To be completely honest, I would very much like for this to be a non-political life update (not because I am worried about offending people but because I am worried about adding an extra 3,000 words to this) but it’s just impossible. The wreckage is everywhere.

Bintou and I are dealing with a situation that may not actually be that unique given the global rightward, authoritarian lurch, but basically both of our countries of origin are moving towards autocracy. Mali is fully there already, with the dissolution of political parties, banning of foreign media and the arrest of journalists, activists and politicians that don’t tow the government line.

What is perhaps unique about our situation is that in addition to embracing authoritarianism, the governments of our respective countries of origin are also feuding with each other. (Actually, maybe not that unique either). After the US announced that Malians could no longer immigrate or study or visit, Mali released a communiqué of their own. Now, Americans can’t get visas to Mali either.

Somewhat related side note: Do you know that we haven’t been able to send any mail to the United States — from anywhere in West Africa — for about 6 months??? Not even a postcard!!! And it looks like it’s going to just… stay that way?

So here we are, on the Petite-Cote of Senegal.

The 2023 move to Senegal felt wrong for so many reasons. Life was good in Bamako. We had Bintou’s family. So many friends. The kids had plenty of friends, too. Liza had her playgroup and Andre was happy in school. But each month our business was making a bit less money while the security situation throughout the country was deteriorating. A few months after we moved, the electricity cuts started. Things have only gotten worse in the time since.

You’d think you would be able to find solace in a well-timed decision. It doesn’t really work like that. I have an achy nostalgia for Bamako that I cannot shake. But like last year’s post, I can only end this intro on a note of enthusiastic gratitude. We are lucky to be in Senegal, all together and in good health (yes, I am touching wood), in a beautiful place next to the ocean.

How did things pan out from my hopes and dreams list from last year?

Let’s take a look.

1. Get Jason Kottke to notice and mention Postcards from Timbuktu on his blog – This did not happen. But I am not giving up. Apparently, it is going to be a multi-year effort. You can read the first entry in last year’s post to see why this is important to me. Somewhat related side note about the previous side note above: I have a large batch of postcards from Timbuktu that I was forced to send with DHL in order to get them to the states. That pile of postcards has been under scrutiny from US Customs for nearly two weeks now. WTF

2. Send at least 100 postcards (friends, family and postcrossing) – I ended up sending a lot more than that and all I can say is that I really had no business spending that much on postage (and postcards). My pace slowed considerably during the second half of the year as I became increasingly conscious of that fact. In case you missed it, I am a postcard person now.

3. Learn how to surf (or at least witness my son learn to surf) – did I write this with a built in cop-out knowing that I would not actually pursue surfing? It’s possible. But my son is well on his way!

4. See at least 36 new bird species, including an Abysinnian Ground Hornbill – YES! on both counts. The Abysinnian Ground Hornbill was also the most dramatic bird encounter I have ever had. We were a few days into our carnival trip, somewhere between Baila and Bignona, on a forested stretch of road. He came gliding out of the trees to my right, flying over the road like a small majestic airplane. The dramatic entrance combined with the realization of what I was seeing nearly caused me to crash the bike. I braked as quickly as safely possible (it was a little unsafe) and scrambled over to the opposite side of the road to confirm it was not a hallucination. He landed quite a distance a way (it is a he as you can see by the red on the throat), but the zoom on my google pixel 7 was able to get a bit of his head before he flew off again. Lya and Abbey, clients who are now friends, were confused to find me off the bike and dancing around the road. They were even more confused when I breathlessly tried to explain that I SAW AN ABYSINNIAN GROUND HORNBILL.

Here is a much better photo of a male Abysinnian ground hornbill taken by a Mr. Charles J. Sharp. It is quite the bird!

5. Make a longform video I am proud of – Nope. Total failure. I did make some shorter videos, though. Here is one. Anyway, it is still longer than most vertical swipey shit.

6. Go camping with Andre – Technically, yes. Although we were camping at the new Sleeping Camel (more on that in number 12) so it was kind of like camping with training wheels.

7. Take a trip to the states (move to the states?) – We did take a trip to the states. We couldn’t move there even if we wanted to (see beginning of post). The trip was wonderful, though. Incredibly nourishing despite It All. It was great to see family and friends after more than a year and a half away. I will also say that Vermont and upstate New York with Your People in the summertime is a magical formula.

8. Take more family trips in West Africa – We spent a good chunk of the summer in Mali. Along with a few short trips around Senegal, that was it. We have quite a bit of ground to cover when it comes to family trips in the region. But again, going back to the intro of this post, we are lucky to be able to take family trips of any kind. Much of this past year was about keeping our heads above water.

9. Finish updating the Bradt Guide to Senegal – YES YES Alhamdulillah!!! YES!!!! I’ve already posted about it, but this was a big lift. If I’m being completely honest, I did not know what I was getting myself into when I took this assignment. Our friend, and the original author of the book, Sean Connolly, got me this gig, and while I may have cursed his name at one or two points along the way, I remain deeply grateful for this project. It was quite possibly the least lucrative work I have ever done, but it paid in many other ways. Also, I now have a new appreciation for guide-book writing, a craft that requires writing chops as well as a methodical approach to research, exceptional attention to detail, and at least in West Africa, a skillset that in some ways overlaps with that of a murder detective. Sean is one of the best in the game and I strongly suggest checking out some of his books — perhaps his Bradt guide to Mauritania which just came out a couple of months ago? Of course, the Bradt Guide to Senegal is also his book, and I did not need to make very many changes to the already excellent foundational text. Bradt Senegal is now available for purchase in the UK and will be out in February in the US. I just received several advance copies and I do admit, it was cool to hold this thing in my hands.

10. Become conversational in Wolof – I did not. But I did make some small small progress and I remain committed to the goal. One BIG thing that was unlocked for me in this language learning journey is that there are no verb tenses/conjugation in Wolof. The verb ALWAYS stays the same. It is rather the tense of the subject that changes. This was hard for me to wrap my head around. As an example, to say “I eat,” you would say “Damay Lekk.” To say, “I ate,” you would say “Lekk Naa.” “Lekk,” the verb “to eat” does not change. I think this is kind of cool actually. It’s me and you that are changing tenses and not the verb. I remember when I was learning Bambara and I finally reached the point where I could think in the language. That is of course the big breakthrough. I am a ways off from that in Wolof, but I can see it in the distance. Inshallah.

11. Write at least one thing every week on this blog or in some other public place – Yikes. No. Very little writing this year. I mean last year. This year, more writing!

12. Create a base in Senegal – Midway through the year this looked increasingly unlikely. I don’t want to say we manifested it, but yeah, maybe something like that happened. Instead of relying on les agents immobiliers, who were more interested in showing us exorbitantly priced well manicured 3 bedroom houses with shoebox pools, we took the search into our own hands — riding around on the jakarta and looking at empty, and some not so empty properties. We were struck by one house that had a massive garden, an interesting looking u-shaped house, and an excellent location. Our friends at the Kalao brewery, which is situated around the corner from the property, put us in touch with the landlord. But it turned out that the house had a tenant. Damn. The search cooled over the summer as the rainy season settled in and we took off for Mali.

Later, while we were in the states, I got a message from Rapha at Kalao. He was convinced that the house was going to be vacated. I got back in touch with the landlord and sure enough, the house was available from the end of September. Once back in Senegal, I had a series of meetings/negotiations with the landlord and we eventually settled on a price. After one of these meetings, I ran into a camel (and an ambitious dog) around the corner from the new place. This was auspicious to say the least.

