Italy and Africa

Many of you may know that my wife Farina is an African History student. She is working on her Masters, and after she finishes her Masters she may continue on to a PhD of she wants. Right now she is working on her Masters Thesis and she has hit a big bump. She is interested in French West Africa, specifically Benin, education, and the Yoruba language. Unfortunately, there is almost no work in the United States on the history of Yoruba education in Benin. So, after discussing the matter we decided that we ought to go to Africa this summer. I asked Farina if she wanted to go to Benin, and she said no. She said that she wanted to go to Senegal, because Dakar, Senegal used to be the de facto capital of the French Colonial Empire in West Africa. Because of this, many of Benin's best sources are actually found in Senegal.

We did research on how to get to Dakar, and realized that it was going to be a very expensive ticket. We then found extremely well-priced tickets to Palermo, Italy. I lived in Palermo for six months, and have always wanted to go back. I looked at tickets from Palermo to Dakar, and they were still pretty expensive. I then looked for tickets from Tunisia to Dakar, and they were really really cheap. So after doing the math, I found out that it would cost almost the same to fly to Palermo, take a ferry to Tunis, Tunisia, then take a plane to Dakar with a 24 hour layover in Casablanca, Morocco. We booked our tickets.

This August we will be out of the country, in Europe and Africa. Wish us well. We leave August 10, and get back August 31.