peregrine by nature

Brew coffee and heat canned evaporated milk. Pour simultaneously into teacup. Add wild honey to taste.

Slice and toast baguette and slather on organic butter and marmalade, guava jam or hibiscus jelly. Or all three.

In the Bible Isaac is named as the son Abraham nearly sacrificed on Mt. Moriah and his descendants the Jews inherit Jerusalem. In the Qur’an his half brother Ishmael is the offering and his descendants the Muslims inherit the land.

The war is not over.

This is the matrix. Wake up.

A renegade soldier is loose in Goma and Gaza Strip militants fire more rockets and Russia still refuses to pull back. In Dakar we lose power, blacking out the peninsula from Point E to Almadies, and now is a good time to remember your physics, in this universe true darkness does not (yet) exist, only varying levels of light. In any conflict or cave or refugee camp, even if your eyes can’t make them out, there are particles of luminescence. Hold on to that and have faith.

Attaya, or gunpowder tea is strong, sweet tea served in tiny glassfuls in a 3 round ritual. Water is boiled on a fuurnu with a small packet of tea leaves and a full kas of sugar, each round with added sugar to symbolize the growing sweetness of friendship. Or, alternatively, the first bitter round is for life, the second for friendship and the third is the sweetest, for love. The tea is poured impossibly high from kas to kas, up to a two foot arc without spilling a drop. This creates delicious foam. Return warga to fuurnu and bring back to a boil. Serve scalding hot. Second and third rounds add mint.

When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then – that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it.
–CS Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

There are 10,000 talibes on the streets of Dakar, taken from their rural villages at a young age by a marabout, a Muslim religious leader with credibility elsewhere but in Senegal is using the ancient practice to exploit.

Talibes go barefoot onto the streets of Dakar to beg for their food and for money. If they do not bring a sufficient sum to the marabout at the end of the day they are beaten. They also are isolated in that they often can only speak their tribal language, of which there are 36 spoken in Senegal alone. Read more about them here.

Sometimes we scare ourselves with our promise. The spirit within each of us. Sometimes I have to grip the ground to keep from jumping off.

Threads crisscross the planet binding portico to rooftop, my Dakar stoop to your Chicago flat. This is where underdeveloped meets tech; two women are grinding grain, one is taken, and the other takes a call on her Samsung.

Dakar has a rainy season from July to September, with oppressive temperatures and high humidity.

While the rains in Senegal are necessary to bring life and growth to the villages the same rains can carry death and disease into Dakar. Due to mass rural exodus and poor city planning Dakar was built without taking into account the geographical horsts and grabens, therefore much of the city floods during the rainy season, bringing sewage into homes and schools and creating a breeding ground for malaria-borne mosquitoes and outbreaks of cholera.

The day these photos were taken the president appeared on the news falsely telling the rest of the world the floodwater had been pumped out of Dakar streets and the threats of disease eradicated. To those that live here the implication is that disaster aid funds given to Senegal had been used to line bureaucratic pockets instead of for their intended purpose. A very common practice in a corrupt government such as this one.

While Senegal remains one of the safest African countries to live, the people are afraid to speak out against the government for fear of the very real threat of retaliation.

This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein
After the dream of falling and calling your name out
These are the roots of rhythm
And the roots of rhythm remain

-Paul Simon

“But anyone can find out what will happen,” said Aslan, “If you go back to the others now, and wake them up; and tell them you have seen me again; and that you must all get up at once and follow me—what will happen? There is only one way of finding out.”