The Reviews Are In! (And New Availability from Online Book Stores)

• "A superb adventure in Africa"
• "A delightful read"
• "Makes you want to travel to Africa"
• "Mountains Never Meet is a fantastic airport or beach read. It’s light, humorous, and all about the mushy love stuff."
• "Kept my attention from the first page to the last"

I want to thank everyone who has read and reviewed Mountains Never Meet. I may not say this often enough but I am so thrilled that anyone has paid attention to it and when I read your thoughts on my book it motivates me to keep sharing it with others and to keep writing.

If you haven't reviewed it, please consider doing so on Amazon and Goodreads. And not just my book, on any book that you read. From the best-sellers to the indie authors, everyone loves hearing what the readers have to say about their work.

I know that not everyone loves Amazon, so online distribution has been expanded to a couple other sites for the paperback version. If you already have an account at one of these retailers, why not check it out?

• CreateSpace (This is the Amazon direct-print website where I created the paperback edition. It's also where I get the highest percentage of royalty. :)  Just sayin')
• Barnes and Noble
• Abe Books
• IndieBound

I am still working on bricks-and-mortar stores and libraries. I'd love to see it on a shelf someday!

Thanks again for reading!

Leaving Bamako Behind

I’m going to start with a sequential order of events then try to sort out my feelings. It’s been hard for me to sit down and write this post but it is something I want to get down before I forget everything.

The week before Thanksgiving there was a terrorist attack at a hotel in Bamako. The hotel is near our house there and the attack not only changed the dynamic in the neighborhood but the entire security profile in Mali.

On December 1, the State Department put an authorized departure order in place, which is a sort of voluntary evacuation for nonessential employees and family members of all State employees in Bamako. But if you leave the country for any other reason during that time, you are not allowed back in until the order lifts.

Mike and I decided we would stay in Bamako until school let out for the Christmas holiday, then, after a family vacation, Muffin and I would return to the U.S. while Mike returned to his job in Bamako.

We had a wonderful safari vacation in Kenya. Mike and I were happy that Muffin’s last memories of Africa were fun adventures with animals, not being stressed out over bad guys in Mali.

On New Year’s Eve, we separated in Nairobi airport. Muffin and I landed in Boston the next day; Mike landed in Bamako.

The authorized departure is ongoing but even when it ends, Muffin and I will not be returning to Bamako. We’ll be staying in the U.S. until Mike’s assignment ends later this year.

It’s hard. We arrived to shocking winter cold with just a couple of suitcases and had to figure out some logistics, like winter clothes for Muffin, right away. There are loads of good things, however. We have a house, and a car, and lots of support from family and friends. Muffin is back in the same class she was in before we left for Mali, which helped her transition. The dust allergies we’d been suffering from in Bamako cleared up within a couple day of leaving there, so our physical health improved greatly. We no longer have the stress of living in the security situation in Mali.

But it’s still hard. We left with so little time to really process it. We were so sick and stressed out in the last couple of weeks in Bamako that it became difficult to say proper good-byes to all our friends, especially with all the stress of Christmas parties and other seasonal social obligations. I broke down toward the end and couldn’t really leave the house. I was so sick I couldn’t hold a conversation without coughing uncontrollably, which made me anxious and self-conscious. Muffin was visibly worried about bad guys all the time and we felt horrible about our decision to move the whole family to Mali in the first place.

We arrived to a house we’d bought but never lived in. I’ve slowly been bringing it together, but there are still days where I just sit and stare instead of put shelving together and measure closet space. I always have culture shock when I return to the U.S. but it seems doubly difficult this time. Some days all I can do is the minimum to get Muffin to school and provide decent meals. I’m running as often as I can, which is something. It’s been almost impossible to write, though. The seven hundred words or so of this post are the most I’ve written in weeks.

Friends and family members would ask me about what it was really like in Bamako during and after the attack. Eventually I caught on to a sort of glazed-over, yet slightly horrified, look in their eyes. I'd forget that I'd lived with the Bamako story for so long that it wasn't shocking to me anymore, it had become the status quo. But events like that and living in conditions like that aren't normal for most people in the U.S.

Last week I felt like I started to wake up from a fog. I feel healthier, mentally and physically. Muffin and I miss Mike but we all know this was the best decision for our family and we'll be together again soon.

