Ahem The temperature around me dropped a full thirty degrees when I returned from Abidjan in mid-month, just three days after Gwen’s 20th birthday, a...

Ahem While I and my colleagues at the Bank are paid good salaries, even by European standards, most families in the Cote d’Ivoire have perilously...

Ahem There are no second hand markets in Abidjan: no Petticoat Lanes or Portobello Roads. There are no marches aux puces and no charity shops....

Ahem As Europe falls into yellow leafswirl, brown mulch and bright red bonfires, search-lit by horizon sunbeams and long-man shadows, so by contrast the weather...

Ahem The curse of Shango, Yoruba God of thunder and lightning, is invoked against the Jeep Corporation for indirectly selling me (in separate continents and...

Ahem A family from France are staying for a few weeks. They introduced a cheerful, bustling and friendly family background noise of argument, proposition, enquiry...

Ahem The process of moving into my new home, a villa in a half-gated lane (see photo) close to the Rue des Jardins, was quickly...

Ahem After the strong and positive family emotions around my brother Clive’s funeral, I had a grim return to Abidjan, where uncertainties at work were...

Ahem To be honest, my brother Clive and I were too far apart in age to be all that close while I was growing up....

Ahem I am growing very wary of the word “smart”. Never dependable or stable, the word is too often used pejoratively. “Smart” was paired in...