Cultural & political influences in West Africa

A few notes on my observations of cultural and political influences on West Africa:

• US culture is most prominent on TV, where many American movies and TV shows are on. In the Gambia the family I was staying with also watched CNN. However, we are far from unchallenged in the role of cultural supremacy. Al-Jazeera is the primary international news source for my host family in Accra; TV in the Gambia has lots of Bollywood; many if not most English-language programs have Arabic subtitles (example shown in the parlor of Ibraheem and Sirah’s home in the Gambia); and South African shows also seem popular.
• France is of course hugely influential in Senegal but not much so in Ghana and less than I might have expected in the Gambia given that it is landlocked by Senegal. France had a different kind of approach to colonialism than the Brits, and ties seem to be closer between France and the Francophone West African intellectual/cultural elite than the corresponding British relationship.
• Germany, for some reason, has a lot of well-marked development projects in the Gambia. Not sure why.
• I met a real live person, who spoke enough English to have a real conversation with, who had not heard of Barack Obama! She is 16 years old and from a tiny rural village in northwest Ghana, near Wa. She is “educated,” meaning that she goes to school unlike some of her siblings (hence the English). And she had no idea who Obama was – in fact, I’m not sure she even understood the concept of the President of America. Most other West Africans, however, seem to have quite a balanced opinion of Obama. They think he’s generally good, he’s probably made a few mistakes, and that Americans are expecting far too much far too quickly from him given how royally Bush screwed things over. They don’t have too much of the attitude I was surprised by in Jamaica last year, where Obama is viewed in the same category of historical figure as Bob Marley, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X – he’s not a savior or even really viewed as a representative of the black race -- he’s just a good guy who’s got a really tough job. Not sure how much the difference is because it’s now a year later and we’ve all lowered our expectations for Obama, and how much the attitudes differed all along. However, I did come across the pictured "Obama biscuits" this morning and couldn't resist buying them :-)
• Speaking of Bob Marley, he and reggae are remarkably popular here, I think for reasons closely related to the strong underlying sentiments of pan-Africanism and that all black people need to stick together the whole world round. There is a small slice of men in Ghana, the Gambia, and Senegal each who are visibly Rastafarian. Note: Rafiq and Faiza asked me at one point why all the white women in Africa who are traveling with/sleeping with/dating black men are with the black men with dreadlocks, and I had no good answer – but from observation it’s undoubtedly true!
  
• Nigeria is clearly the cultural Mecca of Anglophone West Africa – Nigerian productions make up probably 70% of all West-African generated music, film, and TV I encountered, even though I didn’t go to Nigeria or any of its border states!
• Australia has a very low profile (though I'm told that some of Ghana's gold mines are run by Australian companies) and Australians are very rare here (which in my traveling experience is unusual – they are all over Latin America, Europe, and of course Asia!)
• In Ghana, several times I was shown massive construction projects (usually sports stadiums) that were introduced with the sentence “The Chinese built this,” accompanied by a warranted awe for Chinese efficiency. Otherwise there wasn’t too much obvious Chinese influence, but neither was there too much obvious American influence outside of TV. My hosts in Ghana seem to think that America is more influential on Ghana’s politics, however.
• In the Gambia, I asked the same set of questions about China and was surprised to learn that China and the Gambia have highly strained diplomatic relations because Jammeh, the Gambian President, is one of the most vocal supporters of Taiwan on the international stage (eg at the UN). Taiwan, in return, provides a lot of aid to Gambia, including things like scholarships to go study at Taiwanese universities. But it was an important reminder of how being the head of state for a very small, poor country can still carry with it much more power in some ways than being, say, a governor of a very large, rich state in the US.

Back "home" in Accra!

As I told Uncle Negro and Sarah, when I got off the plane yesterday in Accra I felt like I was coming home! Of course Faiza and Kalila aren't here, but I'll see them soon enough in Indiana.

My last few days in the Gambia were packed with excitement, including a few more kora lessons, a fascinating school theater performance that Ibraheem was judging, and the opening ceremony of a national youth conference that Ibraheem was running, complete with the Vice President of the Gambia.

