Having a muddy lawn in winter can only make our winter doldrums worse. Yet that is exactly what many of us face at times from December to March: mud all over the lawn, mud that we track into the ...

The Koutammakou landscape in north-eastern Togo and neighbouring Benin is home to the Batammariba, whose remarkable mud tower-houses are known as takienta (sikien in the plural). Nature is strongly ...