A Lady in London

After the taxi breakdown on the way to the Dakar airport, I hoped the rest of our trip would go smoothly. Unfortunately, the incident proved to be a mere taste of the bad luck we would encounter over the next three days.

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When I started telling people that I booked a trip to Mali, most of them wondered how such a seemingly obscure country had worked its way into my list of places to visit. The answer lies in a class I took at Brown: West African Dance. The professor was married to a Malian man, and most of the dances we learned were from there. In addition to learning the dances, we also learned about the culture, food, history, people, and traditions of Mali. I was fascinated. Mali was added to the list.

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One of the nice things about living in London is that seemingly every country in the world has an embassy, high commission, or other visa-dispensing diplomatic mission in the city. Sometimes this makes it really easy to get visas. It also sometimes works to my advantage when the UK visa fees are lower than the US ones, as sometimes I’m only required to pay the UK fee despite my blue-and-gold passport.

Sometimes.

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