So here we are, with another rent payment to make each month, appliances to buy, renovations, paperwork and licenses to obtain, etc. etc. Are we insane? Possibly. But if there is one thing we know how to do — besides running tours — it’s building a home for a traveler-oriented community. For circumstances beyond our control, we can no longer do that in Mali. Here, in Senegal, there is a tremendous lack of these kinds of spaces.

We’ve also been running these tours in Senegal since 2017 with no base of operations, no office, no physical address. We have a website and 15 jakartas, which are parked at our mechanic’s house 180 km away. We’ve done well with this set up, all things considered, and there are advantages to a minimalist operation. But we want to get back to offline client recruitment, and we need a physical location for our Senegalese paperwork.

Wish us luck. And come visit.

This photo was from one of my early visits to the property. It does look a bit more kempt after a few weeks of TLC and Moustapha’s green thumb.

Matt looking contemplative while brewing a pot of coffee on the fire. It’s been wonderful to watch the space come to life.

We have 4.5 rooms that are ready to go, with a few more on the way. We also have lots of tents. And hammocks.

So yes, please come visit.

We do have a little website now. And an instagram (yes, another one. Ugh.). And a substack (!!!!!). But in general, we hope to be spending a lot less time online in 2026.

See you in Senegal

My wife Bintou banned me from skateboarding a couple of years ago and I am probably one injury away from losing pickup basketball. Of course, none of this is really on Bintou. It’s more about me coming to terms with my aging body.

Birding and postcard-writing are two hobbies that are very compatible with this current life stage. They also offer a much more sensible way of obtaining that little hit of dopamine compared to just about everything else we are being peddled. But we’ll get to that later.

With birding, I was taunted into it by a little burnt headed passerine. With the postcards, it was more of a delayed fuse. I have actually been running a postcard project with a former guide from Timbuktu for 9 years. In 2018, a website called Postcrossing wrote a blog post about the project. Do you know about Postcrossing?

From their website:

• What is Postcrossing? The goal of this project is to allow anyone to send and receive postcards from all over the world! The idea is simple: for each postcard you send, you will receive one back from a random postcrosser from somewhere in the world.
• Why? Simply because, like its founder, there are lots of people who like to receive real mail. Receiving postcards from different places in the world (many of which you probably have never heard of!) can turn your mailbox into a box of surprises — and who wouldn’t like that?

Despite this simple and beautiful concept, and the fact that I was running a postcard project (that they promoted on their blog!), I did not become an active postcrosser until late last year. One reason for the delay is/was that sending and receiving naked postcards in Mali is a challenge, one that has only become more difficult in the wake of Mali’s ongoing diplomatic dispute with France.*

But two years ago, we half-way moved to Senegal and I finally got a functioning PO Box. I quickly learned that the Senegalese Poste is a well-oiled machine. In fact, I now route all the postcards from Timbuktu through Senegal.**

In October of last year, I made a little vlog from Senegal for Scoot West Africa in which I displayed our new PO box address and encouraged people to send mail our way. It worked. I started to get mail. From all over the place. Postcards, mostly, but also some letters. Do you know how thrilling it is to get physical mail? A handwritten letter from someone? Maybe you do. Everyone loves mail, right? 

But what about writing and sending my own cards? For every card or letter I received that included a return address, I sent a card back. Once I wrote the first 4 or 5 cards I had some wind in my sails, and I realized something: I was enjoying this. Unloading thoughts. Writing slowly. Drawing little hornbills. Imagining the reaction of the recipient. 

Again, I realize that this might sound bizarre – I had been running a postcard project for 8 years. I suppose it’s kind of like having a kayak in your garage. That you’ve never used. The day you take that thing out, you might realize – or remember – that you really like kayaking. 

Once I got into a rhythm of writing and sending cards, I remembered I had a postcrossing account. I dusted off the cobwebs there and requested an address. I got Michaela in Wegburg, Germany. Her profile photo was a picture of a husky. In the about section, she wrote that she was happy to receive any kind of postcard, but she would be ecstatic to receive anything featuring:

Wolves, Fairies, Huskies, Alaskan Malamutes, Arwen, Galadriel from Lord of the rings, Twilight, CSI, Lighthouses, Halloween (Halloween greeting cards are welcome, too), Brad Pitt, Nice fantasy postcards (Briar, Nene Thomas, Anne Stokes, Selina Fenech etc.), Beautiful landscapes with sunsets.

I ended up sending Michaela a postcard of a mosque in Chinguetti, Mauritania. It’s what I had at the time. It took about a month to arrive. She was thrilled. On Postcrossing, she had sent and received over 18,000 cards. Yes, eighteen thousand. But this was her first card from Senegal. It was actually only the 632nd card ever sent from Senegal through postcrossing. To put that in perspective, 15 million postcards have been sent from Germany through the site. 

When you first start a postcrossing account, you can send up to 5 cards at a time. For each card, you are given a code. Michaela’s was SN-632. You write that code on the card. When Michaela gets it, she registers that code and it will link it with my account. You can now exchange messages if you want. Every time one of your cards is successfully received and registered, another postcrosser is assigned your address and you will have a card coming your way.

Let’s just say that every time I go to the post office now, the reward centers of my brain start lighting up before I make it out of the house. I typically read my postcards in the company of Cheikh, one of the poste employees who has a huge smile and is often even more excited than I am when a new card comes in. But believe me, I’m beaming too. Holding this thing in my hands that has traveled thousands of miles, that someone took their time with – the little weather reports, the drawings, stickers, the choice of stamps, the random story, the mini-bio, the cryptic poem, the This is What I’m Doing Today, the curiosity, the “wow! I have never sent a postcard to Senegal before!” Every postcard is somehow a piece of art. Even the wear and tear and the haphazard post office interventions play a role in it. I cherish every single one I get.

Because I put birds and birdwatching as interests in my profile, I get a LOT of bird postcards. Often with stories about birds AND BIRD STAMPS to go with it. I LOVE this. 

This card even had a SCOOTER STICKER (in my profile I talk about riding scooters around West Africa). 

I have now become penpals with some of the people I was randomly assigned on postcrossing. I even have plans to meet up with one of them! I also swap cards with people on instagram and I will occasionally post a story announcing that I will send a card to the first person that sends me their address. All of this is to say that I have become a little postcard-obsessed. 

Here is why that’s a good thing

1. Postcards are analog  

Something magical happens when you get away from screens and algorithms and put pen to paper. When you sit down and write and concentrate on another person. And when you finish writing, you can hold this thing in your hands. You leave your house and go to the post office with it. You might even have a conversation with someone before it’s all said and done. The person who receives it can also hold this thing in their hands. They may put it on their refrigerator and look at it every day.  

I’m not saying you can’t write a meaningful email, but when you think about the torrent of digital refuse that gets spewed all over us from the moment we wake up each day, it isn’t hard to imagine the profound joy you will feel when you receive a handwritten note that has traveled hundreds or thousands of miles. 

2. Postcards provide a healthy way to release coveted brain chemicals 

Scrolling gets you the dopamine, but you feel like garbage afterwards. It also makes you more anxious, less social and destroys your attention span. Postcards offer equally convenient dopamine along with a healthy dose of oxytocin and 0 side effects. What’s wonderful about postcards is that it feels just as good writing and sending them as it does receiving them. 