The first photo is of one of the acts in the school theater performance -- a traditional Indian dance, performed by a couple of students of Indian descent and a couple native Gambians. I hope I have time to write a whole blog post on the entire event, as it certainly deserves it, but this act in particular stuck out in my mind. The girl on the left in the picture was the leader of the group, and while the other dancers sometimes stumbled through the choreography, she had a look of intense focus the whole time (and it was long -- like maybe 4-5 min). The audience of middle and high school students, who you can see a few of at the bottom the picture, were going absolutely wild the whole time, screaming and dancing and clapping along. And I just had this sense that for this young girl, living in a country and going to a school where she's in a tiny minority ethnically and culturally (and probably religiously, though she could be Muslim), this was a pivotal moment in her adolescent years, the kind of moment of feeling accepted and even celebrated that problably doesn't come along very often. I felt a real sense of vicarious pride and joy in her accomplishment!

The second picture is from the opening ceremonies of the youth conference -- part of a procession of youth groups, musicians, traditional dancers, and more passing by a dais with several ministers and the Vice President. The brown hairy guy dancers you can see in this picture are monsters who carry machetes, and they're acting out some sort of attack scene. It's supposed to be very bad luck if they touch you with their machetes, and Sirah tells me that Rugi used to be very frightened of them as a child.

A veritable Babel

[This is a very long post, but I hope an interesting one!]

West Africa is not like the USA or Australia or even Latin America for many reasons, but one is easy not to think about until you get here. Ghana is English-speaking, says the guidebook. Senegal, French.

Ha!

Virtually no one here speaks a European language in the home. And because of the long history of migrations within the continent, in any given location there are at least 3 or 4 African languages that are the first language of a large segment of the population. The language you speak at home is, as far as I can tell, the primary indicator of what tribe/clan/people you belong to.

But you also don’t just speak your in-the-home language plus English/French. Usually, you speak your own language, plus at least one other African language that is widespread in your area at the level of fluency, plus at least one other African language as well as I speak Spanish (which is to say, plenty well enough for daily practicalities, bargaining, etc). So for example, in the Gambia, the languages/tribes that are widespread include Wolof, Mandinka, Fula, and Sarahule. Of these, most people seem to have practical knowledge if not fluency in both Wolof and Mandinka, as well as their own language if it’s neither of those

You also probably went to Koranic school and memorized the entire Koran in Arabic as a child, and if you are particularly religious you may have learned even more Arabic than that or at least kept up your Koranic reading over the years. And then, if you went to school, you speak either English or French (possibly both) reasonably well (and if you didn’t, you probably speak enough to at least sell things to tourists). And none of these languages are luxuries – you need all of them to conduct your daily affairs. Pictured is Malang, an 18-year-old member of Ibraheem's household, who speaks Mandinka, Wolof, Fula, English, and French, in front of an Arabic-language TV program.

It’s enough to give me, with my practical Spanish and my beginner-level dabbling in German, Mandarin, and French, quite the inferiority complex. And it really puts Americans to shame in general. Imagine how much better off we’d be if every American spoke both English and Spanish fluently, as well as at least one other language at a proficient level! And we’d still be behind West Africans. [It also seems like quite the waste of brainpower here in an objective sense. Part of me feels like “gosh, if they’d just all speak English at home and then devote all that energy and time to learning Mandarin, Arabic, and either French, German or Spanish, they’d have valuable skills marketable the world over!” But of course that is not how it works…]

Other observations:

• Most people are not literate in any African language, with the exception I think being Wolof in Senegal, in which there is actually a growing body of literature, film, etc (though there is both Wolof written in the Roman script and Wolof written in Arabic script, called Wolofal). Even in Senegal, though all the Roman script writing I saw on signs/shopfronts/etc was in English, and I assume that all the Arabic script writing was in Arabic, not Wolofal.
• The two families who have so graciously hosted me both have televisions in the parlor that are on a lot of the time, and almost all the programming is in English. Watching cartoons takes on a whole educational level if you are learning a language while watching!
• I think I’ve gotten a lot better over the past 5 weeks at parsing English spoken with a West African accent. The big problem I have is not so much the different pronunciation of vowels and consonants, though there is a bit of that, but more the difference in emphasis on syllables and the rhythm of the sentence. Eg, the word “development”, which is used a lot here, is pronounced something like dee-VEL-up-MUNT by us, and something like "DUH-vlup-munt" by most West Africans I’ve encountered. String a bunch of differently-emphasized words like that together and change the emphasis/rhythm of words within the sentence, and it can be really tough for the American ear to parse.

