{"id":4282,"date":"2019-02-06T15:38:02","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T23:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?page_id=4282"},"modified":"2023-05-28T18:37:33","modified_gmt":"2023-05-29T01:37:33","slug":"the-road-to-timbuktu","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?page_id=4282","title":{"rendered":"On the Road to Timbuktu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Follow the slightly revised but mostly simply transcribed diary notes from the overland trip myself and two friends, Louie Nosko and Tom Lane, took in January, 1968, from Bamako to Timbuktu, Niamey, Ouagadougou and Abidjan, eventually back to Liberia, where we were teaching at Cuttington College.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It is unsettling to come upon ones own words at this remove.\u00a0Readers may or may not share the embarrassment, but also the complaisance I feel for this avatar of myself, pompous to be sure, also insecure, sometimes overly earnest – qualities betrayed by and translated into my jejune literary style at that point in time. I was twenty-two.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

No question, though, that this was the first great travel adventure of my life. It marked me deeply, inscribing themes and topics which returned decades later ovr my career as Africanist, a significant part of which had to do with representations of Islam in African literatures. I remain proud of having been part of the first serious consideration by Europeans and North Americans of the role of Islam in African literatures in French and English, a movement of which Ken Harrow\u2019s <\/i>Faces of Islam in African Literature (1991) was a prime example, one might even say prime mover. My piece in it\u201cThrough a Prism Darkly: Orientalism in European-Language African Writing\u201d,<\/i> served as conclusion to it?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

A few years later, Ken edited a second book, <\/i>The Marabout and the Muse: New Approaches to Islam in African Literature, in which my\u201cJihad,\u00a0Ijtihad\u00a0and Other Dialogical Wars in\u00a0<\/i>La M\u00e8re du printemps,\u00a0<\/i>Le Harem politique, and\u00a0<\/i>Loin de M\u00e9dine\u201d. In a age perversely obsessed with Islam, it is worth a read: download it <\/i>here<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

12 January, 1968.\u00a0Robertsfield, Liberia<\/strong>. <\/i>The Russian turboprop on the ground at Robertsfield was long and sleek and decorated with a single yellow stripe.\u00a0I was struck by some of the passengers waiting to board, men wearing attractive flowing robes, hats of the Sekou Tour\u00e9 variety, sunglasses of the American Air Force sort.\u00a0Two women, one large and dressed in a showy multicolored outfit of diaphanous but not transparent material, and another, elegant and statuesque and wearing a dress made out of\u00a0green lappas<\/i> with a head tie of the same material. When we got on the plane, the latter turned out to be the hostess.\u00a0Whenever I glanced away from the window – for I was very interested in watching the progression from rainforest to savanna – it was to follow her swaying movement down the aisle.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through we were flying for most of the trip too high to see detail, I could detect, after about an hour, increasingly large patches of treeless ground until, as we descended, trees became rare, scribbles on the barren landscape.\u00a0Just as we landed, there were signs of cultivation, squared-off plots of land, trees organized into thin rectilinear networks.\u00a0The air, as we stepped out of the plane was hot and dry, but a welcome change from muggy Liberia.\u00a0We were expecting much palaver, since we had no pre-arranged visa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We went into customs and got tangled in officialdom until an attractive couple, a slim Malink\u00e9 girl of delicate features and a tall, equally handsome man, introduced themselves as representatives of the Tourist Office.\u00a0They took us in hand, showed us where we could change money, insisting we count it after the exchange was given us. Eventually, they led us to the Tourist Office.\u00a0I may have been influenced by the fact that everything was in French but I was impressed by the friendliness and manners of the men there. We ended up at a small hotel by the train station \u2013 Buffet de la Gare<\/i> \u2013 and had time to relax before we took off to find a place to eat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Driving into Bamako from the airport had been entering a different world than the one we had become accustomed to after six months in Liberia.\u00a0The streets were narrow, there was less traffic, though bicycles and motorcycles proliferated.\u00a0The shapes of the buildings, almost all of a single story, were unusual to my eyes. Everywhere Malink\u00e9 men in their bright blue robes petalled through the streets. Others, especially those involved in officialdom, wore unornamented Mao-suits, or so they appeared. The women were dressed in colorful and elegant yet simple robes, almost always color-coordinated.<\/p>\n

