Spent a very entertaining morning at the Chawama Youth Project who have just openend their community recording studio in Chawama Compound (township) in Lusaka..

Check some Flickr pics, but also the following Blip.tv videos! :)

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Chita staff part II
so i just had a drink at the bar at Chita, and when i started to walk back to my room to do work and prepare for tomorrow's workshop, one of the girls who serves food linked into my arm and started walking with me to my room.
during previous trips she used to work the breakfast shift, starting my day with friendly joyful chatter, recounting her struggles with further education in a chirpy manner and updating me on the latest gossip of Chita staff and Chita management. The first day that i came back this time, she slid up to me and told me in a conspiratorial voice that she had to tell me something.. aah.. but not now, eyes shining and a secretive smile on her face.
I had forgotten until she walked me to my room, waited for me to open the door and came in with me. 'I'm pregnant', she said. With a smile on her face, averting her eyes and not saying much else for a bit. I noticed I wasn't sure how to react. A stream of questions started racing through my head - Was she happy? Was it planned? How óld is she anyway? Was she going to ask me for money? Would she still be able to work? Would I give her money, and if so how much? Was I going to give some structurally, put aside some every month to help out? How did I feel about her going to ask me for money, we had always been so friendly, girly confidantes, open and sincere, how was this changing how I felt towards her? If I gave her money, what would happen with the other staff who I have been friendly with over the years, and who have sick/illiterate/old dependants or babies and equally as miserly salaries?
So I started asking her some of them.
- Wow, that really is a big bit of news, uhm, was it planned?
- No, no. It just happened... so what can you do.. keep it.
- How far along are you?
- Well the doctors they say that the date is end of June, but I don't know.
- What date is the end of June?
- When the baby is coming!
I looked at her belly through the thick winter jacket and saw a small protrusion, but she definetely didn't look 8 months pregnant..
- Are you sure?
- (laughing). Ha, that's what I said! But you know the doctors, they started saying, you don't believe us? we are professionals! you think you know better than us? You know what doctors are like, they can Scream at you, although the nurses are worse..
- so.. are you happy?
- (silence) guess so (smile)
- and.. what about the father?
- yea, he's around. (silence). but I'm not going to get married..
- No?
- No. I don't want to. Definetly don't want to. Maybe in two or three years, but not now.
- And what does the family say?
- Ah, they didn't say anything..
- No?
- No. My parents are no longer alive. I grew up with my sisters. Now I live with my auntie. She fell sick and had no one to take care of her, so I came down to Lusaka to care for her.
- So do you have people to help you? To show you what to do?
- yea, but i don't want that. It's my baby, so I don't want people telling me You must do this and that..
- and are you still going to be able to work here?
- hmm yea, but after four months or so.
- who is going to take care of the baby?
- i dont know, I'll hire someone, a girl, and then when i come home from work I will take care of her. Anyway, I want to go back to school. You remember last time you were here, I was at school and finished first level. I passed, so know I want to go to second level.
- that's great. so you'll be working, going to school ánd have a baby?
- (smile) yea, in fact, people keep telling me that I should stay with the baby all the time, but I don't want to!
- so, how old are you now?
- ... twenty-two (smile), and in fact, the guy keeps saying we should get married, but i don't want to.
- why not?
- ah, me - i don't trust men.
- no?
- no. and i don't want to get married because there will be a baby. Maybe two or three years after, but not now. Then when there will be trouble, we will say, ah we only got married because of the baby, and i don't want that. marriage.. no, not yet. i see so much trouble.. i don't want to be dependant on a man. me i want to be independant, it's my baby, and i want to care for it and make the decisions.
- do you know if it's a boy or a girl?
- no, but i think its a boy.
- how do you know?
- (smile) i don't know, i just think so. if it's a boy, the boy is going to give him the name. if it's a girl, I will give her the name. I'm still looking for names, I don't want anything ordinary, I want something special. I've got three names now, but I'm still looking. And then i want to give her a local name too, a name from my tribe, people keep saying I should give her a local name.. but i will only give it as an initial! (smile)
- is there a naming ceremony? I mean traditionally, like if she is born on a certain day she has to have a certain name? Which tribe are you?
- Lozi. and about tradition, me I don't know. I don't know what they do in the village. Me - I've never been in the village.

We went on for a bit, and she never asked me for money...

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees

[...]

