Life Is A Slow Harold
MC Tuareg’s family. on Flickr.
I have no idea how they’re related to him, though. Families are very fluid in Africa. Cousins are also called brothers, every man seems to be an Uncle, and everyone is a father or mother to a child.
Davide, from France, putting on a fire show at the traditional tent. on Flickr.
A fire spinner from France performed with some traditional Tuareg singers. They were frightened by him at first, then laughed nervously the whole time.
A caravan of Tuaregs arrives. on Flickr.
I was sitting at my desk, waiting for tourists to come so I could check them in. The opening to the tent was low, two feet of the ground. I looked up from my book to see the hooves of camels right outside the opening. A Tuareg tribe had just arrived.
My “office” on Flickr.
My desk at work checking in tourists to the Festival in the Desert.
Kids yell at you until you watch. Then they do flips. Then they demand money for the show. on Flickr.
In the Sahara.
Foosball table, 5am, Bamako on Flickr.
Foosball tables are everywhere. They leave them out and kids play on them all day.
“You Americans all say ‘Africa’ as if it’s some dark, forbidden continent. But I live here,too.” – Zara Julius, a South African, to me.
I stepped off the plane in Casablanca just before sunrise. My first view of Africa was the tarmac, a dark blue sky and a dark red earth. My first smell was of the Royal Air Maroc airplane emptying it’s toilets. I slept in the airport all day, moving until I found the quietest and most secluded spot where I camped for 14 hours.
I arrived in Bamako at 1 a.m. On the flight, I sat next to a Lebanese man living in Bamako and hating it. He had spent two months home in Beirut and was sick at the idea of returning to Bamako to run his night club. He hated the city and the people. He told me we should hang out at his nightclub. I got his number. I have not called him.