The colors of Bamako were very different from Liberia.\u00a0Even in the dry season Liberia is green, though not necessarily fresh and clean.\u00a0Bamako, because of the dust which hangs in the air, is pink and brown\u00a0and made more striking by the contrasting crisp blue Mandingo robes, which proliferate. The mosque near the center of town is pink brick, a large version of the one I knew in Gbarnga, Liberia, the first mosque I had ever seen in my life. Except for this and a few other mosques plus the remnants of French colonialism, there were few large buildings.\u00a0Yet despite its narrow streets, Bamako seemed spacious, more so than Monrovia, less cluttered with dilapidated shacks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There was indeed a lot of French about this city but much also African, or what I liked to imagine as African. It was an urban society which was not a product of the West alone. I attributed this to the Marxist government of Modibo Keito [who was to be ousted ten months later].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There were to be sure many more cars in Monrovia, but most are taxis or ostentatious vehicles owned by a few rich purveyors of foreign goods and technology.\u00a0Those who do have cars have huge ones; those who don’t have one have nothing.\u00a0In Bamako, on the other hand, a large portion of the population appears to have a bicycle or a motorcycle. One man, who voluntarily picked us up off the streets while we were waiting for a taxi and was evidently a functionary in the government, well-educated, charming, had a small but perfectly adequate French automobile, a Renault of the sort I knew from France.\u00a0As he drove us through the streets of Bamako after our diner at Les Trois Ca\u00efmens<\/i> (The Three Crocodiles), the restaurant we had found our way to, he chatted about the time he spent in the States.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ah oui, j’ai fait New York, j’ai fait Washington, j’ai fait Milwaukee, j’ai fait plusieurs villes am\u00e9ricaines<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He had neither the suppressed hostility towards nor fear of whites, nor the overweaning need to impress and prove his worth that one encountered often in Liberia.\u00a0He was sure of his equality, did not need to insist upon it.\u00a0 He was relaxed and unconcerned with being anything but what he was: an African, a Malian, in the last third of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

In the Trois Ca\u00efmens<\/i>, the waiter’s face had brightened when he answered: oui, ce restaurant appartient \u00e0 l’\u00c9tat.\u00a0Tous les grands h\u00f4tels et restaurants appartiennent \u00e0 l’\u00c9tat<\/i>.<\/p>\n

A man at the bar asked me, pointing at my Vai tie-dye shirt: c’est la tenue d’un hippie<\/i>.\u00a0A word which it took a double-take for me to recognize.<\/p>\n

13 January, 1968<\/i>.<\/strong> The next morning we went to S\u00e9curit\u00e9<\/i> and attempted to get visas.\u00a0 The officials were, as might be expected, confusing and contradictory, but we filled out the forms and I composed a letter to the Director asking for a visa and explaining that we didn’t have any, a formality perhaps, but what seemed to us to be a deliberate obstruction.\u00a0Then we left.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Two young boys had attached themselves to Tom and Louie and upon my return, they found someone to speak French to.\u00a0They also thought we were hippies.\u00a0 My shoes, they thought, must have come from San Francisco.\u00a0Tom was, in their eye, a German.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Je d\u00e9teste les Allemands.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0 <\/span>Il ne faut pas dire les choses comme \u00e7a.
\n\u2014\u00a0 <\/span>Excuse-moi, mais je lance toujours de telles phrases.
\n\u2014 Quels Allemands?\u00a0 Les Allemands de l’Est ou les Allemands de l’Ouest?
\n\u2014 Ceux qu\u2019on connait ici, de l’Est, mais je d\u00e9teste aussi les Allemands de l’Ouest, ces capitalistes!<\/i><\/p>\n

