The Blogger Returns

Whoa! I've been absent from these pages a long time. There's so much going on my blogging has just gone by the wayside. Let's get back on track. What have I been up to? Well, for one thing, planning a trip over the holidays to Morocco and Mali. I've never been to the African continent before, so you can imagine how excited I am. The Moroccan part of the trip is the briefer leg - we'll be there about a week, in Casablanca and Marrakesh. We'll be travelling in Morocco with some good friends. The Malian trip will be over two weeks long. We'll start in Bamako, where we will be staying with our niece Rebecca and her family -- Rebecca is there heading up a project of the Educational Development Center -- but then head up north to Segou, Djenne, pays Dogon, and Timbuctou. The up-country travel was organized by Karen Crabbs of Toguna Tours, a former New Yorker who has been based in Bamako for years. Rebecca's husband is from nearby Guinea, so we're counting on getting a good introduction to West African culture - especially music. Needless to say - if any readers of this blog are anywhere along our itinerary, we'd love to get together. Maybe even talk about Information Technology and learn about the challenges facing NGO's in your part of the world.