Seasons of Sand

By Ernst Aebi

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671769359
• ISBN13: 9780671769352
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 236 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Seeds of Change in Mali

Ernst Aebi, in something of a mid-life crisis, reads Richard Trench's "Forbidden Sands" and goes to travel in the Sahara. In Mali, some distance from Timbuktu, he finds a desolate, nearly dead village which was once an important waystation on trans-Saharan caravan routes. He has an epiphany. He decides to teach the villagers how to raise vegetables in a garden. With his own money and resources he starts the garden. One thing leads to another, and he decides to stay longer than he had planned. Overcoming numerous obstacles he eventually starts a school and a hotel (which he calls the Hilton, in hopes that the real Hilton hotel corporation will sue, thereby publicizing his project). Life in the village changes: an entrepreneurial class begins to emerge from a medieval master-serf society. He comes to love the village and its people. He tells his story in "Seasons of Sand". It is not a great book per se, but Aebi's story is worth hearing, and he shares much of his first-hand knowledge of Saharan peoples and traditions. He is a down-to-earth and practical man, and he writes without pretension. The story ends circa the early 1990's. What has become of Aebi and the people he single-handedly helped? The rest of the story should be part of a new edition of this book. This book deserves at least some of the recognition that "I Dreamed of Africa" has received.