So that's where we are now. We're in this weird limbo. We're waiting for Mike to come home safely. We're guilty about being healthy and eating good food. Most of our belongings are in Bamako and we can't get it back until Mike's assignment is up. I'm already tired of the U.S. and want to go back to Africa. I'm trying to get by with what I've got.

Mountains Never Meet -- Now in Paperback!

I'm pleased to announce that after a few weeks of setbacks, Mountains Never Meet is now available in paperback at CreateSpace. It will follow on Amazon in about a week and I am working on additional distribution channels for both the paperback and e-book editions.

I'm so excited, you guys. It's been a busy few months (an updated Bamako post will follow in a few days -- let's just say I have left Bamako about 6 months earlier than expected, due to the security situation). I'm so happy that after everyone's been asking about the paperback I can finally offer it to you.

Thank you for hanging in there!

Also, I will be removing Mountains Never Meet from the Kindle Unlimited program in one week, on February 10. So if you've been meaning to read it for free under KU, please do so now! Click here to go to the Kindle page. It will still be available on Kindle for $2.99.

Here’s Where I Write on Bamako

I’ve written so many personal notes to friends and family over the last few days that it’s difficult to sit down and write my public feelings about what happened last Friday in Bamako. I’m exhausted. I may or may not have copy/pasted phrases from various notes and stitched them together here for this post.

Last Friday morning I was feeling too sick to be motivated to leave the house at my usual time for a run. My phone buzzed with a message from a friend telling me to stay home if I hadn’t left yet. Thank goodness I was sick. Otherwise I most likely would have been running past the Radisson at the time of the attack. I surrendered to the couch with a cup of tea and a long day of waiting for news ahead of me. I’m not going to rehash the day here. You can Google all the news if you’re not familiar with it. Reading it now still gives me a bit of a panicky headache.

Bamako is relatively back to normal now. Most people can’t afford to take the days off for mourning or states of emergency. The economy relies on everyone going to work every day. My run streak is still on (day 26 today). I spent a few days on the treadmill, partly due to the events here but partly due to the amount of dust in the air right now making my sinuses ache if I’m outside for too long.

It’s Thanksgiving week and I’m sick and all I want to do is sleep and order take-away on Thursday and hope that Mike doesn’t get called in to work. I am thankful that everyone I know is safe and sound. And that we have enough to eat should we choose to have a feast. And we have friends we can gather with, who are our family here. And we have a roof over our heads and all the necessities, and then some, which so many people in Mali and in the United States and in other parts of the world do not have. We are still very lucky.

Mountains Never Meet Kindle Release Day!

About a year ago I half jokingly posted a status on Facebook stating I was going to write expat-travel themed romance novels. Whether they were half joking or not, my friends encouraged me to actually do so. After a lot of work, here it is.

I made it a point to read more independent authors on my road to becoming one myself. I had no idea what I was getting into. I reached out to different online communities and not only did I learn some of the ropes (because there’s really no one way to do this) I met some wonderful people who have helped and supported me immensely.

Mountains Never Meet is available for Kindle from Amazon (in several countries, including the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, and India, so check your local Amazon site). The paperback edition and other digital formats will follow in a few weeks.

Thank you, everyone, for the various ways you supported and encouraged me. I hope you enjoy it. (And if you don’t, that’s okay, too. Not every book is for every person.)

US: http://amzn.to/1MN6QxF
UK: http://amzn.to/1Mbcpsz
Australia: http://bit.ly/1QzHwkW
Canada: http://amzn.to/1Nu7FvY
India: http://amzn.to/1NP4dRj

After you read, please consider leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads. (And check out the reviews I’ve left for other indie authors.) Thank you!

Lace up your hiking boots...

The adventure begins soon!

I'd like to give a million "thank you"s to my pal Warwick for the cover design! 

"Sweaty, Gross, and Super Hungry"

That's what I said to Mike one morning when he leaned in for a hug and a kiss before he left for work. I was in the midst of my run streak and had just returned from the great outdoors. It was the peak of Malian summer, sometime in April or May. Every morning I was sweaty, gross, and super hungry. Mike laughed that morning and suggested it as the title of my memoir when I eventually wrote about the run streak.

