Back in the USA

I'm back in the States, suburban Maryland for the time being...

Africa was a little more interesting, Paris a lot more fun.  

Not feeling the holiday spirit yet.

Europe

I survived Africa. One week ago I stepped off a bus in Paris, huddled against the cold, groggy in the pre-dawn, said a silent thank you and thought yes, yes I did it! I finished, drew a rough wavy line over thousands of miles of African savannah, came out the other end three months later and a few pounds lighter, and it was done, really really done, I was euphoric. I realize this sounds absurd, but the first thing I did that morning was walk through the Arc De Triomphe like I was Napoleon or something, like I was in a one-man parade, and damn it felt good, felt good just to be back, to be on the other side.

The second thing I did, at ten in the morning, was to catch a movie. There were four choices, Keira Knightly was in one and that's really good enough for me. Hadn't seen a movie since August and I don't care if 'The Dutchess' is a chick flick, I sat back and relaxed and its just so good to be back in civilization.

Paris, Paris the colonial motherland, Paris the center, Paris with its grand boulevards, its imperial architecture, its vastness and beauty, its winter chill and beautiful nights, what a shock, what a wonderful shock after three months of mud huts and straw roofs! I love it, I love places like this, I love glorious monuments to glorious deeds, love big museums, love the grandness, love the celebration. I found a place to stay, slept 12 hours, found a cheerful friend to share the day with, then walked all over town, visited old favorites at the Louvre, and can you ever get enough Delacroix and Rubens? I stayed in Paris just two days, then on to Antwerp and now Vienna, and it turns out that Europe is just one big party, it's the after-Africa party and it's the best party I've ever been to. The last five days have been a blur of smoky bars, throbbing punk clubs, great people, new friends and old friends, quite a few too many beers, a few sunrises, and really I havent partied this hard in years, if ever.

I came to Antwerp to see Rubens' triptychs in the cathedral -- well worth the visit to be sure --and found to my surprise that Antwerp is a wonderfull and strange little town, a dream of old old buildings, cobblestone streets, beautiful lights from hundreds of little bars and restaurants reflecting in the rain. The bars are full of a sturdy, hard-drinking, hard-smoking, fun-loving people, and its like everyone's living in a Breughel painting, a modern Breughel painting with lots of little dramas and it's great. Met a friend of a friend at an artworld afterparty, caught up with an old college roommate, met some new friends too, and each afternoon woke up with an anti-hangover, feeling better than ever. For sure I'll be back one day.

Vienna is a bit like Paris, it was the capital of a grand empire and all the old emperial glamour remains, huge palaces, gilded statues, wide avenues, trolleys, all the good stuff. I've been staying here with a painter friend, and in addition to the museums we got a taste of the city's late night scene and stumbled home two nights in a row after some good times. In the museums Egon Schiele stands as the champion, not all his work but the big paintings are simply raw. Next to him Klimt is a little boring, a little too-fine, the younger colleaugue just hit harder. From the Renaissance, Perugino is a new surprise, he made such sweet, lovely figures, and Raphael always makes me happy. Titian is solid and strong as ever but Caravaggio disappointed, as did all his followers. Rubens rushed through more than half his paintings but the ones he cared to finish are stunning.

I've got a few more days in Europe, then the party's really over and Michael its time to go home, home to the USA. Can't say I'm looking forward to it, but I do miss friends and family and the holidays should bring a cheer. Then I'll jump back in the game, not quite sure how or where but I'll let you know.

Leaving Africa

I spent about a week getting from Timbuktou to Dakar and, excepting one particularly long bus-ride, this last leg of the trip was good fun. For the first time I met up with other travelers, downed some good beers, ate in restaurants, and got to know some interesting characters.

I met Jeff, an English Iraq-vet and security contractor who was taking a 2-year spin around the globe on a motorcycle (he looked and acted exactly like that soldier from the cable show Rome, Vorinus I think?); I met his companion Mark, an SF vet like myself, and we agreed to meet up for a beer in March; I met Mike, a long-bearded Scottish postman who endured the ride across Senegal with me; I met Paul, who makes his living buying and trading Chicago White-Sox tickets like it's some kind of stock; I met Ragnar, a young Norwegian girl who amazingly is on her way overland from Norway to the the Congo (yes, she knows there's a war there) and who had earlier traveled for three years across Asia, including Afganistan in 2004.

In Bamako, the capital of Mali, I started the last punishment of this trip: a 24-hour busride to Dakar that took 55 hours. It was awful, I don't care to write too much about it except to say we were endlessly delayed by police, 'gendarmerie', toll officialls, soldiers, and that we spent one night outdoors on a concrete pad at a busstation and I woke up with over fifty mosquito bites, a second night rudely awakened by over-eager toll officials, and that it was hot, overcrowded, they stored gasoline in the aisles, and my only luck was meeting up with Mike for part of the journey, the aforementioned Scottish postman. To give you some idea of corruption and inefficiency in Africa, the bus paid over 200 dollars in bribes to dozens of uniformed officials in both Mali and Senegal, and still our bags were searched and id's checked. The road in some places -- that's the main road between the capital cities of two nations-- was so riddled with potholes that we spent hours at a time cruising at five to ten mph.

Now I'm in Dakar, where the trip ends. I met my Dad here a week ago, he was on his way back from a business trip in South Africa and me on the way back from a marginally-business trip, and the timing worked out well, and it's been great to see a familar face and have good conversations and catch up after so long.

Although we're heading to the airport tonight I in essence checked out of Africa three days ago, when we checked into a swank lux hotel on the outskirts of town, complete with 50-meter swimming pool, chaise lounges, coctails with the lime placed just so, you get the idea. We also had excursions to St. Louis, the earliest French colonial town in West Africa, and a trip to the Parque National de Ouiseaux de Djoudj. The park is a sanctuary for migrating birds in a huge wetlands by the Senegal River, and from a boat we saw beautiful cormorants catching fish, a huge colonly of pelicans, a lone pelican (they fly solo when wounded or sick), lone herons, black and white egrets, ducks, eagles, and the 'Sacred Ibis' which looked just like an ancient Egyptian sculpture in the Palace of the Legion of Honor back in SF (both the bird and the sculpture are extraordinary). We also saw a big bad crocodile.

