Agriculture, ICTs and Gender in Africa

This last month, I was asked to judge GENARDIS 3, "Small Grants Fund to address Gender Issues in Information and Communication Technologies for Agricultural and Rural Development in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP Countries)." The applicants that I judged were a wide range of projects attempting to use the tools of radio, computers, and media to reach the disenfranchised in their villages. Unfortunately, there were some applicants that immediately drew the opinion that women = gender, which is still a major misconception of what this small grants fund is all about. The thing is that it is likely to be women and children who are most disadvantaged in these small villages wishing to implement technology in order to improve lives. However, maybe it is not, and it is best to analyse the situation for both men and women first and then distinguish the differences between the two groups. Perhaps we will find a village where males are not participating in computer classes and 99 % are women, then why have these males decided not to participate?

Check out the GENARDIS projects that have won in 2005 and an evaluation on the program in 2007.

More Information:

IDRC - Acacia webpage on GENARDIS

Gender and Natural Resource Management book

Mobiles & Poverty

Since completing my studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, I have been doing a bit of writing based on my mobile phone study. My field work photos are found under "IDRC work" on my flickr page.

Here is one article: i4d: Mobiles are leading the way: A review of IDRC projects

Here is a short case study write-up that I did for the W3C workshop in Brazil in June 2008.

This is an old presentation that I did at UKZN in November. I presented my results and analysis at the IDRC on May 1, 2008 with an updated presentation (ask if you would like a copy).

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All kinds of ICT4D conferences have been popping up recently:

- HCC8 - Pretoria, South Africa (25-27 Sept 2008)
- Msociety - Antalya, Turkey (18-19 Sept 2008)
- SAICSIT, Wilderness, South Africa (6-8 October 2008)
- MobileActive08 - Johannesburg, South Africa (13-15 Oct 2008)
- ICTD 2009 - Doha, Qatar - deadline for submissions: Sept 22, 2008 - (17-18 April 2009)
- IFIP, Dubai, UAE - deadline for submissions: August 15, 2008 (26-28 May 2009)

Gender and Wireless Africa

Last month, I attended the Wireless Africa workshop: June 25- 27, 2008, CSIR Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

Here are some excerpts from my report:

Day 1 – Wednesday, 25 June 2008

Purpose: The purpose of the workshop was to introduce the Wireless Africa research project, share current wireless community network initiatives throughout Africa and choose the three countries as case studies for review of their sustainable business models. There were at least 40 participants in total (10 women participants) and all proceedings will be found here.

One country presentation highlights:

Emphasize goals towards development: Prof Hicham Bouzekn, Al Akhawayn University, Morocco stated that the success in working with regulators and even mobile operators depends on “the way you present your project, […] cannot be perceived as a threat. It must show some goal of development, and a benefit to the country”. Prof Hicham’s Wifi project had also seen their regulators pushing the researchers to aim big, increasing their research sites by two-three more areas in Fez.

Business Models: As for presented business models, the range was also diverse among the countries and within the country institutions. The 16 countries had telecentres models, government owned models, NGO style setups and primary school network ideas. Within the institutions, the range of products and services could be from running a microfinance institution to internet café side projects with a whole gamut of income generating projects done within. While aware of the idea of business models, none of the countries had actually written up a business plan or prepared such documentation in the past. Fantsuam was possibly the closest organization with $USD figures of their operation costs and revenues through their cross-subsidized model of business.

Village Telco example: Steve Song (Shuttleworth Foundation) and Rael Lissoos (dabba.co.za) presented on the Village Telco model (wiki.villagetelco.org) which is in place in Orange Farm, South Africa. Running for the last two years, Rael has been able to provide wireless services to this community with use of pre-paid cards for internet and phone services. The recent village telco workshop (June 16-20, 2008) can be found here. Steve did a presentation summarizing their workshop asking the question can a mesh network be developed for $5000 USD and deployed and break-even within 6 months. From the workshop came the “Mesh potato”, a hardware/software package which allows for phone/internet connection, and asterisk, BATMAN and network management software. Check out more information on Steve's blog.

