miłych

wesołych świąt. merry christmas. dhamira njema

yuppie

finally!!!! i'm done with the three projects and i feel light and zestful. i'm just sooooooooo happy.
life's good... efte's great. i'm looking forward to the new year's :)

DESIGN FOR THE OTHER 90%
old fascination refreshed recently

back on track

dear everyone, finally i've got throught most of the work and (though i still have lots of papers to write etc.) i'm feeling more relaxed, happy, zestful and looking forward to every minute :)

i just got back from viena, where i attended a clean clothes campaign workshop. it wasn't spectacular, but i had a wonderful time with my friends and it seems like a brilliant begining of christmas time :)

and one video that also helps me get in the mood

thinking about it

there are so many different types of swings. i love them all ;)

http://www.businessballs.com/treeswing.htm

gałczyński wie

Nie jesteśmy, by spożywać
Urok świata, ale po to
By go toczyć i przetaczać
Przez czasy jak skałę złotą

Choćby i po razy tysiąc
Osaczyły nas trudności
My idziemy, blaskiem bijąc
W urodę maszyn i roślin

W poczekalniach kin srebrzystych
Gdy zadymka śnieżna bredzi
Nieraz siadamy strudzeni
Strudzonych ludzi sąsiedzi

Sni i noce z nami biegną
A my z nimi ku przodowi
W trudzie tworząc piękno, piękno
Które znów służy trudowi

Z chmury zwisa śnieg z ukosa
Twarz twoją w srebro przemienia
Chciałbym śnieg na twoich włosach
Ocalić od zapomnienia


Pieśń VI. Gałczyński wie

confession

ok. i confess. i am a workaholic....
i'm fighting with this syndrome, but work is just sooooo interesting. just a few things on my mind right now:

...workers' rights!!!!
...friends in poland and abroad
...swahili poetry from the middle ages
...ethical office
...roger's therapy focused on the client
...frisbee and how to squeeze it in the daily plan
...psychological interview
...the blair commision report on africa in swahili and english
...GLEN
...a dictando in arabic
...culture&development in tanzania
...biodegradable plastic bags
...fairtrade and the critique of fairtrade
...MDGs
...moving in and out of different appartements
...the lightspeed champion
...jazzdance

and lots and lots of toher stuff.....

PP's best friend

yeah.... i guess i'm PP's best friend. recently, my main activity is to create, adapt and deliver PP presentations. mostly about Fairtrade. i should start getting paid by microsoft for the best promotion ever.

last week. the joozbee tournament was great. i got to play more frisbee....

i've been quite busy. as always. but there's always time :) i just have to catch up on some school work... so i'll write a bit more later.

just a picture from riga (two weeks ago!!!). more picts on picasaweb

looks kind of familiar....

long time no post....

it's been a looooong time since the last post... i think that the main reason is the fact that my laptop decided to celebrate the all saints' day (in poland - the day of the dead ;)) and died... now i'm digitally homeless, trying to find some space on my sister's computer and at work...

another reason might be that i've been moving around quite a bit recently. Riga, Torun, Wroclaw.... and lots and lots of time in trains&busses. hard to post anything while there...

good news: soon there'll be photos from Riga and.... sorry, i forgot

anyway, i'm back in warsaw, catching up on work&social life. + i hate winter!!!!!!!!! i'm seriously thinking about moving somewhere warm...

just life

time is funny... it's been a week since the last post and it feels months...

life's good as always! the highlights of my last week are:

...moving in with weronika to an apartment full of saint mary (there is even one that changes color of her robe when the temperature changes!!!)

...jazzdance class and dancing to 'Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham' music. fun fun fun!!!

...a wonderful concert of 'stan milosci i zaufania'. karol is just the best :)

...celebrating efte's 2nd birthday!!!! ooohhhh...

...finally finding time to play at least a little bit of frisbee

...finally watching the video from julia's weeding... it was BEAUTIFUL!

...writing loads of stuff (job&uni) and, suprisingly, enjoying the process and the results :)

VOTING IN BERLIN

during the glen-strategy workshop in berlin we worked hard...

...and we had hard time waking up the next morning...

...but we VOTED!!!!


we joined the other 20 mln Poles (55%!!!) that voted yesterday!!!! and what's even more important:

the PiS rule is OVER!!!! no more crazy twin brothers (although the president is still there...)