I'm leaving Africa now, leaving tired and happy, looking forward to coming home, grateful for the things I've seen, and thinking that one day, a long time from now, I might just be back.

(But before I return, a quick stop in Europe.)

Timbuktou

I made it to Timbuktou.

I made it to Timbuktou and a swarm of hawkers, guides, and scoundrels met me with a big smile, my white face drawing them out, they met me like miners meet an ore of gold. I made it to Timbuktou and a guy tried to sell me a shirt that said 'I made it to Timbuktou.' I made it to Timbuktou, and the sun was hot and the wind blew sand and dust and trash. I made it to Timbuktou, I stayed a little while, and then I turned around and headed for home.

It was a bit of a disapointment. I snapped a few picturs in front of the various European explorer's houses, noted the mildly interesting architecture, some yellowed manuscripts in a museum, and then I found a guide, or rather I should say he found me, who put me in touch with his friend, who talked to his brother, and soon I was off into the desert with a camel named Ajoumar and a sly Taureg camelherder named Alhalifa.

Or at least I thought I was off into the desert. I had wanted to see the Sahara, stand on a hill and see nothing but sand and rock around me, but mile after mile the remnants of the Sahel continued. There were sand dunes for sure, little wind-ruffled hills of sand, but they stood in an ocean of dry prickly grasses and little thorn trees, goats and goat herders, and I was told to my great frustration that the real desert was a seven-day camel ride north. I had two days, so you could say I made it to the fringe of the Sahara, but the real thing I did not see.

Desert or not, the landscape around Timbuktou is interesting, low hills, light yellows and ochres, sand, and riding a camel is fun. You sit with your feet bracing against its long neck, in a v-shaped wood saddle strapped to this very tall animal's even taller hump. Riding along rhythmically from this considerable altitude, with a straight back and dressed in a turqoise Taureg gown and turban, I felt royal, like a king on my tall horse surveying a grand conquest. The illusion broke when I dismounted --rather clumsily -- and found myself completely helpless. The prickly 'kram-krams' in the grass ate into my feet and sandals, slowing my walks to a crawl as I stopped to pick them out; the heat was awful, the gown felt silly and akward, and nausea welled up from a diet of couscous-in-sick-brown-sauce with gristly goat meat.

The Taureg people, also called the Tamashek, are the main ethnic group around Timbuktou and across the southern fringe of the Sahara, from Niger to Mali and beyond. Half of them look Arabic, the other half look like other black Africans, but they all speak the same harsh-sounding language, and the men are easily identified in their long gowns and face-covering turbans. They're a tough, desert-hardy people. Traditionally nomadic, many still live in semi-permanent straw-mat huts across the desert fringe, and make their living as sheperds and traders, and now also as hawkers of tourist trinkets. In the past their grand camel caravans criss-crossed the Sahara to trade gold, salt, and slaves, and to this day caravans make long expeditions, usually to gather salt from mines near the Algerian border. Traditionally they kept slaves, and from what I gather a strict social hierarchy still exists. Slavery, or a kind of unfree indentured-servitude, is reported to still exist in some parts. The Taureg are also the least integrated ethnicity in many of these countries; a Taureg rebellion in northern Niger still simmers, and one in northern Mali was resolved just a few years ago.

Anyway, Alhalifa, who is Taureg, and Ajoumar the camel and I spent two days and nights outside Timbuktou -- one night resting in a small Tuareg encampment, the second night on a sand dune. The desert is at it's best at night, when the blinding heat of the day gives way to cool and then cold, when the stars come out and a powerful silence holds sway. It's common for the larger camel caravans to travel by night and rest by day, navigating by 'bel-haadi,' the north star, and other constellations.

On the second day we rode past sunset and into the darkness, watching the stars appear one by one and the distant glow of the city rise on a stretch of horizon to the south. We made a little campfire, shared another awful meal of couscous and goat gristle, and I slept like I was awake, with vivid dreams under a cold clear sky, 'abba-raana-bakkar' (the Milky Way, literally the way of the blood of the sacrificed goat), and bel-haadi, and a thousand other stars shining above me. I had come two thousand kilometers over four countries, one month, sickness and homesickness, in overcrowded cars, buses, and boats, met good people and bad, and here, this here was the destination, my effort, my farthest reach. I had finally arrived. Even better, I was on my way back home.

The Road to Timbuktou, Part II

From mountainous Hombori I caught a five-hour pre-dawn bus to the town of Gao on the bank of the Niger. Gao, like Timbuktou, was once the center of a Sahelian empire, but now it's a miserable outpost of dreary mud-brick buildings, dusty streets, and mercenary tourist guides. After the last days of heat-exhaustion in Hombori and some days with a miserable guide in Dogon country, it marked a low point of morale. I spent two days here waiting to get out, and when I found out they had an airport I almost took an early flight home.

I decided to continue on to Timbouktou, however, but finding transport was difficult. Two locals finally 'helped' me book an overpriced passage on a transport boat docked in the harbor, which they assured me would leave the next morning. After I put down my deposit down I learned it was to leave the day following the next day, at 8am, by which time a more comfortable, cheaper, and faster passenger boat had come and gone. So, two days later, at 3pm not 8am, I left with a dozen passengers, five crew, two donkeys and a goat. I was told the journey would take two nights and a day, but, this being Africa, I knew that could mean anything.

The 60 foot-long motor boat was made of wide wooden planks and a rounded, straw-mat roof supported by saplings and tree branches. It wasn't designed for comfort, or really for any type of quality. The main job of one of the crewmen was to scoop water out the boat, water which continually seeped in from dozens of tiny holes. The holes were 'fixed' by pushing cotton rags into them with a special tool. Getting from one end of the boat to the other was an obstacle course over wooden beams, cargo, people, a cooking area, and the motors themselves; alternately you could trust your climbing skills and mount the outside of the boat to the roof, then walk along the (rounded) roof to the other side. Still, the boat stayed afloat, and I on it, and slowly but surely we made our way against the current of Niger towards Timbuktou.

How do you pass five days and five nights on an uncomfortable boat? I slept, I painted, I ate, I decoded a French spy thriller using a dictionary (CIA agent looks for two Irianian terrorists, but mostly just finds sexy women), I spent hours staring at the shoreline, watching sand dunes and river grasses and egrets and little fishing villages pass by. I thought about what I would do when I get home (I'll spend a day on the couch with the Sunday Times, a cup of real coffee and a toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese, tomatoe, and a pinch of salt; after that I'm not sure). We stopped at a village one night to load over a hundred huge sacks of white flour, which left the porters covered in a fine white dust, white dust against their black skin in the moonlight, a terrific sight. We stopped to visit the family of the captain (which ended in an argument), and we stopped at other villages for smaller loads and passengers, and each night we pulled ashore for a few hours to give the pilots some rest. I slept on a wooden board next to the grumpy captain, who spat and coughed and mumbled all through the night.

The Niger River must be over a mile wide in some parts, and it's really peaceful, really beautiful. The days were hot but the evenings cool and serene, and at night the moon came out, turning towards full, so the river glittered in silver light. I eventually made friends with the other passengers and crew, I painted portraits of several of them, and when on the third day I got really sick, Umu, the mother-figure of the boat, gave me some medicine and some comforting looks of concern. The boat had begun to feel like home, especially in the central cooking area where the women kept up a good banter. But a strange kind of home. The cavernous roof, held up by rib-like supports, was shaped much like the rounded bottom and I felt like I was inside a big whale, traveling slowly on my way to nowhere. The motor kept up a constant hum, the scenery passed effortlessly, the sun rose and fell, the moon rose and fell, I lost track of time. No one could tell me how far we'd come or how far to go -- one kid spoke a halting French and he had no clue -- so I just relaxed and trusted that things would work out.

Now I'm in Timbuktou.

The Road to Timbuktou, Part I

I wrote last from Sevare, just outside of the Dogon Counrtry of south-central Mali. To elaborate a little, the Dogon live along a big, flat-topped cliff that marks a welcome rise from hundreds of miles of flatlands to the south. Traditionally they lived in mud-brick and stone houses built right into the face of the cliff, which you can still see, not unlike some Native American dwellings in New Mexico and Arizona. They still bury some of their dead in fissures high up on the cliffs, little cracks in the rock that they reach with rope made from baobab trees. Today most Dogon live near their fields of millet on the plains below and on top of the cliff, or in nearby towns, and although many still practice their traditional religion, others are Christian or Muslim. I visited Dogon Country with a native guide, who drank bags of pre-mixed gin and tonic as we walked, and who hung out with his raucous African buddies at night, so what is considered one of west Africa's most extraordinary places became in fact a bit tediuous. But the trip continued, thankfully alone.

In Sevare, a tranport link at the edge of Dogon Country, I had the choice of a day's direct ride to Timbuktou, or taking the long way to Timbuktou.

In centuries past, Timbuktou marked the end of the trans-Saharan caravans that linked Europe, the Arab lands, and Sub-Saharan Africa. It grew on the riches of the caravans -- slaves and gold going north, salt and other goods coming south -- and was the capital of an empire when Europe was a mess of sqwabbling, pest-addled kingdoms. For the Muslim world, it was a center of scholarship in astronomy, religion, medicine, and other fields before a series of armies ran it into the ground. Trade with Europe eventually dwindled as European ships brought trade goods to Africa's coast, circumventing the caravans, and Timbuktoo fell into decline, retaining only a whisper of its former glory. Dozens of Europeans tried to reach it over the centuries, but the first ones didn't arrive until the 1820s. Today you can fly here, or take a day's ride from Sevare as I might have, but the place retains its allure and I didn't want to spoil the fun by getting here the easy way.

So, from Sevare I took a bus east to a town called Hombori, and spent four days there and in the nearby village of Daari. This is a mountainous part of Mali that looks a lot like New Mexico, with an arid landscape and huge mesas rising out of flatlands. I hiked to the near-top of the 'Cle de Hombori,' picking thorns out of my flip-flops along the way, and watched hawks and eagles flying below me and a spectacular view of Tondo Hombori, Mali's highest peak at 1155 meters, and a vast plain that dissolved into dust-laden air. I spent another day climbing around the 'Main de Fatima,' a formation of five giant rock spires farther down the road, but I got caught hiking in the mid-day sun, and despite plenty of water and sunscreen I got completely slammed by the heat. I spent the rest of that day in my hut praying for evening and the coolness that comes with it, sucking down water and craving salt. I have some watercolors from this landscape that I hope to use as studies for a painting of a vast, silent landscape, starting with thorns and brambles and yellow grasses and continuing with little dots of paint into infinity.

At the base of the 'Main de Fatima' is the Fulani village of Daari. Traditionally semi-nomadic goat and cattle-herders, the Fulani live across Sahelian West-Africa, and often look different from other Africans: thinner, somewhat lighter-skinned, the women often with hair braided in long strands across their heads. Of the many overlapping ethnic groups in west Africa, I somehow like the Fulani the most. My friend in Benin was Fulani, and I stayed with his Fulani family in Niger, and the town of Dori where I stayed with a Peace Corps volunteer is mostly Fulani. The village of Daari, however, was one of the most miserable I've seen, and the villagers, being used to tourists, ran up to me demanding gifts and showing me hideous infections and deformities.

As in many other villages, the women of Daari used a small, seasonal water hole for washing, bathing, and drinking and cooking, and this water was the most putrid, foul-smelling, nasty water you could imagine. It was shared by their animals, cow droppings everywhere, and I saw a kid going to the bathroom on the shoreline, but I don't think they've made the connection between water quality and illness. It's ironic, because generally people really care about hygiene, they wash a lot, wash their clothes a lot, wash their hands and feet before praying, and use only their right 'clean' hand to greet people.