I started on Thanksgiving last year and ran at least one mile every day for 199 days, ending in mid-June. I ran in Mali -- in Bamako and Segou. I ran in Paris. I ran in Salzburg. I ran on the pedestrian path between the hotels and the airport in Munich. (Or was it Frankfurt? I don't remember now where our twenty-four hour layover was.) I ran in West Palm Beach and South Beach. I ran along Ocean Road in Narragansett. I ran by myself most days but with sometimes with Mike or other friends.

I ran on treadmills sometimes. I'd brought one with us to Mali to get me through running during the worst weather here -- the dust storms of winter followed shortly by the intense heat of summer. The treadmill shorted out the electricity in the entire downstairs of the house every time I plugged it in, and by the time someone was able to fix that problem, I'd already run through the worst weather outdoors. The dust storm days when my lungs hurt after ten minutes outside. Long runs in the May heat that I broke up by running two miles to the gym, running on the treadmill under a full-blast air conditioner, and running two miles home.

I learned that I can run one mile under almost any conditions. Bad weather, minor injuries, mild fevers, after too much cider and chèvre-stuffed galette for lunch at a Breton café in Paris. I learned that eventually one mile wasn't enough unless I was extremely tired or pressed for time and most days I was going out for at least two.

I was always hungry. Even the low-mileage days left me ravenous and I ate like crazy. Yet, I started to fit into clothes that hadn't fit me in a few months (a few years, even, after my winter hibernation in Rhode Island).

Until one injury stopped me. We were back in the U.S. I was eating like crazy because so many foods were available that we don't have in Mali. I was running every day but pain was causing me to slow down and limit myself to less than two miles. I could have run slowly through the injury, limiting myself to one ten-minute mile each day. But I'd planned to run a half marathon with some friends, friends who I hadn't seen since we'd run a half marathon together the previous year. I ended the streak so I could get some real rest. A week later I ran with my friends and came within ten minutes of my half marathon PR, which I was thrilled with considering the horrible two-hour nonstop downpour we ran through combined with still nursing the injury.

I belonged to a handful of run streak groups online. Some people congratulated me on knowing when to end the streak and concentrate on having fun with my friends instead. Others sniffed at my decision, saying they would have chosen to keep the streak alive and forego the half marathon. Whatever. I made the right choice for me at the time. (And the people who supported my decision are people I'm still in touch with regularly even though I'm not streaking any more.)

Even though I kept running regularly, I did not go back to streaking. Yet I was still in the U.S. eating as if I were still streaking and training for a half marathon. By the end of our vacation, some of those favorite clothes no longer fit.

Several months later, some of those clothes still don't fit and I know that all I have to do is commit to running one mile every day again if I want them to. Without even really thinking about it I recently found myself running every day for several days in a row -- a week, maybe 8 or 9 days, I didn't really pay attention. I felt healthy and strong again. I also felt like there's not enough food in Mali to keep me fed through another streak and we don't have plans to get to Europe or the U.S. any time soon.

But aside from the health, strength, and fitting into of favorite clothes, I also found I was extremely productive when I started every morning with a run, regardless of it being ten minutes or ten miles. I wrote my novel during those run streak days along with a number of other projects. (I'm thinking I should try to write off Strava Premium on my taxes because of my productivity during the streak.)

I'm going to take it one day at a time. I ran yesterday. I ran today. I'll probably run tomorrow but I'll make that decision in the morning.

"It has to be a good story."

"Sometimes I interview as many as three or four people a night if I'm lucky. But it has to be a good story. That's only fair, isn't it?" -- The Boy, Interview with a Vampire

I was tagged by the lovely and talented Mollie Smith to do a little Q&A. I can't promise vampires, though, not this time.

When did you first start writing?
I've always written. Professionally I'm more of an editor, but I've written children's books, essays, catalog copy, website copy, all sorts of different things.

Was being a writer something you always aspired to be? 
Not really. I always pursued whatever my interests were at the time and I seem to have landed on editing and writing.

What genre do you write?
Right now I'm concentrating on novels but I've written mostly nonfiction. I'm calling Mountains Never Meet and some of the others I'm working on travel-expat-romance.

Can you tell us a little about your current work in progress?
It's my first novel. I started writing a memoir about living in Burundi but somewhere along the line I decided it would be a little more interesting if things happened differently. It morphed into a work of fiction that has nothing to do with Burundi now. (I'm sure Burundi will pop up in future stories, though. I still have a lot of adventures to share from there.)