I'm proud to be Polish!!!! :)

on paper

have you ever wondered how do you say
'general secretary of the UN' in arabic? i have... ;)

i am a (unexpecting) published author ;)
('pomagamy')

a very published author ;)
('przegląd afrykanistyczny')

kawkowo

celebrating marysia's and jan's birthday :)))) soooooooo beautiful. and my first time in pupki/kawkowo since before-africa....



kawkowo

maria my dear :)

a kite from shanghai under polish skies...

because of the lighting breakdown at the Legia stadium,
the game has been interrupted...

playing 'names'. my favourite...

then the game was resumed :)

undersleeping

just a bit of explanation - in helsinki it was Fairtrade Action Network Kick-off Seminar, where Daria and me represented EFTE!!! it was fun. esp. watching a rugby game in an irish pub in helsinki encouraged by a frenchman...

the last week's been a bit rough... out of home from 7am till usually after 11pm.
i'm constantly underslept. but this morn i skieve off a class and i'm getting some rest (and getting packed to go up north with friends for a weekend!)

but i'm not forgetting to have some fun.
after my first jazz dance class i'm in excruciating pain... ;)
oh, and karol is a MA since wednesday!!!!!!!!

helsinkiiiii

old cars. lots of them. why?

very fair trade

that's what it was

wonderful

Finland, Finland, Finland,The country where I want to be,Pony trekking or camping,Or just watching TV.Finland, Finland, Finland.It's the country for me.
You're so near to Russia,So far from Japan,Quite a long way from Cairo,Lots of miles from Vietnam.
Finland, Finland, Finland,The country where I want to be,Eating breakfast or dinner,Or snack lunch in the hall.Finland, Finland, Finland.Finland has it all.
You're so sadly neglectedAnd often ignored,A poor second to Belgium,When going abroad.
Finland, Finland, Finland,The country where I quite want to be,Your mountains so lofty,Your treetops so tall.Finland, Finland, Finland.Finland has it all.
Finland, Finland, Finland,The country where I quite want to be,Your mountains so lofty,Your treetops so tall.Finland, Finland, Finland.Finland has it all.
Finland has it all.

(Michael Palin, Monty Python)

here and now

guess what

last moments in my old room. i'll be a part of my
mum's living room soon. i'm homeless...;)

just some of the people that i'm missing now

back for good (?)

i'm home. definately. warsaw is my home and i feel it and appreciate it the more and more everyday.

the job at PHO (polish humanitarian organization) is perfect. basically, it's what i've been doing in efte, just on a bigger scale, with more opportunities and i'm getting paid... as soon as we have the website, i'll post it here, so that you can take a look.

efte is also blossoming. a new website is coming up soon!

why camel?

watching me, my friend once said:
I know why you're feeling sad.
it's your soul that's still behind.
this is what you cannot find.

because when you move so fast
across all those seas so vast,
your soul doesn't stick to you
it needs more time to get through.
it can only move as fast
as a camel's march would last.

that's why, when you change a place
there's a risk that you must face:
feeling empty for a day
or a month - it's hard to say
till your soul will make it there
it's a wait that's hard to bear...

but be patient, little friend
it will come and it will mend
all hard feelings, sadness, pain.
it'll all go and you'll regain
everything there is the best:
love, hope, playfulness and zest!

the mess...

just letting you know that i've put some new pictures on the webalbum. check the upper left corner for the link.

warsaw is sweeeet... i'm starting a new exciting job in PHO !! more news on that soon!

a la senegalaise

I AM BACK IN WARSAW!!!!

senegal was so wonderful that it's hard to write about it cause it makes me miss it...

the seminar for 'groupe senegal-maroc' (my beloved glen-geco participants) was good. of course, the best part was simply seeing everyone there :) popenguine, where the seminar took place, is absolutely beautiful, including a wonderful beach and the warm ocean. no need to ask what we did when we didn't work :)

for the first time in my life, while organizing a seminar, we had to think about brakes for the prayer and calculate meals remembering that during the ramadan some people won't be eating lunch.

apart from work, we could also experience some senegal (or rather dakar, i should say). a nice sunday night at Musa's drinking extremely sweet tea and listening to religious chants in front of his house in medina. we could see how dirty and shabby are some parts of the city and how rich and fancy are the others. but that's normal. dakar is just really interesting and often very beautiful, esp. the fishing boats in the afternoon.

i've managed also to pay a visit to the ambassador of poland in senegal in the brand-new-and-shiny embassy. he is a really interesting and welcoming person i hope it's not the end of our contact!

