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?