Year: 2007

immer weitermachen

Ich habe dieser Tage eine alte Aufzeichnung einer Lesung von Walter Kempowski im Radio gehört, der ja vor kurzem nach langer Krankheit verstorben ist.

Ebenso wie Kemposwki, verstarb dieses Jahr auch mein Vater im Januar, kurze Zeit später der von mir sehr geschätzte Journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski – und jetzt vor kurzem leider auch Hans Otte, der hier in Bremen lange Jahre beim Sender Radio Bremen tätig war, und (nicht nur) dort ganz maßgeblich für ein neues Klangerlebnis gesorgt hatte.

Trotz dieser traurigen Botschaften war 2007 für mich aber auch ein sehr erfolgreiches Jahr, in dem ich viele neue interessante Menschen kennengelernt habe und jetzt einer Tätigkeit nachgehe, die meinem Profil weitgehend entspricht und den Freiraum bietet, den ich mir immer gewünscht habe.

Insofern bin ich gespannt auf das kommende Jahr und freue mich ob der Dinge, die da noch auf mich warten.

Ich wünsche Euch allen ein erfolgreiches und glückliches neues Jahr 2008!

again and again…

message

Seriously…what else can one comment on the current situation of the outcome of the elections in Kenya in 2007?

There’s so much anger, so many hopes lost just because some guys have once again (!) taken Kenyans and the World for a huge ride.

I hope the European Union will not even dare to confirm “fair” elections.

This isn’t about Kibs or Agwambo, but instead about some fishy elections that were provided by a very diciplined electorate who turned up as early as 4 a.m. to cast their votes, endured till the end – only to be told two days later on that the guys who wanted to remain in power had actually tweaked the results to fit their needs.

Kenya 2.0 logo mashup

A post over at Ory’s Realm inspired me to create the following mashup of logos as used by the registered (Kenyan) political parties for the upcoming elections. All logos were copied 1:1 from a publication available online (PDF, 1.6 MB) from the ECK website and the listing isn’t complete as not all parties published their logo in time.

politicalparties-kenya-logos

different sizes available @ flickr

As with other smart online content, this mashup work (not the logos themselves) comes with a (CC) Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported licence, meaning you are free to share and remix it as long as you don’t use it for commercial purposes (as I am also not gaining anything by publishing this except maybe for visitors which results in Google AdSenSe increases, but that’s another story). THIS ALSO INCLUDES YOU, dear KenyaTimes ;-)

Seriously, it was great fun copying the logos into one big sheet and seeing how some are really well done while others are…well….judge for yourself.

Using logos instead of just names in a country where the illiteracy rate is still high enough makes sense. But then, also, the most important reason seems to be that there are so many parties with similar names and since most of us humans are visually orientated, I think it’s much easier this way.

p.s.: my favourite logo is the Kikombe one – such brilliant artistic skills! Oh, and btw: logo = symbol [sihm-booohlll]

my briefcase is bigger than yours

I had an urgent desire this morning to blog about something that would prolly come close to a *what-if-Raila-wins*-scenario, dealing with questions like “Who will organise the opposition then?”, “Who will organise the Intelligence Network?”, “How will Kenya benefit of such a situation”, etc. – but then I am not really the right person to blog about such questions and ask for answers.
So I took a quick glance at a well known internet forum specialized on Kenyan politics and realized – once again: Politics are a beautiful waste of time.
Besides, there’s no reasonable analysis possible if 99% of the stuff you get to read online is based on gossip and other propaganda. I sometimes even think it’s some kind of “judgement day” – the upcoming elections on December 27th – a day on which Kenyans want to settle a few very personal issues with this and that male or female politician.

Atiriiri…with all these questions in mind (and the more you think about it, the more stuff comes up), I can already picture myself being squeezed between two Nairobi characters: one from the Koigi/rural farmers section with huge hats & the obligatory pickup parked outside and maybe the other one a retired academic from channel ‘O’ who – both drunk – would yell some gibberish into my ears… OH! This reminds me of the Kenyan Bar I wanted to check out here in Frankfurt. Hmmm. :-)

So, instead of answering these difficult questions and joining other fellow Kenyans on these hectic days of election campaign debates and “breaking news: candidate abc is stepping down for xyz (and was given a lump sum of xx mill Kshs.)”, I will instead focus on much more important matters:

Luggage!

Seriously, have you ever noticed that many people with nice looking briefcases often have nothing else inside their luggage but only something like a newspaper or an apple?

On the other hand, though, those who are really in need of decent luggage and have to carry at least one laptop, 3kgs of paper and 2 books as well as other obscure office stuff for maybe a business trip often have the oldest, smallest, dirtiest and ugliest backpacks ever seen.

Dito shoes, suites, desktops.

Coming to think of it…politics aren’t that much different.

“Wie-geht-das”-Anleitung für Mama & Co.

Hier jetzt mal etwas ganz anderes, nämlich eine *Wie-geht-das?*-Anleitung für meine Mum und andere (ältere) Freunde, die neben dem Internet immer noch gerne in der Papierausgabe ihrer Lieblingszeitung stöbern.

Eines auch gleich vorweg: es gibt im Internet viele Möglichkeiten, um an Informationen heranzukommen. Diese Anleitung ist nicht all-umfassend und sicherlich auch nicht der beste Weg, aber dafür meiner Meinung nach relativ zukunftssicher…

Continue reading ““Wie-geht-das”-Anleitung für Mama & Co.”

sanaa, again…

Fellow blogger Ed Cross dropped me an e-mail, informing me about his page on contemporary African art “African Works“.

Well…saniblog.org came in between, but otherwise: I’d love to open an open, multi-authored blog dedicated to art works from East Africa. What I’ve seen online so far are just single artists being promoted by someone or themselves, and often it’s just limited to one specific artist and his/her well-selling works. With a blog as the contemporary publishing platform / tool, up-coming artists and those who are already well established could at least present their work in a much better way. All you’d have to do then is to register as an author and upload some of your works.

Currently, at my site, it just lacks another empty mySQL database, a lonely weekend aka 2-3h of creativity and a suitable domain name which could suit everyone involved. Sanaa.org/.net are already taken by someone, but I think a Kiswahili domain name would still be very attractive. Any ideas?

(I really really have to change my webhoster one day soon…have been with 1&1 since 1998 and all they given me are high montly costs but also good 99,99% reliability. The package is limited to 3 mySQL dbs only though, and even their domain costs for the .net/.org range are wayyyy above the competition. Yani – moving sites = time & pain = costs).