SUNDAY TIMES – JUNE 2023

St Turkana

“We must go on a journey, somewhere, a destination; after all ‘we are a seeking generation’. How about Lake Turkana, the Jade Sea, as it is known, for its waters glitter like a precious stone against the harsh dark dry skin of the land; it is the lands nourishment, and yet it is not for it is saline, undrinkable, a paradox? Also up there is the building designed by Francis Kéré, the architect who won the 2022 Pritzker award, the first African to win it.

And so we go. Along the Trans African highway, the main route into Uganda, Ethiopia and South Sudan. (continue reading…)

Turkana ST

The Sunday Times November 2013

Early morning in Nairobi “This is the rainy season,” a pilot says “difficult flying in Kenya now, Nairobi is high, 2000 feet and the weather patterns are unpredictable, but it is still early, at some point there will be a gap and when it comes, take it.”

A handful of blue, we take a right hand turn out. I hold the map on my knees and watch the green lines of the GPS. In the lull the sky is open, all around this space it is grey; the clouds are opaque and ponderous. “Storm clouds,” Tamiko says, “we will have to avoid them, how high are the peaks, we can probable only go up as 6500feet because of the cloud cover, we may have to fly around them.”
We sidestep a storm, and fly over the Nairobi suburb of Karen, named for Karen Blixen; then the Ngong Hills, the clouds are heavy around the four raised knuckles, from the ground they are benign, now they are malevolent. Below us Hog Ranch, the sometime residence of Peter Beard, khaki cloth walls hold within them many journeys. I could die in the Ngong Hills; disappear in the indifferent sky, and who would know. (continue reading…)

Sunday Times May 2013

(Central Kalahari Game Reserve)

The earth beneath me is far away, I can touch her and yet I am enclosed, this is a retinal experience, visually sensuous, no sound but the engine, no smell but perspiration, no taste but salt, 5500 feet above the ground and I look out. Arid semi desert below me, blue sky surrounds; an uneven landscape, small hills that are shrubs, bumpy green, and the sky, an uneven blue; hills in the sky, scatterings of cloud. (continue reading…)

Toumbouctou

The Sunday Independent October 2012For most people, says Monsieur Jaro, when you say Toumbouctou, it is like the end of the world, for others it is a place that is not there, but that is not true. I am from Toumbouctou, and I can tell you that we are right at the heart of the world. (continue reading…)

Sunday Independent 2012 JanuaryCars howl; animated machines move, stop, disgorge people …… it is a Monday morning, the beginning of a week that may, or may not, be busy.

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