by phil | Sep 27, 2011 | Stories, W. Africa
Anne-Marie and Blessing head up BCU (Banku Crushers United). I was a provisional member until word got out that I don’t actually eat Banku. In the world of dense heavy starches, I prefer fufu. Thankfully, I was not banished entirely from the girls’...
by phil | Sep 15, 2011 | Music, Stories, W. Africa
I travel with a canon s90 and a flip cam. I do most of my reflection with a notepad; some amount of that writing ends up on this site. I also travel with a digital field recorder, currently an Edirol R-09. I record a bit of everything with it. Music from car stereos...
by phil | Sep 8, 2011 | Mali
I tend to rail on people who generalize about Africa, but I also realize that cultures south of the Sahara have a lot in common. This post from Akila and Patrick, about a cooking class in Zambia, reminded me of that fact. Women append their babies to their backs with...
by phil | Aug 9, 2011 | Cote D'Ivoire, Mali, Music
On the coast of Cote d’Ivoire, in Abidjan, you can go to a nightclub and dance to coupé-décalé till morning. It is possibly the most frenetic dance music on earth. Get in sync with it and your definition of human movement will change forever (see Dj...
by phil | Aug 4, 2011 | Mali
In what is turning into something of an informal series (see this and this), this is another post challenging perceptions of Africa. In tenth grade, one of my classes began with a round table discussion of current events. Each day, everyone in the class brought in an...
by phil | Jul 27, 2011 | Mali, Senegal, Stories, W. Africa
Four hours into a 35 hour bus ride and the sky dropped an ocean on western Mali. Rivulets formed in an instant and brown water submerged a police checkpoint, normally a hub of commerce but temporarily abandoned because of the storm. My seatmate moved to the stairwell,...