after having visited our interns, another NGO and the city center, we went back to the hotel to get ready for the plane... it started innocently with high humidity during the day and some clouds in the evening. then it developed into a full-fledged storm with lightnings shooting one after another and a torrential rain. we had to take our shoes off to be able to cross a huge paddle of mud that separated the hotel from the taxi. a good end of such an amazing trip :)

OUAGADOUGOU KOUDOUGOU

my short trip to burkina faso is coming to an end. tonight we're flying to dakar (senegal).

the mission is going very well: we've done a good seminar for the GLEN-Geco interns and their bosses and we've gathered some new projects for the next year. it's sooooo interesting (though sometimes challening) to travel with a mission of the french department of agriculture...

anyways, with a little help consisting of a couple thousand francs CFA, we made it to the newspapers :) in the 'observateur' there is a nice photo and good article (mentioning my totally misspelled name as well ;)) about our seminar...

still, our little 'equipe' of 5 is really cool :)

burkina is extremely interesting... i wish i could spend more time here... next time maybe. for€ now i'll keep good memories of the local officials:

a policeman at the airport, after a little scene when they wanted me to wait (another!) day for a visa, gave me two necklaces so that "i keep good memories of burkina faso". and so i do :)

a lady in the senegal consulate in ouagadougou also wanted to be kind to me. she doesn't have many 'nassaras' (europeans) coming. i applied and paied for a transit visa for a week. still, when i showed up at the consulate to pick up the visa, the lady announced proudly that she's given me a mulitiple-entry, 3 month-long visa :)

maybe i'll come back for the FESPACO, the most wonderful film festival in africa (together with 'dhow countries film festival' on zanzibar island). it's amazing how ouagadougou, a rather rough and small city (except for the brand new and rich Ouaga2000 quartier...) has so many cinemas...

too short a stop

back in poland for a day and a half... i'm trying to get my clothes washed and hopefully i'll get through some pictures too... check my webalbum (link in the upper left corner) or on facebook SOON.

missionary

i always wanted to be a missionary... and now my dream has come true:) I AM GOING TO BURKINA AND SENEGAL FOR 10 DAYS - GLEN evaluation mission.

it turned out that i have to pop into poland before going to burkina, so...

BEDE W POLSCE w CZW (jutro) o 11.55
WYBEDE Z POLSKI w SOB (popojutrze) o 8.30

mozna mnie lapac szybciorem. komorka polska dziala i czeka na smsy i telefony!!!!

crossing the equator

so, after having gone to the movies with petr (the simpsons movie rulez!!!:))), i picked up my mum from the airport and since then:

..we've tried all means of transport: matatu, bus, taxi, tuk-tuk, boda-boda (bike taxi), pick-up truck, boat... tonight we're getting on the train
..we've visited Simba Friends - a polish NGO computerizing some schoold near the border of Uganda. sooo cooool:) we've delivered some parts (that my mum brought from poland), hanged out with them, ate a dinner in a restaurant, where everything (incl. electricity) is out of stock, travelled in the rain on the back of a pick up truck
...visited the KAKAMEGA RAINFOREST where we've breathed the heavy tropical air, saw monkeys and butterflies, got soaked by a tropical rain and almost drawn in mud
...enjoyed the best food on earth in Kisumu in Green Garden restaurant... oh....
...watched hippos, otters, warans and birds on the lake victoria (my birthday trip!!!!:))
...played backgammon on my mum's phone while the driver of our bus went to look for fuel (cause he forgot to buy it earlier...)
...had lots of fun with some kids taking pictures
...visited a hindu temple and a sikh one
...had lots of fun together :)

NBO

nairobi has been rough... on my first trip alone to the city center the mob has kicked unconscious a man suspected to be a thief. i hate this city. still, it feels suprisingly comfortable not to be watched and pointed out all the time. during the whole day i heard 'mzungu' only once.

it's such an interesting country, especially now that i can compare it to tanzania. you can see an enormous difference, which i would put on the carb of socialism vs. capitalism. i've thought about it a lot. maybe when i'm home, i'll write some more about this and about all the other interesting things (lately the blog has been really shallow and boring, sorry. it'll get better.)

i've been staying at two glennies' place. they're cool (as their flatmates even more so - a merry UN company: a kenyan family with a hyperactive son, a german, a czech, an indian and a canadian... :)) they are working in the mathare slum with a project called shootback (in MYSA). have you seen 'born into brothels'? it was inspired and based on the same idea as shootback! kids with cameras documenting their lives and the situation.

and tonight i'm picking up my mum from the airport!!! it's sooo great!!