3. Postcards are an antidote to AI 

I’m not anti-AI. I used AI this morning. To help me sort through addresses on the backend of the postcards site. I do have an issue with AI and creative work. Oliver Burkeman said it better than I can here, but in case you don’t feel like reading his essay toute de suite, let me just say this. More and more often, when I’m reading things online, I find myself struck by a word or a phrase that has a certain je ne sais quoi. Call it a synthetic tinge. At a certain point it feels like I’m being paranoid. But I can’t help it. If I become convinced that a single, solitary word is AI, the whole thing is tainted. 

Imagine going to your favorite restaurant, where everything is supposedly homemade, and you walk by the kitchen and see a giant plastic bag of frozen industrial french fries from Sysco. Those “hand cut artisanal french fries” on the menu are suddenly not so delicious. More than that, you may actually feel a sense of betrayal. You don’t have to worry about this problem with postcards. Postcards are 100% handcrafted and made to order.***

4. Anyone can start sending postcards

You don’t need your friends’ addresses. You don’t even need friends.**** Sign up to Postcrossing. The internet was made for cool shit like this. Postcards are usually quite cheap (you can even make your own!) and so is postage. 

5. Postcard people are good people 

I kind of knew this already from the Timbuktu postcard project. My experience on postcrossing has only reinforced it. In addition to having very diverse interests, postcard people are generally progressive, empathic, curious and open-minded. Postcard people are the kind of people that support independent bookstores and participate in community gardens. They will restore your faith in humanity and convince you that we just might have a fighting chance against the forces of ego and accumulation. 

I don’t know if I’ve convinced you or not, but this is part where I share my address and ask for yours. You can email me yours at phil@philintheblank.net . Mine is : 

Phil Paoletta

B.P. 232 

Ngaparou, Mbour 

Senegal 

My son Andre also loves postcards 😉 

Andre Paoletta

B.P. 232 

Ngaparou, Mbour 

Senegal 

* All international mail from Bamako (that wasn’t destined for neighboring countries) was previously flown to Paris on the daily Air France flight. After the Malian government banned Air France in July 2023, international mail temporarily came to a halt. The mail now goes through Casablanca on Royal Air Maroc flights. 

** The postcards travel 1,200 kilometers on a bus from Bamako to Dakar, and I either ride up on a jakarta from La Somone or take the train from Diamniadio to go and pick them up. The postcards are still stamped and postmarked in Timbuktu. I just put them into an envelope that is stamped and postmarked in Senegal. In other words, more stamps for you!

***I mean, I guess you could use ChatGPT to write a postcard, but you’d have to be a really sick person to do that. Postcard people are definitely not doing this (see point 5). 

**** I do highly recommend sending postcards to your friends, though.

I was not very present for Bintou and the kids during the final sprint to turn everything in. When I finished, it was as if I was returning home from a trip. The kids were on spring break and I don’t have a real job so we got some round-the-clock QT in Bamako before heading back to Senegal.

After that, I sort of blacked out for a couple of days. I had not really spent any time on social media, in a feed, in newsletters etc. etc. etc. for a few weeks. How nice that was. Then for no particular reason, I let the algorithm just torch my brain. I did get some reading and website work in here and there, but for the most part I was like one of those lab rats repeatedly hitting a lever for more treats. I might as well have been shooting up with crack. It was exhausting, and of course, I have nothing to show for it except regret and a whole bunch of misfiring neurons.

One of the reasons (or maybe the only reason) I am writing this right now and not scrolling is because of an instagram story by @badkidfrench, who has been spinning tunes next to our pool at the sleeping camel on Sunday evenings. His post paid tribute to a genre of music in Mali that comes from the Wassoulou region. This genre has two ingredients, looping Mandé melodies and divine female vocals more than capable of freeing your brain from the algorithm’s death grip. It’s been 100% Wassoulou music for the past several days and I am writing postcards, updating our scoot website, writing in my journal, doing puzzles with the kids. I even updated our Patreon.

Here’s some Tata Diakité to get you started. Djiguiya means hope by the way.

Also, I didn’t mention this earlier, but I have a “now” page now.

To be very clear, the project was 100% Coumba’s idea. She wanted to mobilize people to vote – and to vote for the right reasons – in Mali’s post-coup election in 2013. I played a support role, launching a crowdfunding campaign and trying to get the most out of contacts I had with different embassies and NGOs in Bamako.

In the beginning, the project was self-funded, with Coumba contributing much of her own money, and everyone volunteering their time. We organized town halls in Bamako neighborhoods in conjunction with Yeredon, a community dance troupe, who put on a satirical performance mocking politicians who try to buy votes by giving away t-shirts and sacks of rice.

The town hall Q&A’s were revealing. We realized that many people didn’t know how to vote – from what documentation was needed to where they could obtain it – or how to find out who was running and what policies they were promoting. Almost no one knew that you could still vote even if you didn’t find a candidate to your liking (at the time, you could submit a blank ballot. If over 50% of the vote turned out that way, the election was nullified and rescheduled).

Things were going well but we started to run out of money. Coumba couldn’t really put anything else in, I barely had enough money to buy my evening meal of sɔ ani macaroni (beans and spaghetti), and we had exhausted the crowdfunding money. The weekly meetings were suddenly less well attended. Membership dwindled.

Then we got the call from USAID. They wanted to meet. We were received by a team of 5 or 6 people. We gave our pitch and then fielded some questions. Many questions in fact. Most of them, very good questions.

At this point, we had several different gameplans depending on whether or not we could find funding. The most ambitious plan involved a call center where Malians could freely call in to ask questions, an expanded campaign of countrywide town halls, and TV spots on ORTM, the national television station.

After several rounds of meetings, USAID was on board. So what happened next?

Elon Musk would have you believe that USAID forked over a wad of cash and then went on their way. There were actually some members of SOS Democracy that thought this would happen. They quickly disappeared once they realized that the USAID collaboration was not their ticket to a payday.

What actually happened was that USAID worked closely with us to carefully disburse funds and to monitor their use every step of the way. In many cases, they didn’t actually give any money directly to the organization.

For example, the call center. There is no unlimited calling plan in Mali. You put credit on your phone and then when it runs out, you add more. For many Malians, phone credit is a luxury. You are not calling up your friend to chat for hours. And most Malians were not going to spend money they didn’t have to get info about voting and the election.

So we created a number that Malians could “beep.” Beeping someone is free and doesn’t use your credit. You just call their number and if you hang up before they answer, they get a missed call notification. Malians beeped our hotline number and then we called them back and talked to them for as long as needed.

We of course needed to buy the phone credit to call them back. Instead of giving us the money to buy it, USAID went directly to the two telecom providers in Mali and worked out a deal to buy phone credit in bulk at a discount that would then be issued to the hotline numbers.

The phone credit was released incrementally, and USAID required that we keep detailed call logs to show how the credit was being used. They regularly dropped in to monitor the call center in-person.

And so it was with the TV spots on ORTM. USAID worked out a deal for multiple ad spots and then they handled the payment directly.

Throughout this collaboration, regular meetings were held, questions were asked, feedback was offered. The USAID team was helpful and thoughtful. But what I want to stress more than anything else is the relentless scrutiny when it came to finances.

In the years since, I have come to know dozens of USAID employees in Mali. They have been some of the most hardworking and dedicated people I have ever met.