Day 2 – Thursday, 26 June 2008

2.1 VoIP and Wisp in a Box Presentations: Louise Berthilson (it+46), Alberto Escudero-Pascual (it+46) and David Rowe (Free Telephony Project) presented their current work on VoIP in a Box. David showed the simplicity of wireless point-to-point setup by getting his children to set up a wireless phone in a public park. Sebastian Buettrich followed with the development ideas of WISP in a box (still in progress with completion date aimed around +/- October 2008). From both technology presentations, it was clear that low power was a major roadblock that needed to be addressed immediately as power is usually one of the most costly expenses in running these technologies. “Big power is low power,” as stated by Alberto. All projects must consider looking at low power using technologies in order to see sustainability. So why not consider the 1Watt computer? Another major challenge was how to move from small to large scale networks with out destruction, particularly address network management problems once capacity starts to reach a point of over optimal. How does one prepare for this point? Another major obstacle discussed is learning retention – local transfer and avoid staff turnover – in a business model. While some acknowledge that they will need to continuously input training, the discussion looked a use of retired professionals, training business people to be a trainer for a business, young 3rd year undergraduate students volunteers, other motivation techniques, use of local women or grandmothers (my idea), training government officials.

Gender Presentation: I gave a short presentation on gender research based on the firm desire by Wireless Africa management to incorporate gender into their research plan. The presentation was based on the IDRC – Acacia lessons learned from the Gender Awareness Workshop in Fez, Morocco in 2007. Here is the presentation:

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The purpose of the session was to ask country/researchers to consider adding gender as part of their research agenda in their planning and consider four possible strategies of implementation. Why is this area of study exciting? As technology is fairly new in many of their societies, great insight comes from research on the adaptation and usage of technology by both sexes. Secondly, as implementers, one can have great influence in whether such tools become gender biased or not in the community by way of constructing opportunity for both men and women with the technology. I emphasized “What are we losing out?” asking the audience what innovation and economic advances will the project be missing if they exclude specifically women from the knowledge society? As little has been written in the field of gender and wireless community networks (even in North America), I also challenged the group to work towards presenting their gender research to the Acacia Conference in Dakar, October 2009.

At the end of the workshop, the three pilot projects were announced: Ghana (onevillage Foundation), Uganda (Community Wireless Resource Centre) and Nigeria (Fantsuam Foundation).

More information on Wireless Africa, click here.

CICEWA Workshop #3

This week, I was asked to attend one of our IDRC research partner's workshops here in Johannesburg. Here is an edited version of my workshop report.

1. Project Objective:

The project, “Communication for Influence: Linking Advocacy, Dissemination and Research: Building ICTD Networks in Central, East and West Africa” (CICEWA) has the objective to identify obstacles to universal affordable access to broadband ICT infrastructure in Central, East and West Africa through two sub-regional ICT policy advocacy networks. Their key role is to disseminate research and find effective ways to advocate for ICTD.

2. Workshop

CICEWA hosted their third in a series of workshops (the June one was in Senegal). I dropped in last Wednesday, July 16. The purpose of the workshop was to bring African journalists and researchers nominated by the ICT4D network from East, West and Central Africa to develop a common research framework, and build the network for stronger ICT4D policy advocacy. In the previous two meetings, two regional networks were formed: EAICT4D, coordinated by Harry Hare (KictaNet, Kenya) and GOREeTIC (Coura Fall, APC).

There were 18 participants (7 were women) from both French (Senegal, Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, Benin) and English (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda) speaking African countries. One of the participants was an APC member from South America.

3. Presentation: Telecommunication Reform in South Africa

The first speaker, Robert Horwitz, Professor at UC San Diego, spoke about a paper that he and Willie Currie recent wrote: “Another instance where privatization trumped liberalization: The politics of telecommunications reform in South Africa – A ten-year retrospective”. This journal article was used in the presentation as a possible output model for the country teams. The author spoke further on the research and the methodology undertaken to produce this paper.

A major issue which arises from many transitions from monopoloy state-owned telecommunications to a competitive market is governance. How does a country create a new market structure for telecommunications and then how do you deal with the incumbent? How do you change the tariffs enough for the incumbent (who had provided much infrastructure in the first place) to stay competitive and yet allow competitors? Many known regulators are still unable to provide strong structure to guide this process in a transparent manner.

