well, here i am in kenya.

Tasara also came and visited, and I said that if one visited me, I would put their picture on my blog. (Sorry, Tasara, for the long delay.) I kind of lost the pictures - had put them on friends' laptop, etc etc.

Doesn't Tasara look happy?

When YOU come to visit, you will also be happy. I will take you to Amani Ya Juu (where we are in this picture), where they sell great stuff made by refugee women living in Kenya, and they have a beautiful compound where it is green and really relaxing to sit and drink some Stoneys (ginger soda).

I have 99 emails flagged as "urgent", 31 of which I need to actually respond to, most of the rest are documents I really need to read. sigh.

It's hard keeping up with information, eh?
And it's also hard to keep up with blogs. Some people don't update their blogs very often. (And by 'people', I mean 'me.') And s people update them so often you can't keep track.

So, my new favorite thing in the world is Google Reader, keeping track of website updates for me.

My Google Reader keeps track of the following websites for me:

- The Eash Scott Family (http://eashscottfam.blogspot.com) - brother and sister-in-law's musings on family and life. Really, really good, funny, AND excellent photos of my nephews)

- The Nest (www.thenesthome.com) - Home for children whose mothers are in prison, and also some abandoned babies (and some abandoned babies who have grown up into children). Run by good friends. In German and English, so excellent for those of us who really need to work on our German!

- The Trade Observatory (www. tradeobservatory.org) - I love IATP (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy). I mean, i LOVE them. I want to have little IATP babies, who will be thoughtful and accurate and minnesotan yet international. They keep track of trade negotiations, etc with this website.

- The Bretton Woods Project (www.brettonwoodsproject.org) - Tracking the Bretton Woods institutions - IMF and World Bank mainly. Based in UK. Good studies.

- Bilaterals.org (www.bilaterals.org) - Tracking all of those pesky trade negotiations and agreements that are not the WTO. Really, really important. I tell you, FTAs are the new WTO, man.

- AU Monitor - (www.pambazuka.org/aumonitor) - Pambazuka is great website tracking and commenting on what's happening in African civil society and any social movements. AU Monitor keeps track of what is happening at the African Union and the associated institutions.

- Grist news (www.grist.org) - US on-line news of all that is happening Environmental-wise, served with a bit of wry cynicism and joking despair. Actually, they hit on a pretty good tone - hard to walk line of funny between just state of despair and state of cynicism.


that's my Google Reader. Any suggestions of what else to add?

Are you ready for CHOGM? The Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting is coming to Kampala this November. And the city is going CRAZY! I have NEVER been in a city as clean as Kampala is right now – no rubbish anywhere. Streets are being redone, hotels are still being built, the ‘thugs’ are being carted up and shipped to a ‘rehabilitation camp’ outside of the city limits... And everywhere there are billboards asking: Are you ready for CHOGM? or Let’s Embrace CHOGM. Let’s Embrace the World. or Uganda has been ready for centuries (I’m not sure what this one means, actually).

Just Say No To Sugar Daddies: Cross-Generational Sex Stops with YOU! Speaking of billboards, this series of billboards around town are extremely well made, very professional, and have big labelled pictures: Sugar Daddy, Sugar Baby, Community Members. Or maybe Concerned Community Members. I don’t remember. In the newspapers I also came across references to ‘cross-generational sex’. I don’t think I’d heard that phrase before, but it has become part of the common parlance of Kampala, I guess.

Museveini is referred to as ‘M7’ in shortened newspaper headlines. Kind of clever. The Inspector Governor General (or Inspector General Governor – not sure about the order) fired the Attorney General while I was in Kampala. When I asked a Ugandan how long he has been the President, she paused for quite a while, asked another Ugandan, who didn’t know for sure, and then said, ‘Well, I guess 21 years. Well. I guess we don’t really think about that any more. But yes, 21 years. A long time!’ The front page headline one day was ‘Museveini says he doesn’t need 5 million’ – referring to the Mo Abrahim prize to former African Heads of State, rewarding them for good governance and whatnot. ‘Look at me,’ says Museveini, ‘I don’t need 5 million. I am very rich.’

I moved my tv around the apartment until I found a spot where I can pick up Citizen station, because Ruthpearl and some other CSO people got spots in the audience for a very popular political talkshow on that station and they were going to try to squeeze EPAs into the conversation about poverty & equality in Kenya (they did a pretty good job, although Ruthpearl never got called on – they kept showing shots of her raising her hand, but the host was for some reason ignoring her). Now I can kind of pick up NTV, too, which means I can get COBRA SQUAD – a new Kenyan cop drama. Caught the last half of it this Sunday. Pretty good, especially for a domestic show. Definitely better done than those 4 hour Nigerian movies (in my estimation. Although probably if I watched them more I could really get into Nollywood. I mean, millions of people do. There must be something to it). My only complaint from the 15 minutes I saw of Cobra Squad is that it has an overly dramatic musical score. Really, really dramatic music for offering some juice, pouring the juice, and then drinking the juice. I kept thinking - the Juice Is Poisoned! The Juice is Poisoned! But it wasn't. She was just being a polite hostess.

Speaking of musical scores to Kenyan television, a trivia show “Who’s the Smarter One Now” (it pits 3 men against 3 women, and almost always the men win, mainly because they risk strategic amounts of money instead of always 500 shillings) – anyways, it uses very familiar music. “Where do I know that music from?” I wondered. Well, it’s the music from that one quiz show, what is it called…not “what’s my line”. Originally with Regis. It was a cultural phenomenon, but somehow I missed out on it. Like, I was in Canada that summer or something. I just looked it up on-line – “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. It uses that music. Other shows (like the news) use music from American shows also. I am just really pretty sure they ain’t paying nobody for those rights, if they are even available, which if I had taken more than just 1 day of Intellectual Property Rights, I would maybe know. I regret not taking IPR.

So I was at a housewarming party for a new ACORD colleague, who has been in Kenya for one month and who has met at least 50 people who were all at her housewarming party. She has gone on horseback riding safaris several times, goes out on the town 3-4 times during the week, has started a non-profit in Kibera, and is generally a very friendly but very driven person.

Anyways, I talked for a while to a Russian who works for the Russian embassy. We talked for a good solid 10 minutes – quite possibly 20 – about Solaris, which I had recently seen. He talked about having been in a Moscow cinema to see it when it first came out, how within the first 15 minutes 15% of the audience had left, another 20 minutes and half of the folks had left, at the end there were 15 people and they were only left because they were sleeping. But still, it is a really good movie. Based on the book by that Polish guy, Lem someboday, neither of us could remember his last name. Good things about the movie. Etc etc etc. Solaris, Solaris, Solaris.

So after talking 10 to 20 minutes about Solaris, he says, without missing a beat, ‘I have made a mistake because of the whiskey. You are talking about Solaris. I am talking about (some other movie whose name I forget – also russian, also science fiction, but not at all Solaris).’ I spent a significant amount of time talking to a drunk Russian about Solaris, who kept touching my leg while making points about Solaris, and he wasn’t even talking about Solaris!

I was then trapped into talking for a short while with a seriously sleezy guy in an altered state (and unfortunately the partner of a co-worker) who kept saying things like ‘if I say Habari yako? what do you say? Huh? Huh?’ until I said something about not having to prove my Kiswahili to anyone, man, and walked away.

I think I’m going to have a dinner or something at my house for co-workers and have it be an alcohol free party. ha HA! Just sit back and watch how people interact without social lubricants.