“There are ways of arriving in a new country. You should know where you are going, have your first few nights' accommodation booked, be able to converse in the lingua franca and have a bottomless bank account - or enough savings to make cash the least of your problems. This is the way of the well-organised and the cash-savvy. I’m not this person. I arrive in Dakar at 3.30am on a ‘dental floss’ budget; I don’t know anyone, and my seven-word French vocabulary doesn’t include ‘please help me’.

Go ahead and tell me I’m an idiot. I aim stronger words at myself as I leave the plane at Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport. I fill in my customs forms as if my hands have never held a pen. An official comes over to help me with the daunting task of tackling page two, where I need to answer the horrific question of where in Dakar I will be staying.”

Vagabond: wandering through Africa on faith is the story of how a three-month backpacking trip in West Africa turns into a five-year epic across Africa. The critically-acclaimed memoir has been hailed as Africa’s answer to Eat.Love.Pray.