As quiet as Bamako’s streets had been in the middle of the night, they were an extreme of chaos at first light. The whole city was an almost cartoonish representation of every African city you see in the movies- roads shared by vehicles of all descriptions (some defying, by many years, the natural lifespan of any mechanical device), livestock, beasts of burden (including the human variety) , and vendors of all shapes and sizes- anything from a lonely soul s...

After a long, sleep-deprived journey to get to West Africa, Bamako hits us like a ton of bricks right in the customs and luggage area. I assume that the scene that played out would be akin to an announcement of the pending end-of-the-world in most places. People running and pushing in all direction, someone in a white lab coat demanding to see our Yellow Fever vaccination but losing interest the minute he sees a yellow piece of paper coming out of my pocket, line...