‘We are making palm oil,’ Christian says, ‘would you like to see?’ He leads me through a landscape of palm, elephant grass, and smoky patches of last week’s slash and burn. Young girls from the village, Beautiful faces, giggles, hands waving like flags. You snap me! You snap me! Christian points to a tree that […]
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Book spine poems
A great idea from http://millionsmillions.tumblr.com/ which Helen added to on http://schietree.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/book-spine-poems/ Here is mine, from titles within 3 feet of my mac! The sentimentalists Say you’re one of them, The memory of love, The beautiful things that heaven bears. Bush wives and child soldiers Dangerous lives, They fight like soldiers, they die like […]
On standing out….below the radar, in Sierra Leone
I’ve often been asked if I’ve ever felt uncomfortable in Sierra Leone. The answer is yes, when I was there in 2000, during the war. It was a year after ‘the second coming of the demons’, which is how Sierra Leoneans often refer to January, 1999, when the rebels retook most of Freetown. When Joseph […]
My birthday surprise….
Shelley packed a bag for the two of us, My birthday surprise. Take Marley and Finnegan out to the car and wait, she said. Nice. Going away for 2 days and I don’t even pack a toothbrush, I’ve got it all covered, she assured me. She took us up-island. On the Malahat before she spilled […]
In memory of a good friend…
Two years ago I returned to Sierra Leone (Return to Freetown, Salone 2010). I made it through the chaos of Lungi Airport at night, stumbled onto a helicopter, and landed on the other side of the estuary. Waiting for me was the welcoming face of Kenawa Bernard, the brother of my good friend Betty Tenga. […]
So many voices
Literata. I like the sound of it. I’m sitting in one of the reading rooms of the New York Public Library, so I thought I should look up the word. Literata, a Spanish word roughly translated as ‘female intellectual’. Well, I’ve been a male all my life. But I still like the sound of it, […]