A stormy afternoon in Victoria–100 k wind gusts coating the windows with saltspray. The house is rocking and I’m thinking of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz just before she was carried away… My plan? A fire and a titch of Scotch whiskey and a few more chapters of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Today’s edition […]
Salone 2012
2012–a book deal, a new school, and dancing with the Mende
2012 was quite a year. We spent February in one of my favourite places—the island of Kauai. Four weeks of family visits and homemade ahi poke, countless waterfalls and all-day double rainbows. I had started pitching to agents and it was from Kauai that I began a conversation, via email, with Drea Cohane of The […]
Taking the back way through Sierra Leone
I hadn’t counted on National Cleanup Day. A country with no garbage pickup—no recycling. On windy days plastic bags swirl like leaves. But not on National Cleanup Day. The only vehicles on the roads belong to police, or the military or politicians. Everyone else is ordered to remain at home, sweeping one’s compound of trash. […]
A few days among the Mende in Sierra Leone
This is a “live” post from Sumbuya, Sierra Leone. I ask your forgiveness for spelling or grammatical errors—I’m in an NGO office, the lights are blinking and, well—this is going to be one draft only. I’m here to tidy up loose ends. Tomorrow I’ll attend the opening of the school that our family and friends […]
Back to the beginning….
Thanks to my agent, Drea Cohane, My Heart Is Not My Own is finally getting into the hands of acquiring editors. And so my thoughts return to the beginning…. In 2000, during the civil war in Sierra Leone, I visited a refugee camp in Freetown. I remember several images from that trip, but one in […]
A walk unspoiled….
‘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 […]