Just back after a trip around Lakje Victoria. Not too much online, because internet is not available in most places i visited. Visisted Bukoba in Tanzania and expected ‘hotspot’, like Zanzibar, for the upcoming elections on the 30th of october. Security measures are taken at the moment and the talk of the day in the kahawa’s, small open air spaces where men talk about politics and the latest news while enjoying a small cup of strong coffee (kahawa in local spoken Swahili-language) is what is gonna happen in the unlikely

Today I spent some time on a press conference. Human Rights Watchwatch was presenting a report on Northern Uganda. Sorry: embargo on the news until midday tomorrow East African Time. The forgotten in Northern Uganda where the LRA abducts young boys and girls to work for them as sex slaves and soldiers, is still being forgotten.

Did you notice, there is an interesting on poverty discussion going on in this Blog? Join here!

Walking through the streets of Nairobi these days, you can be surprised by small groups of people sitting together, listening to somebody. If you get near, you will sometimes find that there is a street preacher trying to win some souls. But these days you will find more and more people involved in other type of discussion during rush hours and luch braaks. Kenyans are getting their civic education. On 21 November this year, they are going to vote for a new constitution (downloadable as PDF-file).

Kenya dropped 10 places in the United Nations Development Report, published this week. Bad news. Had an interesting conversation with a researcher about this. He said he never saw such a change in Kenya since the last president came into power. ‘Kenya suffers from a lot of bad publicity’, he said. ‘But watch this country. For next year, there is a forecast in economic growth of more than 5 percent. ‘I have done research to the underlying currents of the change in Kenya. This gives hope. Institutions like Worldbank, IMF

… Kenyan coffee is considered to be tamong the best coffes in the world. The strange thing is that most Kenyans don’t drink it and they even don’t make the money with their coffee like they could. Kenyan highest quality raw coffee beans are exported to the Western world where coffee companies ‘add value’ by burning it. Europeans will sometimes spend 1,50 euro on a cup of coffee in a bar. That is 216,00 euro per kilo of coffee. Kenyans are left with lower quality instant coffee and lower quality

On the 19th of August 2005, 21 years old June Wangu was shot dead in Jericho estate, her only known safety heaven (home). A group of armed gangsters approached June at about 7 pm in the company of her little brother, relieved her off her mobile phone, then shot her dead at close range. June was a social actress from Eastlands, Nairobi, innocent of the lethal accessory that spilt her blood. The incident surrounding Mrs. Wangu’s Death and the deaths of many more innocent Kenyans thus prompts the initiative to

…that is what I want to show in this Blog. Recently I had a discussion with friends on this Blog: they thought I was to cynical. My response is always that cynical is a matter of style. Writing down things that happen to you or others in daily life has not to do do with being cynical. It is honest observation, that might be coloured because of personal circumstances and background. I observe the place I live,with other eyes than the native people who live here and who are used

Earlier you could download a fragment of an interview I had with a teacher who found four 15 year old guys in Turbi. In this fragment i visited Marsabit Hospital and had a short talk with nurse Amina. We are standing next to a 2 year old girl. Her legs were speared in the massacre.

While the United States have their problems that, according to their president will ‘scar them for years’, Africa gets the usual stuff (see below, did you notice the news by the way?). Sorry for this cynisism… KATRINA WILL SCAR US ‘FOR YEARS’ The US states stricken by Hurricane Katrina will take years to recover, President George W Bush has said, after an aerial tour of the disaster zone. He promised his cabinet will take over the aid operation for “one of the worst natural disasters” the US had seen. An