Souvenirs

Souveniers
by Casey Scieszka, author of To Timbuktu

 After traveling through and living in nine different countries for about two years, Steven and I acquired a lot of things: language skills, new bacteria, friends, and stories we swore we’d never tell our moms. Most of that is what our book, To Timbuktu, is about.

We also acquired an array of much more traditional things: souvenirs. These didn’t really make it into the book. But they’re important to us because we live with these objects in our home and studio, and they serve as physical reminders of those places, those people, and those lessons we learned along the way.

Here are some of our favorites:

	Malian fabric we turned into pillows reminds us: of all our Malian friends who wore this kind of stuff every day.
	Chinese propaganda comic books on our shelves remind us: just how different it is to live in a country with such an, um, inquisitive and concerned government.
	Moroccan slippers remind us: that Morocco is where it all began for us.
	An “I Love Africa” bucket reminds us: that doing laundry in that bucket with a washboard was REALLY hard so we should never whine about having to do laundry again!
	Rubberstamps from Vietnam remind us: to make silly things for each other, like we did with these stamps in Hanoi.
	Hideous statue of a hippo reminds us: of the hilarious and prolonged bargaining session it took to pry this terrible-looking thing out of the vendor’s hands at a reasonable price. Most importantly it reminds us to try and play it more cool from now on.

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