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

from Every Day You Play, by Pablo Neruda

and when i'm at the lodge, and not engaged in conversation at the bar..

i find myself meandering through cyberspace again, moving ever further away from the open Word document in my task bar, and discovering new, to me, unknown worlds, of lyrics, of poetry, of mythology and mystical 'heresy'.

i'm not sure whether it is my state of mind or heart, but the random function on my latop media player seems to be churning out not-so random tunes.. a few songs it keeps throwing at me, and, as they are pleasant and pull at my at-the-moment-not-so-joyful heartstrings, I allow myself to indulge, and even dream up meaning in the lyrics or associations that the songs put forward.

some examples:
from the earthly John Legend with his 'I don't trust myself with loving you' (thanks Haim for sending me that and sensing some possibility for identification..)

Hold on to whatever you find baby
Hold on to whatever will get you through
Hold on to whatever you find baby
I don't trust myself with loving you

I will beg my way into your garden
I will break my way out when it rains
Just to get back to the place where I started
So I can watch you back all over again

..to repeatedly pushing a more ethereal Branford Marsalis 'Reika's Loss' off an album called 'Eternal'. Marsalis himself apparently said that this collection of ballads 'is an expression of emotion... In particular it's about the expression of melancholy. [...] All of the songs reflect the idea that there is beauty in sadness" and the reviewer goes on to say "Eternal is the perfect compliment for pensive moods. An excellent soundtrack when you are musingly thoughtful and a welcomed friend when you find your spirits depressed. I recommend it for rainy day afternoons of contemplation when you want to shut out the outside and immerse yourself inward."
How does my media player know? I think i may be spending just a little too much time with my laptop.

Another time it throws songs at me that i don't even know are on there, where the sound and melody intrigues me and triggers a search for further meaning. So it was with Nick Cave's 'Nature Boy'. Variations on:

And she moves among the flowers
And she floats upon the smoke
She moves among the shadows
She moves me with just one little look
She moves among the sparrows
She floats upon the breeze
She moves among the flowers
And she moves right up close to me

are lovely enough, as is:

Years passed by, we were walking by the sea
Half delerious
You smiled at me and said, Babe
I think this thing is getting kind of serious
You pointed at something and said
Have you ever seen such a beautiful thing?
It was then that I broke down
It was then that you lifted me up again

but what got me investigating new lands was the following:

Later on we smoked a pipe that struck me dumb
And made it impossible to speak
As you closed in, in slow motion,
Quoting Sappho, in the original Greek

Who was Sappho??
So i looked up Sappho, and was mesmerized by the fragments of her poetry that remain to the world, sometimes just fragments, just two or three words here and there, but such a rich history of myth and lore, of Love and suffering, of passion and fire, with poets like Lord Byron, Ezra Pound, Baudelaire and others enthralled by her being and her words. how is it that i was never consciously aware of her until tonight, and came to her so indirectly?

Then through reading various references for Sappho i stumbled upon a French mystic, Marguerite Porete, who was burned at the stake in Paris in 1310, for a work of Christian spirituality dealing with the workings of Divine Love..
here we go again i thought. What's been getting me in this pensive melancholy mood is exactly that - Divine Love, and wordy discussions and misunderstandings on the same. Moving from Eros or sexual love to Divine Love, whatever that may be, however it may feel, and if ever it is possible between lovers infected with the supremacy of erotic love in our times. Although Porete's writings and beliefs have a distinct Christian focus on God's love (as appropriate to the times she lived in, exploring in poetry and prose the seven stages of 'annihilation' the Soul goes through on its path to Oneness with God through Love), it nevertheless resonates with Barry Long's conviction that love (and love-making) between man and woman, the divine way, leads to spiritual union which is the manifestation of God/Love on earth.
Uncanny timing.

This is where I am now in my journey, sailing from song lyric to ancient poetry to medieval christian mystical texts, and i am amazed at what i encounter, how it all resonates, and how little time i take to let myself flow to distant themes, words and writers in my 'normal' life. Yes, it feeds my melancholy, but it also feeds the fire. The fire of my imagination, the fire of my longing for knowledge and inspiration, my desire to understand and practice what is beautiful and good, and to grow through it.
But yes, I agree, the danger is that i get too caught up in words, in the realms of my head and imagination, that my spirit wants to soar, and that my unrealistic expectations will end up chaining me to the ground.

Enough for now. I really should turn off my media player.
A song just came on that goes 'Gravity is working against me, And gravity wants to bring me down ... Just keep me where the light is, Just keep us where the light is.'

Where is the light?