When did you start working on this project?
At the beginning of this year.

What was your first piece that you can remember writing? What was it about? 
In third or fourth grade, I think, I wrote a piece of My Little Pony fan fiction (before it was even known as fan fiction.)

What’s the best part about writing? 
All of it!

What’s the worst part about writing?
All of it!

What’s the name of your favourite character and why?
Right now I'm in love with my male main character in Mountains Never Meet. Opening up my manuscript every day is like opening an email from someone I have a crush on.

How much time a day/week do you get to write?
I consider writing this novel my job this year so I spend several hours a day working on it. I'm more in the editing and format phase right now but I still make time almost every day for a writing prompt.

When is the best time for you to write (morning or night)?
I'm a morning person, but I often have ideas just before I fall asleep at night so I jot them down and turn them into real sentences the next morning.

Did you go to college for writing?
I was an English major. I concentrated on literature but the program included some writing courses. I minored in film studies so my courses included script writing, too.

What bothers you more: spelling errors, punctuation errors or grammar errors?
As an editor, all of them. As a reader, all of them. As a writer, I don't pay attention to them at all until I'm editing later in the process.

What is the best writing advice that anyone has given you?
Write drunk, edit sober.

What advice would you give to another writer?
Don't be afraid of your first draft. Just write the damn thing. No one's going to see it so it doesn't matter if it's terrible. You go back and fix that later, but if you don't write it in the first place you'll have nothing to work with.

What are your favourite writing sites or blogs that you turn to for help, tips or encouragement?
I like the Badass Writing series and Terrible Minds. I love #1lineWed on Twitter and I belong to a couple writing groups on Facebook. For the most part, though, I read a lot of novels and learn from them. I'd rather spend more time writing than reading about writing.

Besides writing, what else do you enjoy doing? What are your hobbies?
I'm a runner. I sew. I bake gluten-free treats.

What is the best movie you’ve seen this year?
We happen to be back in the U.S. when Jaws was shown in theaters for its 40th anniversary. I'd only ever seen it on television before. It was an entirely different movie on the big screen!

Who is your favourite author?
J.D. Salinger

Where else can we find you online?
Twitter: @StephanieSD
Instagram: @stephanierunnerwriter
Goodreads: Stephanie (and where you can see from my reviews who my current favorite authors are)
Facebook: Stephanie Smith Diamond

ThrowBack Thursday: Serengeti National Park, February 2009

One of the inspiration locations for my novel, the Serengeti.

(In case you missed it, read the blurb here and Chapter One here.)

Introducing... Mountains Never Meet

Here is the blurb for my chicklit-travel-expat-romance novel, Mountains Never Meet:

When Maggie has second thoughts about getting married, she thinks an exotic vacation will bring her and Thomas closer together. Thomas agrees but he isn’t thrilled with her choice of a destination – Mount Kilimanjaro. Their rocky relationship becomes even more strained, however, and Maggie finds herself alone in Africa.

Maggie hates asking for help but she finds it in the form of an unlikely stranger. Against the magnificent backdrop of the African savannah, Maggie starts to question everything she’s ever thought about love, life, and where to call home. 

Publishing this November in ebook and paperback!

Bonjour, Mes Amis!

The Great Mosque (Mud Mosque) Djenne, Mali

Well, it's been a while. Life is going on as usual in Mali and I've been keeping busy with a very exciting project -- I'm writing a novel! And it will be published in November! It's called Mountains Never Meet and while it's fiction, I think regular readers might recognize a lot of the adventures of my main characters from the posts here. It's very much inspired by our life overseas.

Look for more details in the next few days. I'll be sharing the blurb, the first two chapters, and the cover very soon.

If I have any followers left, I'd love some feedback from you. Please drop me a comment or email to say "Hi!" If you can let me know about any sharing links that are or are not working, that would be awesome, too. And any general feedback about the site, especially if links are broken. I'm still tinkering with the sidebar, too, so if there's any information you'd like to see there, please let me know. Thank you so much! You all were among my first loyal readers and I do still appreciate you so much.

I've also been expanding my online empire, so you can follow me on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StephanieSmithDiamond
Twitter: https://twitter.com/StephanieSD
Instagram: https://instagram.com/stephanierunnerwriter

And you can subscribe for email updates.

I'll be back with more very soon!

