Who would have guessed that the good Dr. Kevin M. De Cock, director of H.I.V./AIDS for the World Health Organization, would have been so presciently named? A study in Kenya and Uganda by the National Institutes of Health has found evidence that circumcision might reduce a man’s risk of contracting HIV from heterosexual sex [...]
Jamhuri Day Party in Addis Ababa
Last night I attended the Jamhuri Day party at the Kenyan Embassy in Addis Ababa, an event which is on every diplomat’s and Ethiopian taxi driver’s calendar. There were at least five hundred people who attended and the food and the tusker were in full flow. So much so that I heard myself, [...]
Lamu Calling
Word is out, the ticket is in hand, the speedo packed and the aspirin counted, I am going to The Kwani Literary Festival in Lamu from December 21st to 28th. What could be better than surf and sand and books and people who love them?
Lamu from the tourist brochures is described as ‘hypnotically exotic’ [...]
Solidarity Journalism and Venezuela
Phil Gunson in opendemocracy.net on how the ‘political polarisation of Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution” in Venezuela is reproduced in the way the phenomenon is reported and assessed’. More on the defects of “solidarity journalism”.
The article kind of reminds me of the media reporting on Zimbabwe and Mugabe which often leaves me with the sense [...]
Charm kills art and I fear it has murdered in Addis Ababa
I was recently rewatching Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited when a friend of mine, who is on a one-year writing fellowship in London asked whether he should move house to Oxford so that he could commute to London for his classes. Oxford, which is a city that I enjoy and like, is ever associated in [...]