Blonde Ambition/Dynamic Diva

I am sitting under a hair dryer at noon on a Thursday waiting for my freshly shampooed and twisted locs to dry, and it is all this woman's fault!

My gallivantin' gal pal Kelly is back in town from New York, and I have to say, my social calendar is starting to run out of pages! This was the only time in the next few weeks that I could even pretend to eke out a few hours to get my hair "did," and I had to just go for it.

There's something about this woman's presence that brings all sorts of terrific energy into my often trying expat existence. For example, how many times in life do you get to drink a foul, fermented brew made of flour, honey and God knows what bovine glandular secretions, from a hollowed-out bull's horn, as we are doing in the picture at left?

One sip, and I was ready to puke my guts out, but get this....Kelly drank the whole thing! It's that "can do" attitude that makes her so much fun to hang out with, although I truly hope she won't further risk her immune system, or liver bile duct functioning, by sampling any other scary local brews.

Anyway, the thing about hangin' with Kelly is that the synergy is just amazing. We're both the same age (Okay, I'm a year older, dammit!), in the same industry, and with the same hopes and dreams for our career futures. We both find ourselves spending considerable amounts of time on the African continent, yet if you'd told us it would happen 20 years ago, we'd have probably laughed it off. We both have a powerful drive to make a difference in this industry, to do more than just clock in and clock out.

And we both sense an incredible amount of energy and possibility in the future of African media. Now, how a gal from Taylor, Texas and a another gal from Cairo, Illinois managed to wind up thinking they could actually be a part of that energy, half way around the world....well, that's the rest of the story. And it's a pretty exciting one, come to think of it.

But time will tell. In the meantime, look out Kenya: You are witnessing the rise of "Blonde Ambition and the Dynamic Diva." Together, we far exceed the legal limit of fun.