I don’t agree with all of their programming, and I’m sure USAID has its share of waste and inefficiencies, but the idea that this agency (and every federal agency?) is nothing more than an army of faceless bureaucrats ripping off American taxpayers is a steaming pile of horse manure.

You may have already known that. But maybe you have a friend or an uncle or a colleague that has been parroting Elon Musk’s talking points and hurling (now debunked) claims that USAID spent $50 million on condoms for Gaza. Feel free to show them this alternate perspective.

Or not. I don’t really know what to do anymore. Other than make phone calls.

P.S. if your concern with USAID is not waste, but rather the idea that we are spending money outside our borders — if you can’t even see the practical reasons for it never-mind the idea that maybe we should be invested in some idea of shared prosperity and collaborative living as human beings, then I am at a loss for what to say to you.

1. Humans 

Obviously 

2. Pelicans

Is it personal? Yes. Is it justified? Yes.

Let me ask you something. How do you feel about swans? Be honest. That’s right. You don’t like them. Because they are horrid, vicious creatures. The word “nasty” has lost much of its meaning, partly because the incoming president of the United States uses it to describe most of the women he interacts with, but this word was really created for swans. 

Pelicans are like swans but with bigger beaks. 

I once thought they were harmless, cute even. A seaside curiosity that spends its days shoveling fish down its gullet.

Then I saw a pelican assault an Italian woman on a beach in Dakar. I believe she survived, but does anyone know for sure? 

The pelican had no reason to attack that woman. But I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was an isolated case, a one-off.

Then I was attacked by a pelican outside of a welding workshop in the village of Kafountine. Again, unprovoked. I mean, I looked the pelican in the eyes from a distance of over 10 meters. Is that a provocation?

Growing up, a friend’s basenji was like that. His name was Rudy. You couldn’t look him in the eyes. If Rudy had a beak like a pelican, I wouldn’t be alive to write this.

I was able to take refuge in the welding workshop before the pelican was able to have his way with me, but I still live with the PTSD from that encounter.

At the end of 2023, I came face to face with a human sized pelican statue at a friend’s garden Christmas party. I was terrified but I convinced myself to face my fears. I poured out some libations and asked the universe for a pelican truce. It worked for about 3 weeks, at which point a flock of pelicans seemingly tried to attack me from the air while I was riding a scooter in the Sine-Saloum delta.

The thing is, it’s not just me (and the Italian woman). More and more people are starting to talk about it (I assume the person that filmed that is no longer with us).

I would love to make peace with these birds. If you have any ideas, I am all ears. I live only a couple kilometers from something called “Pelican Island” here in Senegal, so this may actually be a matter of life and death for me.

3. Mosquitos 

Obviously 

4. Orcas

Trying to keep up with all the diabolical shit orcas get up to will make your head spin. I had just finished reading about how orcas have figured out how to kill whale sharks – yes, those docile, gentle giants of the sea – when I stumbled across an article talking about them wearing salmon carcasses on their heads, which is apparently an orca “trend” that is now back in fashion.

An orca will risk beaching itself in order to snag a baby seal. Because it’s starving? No, because orcas love to torture baby seals. It’s their favorite pastime. Did I mention they practice infanticide?

These are just the things we can see! Imagine what they get up to under the water when we’re not looking. And that’s really the only bright spot, that these motherfuckers don’t live on land.

5. Monkeys and some apes* 

I’m not going to get too stressed about something small, like a marmoset, but even a capuchin will put me on edge. I don’t trust them. After humans, monkeys (and some apes), are the shiftiest creatures in the animal kingdom. This makes sense. We’re all primates, and the combination of nucleotides responsible for shiftiness was sprinkled liberally around primate genetics.

Of course, some primates were spared. Lemurs are straight shooters. And despite looking like gremlins – and being able to swivel their head 180 degrees, see at night, and leap up to 5 meters – tarsiers are not trading in deception.

Baboons, though? Chimpanzees? Even when they are trapped behind glass at a zoo, I feel like I’m caught in a mind game. Are they my friend? Are they making fun of me? Are they going to snap my legs in half?

Bears are potentially dangerous animals, but at least I know where bears stand. A bear might try to eat me because it’s hungry. A chimpanzee might try to humiliate me before it rips my face off for fun.

*Bonobos are cool. And orangutans. And some gorillas. 

Do you agree with this list? Anything to add?

This is my second post of 2025. In my first post I mentioned a few goals for this year. One of them was posting every week. Consider this a request for increased accountability on your part. I have written 26 postcards this month, though.

Twenty twenty four felt like a car careening around a bend with two wheels in the air. 

For me personally, it was a year of bricolage, cobbling together tattered sources of income, dipping into savings, trying to keep the dream alive. The dream being to wake up without dread each day, to live relatively comfortably, to move freely. To watch the kids flourish and grow. To stay healthy. 

It’s a tall order. We did alright this year all things considered. 

There was a little dread. The normal amount of dread when you find yourself occasionally staring at your bank account and crossing your eyes to add a few decimal places. And there were a few sacrifices. We couldn’t do our big trip to the states this year and some fall break plans got scuttled. 

But I can hardly complain. We live 200 meters from the beach in Senegal, the kids go to a good school, and we still managed to spend nearly 4 months of the year in Mali. The Sleeping Camel continues to poke along, and Matt and I are both optimistic (is that the word?) about Scoot West Africa, despite a slow start to the season. 

If we run out of rope, Bintou has a multiple entry visa to the US that is good for another 4 years. It wouldn’t necessarily be a soft landing. I don’t quite understand the economics of living in the United States at the moment. And then there is everything else. Talk about dread. But the point is, we have the option. Many do not. 

We really have too much to be grateful for. 

Hopes and dreams and can I use the word goals for this year?

1. Get Jason Kottke to notice and mention Postcards from Timbuktu on his blog

I just realized that I’ve been reading Jason’s site, kottke.org, for over twenty years. In the early days, it was more of a personal blog. It is now something of a bottomless well of curiosity, wonder, and human achievement, a one-stop shop for the best things happening online and off.

But what stands out to me these days is not Jason’s prolific curation, but his values – values that I share – and his willingness to champion them. He could easily make his site politically neutral and commercialize the shit out of it. He could get in bed with a particular platform (or all of them). But he hasn’t. He has stayed true to his progressive politics and online ethos at a time when the stakes couldn’t be any higher. 

I have been trying to get Postcards from Timbuktu in front of Jason for a while. I am obviously biased, but I do think it is incredibly cool that with a few clicks and keystrokes, you can order a handwritten postcard from a place that many people believe is fictional while also providing a lifeline to a group of guys and their families who have been struggling since the collapse of Mali’s tourism industry. 

The project could not exist without the internet, but it is the analog aspect of it that I truly love. On the backend, a physical card travels from Timbuktu by motorbike, bus, sometimes boat, sometimes plane. It changes hands a dozen times. And that’s before it begins its second, international leg. Anyway, I’m preaching to the choir. Many of you reading this already support the project. My feeling is that there are people in Jason’s audience that would also appreciate it. 

Years ago, I sent postcards to Jason at the address he had listed on his site. I don’t know if any of them ever arrived. I do know that before I started our current double postage card-in-envelope method, a lot of postcards were lost.  

I sent him an email. Maybe more than one. I may have sent some tweets. I may have inadvertently unleashed my email list upon him. That was dumb.