4. Discussion

The researchers were asked to develop their country’s political narrative or institutional histories and use institutional players, the context, the political structures and understand why things happened and how they are likely to play out.

Major question put to the participants, “Where are the points of entry, on policy, and advocacy, how best to engage, how to provide pressure with impact, and practices of freedom.”

During the discussion, each country described their political and telecommunications story. In summary, there were several issues with the regulator and its ability to help in lowering the interconnection costs between mobile phone operators. There were also examples were cell phone operator competition led to lower prices but cases like Tanzania were there was no price change. There is also the issue of high costs as a result of governments high tax imposition (ex. Uganda has 30 % tax). Discussion also came up on the weak consumer associations in the country who are not able to push for fair competition and lower prices.

In terms of the research, the question came up as to how one revealed the “secret deals” which undermine the processes of good governance particularly during this transition period? How do we start to see transparency and show things as understood and fair by its citizens? How does one expose “never released documents” and hold government accountable?

Fifteen ways in order to retrieve important documents and interview key informants in institutions like government:

a) Be persistent
b) Try talking to people who lost out in a contract or deal
c) Work through the opposition or the chair of certain parliamentary committee
d) Interview mid-level management, reveal certain information, build rapport, allow them to reflect on the big picture
e) Always check sourcing
f) ‘Follow the money’ – check annual reports, stock exchange prices / reports
g) Use the switchboard operator to your advantage
h) Turn off the voice recorder and hope this will lead to information
i) reluctance to give information IS information
j) Ensure anonymity: “off the record” can be called key informants, “respected industry insider”
k) Always ask “who else should I talk to?”
l) Possibly align one’s self with an organization (eg. Statistic bureau) for authority
m) Use cousins / sisters within the organizations
n) Be aware of permits which may be required to conduct research.
o) Use the country’s freedom of information act

Other News:

Village Telco and dabba.co.za gets exposed on the Economist: Read more

IDRC - CICEWA network project links here


Special ICT4D Edition: Computer June 2008 (Vol. 41, No. 6).

The restoration of STC

While I have always had the intention to start updating this blog on the wonderful things happening here in South Africa, it is only until now that I have pushed some keys together and voila, words to screen. Since my last blogpost, I have started venturing into new research terrain working with a network on Community Owned Wireless Networks and testing the waters in the socio-economic side of these pilot projects particularly on gender. I'll also go back into time and reflect on the research findings from my mobile phone and technology spending project last year as well as update on the recent workshop and conferences which will be taking place in Africa on Information & Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D).

Besides that, well you probably heard that Nelson Mandela's turning 90 this Friday! Stories have been running on all the local papers of people who had met Mandela while he was studying as a young lawyer in Jo-burg, to his days spent in prison on Robben Island. I guess you have to give credit to the man, he did his time and the respect and hope he has brought to the people of South Africa is not something one will forget for a very long time.

homemade goods obsession

Today's been fairly creatively stimulating and work un-productive.

Last night, I strutted off into the Centurion evening to a club just off Old Johannesburg Road near where I am staying. Sadly enough, the night of dancing, ended at 12 midnight with a power failure in that part of town. Double Downer (the DJ had no idea what he was remixing), to say the least, but certainly can't be a particularly profitable night for the venue. Well, at least I got my dancing feet moving again.

The next morning, I decided to venture to the Irene Market at Jan Smuts House. Twice a month (1st Sat and 3rd Sat), the diversity of wares are displayed throughout the space surrounded in high shading trees. I was impressed by the range of over 300 stalls of home-made wares, cultural display of cuisine and fun to be spent in Irene.

What did she buy do you ask? Well, first off, a beautiful handmade doll from Vicki's Kid's Stuff (+27 82 806 8401) for R80 or $13. At this booth there were nappie bags and other baby wares. I then stopped at this booth which made these incredibly innovative purse made with a zipper. Pam from Dizzy Zippy (Yvonne: +27 83 248 2376) greeted the passerbys by rolling out this zipper and then zip around and around until it becomes a purse. It's fantastic. Their product ranges from small pencil cases to school bags ranging in price from R40 - R 150 ($ 6.50 - $25).

