Stories

Red Roofs of Yop City

by phil February 20, 2013 Cote D'Ivoire

I’ve come to realize that the main reason I travel is to learn things and to form relationships. The best way to do that is to take your time, get comfortable, re-visit. The following is part 1 of a piece on Toits Rouges, a neighborhood in the Yopougon quartier of Abidjan. I have spent a [...]

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Some Thoughts About this Year and the Next One

by phil December 31, 2012 Stories

Sunset, Niger River, Bamako, rainy season I am writing from Abidjan. I was also here on this day one year ago. It’s quite a fun place to be on the 31st of December. In early January 2012, I traveled from Abidjan to Bamako. I went to the Festival in the Desert in Timbuktu a week [...]

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Remembering Chéché Dramé

by phil September 15, 2012 Cote D'Ivoire

While waiting for a customs agent to come to an agreement with a man that had many jerry cans of palm oil on our minibus, we stood in the road and listened to Chéché Dramé on my girlfriend’s cellphone. Trucks and busses tore past, slaloming around potholes, teetering on their tires. Farmers and villagers rode [...]

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Names by which I am known

by phil June 7, 2012 Stories

In Timbuktu with a piece of camel cheese in my mouth “Home” is difficult for me to define. For the moment, I consider “home” to be places where people know my name. Thinking about that today, I realized that not only do I have more than one home, I have more than one name: Mohamed [...]

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Bamako to Abidjan by bus: a chance to get intimate with the hot season

by phil May 14, 2012 Cote D'Ivoire
bamako to abidjan

In Bambara, Sama = Elephant I have spent approximately 110 hours of my life on the road between Bamako and Abidjan. I first took the trip in October of 2010. At that time, the northern half of Cote d’Ivoire was controlled by the Forces Nouvelles and it was the middle of the mini late-year rainy [...]

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2012 Festival au Désert in Words and Photos + Update from Bamako

by phil February 3, 2012 Mali

I recapped the Festival briefly in this post. The event was over two weeks ago. A lot has changed in northern Mali (and in Bamako, you could say) since then. I will address this to an extent later in the post. I will also list some resources for you to follow. I first traveled to [...]

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