There are a few concepts/types of communication that routinely cause problems for me:

1. Relatives: The words “brother”, “sister”, “father”, “mother”, and so on, are used to refer not just to your immediate nuclear family, but to your cousins, aunts, and uncles – because in West African family structure, your father’s brother has equivalent authority over you as your father, and your responsibilities to his children are not that different from your responsibilities to your father’s children. It took me a while to break the reflex of assuming that when someone uses one of these words, they mean what we mean. There are other confusions like using “stepfather” to refer to your father’s brother (because if your father dies, he will probably marry your mother), and “uncle” to refer to the unrelated man your mother marries after your father’s death (I don’t know why – I guess because “stepfather” was taken and “uncle” wasn’t being used?)
   
   Moreover, it’s clearly not just a translation issue – it’s a different way of categorizing the world. When I ask something like “what is her relation to you *actually*? How are her parents related to yours?” etc – people have to actually think about it as if solving a new math problem. Their relatives are classified in swathes of “grandparents” (people two generations above you) “fathers/mothers” (people one generation above you), “sisters/brothers” (your own generation), and “sons/daughters” (the generation below), and the question that Europeans consider critical of what percentage of your genes you share is simply not relevant.
   
   What I am dying to know but can’t figure out how to get across the concept of asking is at what point the expansion of kinship ends. If your father’s brother’s children are also your brothers and sisters, then they are your children’s fathers and sisters as well. But clearly that can’t go on forever – how and when does someone drop out of that category and just because a loosely defined “distant relation”, which they also do talk about?



2. Referents/pronouns: First, I am often confused by stories in which gender pronouns are used because either the pairs he/she and him/her are used interchangeably or else my ears can’t hear the distinction within a West African accent.
   
   Second, compounding the problem, I have a very difficult time making a question like “but I’m confused, who is the “he” you are referring to in this story?” clear. For instance if out of the blue someone says to me “You know, that woman owns the store down the road,” and I ask “who is that woman?” because I don’t know who they’re referring to (the woman we just greeted on the roadside? The woman we had an appointment with earlier today? The mother of a friend who we were just talking about?”), The answer is usually “The woman who owns the store down the road.” I repeat, yes, but who are you talking about? The frustrated response: “The owner of the store! I hope you understand now.” And so on…



3. Planning/time. This one I assume is only partly language, and a lot about the whole “African time” phenomenon. But questions like “how soon will he get here?” are often answered with statements like “he has already left.” “But how soon do you think that means he will arrive?” “Oh, that I cannot say…”



4. Measuring frequency & ratios. (I think this is probably related to the African time phenomenon as well.) Being my father’s daughter a lot of my questions about culture and lifestyle come in the form of “How often do you do X?” or “What percentage of people are Y?” The answer to a question like this almost invariably comes in the form of an anecdote, about a time when they did X or a person who is Y. The anecdotes are usually very illuminating about how things work, but they do not answer my question!
   
   In order to get a related answer, I have to repeat the question in several different but related ways (eg, “When was the last time you did X? or “How many times did you do X last month”? or “Are most of your friends Y, or just a few?”), and even then often fail. I have been thinking that I should actually try this on some random Americans and see how it goes – it seems entirely possible that my set of friends and colleagues think about frequencies and ratios differently from the average Anglo as well from the average African.

Home in less than a week!

Have been busy the last few days, not as much blog posting time, but much to blog about... This trip is very rapidly coming to a close – I fly back to Accra on Saturday, then arrive in DC on Tuesday morning, then fly to Greencastle on Wednesday evening, if all the flights go as scheduled.

I really don’t want to think about what the temperature shock is going to feel like… I don’t even have a jacket in which to make my way from Dulles to Mt Pleasant!

On the other hand, Kalila is by all reports doing quite well at the Indianapolis hospital post-surgery, and I’m really looking forward to checking up on her in person very soon.

Speaking of kids, here’s a bonus picture of me carrying Bobo (Ibraheem Jr) around on my back, African-style. The Gambians Sirah and I walked past on the street found this hilarious. It’s also the first practical use for large breasts I’ve ever recognized – they’re essential for fighting the baby’s gravity!

Sandele Eco-Resort

This post is primarily for some friends who are considering Sandele as a retreat site. I have no other easy way of sending photos to them :-)

Going clockwise from top right:
First pic -- view from beachside meeting hut
Second pic -- view of inside of beach meeting hut
Third pic -- view of unfinished inside of another meeting space -- they are planning to remove some of the pillars
Fourth pic -- view of rooftop meeting space. Right now there's no roof but they say they can easily construct a shade tent.

