Coprolites in Amber (etc.)

Introduction: In 1977-1978, sponsored by a Canadian NGO, I taught in a boys’ boarding high school in northern Nigeria.  Looking at my grainy 110 photos of that era, I am struck by just what a wildly colourful place it was. Nigeria, at that time, was in the midst of an oil boom. That boom financed…

Upon finishing his beer, Padre Pepe, still in his white cassock, grinning ecstatically among the tiny group of parishioners quaffing the ‘dadi’ [maize liquor] proffered in tin cans. For at least a half hour he laughed, clapped hands, danced and leapt crazily among his flock while the Maasai men and women glugged through 3 pails…