The Sex Lives of Cannibals

While I have been eagerly awaiting reading the Kite Runners my parent’s also brought over a book called the Sex Lives of Cannibals documenting the author’s experience living in Kiribati “possibly the worst place on earth” a tiny nation sitting periously atop a coral atoll in the middle of the swealtering Equatorial pacific. I personally have found this travelogue ridicolously funny. It may be due to the fact that I can relate to some of his experiences having spent many years visiting and living in developing nations. Regardless, I definetly recommend picking up a copy. It’ll make you never take for granted having clean water or a cold beer ever again.

Here’s is a particularly biting excerpt from this book by Maarten Trost…

It is entirely possible that somehwere on planet Earth there exists food more unpalatable than that found in Kiribati. I accept this possibility like I accept the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. I have never encountered it. I cannot imagine it. I simply accept that there is a statistical probability of its existence. An eensie-weensie tiny little probablity.

Making the switch
After long debating this for a long time, I have made to the decision to store and organize all of my email. The tipping point has come with the fact that I have just had to rebuild my labtop for the third time in the past 4 months. And who did I trust to handle the task, Google’s Gmail with its superior interface and 2.5 gb (and growing of free storage) makes it hard to beat. So anyways, all of my 5+ email accounts now gets forwarded to one spot where I can organize and store for posterity’s sake. If you need a gmail invite let me know. I have 46 left.

Dimanche a Bamako
I just wanted to reiterate how GOOD this album is. I have been listening to it for the past three weeks straight AND I still get excited to hear it AND I have no desire to listen to anything else. Not bad for a blind couple from Mali.

Meeting the President

Last week I had the chance to attend the AGOA conference held in Dakar this year. During the conference, President Wade toured some of the exhibits including where I was working. I even got to show him my work so far on Leuk. What was really kind of neat was one he saw that Leuk he yelled at the national tv to make sure they take a picture of my computer screen since it was in Wolof and thus was “really important”.

My project also got covered in this recent article from the department of state.

Galle Nanondiral
One of the reasons I think I decided to pursue a career in development stems from the pride in the work my father started in Senegal nearly 20 years ago. My father helped establish Galle Nanondiral “the House of Mutual Understanding” in Yeumbel a poor suburb of Dakar. In an area devoid of basic resources we take for granted, Galle Nanondiral has become an extremely important center providing community members access to literacy courses, sports (basketball, ping-pong, fooseball, etc), a computer lab and perhaps most importantly a library. In an area where having your own school books is almost an unthinkable luxury, students old and young come to the the center and wait in long lines to study and get ahead. So popular is the center has been known to get over 700 unique visitors on a given day.

What I am perhaps more impressed by is that fact that the center has flourished despite my father leaving. My father and others in his organization believed in empowering Senegalese with the task of developing and managing the center. The center is now run by a Senegalese co-director and Senegalese staff. While developing local capacity is now a popular trend in development, I think it’s notable the center started doing it 20 years ago.

My parent’s with some of Galle Nanondiral’s Staff

The court where future NBA hopefulMamadou Diene a former school drop-out found basketball and the academic support to now attend Baylor University.

Mamadou Diene: From Yeumbeul to Baylor University Freshman big-man from Senegal… Seven-footer with raw talent and high future potential… Gifted athlete will need to adapt to American game… Coaches plan to utilize shot-blocking ability and inside presence off the bench… Rated top NBA prospect in Africa and sixth-best international prospect in world by NBAdraft.net… Head Coach Scott Drew’s first signee at Baylor. HIGH SCHOOL: Would rank among top 40 high school players nationally if a U.S. player, according to HoopScoop… Top player at Babacar Sy Basketball Camp in summer of 2003.

The Library

Think these don’t get read?

An early innovation: egg cartons on the roof to dampen sound

My father with Asseck and old friend and fellow carpenter

Life at DFI

DFI’s Current Volunteers

Working with these two is certainly a chore

Team Leuk

Goat park - Photo by Raffaele Moles

No I’m not dead
I apologize for not posting in nearly two weeks. A lot has been going on and I have been extremely focused on getting the initial version of Leuk going. The Leuk project is going extremely well and I hope to have the initial version of the software up this weekend. From a programming standpoint, I couldn’t be happier in how it turned out eventhough I have a lot more work to do. The real tests starts next week when real merchants start using it. Their will be a lot more to come on this in the future.

The British
One of the events that occured since my last post was the horrible tragedy in London. Thank god, a number of my close friends who work in London are ok. I wish we all could handle adversity with the grace of the British. You’d be hard pressed to find a tougher people that’s for sure. Proof of point, the day after the bombing the British Embassy opened up their pub (yes they have a pub at their embassy!) to strangers off the street like me to share a couple pints with the British Ambassador. All this while the US embassy was in a complete lockdown.

Live8
Live8 was certainly enjoyable to watch and the G8’s recent news to signficantly increase aid and hopefully move closer to reducing farm subsidies is definetly encouraging. I found it ironic that the concerts where unavailable on Senegalese TV despite the fact that Senegal is one of the countries be targeted for complete debt relief. Either they couldn’t afford the broadcast or someone figured it wasn’t Live 8’s target audience. Luckily, I was able to watch Yousou steal the show in his duet with Dido.

AGOA Conference
Next week, I will be helping to represent DFI at the AGOA Conference (think NAFTA for Africa) in Dakar. it should be quite an interesting experience as economic ministers from all across Africa will be there along with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Celebrating the 4th Senegalese style with two kilos of Djibi

I’m hooked

Amadou and Mariam from Mali just came out with this album with 5 guest tracks from producer Manu Chao. This is truly what the best of world fusion music sounds like. If I had to recommend any album in the last 3 months this would definetly be it.

Cultural insentive maybe? funny yes

Does anyone find it funny, the white guy has a striking resemblence to GW?

I finally got around to creating ThunderBlog.org where I’m trying to capture the essence of the T-bird “Mystique” by making it for T-Birds around the world to share their blog.

Thunderblog.org will serve both as a blog directory and an aggregated collective blog of post summaries which will be automatically created through RSS feeds. Right now my site is the only one listed so its really boring.

If you are a T-Bird with a blog please check out the ThunderBlog about page and follow the instructions to register.