Monthly Archives: August 2016

Where’s The Peace?

My step-father’s farm lies about 200 kilometers north of Bangkok. Den annually harvests one rice crop. The rest of the year he tends to his roaming cattle. His house is small. A solar panel provides energy for a small TV, radio, light bulb, and fan. The sun falls fast on the rice fields and at […]

The Brides of Mopti

The Niger River runs 4000 kilometers through Western Africa. Its existence was known to the Romans, although few people were aware of its source. Mungo Park explored the Mali interior finding death beyond the relative safety of Timbucktoo. It was a common end for most European seeking the shrink the expanse of ‘terra incognita’ on […]

KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST BY Adam Hochschild

Can you judge a book by its cover? Certainly not KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST, unless you have an inkling that Josef Conrad’s THE HEART OF DARKNESS was based on his six months of visiting the hellish Congo Free State plantation dotting the Congo River and that Kurtz was not one man but many fervently seeking their fortune […]

Mungo Park – Explorer

European geologists were baffled by the rivers of Africa. They were puzzled by the sources of the Niger and Congo and even thought that the two rivers were one. Expeditions were sent out from the capitols of the empires. Mongo Park was one of those explorers. The Scot had reached the Niger in the end […]

Bamako On The Strong Brown God

Bamako is the fast-growing capitol of Mali. The word ‘Bamako’ means crocodile in the Bambara language and the ancient town has served as a market town since Empire of Ghana dominated the region. The city of 2 million inhabitants straddles the Niger River. Three bridges span the wide river. During the dry season two causeways […]