by phil | Jun 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...
by phil | May 14, 2012 | Cote D'Ivoire, Mali, Stories
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...
by phil | Feb 3, 2012 | Mali, Music, Stories
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...
by phil | Oct 20, 2011 | Stories
Taxi interior design in Bamako. Minimalist taxi interior design T-shirts in English in Francophone countries. “PMS – Putting up with Men’s Shit.” He’s not trying to be ironic. He just doesn’t know what the shirt says. I’m...
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...
