiness through buying a new car or new clothes? Or he who has just enough to live on, and has time to spend laughing and joking with friends in the shade of a tree? Is there not a greater social dignity in the respect they pay to the elderly and the less fortunate?". Travelling gives us many answers, but it can also give rise to many questions. This is the story of the adventure of an engineer, a traveller. A car accident...
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"Who is better off? The person who looks for happiness through buying a new car or new clothes? Or he who has just enough to live on, and has time to spend laughing and joking with friends in the shade of a tree? Is there not a greater social dignity in the respect they pay to the elderly and the less fortunate?".
Travelling gives us many answers, but it can also give rise to many questions.
This is the story of the adventure of an engineer, a traveller. A car accident helps him understand that now is the time for self-fulfilment. The author starts from the house where he grew up in Northern Italy and goes on a journey far away from the tourist circuits. On his way, he travels over the Sahara and crosses the heart of the continent - the equatorial forest - until he reaches the farthest/southernmost point where the Atlantic and Indian oceans embrace. Overall, he covers 25,000 kilometres in 615 days and gets through 11 tyres and 8 chains.
During the journey, he is arrested and even bedridden with malaria for twenty days. However, each person he meets provides a moment for exchange; forging bonds that are strengthened around a campfire. There is only the simplicity of life and a welcoming smile, in the search for new questions where it all began, in Africa.

• The book includes a chapter written by his mother, Carla Villata.
• Toubabou, with its variants (toubab, tubaap...), is a word used by many West African peoples to designate a white-skinned person, a European.