The Holy See

Dear Misfits,

Hi there, just wanted to post a few photos of my trip to Mali, while you all breathlessly await new editions of my tiresome, churchly prose.....

These photos are very lackluster, but Mali is not. Make no mistake.

I'm here in Nouakchott, having finally installed myself in what I hope are temporarily permanent digs after carting around all of my earthly belongings in a backpack, a plastic sack and a bucket for the month and change since I've left El Qidiya.

Okay, think of me fondly.

yours, Coltie

This is the man who was selling cigarettes, and/or other things, beside the coffee men.

This is my perennially ugly mug standing in front of that photographer's darling, the mud mosque at Djenne.

These are little bottles of gas, called essence in french, which I think is funny-ish, and which people buy only in tiny bits like this, as they have the money to do so.

This is the frenetically busy port at Mopti on the Niger.

This is a Dogon granary, an example of their brand of mud architecture, which everyone pressures you to feel impressed by, but which is actually quite lovely anyhow.

This is a little pastoral scene, at Bandiagara, at the head of the road towards Sangha and Dogon.

This is a little boy's picture at Banani, Dogon, which I quite literally stole (I didn't pay him for it)by snapping the photo inconspicuously as I passed. Whatever.