Finding the Diaries

I picked up these diaries at one of the second hand book stalls that sell books on Indepence Drive, near the market. They were dirty, smudged exercise books, with brown water stains on the front, as if they had been left out in the rain, and suspicious looking soot marks all over the cover. The middle pages were stuck together, and the red color of the cover had faded until it was a dull pink.

Nevertheless, I was hooked as soon as I opened the first one. They were the diaries of a man who purported to be "a Banjulian by birth, but a citizen of the Imagination by disposition". As I flipped through the first volume, I found more and more entries like this and, growing increasingly excited and convinced of the value of this book, I asked the stall-keeper how much he would sell the whole pack to me for. He offered to give them to me for free - with a certain weariness, I must admit - if I bought a novel or two, and soon I was headed home with my bag considerably heavier, eagerly anticipating locking myself up in my room to plumb the diary of the rest of its treasures.

Over the next few months I will be posting some of the entries, as I read them, especially the ones I judge you may find interesting. I hope you are as captivated as I am by this skewered, crazy but very, very interesting view of Banjul.