Archive for the ‘Elsewhere’ Category
Er, 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 duty free, all kinds of cigarettes have all kinds of warnings on them. Marlboro is descriptive but somehow non-committal: Smoking Kills. Dunhills are rather considerate: Smoking seriously harms you and others around [...]
Offsetting 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 not entirely true; I imagine that from Kigali, where that’s not really an issue, but I read about this offsetting a lot.
I would like to offset my digital footprint. [...]
What 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 — I do still do all the world news headlines — but something about being reminded today that one-fifth of Pakistan is under water jarred me.
What have you read on Pakistan [...]
Read 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 others, but these are the prizes I’ve encountered in the pages of African in-flight magazines of late.
I’ve loved this moment, because while I’ve been doing some standard reporting work in the [...]
A powerful voice on “slum tourism”
If you haven’t read this op-ed in today’s NYT yet, it is an absolute must read. You might not agree with him, but Kennedy Odede, from Kibera, makes writes powerfully and beautifully about what it’s like to be looked at on a slum tour.
Why Enough will always get Congo “wrong” — and why we should maybe thank them for it
I’m going to go straight to it: Because advocacy is politics.
Advocacy is aspirational; it is rhetorical; and it is manipulative. And none of those things is prima facie bad (though there are better and worse ways to do them).
It seems to me we should no more expect advocates to offer a nuanced and complex [...]
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [