Archive - January 16, 2013

            Sunday Morning July 2, 1961 The road home was flat. Miss Mary drove. The old hunter, watching The distant hills, Small breasts against the plains, Thought of Kenya, the rugged Mountains, where death was Close as brush, Gentler than the Slow defacing of flesh. He wrote of sin as no small town Methodist ever had, Carving his prose with a new King of tool; Honed in the woods of Michigan, Sharpened by a fascist war, And tempered for an old man of Cuba. Fragile as the light birds he Picked from the sky Decades and miles away, He no longer heard the call. Pencils now were hollow in his hands, The juice that flowed so ready Had yellowed in his veins. He was what Gertrude had proclaimed. Sunday he woke to our tragedy, Sought in the library of his exile His own Kilimanjaro. Feeling . . .

[Peter Tinti (Mali 2008-10) is a freelance journalist, writer and analyst splitting time between Bamako, Mali and Dakar, Senegal. He writes and reports on issues pertaining to politics, culture and security in West Africa and the Maghreb. He has lived and worked in the region since 2008, first as a PCV in Gao, northern Mali. He holds an MA in International Peace and Security from King’s College London as well as degrees in Political Science and Peace War & Defense from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Among other outlets, Tinti’s writing, reporting and analysis has appeared in Think Africa Press, World Politics Review, Christian Science Monitor, BBC, and Voice of America. This is from CS Monitor, published on January 13, 2013. With French airstrikes, has the war to retake northern Mali begun? Today’s expansion of the French air campaign beyond central Mali has left many wondering if . . .