A chorus of truth-telling: On hegemony, Africa and the news
Forget h/t. An out and out handshake to @sonjasugira for a link to The Revolution Will Not Come By PowerPoint, a very unsentimental essay…
Read More
Quote of the day
From my ever-increasing Vault of Thus Far Unused Reportage A Burundian man described to me meeting some people from Belgium, who were befuddled by…
Read MoreOn transitions and translations
Yesterday, Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame was inaugurated for his second term. I listened to his speech on the radio, much of which was in…
Read MoreEr, well, one more (funny) thing.
I’m waiting at the airport, where there’s a fair amount of funny English. Here’s a few little gems to keep you smiling: In the…
Read MoreOffsetting my digital footprint
You can’t get on a plane or buy something significant any more without someone asking you to offset your carbon footprint. Well, that’s probably…
Read MoreWhat to read on Pakistan?
I’ve been distracted in and by my little pocket of Central Africa, and meanwhile, Pakistan is floating away. I’ve known this, of course —…
Read MoreRead this
Tis the season of African writing in English, or at least the prize season. The Caine prize. The African Playwriting Competition. There must be…
Read MoreOn normal — and whether it can mean turning that radio down?
I’ve been writing a lot about normalcy lately, it turns out. Somehow it emerged as a theme in my peacebuilding work, in particular in…
Read MoreThe most entertaining 22 minutes on American radio
After all that, I needed a change of pace (see, “Self-care to prevent self-pickling”), and a friend mentioned in an email this radio program,…
Read MoreKigali grenade attacks: Journalistic choices in three acts
Act I, in which I am not a good authority on anything that happened last night No confusion: I didn’t cover the grenade attacks….
Read More