In Africa, people really do get sick more often, children die in infancy, adults die younger, accidents happen, and there's no welfare, no health insurance, no protection from the uncontrollable forces of nature and man, only the comfort of family and religion. In the cities, there are sewers with enormous sections of concrete missing, so one misstep and you've either broken your leg or you're soaking in a nasty brew of urine and trash. In restaurants, the metal fans behind refridgerators often face common areas, ready to cut the fingers of anyone walking too close. Traffic is a terror, malaria comes with the rainy season...if I lived here, I would also become superstitious and religious.

This first week or so in Mali was interesting, but it was exhausting, and it felt good to finally catch a bus and be on the move again.

Congratulations America!!!

'America is second to heaven'
-Ghanian street vendor in Cotonou (a few weeks ago)

Congratulations America!!! I woke up this morning on a rooftop in Begnimato, a small village on top of the Bandiagara Cliff in Dogon Country, southern Mali, to hear the good news...I couldn't believe it at first, but some guides and other travellers had listened to the radio and yes, we will have a new presdient, Obama won, it's time for a change, it's amazing!

Over the last two months, every single African I've talked to has been hopeful for Obama. They've followed the election over the radio, and they were excited that someone with African roots might make it to the top of a country they regard as the most powerful and wonderful in the world. They truly see the US as a land flowing with wealth and opportunity: even if the real thing might not live up to the fantasy, America really is a symbol of hope and liberty, and I am so glad that we now have the chance to live up to that symbol. People here love America despite the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, and despite these countries being up to 90 percent Muslim.

I'm in Mali, just passed through the Dogon Country, where the flatlands end abruptly in a huge mesa, and where some people still practice their traditional religion. It was harvest season, and it seemed like entire villages were outside cutting millet, then hauling it and pounding it for storage, even the smallest little kids were out in the fields. I went with a guide, but as far as I can tell the only good a guide does in Mali is keep other guides off your back. Mali is perhaps the most-visited country in West Africa, so people see you as a cash machine, which is rather unpleasant. I painted some really bad watercolors here the last few days, plus one I like, it's a baobab tree in the evening. Niger and Burkina were much more intersting, with friendly people, or people who just left you alone.

Right now I'm in Sevare, about 200 km south of Timbuktoo.

Burkina

I left Niamey, the capital of Niger, last Sunday morning, October 26th. I painted some decent watercolors in Niamey, and came to know my host family a little better: uncle Mahumud and I discussed travel plans in sign language and diagrams, little Habibublai taught me some Fulani by naming animals I drew for him, and I got along in a formal, cordial way with Mr. Alzouma, the patriarch of the family. They took good care of me and set me up with their relatives in Tera, down the road in the western tip of Niger, another family that was really kind to me. They had at least ten kids, I couldn't count and neither could they.

West of Niamey, across the Niger River and across to Burkina the landscape became truly fantastic. Where before it seemed bleak, here it seemed majestic, biblical even. The land is hot and flat and dry, and small fields of millet and sorghum punctuate a vast backdrop of sparse green trees and dry grass. Sheperds tend flocks of goats and gaunt, wild-looking cattle, women gather firewood, people wash in the occasional watering hole, all of them dressed in billowing robes and scarves and headwraps. When you add to this a very religious people, with names like Ibrahim (Abraham), Issaka (Isaac) and Zara (Sarah) it really seems like you're two thousand years back in time.

(I should also say that while this part of the world is almost entirely Muslim, and life comes to a halt five times a day for prayers, it's not at all like the fundamentalist Muslims you read about in the paper. I honestly feel no animosity from them.)

From Tera I went on to Dori, in Burkina Faso. The speed of travel in Africa depends almost exclusively on the quality of the road, so this 100km stretch took an entire day. I waited four hours while passengers slowly gathered, and then took off in the back of a burly Toyota 4x4 pickup. It was by far the funnest ride I've ever had in my life, and it's a real shame riding in the back of a pickup is illegal in the States. We were crammed a dozen people and a goat in the bed of the truck, another dozen on the roofrack, and heaps of sugarcane and baggage strewn about. The 'road' was in fact a series of converging and diverging sand tracks, with plenty of potholes and ridges that left us flying all over each other for the rest of the day. We stopped many times, border checks, prayers, food, unloading and loading, and by nightfall I landed in Dori.

In Dori I reconnected with a Peace Corps volunteer I had briefly met in Grand Popo. Yaneth let me crash on her couch, and it was just really great to relax for a few days, to speak English, to have a conversation with similar cultural references, to find real vegetables at the market and cook food again, to let someone else take charge. I got to know Dori a bit, we visited an orphanage where she volunteers and played with the kids, and we took a trip to nearby Bani to see a series of mud-brick mosques built in the 1970s by a latter-day Islamic prophet.

From Dori I travelled with Yaneth to Ougadougou--the capital of Burkina Faso. Ougadougou is a surprisingly sophisticated city: big buildings, restaurants, traffic lights, traffic that's merely stressful and not terrifying, a city that somehow keeps the choas of Africa at bay (we did however see a crocodile in a creek just outside of downtown). We met up with a bunch of other Peace Corps volunteers, and I spent two days forgetting I was in Africa: We went out to western restaurants, relaxed and swam in the International School's pool, read English magazines, and visited Siao, a big, biannual arts and crafts and music festival. Morale was high among this group, they were kind to make room for me , and it was definitely a high point of the trip.

This morning I left for Ouahigouya, a depressing border town on the way to Mali.

Sahel

I left Cotonou early Tuesday morning, October 21, for the long busride to Kandi in the north of Benin. It was a rare, comfortable, western-style bus, playing pop music and WWF wrestling as we passed endless miles of flat African countryside. The landscape changed slowly from the greener coast to a drier soil, less underbrush and more grass, people in longer, billowing clothing, more mosques. I was nervous, hoping each stop was not mine and glad for the comfort and safety of the moving road.

