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As of today, I’ve been in Africa for exactly one year. I’ve got 26 days left; I’ll be flying home from Dakar on Friday, 8 April (God willing). My health is still good, but I’m pretty burned out mentally, and am pretty much looking forward to going home.

I’ve been unable to do much with this blog from West Africa. Even when there’s Internet access, there isn’t always electricity, nor are there always computers with enough RAM to run a web browser at anything like usable speeds.

Thus far, I’ve visited four West African nations: Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, and now Mali. I’ve taken the two longest bus rides of my life: 19 hours from Ouagadougou to Bamako, and 21 hours from Cotonou to Ouagadougou. The level of street harassment in West Africa is even higher, overall, than it is in East Africa, and that’s very annoying; at the same time, though, I’ve made many more African friends here than I ever did in Ethiopia, Kenya, or Uganda. I’ve seen the inside of several West African homes, eaten meals and watched TV in people’s homes, and thus (I think) have gotten a little more of a feel for “real life” here than I did in the East. Being able to speak French has really helped; my French has enabled me to have a very different experience here than I would have had otherwise. I was able to make real friends in Togo and Burkina Faso, and that has been a good thing.

Next week I’ll go on a six-day trip around Mali: Mopti, Dogon country, and Djenné. After that I’ll come back to Bamako for a couple days, and then head off to Senegal for my final two weeks. I’m hoping to take a flight on Air Senegal from Bamako to Dakar; it takes at least 30 hours to get there by bus, and I am less than enthusiastic about that idea.

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