It’s Friday morning - so the beginning of the Islamic week-end. The streets of Algiers are empty, and the architecture is mine to explore. But first, I need breakfast. Here the city’s repose is not on my side. Everything is closed, even along the capital’s historic shopping street: Rue Didouche Mourad. As I begin to... Continue Reading →
Oran: Architecture in Transformation
It is dark when I wake up. The hillside twinkles between navy sea and sky. Under my window, traffic flows paint the beginnings of day. A single crane on the horizon symbolises the building of this modern Algerian city. I take my breakfast facing the the coastline as the natural pastels of morning develop beyond... Continue Reading →
Amitié: Ben et Mamadou
Mamadou looks up from the green metal floor of the deck. ‘I was the only one there’, he says. ‘My mother went out for five minutes to buy some charcoal to cook with. She asked me to make nana breakfast. Whilst I was boiling the water, nana died. I found her, still and cold. I... Continue Reading →
An African muslim, a French spiritualist, and a British agnostic, walk into a bar
Truth is stranger than fiction. Some of what I write in future posts will be fictionalised, because to describe it in the purely factual sense of truth would be to betray those whose little white lies and private matters have important purpose in supporting the necessary machineries of life. Also because sometimes fiction can convey... Continue Reading →
Filming, Street Children, Development and Religion (but no lunch) all in my first day back in Senegal after five years.
We're outside a 'daara', or koranic school for street children (talibes). There's a film crew from Lebanon, a drone pilot from Ghana (for aerial shots) and a TV news reporter from New York. They are documenting the experience of the talibes, and so they've asked Issa to take them to an 'especially terrible' daara -... Continue Reading →
