Out of Africa
Alan Dean Foster, who as near as I can tell only uses his house in
Arizona to store books because he never stops globe-trotting, sends along these pictures from a recent trip to West-Central Africa (Jan 19th to Feb 20th). The picture on the left is of buyers at the Gorom-Gorom market. Alan explains, “Gorom-Gorom is the northernmost real town in Burkina Faso, up in the frontier where Burkina meets Mali and Niger.”
Also pictured, a hunting spider shot in Lope National Park, Gabon, which Alan says was six inches across. Touareg women photographed in their camp at Darkoye, “their group having just come over from Niger,” a mud-brick mosque at Bani, and a forest elephant, from Langouie Camp near Langouie Bai (in Gabon) “famous from Michael Bey’s (National Geographic) megatransect of central Africa. 
“Forest elephants are smaller than their Eastern and Southern relatives, have rounder ears, and…different toe arrangements.”
As Alan says, “another interesting part of the planet.”