Back Into Africa

This is the sign every community has the shows Rwanda's vision and 'commandments'. The numbers show the number of families in each 'self-help' group I’ve probably built up my Great Disclosure about Rwanda. In reality, I just got a bit edgy about censorship*. It all started when I was cycling on the edge of Gisenyi and suddenly a crowd of around 100 people came towards me – at the heart of the group were 2 boys (must have been 10 years old?) with slaughtered pigs round their necks. At first I thought it was a protest and then someone told me the boys had been caught stealing bananas so the community were frogmarching them to the police station. Something about the medieval-type humiliation (of children no less) made me really uncomfortable – and so at odds with the perfect-community feel I’d had in Rwanda so far. So I googled ‘thieves with pigs round their neck’... ... not expecting to find anything. But it turns out that mob punishment of petty crimina...

Kenya - Brits abroad Breaking my travels with Becca and the (big and small) boys in northern Kenya was just perfect. After my 'retreat' with the Orthodox Christians of Ethiopia, I was fully awakened by 'the cow jumped over the willy' and such 6 year-old wit.  The British Army has nailed it this time: palatial house in the bush with uninterrupted views to Mt Kenya. For the nephews it's fields to roam free with guinea fowl, a tortoise and Gemma the gender fluid cat (initially thought female but confirmed male, goes by the pronoun 'they').   Becca is dedicated to the local disabled orphanage and takes the boys along when they're off school. We took them out  (they don't usually leave the sit e) in shifts in broken prams that broke my heart. They all love Becca and her enthusiasm. If you have any kids' clothes/toys you can spare, it's one of those really basic situations (that feels wrong in this day and age but it is what it is) - le...

Having been lucky to spend 3 weeks in the birthplace of human beings (Lucy being the oldest skull, named after the ‘in the Sky with Diamonds’ soundtrack of the archaeologists), the idea of ‘being’ has been hard to ignore – for better (in the moment, no treadmill, no stress) or worse (after all my years in this continent, Africa Time will always frustrate!). I know I will sound like a mid-life-crisis drifter but Ethiopia has been a useful reminder how much we / I’ve become fixated on ‘doing’. “How are you doing?”, “Doing the right thing”, “the kids are doing well at school”. Of course, ‘being’ isn’t great for progress, economic growth or even the sense of self-achievement we all need BUT we could probably all benefit from 'being' human a bit more often. That said, I’ve managed to ‘do’ a few hours a day of work from my bush office almost 6,000 miles from my client and 10,000 feet asl. It gives promise to my vision of a Write to Roam career.  The church in the cav...