mrjake118

It all sounds incredible and I'm sure overall it was a great journey for you but I'm sure there were parts that were just awful. If you were to break up your whole journey into positive and negative moments or experiences, what would the ratio be? Like, would you say half positive, half negative? 10 to 1 positive to negative?

I lived in Mali for a couple years and I'd love to hear your impressions of the place, if you've been. They're such a fascinating blend of being the most hospitable, jovial, and warm-hearted people I've ever met, while also being extremely poor, very conservative, and having little awareness of the world around them. Overall though my time there was fascinating so I'm curious if you have thoughts.

I also wonder what you thought of what we called the one-pagers, the countries or regions that only got one page in the big visitor guides and they basically just said, don't visit without a heavily armed escort. Do you feel like trips to those notorious areas, if you took any, were worthwhile, worth the danger and effort to go there?

Lastly, what was the most inexplicable, alien, or supernatural thing you experienced in your travels, that just made you think that this was a memory that will last lifetime and an event that would never happen anywhere else?

What you say about Sudan definitely rings true with Mali. They have a thing called "joking cousins" where people of different family names have inside jokes that they make fun of each other for, a system that was instituted from what I understand to replace actual conflicts. So if you are in the know, you can pretty much make instant friends with anyone you meet just by calling their brother a donkey! And it really is such a shame that the country has been hit so hard over the last 8 years since a coup overthrough the government and created a lot of instability in the country. Tourism and international aid haven't recovered to the previous levels yet, but really most people are completely uninvolved with any of the conflict, they're just needlessly suffering even more as a result of it. But it is a strange contrast because you'll see the same sweetest people you've ever met who will do things like FGM and spousal abuse in the name of traditional values, some of which are attributed to Islam but often they don't even bother making an excuse.

To my third question, from my experience, I'm thinking of things like a Voodoo (Vodun) ritual in a priest's shed in Benin that involved lots of incantations, a chicken slaughter, and alcohol and baby powder applied liberally to some very bizarre looking idols, or some friends of mine who visited a mountain said to be inhabited by spirits, and they heard some sounds that even as educated Americans, they couldn't figure out what to make of and eventually got spooked and went home. I'm looking forward to hearing any examples you come up with. :-)