Where’s Mali?!

What the &%$*?

I can’t believe I am reading a book that forgot an entire country in its “AFRICA: 2005” map. No kidding!

I went to Barnes and Noble before I left for Cameroon, in order to buy the fattest “History of Africa” book I could find. I was counting on such a purchase to keep me oriented on this continent and history-savvy for the next 2+ years! So I thought I’d done the trick when I came home with Martin Meredith’s Fate of Africa, all 688 indexed post-independence pages worth of it. Not so!

Fast forward to last night, sitting on my bed in Banganté, Cameroon. I was getting my usual about-to-start-a-new-book giddy excitement, perusing the forward of Fate of Africa, when I lingered over the map section. I love maps. But as I’m looking at the map, I think, hmmm, fishy, Mauritania is not that big! Wait, where is Mali?!?!?!

If this book hadn’t received gushy reviews from the Financial Times, New York Times, Boston Globe, and Wall Street Journal, I would have just assumed, “Maaaaaaaan, I got duped!! Sucker for spending $20 on a book that can’t even get its maps right!” But I really can’t believe that ANYONE could leave an entire country off the continental map, that such a book could arrive to press, and then actually sell under any guise of credibility!! How am I supposed to trust anything this book says? You better believe nobody leaves your generic European country off a map without getting blasted for it by all types of media.

The I’m-not-lying proof. Yep, Mali typically falls between Senegal and Niger. Sadly, looks like Mauritania subsumed it/ate it for dinner.

And that, my friends, was your African geography lesson of the day!

Love,

Kate Fleurange