Down South

Today, Sarjoe and I headed down “south” (insofar as the Gambia has a “south”) along the coast -- all the way to the Gambia's southern border with the Casamance region of Senegal. The border river (pictured, with Sarjoe) and the beaches in the Kartong area were both beautiful, serene and almost unoccupied.

Working our way back north, we stopped to see (and hold!) the snakes at the local Reptile Center. The woman who gave us a tour said that there are serious misconceptions about snakes in Gambian folklore that can even lead to unnecessary deaths, so part of their mission is to teach several thousand Gambian schoolchildren per year what there really is to fear and not fear from the local snakes. Unrelatedly (I hope), she had a simultaneously understated and lewd sense of humor -- telling us about one kind of snake that allegedly has two penises and can go at it for 24 hour straight; cracking jokes about tortoise polygamy; and ending the tour with the question "What is the most dangerous snake in the Gambia?" with the unexpected response "The one in men's pants."

At around 5pm, we watched the fishing village Tanji in full swing, with boatloads of fish pulling up and a sophisticated ladder of distribution in deployment. From what I could tell, it works something like this: Wholesale brokers take their teams of teenage boys out to the boats, buy fish in bulk, and have them carried back to shore in enormous buckets. Those fish that are to be dried are then carted away from shore in wheelbarrows to the smokehouses just a few dozen meters away. The fish that are to be sold fresh, iced or salted are bought on the beach from the wholesalers by small-scale distributors on the shore, who then take them to market in Serekunda or wherever the next day (presumably) -- or possibly resell them to the people who are actually going to take them to market, taking their own small slice of profit at each step of distribution.

Also today: We had lunch at and a very interesting briefing on the stunning Sandele Eco-resort, which we were checking out on behalf of Avaaz as a possible retreat venue. We also went to the Tanji museum on the history, culture, flora and fauna of the Gambia. And we visited with Sarjoe's sister and his former boss (a retired UNICEF professional).

The Sunday rounds

Yesterday, Sirah, Rugi, Bobo (Ibraheem Jr) and I did the rounds of family visits around town. First we visited Ibraheem's family compound, then Sirah's family's compound. The first picture is of the children at the latter compound eating in the standard Senegambian fashion -- a big bowl of rice with some form of flavorful stew/curry mixed in, eaten out of collectively with one's hands. The children, women, and men each eat out of separate bowls (you graduate to the adult world when you're about 10).

[That brings me briefly to the topic of hygiene and disease: There seems no concern or really even awareness of non-fatal person-to-person communicable diseases like colds or the flu -- but I also haven't heard of anyone having one. It's considered an absolute given that all food and drinks are shared in a way that would make most American parents shudder for fear of their child having the sniffles for a few days. Hands are also washed pre-meal in shared bowls of water, which doesn't really help the situation much!]

Next came Rugi's father's compound (where his second wife lives -- his first wife lives in Sirah's family's compound), and finally the house of one of Sirah's cousins, her husband, and his second wife. Sirah's cousin gave birth 2 weeks ago to her 4th child, who I think may hold the distinction of the youngest child I can remember ever holding. The second picture is of Rugi's father writing Koran verses (using washable ink) in Arabic for the children in his compound to memorize. Rugi herself goes there after school most days to learn them.

These compounds are all literally crawling with children. I'd say the adult-to-child ratio is about 3:2 if you define child as under 16 -- which fits approximately with the published demographics of the Gambia. But the childcare burden for adults is no more overwhelming than it is in the US, possibly less so, because first of all of the shared load among all the women and second because of the extremely well-established role that the older children (especially but not exclusively the girls) play in caring for the younger children. In fact, it's led me to think a lot about the way that we think about education. I may be able to type and read really fast but any 10-year-old Gambian girl is far more qualified to care for a child than I am -- and you can't say that's not an important life skill!

Afterwards we went to the beach again for a little while -- hence the final photo. Rugi is developing quite an impressive flick, no mean feat in the windy oceanside conditions especially

More frisbee

Just in case you felt like I haven't done enough evangelizing for the frisbee, here is me teaching Rugi forehand grip this morning.

Thanks to Malang for taking the photo -- you haven't met him yet but he is an 18-year-old resident of the Ceesay household who Ibrahim has "adopted." He is speaks excellent English and, while studying waste management for the time being, is trying to scrape together funds to start a cell phone repair/maintenance/unlocking shop. He and Rugi and I spent more than an hour throwing on the beach today!

