Update: I’ve decided to spend a few months in Canada. I’m heading back to Edmonton on Friday, where I will get a job and save up some money before heading back abroad. I’ve got an offer at a pretty nice school in Xi’an, China if I want it, but I’m also going to interview for [...]
It’s quite possible that my heart is still in West Africa.
Yes, life is good here in Guatemala. I love this country. I love speaking Spanish (far more than I will ever love French). I love the music here, the food, the culture. There’s lots to do and I have tons of friends in the [...]
Warning:
Travel Snobbery ahead. (You know, how you get some travelers together and one will say “I’ve been here, it was incredible,” and another will reply “but I’ve been here, and it is more incredible!”) I try to avoid this as much as possible in my blog, but today I’m going to jump headfirst into a [...]
Man: The way you look at polygamy is the way we think when we look at your culture on television and see two women or two men getting married. It’s scandalous! We don’t understand!
Woman: We intellectual women fight for the liberation of women, but in our homes our husbands still try to maintain their authority. [...]
My second last day in Ouagadougou in 2008, I learn from a neighbor that a good Burkinabe friend of mine has been sustaining a big lie for the past two years.
In 2006, he was the best bud to me and the two other Canadians in my project team. On our first night in the [...]
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Posted 04 May 2009
† Caitlin
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Last week, during one of my daily sessions perusing the Lonely Planet message boards, I received an interesting message. A forum member had read about my time staying with a local family in Ouagadougou, and sent me a bunch of questions. Among the mundane (“how did you find the family?”) was a very… interesting question: [...]
One afternoon in Ouaga I go to meet Dabson and “Mr. Baobab” at Zaka. They are not there when I arrive so the waiter (who now knows me) seats me at a table in the shade and says that my friends will be back in an hour. I order a Coke, and because I don’t [...]
I am writing a ridiculous travel novel, just for fun. Well, right now it’s just a dozen or so jumbled memories disguised as fiction through composite characters, but it feels good to write. Here’s a page I just wrote.
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When I get home later the same day, Adjara and Mariam are sitting outside my door. [...]
This month has gone by very quickly, but I also feel like I’ve been in Ouaga for quite awhile. I leave on Friday morning for Ghana. There, I’ll spend two nights on the beach in Kokrobite, and the last night in Accra before catching the flight to NYC. My mom is coming to meet me [...]
Last Saturday I was invited to go to a wedding with a friend (Ouaga’s least annoying musician/artisan rasta type.) I wasn’t really sure whether I should accept or not, since I wasn’t entirely sure that “I want you to come to my home and meet my family” wasn’t code-word for “I want you to come [...]