At first they were interesting but it became obvious that they had decided to attach themselves to us for good.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Aimes-tu les acteurs am\u00e9ricains?
\n\u2014 Oui, trop!
\n\u2014 Trop?\u00a0Alors qui aimez-vous?
\n\u2014 Montgomery Cliff.\u00a0Robert Mitchum.\u00a0John Wayne.
\n\u2014 John Wayne?\u00a0Mais ce n’est pas un bon homme.
\n\u2014 Je sais.\u00a0 Il n’aime pas les Noirs.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>\u2014 Tu as laiss\u00e9 ta femme au Lib\u00e9ria?
\n\u2014\u00a0Je n’ai pas de femme.
\n\u2014 Pas de femme?\u00a0\u00c7a te g\u00eanerait d’avoir une fille noire? Des enfants noirs?
\n\u2014 \u00c7a m’est \u00e9gal.\u00a0Beaucoup sont tr\u00e8s belles.<\/i><\/p>\n

We ate in a restaurant off the Place de la R\u00e9publique<\/i>.\u00a0 Some plat africain<\/i> whose name escaped me.\u00a0Afterwards we took a taxi back to the hotel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It had become apparent that the occasional whites I saw driving around in small cars and on motorcycles are Russians, and not particularly friendly.\u00a0One beautiful Russian blond whipped by us on a Vespa. In one section of town, just south of the railroad station, ressembled for two or three streets a French provincial town.\u00a0People were clustered around the markets buying groceries.\u00a0The fresh fruit and vegetables are far more abundant than in Liberia and in much better condition.<\/p>\n

We stopped at the Artisans’ Building, near the mosque, and glanced at the wares.\u00a0Tom wanted to buy a crocodile belt and when he was offered one for 3000 francs maliens<\/i>, he tried to bargain, through me of course.\u00a0His return offer was far too low, and the merchant turned away from us in what I interpreted to be anger.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At another shop we had an argument with one of the artisans, who insisted that all Americans are rich.\u00a0I attempted, half-heartedly, to suggest that not all but many were, but he remained totally unconvinced.\u00a0 Yet another warned us that les choses ne sont pas bonnes ici<\/i>. Il vauderait mieux cacher les portefeuilles<\/i> — indicating the wallet Tom had sticking out his front pocket.<\/p>\n

There was a statue in the Place de la Libert\u00e9<\/i> which celebrates the French Arm\u00e9e noire<\/i> in the First World War.\u00a0To it had been attached a small sign which read: Aux sacrifi\u00e9s du colonialisme, la patrie reconnaissante<\/i> \u2014 \u00a0To the victims of colonialism, from the Homeland.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There was the Bamako of mud-walled, squat and crumbling slums just south of the mosque, and there was also the Bamako of the old colonial neighborhoods.\u00a0Large mansions spread out in the area south of the train station, where there was a huge Catholic church. These old buildings have been converted to new purposes.\u00a0In one, beyond the dry trees of a dusty courtyard, we could see karate practice.\u00a0One of the boys told me that this was his only sport.\u00a0Occcasionally a European, sometimes a priest with a long beard and a weird hat, would pedal through the traffic, but in general the cyclists were Malian.\u00a0 They somehow managed to keep their long robes from the uncovered sprockets.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The most distinct odour in this city was not that of refuse and excrement, but of marijuana.\u00a0Perhaps it was not marijuana, for if as much as we seemed to smell were being smoked, the city would be absolutely still, without movement, lost in a trance. Maybe it is the dust or the burning leaves or the cooking which smells like grass.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever the condition of the neighborhood, whatever style we were surrounded with, colonial decadence or adobe decrepitude, one thing was constant: dust hangs in the air, diffusing the light.\u00a0The mucus of the nostrils, the inside of the mouth, the fingertips and eyelids were all dry.\u00a0The streets and the high trees which hang over the empty grassless courtyards were covered with a film of dust.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

