Monthly Archives: June 2011

At sunset, I sit outside the walled compound, in a plastic chair, in the patch of dirt alongside the new ditch. The older children have been digging this ditch all afternoon, the younger dangling their legs over the edge and watching boys play soccer across the way. Dark comes fast; the soccer game and the [...]

We drove ten hours north and east from the capital, speeding over new roads. Camels kneel on the sidestreets here, and the wells at the edge of town are crowded with people lowering and lifting plastic containers for water. Late last night, I was woken by the sound of metal shutters clanging against the window-grates. [...]

In the malaria ward at the pediatric hospital, the doctor recites the status of the children. This one is emerging from coma. This one is doing much better. They have quinine drips and transfusion bags, sometimes an IV stand shared between two patients. At one bed, a father, dressed meticulously in a kaftan, stands perfectly [...]

I handwash clothes in a plastic tub on the floor of my bathroom while my laptop dials up Air France. The reservation agent greets me as I consider the dustiness of the wastewater. There is the sound of dripping, then the sound of her accented English, reverberating a bit in the bare tiled room. There [...]

The first time I rode a motorbike taxi through a West African capital was in early December, over five years ago, in Lagos. I was giddy with infatuation, overwhelmed by the city’s frenetic crush of yellow busses and packed bridges and industrial edges crumbling into urban fishing villages. I wore heavy wood earrings that morning, [...]

The city smells like diesel and dust, exactly as I expected it to. As evening falls, I stand in my courtyard and watch the driver haggle over a small pile of fake Nokias that another man has brought in. I buy a phone. The guard stands a few feet from his motorbike, turns away, and [...]

On this continent again, finally. Tonight I’m in a university guesthouse at the top of a hill: stucco walls and dusty shelves, bars of fluorescent lights at the ceiling. Astonishingly, there is an Internet connection. And, in the courtyard, a guard who sleeps beside his motorbike. I had forgotten about the guards.

At the end of the day, we stand barefoot in my third-floor room, the June light filtering through the blinds. I fold my hand around his jaw– he’s got a great jaw, a lovely mouth. He speaks with a Canadian raising, the vowels are all funny to me, but his voice is gentle. I am [...]

Somewhere north of Washington, we pause. From my window, the thin woods of central Maryland are deeply green under morning sun. Across the aisle, a freight train passes in flashes of blue-black and rust and gold. It clangs rhythmically and no one speaks. In my bag I carry a passport with a new visa to [...]