For lunch I had some Portuguese Rissois near the entrance for R7 ($1) and a 100% real orange juice for R8.

In the beginning, I cruised through the food section only to find some delicious Acacia/Eucalyptus raw honey (R30 or $5) produced in Irene by Bees Knees (+27 12 667 2372 or cjprussell@xsinet.co.za). On the label, it states unheated and unfiltered: “Nature's Best for Connoisseurs off the Comb with all its Natural Pollen” Then next to the honey booth, was the Mustard Shop with some homemade tasty Sweet Basil salad dressing (R20 or $3.40) and DELICIOUS olives mixed with peppadews (R30 or $5 for small plastic container). yum.

My highlight of the market was passing through south africa's history in images. Post cards and other products from digitized material of a man's artifact collection passed down by his father (former professor of Anthropology). A beautiful collection converted into post cards, birthday calendars and tin cans. The Colonial Heritage (The Reed Foundation) boasts of “100 year old postcard & photographic reprints of Old Colonial and Republican South Africa) +27 72910 1661 / +27 82 884 9989. I was able to score some amazing images (R10 or $1.70 per postcard or R70 or $10 for birthday calendar) of the Bluff, Durban with dated shots of 1435 and hear the story from Thatcher and Amber about the infamous Rickshas in Durban when they first arrived from Japan in 1892. Today, most people recognize the ricksha on Durban's ocean front as a tourist trap or the raddest part of surf classic, Endless Summer.

stoked on the visit and will definitely try to go back. Highly recommend arriving there between 8:30am - 10am otherwise feel the wrath of the longest line-up to the market. Parking is R5.

Best Travel Tackling Techniques: O.R. Tambo Johannesburg Airport

I can say I'm a O.R. Tambo regular. Fly out Friday, Fly in Monday. I actually have started find there is a group of vigilante weekend warriors who do the trip as I do to Durban. In the last three months, I share some of the wonderful tidbits that have helped me kill through 30-90 minute wait (either because your cheap flight is delayed or you got to the airport so dang early just in case there is an accident on the road that could be backed up for hours).

1) The Keg and Aviator: Yes, the best way to kill time at O.R. Tambo is finding a nice pint and cheese nachos and just let the hair down. Actually x-nay the nachos - they are kinda not fun and will not meet your expectations. Tucked away at the far end of the restaurant floor, it's worth the few steps further. Do not let them seat you near the entrance; ask to be seated near the back with the flat-screen TVs and people and catch the most recent sport highlights. Sit at one of the long lounge tables, so much room, and it's usually never full. Killer.

2) Sushi at the Ocean Basket: Okay so they may take FOREVER to deliver a few maki rolls, but who cares? The craving must be satisfied and if you are lucky, you might have the women who delivers you the soft rock hits of the 80s on her synthesizer and voice. YEOW.

3) Wi-Fi internet: love it. Sit just about anywhere and time kill on Facebook and digg and other random websites. The phasing out can be so easy.

4) Hand Luggage only: Okay for within country travel, it's worth it. You stare at the long queues and feel the luggage getting heavier and heavier.

5) Lastly, Shaded Parking # 3: Totally wicked find. While not as cheap as Supersaver parking in butt-f* no-where, Shaded Parking #3 is half the price of the other covered lots and it's still close enough to walk if you feel like. The bonus is of course the free shuttle that takes you right to your vehicle or any of the departure gates. love it. I wish I clued into this one 2 months earlier.

9 Great Websites for South Africa Trip Planning

I have been so lucky to have many of my friends from home come visit me in my last few years in South Africa / Kenya. I always have loads of questions thrown my way on Africa in general and travel and living tips in the area. This is my top 9 things to consult before jumping across the ocean to live/work/study or party/travel in South Africa!