I think what has happened is that I may have deservedly ended up on Jason’s shitlist before he ever got a clear look at the project. Sometimes persistence pays off, and sometimes persistence earns you a sign over your head with blinking lights and bright red lettering, “this mf’er is annoying!” 

But I’m not ready to give up. The project could really use a lift, and I think an appearance on Jason’s blog could do more than any of the news articles written about it. Jason has a massive audience and there are many bloggers and newsletter writers with their own audiences that make discoveries on his site. 

I feel like I am seeking relationship advice here, but if any of you have thoughts on how to proceed, let me know. We need to have a strategy here. Because I feel like my next move could be my last chance. 

2. Send at least 100 postcards 

While I’m on the subject, I have become slightly obsessed with sending and receiving postcards. I am active on postcrossing now (this is me), but because my cards take so long to travel from West Africal, I have started doing swaps as well. 

If you want to send me a postcard, this is my address: 

Phillip Paoletta 

B.P. 232 

Ngaparou, Mbour 

SENEGAL 

Any bird related stamps or cards (except for pelicans) and you will have a permanent place in my heart. 

Regardless of whether you want to swap, I would love to send you a postcard. Just send me your address to phil.paoletta @ gmail dot com and I will send you a card from Senegal.  

3. Learn how to surf (or at least witness my son learn to surf)

I am not an aquatic person by nature. I think that has to do with being ginger. Water fun typically comes with a lot of sun exposure. I already have a few basal cell carcinomas under my belt so now I am one of those guys wearing a broadbrimmed hat and long sleeve UPF shirts, which by the way are apparently riddled with microplastics. Between microplastic cancer and skin cancer, I guess I have to take microplastic cancer and hope that it’s less deadly than melanoma.   

Anyway, we live next to the ocean now, and regardless of how I feel about it, the kids absolutely love it. I will say that I do enjoy the occasional dip, and I do like collecting shells and observing tide pools and building hermit crab hotels. And if you give me a patch of shade, I can sit and look at the ocean all day. 

But now that I’ve tried surfing, I can see a path forward to even greater ocean appreciation. My son Andre and I did a joint lesson and we were both standing up for stretches by the end of it. It was thrilling. And admittedly much harder than I imagined. After my collapsed lung, Bintou banned me from skateboarding and she has more recently tried to ban me from playing pickup basketball. At least for now, surfing is being perceived as a relatively risk-free activity in our household. I will not be telling Bintou about sea urchins. 

We have our next session a few days after we arrive back in Senegal.  

4. See 36 new bird species, including an Abysinnian Ground Hornbill 

In West Africa, this is a very modest and achievable goal. But the pool of potential lifers shrinks each year. I think I can manage to see 3 new bird species a month with a little bit of effort. 

I really want to see an abysinnian ground hornbill. You can only see this bird in a relatively thin band that runs across the African continent. Or in Florida, where they occasionally escape that state’s ridiculous exotic wildlife trade. I imagine there is a “fully nude florida man high on PCP arrested at Wendy’s drivethrough with Abysinninan Hornbill in passenger seat” headline out there somewhere. 

I haven’t been to Florida in a long time, but I do happen to spend a good amount of time in this bird’s endemic range. 

5. Make a longform video I am proud of 

I’ve made a few videos that I’ve published on our Scoot West Africa youtube channel. If I’m being honest, I am more embarassed by them than anything else. Sometimes it’s something the small, a poorly framed shot or bad lighting. Sometimes it’s the entire premise of the video. Sometimes it’s my irritating tendency to overexplain and overnarrate, something I feel like I’m actually doing right now in this post.

case in point.

I have an idea for a video that I am going to film roughly two months from now. Then I will likely spend the next 3 years editing it, which is why I need I this goal. 

6. Go camping with Andre 

Long overdue. Between official Scoot West Africa gear and the semi-permanent bazaar in Matt’s room at our house, we have everything we need. And it’s not the rainy season anymore. No more excuses. 

7. Take a trip to the states (move to the states?) 

The latter is not the goal, but if it works out that way then it will cancel out the first bit.  

8. Take more family trips in the region 

Bintou and the kids have still not been to the Casamance and that is gross negligence on my part. We have been everywhere on the Petite-Côte and up to Dakar often enough. And we have spent a bit of time in The Gambia and the Sine-Saloum. But there is so much more to explore and really an endless supply of family-friendly trips to take.  

9. Finish updating the Bradt Guide to Senegal

Provided I finish on time – and the manuscript isn’t rejected – I will be a published author sometime later this year. Ok, a published “updating” author. My name will not be on the cover, but it will theoretically be somewhere in its first pages. Anyway, it’s less about the glory of authorship and more about future opportunities, and an excuse to see more of Senegal. 

10. Become conversational in Wolof 

I mentioned in a post last year that I finally started to appreciate Wolof as a language. Unfortunately, my language learning efforts have not been commensurate with my appreciation.  

11. Write at least one thing every week on this blog or in some other public place

I write at least once a day privately, but my daily commitment to blog posts proved too ambitious. I am aiming to post at least once a week though. I think this is manageable. Good things happen when I write here.  

12. Create a base in Senegal 

The algorithm – or, my algorithm – is collapsing in on itself. I’m consuming less social media these days and when I do, much of it is encouraging me to get offline. 

The story I keep telling myself is that we need social media for our different projects, especially Scoot West Africa. But I’m not so sure anymore. We have actually not found that many clients this way. 

Now, we might just be shit at social media. We do neglect and often ignore many so-called best practices. 

What I do know is this: social media has produced a disproportionate number of problematic inquiries – prospective clients that really do not sync up with our travel philosophy.

A client on our November trip to Mauritania made a tiktok video that was viewed over 10 million times (!). She tagged our company in the post and throughout the comments. We thought we would be selling out trips to Mauritania for the next two years. 

Instead, we ended up with an inbox full of unserious inquiries and long-winded pleas for steep discounts from teenagers. I’m all for teenagers being adventurous, but we are not in a position to offer a 10-day trip in 4x4s for a few hundred dollars. 

Amongst the more serious inquiries, 100% of them wanted to do the trip for one reason: to ride the iron ore train, which tourists have since been banned from. This is unsurprising – Francesca’s video was about the train – but what was disturbing was the complete lack of curiosity about Mauritania itself. 

It should be said, Francesca was a wonderful client. She is now a friend, and someone that we hope will join us for another trip in the future. And of course, we appreciate her efforts to showcase our company. But if it wasn’t already apparent to us, it’s crystal clear now that “viral content” is not the way forward. 

I think it’s still possible to win the right people over on social media. But that’s if our stuff gets in front of people. The kind of content that the algorithm wants – and I suppose that just means what most people want? – is rarely the kind of content that is reflective of who we are and what we appreciate about travel in this region.  

When I think about where we have had the greatest success – and what we actually enjoy doing – it’s meeting people in-person. Yes. Like, real life. This is what we’ve been missing the past two years. The Sleeping Camel was once a Mali travel institution. It still is, really. There just aren’t any travelers. The government has quietly done away with tourist visas, and the entire country is painted red on most embassy websites. We get a few stray country counters every now and then, but that’s it. 

Senegal has lots of travelers and no sleeping camel. Our scooter trips are based there, but we don’t have a base of operations. Whether it’s a “scoot shack,” a small guesthouse or some kind of speakeasy, I really believe we need to have this physical space where we can meet people and, you know, indoctrinate them. Our brand of maraboutage does not travel well, and it does not work well through screens.  

