Twenty twenty four felt like a car careening around a bend with two wheels in the air. That s how I started last year s post. Nothing s changed! Maybe the car is on fire now? It was another year of bricolage except now we ve lost the ripcord of taking a one way flight to the states. Trump and [ ]
My wife Bintou banned me from skateboarding a couple of years ago and I am probably one injury away from losing pickup basketball. Of course, none of this is really on Bintou. It s more about me coming to terms with my aging body. Birding and postcard-writing are two hobbies that are very compatible with this [ ]
Here s what s been happening lately. I finished my update to the Bradt Guide to Senegal. It was far more work than I bargained for. I may have actually earned a negative wage in the end. But never mind that. I m proud of the work and it feels good to finish it. And it was honestly [ ]
I wanted to briefly share what it was like to work with USAID some years ago, when a Malian woman and I teamed up on a project called SOS Democracy. To be very clear, the project was 100% Coumba s idea. She wanted to mobilize people to vote and to vote for the right reasons [ ]
I think this is a fairly uncontroversial list, but you can let me know in the comments if you think otherwise. 1. Humans Obviously 2. Pelicans Is it personal? Yes. Is it justified? Yes. Let me ask you something. How do you feel about swans? Be honest. That’s right. You don’t like them. Because they [ ]
Twenty twenty four felt like a car careening around a bend with two wheels in the air. For me personally, it was a year of bricolage, cobbling together tattered sources of income, dipping into savings, trying to keep the dream alive. The dream being to wake up without dread each day, to live relatively comfortably, [ ]
I can t remember the last time I wrote a poem. It was surely part of an exercise at school. What I am really trying to say is that I don t think I have ever written a poem voluntarily. So, here we are. My first poem that was not written under duress: Red Eyed Dove You [ ]
In 2019, I had a red bump on my forehead that would not go away. I applied different creams and ointments. I tried covering it up, I tried airing it out. Nothing worked. I thought that maybe my skin was irritated by my motorbike helmet. But when I went to the states for a month [ ]
Yes, the decluttering of our digital life that people talk about. I am really doing my best to follow the latest self-help trends. Even birding is apparently what you should be doing now! I was subscribed to many newsletters, but when I separated the wheat the chaff, this is what remained. And maybe a few [ ]
Part of this appeared in our Scoot West Africa Patreon. Senegalese democracy in turmoil is it the end? This is what we heard for months. The whole thing was about to collapse. Protests had been violently suppressed, the internet repeatedly throttled, and the main opposition candidate imprisoned along with his deputy, the now President-elect [ ]