hot or not?

just for sh!ts and giggles. haha. this is me and balla kante, my neighbor-tailor, and member of my extended host-family-somehow...

today is day 53+. no smoke, no nicotine replacements, no acupuncture. do you know that i have made a list of reasons for why i quit smoking? here is my favorite reason: #43-life is too short to sit around smoking it away. and that's exactly what the man wants us to do. damn the man.

feeling good right about now. life is good. the rains are here in full force and keeping temps down and bearable. going on a boat ride here pretty soon, hopefully all the way from bamako to gao. if you don't know where that is, take a look at a map, folks. just checking in. don't have much to say.

sending all of my good thoughts and hopes to those who read this pink blob of a blog. i will have more to say in a couple of weeks, and much much better photos to post.

peace. chance.

read-what-i-have-read-book-list!!!
dancing skeletons-life and death in west africa: katherine a. dettwyler. written by a nutritional anthropologist doing research in mali. good read, informative, and gives a good idea of what hunger in the sahel is about.
the dharma bums: jack kerouac. kinda makes me want to become a monk. sitting in a monestary, meditating all day wouldn't be all that bad.
chomsky on miseducation: noam chomsky, edited by donaldo macedo. is chomsky too smart for his own good? i was kinda disappointed in this read because about one-third of the book was taken from another book chomsky had written. and the title is misleading. here i thought the man was going to talk about the american education system, not the case. granted, it was an interesting read because he talked about central america and the middle east as a lens through which to discuss democracy. but the lofty ideas don't necessarily address pragmatic solutions to america's democracy/education problem.