168. Kenya 4: on the orphanage, and AIDS

Posted on 13 November, 2007 by | 9 comments

village-kids-kenya-2007-by-roadsofstone.jpgThe loss of one parent is traumatic enough, for any child. The loss of both must be almost unbearable.

At home, it happens rarely. But in Kenya, it happens a whole lot more.

The reasons ? Simple enough. There isn’t enough food to go round. There’s little medical care to speak of. Just about everyone has to battle with malaria, and malnutrition. Sickness and diarrhoea from unclean water dispatch thousands more, every year.

But that’s only the surface of the problem. Because there’s a huge medical problem in Africa. AIDS. It’s killing millions here.
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Posted in 2007, Africa, Kenya, travel, world

167. Paris – Ville de lumière

Posted on 2 November, 2007 by | 6 comments

paris-metro-by-alain-bachellier-at-flickrdotcom.jpgplay-ville-de-lumiere-by-gold.jpgVille de lumière
J’ai besoin de toi
Gold – September 1986

The City of Light lies at her knees. It’s eight o’clock on an autumn Friday, and the streets of Paris are grid-locked. Frozen.

Emerging up the ramp and out of the Earth at the Gare du Nord, there’s chaos all around us. Sporadic, half-hearted toots echo from the crossing streets, but it makes no difference.

nicolas-sarkozy.jpgAs a vision of Nicolas Sarkozy’s France, it’s dark and disappointing.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. A family celebration in Burgundy had called us here, and we’d tried to do it properly. Ecologically.

To take the train from London, bundle an exciting metro ride across the city to the Gare de Lyon and board a southbound TGV. To travel serenely, and greenly, across the evening and arrive in Dijon as sharp as mustard.

So much for plans and good intentions.

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Posted in 2007, France, life and times, music, Paris, travel, world

166. Kenya 3: Masai Mara – the last wilderness

Posted on 18 October, 2007 by | 8 comments

dawn-masai-mara-kenya-august-2007.jpg

Cool grey skies hang their high curtain above the savannah this morning. Scarcely any flash of colour. Just pale grassland, reaching as far as the eye can see, the horizon broken only by the gentle rise of distant hills and the lonely spread of a guardian acacia tree.

vulture-in-tree-at-sunrise-masai-mara-kenya.jpgWe rumble on, the tyres of the Land Rover clawing restlessly at the gravel. A shroud of pink is forming slowly in the east, where an invisible sun is lightening the underbelly of rippled cloud like some low energy lightbulb down a lonely corridor – weak and inept at first, then adding detail with every second.

Dawn on the Masai Mara – daybreak over one of the last wildernesses on Earth.
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Posted in 2007, Africa, environment, Kenya, summer, travel

165. From the desk of … Roads of Stone

Posted on 8 October, 2007 by | 16 comments

You can tell a lot about a writer just by looking at their desk. That was the idea behind a recent special photo supplement in The Guardian.

writers-desk-2007.jpgEvery desk was different – tidy or cluttered, modern or ancient, with different flavours of pen and paper, typewriter or computer.

So I thought I’d better take a look at mine. Pity I didn’t tidy it first.

This was once the dining room of the house, but the previous owners used it as an office, and it’s stayed that way today. The desk is just a cheap and simple slab of chipboard, but I like its simplicity and it’s got space for my longer legs. As well as a few pairs of running shoes, obviously.
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Posted in 2007, life and times

164. Kenya 2 – the dusk behind the beach

Posted on 20 September, 2007 by | 18 comments

the-shadow-of-the-sun-by-ryszard-kapuscinski.jpg‘… So often I had felt irritated with people who arrived here, lived in “little Europe” or “little America” (in luxury hotels), and departed, bragging later that they had been to Africa, a place in reality they had never seen.’
Ryszard Kapuscinski – The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life.

* * * * *

dhow-indian-ocean-beach-kenya.jpgThe sun is low in an African sky and my subcutaneous fat and I are running down the road.

The Indian Ocean lies behind me now, and with it the easy lifestyle of the North. The beach hotel. Comfort. Contentment. Ignorance.

And in front of me ? Adventure, uncertainty. Guilt. A touch of fear.
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Posted in 2007, Africa, Kenya, summer, travel, world

163. Film noir

Posted on 10 September, 2007 by | Leave a comment

film-noir-los-angeles.jpg‘Sure as hell that didn’t work, but I finished the sucker eventually,’ mumbled downbeat, unshavenly scruffy lawyer Joel F Bradstock, to no one in particular.

His nicotine-stained fingers trembled slightly now as he rolled another cigarette and pulled hard on the half-drained bottle of Bushmills beside him.stressed-midwest-lawyer.jpg

A minute went by as he let the long-awaited dawn rise up over the city. He could hear high heels in the stairwell now, so he hurriedly fumbled the friendly bottle amongst the chaotic slew of box files, safely out of Rita’s sight.

He’d have to conquer the single malt habit eventually, but Monday never was a good day to start that struggle.
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Posted in 2007, divided by an ocean, life and times