I stayed in Kandi one night, made a bad watercolor from the rooftop of my sweltering hotel room, walked around Wednesday morning along wide dusty streets, stopped in a cafe and made a watercolor of one of the guys there, amused crowds gathering around me.

From Kandi a short 'bush taxi' ride to the village of Alfa Kouara, on the edge of the large 'Parque National du W.'

Bush taxis are the main transport linking smaller villages in West Africa, and they're a chaotic, cramped, unbelievable way to travel. The taxis, either station wagons or old peugot's, are banged-up, creaking, moving wrecks, complete with cracked windshields and missing mirrors. On the inside they invariably smell like gasoline, but to beat the headache and roll the windows down you have to first ask the driver to pass the handcranck, and forget about seatbelts, locking doors, working speedometers, or other luxuries. They don't leave until fully loaded, which means four people plus kids in each row, and three, sometimes even four, in the front (that makes eleven and sometimes twelve adults plus kids in a station wagon). I once sat in a taxi where the driver shifted gears between a passenger's legs. The luggage is strapped to the roof -- huge bags of grain and miscellaneous pots and baggage, often taller than the car itself, laboriously loaded and unloaded at each stop, which means every ten or fifteen minutes. At the larger taxi stations, and sometimes the smaller stops, inevitable arguments about who-knows-what...the roads aren't too good either, paved but little wider than a suburban street in the States, sometimes more potholes than smooth surface.

The park entrance at Alfa Kouara was officially closed for the rainy season, but I got a ride in on a motorcycle anyway, really fun, and beatiful, colorful, long-tailed birds, a troop of monkeys, but none of the big mammals. Ate a meal of paté with the park rangers at night under a thousand stars, and shared a nasty mix of pastisse and syrup, their preferred drink at a nearby 'bar'(I declined to sniff the tobacco powder mixed with 'medicaments').

On Thursday a short ride from Alfa Kuoara to the border town of Malanville, lingering long enough to send some postcards, then the police check and a walk across the bridge spanning the Niger River, Africa's third longest, and into the country of Niger.

Niger is immediately different. At the bus depot at Gaya, a beautiful tall woman with a glossy, blind eye, henna-painted feet, long black headscarf, praying with a crying baby on her back. Miles and miles of even drier and bleaker countryside, now only mud huts instead of cinderblock, thatch traded for corrugated roofs. Many stops, police checks, stops for prayer, who-knows-why stops. People don't always smile back when you smile, or wave when you wave, and they don't ask for gifts unless they really really need it. People who don't speak French. Thinner people, more 'Ethiopian' features, longer wraps, solid colors mixed with the ubiquitous patterns of the coast, headscarves, muslim hats, clothing taken out of a Rafael painting. More cripples, more deformities, a man in a white headcap and his adolescent child with an impossibly small head, eyes right out to the perifery, like someone you might have seen at the circus a hundred years ago. Sweltering heat, forgot to bring enough water, cramped bus, my seat tilted seat in the aisle with luggage, people climbing over each other at each stop.

Arrived in the capital of Niamey Thursday night well after dark, was supposed to stay with relatives of Abdullay from Grand Popo but didn't dare venture into the periferies that late, found a taxi driver I trusted and a hotel. Issaka picked me up in the morning, and I found a city much calmer than I feared, wide streets, spread out city, not unnerving and polluted like Cotonou. Errands, visa for Burkina, bank, phone, tour of the city, a break at Issaka's and two watercolors, the first good ones on this trip, of him and his wife. Stronger colors, more agressively painted. His wife only spoke Hauossa, both had long tribal scars across their cheecks, I couldn't tell if she minded me there. A watercolor on the bank of the Niger, women washing clothes, across to the Harobanda district where I met Abdullay's family. Kind to offer food and shelter but little chit-chat. A maze of alleys, courtyards, mud houses, slept outside under a mosquito net, woke up predawn with a bad dream and the call for prayer, painted the crescent moon rising over the rooftops.

Planning to leave Niamey tomorrow or Monday for Burkina Faso.

Moving Forward

My painting residency finished and I left Villa Karo and the village of Grand Popo this morning. By the end this strange place and unlikely collection of people started to feel a little like home. There was Jaakko, the Finnish intern, with whom I travelled to Togo among other adventures; Liz, the American peace corps volunteer who brought a little good-old-USA with her; Kaisu the older Finnish painter I connected with; Boris the vegetarian carpenter who never failed to bring a smile; Marcel the raggedy, drooling speach-impaired kid who never left us alone, but who was too adorable to chase away; the family of Adrienne and Francoise and their six kids, who farmed and hunted crabs and lizards for a living and were so warm to me; Abdullaj the easy-going Fulani night guard, who cheerfully ascribed every misfortune to fate, and with whom we shared many funny, mosquito-laced conversations, Victor who guided me safely across the seedy side of Cotonou, and many many many others. It was sad to leave but I left properly, said my goodbyes, didn't leave things unresolved...I'm leaving with less baggage than I came with.

In the end I did make some paintings, although painting here never ceased to be difficult and I'll have to finish most of them in the States: A flowering, overgrown garden, a painting of Abdullay, the night guard, a painting of the sea at sunset, palms in moonlight, two portraits, and maybe a dozen small watercolors.

So I'm leaving, but I'm not going home yet. I'm single for the first time in a long time, I have no apartment, no studio, not really a city to call home, I have no shows scheduled, and it occurred to me that I have no reason to return to the States just yet (although sadly I'll miss the election). I have enough cash from my open-house show in August to keep me going another month or two, so if I want to see the Sahara Desert, if I want to ride a camel or float down the Niger River or sit on an overcrowded train for two days straight...then why not?

