The first and the last

 It has been a long time...

It is because I, like so many others, feel there is not much to talk about in this monotonous lock-down world we have inhabited for so long now...

but of course there is plenty stirring, and some of it may be the closing of one chapter and the opening of another, but who knows? My Mali adventure  is still not quite at its end: I am leaving in just over a week for Bamako, and will once more be winding my dusty way up to Djenne- this time in the company of my boss Father Columba the Benedictine from Minnesota, with whom I have lived through many adventures in the past- let's hope this trip will be more peaceful than our first trip to Timbuktu together in August 2017- see beginning of this blog.

This time we are only going to Djenne- the work in Timbuktu is being wrapped up finally, since we have now digitized all the manuscripts in the three great libraries there.  But the work in Djenne continues- at least for now! 

The picture above is taken on the day Keita and I first visited the land which were to become Hotel Djenne Djenno in April 2006. The picture below is my  last breakfast  on the day I closed the hotel in 2017. On the 26th of March it will be five years since Keita left us- I will be in Bamako then. His last days  still feel as fresh in my memory as if they were yesterday. My life since then has seemed like a waiting room, where I have passed some pleasant time, but waited for what is to develop next. And now, maybe there is another chapter- and it may be just around the corner- it has to do with a plan for another little guesthouse, or a pensione rather, and it might be in Italy- the plans which were vague are shaping up a little more firmly, and if all goes well I will travel back to London via Italy at Easter time where I will return to Siena... but more about that later if it works... meanwhile the Italian is coming on apace- doing an online intensive Italian course.

More from Mali... then from Italy if they will let me in..!Ciao!