by phil | Dec 27, 2016 | Biz
A couple of weeks ago, I asked Faty, a friend in Timbuktu, if she would be willing to have her students design postcards for Postcards from Timbuktu. I proposed selling her cards for $12, with the additional $2 going towards her classroom. I was not surprised that...
by phil | Jan 19, 2016 | Biz
I haven’t been to Timbuktu since 2012, but I still have regular contact with a number of people there. I send a bit of money to Fatoumata’s family (I wrote about staying with them here) each month. They lost all of their livestock during the upheaval of...
by phil | Dec 18, 2013 | Biz, Cote D'Ivoire, Stories
Here are a few observations and lessons learned from nearly two months of running a full service restaurant in Abidjan. Running a restaurant is a great way to meet people. Among our regulars, we have the captain of ASEC Mimosas (Cote d’Ivoire’s most...
by phil | Nov 6, 2013 | Biz, Cote D'Ivoire
Around the end of each month, you start to see a few more armored trucks than usual rolling around Abidjan. They are filled with cash and on their way to supply banks and ATMs with the monthly salaries of workers who find themselves in the formal economy. Some people...
by phil | Aug 20, 2013 | Biz
Just a short update on version 2.0 of our restaurant/catering business. Over the past couple of years, I have made less money than I did as a teacher in Washington, DC. But my current income – a combination of writing, online income from affiliates and...
by phil | Aug 7, 2013 | Biz, Cote D'Ivoire
I wrote some time ago about our plans to scale up our food business in Abidjan (for previous posts on the biz, see here). After convincing two additional friends to invest in the project, we are beginning to realize those plans. The latest development: we have a...
