i tracked down the key to the community center where i was holding my march 8 event exactly five minutes before the program there was slated to begin. the manager with whom i’d had everything arranged had gone “on mission” (code for “away”) the day before, leaving his cell phone in the care of a younger brother and the key to the maison de jeune ( Read more... )

What’s weirder than standing outside naked dumping water over your head, i.e. bathing in Selibaby? Standing indoors in your underwear with six of your closest friends before being scrubbed down by large Moor women in THEIR underwear… To kick off my second tour de Nouakchott I agreed to go to a hammam, or Turkish bath house, for some de- ( Read more... )

a few things are different around my neighborhood: first of all, my host brother mamadou not only divorced his wife of three months while i was away; he also got remarried. aichetou is about 29-bloody ancient for an unmarried by mauritanian standards-and comes from the Hassaniya-speaking quartier of town. i have not actually gotten to talk to her ( Read more... )

"aujourd'hui il n'y a pas de taxi... today there is no car." this is the song a guy was singing when i walked down the street a few minutes ago. i'm not sure if he was a driver happy to be on strike, or if it just seemed like a good way to spread the news. in any case, i'm stranded in st. louis, senegal, forced to spend two more days taking hot ( Read more... )

hamdy diallo sleeps on a wooden bench under a tree in the middle of the lycee grounds. on the hour he gets up and walks over to a rusted wheel well and bangs it two or three times--but this isn't an exact science, and sometimes the clanging comes a few minutes too early, or ten minutes too late, or not at all. but when it comes it signals the end ( Read more... )

this is my latest adventure ( Read more... )

(this showed up in my college paper (thetowerlight.com). thus the capitalization ( Read more... )

okay, so when i said occasional email updates, i really didn't intend ( Read more... )