After Africa

Call me. You don't love me!

 
I just came across this delicate piece of South African design in a shop in the centre of Copenhagen.

I just love this way of putting an (universal?) emotion straight: Waiting for the man to call.

The fact that he doesn't call me, makes me feel that he doesn't love me.

South Africa or Denmark. Same thing.

Why not put it in print and wear it for the world to see what I find hard to say?

Mobile phones - part of the technological development in Africa.

On Blogging motivation, Top Key Words, Freud, being stuck in Africa, and living less...

I'm preparing a training session for Danish development NGOs on blogging for this afternoon where part of it is to explain that before starting a blog you should decide on software, succes criteria and aims, plan strategically, and then currently monitor if it works out that way.

That is if you want readers, to keep them or to influence agendas or what not.

I realise that I never planned beforehand in terms of blogging, but rather learnt stuff along the way. Simply because I had little idea of what the potential was. In fact, no idea, when I see what came out of it in the years to come. 

But what's there to monitor if you have no readers? And what's there to blog if you're out of ideas and motivation?

In terms of blogging strategies, aims and plans are worthless without personal drive, passion and motivation to express.

I didn't succeed very well in regards of blogging in 2011. Mainly because I've been lacking personal drive, passion and motivation to express myself.

I did get into Twitter during the past year, which has been cool for getting familiar with the media and community. However, I find it hard to say what I really want in only 140 characters, and turn both fascinated and sceptical at the same time when big men like Paul Kagame and Ian Birrell squeeze Twitter's (and their own) potentials to their maximums.

While I lived in Tanzania some friends would ask: 'Don't you miss cultural stimulation? Like the news on TV, the Sunday paper, theatres and rock concerts they way they operate in Europe?'

I never really did. (There was always Q-Bar). I already knew then, but it just feels more evident now:

Africa gave high, daily doses of motivation to express myself, and I simply haven't found it here.

And to me, not to feel a daily urge to write and take photographs, that is in fact sort of like living less.

This fortunately explains the reason why I have taken time out of Denmark with the intention of spending it in Tanzania from June and onwards.

Can't wait.

PS. I needed an illustration for the training session on how you monitor key words for your blogging. The above illustrates my top key words for 2011. I'm sure Freud would have noted my key words, and said something about the unhealthy thing about being stuck in Africa while actually in Europe.

Haya...

 

Favourite photo of today: On the market in Athens

Photos from one of the few countries in Europe I've never been to before...

Blue Sky. Finally. And as long as it lasts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How I missed this colour! Full of contrast instead of this gray zone hell we've been cloaked in all winther.

Finally the sky turned blue in Denmark.  Crisp, clear blue. With clear markings of airoplanes leaving and coming.

I don't know where I will be, but God knows...

Notes from a workshop.

This one from a session working with the Southern Sudanese in northern Uganda back in 2006, where the question was something in the direction of 'Let's imagine the future!'

I learnt a lot from that.

Refugees and returnees think totally differently than, let's say, my parents who never spent more than maximum three days away from each other, still live in the place they were born, grew up, met, got engaged, married, took over my great-grandfather's farm in a rural outpost, had me, my brother and sister, sent us to school, and taught me that complaining over bicycling long-distance would take me nowhere...

Having gathered something close to 80.000 photos in the past 10 years, I still come across images of times and concepts, I wouldn't be able to remember so clearly if not photographed (and blogged). 

Living in the state of perfectly normal

Thursday the bus drivers in Copenhagen went on strike, leaving the Danes to their bicycles, taxis or walking.

Strikes like these cause relentless complaining, because it interferes with the Danes' watertight plans:

How dare some of the lowest paid people of our society practising their right to make us stop up and lead our attention to their work conditions? 

It provided me with a perfect excuse for slowing down after too much moving around.

At the same time I couldn't help thinking that I feel cut off from what is happening in the real world. After all, strike or not, I did eventually make my train, and the strike was over the day after.

Everything back to the state of perfectly normal.

It struck me again yesterday when I browsed the shelves of the newspaper kiosk at Århus Railway Station with the purpose of finding something to read - on real paper for a change.

Several front pages went back at me with 'revolution' in their headlines.

This is, for now, as close as I get.

Vote for my photo of Esther at KLM's Top 11 'Flying Blue Miles'. PLEASE!

This photo, of Esther from Kanaani Village in Njombe in Southern Tanzania, now made it to the best 11 photos in the competition '5000 Flying Blue Miles'.

The top 11 best rated pictures are now featured on Facebook here, and I REALLY wanna win the 5000 Flying Blue Miles, so PLEASE help me, and go vote by clicking on the ‘Like’-button of my picture. Note that it only works, if you 'like' the '5000 Flying Blue Miles' first.

(KLM will be giving away an additional 5000 Flying Blue Miles amongst the likes!)

The story of the photo comes here.

Thanx!

Definition of a returnee

Returnee (plural returnees), (r-tûrn)

'Someone who comes back or returns, especially to one's own country or region.'

'A person who sends something back.'

I knew I was something.

Source: Wikipedia and The Free Dictionary

Why Europe needs 4 seasons

I just read in the paper today, that 'finally the Danes had gotten used to the change of weather' - from gray, cold autumn to white, cold winter. Apparently, the Danes, according to the paper, are complaining less this week.

The sudden change of weather, and the arrival of heavy snow made the Danes ramble daily for the past week about all the possible ways this had now changed the content and structure of their everyday lives.

It struck me that Europe really needs four seasons which gradually and slow-slow bring us safely through the transition to the other side. 

Abrupt changes are not for Danes, because they really mess up everything we believe in.

Organisation;

Systems;

Infrastructure;

Plans;

Inetiaries;

Guarantees, promises and expectations;

...oh, the list is long.

The two things I actually love about the snow - and the abrupt change in our everyday lives - is that finally the Danes shut the windows and turn up the heat; the other, that it opens up for irregularities to occur.

Not a lot, so far, I must say.

The Danes do seem to have lots of plan Bs.