Holiday in Mexico - brain reduced to mush in the heat.
Back home - routines restored.
Time to think of starting a new book, ie procrastinate.
And procrastination leads to sorting through old photos which leads to this blog.
Much of Whispers Under the Baobab is set in West Africa in 1970, and among my pictures I found a few I had taken back then that will give you a glimpse of what Flo saw and experienced as she fled across the Sahara to safety in Bamako.
Click here for more information.Here is the only picture I still have of the 14th century mosque in Tombouctou, destroyed by Islamists in 2012.
From Tombouctou, Flo and Josef traveled by boat - the General Sumaré - down the Niger River. Flo was on the second level and was able to go up on the top deck to view the surroundings. Josef, on the main deck would not have had that luxury.
When the General Sumaré beached on a sand bar, the women and children were taken to shore in these pirogues. They are propelled by pushing poles into the river bed and walking along the side of the boat. Back in 1970, goods were transported hundreds of kilometers from Guinea to Mali in these (heavily loaded) pirogues powered by man.
Nearing Bamako, this is what the terrain looked like with calabashes growing in the fields.
The Tuareg ring that Flo bought on her journey and wore on a leather thong.
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