Mali is one of those places usually reserved for daydreams, evoking thoughts of the remote and the exotic. The name of Mali’s famous city, Timbuktu, is used in Western culture to describe something so far away that it borders on the impossible. I never imagined that one day I would actually be in Mali. The Niger River flows through this West-African landlocked country, once an integral part of the trans-Saharan trade route. I arrived at the height of the dry season, when rivers sink low against their banks, and the earth turns a dusty orange. Read more
