Archive for the ‘Rwanda’ Category
On 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 English. As he closed, he said to Rwandans, “My fellow citizens…” It caught my ear because I’d been talking to a friend whose daughter just changed schools. Last year, her daughter [...]
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 [...]
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. I’m [...]
On 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 this post about Sierra Leone’s progress since its own terrible war. And one thing I keep stressing to friends and family is how normal Kigali was the night of the grenade [...]
Kigali 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. Last night, I posted links to the work of a bunch of journalists who did — Hez Holland and David Kezio-Musoke/Reuters; Josh Kron/CNN International (last night, though oft with the NYT); [...]
Oops, sorry for the link damage
If you happen to find the site, but you came here via 404 not found or whatever, sorry for the disappeared post. I was trying to do an edit/update, too fast, and I trashed the post instead of updating. Which would have been fine, except the teeny tiny print in the back end of WordPress [...]
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [