Maasai Mara Park, Kenya - home of the lion, elephant, zebra, giraffe, mongoose, antelope, hippo...............

merchant of ghana

best thing being hawked in the road yesterday:

• brand new shiny copies of both the Oxford English Dictionary and the Complete Works of Shakespeare

i'm guessing they must be required books for highschoolers here.

but the scenario i'd much rather imagine is a taxi driver saying to himself as he is stuck in grinding hot traffic in his unairconditioned car breathing diesel fumes - you know what i just haven't read enough of lately? macbeth. well, macbeth and hamlet - oh, and the merchant of venice - i can never get enough of that merchant of venice. always takes the edge right off a long day stuck in traffic...

what everyone less literary was selling:

• bananas
• chocolate bars
• neck ties
• toilet paper
• flags of the world
• cell phone minutes
• fried dough balls
• combs

buttah buttah

if you have ever wondered where on earth shea butter comes from*...

wonder no more!

at least some of the shea butter, for some of the people in the world comes from these women living in the small town of Kpatinga in northern Ghana.

the women pick the shea nuts growing wild nearby their town.


then they dry the nuts in their patio in the hot sun.


roast the nuts.


and finally crush them to extract the butter (my camera failed for the picture of the butter – but picture a gigantic bowl of vanilla icing swarming with flies…mmmm?)

and then finally hope someone will pay them for the fruits (or in this case butter) of their labor.

these women are hoping to someday form a women’s group to get a loan to get mechanized processing equipment so they don’t have to do this entire process by hand. but until that day comes, they will keep picking, drying, roasting, and crushing these nuts by hand.

*i know you have probably never actually wondered where shea butter comes from – i’m mostly counting on your general curiosity about the world here…I knew the word sounded familiar but beyond that I had no clue what it was for - according to the all knowing wikipedia “Shea butter is widely used in cosmetics as a moisturizer and an emollient.” Exactly…

trying it out

so i've decided to give this travel blog thing a try...

it might be a total failure. a testament to great intentions and less than stellar follow through. we'll just to have to wait and see.

but given that i have started traveling more and more and more. and given that sometimes there is just enough time to write one update. a blog seems like it could be the right thing.

so hold your breath.
or maybe i'll just hold mine.

here goes something.