I've spent a significant number of years in several places around the world that I think of as "home towns", in the sense that they contributed importantly to my formative years. Here are brief snapshots of them.

London (from the air)

London I was born on the upper floor of one of those tidy little row houses in the suburb of Golders Green near Hampstead Heath. Twenty-four years, later at the start of a long European trip, I decided to try tracking down that house, armed with nothing more than an old address. Imagine my surprise to find that the owners who had rented the house to my parents during the war still lived there--it was a memorable reunion!

Bombay

Mumbai Here is where I learned to love trains, listening to the commuter trains chock-full of passengers chugging and rattling along by Churchgate Extension, right near where we lived for several years. Today that area is full of some of the best hotels in the city.

Los Angeles

The "City of Angels" is where we finally landed in the United States, and for me, LA will always be "home". Here I quickly shed my British accent, graduated from Hollywood High School and then went to UCLA. When I finally decided to go back to graduate school, it was in the then nascent program in linguistics, with its strong presence of linguists working on African languages and linguistics. Los Angeles

Kano

Historically, Kano was an ancient walled city-state in northern Nigeria. a major endpoint of the centuries-old trans-Saharan trade routes. Its traditional ruler is the Emir of Kano. The current Emir is Alhaji Dr. Ado Bayero, who has held this position since 1963 and is among Nigeria's most respected Muslim leaders. Kano is home to Bayero University where I taught general and African linguistics in the mid-1970s and helped compile a modern Hausa-English dictionary under the auspices of the Center for the Study of Nigerian Languages.

Kano Kano Wall Bayero U.

Leiden

Leiden Leiden is a famous university town where the Pilgrims lived before they sailed off to Plymouth Rock. It is where our son Michael was born. Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, the oldest university in The Netherlands, is also unique in having a department specialized for African linguistics and languages.

Bloomington

Bloomington, Indiana Indiana University in Bloomington, where we lived for more than 20 years, needs no introduction, neither for its sports programs, its renowned school of music, nor its African Studies program, one of the oldest in the U.S. The town is surrounded by rolling hills and woods that bloom profusely in spring and blaze with golden maple colors in autumn.