1) Free Classified listings in Durban:
It's the craigslist of South Africa! So great for finding rental apartments and cars!

durban.gumtree.co.za/

2) Cheap Flights within South Africa:
All countries have their cheap flights within the country... Kulula, Mango and 1time are the way to go at reasonable rates if you happen to get the right deals. JNB to DUR can be as low as $20-$50 one way!

www.kulula.com
www.flymango.com/
www.1time.aero/

3) Cheap Car Hire in Jo-burg:
I have my old Toyota Corolla beater for 2500 R ($415) a month as I look for a possible permanent vehicle. Best price I have found so far for an automatic.

http://www.rentawreck.co.za/

4) Backpacking in S.A. and Mozambique:
This free guide is on recycled paper at any of the backpackers across South Africa. It is a great way to move across this country at a great price!

www.coastingafrica.com/

5) Good Eats in S.A.:
I love their top 10 lists.

www.eatout.co.za

6) Events in Durban and S.A.:
Haven't used it much but looks promising...

www.ijol.co.za

7) Blogs in Africa:
Get a real sense of what's happening around Africa...

www.amatomu.com
http://afrigator.com

8) Social Bookmarking in Africa:
what are people finding as interesting in Africa?

www.muti.co.za

9) Techy stuff on Africa:
I got some of my social bookmarking links from here. Really innovative stuff.

http://www.bandwidthblog.com/2007/09/14/south-africas-web-startups-to-watch/

S.A. universities: fight for your right...

I am frustrated. Students at the University of the Witwatersrand were shot at with rubber bullets as they attempt to protest against the hike in next year's tuition rates. How ridiculous. You have some of your intellectuals and leaders at one of the top universities in the country with the inability to protest and speak up for their rights to education. I ask those who still represent tertiary education or part of student bodies to support the Wits students with emails, publicly denouncing violence on this protest and messages to these institutions that these are not radical, weapon toting hooligans... these are your future leaders who wish to voice their frustration with the difficult undemocratic S.A. system.

What happened to spare fun time?

I'm back and forth from Durban and Jo-burg as I strive through the last four months of my internship with IDRC. Currently, I'm trying to bag this research project analysis on mobile phones and technology spending and its relation to poverty in rural Kenya and Uganda. Yesterday I took a half day course with Hilary at UKZN's ITD school on the qualitative tool, Nvivo. Super simple to use and I think will be useful to sort out my 200+ pages of transcripts (yes, it took me literally 2 weeks to listen to tapes and do this). My only issue is that Nvivo7 only works on Apples with the intel chip and I'm one generation behind with my iBook G4. Doh. Looks like time for an upgrade when I get back to Vancouver! In the meanwhile, I'm attempting to download free versions of HyperResearch and Tams Analyzer to see if they can do the same job. I'm also do it the old school way, wading through the date on paper with post-its, highlighters and coloured dots as I'm a visual learner, but time is running out and I need something interesting for my presentation to the School of Development Studies on Oct8!

Recently, I was sent this wicked article on Buddeblog called, "Changing societies and the role of telecoms" and makes you re-think again, what's with all the work and where's the balance of giving back to society or at least having fun?

This blog talks about people having more time to engage in social activities when they have telecommunication technology. It reminds me of a comment from a man in Meru, Kenya, when I was conducting interviews... We were talking about the time when the community was having water installed into homes. He recalls one neighbor protested paying for the water and asking, “what will my wife do if she does not fetch water?”. Can you imagine? Rather keep her busy fetching water and keep her from doing other social or functional activities.

I like his props to Canadians and New Zealanders on working to integrate Aboriginal culture (still a way to go but trying more than other countries!)

I especially like this paragraph:

“With the economy changing from scarcity to surplus we should use this unique opportunity to tap into these old cultures, with a view to re-evaluating ourselves, our lives and our communities. A good starting point would be to study these cultures, to try and find some answers to the environmental changes that are currently having such a serious impact. As I write this, half of Greece is on fire – how many more warnings do we need before we start to make changes?”

Maasai captures crowd

with his voice on this video. Best artist from the display of Kenyan artists on Friday night. Read more with a few UBC business students who attended the event....

men do nail polish

While I am going through my field notes from my research this week, I am going to try to recollect some of the most interesting things spotted or experiences. For example, back in June, I interviewed a group of nine women in a hair salon about their mobile phone use and changes in their lives. During this time, I did notice something odd. While salons are usually separated for men and women (like our barbers and salons), there was a man doing nails for a young woman. Yes, I suppose if this was in Vancouver or in some super trendy salon, it would not be strange. But in the context, I asked my research assistant about it, and she said that he was actually not working at the salon. He was a hawker (people selling knick-knacks on the street) and men had picked up the job of doing manicure/pedicures in the area. If a salon does not offer the service, they walk through and do the job. I also noticed another man doing nails from a woman's home several days later.