PS I know I said I am spending less time on social media, but I am on bluesky now @philintheblank.net and it seems pretty nice and I may just start using it! 

PPS At least one client has joined a trip through this blog and we honestly couldn’t have asked for someone better. That is giving some extra motivation to revive this thing! 

13. Witness the Mali turnaround 

This might be the most pie in the sky thing on this list. It felt like something had to give last year, and it didn’t. Now it’s the cold season and the power cuts have eased up (to 12 hours a day instead of 20). But we are drifting back into untenable waters. A cratering economy, runaway capital flight, relentless inflation. On the horizon, Ramadan and the hot season.

I don’t know what is going to happen, but I find it hard to believe that Malians will patiently weather the storm once more. Over a decade of crises on multiple fronts, and it now feels like we are in reverse with a lead foot on the accelerator.

If, somehow, things were to break in the right direction, we would move back to Mali in a heartbeat.

But right now, that’s a pipe dream.

Nightmares

Honestly there is enough to be worried about without me articulating my nightmares. A lot can go wrong this year. In my personal life and far beyond it. If there is any truth to the purported ability of our mind to influence future events based on how we target our mental energy, it’s better I keep my mouth shut. 

How about you? Hopes and dreams please, no nightmares.

So, here we are. My first poem that was not written under duress:

Red Eyed Dove

You made

too much noise

and I didn’t want you to wake my family

so I opened the slatted window

to scare you off

but you were two

and you left in different directions

and you took longer because your wing was stuck

and I wonder if you knew where you were going

or how to find each other again?

And then you were gone

like a dream

slipping through the cracks

upon waking.

———-

I have been drawing pied kingfishers recently. A lot of them. The drawings are not necessarily progressing in terms of becoming more accurate representations of pied kingfishers, but I am really enjoying the practice.

Did you know that pied kingfishers are the largest hovering bird in the world?

A doodle

All the hovering is a massive energy expenditure. Pied kingfishers need to eat a LOT of fish.

Yellow crayon and my daughter’s black acrylic paint. I was trying to make the pied kingfisher look mysterious, but he looks downright diabolical.

This is my son’s work. He doesn’t yet know that I have an issue with pelicans and he ended up doing a whole school project on the freeaking things. He is a pelican expert!!! My own flesh and blood!!! Anyway, there are some tough conversations that can wait.

This was a collaboration between my daughter and I. I really like how it turned out.

Greetings from the Petite-Cote of Senegal.

I thought that maybe my skin was irritated by my motorbike helmet. But when I went to the states for a month and didn’t wear it, there was no improvement.

After doing a “skin cancer” google image search, I decided I would get a biopsy. There are not that many dermatologists in Mali. I sought advice on a facebook group and was given the name of a Dr. Traore, who did one of his weekly consulting sessions at the hospital just next door to the Sleeping Camel. Perfect.

Dr. Traore was convinced I did not have skin cancer. According to him, the lesion was not worth a biopsy. He repeatedly said I was too young to have a skin cancer. All of this was baffling as I was not, in fact, too young, and my complexion made me exceptionally prone.

In the end, I had to insist on the procedure. Dr. Traore reluctantly twisted out a chunk of flesh with what I can only describe as a corkscrew (it is officially known as a punch biopsy) and packed it up to be shipped off to a French laboratory.

A few weeks later, Dr. Traore phoned me up. “Monsieur Paoletta, you have a skin cancer.” Oh? “Please let me know when you would like to schedule the excision.” Right. Sorry, Dr. Traore, but I just might be seeing another doctor for that.

Not long before all this, Matt traveled to South Africa to have a basal cell carcinoma of his own removed. A dermatologist was recommended to him and he was now recommending that dermatologist to me. Dr. Rakesh Newaj. Matt said he was good, if a little overconfident. He also mentioned that he was very direct and did not particularly appreciate questions. Perhaps arrogant is the word we are looking for.

I googled his name and found his info alongside a dozen or so reviews. The first one I read was not encouraging:

I thought maybe Dr. Newaj would have some conciliatory words in response, or maybe an apology? Maybe it was all a misunderstanding? Or maybe Dr. Newaj was not the type of dermatologist that responded to google reviews. Oh, but he is.

Dr. Newaj came back with this:

Did I really want to fly across the continent to pay this guy to excise a mass of cancerous cells from my face?

Dr. Newaj did have 4 and 5-star reviews, some of them with glowing commentary. And Matt doubled down on his endorsement in spite of Natalie’s testimony. Then I found one of those dirt cheap, glitch-in-the-matrix airfares. Once I learned what Matt paid for the consultation, procedure and lab fees — an astonishingly low $200 USD — I was on my way.

To be perfectly honest, I was not worried. I had a long track record of being a submissive patient. And I certainly didn’t need to be friends with Dr. Newaj. As far as I was concerned, Dr. Newaj could rip up my file and hurl a few insults at me for good measure if it meant a successful removal of the basal cell carcinoma on my forehead.

Some weeks later, I shivered my way out of my humble motel room in the Kempton Park neighborhood of Johannesburg and walked over to the Arwyp Medical Centre. It was winter in South Africa and I had forgotten about this thing called the southern hemisphere.

There was a crowd in the waiting room. I wanted to introduce myself, maybe fill out some paperwork, but the receptionist made an unmistakeable gesture indicating I should just sit down. Many of Dr. Newaj’s negative reviews also assailed the office manager and/or the receptionist. I remembered the protocol: follow orders, don’t ask questions. Don’t try to be friends with anyone.

The only open seat was to the left of a large gentleman who had a large growth emerging from the left side of his head. I considered standing by the entrance, but the piercing stare of the receptionist told me that was not an option. She had a look on her face that suggested my mere presence had completely ruined her day. I quickly sat down and waited for further instruction.

I was nervous, and it had nothing to do with skin cancer. I felt like I was about to be examined by my high school basketball coach. He used to put a trash can next to the court if anyone needed to vomit during practice.

The receptionist gave me the all clear to approach. I readied myself for some preemptive apologizing. I wanted my obedience to be on full display. But the receptionist was all smiles now, and she was apologizing to me. She apologized for the wait, for having me sit, for the crowd in the waiting room. She might have even apologized for the weather!

Shortly after filling out the requisite paperwork, a nurse practitioner called me back to Dr. Newaj’s office. I had a succinct speech prepared in my head. I would mention Matt’s recommendation, acknowledge Dr. Newaj’s expertise, thank him for seeing me, and briefly explain my basal cell carcinoma diagnosis.

Wouldn’t you know it, Dr. Newaj was also smiling. He gave me a firm handshake and pulled me towards him. I would normally find such a Trump-like power move distressing, but I realized it was part of the examination. He looked at my forehead and squinted. “You have a skin cancer there.” I nearly passed out with relief. Dr. Newaj was friendly and competent!

He asked me a few questions about my medical history and then did a full body scan, noting suspicious spots that would need to be monitored. He then explained that a small surgical intervention would be needed to remove the basil cell carcinoma on my forehead. No worries, Dr. Newaj. At this point, he could have told me to run through a sliding glass door and I would have done it.