Some first impression from the days spent here..
The conversations on the first night back brought me back to what life is like in Zambia. Snippets of those conversations, usually with Prince behind the bar at the lodge, other underpaid but lovely lodge staff, the regulars imbimbing their double whiskeys, and the taxi drivers, make a big impact on me when i hear whats happing in normal (read: non ICT4D) Zambian life, but then other conversations and work take over and the nuggets of reality fade from my focus.

Learning to read
Prince for example, the young barman who has stuck it out at Chita Lodge longest of all, who has turned into a friend over the years, sharing stories and questions, discussing life in 'the West' vs life in Zambia, romance, books and family matters, was telling me about his struggles in sustaining not only himself and his little daughter, but also his brother and his brother's wife who he has been putting up at his house. We were talking about his daughter who seems to be lagging behind in school. With Prince being caught up at Chita all day and night for work (under inhumane working hours and inhumane salary conditions), and the mother of the child no longer being in the picture, there hasnt been anybody to help his daughter with doing her homework and studying after school.
'What about your brother's wife?'
No, his brother's wife is illiterate, she doesnt know how to read or write. She has recently come from 'the village' to the city, and doesnt have any means of income. In the city if you can't read or write, there is little you can do. You cannot even read the signs all around you, the names of stores, the paper, you name it.
'Since your daughter is in grade 1, wouldn't it be a good opportunity for your brother's sister to learn how to read and write along with your daughter? tracing the letters, doing the excercises..'
No, she doesnt seem to want to learn. Plus, with the hierarchy here in Zambia, elders dont want to be seen as knowing less than the youngsters. Loss of face. In fact, she wants to go back to the village, she doesn't like it in the city, she doesn't do anything.
'Why doesn't she go?'
My brother doesn't want to. He feels that life happens in Lusaka, not in the village.
'What does you brother do?'
Nothing. He drinks and watches TV. He can't get a job, doesn't even try. Stays out and doesn't come home at night, and drinks a lot'
'How does he pay for it?'
I don't know. In fact, just yesterday i got really angry with him. He stays in my house, he and his wife are my dependants, and he does nothing. But he doesn't want to go back to the village.

of Poison & Gangrene
did I hear of Andrew's sister dying? Yes, Yese told me on the phone. He also told me that she died under strange circumstances..
Yes, her liver and her kidney apparently stopped at the same time, she was dead within 4 days.. Now how does that happen? it can't be a natural death, still nobody knows. People say she was poisoned, i never trusted that husband of hers..
You serious? Would her husband really do that?
You know men here in Zambia.. she was doing quite well professionally, was very independent, went her own way most of the time. And he wasn't doing very well, jealousy and consuming too much..
I'm so sorry for Andrew.. it must be hard..
Yea, but then life is like that, a few weeks, months and you forget. Well, you don't forget, but..
Sas, you were hear when my mom passed away right?
Yes, i heard.
Well, she died and i was sad, but after a few weeks, well maybe four months, i don't think about it. Only in the beginning did she come to mind, mom - oh no, mom is no more. she's gone.
How did she die Prince? I've never known..
Ah you know.. we don't quite know. what is it called? Gangrene or something? I think thats what it was, i'm not a doctor.
Gangrene? Like the infection in the feet spreading up through the blood?
Yes, we tried to get her treatment, but the doctors didn't do anything. I took her to see a few doctors, but nothing was done (knowing Prince's miserly salary, this must have cost him fortunes).
One day she was feeling really bad, so i put her in a car to take her to UTH (University Teaching Hospital), i knew we had to hurry, i could feel it. On the way there I looked back and there she was in the backseat, dead. Her eyes just staring and her head leaning against the side window (he imitates the position of his dead mother against the taxi window on the back seat).

[Comment from other guy sitting next to me, who has been listening in on the conversation] yea, gangrene, and what's that other one that people are suffering from more these times.. gout? Yea gout, Zambians eat too much red meat.. ha ha..

Prince and other guy laugh about Zambians and their love for eating meat, I am silenced by the reality of these diseases, and the incessant unnecessary deaths that permeate life here.

Sort of Books, Scandinavian Shortstories and My Friend Tom*

Today i've been travelling without moving. I haven't moved a limb, apart from my fingers. And the images flooding my mind-scape.
Images of the simple scandinavian country side, remote islands dotted in between the Swedish, Finnish and Baltic mainlands, simple lives, removed from the clutter of daily distractions. Tales of two women friends, opposites but complementary, living, working, talking and sharing. Written in beautiful simplicity, prose leaving out the unnecessary clutter and giving us readers direct access to lives lived and lives shared.
For those of you that love short stories, or those of you that want to be transported, read a few chapters of the following collection of short stories that together make up a novel. Sometimes i wish i could write like that, more times i wish i could live like that.