I'm in Cotonou tonight, and tomorrow I'll start a one-way trip across West Africa.
I'll travel alone with a small, efficiently-packed backpack and a colorful new watercolor-bag made by Florence, the energetic local seamstress. I got a faux-hawk haircut last night courtesy of Liz and Jaakko, as a kind of going-away-ritual, and it feels great and anyway no one here knows what white people's hair should look like. I've looked at maps and talked to people and made a plan, I feel good and strong and I'm ready to go.

If all goes well I'll travel through Benin to Niamey in Niger, across northern Burkina Faso, up to Mali through the Dogon country, to Timbuktoo and the edge of the Sahara, then up the Niger River to Bamako and across to Dakar, leaving Africa in early December.

I'll write again soonish.

Eating in Africa: An Ode to my Favourite Food Blogger.

For the last many years, Nicole made dinner. She made wonderful dinners: homey, vegetarian, colorful, soft, mouth-watering dishes with strong and simple ingredients, often from that week’s farmer’s market. She made roasted cauliflower sizzled in olive oil and salt, chick peas in a tomatoey sauce with onions over barley, quinoa soups with mushrooms and spinach, amazing pastas and pesto, quiches, mashed sweet potato, marinated tofu, corn on the side, even eggplant, which she hates but I love. Her meals were fantastic, always hearty and warm, filling and light at the same time, and enjoyed with her great company at the table or on the couch watching Seinfeld after a long day, a cold beer never far away. I admit I was spoiled rotten, and that’s before I tell you that rarely a day went by without homemade cookies, cupcakes, muffins, or cakes of all kinds filling the kitchen. I had it good.

I’m in Africa now and alone for the first time in a long time. So, in honor of a great cook and an even greater food writer, and since she's not here with me to tell the story herself, I’m sending this report about the food of Grand-Popo, Benin, West Africa:

In the States I’m mostly vegetarian. Here being vegetartian is almost impossible. There’s obviously no tofu, but there are precious few of the other protein-rich plants: few beans, and anyway I have no patience for cooking beans, no broccoli, no peanut-butter, and some really expensive lentils in a can at the far end of town. I also really miss snack foods, like cheeseits from Trader Joe’s, and black-pepper kettle chips, and haagen-daaz vanilla…

As for other vegetables, the local grocery-shack stocks soggy green cabbage, small roma tomatoes that get pecked by the chickens when no one’s looking (but hey, the chickens are free-range), occasionally eggplant and zucchini, wrinkled green peppers, string beans (I have no patience for the endless chopping), avocados that are purply and red with big pits and an odd taste, and ridiculously spicy habanero-style peppers and dried chile peppers. They also sell garlic and small red onions. (Onions are a big crop here, and on harvest days you can smell onion in the air and can peek over fences to see families working small fields or sorting onions into bunches).

The fruit department is more specialized: You can get a delicious personal-sized pineapple for a quarter, and tiny little bananas that are tough and tasty, and papayas which are fine enough but no match for a good American cantaloupe. They occasionally have apples, but they’re brought in from Togo and aren't cheap. I had never seen either papaya or banana trees before, and they’re both incredibly gorgeous. Bananas hang ‘upside-down’ in clusters in the middle of big, broad-leafed palmy type trees with a kind of purple disc coming out of them, and papayas grow at the top of short, straight-stemmed trees that open like umbrellas into canopies of enormous, serrated leaves.

Canned and bottled goods are limited to tuna, olives, tomato paste, corn and peas, things like that. There’s no juice, and you get your coffee fix with nesquick instant, and don’t leave the sugar out unless you like ants in your coffee. Bread is unfortunately always the white loafy kind that you know is terrible for you, but it’s so much easier to make a sandwich than to actually cook something. Eggs are abundant, and mayonnaise exists, so you can make tuna, egg-salad, and avocado-tomato sandwiches. I’ve seen lettuce here and there, but the SF health clinic instilled the fear of God into me about uncooked foreign bacteria so I don't touch it (two of seven yovos here have been violently ill, surely I'll get my turn soon enough).

The staples are manioc flour and corn-mush, either of which is made like polenta but without cheese, just a big ball of solid porridge. Also popular are white rice, couscous, and western-style spaghetti. A typical West-African dinner is pretty good, and consists of one of the staples plus fried fish in a spicy tomato-onion sauce. You can also get chicken, goat, and occasionally beef in that same type of sauce, but there’s an avian bird flue scare and I just could never eat goat.

I’ll only eat fish when I go out, and a favourite spot at the end of town serves dinner for about two dollars but it’s a hike to get there. The fish is fresh from the sea every day, and when you order you never know what it will look like. Sometimes it’s a frightening, full long-headed, toothed predator, other times it's the bottom half and tail of a flatter fish. I’m always grateful for the protein and the sustenance, and also feel a pang of guilt for the animal before me. The food at Chez Desi’s is really good, but on the other hand I’ve heard you can tell the quality of a restaurant by the way it keeps its bathrooms. When I asked for the bathroom, the owner asked me if I intended to pee, and then vaguely pointed to the rear of her backyard. Nearby was a large ceramic pot behind an open-air thatched screen, the purpose of which would have been difficult to discern if not for the smell. There was no water, much less soap, but thankfully it rains pretty often.

My first successful home cooking experiment was with my buddy Jaakko, the Finnish intern, in Villa Karo’s cooking room. A cooking room is similar to a kitchen, because it conatins a rusty stove with one good burner and possibly an old refrigerator, but the similarities end there. The water supply comes from a garden spigot on the outside of the building, for example. We’ve repeated this meal several times with different variations. I’ll call it Grand Popo Soup.

Grand Popo Soup:

Fry four small red onions and some garlic in a pan with low-grade soy or palm oil, and throw in some diced jalapenos.
Add four small diced roma tomatoes to the mix, be careful to cut out the bad parts.
Meanwhile, cook two cups of rice in extra water in a large pot and add a large lump of tomato paste.
Add the fried stuff, add some salt.
Throw in an old sliced cabbage or eggplant or a can of lentils or whatever, boil until they’re done.

Serve with sliced lime in an old metal container and a flat spoon.

It’s somewhat better than it sounds.

