Drinking Beer by Braille
Its happy hour in Bamako, Mali, and I’m at the Blue Box Bar with the Geekcorps. Now we call it the Blue Box not because there is any official name, no we call it the Blue Box because that is what it is; a big metal box painted blue. And as a metal box in Africa its baking hot on the inside during the day and still warm even at night. So we sit outside, in the soccer field, sipping our beers
Read MoreBusiness Sense in Bamako
Lets say you are a concrete building block maker in Bamako. You have your block form and a shovel. You walk to the construction site and make each block by hand. You mix the cement with the shovel on the ground, scoop it into the form, and then when it starts to fix and harden, you open the form and let it cure in he sun. This whole process doesn’t take more than 10 minutes and you make about 5 cents a block.
Read MoreHonk If You Love Me
Do you ever feel famous? Like a movie star walking down the street? Every day in Dakar I feel like that. I feel like I am Tom Cruise and everyone wants to meet me. Why’s that you ask? Well it’s the taxi drivers. When the local taxi drivers see me, a white guy or toubob, walking along the road they have a fit.
Read MoreLets Get Ethnic Then
Its Friday in Senegal and than means its time to go ethnic, in clothing that is. Friday is the day that Muslims here are called to the mosque to pray so they break out their finest boubou to show respect. Catching wind of this, I broke out my own ethnicity and wore a guayabera to work today.
Read MoreThe Edge of Africa, Trashed
Today I went for a run around Ngor and ran out to Pointe des Almadies, the western-most point in Africa. I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe a Key West scene or maybe a dull marker like the equator in Kenya. It was a whole different story in Senegal. The western-most point has a Club Med on one side, a private house on the other, and a little group of bars and trinket and food stalls in between.
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