Mali

SECRETARY OF STATE Colin L. Powell's four-country tour of Africa reflects his personal priorities, not his president's. The Bush administration campaigned for election with an implied promise almost not to have an Africa policy. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld ruminates about reducing even the small role in military training that exists. But Mr. Powell makes clear he cares, is engaged and hopes to offer U.S. resources to help African efforts in behalf of health, democracy, peace, law and order.

Gideon W. Waldrop, 80, a composer and administrator who served for 24 years as dean of the Juilliard School of Music, died May 12 in New York. During the 1950s, he was the editor of the Review of Recorded Music and the Musical Courier. He also served as a music consultant to the Ford Foundation. He became the assistant to the president at Juilliard in 1960 and was appointed dean the next year. In 1969, the school moved from its old building in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan to its new $30 million building at Lincoln Center.

When Johannes Pleah arrived in the United States last summer, he spoke only a few words of English -- yes and no, yellow and red.Almost a year later, nearing his ninth birthday, Johannes is reading everything he can get his hands on. He won a Dr. Seuss writing contest for Read Across America Day this year."

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- The International Olympic Committee began its radical makeover with an unprecedented purge yesterday, expelling six members who took improper payoffs from the Salt Lake City bidders for the 2002 Winter Games.The expulsions came on the heels of an 86-2 vote of confidence for the embattled IOC president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, who has weathered months of calls for his resignation.The IOC has been under pressure from corporate sponsors and political leaders to right itself in the aftermath of the Salt Lake scandal, in which organizers were found to have plied IOC members with $1.2 million worth of gifts, cash, travel, scholarships, medical care and other inducements.

Andrew Maly has this gift.He can tell you that in 1846, the settlers in California staged the Bear Flag Revolt. He can name the capitals of Sri Lanka and Cyprus. He can tell you that Leon Spinks beat Muhammad Ali in 1978 to win the heavyweight title in one of the biggest upsets in boxing history.Perhaps even more impressive: He can listen to a three-second snippet of a cartoon voice and tell you, with absolute certainty, that it belongs to Woody Woodpecker."I'm blessed," says Maly, 34, an environmental engineer from Bel Air, "with the ability to retain useless knowledge.

A SENIOR at Goucher College, Sonia Peters wanted a challenge and found it. She will be heading for Mali, West Africa, next month with the Peace Corps."

Baltimoreans Bashi and Mitchell Ferguson call their theater company The Men of Nommo, based on the term for "the word" in the language of the Dogon people of Mali. Beginning Sunday, they will give the first of four performances -- scattered throughout the season -- of "Locks & Links," a choreopoem about the struggle of the African-American male, at the Theatre Project.Show times at the Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St., are 7:30 p.m. this Sunday, and again Nov. 12, Dec. 3 and Feb. 11. Tickets are $14. Call (410)

TOMBOUCTOU, Mali -- There were only four guests, all staying for a single night, during one recent week at the Relais Azalai, this town's one modern hotel, forcing disconsolate tourist guides to trudge through streets of deep sand in a vain search for clients.Souvenir merchants, wearing turbans against the fierce sun and fine grit borne in the breeze, maintained a determined lookout at the hotel's gate, hoping to unload some of their finely engraved sabers.The curator of the museum, with its 500-year-old manuscripts and other relics of a great but distant past, stays home these days, leaving it boarded shut.

Two-week tours of Senegal and MaliDo names like Senegal and Mali stir your blood? If so, the rich cultural heritage of West Africa awaits you early next year.Travel Plans International is offering two-week tours of Senegal and Mali, with departures Jan. 18, Feb. 1, Feb. 15 and March 1. Highlights of the tour include the flower and basketry markets of Dakar; a tour of Goree Island, once a major West African slave-trading center; a day in Timbuktu, a nexus of the trans-Saharan caravan trade and a center of Muslim culture; the mud mosque in Djenne; and tours of remote Dogon villages.

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.--People who heard I was going to Ouagadougou, invariably responded: "That's in Africa, isn't it?" Indeed it is. "Ouaga," as established locals call it, is the flat, dusty capital of Burkina Faso, called Upper Volta until a pro-Libyan strongman seized power in 1983.A five-day visit there is a reminder that despite the fall of communism and the wave of support for democracy, there are still places where heavy machine guns and street barricades protect nervous leaders.