I have to say I was a trifle surprised to learn that our building manager considered me a potential member of Isis. Given that the number of middle aged, white Englishmen who had left our green and pleasant land to wage violent jihad in the Middle East has consistently hovered around the zero mark, at least no one could accuse him of ethnic profiling. Having already passed a pleasant two months in the apartment with my friend Ziad, that had…
There are few pleasures in life more sublime than being able to make small children burst into tears or flee in abject terror at your mere presence. Such are the joys of travelling in areas of West Africa away from the tourist trail and you don’t have to go very far to do that given the limited number of people who make the effort to come here. These kinds of reactions are usually an indication that the children have never…
Let me take you away from the headline grabbing suffering in Africa and go down to the simple realities of everyday existence, to my friend Mamadou’s home: a one room mud brick shack with a corrugated iron roof, in a small town a few km outside the capital of Burkina Faso – Ouagadougou. Apart from a lucky few who could afford concrete blocks, all houses are built like this, so every rainy season brings some new collapses. Here, where I…
At a café in a small town in Northern Benin, a young man asked if it was ok to share my table and I had to assure the waitress that I was only too happy to chat to a stranger who she assumed would only bother me. He introduced himself as Paulin and we spent a few hours discussing life, the universe and everything. It’s always rewarding to find someone interested and knowledgeable in African politics to get a better…
Having been invited to Rwanda for my friend Chance’s wedding to lovely, local girl Fausta I could only have been kept away at gunpoint. Although there were three days of festivities in all, two of them broadly followed the outline of the wedding I attended during the visit two years ago, see http://insideotherplaces.com/2008/03/18/rwanda-2008-not-just-gorillas-and-killers/ . Hence what follows concerns only the traditional wedding ceremony day. Unlike the previous wedding where we were guests I was honored (not a term I would…
