Blogs from Africa - page 3301

hey, well morrocoo is fantastic... not as cheap as i thought.. but very decent.. trying not to buy too much gorgeous jewelery.. grr having trouble typig cause the keypab is arabic and frenchhehehe:::!§§§§ staying in a hotel with beautiful tiling;;in the middle of some crazy markets,loads of colour and smells:: some better than others:: all the girls went out and got henna done by some beautiful arabic ladies that just didnt want to stop and even managed to get a scorpian on ash:,, he wasnt impressed;;,, lol moroccans are super friendly; lovely ppl!! a lady on the train down from casablanca (we stayed there first) invited to come to her house so she could do henna and feed us moroccan cuscos!!! bless her!!! but there are 6 of us;;to many!!! its bloody hot here! once you ... read more

I thought it might be valuable for everyone to gain an appreciation for Zambian domestics but it seemed an overwhelming task since the term “family life” is about as close to nuclear as Canada is tropical. Canada itself, with the divorce rate at approximately 50%, has experienced major paradigm shifts in the past fifty years in the traditional definition. Add a fatal pandemic infecting between 20-30% of the population, intermarriage between 72 tribes in Zambia alone that haven’t always lived in harmony, and a dash of traditional social norms mostly absent in North America and you have the recipe for a distinctly different family milieu than Kevin Arnold experienced in those Wonder Years. There are countless other factors contributing to various family models here but overall, it’s safe to say that the typical in Canada does ... read more

Damn it...I just tried to post a good, long post but lost it somewhere in cyberspace. So this will be shorter than it's supposed to be, but hopefully it'll say what it needs to. So I leave Cape Town in a few days...it's been a really interesting experience, and though it hasn't been perfect it's been a learning process the whole time. Uhm...yeah, so since I don't feel like rewriting this all over again, I'm just going to say that I'll tell better stories the next time i see/talk to you guys, and I'm looking forward to being home (or whatever best approximates home for the time being). Love and such BernieBear... read more

Boy oh boy is the story different in Maputo than it is in DC. The policies that I have been forming opinions on just ain't the same once you get outside of the beltway, let along the continent. We spent ages in Maputo. A month to be exact. That makes two months and just over three hundred miles. We are not exactly zipping along. But it was worth it to sit in Maputo for a bit and soak up all that we didn't know. Turns our the Millennium Challenge Account has "been an embarrassment" and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has been a "grand success." Who would have thought it? Certainly not me, sitting in DC. Sure, there were indications one way or another, but it really clarifies matters to talk to the folks ... read more

X tells me “Djibouti” is French for “tiny, expensive, hot, steaming pile”. I admire conciseness in a language. Night. Somewhere in the desert between Hargeisa and Djibouti. A couple of huts selling food. I am in full power-saving mode, stretched out on the tarp with my daypack under my head, eyes tightly shut and not a single muscle moving, even though I know there’s no time to sleep, even if I could manage to. My fellow-passengers are finishing up their meals and are assuming similar rest positions. X is somewhere to my left, taking full advantage of his Frenchness and talking to the really cute fellow-passenger (whom I saw first!). She’s telling him that she’s married to a French legionnaire who promised he would take her to France when his term expires in 2 years. The ... read more