out of tanzania

dear all,
this is the end of my travel around tanzania. tomorrow i'm leaving arusha to go to nairobi. i'll hang out in kenya for about ten days and then... hush.. i'll tell you later :)

this is what i'll miss the most...
..all the wonderful people: Tanzanians and others that i keep meeting on my way
..the merry atmosphere of economy class in the train with people chatting all the time, sharing news, blankets and food, holding chickens and huge bags of everything
..stunningly beautiful views everywhere
..vast spaces with no people, no houses, just nature
..the time to think about everything
..muezzins waking me up with their priers at 5.30 in the morning
..people really being proud of their country
..the feeling of community everywhere
..people telling me not to trust anyone and then themselves being so generous and trustworthy
..breakfast consisting of two chapatis and a tiny cup of coffee on a bench in front of a mosque
..people playing bao and domino
.."karibu chakula"
..fruits tamu kichizi kama ndizi (crazy sweet like a banana :)))
..practicing my swahili
..saying "nzuri" 250 times per day
..mastering my skills of saying 'no' (esp. on the bus station)
..same handcraft everywhere, always very beautiful
..many many more...

dark?

on my screen they seem really dark. i hope they are not in reality...

train to mwanza and mzee timotheo who tested my swahili

lake victoria... soooooooo beautiful

the hill

it's been a while since the last post...

what should i write...? it's been good :)
tabora-mwanza-musoma-mwanza-moshi

mwanza, finally some rest. together with two german and two british girls and beautiful rocks and boulders on the shore of lake victoria

musoma, visiting with gerald. we stayed in exactly same room in philly (at chuck and pamela's), only in different time :) i had a good time hanging out with him and his family (nota bene, nyerere's family :))

mwanza, hanging out with the girls again.

moshi, after a murderous bus ride, along the new road via singida (next to the road and under new bridges, not over them most of the time...) with strikingly beautiful views i'm in this really cool little town at the feet of mt kilimanjaro. tomorrow i'm meeting local fair trade farmers :)

next time some more. i don't know why, but i don't feel like writing at all at the moment...

acknowledgements

a couple of appreciations:

Stefan, Morogoro - for showing me around the MEHAYO (glen project), for being so great with the children, for the invitation in the evening (even if i couldn't make it there)

Ed and Maganga - for a day and a half of fun, for the most exciting pool game (half of Ifakara was watching us), for telling me everything about mosquitos and malaria, for the bike trip to the river, for keeping me company and walking me home, for being really cool guys

Salvina, Ifakara - for being the most helpful person I've met in my life, for staying with me when I felt down, for all the advice and stories that I understood in half (swahili...), for her patience for my swahili efforts, for accompanying me to the train station in the middle of the night, for finding Muhenze

Muhenze, Ifakara - for getting a train ticket for me on the last moment, for guiding me through the pitch-black train station, finding me a seat in the overcrowded carriage, for sharing his blanket with me, for offering me bananas, for such an interesting conversation so early in the morning

a man on the train - for sharing boiled corn with me, for smiling so much and saying nothing

women on the slope of Loleza Peak, Mbeya - for my most wonderful conversation in swahili, for laughing so much, for the invitation to her house for food

Maloti, Mbeya - for being the sweetest guy on earth, for serving me the best wali mboga and the worst chai ever, for joining me at the table every time, for being so brilliant, for letting me develop a tiny crush on him:)

Samu, Mbeya - for helping me so much in Mwanjelwa, for not letting me to get lost, for being so interesting

Tiba, bus to Tabora - for being so kind and beautiful, for the chat, for all the kind words during the scary 27h-long journey on the bus

Suleiman, bus to Tabora - for being sooo kind, for offering me a good seat, for letting me sleap on driver's matress, for the candy, for offering me his food, for all the interesting explanations, for mocking me, when i was afraid of the way his drunken brother drove the bus, for showing me baboons and buchbabies, for driving me to the hostel in tabora

My Imaginary Boyfriend - for saving me lots of time and trouble... :) actually, he's becoming the more and more compleate and complex person. i'll soon start believing in his existence myself. he's a student, lives in poland, we're engaged and we're getting married next year. he still doesn't have a name (nobody's asked so far:))

finally

it's just to let you know that i'm safe in Mbeya (very close to zambian border), it's beautiful, i've experienced amazing things in ifakara and finally...

i am really in love in tanzania and tanzanians!!!

