Its not that I disappeared...

but you know how it is, sometimes there just does not seem to be enough time to do all the things that you wanted to.

I've been a mite preoccupied, with work, with myself, just so that while I've been wanting to sit down and pen a few words, there just has been no spark as such to get me to do so.

Since Bamako I've been to Niger on a relatively uneventful trip - done that so often now that I tend to take it for granted. More recently I've been to Angola, Ghana and Togo with stops in Ethiopia just to make things interesting. Right now I'm in Lome, Togo penning these words as I wait for our client to free a few minutes to sit down and talk to me.

Over the last three weeks I've been in flights that have been mysteriously re routed adding three hours to what should have been just a 70 minute flight, taken all of two hours to cover 5km thanks to traffic in Luanda, and oh yes paid $260 for a hotel room!

On the fun side I've now added Ethiopean beer to the list of "All the beers I've drunk" - it was pretty foul - watched the action in an Addis dive bar, exchange pleasantries with two guys who spoke only Amharic, got through four different customs and immigration checks without getting hassled even once and drunk a spirit made of honey which I was told is quite similar to mead.

Tomorrow will, I trust, see me on my way back home for a couple of days before setting off again, this time to tour Niger, Sierra Leone and perhaps Liberia too if all goes well as planned.

All in all, the last two months have been busy ones and it looks like it will continue to be so for the next two... some R&R needed I think

Surreal at times

Dinner last night was a surreal experience for me...

Too many hours in the sun yesterday left me with a light head and the lack of sleep in the previous 48hrs not much help anyway. But here I was sitting in this restaurant called Le Logon a few km outside of Bamako with my client and his brother.

We had met up again after spending almost the entire day in his office and walking the market in search of information. Conversation was general, bordering on the personal when he mentioned his intention to seek another wife - the two biggest issues he was apparently faced with in this quest was a) whom to select from a large number of potential mates and b) the need to build a second house - which he intended to share with just his new wife as opposed to his currant residence which includes wife #1, two kids of his own, his two brothers and their respective wife's and children.... the problems people have eh?

From what I gathered the quest was progressing well, and he seemed in no hurry to make a decision...  but surreal really kicked in once the conversation slipped into religion; in this instance Buddhism and Islam

Now I'm one of those easy going types when it comes to religion, live and let live I believe and unless I am witness to an act of cruelty as defined by my perceptions, I tend to treat people the way I would they treat me.

And generally, when the person I'm talking with edges on intensity, I prefer to resort to nodding my head and making appropriate noises at appropriate moments.

When I mentioned that Buddhists did not have gods to believe in (yes I know, we have the Hindu ones) and that there was a cycle of re birth and accountability, things got interesting; I tend to be amused by people who while trying to convince me of the merits of their argument are unwilling to conceded that there might be other options - is this due to my practice of Buddhism and its call for compassion and tolerance? But then I know of so many others who claim to be better Buddhist and yet seem unwilling to be tolerant.

Take for example the issue of Buddha Bar and the general usage of the Buddha's image as art. I freely admit that I am quite taken up with his image used as art - in my own home I have wood carving hung on a wall, the 'Pièce de résistance' of all the trinkets I have - by currant SL standards I might be in big trouble!

It seems so silly really, who gave us the right to act in such a churlish manner - are we not expected be more tolerant, is it rather not better if we lived and changed people by example? These are the double standard issues that SL seems to be today - the national dressed politician with eyes cast down worshiping at a temple only to leave with tires screeching, tearing at breakneck speed along narrow roads and barely a care of a human or animal...

  

Tat's R Us

I was thinking (and that act alone deserves some mention) inspired by Lady D and her Tat post  if it would be a kindda of an interesting project to see what people actually thought were their tats of choice...

I wanted a tat to celebrate, well ‘me’ really, it was to mark a milestone along my life’s path and having gone through the phase of considering  Chinese dragons and scantily attired vixens on my arm, I found myself looking at Celtic symbols after having read a Sci Fi story that touched upon the Book of Kells

What I ended up picking was the triquetra, a three pronged Celtic knot which offered broad interpretation for what it stood

The Celtics honored the Great Mother who had three personifications – the three lunar phases, other possibilities included:

• -        Spirit Mind and Body
•          Past, Present and Future
•          Thought, Emotion, Feeling
•          Power, Intellect, Love
•          Creation, Destruction and Preservation

    For me the interpretation was the connection between mind body and soul, and that is one of two reasons for this to be my pick – the other reason is simply that I liked the design!