Kora Jali

That's me -- a "jali" (update: spelling corrected from "jalli"), or student, of the kora, West Africa's traditional harp and probably signature musical instrument (along with the djembe drum, of course). I'm taking lessons from one of the Gambia's best-known players (pictured), nicknamed Pa Bobo. He started touring around the world around the age of 12, and has a website here. Today was my second lesson and so far I can play about 8 basic tunes.

Kora are now made with the traditional materials of a calabash gourd, cowhide, wood, and the less traditional materials of thumbtacks and fishing line. Being a musician, or griot, is considered hereditary here in West Africa and Pa Bobo comes from one of the most prominent griot families in the Gambia.

I'm finding it much easier than guitar, probably in part because there are no pesky key changes -- so in that sense it's also a lot less flexible. The harp is in F major (and therefore I suppose E minor). I'm probably going to buy a small one and bring it back -- just need to make sure I can bring it through customs, though Pa Bobo obviously manages to get his through when he travels, so it must be possible.

Oh, and yes, those are braids! For some reason it hadn't occurred to me until yesterday that my hair was long enough for braids for the first time in more than 5 years! Still not quite long enough for a single braid in the back, but still very exciting.

Meet the family, Gambia edition

In Serekunda, the largest city in the Gambia, I am staying at the house of Ibraheem Ceesay and his lovely wife Sirah. I went to visit Sirah at the department store she works at today and here is a picture of the two of us.

Ibraheem, who is ED of a small Gambian NGO called Children for Children, is in Senegal right now doing some NGO facilitation/trainings. He'll be back on Saturday, but in the meantime I'm getting to know his household and touring around the Gambia with C4C's Logistics Coordinator, who moonlights as a tour guide on a regular basis (and, critically, has a 4WD).

The next picture (sorry I still haven't figured out how to rotate...) is of Rugi, who is Sirah's sister and lives with Sirah and Ibraheem, and Booboo (Ibrahim Jr), Ibrahim and Sirah's second son. (Their first son, Omar, is with Sirah's mother in Guinea-Bissau for a few months.) Booboo is about 6 months old and has had a somewhat exaggerated version of Kalila's initial reaction to me. Yesterday while Sirah was at work and Rugi (who does a good portion of the child care) was at school, the maid/nanny, Haddy, left me alone for about 15 min with Ibraheem to run some errands. I was sitting across the room, and as soon as she walked out the door he took one look at me and started screaming. I tried everything from singing to him to leaving the room so that he couldn't see me, but he wasn't having any of this whole being-left-alone-with-a-terrifying-white-person thing and screamed non-stop til she got back.

Since then I've been making my best efforts to become friends and he has gotten to the point of smiling at my peekaboo and developing a decided interest in chewing on my fingers as long as he's in the arms of someone he trusts. He still does occasionally, and as far as I can tell unpredictably, burst into tears on the sight of my face, but I'm counting it overall as progress.

A meditation on markets

As in every developing country I've traveled in, most everyday commerce in West African countries takes place on the streets rather than in "real" stores. There are some fairly big differences between and within countries, of course: In Accra especially, the markets come to you in that anytime you are stopped in traffic (which is about 80% of the time you're in a car), you are approached by vendors darting through the stopped vehicles to sell you anything from a bag of cashews to a colander to a cell phone -- you could literally do a day's worth of shopping without ever leaving your car. In Dakar people are particularly insistent that surely any white person wants to buy whatever it is they are selling. In Serekunda's main market I for some reason have been unable to locate the sellers of bananas and oranges, though other fruits and vegetables are readily available and you can get bananas and oranges on any road outside town.

But the basic point is that the "informal" economy far outpaces the "formal" economy in the realm of everyday goods and services.