So talking about gender equality, do nails become a gender-neutral (or is it in this case a male-dominated occupation?) job in rural Uganda? What other examples of jobs exemplified as women-dominated are now being taken on my men even in contexts that appear to be extremely gender-biased? A man carrying a baby on his back in East Africa or man being the "house help" (where the wife works and the man stays home)?

am i shaking?

it's been a crazy few months. I just got back to Nairobi on Tuesday after spending almost 2 months in the field (rural Uganda and Kenya) collecting data for my study. But what's going on in Nairobi? Well for the last three days I have been feeling tremors from a nearby earthquake in Tanzania. It's kind of strange because I actually don't know what I would do. The first time I felt the movement, it was strong, the walls shook, I was on a Skype meeting and froze. The following night I put my passport in my wallet so if whatever may happen i'm ready to move. It's continuous: 5am, 10am. 5pm. 8:30pm. I sometimes don't know if I am shaking because of drinking too much coffee or coca cola or if it's just the continuity of the tremors. What next, Nairobi? Banning of plastic bags and no smoking in public areas? Oh, never mind. That happened as well while I was gone!

How about wild elephants walking around my Kenyan study area especially where the local women collect firewood to sell for their livelihoods? next story.

Viva los Jozi

Today is my last day spent in Johannesburg. This is my catchup email after relatively cold evenings last week in Durban and cold fireplace-required evenings in jo-berg. My lovely friend, Natasha, had put me up at her house of a million random people (the house has people coming in and out all the time and we are both unsure who really lives there). I wish her all the luck in her move to the new pad tomorrow! The neighborhood she lives in is Melville, a very up and coming trendster street with funky ceramic and bead shops, evening bars and morning cafes that remind me of an incredibly small version of Montreal by day and night. I also had the chance to be taken over several extremes of the city - the industrial Midrand area (big, boxy corporate headquarters of multinational companies), Rosebank mall (atypical mall like every other outdoor type mall), and the all eccentric Yeoville (high adventure area but typical of immigrant [this of a north Africa type] ville with much needs for social services). Memory: walk up a flight of stairs to a home converted to Ethiopean restaurant with men sitting on the couch and little girl bouncing around the home/converted food place. thanks tash

Back in Durban - one week later!

Yes, I have been slacking on the entries after I arrived back in Durban last, last Sunday. I have been trying to settle back in to the University system and as expected deal with the usual one-day logistical nightmares of UKZN - getting renewed student card, organizing an office, getting internet access, etc. But luckily it was one day and not an enduring process as one experienced last year during the strike, so I'm relatively happy about that. My birthday had recently passed so I had the chance to dine with some UKZN friends and Sean at a Moroccan restaurant called Fabulous. As fabulous as the food was, the service was pretty dismal - example, not allowing Lauren's vegan cake into the premises UNLESS we paid a "cake fee". Crazy. Anyways, I liked my chicken tagine and can say it was comparable to the Moroccan version but it looks like the lamb shanks and ostrich were the actual tasty winners. The weekend was spent reviewing notes and surfing back in town. Durban had some big canoe festival going on last Sunday, so while waiting on the surf break, we watched several hundred race canoe paddle out of the waterfront, of course, with a few overturned boats not quite making it past the break. too funny!

The university has its usual stream of School of Development Studies seminars and workshops going on: today, Professor Vishnu Padayachee will host "Capitalism of a special type? Trajectories of capital accumulation in South Africa" at noon today. I just might attend.

Duduzile Khumalo from the Centre for Civil Soceity hosts on Friday: "Social and cultural benefits of Umgeni River that have been lost to the Inanda Dam"

Her description: "Dudu Khumalo is a community activist working mostly with rural and townships organisations. She has worked with the South African Municipal workers union (SAMWU) as an Organiser and as a co-ordinator for Water and Sanitation issues in the SAMWU KwaZulu Natal Province. While at SAMWU she also helped to co-ordinate Women's issues within the Union. She is currently at the Centre for Civil Society as a community intern."

