The Walking Tukul

Earlier this year, 2018, I was working on a three-page comic strip story for Medecins Sans Frontieres/ Doctors Without Borders, the people who do remarkable work saving lives in under-resourced places in the world. The strip is set in a refugee camp in South Sudan and in the story there's a briefing that takes place, so said the script, 'in an open-air tukul'. Uh, where?

A tukul. You know, a tukul: 

"A cone-shaped mud hut, usually with a thatched roof, found in eastern and northeastern Africa"

Oh, yes. Of course.

 So I tinkered about with drawing one, transcribing it from an image I found in my photo file (often referred to as 'the internment'. Perhaps you've heard of it).

And, as so often happens with drawings, I found that I had made something into quite another thing. Or, more precisely, you've put a spin on it, created a version that on one day you might think of as an 'interpretation' and on another, as a 'mistake'.

But when one writes with pictures, it's the former day you most want to wake up on. We're in the discovery business here, my friends.

And that tukul is WALKING.