The Dancing Man

As I am writing this there is a local man is wearing a ski mask the middle of camp and he is dancing. About three months ago I would have found this odd and totally nerve racking, yet now it seems strangely normal. His body, covered in banana leaves, floats and spins as he bounds in one meter increments towards the kitchen. I think for the riders on this tour the whole experience would still not be odd if it were only this one man bounding around camp, he may have been noticed, but he could have been totally missed, if it were not for the group of about of one hundred children hanging on this mans every move.

The constant shouting and chanting from the children has made this clown man another small treat in today’s tour life. The rippling ups and downs of Malawi’s highlands, the miniature logging villages made entirely of scrap lumber and the mist covered vistas of today’s ride are the little oddities and sometimes missed events are what make a tour thru Africa mystically memorable. And yet over the past few months things like this, things totally out of the ordinary have become strangely familiar. And in much the same way that riding a bike for hours a day has become a norm I hope that small moments like a ski mask wearing, banana leaf covered man surrounded by a sea of children continues to be normal state of imbalance that we have the opportunity to live in on tour.