Seeking Out Running Opportunities

Sunday morning we decided to stop at a cafe for breakfast before doing a little grocery shopping. Since I can't eat gluten and I don't like eggs, breakfast is one of the hardest meals of the day for me to eat out in Africa but most of the time I can get some fruit and yogurt, and if I'm lucky, a little bacon. This restaurant was out of fruit plate, however (despite a bustling fruit market just down the block), and bacon. As I drank my surprisingly good coffee and munched on half a stale Lara bar I'd had in my purse while watching Muffin eat waffles and Mike eat pancakes, I felt discouraged. 

Then the channel on the television changed from a nature show about whale pregnancies to a marathon and waitstaff who hadn't been interested in serving us materialized to watch. I got up to watch, too. I didn't know until later that it was the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. I couldn't hear most of the French commentary and there were no graphics on the screen informing me of anything other than distance and time. It didn't really matter, though. I watched and I felt happy. 

We visited the Parc National du Mali on Saturday for a short hike. There's a fitness trail with some crazy 1970s-like workout equipment, but it looks fairly new. I hopped onto a few machines and felt like I was in a Jack Lalane video, or the Ben Stiller Daniel Day Lewis treadmill sketch from Saturday Night Live. Muffin had a blast trying out all the equipment. I envision myself jumping into the car as soon as she gets on the school bus in the mornings to get to the parc early to run the trail up the mountain before the heat of the day sets in. I caught site of a track from our hike up the mountain, too. 

Mike thinks our neighborhood is fine for me to run in, I just need him to take me out a couple more times so I get the lay of the place. We have a treadmill coming in our household shipment. There's a gym at Mike's office. I can run laps around the field while the rest of the expat community plays ultimate frisbee on Sunday nights. There's a hash club here. There are ways to run. 

I didn't plan my gluten-free foods in advance of arrival in Bamako as well as I should have, so I'm hesitant to try too much running or working out quite yet. I'm making strides with grocery shopping and our housekeeper but everyday living and figuring things out in a new place is still taking up a lot of time and energy. One of the cookbooks I mailed to myself arrived last week, one that I'd already jotted down French translations for our housekeeper in Burundi, so I was able to ask our Malian housekeeper for the right ingredients without consulting the dictionary again. I hope some of my gluten-free mixes arrive this week so I can have crepes and make quick breads. I stocked up on local peanuts, popcorn, and honey to try making some kind of peanut-popcorn snack this week. The local yogurt is good and our housekeeper has a fresh, pasteurized milk source. Yesterday I found a good avocado at the fruit stand, which I overpaid for, but my housekeeper says it hasn't been good weather for them this year, so everyone is overpaying for the good ones. We are eating mangos like they're going out of style, because they might be soon. The rainy season has been unusual and we are eating produce while it's available.

Today is a "surprise" holiday -- you never know until the last minute which day will be the holiday for Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. Mike has the day off so we are contemplating getting outside for a bit, exploring a new place. I have enough bottled water and peanut packs for a day hike.

We're Moving to Mali

The title about sums it up.

Our plans have changed from what we thought would be happening last year at this time. But we're happy with the change. I've been tired of the United States for a few months now. I'm certainly done with winter. Muffin asks every day if we're moving back to India. If we're going to Pakistan. If we're going to Chad. If we're going to Mali. She hasn't been in one place for so long without getting on a plane and traveling somewhere (although that changed las week when we went on vacation); she assumes every morning we are waking up early and going to the airport. My aunt told Muffin she has itchy feet and Muffin agreed, although in the sense that her feet are literally itchy because of her winter dry skin.

We haven't even unpacked all the boxes from India yet and my project for the next few months is to decide what goes to Mali and what doesn't. I've already got lists for consumables, for our suitcases, for the air shipment, and for the boat shipment, based on two overseas moves already and on the basic nonavailability of so much stuff in Africa (Mali may have slightly more to offer than Burundi, but I'm not taking any chances).

I've started speaking French to Muffin. We're hoping to enroll her in a preschool program that will prepare her for full-immersion French kindergarden. She doesn't seem to remember any Telegu or Hindi but she is taking to the French very well.

She is so certain that we still live in Hyderabad. I think there's a lot about Mali that will be familiar to her and make her feel at home.

Mike has been working in various African places the last few weeks. He said landing in Africa felt like being home again.

