by Aralola (Lola) Akinmade
“You this idiot man!†Seyi yells at Samson. “Why are you listening to Fashola?â€
Samson is leaning in close to a parked car, listening to the governor’s latest decree about motorcycle taxis called okadas. The governor’s voice blasts from the radio through the driver’s open window, the driver himself fast asleep on his [...]
by Barbara Cunliffe Singleton
TENGENENGE, VILLAGE OF STONE SCULPTURES
Zimbabwe
A cassette of Zimbabwe’s top singer, Thomas Mapfumo, vibrates the dashboard and his rhythm muffles the bumps of the last five miles. Having delivered a load of stone sculptures in Harare, Tengenenge’s driver is giving me a lift to the village of sculptors, two hours north of [...]
by Bonnie Smetts
The specter of a transatlantic flight without a book drove me into the airport bookstore—and into the unfamiliar arms of a lusty romance. With the final boarding call for my flight blaring overhead, I grabbed a book and ran to the gate. For the next twelve hours, the steamy affairs of a six-generation [...]
by Lola Akinmade
There were only four items on my to-do list – buy some Ankara, buy some groceries, find a tailor, and get some original artwork. “You can’t find them all at the same placeâ€, Remi explains as we travel along Lagos Mainland Bridge towards our first stop, Balogun Market. It was a hot [...]
by Jann Huizenga
It’s raining, and the power is out. I strain in the dim light to take it all in: shattered spectacles; sour linens; jewelry black with age; wool stockings; fusty hope chests and sculpted cradles; mountains of rusty pistols for Albanian blood vengeance.
The shops in Kruja’s old Ottoman bazaar have the bad breath [...]
by Bonnie Smetts
I tiptoed up the gray-carpeted stairs of the Gucci store in Rome. A single sweater folded with precision lay on a counter and another three lay perfectly forbidden on a shelf below. The only other shoppers were a Japanese teenager with no apparent budget and a model who I’d seen leave her boyfriend [...]
By Craig Wilkins
Rick’s Café (Latin)American
I am a night person. Always have been. I’ve never understood the need for anything to begin early in the day and phrases that purport to educate me in this area — like “Early to bed, early to rise…blah, blah, blah†or “The early bird catches the worm†have only served [...]
By Anke Snow
Hello, my name is Anke, and I’m a souveniraholic.
I am not exactly sure how I came to realize this. Maybe it had something to do with a general dissatisfaction I felt about my vacations, as if I hadn’t gotten the most out of them. But why hadn’t I?
On a six-week trip to France [...]
By Jeff Vize
I have a thing about haircuts – an addiction almost. I’ll do them anywhere, anytime. I get them once a week sometimes. Especially when I’m traveling. And especially when I’m in the middle of nowhere.
I justify my pathological behavior in a couple of ways: First, I have a shaved head, and I prefer [...]
by Janna Leyde
In a department store on the biggest island in the hemisphere of the Southern Cross my two Aussie friends waiting patiently while I debated between $20 or $200 sneakers—cheap generics or unnecessarily expensive Lacoste. It was simple. In three hours I needed a pair of sneakers to climb a bridge, and [...]
