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294 results in the libraryPage 3 of 13294 results in the library · Stories · Page 3 of 13
There are at least nine blues in one alley and the paint is refreshed by hand each spring. A woman repainting her step let me help for two minutes and then politely took the brush back.
Author not specified in the imported source
Chefchaouen, Morocco · Africa
Imported text; story or fact not individually verified. A reference may provide background only.
I accepted the second price and the seller looked genuinely disappointed. He explained that the negotiation was the point, poured tea, and gave me a better price than I would have got.
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Cairo, Egypt · Africa
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The wind died and our captain tied off the sail, lay down on the deck, and slept for forty minutes. We drifted backwards. When he woke, the wind came back within five minutes as though he had ordered it.
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Aswan, Egypt · Africa
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Twenty balloons went up at once over the Valley of the Kings. From the ground it looked like the sky had been decorated. From the basket it was completely silent except for the burner.
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Luxor, Egypt · Africa
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The bus left when it was full and not before. Full meant something different than we expected. We made friends with everyone in three rows and arrived eleven hours later knowing four words of Amharic.
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Ethiopia · Africa
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The ceremony took an hour: green beans roasted in the room, ground by hand, brewed and poured three times. Refusing the third round, we were told, is a small insult. We stayed.
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Addis Ababa, Ethiopia · Africa
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A priest unlocked a church cut down into the ground and held up a cross older than most European cathedrals. Then he sat back down on a plastic chair and continued reading his phone.
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Lalibela, Ethiopia · Africa
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We were told to stay seven metres away. Nobody told the silverback, who walked within an arm's length of my knee without breaking step. The guide's only instruction was to look at the ground.
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Bwindi, Uganda · Africa
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The sign said equator and a man demonstrated water draining in opposite directions three metres apart. The physics was nonsense and the performance was excellent, and we tipped him anyway.
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Uganda · Africa
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We waited five hours at the river. Then, with no signal we could detect, four thousand wildebeest decided at once and the water turned brown. It lasted eleven minutes.
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Masai Mara, Kenya · Africa
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Our matatu had a sound system worth more than the vehicle and a hand-painted portrait of a footballer on the back. The conductor hung out of the door collecting fares in traffic and never miscounted once.
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Nairobi, Kenya · Africa
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The guide said pole pole about four hundred times in five days. On summit night, walking at half the pace felt absurd until we passed the fast group sitting down in the dark.
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Kilimanjaro, Tanzania · Africa
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The sea went out nearly a kilometre and the whole village walked out onto the flats with buckets. Children raced the incoming tide back to shore as if it were a game invented that morning.
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Zanzibar, Tanzania · Africa
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He was making a boat with no plans, using a stick with notches as his only measuring tool. His father built the boat next to it. His son was sanding a rudder and complaining about it.
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Lamu, Kenya · Africa
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The collectors work waist-deep in water saltier than the sea, coated in shea butter to protect their skin. They fill a pirogue by hand and it takes most of a morning.
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Lac Rose, Senegal · Africa
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We asked about the history of the town and got a song instead of a date. It lasted nine minutes, named six generations, and was more accurate than the guidebook.
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Mali · Africa
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Once a year the whole town replasters the mosque. There are teams, there is a race, and there is a great deal of mud. Being clean that day marks you as a visitor.
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Djenne, Mali · Africa
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Visibility dropped to about four metres. We took shelter in a shop selling only mattresses and phone credit, and the owner made tea for eleven people until it passed.
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Mauritania · Africa
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Nobody warns you that the Sahara gets cold. At three in the morning we wore every item of clothing we had brought and still slept badly, then watched a sunrise that made it fine.
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Sahara · Africa
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We took the cable car up into total white. Visibility was eight metres. Then the cloth lifted for ninety seconds, the whole city appeared below, and it closed again like a curtain.
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Cape Town, South Africa · Africa
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African penguins crossed the boardwalk at their own pace and in their own order. A queue of humans waited politely, which felt like the correct arrangement.
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Boulders Beach, South Africa · Africa
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There is one person at the fire and everyone else offers advice. Nobody touches the tongs. The meat is ready when the person at the fire says it is ready, and not before.
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Johannesburg, South Africa · Africa
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The ferry was scheduled for nine. It left at two. In between, someone produced a guitar and someone else produced grilled prawns, and by the time it arrived nobody wanted to board.
Author not specified in the imported source
Mozambique · Africa
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Our poler stood at the back and pushed us through reeds taller than the boat. He stopped once, silently, and pointed at an elephant twenty metres away that we would never have seen.
Author not specified in the imported source
Okavango, Botswana · Africa
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The missed ferry. The stranger who handed over a key. The meal that ran until midnight. If something happened to you on the road and you still think about it, send it - a few sentences is plenty, and we do the tidying up.
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