14 January, 1968<\/i>.\u00a0<\/strong> Last night we ate at the Grand Hotel where we had a so-so meal, and I got so-so drunk. I met a Congolese on his way to Moscow when I went after cigarettes.\u00a0 He made some joke in French, to which I replied, but then he was surprised when I admitted I was an American.\u00a0There was a shift in your relationship when someone discovered you were an American, subtle though it be.\u00a0You could feel preconceptions and but then curiosity cutting in and out, but sometimes a mild surprise at having exchanged amenities with a harmless and well-meaning white man who has been instantly transformed into a living of example for which there is well-prepared stereotype.<\/p>\n

The trains rolled by outside my hotel window, less than twenty yards from my rickety desk.\u00a0From the two-by-two-yard balcony, I watched people carrying baskets of vegetable and gourdes on their heads, gourds which looked like they were full of milk.\u00a0They scrambled over the tracks, oblivious to the infrequently passing trains, violet and blue gowns and sheets of cloth furling out in the breeze behind them.\u00a0 With the exception of a few tattered boys en hallions<\/i>, they were well-dressed.\u00a0 Most of the men wore flowing robes bunched up over their shoulders in the heat of the day, pointed leather slippers which leave the heels bare.\u00a0On the streets passed the occasional beggar, a leper, a woman wrapped in dirty cloth whose feet were bound with bandages, a man without pupils in his eyes.<\/p>\n

In the cafe the next morning, empty except for a few ladies behind the bar, I had coffee and read a few pages of Soundjata<\/a>, the great national epic of the medieval empire of Mali.<\/p>\n

The terrace was also deserted, and the waiter brought my bowl of caf\u00e9 au lait<\/i> in his own good time.\u00a0On the greenish walls, which bear stains up in the corners the walls meet the ceiling, there were Gauginesque pictures of caramel-skinned bare-breasted women standing before savanna-scapes.\u00a0A fourth picture was of an old, apparently white woman wrapped in blue cloth with a veil of cloth across her head.\u00a0No idea what this meant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The cafe was cool and humid and high-ceilinged and, compared to the glare outside, dark.\u00a0The floors were of the same red tile which floored my room and the gallery on the second floor of the hotel. You look across and down from the gallery which leads to my room to the concrete patio outside of the cafe.\u00a0Beyond that, past the grey trunks of the high trees which shade the patio, over a brick fence, which was not solid but composed of as much space as brick, there is the plaza in front of the the Chemin de fer, Dakar au Niger<\/i> railroad station build in 1924, an almost invisible plaque high on the building told us. Groups of men mingle and converse, and at the edges of this plaza are the peddlar stands where Unit\u00e9<\/i> and Libert\u00e9<\/i>, the two national brands of cigarettes, are sold \u00e0 l’unit\u00e9<\/i> but also by the packet.<\/p>\n

Evening in Bamako. The terrace and the courtyard, the practically leafless trees etched in the moonlight, offered a friendly world of silver shadows.\u00a0 The moon was full.\u00a0The air had so rapidly chilled from the afternoon heat that a light breeze raised shivers.\u00a0Across the courtyard and behind the brick grill which surrounded it, an open air movie blasted reverberating French and rifle shots of a dubbed Western.\u00a0Broken phrases of a popular song drifted in from another direction and the railroad creaked continuously behind the hotel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

