Drinking at the doctors in the Ivory Coast

Booze or medicine It’s a common dilemma for the poor, hard-drinking man: spend your limited funds on medicine or get drunk to disguise the symptoms? However, in West Africa they have found a unique solution – make booze into medicine. In the Ivory Coast it all starts with the basic ingredient of palm wine or Banji as its known. Sap from certain varieties of palm is tapped off every day from the living trees to be delivered to the thirsty, although…

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Toilet of the month

A celebration of Ethiopia’s most notable cultural heritage. Once in a while, a piece of toilet architecture stands out head and shoulders above the competition, sometimes enough to make a whole month of dragging yourself around UNESCO World Heritage Sites and unique geological creations somehow worthwhile. This glorious example tucked away in the back-end of Abozo in southern Ethiopia will surely soon be turning this quiet little village into a major tourist hub, as the masses flock to get a…

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