Field notes on Dutch “dead,” Vodun “elsewhere,” Yoruba Egun, and how language decides what our dead are allowed to be—and what grief can still do.
Tag: grounded magical realism
Abidjan at Altitude: When the Shipping King Moves His Pieces
Field notes on ports, power, and a shipping king who has been controlling trade routes since Uruk. The Memory Cartographer — Book V.2.
Sitting with a Gawlo in Labé’s Highlands
Field Notes from Labé: Where Stories Keep Time Book V – Part II There’s a point on Elena’s road through West Africa where, for the first time, she isn’t interviewing anyone, recording anything, or proving she has a right to be there. She’s just standing at the edge of a village square in Labé, listening….
Hollandé – When the Fouta Highlands Borrow Your Home’s Name
On the dusty road into Guinea’s Fouta Djallon, a battered Peugeot and a smiling taxi driver quietly weld Elena’s Dutch past to the West African highlands. When he calls the mountains “Hollandé” in Pular, the word suddenly makes her feel less like a foreigner and more like someone whose old home and new road have collided for a moment in the same name.
Waraba: Hyenas in the Malian Night – The Agbara Chronicles
On the road to Timbuktu, a dreamwalk reunion under silver dunes — and the night Karim negotiated two hundred metres of Malian scrubland in his underwear with a cooking pot and three unimpressed hyenas. Field notes from The Agbara Chronicles.
The Archangel’s Archive
Operational field notes from a KGB archangel who has kept records across centuries — and failed at detachment exactly once. Read free on Kobo.
SIRA: The Swahili Word That Changed How I Write About Memory
Field Notes from Dar es Salaam — Behind the Scenes Sira — the path that was always meant for your feet. There are words that stop you mid-sentence when you first hear them. Sira. Kiswahili for biography — but not the kind you find in a library. Not chronology, not curriculum vitae. The path itself,…
Fieldwork at the Crossroads: Vodun, Twins, and a Wolf in Cotonou
Field notes from editing Book V, Part III The Kivuko Chronicles, of The Memory Cartographer. This week I’m deep in the opening of Book V, Part III of The Memory Cartographer: Elena six months pregnant in Cotonou, trying very hard to pretend this is still just “fieldwork.” Breakfast at the Sofitel, security logistics, anthropologist armour firmly in…
The Memory Cartographer
The Alkebulan Chronicles — Book V is published The Memory Cartographer · Book V · Part I. The Mauritanian desert, a ruined well, gunfire, and a pack of wolves materialising out of the dark. Elena is running. She is also, as it happens, four months pregnant. One by one they emerge — fantastic shapes, silver…
The Memory Cartographer
Book V Part I The Alkebulan Chronicles The car rattles to a gentle stop, dust swirling in the late-day sun. Beyond the windshield: the barren edge of the border crossing, a horizon line between worlds. Karim turns to me, expression suddenly serious. “Elena. From here on, you’ll need to pose as my wife.” I arch…
The Memory Cartographer 