17 January, 1968<\/i>.<\/strong>\u00a0 The previous day was devoted to travel hassles.\u00a0We got up the next morning early, checked out and left for Mopti. We left Bamako in a hand-crank-started station wagon and rode through the dry savanna towards Mopti.\u00a0Bamako is circled by long red cliffs. For a few miles we passed boulders stacked and crumbling in heaps.\u00a0 Then the countryside flattened out and the road straightened and the landscape of knarled baobab trees became monotonous.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The stunted and sun-warped trees, the grey patches of exposed earth, the interminable barrenness of the land was broken only by mud-walled communities which seemed to have either grown out of the soil or been eroded down to it from hills of clay.\u00a0 The villages were long and low and clung to the earth. Over the village conical roofs stuck out in random clusters.\u00a0Herds of emaciated cattle sometimes blocked the road as they emerged from the bush, and the driver slowed and honked and dodged through them before he regained speed. We just missed a kid goat which dashed across our path as we came around a bend.\u00a0 Later in the afternoon Louis and Tom saw three monkeys, but I was asleep, lulled by the regular rumble of the motor and unchanging format of the scenery.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Just before S\u00e9gou we saw the Niger, which swept out to the left in a graceful swampy curve.\u00a0There were reeds in the water and woman and children washed on the banks or floated near shore on thin barks wavering in the eddies.\u00a0At the plaza in S\u00e9gou we stopped and ate and changed taxis, waited in the hot dust surrounded by small boys peddling sheets of paper and green oranges.\u00a0Our new driver took fifteen minutes to get out of town and stopped to see every friend he could find, shouting greetings and comments probably curses in Malink\u00e9 to every man, child and especially woman that he saw.\u00a0The road was being improved and in the afternoon we chugged through miles of dusty and improvised detours.\u00a0But I dozed off again, wedged in the back corner between the window and a grey-bearded official carrying his son and wearing a heavy wool uniform.\u00a0By the time we arrived in San it was too late to continue to Mopti.\u00a0Night fell quickly and we had hardly found rooms in a nearby resthouse when they started lighting the kerosense lanterns.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We had a good meal of roast chicken and potatoes and salad and strong black coffee then read for an hour or so before turning in and lowering the mosquito nets around our soft, straw-stuffed beds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

19 January, 1968.<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0Just as I was falling to sleep, Louie came knocking at my door to translate. A man offered to take us in his truck to Mopti.\u00a0We hesitated for a moment but decided to make sure we got to Mopti in time for the boat to Timbuktu, and so decided to take up his offer.\u00a0About 9 pm we piled into the back of a huge truck full of Malians, bunched togther under woolen blankets and tarpaulins.\u00a0As the truck moved out into the night, it became colder and colder.\u00a0The moon was full, covered with a thick haze, and the men joked and laughed until late at night.\u00a0I had a d\u00e9j\u00e0-vu of incredible proportions and drowsily dreamed of plots and characters for my as-yet conceived novel.\u00a0But the wind and the chilling air rapidly took any adventure out of the affair.\u00a0By 3 am, when we finally arrived in Mopti, aching and trembling with cold and muscle cramps, the only hotel had no room and we were forced to sleep on the cold pavement of its terrace surroundbed by swarms of mosquitos.<\/p>\n

Before we found that hotel we had walked around town in search of a one. The streets were deserted and dimly lit with street lights distinctly spaced in the night.\u00a0There was no sound except our footsteps, our half-hearted jests and the whimpers of children crying in the night. I tried to ask directions several times from the occasional passing man or woman wrapped up against the cold, but they turned from me, without answering, as if I were a ghost in the night.\u00a0Dogs barked and the thin shadows of the pirogues lay slicing into the black mirror of the surrounding swamps.<\/p>\n

Mopti by day does distantly ressemble Venice, at least geographically, as is claimed by the Tourist Office, because it is built on, indeed seemed to float on brackish water. Low reeds extend as far as the eye can see. One side of town is built around a lagoon, while on the other side of the town the boats line the quais along the river.\u00a0The main part of the town is composed of a network of streets crossing at right angles through mudbrick and cubical houses.\u00a0Concrete trenches border all the sides and these are full of refuse and excrement and urine.\u00a0The smell of these ditches fills the air. Beggars are everywhere, intoning their chants for alms.\u00a0Young full-breasted girls carry baskets and tubs laden with fruit and vegetables on their heads.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

