Today MW and Mrs. MW begin our second great travel adventure in Africa. Our first was more than a dozen years ago, and also marked my first effort creating a web page. The end result was a travel journal on the (then) new World Wide Web. That time it was Southern Africa, this time it is Western Africa - Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Mali.
Why West Africa? You got me. I asked Mrs. MW the same question about our trip to South Africa, and it was one of the great experiences of my life. I don't ask any more. Mrs. MW is a closet anthropologist/archaeologist, always wanted to explore this part of the world, so we are going. I am just along for the ride. I think it was Kurt Vonnegut that said "Unexpected travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God." Cue the music.
I am informed by Verizon that my TREO 700 will not work anywhere we are going to be, including London - so it stays home. I am bringing an old laptop, will attempt to maintain a journal on the mobile blog as we go, but am not optimistic once we leave Dakar. I may even feel compelled to post on DWSUWF - infrastructure, time and technology permitting. For the most part, I expect it will be a political blogging holiday, which will make Mrs. MW happy.
In the meantime, my brother HDW has agreed to blog-sit DWSUWF while I am gone. Where I consider myself a libertarian leaning to the right, HDW is a libertarian leaning to the left. Actually he is more solidly left, but leaning libertarian. Well, he might really be a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, that just thinks he is libertarian. Whatever. While an enthusiastic supporter of the divided government thesis in the 2006 mid-terms, let's just say that he is considerably less enthusiastic about voting for a Republican President in 2008 to keep the government divided. He can explain himself. The point, is that if/when he posts anything here, I am likely as not to disagree with it, and may need to rebut it on my return. It'll make for a more politically diverse and interesting blog.
On a less political note, HDW has done the trailblazing for our trip to Mali. It was through his participation in a Northwestern University NUAMP's project, that we learned of the great historical libraries of Timbuktu, and the project to digitally document some of the thousands of ancient texts that still reside there. Hopefully we will meet some of the team he works with in our few days in Timbuktu at the end of our trip.
Back in December. Out.
Technorati tags: divided government, blogging,2008 election, libertarian, HDW.
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