We all have itchy feet that are ready to be back in Africa.

Nairobi

What makes me feel strange as an expat, especially one who has lived in Africa and visited Nairobi, is that there was a higher chance someone I knew was going to be at that mall then at any of the locations of any of the shootings that have happened in the United States recently. To my knowledge no one I knew was there; but I haven't heard much from Nairobi on Facebook. Has the government locked down on Internet usage?

I'm glad it didn't happen at the mall I've been to in Nairobi because I didn't want to have too clear of a picture in my mind of people running through the food court and Nakumatt store; images of those places have jumped to the forefront of my mind in the last twenty-four hours.

When you go into malls in Nairobi, Hyderabad, Bangkok, Singapore, there are security guards and metal detectors. But there's also sort of a vacant stare in the eyes of the security guards. The metal detectors offer a false sense of security. And they can't stop a hand grenade that gets thrown before the bad guys even enter the mall.

Sunny at Fabling said some of the things I've been trying to articulate today. Malls are the safe havens for expats overseas. It's where you may find the most Starbucks-like cup of coffee and Western fashions. It's where you'll see an English-language movie. It's where you'll bump into just about everyone you know on a Sunday afternoon. In the summer it's where you go to escape the heat. In Hyderabad, since the parks were closed during the day, the mall was where I took a Muffin who was just learning to walk so she could wander around; I took her as soon as it opened in the morning before there were too many people and she ran up and down the halls freely. As much as I avoid malls when I'm in the United States, overseas they are the place to be when you feel a little homesick.


I mentioned to Mike yesterday that I'm ready to head back overseas. Life is almost too easy in the United States, not counting the tragedies that have happened here recently and in other parts of the world. I'm trying to relax and enjoy the conveniences of American life. But there's a void. A void that exploding malls isn't going to cure me of. I've been working on this post on and off for several hours, watching the news from Nairobi worsen by the hour. Nairobi was never a place I wanted to live but I enjoyed visiting there; even the terrible airport started to feel homey after so many layovers there. After several months of nonstop living in Burundi, landing in a country where English is spoken is always refreshing. I still want to get back overseas somewhere.

Blogging Eventually Comes Down to Posting Cat Photos

This is Grendel. He was a twenty-pound Norwegian forest cat. He was the most lovable slug there ever was. He's no longer with us; he passed away in Africa. But I'm posting his photos for  Motivation Monday because I've been feeling like a slug myself lately. I think sluggishness looks better on Grendel than it does on me.

Mike was out of town last week and as I was single-parenting I binged on coffee, carbs, and sugar (see previous post), giving me just enough energy to muddle through the day and then collapse after Muffin went to bed. Starting over again each morning at 5:30. I walked one mile and went to yoga once. And considered myself successful.

As I'm typing this it's Sunday evening and I'm enjoying a glass of wine after a long week. This week has to be different though. I don't feel healthy. I know that all I need is a tweak of my diet, a few miles, and a little more yoga and I'll feel better. It should be so easy, but it's not.

...

I started this post last night. I glanced at the clock and saw it was 9:00. I realized my wine was giving me a headache more than it was making me feel relaxed so I threw the last few sips down the sink and got a glass of water. I shut down the computer and went to bed to read for a bit, thinking a good night's sleep would be a nice way to start the week. I slept terribly though and was crabby when I woke up this morning.

The little decisions that you make every day to stay healthy are difficult when you're tired, but I'm making them this morning. One cup of coffee, yes. Biscotti, no. Cereal with banana slices, yes. Glass of water, yes. Second cup of coffee, no. Banana-pineapple smoothie, yes. One step and one decision at a time.

There's a Color Me Rad race the day before my half marathon. I really want to do it as a relaxing fun run but some people have told me it's a crazy idea. I'm trying to decide soon, before the registration fee raises another five dollars. Any thoughts? 

Travel Photo Friday: Livingstone-Stanley Monument, Bujumbura, Burundi

From the archives. Bujumbura, Burundi, March 2009.

A few kilometers outside of Bujumbura there's a large rock known as the Pierre Livingstone, the Livingstone Rock. It marks the spot where Livingstone and Stanley spent a few days in Burundi as they were passing through the region. It's not where the famous "Dr. Livingstone, I presume," was uttered; that took place in Tanzania a couple weeks earlier. But they both wrote in their journals about the hospitality of the local king and there's some speculation that they stayed for so long because Stanley was suffering from malaria. It's a highly contagious area, but also a nice view to sit and recover by.

