3 March
Saturday night at Hotel Djenne Djenno- no guests tonight. I sit alone on the roof in the middle of my new sunset bar, the only toubab for a hundred miles, like a mad empress or a a latter day King Ludvig of Bavaria, gazing over my little kingdom of mudpies and sand castles. Is it all going too my head?
It is almost too easy here. I said let's have a staircase over there, and two days later it was built. Now I look into the other corner of the land and decide that we will start building the walls of the new garden, and that we will dig a well. Tomorrow I will wave my wand and it will happen. I am walling myself in with turrets in a make-believe country, which never the less is true. Or is it? Perhaps it is all in my imagination? Perhaps soon I will be mad as a hatter, or am I already? Perhaps soon it will become apparent that I have lost touch with reality and some kind friend who looks in on the blog will decide to send a rescue party.
In the meantime the full moon is illuminating the turrets of my kingdom in a cold light, Jupiter has risen and in the distance a moezzin is calling the faithful to prayer. This place is still as alien as ever to me and I revel and bathe in its strangeness which soothes my soul like balsam. The ochre dust of the Harmattan envelops my kingdom and on the distant horizon flames a lone potter's pyre.