In which our heroine departs, on the road to Timbuktu

channeling Colette at the George V

Paris, December 26th - I obsessed about this trip for two years, but somehow neglected to become fluent in French. What is merely inconvenient today may become more dire in Bamako and points beyond. (I'm not completely mute. "It's true that I am an American, but I hate Bush" goes a long way in today's world.) Too late to worry now, n'est-ce pas?

Paris is exactly like the first day of junior high. I can't open my
locker, I spill food on myself in the cafeteria and I get lost trying
to find the gym. The cool kids snicker, I'm constantly humiliated and
my clothes couldn't be more wrong if they tried. But I'm in PARIS,
BABY!, so it's wildly exciting all the same.

My suitcase contains WetWipes, mosquito netting and a water bottle
guaranteed to filter the viruses (virii?) that cause cholera and
typhoid. None of this stuff is necessary at the Four Seasons George V.
"The Cinq" is an obscene splurge, even for a night, even at media
rates. I justify it because a: surely *someone* will pay for an
article on "luxury Christmas in Paris" and b: I'll be sleeping in and
around mud huts for the next ten weeks. So bring on that gold-fauceted bidet.

One of the luxuries I'm lapping up this week is the presence of Da
Boy. He's accompanied me to the City of Lights and will head out New
Year's Eve, when I fly to Bamako.

I was determined to make this trip alone. (Conveniently, Da Boy does not WANT to spend months in West Africa. Few sane people do.) It seemed, for reasons I'm fast forgetting, very important to scrap through this without a wingman. William Least-Heat Moon wrote about going it alone in 'Blue Highways,' and he was right. Solo travel is different. One sees through a different lens. Soloists connect with others in ways that couples rarely do. There's something important about that. I'll try to remember exactly what it is when I'm dragging my 33 lb. bag onto a bush taxi, six thousand miles from home.