hmm.... i thought i would never come, but here it is. tanzanians are the most friendly people in the whole world and tanzania is the most beautiful and amazing country!!! :)

special issue for philly

ewo i michale kochani, to specjalnie dla was :)

i'm in the middle of nowhere, in Ifakara, actually. the only way to get out of here is going back, as i came. the road ends soon. there's also train (tazara - tanzania-zambia line) passing a couple of km from here. i'll try to get on the train tonight to go to Mbeya.

suprisingly enough, Ifakara turne out to be not-such-a-lost place. even though it's very small with no paved roads and dark at night and i haven't yet found any coffee here, it seems to be an important place. it's a valley, where there's the biggest malaria transmission in the world. that's why there's a research institute generously financed by the gates foundation. i was lucky enought to meet two interns catching and feeding mosquitos there... more details when i'm back. it's very interesting!!!

now about my travel in general: me and two other friends got some money from the Uni of Warsaw to research african and afro-shirazi art. we're here for 6 weeks with no particular plan. just going from one place to another, doing interviews and taking pictures of whatever falls into our hands. the guys have already gone noth, in the direction of Kenya, but i'm still heading south. i'm planning to make a loop around Tanzania (we've already been to the east coast). now i'm going south and west, then maybe to lake tanganyka, lake victoria, arusha (north) and close the loop in nairobi.

visiting fairtrade places here is just my hobby :) it's just so interesting to see in practice what i'm talking about so much;) i've got some addresses from the IFAT website (www.ifat.org) and so i'm trying to visit some of the producers. i've been so far to Bombolulu Workshops near Mombasa and to Kwanza (handcraft) in Dar es Salaam. i'm hoping to go and visit coffee producers of KNCU near Moshi, but they said it would cost 100$ to go there. i'll try to negociate the price and we'll see...

so much for now. the last couple of days, since i left the guys have been amazing... i'm meeting at least one super-interesting person a day :)

ha!

chlopaki niezle daja w noge w bagamoyo

now that the guys are gone, it's only the two of us...

the best dancers on the whole zanzibar

I take it back again... Monday in DSM is a really great thing :) lots of different people, lots of different lives, lots of different cultures. I love it. And it was a good day in general...

I've explored another IFAT company: Kwanza in DSM. I'm learning more and more about Fair Trade...

DSM

i'm in dar es salaam, the most boring city in the world probably... there's not much apart from the headquarters of some big banks and intl corporations and government buildings. it doesn't mean that the city is modern and hype though. it's covered with dust, slow, with hardly any street-stands and street markets. but i have to admit, that we've been here over the weekend. maybe tomorrow and outside the city center will be more interesting.

we got here by a so-called 'slowboat'. it definitely is slow, but it was a rather comfortable night on a bench in a large cabin, sleeping and watching a movie, stopped for the swahili news (each time there was a fight between those who wanted to watch the movie and those in favor of the news). the boat normally carries a huge pile of bags full of flour from dar to zanzibar (zanzi is too small to produce enough of it for the whole populatin). on the way back, the deck was empty.

yesterday we went to bagamoyo, a small town on the coast where the most interesting thing is the college of arts. it's very interesting... during the summer it offers courses of african dance and art for tourists, but during the academic year the student schedule is full. thanks to the college, bagamoyo has become the tanzanian center of art. there are artists' workshops everywhere. some are really good. painters and sculptors. there's also a wonderful fish market and a harbor (just wait to see the pictures of the boats... :)).

but one thing that made my time in bagamoyo the sweetest ever: the children. there are lots of them everywhere: at the local school and outside of it. they run around, play soccer, race. every time they see you with a camera, they demand a photo (there's no way to say no). then they jump, make funny faces, climb on one another and watch the photos on the camera (thanks god for the digital cameras...) forever laughing and joking. there's nothing better than that.

blazej and cyprian've just left. they're going straight to dodoma-mwanza-musoma-kenya. i want to make a bigger loop (going far south first), so we've split up. just keep your fingers crossed so that i don't get malaria while i travel alone. that's the only thing that would make it really nasty...