While you are on the premises of Sort of Books, have a peek at Tom's latest work to be published. Tom Bullough, talented young writer, part-time recluse in the Welsh hills, of college days shared history, of Whirlygig-, dub-in-halls-, Staines house-, and Babe&Babe-associations to my blotchy memory of those distant times, fellow appreciator of Southern Africa and African music, i can't wait to receive my signed copy of The Claude Glass, orderd from my Zambian hotel bed just a few moments ago. Meandering through his website, he doesnt appear to have changed a bit.

I still have an image of the river Wye on my computer which i downloaded after receiving an email from him years ago by now. His description and admiration inspired such curiosity for this wonderous landscape, i couldnt resist to match his words with an image. Plant a small cottage anywhere in the image to the right, imagine a paraphene lamp, and a writer immersed in secluded ceative work, floating down the river in warm weather for relaxtion, and ploughing through fields covered in meters-high white snow, climbing over frozen wooden gates to reach the cottage from the far-away road in winter.
That's how i've been storing him in my memory and imagination.

ilan, maybe he is someone to consult on the Art of Publishing? Presuming that publishing from the Welsh countryside bears any resemblence to publishing in the Melbournian metropole?

*inspired by Ant's repeated mentioning of Her Friend Mark, as if 'Mark' alone and her stories of their friendly adventures did not suffice in identifying the person in question

Cleaned up for public display.
I looked at those around me,
And when they looked at me,
I let them see my soul that day.

Are you scared of it?
Do you wish that it would stop?
Does it bother you
when you hear your spirit talk?

(neil young)

that little place between a smile and a tear

tears slowly filled my eyes for the beauty of the sound and the atmosphere created, a smile stretched increasingly further across my mouth, creeped up my face and joined the tears in my eyes. what exactly happened inside, how the music and the artist touched my heart and soul, is not describable. i doubt i can even tell how it really has touched me.


Toots, exuding love, from the moment he came on stage, refusing to speak through the microphone and honouring the audience by simply beginning to play. after a few tracks, which had been met by emotive and wonderous silence, when he did chose to speak, his voice was weak and his breathing sounded difficult. Yet when blowing into his harmonica, his 'whistle', there was no sign of weakness, of a long life lived, no 85-year old Toots who told us that he started the year depressed and somber, and now would not cease to bubble with charming anecdotes, stories, jokes, high-fives and hand-kisses sent to his adoring band members and the audience.

The Amsterdam city backdrop, with its soulful orange lights lighting up rainy streets and old houses, completed the feeling of participating in a movie soundtrack - i could vividly imagine romance seeping through the dark and deserted streets, the night-owl couple stealing through the cobblestone streets, stealing past canals and over small bridges, soaked by the incessant raindrops and warmed by eachother's loving touch and glances. My mind would wander and create moviescapes, local and familiar and heartwarming, to Toots' soundscapes.

I have been to few concerts that have evoked such emotive dreaming, such pangs of the heart by pure and nostalgic sounds, such adoring appreciation for an artist who, at 85 years of age, can blow into his 'whistle' and transport you, heart and mind, to such a special place, between a smile and a tear.

On Sailing through Tides, Ebb as well as Flow

in the midst of trying to find my way in these man/woman relationship issues, the below seems to address a few snags obstructing my truthful path. It sounds so obvious, I've been reading and underwriting such a vision of relationship for years - in theory.
In practice, I stumble.
By putting it here, and reading and re-reading, I hope to stumble less and stand stronger.

The Flow of intimacy i something i continously seek
Why do i need its nourishment so?
Why, when it temporarily ebbs away,
do i lack faith and allow doubt to reign?

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh 1906 - 2001

Words and Pictures bring forgotten Zambian grandmothers to Ireland
by Sir G

Gareth, of A-Land-Just-Short-of-the-Sun fame, has had his words and photographs published in the Irish Times weekend Magazine, so so deservedly so.
Congratulations Gareth, may the good work done by the project recive bountiful goodwill and support through readers' responding to your words and pictures.
Don't ever stop.

