Adventures in Onionism

I went to Kenya again and Zambia for the first time. It was a quick trip for work. I did four days of research transparency presentations (IPA, APHRC/CARTA, and MCA Zambia) and then went to Livingstone and Victoria Falls for fun. George's cousins Evening runs after the Kenya workshop featured zebras, wildebeest, and gazelles It sucks to be so close to where the coffee beans are grown and yet have to drink crap imported instant the entire trip. (And it's a real economic problem, since sub-Saharan Africa does little value-added processing of its natural resource exports.) A tad better than a skunky Tusker I had earlier in the trip Incredible Big Africa can do thunderclouds Met up with my friend Francis, who CDT folks may remember. Francis is visiting every county in Africa and climbing the highest peak in each. OK, here are some more Vic Falls pics. Monkey with a View I also took a 15-minute flight over the fall...

Strava has auto-created several segments for hilly runs that I've done in Kenya and Colorado. Of course I'm the record holder on all of the ones shown above, since I'm the only one who's ever run them wearing a GPS watch. I spent a few minutes looking around Kenya to see where other mzungu have gone running. Obviously there are a bunch of segments around Iten, and actually a pretty fast time up one of the routes on Mt. Kenya.

I spent the day stretching a bunch of the painting I acquired in Kenya. I just ordered the stretcher bars off frenchcanvas.com, bought a staple gun at the TrueValue down the street, and occasionally used the landlord's right angle square, though a tape measure to test both diagonals would do the trick. I suppose I had to live in East Africa to acquire the art as well. My friend EK is trying to build a library in Busia, Kenya, where she and I once lived at the same time. To raise the funds for the library, she's teamed with some artists she met in Kisumu. I finally met these artists earlier this year when I lived in Kakamega, and I really like the work of one of them. Seth Amollo. So I bought a few of his paintings.  Look for him at the Coca Cola stand by the Impala Park in Kisumu if you happen to be in the neighborhood. Seth Amollo         Fish Ladies (AL bought this one she visited) Women Drawing Water. Man, I should really just wait u...

I think I've posted this before, but this dude looks exactly like me. Shirtless, tats, baseball cap with sunglasses on top, jeans that are probably too baggy by annoying hip people standards, he's got the whole package. Oh, and how 'bout those election results? Pretty freaking amazing. Basically everything that was in the realm of possibility went the progressive way. Obama (1-3 Supreme Court justices), marriage equality 4 for 4, marijuana 2 for 3, improving the Senate (Warren!), and not only did California vote to raise taxes so as not to further pipe-bomb public schools, they elected a Democratic supermajority who will be able to raise taxes on their own. (I'm pretty sure--some of the assembly races were very close.) If you read the quotes from the party leaders, I think their humility is pretty reasonable--they'll lose it in the very next cycle if they overplay it, but still, an oil extraction tax would be great, and they'll be able to put a marriage...

I am back in Western Kenya for a week to help with the launch of our baseline survey. Looks like the Lake Vic hyacinth is really bad again. Venus Williams was on the same flight.

There's this (mediocre) NYT article about Iten, Kenya's running town: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/sports/iten-a-kenyan-town-made-for-marathoners.html?_r=1&src=recg And there's this doc about Bekoji, Ethiopia's analog: http://www.townofrunners.com/ [h/t Em] I found the Iten article's quotes about Kenyans running because they want money pretty interesting. It's exactly the opposite of why I run, but of course my parents weren't subsistence farmers, and I didn't go hungry during dry seasons as a kid. Nor was I a poor urban minority in the US playing basketball for a way out, if that's a fair comparison. I wonder if any of those circumstances make the sport more or less fun. Fun probably isn't the right word, because to be seriously good at a sport you have to work hard, which I haven't done for sports in quite a while, possibly ever. Maybe emotionally fulfilling or rewarding is the right word.

Here are some pictures from a great weekend at Tiwi. I was hoping for some long runs along the beach, but it was insanely hot and the sand was crazy sugary. Plus the beach is only 2 miles long, with bluffs at one end and a river impassable at high tide on the other. Oh and you can't go running back on the roads away from the beach because there are robbers all over the place (or so says all guidebooks, all taxi drivers, and my friends who saw a dude show up in only his boxers because he'd been robbed of everything else on the 3km walk from the paved road, and I was apparently 30 seconds away from it happening to me a few years ago, but I digress.) The beach itself is safe, as long as you keep an eye on your stuff. I was burgled by some vervet monkeys, who ripped a hole in my tent (dammit!) and stole a loaf of bread. So instead of running I played a bunch of ultimate frisbee and went swimming, and remembered that I'm pretty crummy at both. Other than our team t-shirts bein...

Here's my motorcycle plan for the weekend. Remember this post about Rory Stewart's book on his walk across Afghanistan from 5 years ago when I was in Kenya the first time? I thought not. But I read a interesting New Yorker article about him today. Surprise, he's now a politician and likes to compare himself to Alexander the Great. Sorry it's gated.

dude, over here. source of the Nile solid waste disposal George Mack Not really. I went to Kampala to visit a buddy. We went to Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, ate good Indian food, smoked a hookah, and bought soy milk and bourbon at a western-style supermarket. I also got a new puppy. I think I might name him George, but I'm open to suggestions.