View from the monument. We brought a cooler of beers and sodas and enjoyed a drink in the cool breeze.

If you enlarge the photo you can see where they carved their names and the date.

Photo Friday is hosted by DeliciousBaby.com.

Travel Photo Friday: Mount Kilimanjaro

From the archives.

We climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in February 2009.

Day 4 of the climb. Our destination, Uhuru Peak, is in the background.

Photo Friday is hosted by DeliciousBaby.com.

Yowling

Every once in a while we hear what we assume to be a cat in heat yowling outside our bedroom window all night long. We don't know what to do about it other than roll over and try to fall back to sleep, annoyed, yet thankful that it's not waking up Muffin. Last night there was yet another cat. Mike and I were both tossing and turning for awhile trying to sleep. At one point it got so frequent and so loud that I thought our cat was yowling back, but she was curled up next to me in bed, also trying to sleep.

Around 4:30 in the morning, at least one tiny little voice joined the chorus of meows.

Great. She had kittens.

We had our share of feral kittens in Bujumbura and any time we tried to help it didn't end well.

Shortly after the sun came up the cats quieted down and we forgot about them. They are still quiet tonight.

I don't want Muffin running up to help every injured or lost animal she sees, because animals are unpredictable and they have diseases. But once she's a little older, I can't see myself teaching her that ignoring crying kittens is an okay thing to do, either. There are just so many of them out in the world beyond the United States, it's exhausting worrying about them all.

Burundi's Biking Bananas!

A friend of ours has created a short film about bikes in Burundi. He and Mike ventured out many times together to trailblaze the mountain biking scene there -- at least, mountain biking as a leisure sport, not as a means of getting your cargo up and down the mountain. Joe's film was shown at the Filmed by Bike international film festival last week in Portland, Oregon.

Check it out! It's a nice little capsule of daily life in Burundi.

Joe's biking his way through Ghana now. You can follow him at his blog Going Ghana.

Weekly SD Blog RoundUp!

Here it is! I'm taking my shot at hosting the roundup. It may not be as eloquent as some others, but hopefully I'll get all the information up accurately and efficiently. There's a lot of organization with this, keeping all those tabs and windows open! (And I'm keeping one eye on MLB scores. Red Sox play later tonight; Yankees already have a win.)

And all the while, I'm praying to Ganesh that the internet doesn't cut out and erase the whole post. Without further ado...

It's no April Fool's Day joke, I really did propose international bathrooms as the optional talking point this week. Quite a few of you took me up on that:

Nomads by Nature discussed the baseline we all set for ourselves. Has anyone gone lower than sharing the experience with chickens?

Kelly at Well, That Was Different, offers some valuable tips for using third-world bathrooms, including how to help the kiddos use them.

Among other things, Small Bits comments on how easy it is to clean some of the bathrooms overseas. If I'm ever building my own house, I'd love a completely tiled bathroom with a drain in the floor so you can just hose it down for easy cleaning.

Germophobe Kate from Pulling Up Stakes shares a domestic bathroom adventure.

Liz of Nick and Liz Go Global discusses the facilities in Kabul.

Connie at Whale Ears and Other Wonderings once saw a truck piled high with toilets in Cairo.

Ogles and Observations shares some nice photos from the oldest restaurant in South America. Check out the final photo for the air freshening method used in the men's room.

Shannon at Cyberbones discusses composting toilets, among other things.

Sunny at Fabling looked high and low for a particular photo, but she couldn't find it. In "loo" of that, she did share another amusing anecdote.

Almost forgot Sadie Abroad! Sorry 'bout that.

In other news this week...

Digger from Life After Jerusalem has made the trip to Estonia and back.

Daring Adventure dares to write about the parking problems at FSI.

A new A-100 class started this week and one of the specialist classes had their flag day. Congratulations and good luck to everyone!

Phew!

If I missed anyone who requested to be included, please leave me a comment. I've been piecing this together throughout the day with spotty electricity and a little Muffin who likes to bang on keyboards rather than take naps. It can be distracting.

Daniela at Tuk & Tam is hosting next week with the theme "Best of" at post. Check out the calendar if you're interested in hosting.