During my vacation I was in the Paris-Dakar rally. From Bamako to Kayes, front row, next to the driver… racing to shut the window quicky enough each time a new little blue or red shiny thing showed up and then left us-quite seriously-in the dust. The race vehicles, mostly 4x4s and boxy-looking trucks with huge wheels strapped on the back, come out ( Read more... )

The baptism began well before 8 am this morning with about forty men sitting on mats outside my house, or rather, outside our houses… All of them in nice crisp caftans or boubous, emitting a quiet rumble of Pulaar chat. At some point the marabou got everyone’s attention to discuss the matter at hand. I watched this from the other side of the hangar ( Read more... )

Today I woke up to the sound of buzzing mosquitoes, as usual. But I was in my mosquito net, of course. It kind of sucks that we still have mosquitoes here this time of the year, and that it’s still pretty warm now, in the middle of the “cold season,” but it’s nice that we can still sleep outside at night. For breakfast, I made bacon and eggs. ( Read more... )

By morning we should have been to the coast, but at 6:30 I woke up in my corner of the train car to find we were not moving. Nor were we still attached to anything that could have moved. I vaguely remembered feeling the train stop sometime around three, and thinking that we were going in reverse… but it was pitch black except for the stars, and ( Read more... )

i'm back in kaedi reliving last year's training with the advantage of being a Second Year in capital letters (officially as of 9 sept). rather than being on the receiving end of two-hour long training sessions that begin with the all important "Objectives" i'm on the giving end. well, i helped present one or two of these sessions. mostly i stayed ( Read more... )

everything in casablanca needs to be painted. if the rest of moroccan cities are immaculately maintained (on the beach in essouira, workers wear bright yellow vests with smiley faces on the back), casa's glass block walls don't appear to have been bothered with since the 1940s... and this is the "nouvelle ville." maybe it was the eight-hour ( Read more... )

from the passenger seat of a peace corps pickup truck i watch three pairs of minarets coming closer. they're backlit by hazy rainy-season sunset. sy abdoul bocar has a cassette of some early 90s british band in the tape deck (the english is for my benefit), but i can’t really hear it; the windows are down, and since it is flat and dry, we are going ( Read more... )

this afternoon i was walking down the center of a perfectly lined sidewalk with one plastic grocery bag in each hand. behind some trees someone was mowing the grass. a woman walked toward me carrying a beach bag. in front of her were two waist-high kids in bathing suits: a blond girl, a dark-haired boy. their dog was, of course, leashed… i’m so not ( Read more... )

You’ve been waiting for it to happen, so here it is. SEND MONEY TO AFRICA. Specifically, to Selibaby. My school administration is trying to put together an end of the year ceremony to give props to the best students. The idea is to put up a big tent and pull out the mats, invite everyone at the school, then honor the top kid from each class with ( Read more... )

I’ve had my eyes on some prime Selibaby real estate for about a month now: This family’s compound is just on this side of the seasonal river (wide open spaces: cooler), close to the lycee (long walks in 3 pm sun to go to class: bad) and seems relatively unpopulated (few kids: less noise: good). I’ve been in casual discussion with the proprietor, ( Read more... )