What I have is a stylized version of what’s above, which is a simple Celtic knot

BP you suck

BP, you suck; and yes I know I enjoy all the fruits of your labour, that without you I cant sit in the comfort of a car and cruise around, and there might not be electricity, but you still suck

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Charlie-Riedel-Gulf-photos-grimly-resonate/ss/events/sc/060410riedeloilpix#photoViewer=/100603/480/urn_publicid_ap_org_a2affc09c1d543a6b61fd0dcbbb145c5

Surely there must be some way to do this without causing so much grief?

Confucious, he say:

Man who drive like hell, bound to get there.

"An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger" Confucius

Ususfructus

It was just another day in Paradise, the sun rose, as it always did, the waves lapped against the shore, as they always did, life, went on, as it always did. But sinister moves were afoot, for a few, like those wee little pigs from 1984, were scheming - after all, the gods may have created man in his image but some men were more equelll than others were they not?


And so, with rhetoric and whispered sweet nothings,  with promises of even greater pleasures (after all, this is paradise is it not?) to come, of claims to take paradise to the forefront, to be a miracle (of indefinite proportion) we the people were asked to pave the way for those few to tread upon the yellow brick road with the vague promise that we too would walk upon it...


Time of course will tell if this is to be so, if we everyday Paradisians will enjoy the fruits of our labour, walk the streets of New London like Dick Whittington where the streets were supposedly paved in gold - or if those fruits are to be enjoyed by other less industrious souls! 


Or perhaps it will be a mere case of ususfructus -  the right to the enjoyment of the fruits of a thing by one person, while the ownership  belonged to another - this of course interpreted in true Paradisian style to accommodate the chosen few.


But the people have spoken, or at least seemed to. End result of course is that the little hut down by the fish pond is soon to be home to a band of some of the most interesting characters that we have seen fit to gather in that one place since 1948. If loose talk is to be relied upon amongst those few are drug barons, rapists, murderers, thieves of different hues, stars, some mind you barely out of their teens!


What then have the people said? That its OK to be an oaf? Perhaps, I'd like to think not, but then, what do i know eh?

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

I was not gonna do this, I was gonna suck it up and just let those waves of heat wash over me...

But, given that the mercury hit a record high - and I caught it - I had to, especially since we dont have any power ether...

Its hot, made doubly terribly so by frequent prolonged power cuts.... its 30c at 5 in the morning and only gets warmer... 35c at 8 in the night!

So here I sit, my pores all open as the very moisture in my body is being sucked up into this vacuum. 3 - 4 litres of water a day just to keep up with the loss.... I don't know how people manage...

So I decided to see just how bad it can get.... and this apparently is it:

Month	Average Sunlight (hours)	Temperature				Discomfort from heat and humidity	Relative humidity		Average Precipitation (mm)	Wet Days (+0.25mm)
		Average		Record
		Min	Max	Min	Max		am	pm
Jan	9	16	33	9	45	Medium	42	19	0	0.1
Feb	9	20	37	12	45	Medium	38	19	3	0.3
March	9	23	40	15	45	High	39	20	13	0.7
April	8	26	39	15	47	High	51	28	15	2
May	9	26	38	19	48	Extreme	65	40	84	6
June	8	24	36	17	44	High	73	49	122	9
July	7	23	33	18	41	High	78	62	203	12
Aug	6	22	31	14	38	High	81	67	277	14
Sept	7	23	32	19	39	High	79	60	145	11
Oct	9	23	35	18	41	High	72	44	33	3
Nov	9	22	36	16	42	High	58	30	0	0.2
Dec	8	17	35	11	45	Medium	46	23	0	0

What did happen?

Reading the news yesterday the most shocking item was a report dated 3-4.2010 to the effect that President Rajapakse had used derogatory language in the course of a speech he made in Jaffna - Lanka Truth & Lanka News Web.


These remarks are attributed to his reaction to the crowd jeering him during the course of his teleprompted speech in Tamil, apparently due to them not understanding him.

The Sunday Times of today has a different spin to the tale, attributing the jeering to a Sinhalese segment in the crowd who jeered for the same reason

So, while two reports claim that he used language derogatory towards the Tamil community the third suggests him speaking in support.

As the president of a country made up of different ethnicities his excellency has an obligation to lead this nation with no favor of one group over another - it was this favoring of a majority in the past that lead us down a path that saw an entire generation of Sri Lankan's living through a bloody war which tore the very social fabric of this nation.

If the initial reports are true - and frankly though I am incredulous that a politician of his caliber would make such a statement under existing circumstance; this is after all a new Sri Lanka where laws, constitution, common decency is tormented daily, anything is possible - its shocking, If what actually happened is a distortion, it make the reporters no better than the government propaganda machine

Will we ever find out what exactly happed that day in Jaffna?

Micro finance anyone?

Can anyone suggest a micro finance organisation that may be in need of funds?


I've come across a possible source and would be happy to point a suitable organisation in the right direction