A few pictures

At a tiny cybercafe on the equally tiny Ile du Goree off of the Dakar harbor: Cant figure out punctuation on this keyboard so be content that you are getting As instead of Qs qnd vice versq ** see what i mean§

Anyway, just wanted to give you a bit of a taste of what Ive been up to for the last week.

First pic is of me and Uncle Negro with some of the elders of Jingbe-Yiri, the section (like a clan) of Wa that he is from.

The second is my conquest of Burkina Faso (country number 39).

I may not have gotten my passport stamped, but I was there, dammit.

And the last is of our stop at one of the oldest mud-and-stick mosques in the world -- and its still in daily use by the local community.

Senegal!

I arrived in Senegal yesterday at 1:30 am, reaching my 40th country!
Burkina Faso, #39, was admittedly a bit weak -- I managed to take a
few steps on the other side of the river while on a boat tour from the
Ghanaian side hippo sanctuary.)

Spent yesterday wandering through Dakar. Turns out you learn a lot
less in francophone countries than anglophone countries if you don't
really speak French. Moving on today to the historic Ile de Goree,
then tomorrow down the coast.

(unfortunately I am posting from iPhone so I can't attach pictures.)

The itinerary

In case you were wondering, especially given the delays around Kalila, my current plan is laid out below. If I have to stay here more than another, say, 5 days for Kalila, then I may need to revise the below fairly substantially.

Ghana

• Stick around Accra for a few days until everything is sorted for Kalila's surgery
• Head north to Wa in the Upper West region of Ghana with Uncle Negro and probably Nasir. That's where their family roots are. Visit the Hippo Sanctuary and take a mini-safari in the famous Mole game reserve, and then get dropped off at the border with Burkina Faso. (Estimated date now Sunday 11/28)

Burkina Faso/Mali

• Bus it through Burkina, probably with a day or two in the capital Ouagadougou, on the way to central Mali
• Do a few days of guided hiking through Mali's famous Dogon Country, a string of very close-together, very traditional villages set on a beautiful escarpment way the heck in the middle of nowhere.
• Try to make it to Djenne's world-renowned Monday market on the way to Bamako (estimated date now Monday 12/6)
• Spend a couple of days in Bamako with former DePauw student and current Fulbright scholar Alys Moore (http://alysinmali.blogspot.com/)

Senegal/the Gambia

• Take some combination of train and bus through Senegal to the Gambia to stay with my friend Ibraheem Ceesay, who I worked with at Copenhagen last year (estimated arrival now Sunday 12/12)

The Holiday Whirlwind

• Fly back to Accra on 12/18
• Fly home to DC on 12/20, get dress tailored for Portia's wedding
• Fly to Greencastle on 12/22 in time for our annual Christmas party the next day
• Fly back to DC on 12/27 for Portia's New Year's wedding!

Unwritten blog posts

I'm still doing way more bloggable things than I have time to blog about. So, here's a partial list of things that I haven't gotten a chance to really tell you about yet!

1) The press conference I stumbled upon by the CPP -- a minor political party that currently only has a single seat in Parliament but was the party of Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana after independence. Also, the old woman who sat down next to me and turned out to be one of Ghana's first female MPs, during the Nkrumah era -- we talked for almost an hour before the press conference actually started.

2) Nkrumah mausoleum -- fascinating memorial to Ghana's first president and one of the most influential Africans of the 20th century.

3) The courts/law firms -- I shadowed Sarah for half a day, through two court cases and at her very prominent law firm. Most surprising: The judges and lawyers still wear white British-style wigs when court is in session. Sarah and I are pictured; I'm holding the wig.

4) The Accra mall -- it's new and shiny and if you squint you'd think you were in Tyson's Corner.

5) The Burkina Faso embassy and visa-acquisition experience -- remarkably smooth and fast.

6) The voluntary service scheme -- I stumbled across the final round of the national selection process for the voluntary service year (kind of like Americorps).

7) Cape Coast and its castle -- 3 hours west of Accra, the Cape Coast castle is one of the dozens of remaining monuments to the horrors of the slave trade. Fewer than 7 in 10 of those held in the castle survived to make it through the door of no return onto a slave ship; even fewer made it to the New World alive. Pictured is the "Door of No Return" -- through which, after an average of 3 months packed like sardines in underground dungeons, you were herded onto a slaver. (Sorry about not being able to rotate the picture...)

8) WEB DuBois memorial & museum -- The house where DuBois lived out his last few years at Nkrumah's invitation is just a few blocks from my host family's house.

9) The National Theatre -- I stopped by this imposing Chinese-built structure to ask what the performance schedule was, and the guys sitting outside guarding the entrance had the schedule for the next few weeks printed on a single piece of paper in a binder, and didn't even have any way of telling me what the names of the movies coming up were.

10) Parliament House -- I toured Parliament House and observed Parliament in session for about an hour as they were debating a proposal to borrow money from other countries to expand Ghana's ambulance fleet.

11) Kakum rainforest -- one of the small surviving slices of rainforest in Ghana, Kakum is home to hundreds of species and has the sketchiest and most rickety-looking canopy walkway I hope I ever traverse. Pictured...