After fourteen hours travelling on a mini bus from central Tripoli in Libya to Tunis followed by a seven hour train journey to the oasis town of Tozeur, I eventually reached Douz on another mini bus intending to make a desert trek deep into the Sahara.

I'm glad I never got to see him when he was alive. It was tough enough having to deal with his one hundred ninety pounds of dead weight all zipped up inside a sleeping bag. I didn't want to know what he looked like.

Africa has always fascinated me ever since I stumbled across a copy of Mungo Park’s ‘Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa’ when I first starting my teacher training back in 2008. It led me to accepting a job as in an independent primary school teaching the British curriculum to expat and local families in Nairobi, Kenya. Though Park’s book detailed his journey across West Africa, the mystic of Africa was a compelling reason for me to accept the job in the other side of the continent.