Have we lived in a real harsh atmosphere?

Did the reporter go through the roadblock 3 times, just to expirience the emotion o f war ?
"I was driving along the road where they say no white man can come back alive. I was driving to see if a white man could, because I had to expirience everything for myself." Why would someone want to expirience such misery?I believe the reporter has found a completely different sense to life. A sense that not many people have found, and that is more personal and makes the human being mature and find themself and what they always wanted, struggling for a reason a constant battle for knowledge . In this point I would like to make a connection with Meursault and how he acted upon what was happening in his life, Maman´s death, the Arab´s death and being accused with the death penalty. Maybe the reporter and Meursault have many things in common. I would have to say they are both trying to understand what life is all about, trying to escape from all that is monotonous in them.
"Over the distance of 520 kilometers, I had been cheked twenty-one times and subjected to four body searches. Everywhere there was an atmosphere of tension, everywhere the smell of gunpowder. " (p.127) The reporter had to go through many uncomfortable situations to expirience what war was all about. At the same time he made his emotions clear after crossing each and every roadblock. "...the worst thing is to make a gesture of self-difence, because that emboldens them, because that unleashes a new wave of agression in them." (p.131). He was caught in dispair and knew that each second could be his last. At the end of the day the repoter was alive, but something was left unclear. Did the reporter want to die ??