I miss you Nicole.

And the food's just a small part of it.

Working in Africa, Part II

Yesterday was a good day. The morning started with me trying again to make stretcher bars out of some crap wood I bought. The saw was dull, the nails too thick, the wood split, and it occurred to me that I don’t have to stay here. I decided I’d call Air France, change my ticket, stop wasting my time, go home and be happy. As I was daydreaming, one of the local guys, Boris, came by. We had played soccer on the beach together last week, so I didn’t mind him hovering around for a bit. He observed my efforts with concern, and politely told me that he was a carpenter. I’ve learned to doubt people here, but I had nothing to lose and long story short, he went home to get a set of real tools and spent the next ten hours, without break, making four great, sturdy canvas stretchers. He planed the rough wood down, even sanded the stretcher bars which was technically unnecessary but absolutely admirable. He was happy to have work on a day without work, and I was thrilled to be moving forward.

While Boris was working I started a portrait of another guy I know here, Matthias, one of the many underemployed guides. There are too-few tourists to give everyone work, but Matthias always has the air of being busy, things to do, deals to arrange. He’s a sharp dresser and an interesting character, and for the first time here I felt myself painting smoothly, at times effortlessly. I got a good start, and he’s coming again tomorrow to model. I’ve also been working on a larger, colourful tropical garden landscape, and another portrait, and now with four new canvasses waiting for action (I spent today stretching and priming them) I feel I’m finally on my way.

While I was painting Matthias, two enormously tall Norwegian reporters came by. They were working on a story about democracy in Benin (intending to write about a successful African democracy, they found the political situation a bit more complicated) and were in Grand Popo for something or other, and decided to stop by Villa Karo. It was fun to speak Norwegian again and meet someone so randomly, and it never hurts to give a reporter your web site.

I also had a talk with Juha yesterday, he’s an old ‘Africa hand’ and the founder of Villa Karo, and he told me that most resident artists here over the years have taken a long time to adjust, and they don’t necessarily make much work at all. Sometimes the work comes later, after leaving Africa and remembering it from a distance. So that was encouraging, and perhaps it’s ok that it takes a good three weeks to adjust, learn the pace and the routine and the landscape. I know from other times in my life when I’ve moved to a new place, or even to a new studio in the same city, that it takes time to learn things and find a new work rhythm. Perhaps a little self-compassion would be in order.

After three weeks here, existing is no longer exhausting. I have figured out many of the little-but-important things, like where to get food and how to plan meals so I’m not hungry, and how the phone and internet systems work (or sometimes work). I’ve learned, like the locals do, to take long siestas and walk slowly (in the States, I routinely pass people like being a pedestrian is some kind of sport). I’ve learned to be less ambitious. I’ve learned more about the culture, and have gotten to know both local people and Villa Karo people better (many in a jovial good-to-see-you kind of way, but also a few deeper connections). My French is better, if still perfectly terrible, so I can understand people I want to talk to, and not understand those I don’t want to talk to. I’ve found places where I feel good painting, and I’ve remembered how to paint again.

Juha went back to Finland today, and there was a formal goodbye dinner for him yesterday evening. As the sun set and the day came to a close, Boris was still hammering in the background while I sat at a long table, eating a rare good meal, drinking too much wine, enjoying good company and a cool breeze, and looking forward to three more weeks in Africa.

Working in Africa, Part I

(From a few days ago)

It’s hot and sticky here, everything is slow and difficult and inefficient, there’s no studio space, there’s no privacy, I have no energy, and just trying to paint here is exhausting. If I return to Africa, it will be to visit and travel and see, and not to work because working here seems impossible.

I met some Peace Corps volunteers at a bar last week – they had worked in neighbouring Burkina Faso for the last 15 months with 9 to go, and they also felt it was impossible to get things done. People show up hours late, the food is unfamiliar and irregular, the heat wears you down, and just nothing really works. Every other “yovo” (white person in Mina, the local language, and a word you hear incessantly) I meet here feels the same way, and maybe that’s ok. Africa isn’t meant for yovos: It’s its own special place with its own schedule and purpose.

Little things in Africa take a lot of time. For example, it’s a three-mile walk to the internet café. That’s three hot, slow miles, made slower by the constant stop-and-greet (most people don’t work as much here as they do in the States and spend lots of time talking). At this point I’ve met a lot of people, so the stop-and-greet adds a solid half-hour to the day if I’m feeling chatty. (It’s also important to remember people’s names; I can’t tell you how many people I’ve offended by forgetting their names or forgetting that I had previously met them at all, especially in the first week).

At the internet place, the people are grumpy and the connection is slow, so catching up on a few emails can take over an hour. The keyboard is French, which means the a,m,z,q, w, period, comma, and a few other keys are in different places, so typing takes longer. At this point at least four hours have gone by since you left the house, and you realize you’re incredibly hungry. You go to a cheap restaurant to order some food, and it comes an hour later if you’re lucky, two hours later if you’re not, even if you’re the only customer there. People show up to chit-chat, on your way home you stop to buy some things, and when you get home it’s late, you’re hot and exhausted and think that tomorrow, yes tomorrow you’ll get some work done.

Strangely, there’s no studio space at Villa Karo. Before I left I just assumed that an artist residency would have studio space, but not so. Apparently they often host writers and composers and others who need little more than a desk, so the 'studio' is an open-air concrete patio with turquoise walls and a straw mat for a roof. There’s no privacy from curious villagers, and when it rains, as it has for the last two days, there’s no chance of working at all.

It took days to find wood, nails, a hammer and a saw to make stretcher bars for canvasses, and the quality of all the above was abysmal. The laundry lady has had all my clothes except what I’m wearing for the last three days. My mosquito net couldn’t quite tuck under my mattress, which was fine until a few nights ago a plague of mosquitoes appeared and easily breached the gap, and we fought until the net was covered in blood smears (after the one day I forgot to take my malaria meds). Buying groceries can take hours, and yet if you neglect that most basic of chores, you grow hungry and ever-more lethargic. It’s not that I need a perfect set-up to work, just that when I’m already sapped of energy, the little problems seem big, and after a hundred little problems I want to give up.