Forty five minutes later, the nurse practitioner was injecting lidocaine into my forehead. Dr. Newaj worked methodically, cutting me up with a pair of scissors while chatting with the NP about her weekend plans. It was somewhat unnerving that the operation seemed to be secondary to the weekend plans conversation, but maybe that should have been reassuring. As in, Dr. Newaj has done so many of these he doesn’t even need to pay attention? Anyway, I didn’t have much time to dwell on it. The whole thing was over within 15 minutes.

Three days later, I came back for the follow-up. Dr. Newaj was pleased. The sutures looked good and there weren’t any signs of infection.

At the risk of destroying my credentials as a cooperative and borderline sycophantic patient, I decided to ask a question. I wanted to know whether or not the tissue Dr. Newaj removed would be analyzed in the lab. I could see the red ink going into my file: “PATIENT ASKED A QUESTION.” Dr. Newaj smiled and responded with a curt “that won’t be necessary — I got everything out.” Ah, I see. Well, that’s good. I mean, that’s great.

“Do you have any other questions for me?” There is a way of asking this question when you genuinely want to continue the conversation. Dr. Newaj did not ask the question that way. “No, doctor, thank you. Thank you for everything. Hopefully I never have to see you again. I mean, I hope to not see you in this context. It would be great to see you at the mall or the park or anywhere else really.”

That was five years ago. My forehead is still free of basal cell carcinoma. Well, that part of my forehead anyway. It seems Dr. Newaj knew what he was talking about.

I recently poked my head into his google business profile to see how things were going. Not much has changed.

I excerpted the most relevant part of a long winded response by someone on his team. Either that or Dr. Newaj has started speaking in the 3rd person, a development that would not entirely surprise me. I don’t know what kind of misleading statements Mrs. Vrey was making but I hope she is ok!

I think this was the first one where he used all-caps more than once in the same response. Please add “YOUR OWN STUPIDITY” in all-caps to the Dr. Newaj bingo card.

“it may be advisable to see a psychologist or similar professional.” Yikes.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of Dr. Newaj’s one star reviews. He is an experienced and highly qualified doctor, but he’s also kind of an asshole. For an uncomplicated basal cell carcinoma removal, he might be your guy. He might not be your guy if you have a stubborn case of eczema or a mercurial fungal infection. He is definitely not your guy if you need anything close to sympathetic bedside manner. Or if you have questions.

In any case, Dr. Newaj could have ended his response to Jacquelin with something like “Sorry for any misunderstanding” instead of “We are baffled as to how this is rude” followed by “you should see a psychologist.” To be honest, I don’t really know why Dr. Newaj is warring with patients on his google business profile. He clearly has plenty of business and his review responses only serve to make him look petty and childish. Oh, right — he is kind of an asshole.

I do understand Dr. Newaj’s desire to defend himself. Reviews increasingly drive customer behavior and please slap me across the face if I ever start another sentence like that. Anyway, you know what I mean. Too many reviews talking about files getting torn up and leaving the doctor’s office in tears are not good for business.

Thankfully, there is not a platform on which people can review Postcards from Timbuktu. It takes a long time for a postcard from Timbuktu to arrive in someone’s mailbox in Arizona or Auckland or any city or town in Italy. The estimated arrival time is too long to be useful, and there is no way to track what we send.

Despite red text at the top of the homepage explaining the challenges we face, I still get emails from customers asking where their cards are a week or two after ordering. Some of the emails politely request a refund. Others are angry and threatening, accusing me of fraud. I’ve even had someone threaten a class action lawsuit!

But most of the PFT customers are understanding — and appreciative! — of the logistics gymnastics that take place. Most of them are amazed that they can receive this handcrafted, one of a kind item from such a faraway place that some of them thought was actually imaginary until they stumbled upon the website.

The two other businesses I’m involved with — Scoot West Africa and the Sleeping Camel — are available for review on public platforms. The Sleeping Camel has nearly 500 reviews on Google and Tripadvisor and has maintained 4+ stars despite a handful reviews from Malians who thought 1-star was the highest rating (they left a nice written review) and a smaller handful of reviews, mostly from Germans, who had legitimate grievances.

Scoot West Africa is on Tripadvisor. We have 23 five star reviews and 1 one star review. The one star review was written by a client who made it two thirds of the way through last year’s 90-day coast to coast trip from Dakar to Cape Town. Here is what Nick had to say about the trip, and what Matt had to say about Nick.

Dr. Newaj probably would have sprinkled in some all-caps, but otherwise, Matt did a good (better?) job channeling our favorite South African dermatologist. All that’s missing is the suggestion that Nick see a psychologist rather than book one of our trips.

We were about to crack the top-10 in the “Tours and Activities” in Dakar category, a feat that could have possibly introduced SWA to a few new clients. Nick’s 1-star review dropped us down to #19.

Are we blameless in this affair? No, we are not. We’ve since removed anything resembling an itinerary on the coast to coast trip page, and we’ve become much more selective about prospective clients. We should not have let Nick on the trip in the first place.

In whatsapp messages, Nick threatened to make things ugly if we didn’t give him a partial refund. Those messages coincided with multiple requests for my home address. All of this was happening while Matt was still navigating the coast to coast with the remaining clients, and I was in Bamako packing up our family home of 9 years. It was a brilliant time to receive veiled threats of violence from a Florida man (yes).

I had met Nick in person at the beginning of the coast to coast trip. I rode down with the crew from the Sine-Saloum into The Gambia. I spent my last day with them in Farafenni, an unremarkable town on the border of Senegal. It’s not a place you would race to for a holiday. The only reason we were there was because all the roads were shut down in the Casamance after Senegal’s main opposition candidate was sentenced to prison.

In the late afternoon heat, most of the clients were keen for a siesta. But Nick was up for an adventure. So were Matt and I. Farafenni may not look like much, but even dusty border towns reward initiative in West Africa. We rented a horse cart and went on the hunt for a cold beer.

We ended up in a Christian household that served as an informal neighborhood bar. There was a celebration going on. I don’t remember if it was a birthday or a baptism. There was pork on the barbecue and tall cans of Royal Dutch (8.5%). Welcoming and accommodating guests is second nature in this part of the world, and it wasn’t long before we were invited in on the action.

Nick is a filmmaker and he pulled out his camera to get some footage. Some of the off duty police officers and gendarmes attending the fete were not so impressed with this and asked him to stop. Nick did not stop. It was then that a fight nearly broke out.

We eventually convinced Nick to put away the camera and everyone calmed down. But Nick refused to believe he did anything wrong. For him, it was totally acceptable behavior to put a camera in someone’s face without asking their permission to do so. This was our first glimpse of his character. I said goodbye the following morning, but Matt would spend another 55 days dealing with this.

From the Scoot West Africa about page:

Travel is privilege. We believe in approaching it with an open-mind and a heavy dose of respect for the local customs and cultural practices that we come in contact with. We believe in discovering a place on its own terms. We do not impose. We listen, and we learn. We are constantly aware that we are visitors. We are guests. And we should act like it.

For Nick, the world is something to be consumed. You arrive somewhere and you think, what can I take from this? Not “take” as in what I can realize or learn, but “take” as in seize. You see this same approach with certain country counters and content creators. It’s about harvesting experiences and shaping a narrative. The people and the places are incidental, and very often they are collateral damage.

I don’t want to say we’re honored to receive Nick’s one star “diarrhea” review. Something like that, though. If we had 23 one star reviews from people who shared our travel philosophy and whose company we enjoyed and 1 five star review from an asshole, I would be worried. But it’s the other way around.

