on Bob Marley and African roads

There is nothing like a little Bob Marley playing in a cafe to make me heartsick with missing places. Bob Marley is, you see, the soundtrack of Africa. In a crowded dalla dalla, it's going to be on the radio. When you buy some cassettes on the side of the road for $2 each, Bob is going to be among them. And then you are going to spend the next six months listening to either love songs in Swahili or Bob. You may have grown up in a household where the only music was Psalty the Singing Hymnbook and Handel's Messiah, but pretty soon you are going to know every word to Buffalo Soldier and One Love. And you are going to like it. Your options are to like it or go crazy, so you are not just going to like it, you are going to start loving it. You are going to sing along while you drive to see the gorillas, on the rocky roads under the volcanos. You are going to relax to it at a beach restaurant. Someday, you are going to hear it in a cafe in New York and exhaust the Africa blogs on your rss reader and then go looking for some more and they will all turn out to be written by Peace Corps Volunteers in Cameroon, which will not satisfy you, and then you won't get anything done that you are supposed to get done because all you want in the world is to be done with law school and going somewhere, anywhere, before you lose your mind with boredom. And you might even bring Bob along.