There are only so many ways to say something
Earlier this week, I went through recording after recording from Sierra Leone–interviews with forced wives, and with women who suffered every denigrating crime even…
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Hearing the human, or, Why Marc Lacey is my hero
There’ve been a lot of articles about the rising price of food around the world and what it means for everything from the death…
Read MoreHow do you know what it means when bombs go off?
Last night, shots and shells fell near the same city that brought me such needed reprieve only a week ago. The FNL lashed out…
Read MoreMurphy’s law meets Occum’s razor
For whatever reason, the cultural differences in dating practices have been coming up in many of my conversations recently. Today, it was Kenya. “So…
Read MoreGetting right speech right
I’m pretty sure I waxed rhapsodic in my graduate school essay about the importance of telling people’s stories. Stories were the one thing in…
Read MoreWhat do white people know about exotic plants, anyway?
That stuff in the garden I thought was bamboo? It’s sugar cane. This is just the latest in a long, long list of things…
Read MoreStamp your passport at my gate
Fifty percent of my current household is European. European men, to be exact. (Actually, with the exception of me, everyone who lives here at…
Read MoreOnce more unto the beach, dear friends
I know most of you who read this blog, and I’m pretty sure that the five-star beach resort is less likely to make it…
Read MoreWhy I love mangoes too much
I do. I love them too much, which is also a favorite English locution, both here and in Sierra Leone, for saying “a lot”…
Read MoreAnd next in the long list of Things That Won’t Help
You’ll forgive the cynicism, I’m sure–or maybe not, which is also legitimate–but here is a quick highlight of things in my inbox: Writers in…
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