New York's Not My Home

Well things were spinnin' round me
And all my thoughts were cloudy
And I had begun to doubt all the things that were me

Been in so many places
You know I've run so many races
And looked into the empty faces of the people of the night
And something is just not right, 'cause I know
That I gotta get out of here
I'm so alone
Don't you know that I gotta get out of here
'Cause New York's not my home

Though all the streets are crowded
There's somethin' strange about it
I Lived there bout a year and I never once felt at home

I thought I'd make the big time
I learned a lot of lessons awful quick
And now I'm tellin' you
That they were not the nice kind
And it's been so long since I have felt fine, that's the reason
That I gotta get out of here
I'm so alone
Don't you know that I gotta get out of here
'Cause New York's not my home

-Jim Croce

(for all my good friends who made New York their home, have since left, or are still waiting to leave.. thanks for all the good times there, and remember to leave when the time is right)

on guitars, memories and LPs for 1 euro..

I hadn't put the cd on for a while, I have never owned it, and I always associated it with long car rides in my dad's car. Having a new love in my life is making me want to look back over my shoulder, identify what inspired me and share things that made me dream and feel alive. And that's what brought him back.

Recently i saw the cd in the stack of many others and put it on, half embarrassed to look at my-new-love-in-my-life, fearing the possible reaction to my exposé of being moved by sometimes-soppy songs, played by men-with-guitars, a lot of Americana, a little bluegrass, and a lot of longing. Yet upon hearing some of the songs again, i was yet again moved by his straight forward tell-it-like-it-is lyrics, his humanity and honesty, and humour.
A good dose of Jim, the right dosage to trigger yearning for another long roadtrip, enough to trigger longing for far-away friends and past cross-continent adventures, memories of the days of lying in bed and listening to lyrics, and sharing our emotional appreciation of sweetness and nostalgia through looks and smiles and silences.

While far away at a conference recently, i downloaded some of the songs from that distant past, and sent one to my love-in-my-life as a show of affection - across the atlantic, across timezones, hoping to be connected by timeless music.

Upon returning to Holland, I found myself floating through streets filled with small children with faces painted orange, marching bands that looked like they came straight out of a Tolkien fantasy, drinking rosé and and smiling back at the sun, sitting on a tricycle with the warm spring air enveloping me and more rosé in my veins, when suddenly my love-in-my-life appeared, yet again a couple more LPs richer, picked out of all the junk being sold to anyone who will stop to have a look - one LP of which was the man with the guitar, and the music in his blood. Jim Croce.

And such is life, for years you don't hear a particular music, you forget - the music and your own memories, dreams and longings. Fast forward, and you have your love-in-your-life pop around the corner with a big drunken smile on his face and a 1 Euro LP of your history in his hand.

Jim Croce - find, listen, open your mind, and let yourself be rolled along, rolling down the highway, so life won't pass you by.

I recommend to start with: I Got a Name, New York is Not My Home, I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song, Time in a Bottle, Operator, and Which Way are You Going? for some anti-war and pro-reason sentiment, as relevant today as in Vietnam-day methinks..

Why dó the good ones always have to die young?

Access 2 Knowledge

I was lucky enough to be invited back to speak at the Yale Law School's Access 2 Knwoledge conference in April this year. A bit of hectic travelling, flying in and out of the States just for this conference, after all was worthwhile.
With last year's post-conference stop-over stint flooding my memory cells, this year was basically a weekend of sitting in grand Yale auditoria, listening in on policy panels ranging from issues as diverse as new internationalised domain names (I.D.N.) for teh internet, to Brazil's flourishing homegrown music and media market, which has nothing at all to do with large record companies, big promo budgets or copyright laws.

Surrounded by spiffy Apple iBooks, and ubiquitous wifi, at times I wondered whether i was the only one listening, I mean *really* listening. All non-speakers appeared so caught up with simultaneous parallel activities such as checking and answering emails, surfing the net, sending immediate contact and follow-up emails to interesting speakers - it made me wonder what price is paid in terms of attention and participatory discussion after such panels for always-on access to internet and personal mobile computing technology.



It was good to be back in an academic environment once again, exposed to policy makers, researchers and practitioners from a dazzling diversity of disciplines, mainly joined by a common interest in enabling access to information to realise basic human rights as agreed to in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I will be posting more on this on the work blog, so won't get into too much detail here.
I did find that many of the discussions seemed rather far removed from the daily work that educators or health care workers do in 3/4 of the world, and that policy making that is currently going on at WIPO could use a larger injection of real world needs.
Thank goodness the wavemakers from Yale's Information Society Project think the same :) let's how we can bring this new social movement home.

So that's a little bit of what I've been up to of late, for those that may be wondering..
There is more to come, I'm home for a good two weeks, some of that time really should be spent blogging..