All posts tagged: expat

Mali Wins Global Tree Competition !!

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I am thrilled to announce that Mali is this year’s winner (country division) of the 4th Centennial Global Tree Competition! It’s been a rousing century of cutbranch…er, cutthroat competition since the last Deciding Votes were cast (September 1914, GTC Society Phuket Conference). Voting took ages (and I mean ages) as four generations of Contributing Judges reviewed and scored over a thousand entries. Every 25 years, competitors are ranked according to various qualifying criteria in their respective categories. In the 100th, Voting (or Deciding) Year, winners are selected by a team of Deciding Judges based on a century’s worth of careful deliberation. (The 100-year cycle allows for the full development of interested candidates). The categories are many, reflecting the global diversity of Trees: Best Single Deciduous, Best Tropical Ensemble, Best Forest (rainforest reps continue to lobby for a unique category), Most Significant Shade, Best Fruit-Bearing, Most Character, etc. Additional categories are geographic, by country, municipality, or region. And this year, Mali took the Country category by storm! Just look at what Mali has to offer, in breadth …

what’s to eat #15

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Surprise of the day: these apple-y looking fellas are cashews. the cashew nut (seed) attached to the cashew apple (fruit), pulled from a cashew tree (tree). The apple tastes like a proper Concord grape, with a bitter bit at the end; the nut is toxic until heat-treated. Ten points and a round of applause to Nature: Excellent work! Ferekoroba Village, Mali

on fences

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Been considering opposing forces, and how to navigate between them. When to embrace, when to guard against, and how to do each purposefully. Vigilance, for example, versus rest. We require both, and they require equal enthusiasm. What keeps those opposites apart? The fences that we build. And fences are tricky, tricky things. We build fences to make sense of things, to protect, and to facilitate focus. Some schools of thought say fences are healthy, even necessary; you’ve got to know where to draw lines to navigate a chaotic world. Other schools of thought say fences are but an illusion, that boundaries are crutches for coping, an alternative to digging deeper and realizing the essential–and maybe intimidating–interconnectedness of things. Another pair of opposites. I’d say fences are tools, and are at their best when acknowledged and used as such. Perhaps most important is that fences are impermanent, try as we might to make them ever-lasting. And we don’t build them–or tear them down–alone, though we might imagine otherwise. Fences are a collaboration, and none stay upright forever. they shift and are …

what’s to eat

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Tomato tartes, tagliatelle with zucchini and shaved parmesan, gazpacho… goat cheese and pesto ravioli, beef filets with frîtes… and on and on… Nary a complaint heard… in fact, not much heard at all, as mouths were already working overtime, and forks flying. Le Comme Chez Soi Hippodrome, Bamako, Mali +223 74 44 22 22