I've been thinking a lot about why that is, how it works, and what the factors are that would lead to an informal market economy to turn into a formal store-based economy. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Hallmarks of an informal market-based economy

• Lots of small-scale subsistence or barely-above-subsistence farming/gardening
• Child labor is available for hawking goods
• Transportation has a relatively high cost in terms of either time or money, so lots of small outlets spread out all over town selling an item significantly reduces transaction costs
• High unemployment
• Low literacy/level of qualification to be employed in the formal economy
• Culture of markets
• Warm weather year-round
  

Hallmarks of a formal store-based economy

• Information about where to purchase things is readily available, whether because of chain reputation, the presence of the internet, or something else.
• Credit readily available/credit cards in widespread use
• Relatively high income level for lowest 20% -- high enough that the marginal amount you can earn by buying a good from a distributor and then selling it on the street, usually, against stiff, ubiquitous competition, is too low to be worth your time even if you are unemployed
  
• Strong culture/enforcement of paying sales/income taxes
• Strong enforcement of licensing/loitering/etc provisions
  
• Culture of stores (meaning simply that consumers are used to going to stores to buy things instead of buying them on the street)
  

I just made this list up, of course, and it really doesn't feel like it tells the whole story to me. I'd really love to hear other people's thoughts on this matter!

Additionally, other than food, almost all of the items being sold are manufactured outside of Africa. And in fact, a fair amount of the food is imported as well. I've tried to inquire as to how the goods are distributed to the vendors once they are imported, but the vendors almost universally fail to understand what the crazy white woman is trying to ask them -- and/or they don't have a clear picture themselves! It seems that the region's main exports to make up the trade balance are groundnuts (peanuts) and, in Ghana, cocoa.

The Gambia! (country #42)

Arrived in the Gambia last night to stay with Ibraheem Ceesay, Copenhagen AcFac-er extraordinaire, and his lovely wife Sirah. Have good internet access here -- more updates on the last 10 days to come tonight!

Also, I realized I left out Jamaica when I was country-counting, so this is #42! Full list:

EUROPE (18)
Germany
UK
France
Belgium
Luxembourg The Netherlands**
Denmark
Norway
Sweden
Finland
Lichtenstein*
Austria
Switzerland
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Hungary
Italy
Vatican*
Spain

NORTH AMERICA/CARRIBEAN (8)
USA
Canada
Mexico
Guatemala
Honduras
Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Jamaica

SOUTH AMERICA (6)
Argentina
Chile
Brazil
Uruguay
Paraguay
Bolivia

ASIA-PACIFIC (6)
Australia
New Zealand
Fiji
Singapore
Malaysia
China

AFRICA (4)
Ghana
Burkina Faso*
Senegal
The Gambia

*These are the 3 most questionable. Lichtenstein we went through on a train (we meaning my family, when I was 11) without knowing we had been in it until afterwards. The Vatican I think is debatable as to whether it's a country. And Burkina Faso, well, this was the extent of my visit there...

**Update: Oops, got this wrong the first time.

Update

Spent the last 5 days on a wonderful whirlwind tour of Ghana's Upper West region, with Uncles Negro and Nasir. Back in Accra today for Kalila's visa appointment (2 hours from now!) If all goes well with the appointment, planning to fly out tonight to Dakar, Senegal, spend a few days there, and then make my way overland to Banjul, the capitol of the Gambia, to visit Ceesay of EU Action Factory 2009 fame.

Then on the 18th back to Accra as originally described here.

Update coming soon on Kalila's surgery - finances, date, etc.

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!

Near travel-tastrophe

This morning, as I was getting ready to leave the house to go to the travel agent and buy my ticket from the Gambia back to Ghana (on Dec 18), I realized that I didn't have my trusty Lonely Planet West Africa guidebook. I sorted and searched all my things several times, scoured the downstairs of the house, involved the whole family... and finally gave up. It was nowhere to be found, even though all agreed that I had been reading it in the living room last night and hadn't left the house since.

Disaster! There is simply no way I can make it, alone on public transportation, through 3 of the poorest countries on earth, where they barely speak a language that I also barely speak, without a good guidebook. And despite having already been to several of the best bookstores in Ghana (listed, ironically, in the guidebook), I hadn't seen hide nor hair of a travel section anywhere.

I decided to go to the travel agent anyway (and hope that he could tell me where to get a guidebook), and luckily Kalila's mother Faiza discovered that the book had somehow made it into her car last night before she went home. Good thing, because the travel agent had never heard of Lonely Planet and didn't even know what a travel guidebook was. His suggestion was to buy a map of Accra...

Now that I've been through that experience once, I'm going to guard that book with my life.

PS - In a quasi-related experience, I had to visit 6 ATMs before I found one that worked in order to withdraw enough cash to pay the travel agent for the ticket. No one here uses or accepts credit cards, and I gather functional ATMs are only going to get fewer and farther between as I head north. Guess I'll be carrying a lot of cash...