If and when it all goes tits up, I hope Nick is up on Mars with Elon Musk. Donald Trump can be their president and Dr. Newaj can be the dermatologist. There will probably be a lot of skin cancer with that thin atmosphere.

I will happily stay down here and try to work it out with the other 23 people that reviewed our company, and any other person that does not live life with their ego gobbling up everything and shitting it back out onto all of us.

I was subscribed to many newsletters, but when I separated the wheat the chaff, this is what remained. And maybe a few other newsletters that I haven’t unsubscribed to because they send out emails too infrequently, kind of like my own newsletter.

These six are untouchable. I subscribe to these for their content, but also because all of the authors are just good human beings.

Coco’s Variety – Coco’s Variety is a used bike shop in California. The owner, Peter, writes a newsletter. I don’t know how to describe his disparate and seemingly endless interests. He has a lot going on and he really gets into the weeds with things. In the last issue, he talks about redeeming 22 pounds of cans at a recycling center in order to purchase a bottle of wine and to do some pine nut arbitrage at a whole foods. Subject matter will swing from anecdotes like that to an analysis of the annual budget of the US forest service (he is currently rehabilitating a campground). Hopefully he will run for president one day. His writing is incisive and often very, very funny and please just trust me you need some Mister Jalopy in your life. The subscribe link is here.

Everything is Amazing – Mike Sowden says his newsletter is about science and curiosity and discovery, and it is, but the subject matter doesn’t really matter to me. Mike could write a newsletter about seagulls and I would pay to read it. And I do pay to read his newsletter, which says a lot as the current state of my finances doesn’t allow for much more than food, shelter and the kids’ school fees. Anyway, he has a free version that you can try on for size. You will learn a lot but you will also feel better about yourself and the world after reading it. Mike can write his socks off, that’s for sure, but it is the mix of charming English self-deprecation, Mike’s willingness to get lost in anything, anywhere, and his unfailing empathy that do it for me.

Semi-Rad – I discovered Brendan Leonard because of Mike Sowden. I originally subscribed to his Friday inspiration newsletter, but I have been a supporter of his patreon for over a year now and I feel like at $3 a month I am basically robbing Brendan blind. I suppose I should upgrade to the $5 plan. Brendan is a visual artist, a writer and an endurance athlete, “kind of.” The “kind of” is very much Brendan. He has a relentless sense of humor and an endearing, heavy-handed humility. Like Mike, but less long-winded and less English. Don’t get me wrong, Mike’s long windedness and Englishness is absolutely perfect. And so is Brendan’s ability to say something poignant and funny with 5 words and a hand drawn bar chart. Mike and Brendan are two guys that I wouldn’t mind being stranded with on a mountain top with grim prospects for survival. Both of them would be great company, and I would be eager to read their respective accounts of the ordeal afterwards (if we managed to survive).

Curious about Everything – I’ve linked to Jodi’s newsletter and Patreon previously. My original endorsement stands. I often find that when her newsletter arrives, I just delete everything else in my inbox and read what she has curated. She finds the best writing, the most fascinating stories, the things you didn’t even know you needed to see or read. Her Curious about Everything newsletter is free, but she also has a Patreon where she writes about life with a chronic cerebrospinal fluid leak. That condition may mean nothing to you, but I suggest checking out her Patreon regardless. A CSF leak may be a rare medical condition, but there are a lot of other formerly rare medical conditions that are now quietly pervasive while still being overlooked or outright ignored. Jodi’s Patreon is an invaluable resource for anyone navigating life on the wrong side of systems that have proven to be broken and inhumane in a post-pandemic world.

Web Curios – This is another newsletter of curated links, but half the time I don’t even click on the links. Matt’s cynical, and very occasionally hopeful, intelligent, hilarious and almost always manic commentary is the reason I subscribe. Don’t get me wrong, the links are great, too. From his “about page:”

Why do you do this?

That’s a good question. Mostly compulsion, if I’m honest (it’s a bit like a tic at this stage, and I worry if I didn’t have this outlet I would start scrawling urls on park benches or all over the walls of my house, like some sort of awful, never-to-be-discovered (even posthumously) outsider artist).

But, to be serious for a second, it’s because the web is obviously horrible and has ruined us as a species, but it is also amazing because of all the incredible, strange, mad, odd, obsessional, creative, interesting, sad, terrifying, stupid, evil, cruel, selfish, venal, poignant, funny, disturbing and utterly human content that people put on it. I think it’s A Good Thing that there are some places online that help spread the word about some of all of the amazing stuff that exists out there, outside of the walled gardens of many people’s online experience. You don’t get this shit on Insta, is what I’m saying.

Dense Discovery – I actually found out about this newsletter when I was soliciting my own Postcards from Timbuktu newsletter for possible venues to promote that project (side note: I am still very much and always looking for ways to get a shout-out of that project so if you have any ideas, let me know!). Someone suggested that I try to get it featured in Dense Discovery. It didn’t work out, but I’m grateful I was introduced to this newsletter just the same. All I can say is that when I’ve given up on humanity and all hopes for a viable future involving our species, Dense Discovery arrives in my inbox and reminds that maybe, just maybe, all is not lost. And there are no cheeseball, feel-good optimism stories here. It is deep, reflective, critical and practical.

I am really not looking to add anything to my inbox, but please do tell me if you have a favorite that’s not listed here anyway.

Senegalese democracy in turmoil — is it the end? This is what we heard for months. The whole thing was about to collapse.

Protests had been violently suppressed, the internet repeatedly throttled, and the main opposition candidate imprisoned along with his deputy, the now President-elect Bassirou Diomaye Faye. Their political party itself had been dissolved.

The President, Macky Sall, said that the convictions and prison sentences were decisions made by an independent judiciary. Everything else was a matter of security. Sall was approaching the end of his second and final term. He said he would not try to force a third. Was he sincere? Many people were understandably skeptical.

In February, Macky Sall announced that he was postponing the election. A dispute over a disqualified candidate deserved to be resolved, he said. He rescheduled the elections for December. The Constitutional Court took up the matter. Nope, Macky, you cannot. The election must be held before April 2nd, the date when Sall was legally required to step down.

Sall acquiesced. A new date was announced. March 24th. A mere two weeks for the campaign. During Ramadan.

But the campaign went off without a hitch. And so did the election. Macky Sall’s candidate was soundly defeated in the first round by Bassirou Diomaye Faye, a 44-year-old former tax inspector, and the aforementioned deputy of the main opposition candidate who had been disqualified from running. Faye only had a week to campaign because he was in prison up until that point.

Amadou Ba, Macky’s guy, conceded. He called Faye and wished him well, offering benedictions for the new president and the people of Senegal.

The polls were monitored by observers and journalists alike. There were no incidents. There were no allegations of fraud. No demands for a recount.

Senegal’s democracy was supposedly on its deathbed, and yet Senegal just showed the rest of the world how to conduct an election. Thanks in part to an orange demagogue, we are no longer able to do this in America, the global advocate for this system of governance. For the Sahel, where the conversation has recently shifted to “democracy has failed us, we need to try something else,” the Senegal election is a wake up call, a stark reminder that this can work.

Whatever becomes of Bassirou Diomaye Faye and his tenure as President, Senegal has taken a historic step forward. Institutions were tested, but they proved strong. And the Senegalese people — relentless and resilient — never gave in.

In a few more days, on April 4th, Senegal will celebrate independence day. It will mean something different this year.