La Libert\u00e9<\/i>, the riverboat to Timbuktu and on to Gao, was scheduled to leave in the late afternoon. Sitting on the deck waiting for the departure we talked with two Peace Corps volonteers from Togo, while surreptitiously watching adolescent girls bathing a hundred yards away. They soaped themselves thoroughly berfore rinsing, maintaining their this waistcloths until the end when they modestly slipped off the wet piece of cloth and quickly wrapped themselves in another.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The passengers were a motley crew.\u00a0There was an American missionary from Niafounk\u00e9 who had been there ten years and was obnoxiously well-informed.\u00a0The Yugoslav ambassador from Dakar and his wife and the Dutch ambassador were both aboard, on route to hunt wild game together in the Sahel.\u00a0The Dutchman had been in a Japanese prison camp for three and a half years.\u00a0There were also three Frenchmen who had been in Dahomey working in a hospital for their military service, plus three Russians who were part of the Soviet mission to Bamako.\u00a0I talked for a while with the missionary to try and see what kind of man he would have to be to come here to convert, but he described himself solely in terms of God’s Will, praising the Lord, rationalizations for obsessions of one kind or another familiar enough to me. He did however speak good Malink\u00e9.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Niger is quite broad until Timbuktu and at times you cannot see the distant other shore.\u00a0There are rarely distinct banks, the river merging unbounded into swamps and watery low-lands.\u00a0 What land you can see becomes more and more sandy and less and less covered with brush until, around Timbuktu, where there is nothing but sand.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The course of the Niger had altered over the years, so the town itself was seven kilometers from the banks at which La Libert\u00e9<\/i> moored, and a group of us hired a truck to take on there for the obligatory sight-seeing. There is however not much to say about Timbuktu, its mosque being the main or maybe only attraction, with the exception of the Post Office, to which we hurried in order to send post cards stamped Timbuktu. Here is one I sent to myself and later retrieved.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The post card I sent to myself from Timbuktu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We were almost stranded when the driver failed to return for us as he promised, but Yugoslav ambassador somehow wrangled a ride for us in the back of a small covered pick-up, and we rushed back to the port to just catch the boat, which for once seemed to be leaving on schedule.<\/p>\n

Late at night and early in the morning the cold was sharp and cut to the marrow. In the afternoon, heat became intense and the sun burnt, cracking your face and lips.\u00a0 There was nothing do on the boat except read and talk and we passed hours on the decks watching the swamps drift by.<\/p>\n

20 January, 1968<\/i>.<\/strong>\u00a0 Last night there were millions of stars until the moon rose and we docked at a small village situated between two dunes which humped up silvery against the sky.\u00a0Campfires were glimmering in the darkness. As the boat made a slow turn into the shore we saw a crowd of shrouded and turbaned men waiting around a kerosine lantern.\u00a0Knarled trees veiled the moon.\u00a0Pirogues swarmed around our boat, loaded with firewood and bundles of pots and pans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The next morning we passed through the Defile, a narrow gorge between cliffs.\u00a0Our boat slid through a channel of basalt boulders.\u00a0Dunes were prevalent and we were truly in the desert, one whose red cliffs and baked outcrops reminded me of the US Southwest.<\/p>\n

25 January, 1968<\/i>.<\/strong>\u00a0In Gao. Five days have now gone by without entries in my diary. A very taxing five days.\u00a0We slept on the boat Saturday night, for free it turned out, and then we went to a local hotel for coffee.\u00a0Afterwards, we walked about a mile to the place where taxies leave for Niamey, and waited for an hour until discover that a rapide<\/i> would leave that afternoon at 4 pm.\u00a0We went back to the hotel and ….<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\u2026 There are no more notes, but subsequent events \u2014 the forty-eight hour ordeal of the <\/i>rapide trip to Niamey, the two days there, the flight to Ouagadougou in then Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, the train down to Abidjan, finally the overland return to Liberia \u2014 were etched without words in our three memories, which Louis and Tom and I had a chance to confirm and to render collective 41 years later in California during the reunion we three and the others who were with us at Cuttington College had in 1969. We were lucky to have lived this, and to have lived so long to recall it across our nearly full lifetimes.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
At the 40th Reunion of the Cuttiington College crew., Irvine, California, 2009.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Follow the slightly revised but mostly simply transcribed diary notes from the overland trip myself and two friends, Louie Nosko and Tom Lane, took in January, 1968, from Bamako to Timbuktu, Niamey, Ouagadougou and Abidjan, eventually back to Liberia, where we were teaching at Cuttington College. It is unsettling to come upon ones own words … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “On the Road to Timbuktu”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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