Gastronomic Delight of Fez, Morocco

Rad Writers at the Ottawa Writer's Festival

If I was in Ottawa, I would only be attending this event: Writer's Festival, hosted at the National Library and Archives. Stephanie Nolen, the voice of Africa in the Globe and Mail (read a snippet from her book 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa here, will be speaking along with Michael Ondaatje, Andrew Cohel and Alexandre Trudeau. What a line-up.

Maroc: Bienvenue!

I finally get to see North Africa. When I lived in south Portugal back in 2002, I had always contemplated hopping on the ferry from Spain to say that I had been to "Africa" - well Morocco, that is. Now being a little more knowledgeable (less naive) about the continent, my "hop-over" will now be an 11pm flight tonight to Dubai (another new airport), then connecting to Casablanca, and then Fez, Morocco at around 5pm on April 14. Map is courtesy of US CIA. Ah, the joys of long flights and airport interiors. I have also been informed that about some most-wanted local suicide bombers with 9lbs of explosives were taken down by police in the slum areas of Casablanca. Apparently it should not affect travel in anyway. For me, it sounds like a re-visit of when I passed through Bilbao, north of Spain, winter 2001, when the day before, the police had to block off some street for an expected bombing by the ETA. No one was hurt, but full-on threat to citizens living in these cities that they experience everyday.

What have I been reading: The reason why I love the New Yorker is because of its eloquent way of getting the reader to see multiple sides to a person or event that the mainstream media, in most cases, fails to cover. I noticed that Cassidy's article on Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank, has become their most read article. The article allows the read to try to determine themselves whether Mr. Wolfowitz could be using his presidency as a move to push his agenda on Iraq which failed to surface with the US government because of his "silent diplomacy". I got in major debate with an American and Canadian volunteer while in Mombasa on the World Bank especially on the quote that Mr. Wolfowitz was a "bleeding heart". I like the lead-on that the World Bank president needs to project more clearly his plans for the future of World Bank as McNamara did... decide for yourself. Good read.

Mombasa Easter SlideShow

Wow, this took a while to figure how to put together a slideshow on your blog. I actually learned how to do it from Digital Inspiration website and voila! after a few newbie errors, this is the wonderful tool of showing my photos from Flickr. This digital world is a wonderful place! hahah.

Mombasa was hot and sweaty. From the bus ride on the newly paved tarmac, right into the island, I felt the perma-drip on my nose the whole time we were in Mombasa. I caught the mini-bus everywhere, hopping around from one part of the north coast to the other. We crashed a few 5-star hotel poolsides just to take advantage of their waterfront location and lounge chairs. On the Saturday, we made our way into Haller Park to see the giraffes up-close and personal - the park is actually more than that. It is a peaceful trail of ponds and wildlife, completely to gain back serenity after hours of people at the Nakumatt shopping centre or the packed beaches. I stayed with some new friends at Bombolulu, a handicraft workshop where all goods are made by the disabled or the blind. It is an amazing place as the staff live on the grounds and you will find yourself surrounded by smiles and welcoming sits or chats near a breezy covered spot even at the heat of the day. Thanks to Cindy, Geoff, John, and Mike for our competitive evenings of this boardgame, Carcassone and introducing me to the Mombasa place of life. Enjoy the pics.

Simplicity or not?

After almost two years with the same design for the blog, I've decided to switch over to a more simplistic format, colour and font change. I'm not sure if I feel to comfortable with it yet, so bare with me while I test my own tastes on you.

After heavy debate between me, myself and I, the decision for a trip to Mombasa for Easter holidays has been set. I'll be jumping on an non-air-conditioned bus at 9am on Friday morning and be set on my way to the East coast. I met some new VSO friends who said that they would be happy to host us. I am so looking forward to seeing the ocean, sand and just a new side to the world.

It's funny the things you start to miss while living away from home. Like funky trendster Asians walking around Robson and 10$ all-you-can-eat sushi or cheap Sunday brunch with friends or Aboriginal Art or Emily Carr and the imfamous West Coast forests. I have been getting a bit Vancouver home flavour from a few fun websites from like Beyond Robson and the Commodified. The best at home literature I get at the office is the Ottawa Citizen. Oh yea.