Well, welcome to my first attempt at blogging. I'm an American magazine reporter and I'm about to head off for a five-week long reporting trip in Cote d'Ivoire (aka the Ivory Coast.) I am going to be doing reporting on the prospects for peace in the country after the brief but devastating civil war they had last year. I created this blog mostly so my friends can see what I'm up to. It needs a better name though. I had originally called it Cote d'Blog, but thought that might be offensive. I've temporarily renamed it Heart of the Matter, which is a reference to a Graham Greene novel set in an unnamed West African nation. But it's pretty obvious that Greene based The Heart of the Matter on his experience in Sierra Leone, so it's not a great title for a blog about Cote d'Ivoire. I'm open to suggestions for a new name...
I leave tonight for Abidjan, the commercial capital of Cote d'Ivoire (the political capital is Yamoussoukro.) I'm taking an overnight flight to Paris and then catching another flight to Abidjan. It's going to be a long day. I plan on spending the first flight sleeping and then spending part of the second trip brushing up on my almost nonexistent French. I have been taking introductory French classes for the past six weeks, but I still can't say very much so I'm going to have to use a translator while I'm there.
Well, that's all for now. I'll post again when I arrive. A Bientot!
F
Posted by Jeremy Kahn at October 14, 2003 08:35 PMDon't catch malaria.
Posted by: M at October 15, 2003 01:41 PM