The (Aisha) Motorcycle Diaries and the Return to Europa

Writing from a tiny apartment room wrapped up in wool scarves and layers sweatered trying to keep my body warm after the shock of full blown winter.

Our baby: Aisha. A 2001 Yamaha Serow 225 horsepower Mountain Trailer. A January filled with our girl riding through kilometers and kilometers and kilometers....(does it have an end?!) deserts and orange dirt roads of West Africa. Rock solid asses, some scarred knees (dam cows), “Where are we, exactly?”, and finally.....Finally, what?

Now: writing reports and correspondence preparation for african youth participatin in Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009, feeding cows on the farm, and serving people double expressos on the Old Canal....

No finally.

No finality.

Just the next stage.

Holiday wishes

everywhere I go I hear music

all I can say is that there is music everywhere and in everything here.....just look and listen here:


Funeral celebration (because funerals in Africa really are parties) for a village elder in Danyi (on top of the mountain near Tsiko) with lots of spirited dancing. Oh man, those Togolese grannies really know how to shake it:)

Moussa and Bawa, the musicians form Burkina Faso who I met on the beach in Ghana where they are squatting making traditional instruments (check out the xylophone and the sitar) while playing in the Pan-African Orchestra (watch/listen to the videos). I was invited to their rehearsal and then their concert at the National Theater in Accra. Even though their house is on the verge of being bulldozed any day now (notice the 'Move Immediately' painted in red) musically they are actually doing really well and have been invited to England to play.


In a village on the Benin/Nigerian border reached by pirogue, I spontaneously met and stayed a couple days with a family who fabricates drums (in pic is the djembé they made me)










La Semaine de la Biodiversité Culturelle is a week of events and workshops that JVE organizes every year in Tsiko in September to make the link between traditional Togolese culture and environmental protection. One of the highlights is a dance/theater competition where groups coreograph performances that have a message about the importance of the forest in their community. (I'm looking for the pictures I have from this, but no luck at the moment)

And then there is the other 'music' of: the prayer call from the mosque at 4:30 every morning followed only shortly the singing and drumming for Jehovah from the christian churches, the calls of women for customers as they walk through the streets with baskets of bananas, the motos, tro-tro minibuses and taxis passing by, the rhythmic music from the street bar

Zebidjan Diaries

For miles and miles, forests and mountains and dirt trails dotted by villages; exploring all of it from the seat of a motorcycle, singing Christmas carols under the hot sun….back in Togo in the Plateaux region. Several weeks ago we got word that two of our project proposals that we submitted were accepted for financing by partner organizations, which makes me very excited. One is for the deforestation research on land disputes between neighboring villages in forests in the Plateaux region (one of the first projects I was researching/writing when arriving at JVE in July) and the other a solar energy project to transform kerosene lanterns into photovoltaic ones with the same women’s groups that we make solar ovens with. The ideas and plans can now be realized and that means that the real work begins... in the off time I get to shower in a beautiful huge waterfall and have been mastering how to drive motorcycle with lessons. I have decided it is the most fun vehicle and have already found my dream motorcycle in Ghana – (mom, if you're reading this: please don’t panic)

And for your amusement, the famous Too Fan 'taxi moto' song : it's kind of catchy and you gotta love African urban pop culture

Miaga Do Go. (=Until the next time)

On the Road

Long time no blog. Not because nothing has happened to report but because too much has happened. While I want to keep giving some info on where I am, I’m giving up on my original intention in this blog and will just give some brief update...I’ve hit the road since early October doing some wandering (combined with some work-related research visits) through West Africa by car, by foot, by boat, motorcycle...from Togo to Benin, Ghana, and now am in Ivory Coast since last week...this last month has been filled with encounters and experiences with incredible people in each step of my journey. People that were just contacts or chance meetings but after staying with them in their homes and exploring their villages,cities, areas and their lives with them, they have become friends. People who did not know me at all and invited me to stay in their homes with their families, gave me rides, who took care of me, who offered me everything they have even when they had next to nothing.


Right now, it’s Wednesday November 5th afternoon as I’m writing this and I haven’t slept since yesterday; I was up all night crowded around a television along with my Ivorian friends and their families watching the news from the USA elections right up until this morning when Obama gave his beautiful speech in Chicago. I guarantee you that Africa is probably at least as excited as America if not more.(Ghana is getting ready for its own elections in erarly December and in fact I met the NPP party’s candidate at a village rally a couple weeks back, while here in Ivory Coast elections that were supposed to happen right now are being pushed back because of gov’t tensions and instabilities in voter registration) I personally am so happy, relieved, proud, hopeful (more than I expected to be)...a change has arrived in America (a place that I call home but that I have felt a stranger in for some time now) and also for the world. My to vote after faxes, emails, and navigating through markets of Kumassi for a Fed-Ex office to mail my absentee ballot was worth it for this new chance.

ok...December I am back in Togo at JVE ‘headquarters’ until X-mas celebration in Tsiko...and then....well, I’ll let you know then

La Pluie

Rain season is taking its toll here. This article gives a pretty accurate account of the situation. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43500