American Beauty

Dear GOD, how I wish Miss Eloise and Miss Winky were alive to see this day.

Sasha, Slam Dunkin'!

I just got an email from my brother-in-law Ron, containing some gorgeous photos of President and Mrs. Obama, and their beautiful young daughters. It reminded me of something I meant to mention earlier this week.

It was a news brief I'd read about The First Couple attending their first school activity outing, to watch one of their girls play basketball. Naturally, I assumed it referred to Malia.

At 10, she is a tall, reed-thin beauty who I could easily see giving her dad a run for his money on a basketball court. She's at the age where she'll probably start trying out for the middle school girls' basketball team, and I figured this was maybe one of those events.

So when I finally saw a longer story about the outing, at first I thought it HAD to contain an error. It said the Obamas had gone to see 7-year-old Sasha play b-ball.

But then I remembered the supremely attitudinal photo-op with Dick Cheney, and quickly envisioned Sasha drivin' down the lane to the hoop. That is one baaaad baby girl....

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This...

All too often, there are days in Nairobi when this is the only thing that makes even the slightest bit of sense.

'Nuff said.

"Smoke Gets in Your Eye-yi-YI....."

I am starting to detect a pattern here....

This was the view from the front of the Nation Centre this morning. About two blocks in the other direction from the site where a raging inferno destroyed a grocery store and killed 28 people, there was another fire overnight.

Official word is that arson was involved, but it's anybody's guess at this point. All I really know is that I probably better start investing in some asbestos bloomers.

A Ray of Hope....

Remember the other day, when I wrote about being so scattered in recent weeks as I try to figure out whether my being here is making any difference??

It's been a seriously lingering malaise lately, as I make suggestions in news meetings, and maybe one gets followed up on and the rest fall flat. Or I try to play cheerleader and rally some reporter to pursue a story, but then nothing happens. You begin to feel like a voice in an echo chamber, only in this setting that feeling is aggravated by another impenetrable layer of "outsiderness."

Even though I'm feeling a lot more comfortable after 8 months here, I'm still "The American." (Or the loudmouthed American, or the American strumpet who needs to remember her place, or some variation of said concept, I'm sure.) Oh, I stopped feeling sorry for myself a long time ago, but it doesn't ease the sense of being on the periphery of things.

In fact, I had just about concluded that my sphere of influence is shrinking, and maybe there's not much left to be accomplished in this particular newsroom. So yesterday afternoon, when the new managing editor asked me to edit a story about promising new gene therapy related to AIDS research, I expected it to wind up eviscerated and buried deep inside the paper, or on the back page...just like always.

Well, it was like Christmas came early this morning when I saw it on today's front page, AND saw that even more context and background information had been added! And I didn't even get bummed when I got an email from a colleague complaining that the story hadn't been featured as the lead on the front page, as opposed to the usual corruption saga.

As I told her, it's a step in the right direction. We all just have to keep on pushing, and maybe next time, health news will lead the paper.

Oh, yeah, THIS is why I came over here!!!!!!

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/534184/-/u2hou4/-/index.html

"I'm Just Sayin', Dawg..." Part 3

So I've been following the New York Post cartoon controversy whenever I get a chance over here. Granted, by the time I viewed it, I'd already read a couple dozen news items about how offended and upset people were over the image of a policeman shooting a crazed chimp and suggesting that said chimp had written the trillion dollar budget rescue legislation.

When I finally saw the drawing, I could understand where they were coming from. America's racial legacy is like a noose whose knot is still loosening. Anybody who thinks it's been fully removed because of President Obama's election
is either hopelessly naive or downright stupid.

But a part of me stopped just short of jumping into the breech with the rest of the howling protestors. A part of me couldn't help thinking, "What if that cartoonist wasn't a racist a**hole advocating violence against our President? What if he's just a hamfisted hack who tried and failed to shoehorn two wildly unrelated news events into the same panel???"

"I'm just sayin', dawg..."

"And the Award Goes To......"

Hands down, the prize for the most beautiful sight on Zanzibar would be the throngs of Muslim girls carrying backpacks and books on their way to and from school.

Watching them laugh and play, I couldn't help thinking that just 10 or 20 years ago, this would not be happening. It was a truly awesome sight.