So, don’t expect to see a whole lot of great paintings when I come home. Just to exist and survive in Africa seems good enough. I’ll write something more positive next time.

I’m in Africa

I’ve been in Benin in West Africa for a bit over a week. It’s a crazy place, bewildering at first and just completely different from the States in every imaginable way. You realize even at the airport that things are different here, as a huge mob rushes the rolling baggage tray, and suitcases roll by alongside taped plastic bags, large rice sacs, broken cardboard boxes, and all kinds of improvised packaging. My own bags would arrive three days later on the next flight from Paris.

Alphonse, the driver for Villa Karo, took me to a hotel in Cotonou (the capital) that first night, and the next morning we drove to Villa Karo in the village of Grand Popo where I'll be staying. The weeks preceding this trip were exhausting, and the trip itself was long, so I spent the first days here just sleeping and taking a few small walks in the village. I was unshaven, wearing the same clothes, it rained a lot, and morale was low.

Since then I’ve had time to explore the village, get to know people a bit, get on my feet as it were and finally start to paint. So, before I post another blog I want to give you a little tour of Benin, and Grand Popo in particular:

In Benin, there are no stores like there are in the US. Instead, just about every household along any main road has a shaded stall -- typically some tree branches covered by a thatched or corrugated steel roof—where they sell anything from a few fruits and vegetables to rice, batteries, toothpaste, paper, and even gasoline, which amazingly comes in recycled glass bottles. This means it takes a really long time to gather ingredients for a meal, and it also means the “highway” and roads are in constant activity, with people coming and going and buying and selling all the time, from morning until late at night. There are few sidewalks, so pedestrians share the streets with run-down and overloaded “mopos,” (mopeds), cars, and burly trucks. Even areas away from the roads seem active, as fishermen ply rivers, farmers tend fields, and people gather coconuts or just stroll about. It's hot like Maryland in August with no air conditioning, so people mostly hang out outside, and walk slowly, you could say it's laid back and active at the same time.

The only traffic “rule” I have discerned is a general preference for the right side of the road. There are no seatbelts for cars or helmets for mopos; there are no speed limit signs and few traffic signals (none in Grand Popo); you make left turns across heavy traffic by inching forward until that traffic is forced to abruptly stop; at night there are few streetlights, and headlights on vehicles are common but apparently optional, so you walk with great care.

People are really colourful here. The women wear dresses and wraps of brightly-patterned fabrics, and wear their hair in any number of fashions, often with braided extensions or headscarves. One of the most beautiful - and common - sights is to see women walking down the street carrying baskets on their heads – surprisingly big baskets and buckets filled with coconuts, bananas, dishes, anything at all. The men also wear colorful and patterned fabrics, sewn into loose pants and shirts, as well as western-style dress. Sandals and flip-flops are the main footwear. Dressing well seems to be important, and only children wear shorts or raggedy t-shirts, and only farmers in the field will go bare-chested.

Grand Popo, where I will stay for the next several weeks, is a village of a few thousand people on the coast of Benin. It’s two hours west of Cotonou and an hour east of the border with Togo, and squeezed between the Atlantic to the south and a river and wetlands to the north. It’s about three miles long and maybe half a mile wide, with most of the commerce and activity along a mostly-paved road that leads to the highway. Grand Popo is on a coastal plain, so it’s sandy and in some places marshy, with lots of coconut trees, banana trees, papaya trees, and other short-but-lush vegetation. People live in small cinderblock houses, mud huts, and improvised structures, often with thatched or corrugated roofs and fenced-off gardens and courtyards. Instead of glass windows, they use wooden shutters. Colorful lizards scamper about and you see small, colorful songbirds, but there are no big animals, only lots of really small goats, some really small pigs, chickens, and sad-looking and also very small and often-pregnant dogs.

People here are really friendly, sometimes just to sell you something, but often genuinely so. It’s a relatively poor place, with fishing, subsistence farming, commerce, and some tourism making up the economy.

I’m staying in Villa Karo, a “Finnish-African Cultural Center” in a large house on the main road. I’m here as one of six resident artists, all of them Finnish except me, their annual international artist. A Finnish intern, a Columbian spouse, and a large African staff make up the rest of this place. We get along well in a cacophony of languages: Finnish, Swedish, English, French, Spanish, Mina (the local African language), and when that fails, hand-gestures usually work.

Besides hosting artists, Villa Karo has classes and cultural events for the village, things like dance performances, movie night, and an annual boat race I saw which was just absolutely fantastic: fishermen from four villages competed to launch their 8-man dugout canoes into the ocean in a terrible surf, then around a buoy a kilometre offshore and back again through the surf. Three flipped over either on the launch or return, while a beautiful, colorful, roaring crowd of at least a thousand cheered wildly from the beach.

That’s all for now, I’ll write more about life in Grand Popo soon, but I hope this gives you a rough image of what things are like here. Unfortunately there’s no chance of uploading photos (including video of the boat race), as just connecting to the internet can take 20 minutes if it works at all, and then it’s painstakingly slow. But when I get back to the States I’ll get some pictures up.

Solo show at Geras Tousignant Gallery, SF

My solo show "Lost at Sea" opens this Friday evening at Geras Tousignant Gallery in San Francisco. Lost at Sea will be on view, along with eighteen other paintings I've been working on since last spring -- alternately turbulent and peaceful views of the shoreline and open sea in fog, snow, and sunlight, of birds and rolling waves. I've updated some of the paintings to my site.


Lost at Sea through the gallery window, with my beautiful truck parked in front.

Opening is Friday February 8 from 5-8pm; show runs through March 15th. Geras Tousignant Gallery, 437 Pacific Av. in SF, between Sansome and Montgomery near Columbus, M-F 12-5 or by appointment, 415.986.1647.


Lost at Sea


Sea Star


Cormorant at Twilight