I take it back...

ok, i take it back... zanzibar IS beautiful, but the masses of tourists are hard to bear, as are people trying to sell you everything everywhere. it's time to get out of here. tonight we're taking the 'slowboat' to dar es salaam. finally.

meanwhile, i have a couple of minutes to tell you about a couple of really agreable things that I've experienced here:
...afternoon crowd of children and youth going back home from school
...men playing carrambol and children playing marbles on the street
...absolutely amazing 'swahili' coffee with cardamon and cinnamon
...SCUBA DIVING on a coral reef near stone town and near a 100year-old shipwreck with Yuriko and Ahmed. WONDERFUL!! i was quite a bit stressed out in the morning (i haven't dived for 7 years...), but everything went smoothly:) we've seen a stonefish and a crocodile fish and lots and lots of other beautiful fish (including my favourite ones: same as in 'Finding Nemo' :))
...so called 'spice tour'. a typical tourist attraction, but extremely interesting for me, beause it gives you an opportunity to learn about most of the alimentation plants grown here for spices and fruit. it was brilliant!!! the nature amazes me all the time.
...dhow port with a big fish market and a local cantine with lots of content people:)
...speaking swahili!!! i'm getting better and better... ;)

more zanzi

stone town is stunnigly beautiful with its narrow, crooked streets (bringing up memories of m'dina in marrakech) with lot's of children playing on the streets. a part of girls' school uniform is a white, well suited hijab. boys wear kofias and kanzus and study hard, until late at night in coranic schools. there're spices everywhere. beit-el-ajaib, a true house of wonders, the main museum of culture is brilliant. i'm even more in love with swahili culture than before...



ok. got to go... here are two photos, but it takes ages to upload them...

dawn on a dhow, sailing from pangani to nungwe (on zanzibar)

train nairobi-mombasa

on the way

first, i'll add a couple more impressions from mombasa. but stay tuned: some really interesting stuff is coming after that:)

did i tell you that we lived at barabara mwembe tayari ('ready' mango tree road)? it's definately a good name. the street is full of merchants having enormous baskets of mango...

mombasa IS a melting pot. also when it comes to religion. in one day, you can visit a couple of mosques, an anglical cathedral, a catholic church, a parsee temple, a jeenist temple (is the spelling right?), a sikh temple (anouncing the turban year ;)), a couple of different hinuist temples and probably many many more. and noone seems to fight another...

so many temples makes me feel religious. but even more the fact, that i'm travelling with two jesuses. really.... a couple of times cyprian was called 'jesus' by different people. blazej as well, though less frequently. so i'm travelling with a god squad :) could anything go wrong?


and now: TANZANIA....

you can see a difference right after a 5km-long no-man's-land between kenya and tanzania. the paved road is over. much less private cars, much more bikes. most of the houses made of wood and clay. stunnigly beautiful landscape. everything in swahili. little people speak little english. beautiful!!!

i have 5 min left, so just briefly - tanga (an almost abandonded city), pangani (lovely little town)

and... absolutely wonderful sailing on a dhow with local fisherman to zanzibar. 7 hr on a rather small boat on indian ocean... ahhh.... zanzibar is beautiful...

mombasa

the train was late, as you know already. people were squatting on the platform until midnight when the train slowly came to the station. we weren't allowed to enter straight away - it needed another hour or so to be cleaned. it left the platform. after some time it came back. we knew it was time to go. so did other people. they started jumping on board before even the train came to a halt. so did we. in the 3rd class, there are no numbered seats so you have to fight hard for a place to sit on. fortunately, most of the crowd that was waiting for the train must have given up so it wasn't that crowded in the end.

the ride took 16 hours. first at night, freezing, then during the daytime watching the beautiful savannah of Tsavo. train kept stopping every now and then, in the middle of nowhere to let some people out or take some more in. how does the train operator know where to stop?
the new people often joked a bit about the three wazungu that ride with them.

then we arrived in mombasa... it's not at all as i imagined it. i thought it would be collonial, white, considerably rich and touristic. none of this turned out to be true. it's a crowded, busy, dirty city with some beautiful but run down portugese and british buildings and lots of provisor shacks. people are a mixture of africans, arabs, hindus and swahilis wearing colorful khangas, white kanzus, black burquas (here called 'buibui' - swahili for 'spider'). it's beautiful.

apparently there's quite a lot of european and american young volunteers teaching at schools and in orphanages, but we don't get to see them at all...

peope really do speak swahili!!! we don't understand much, but we're making an effort :)

the project is going well. we have quite a few interviews and photos. this morning we got a great interview with a great-great-grandson of a founder of the biggest company trading khangas in kenya :) we'll have a lovely article based on that interview!

funny, i rarely miss people when i travel. but now, i miss warsaw, phila and benin a lot... sitting and watching the indian ocean in the evening puts me in a really melancholic mood :)

safe and sound

just a quick note. actually, i didn't plan to write that soon, but our train narobi-mombasa will be late at least 4 hours, cause it crashed against a truck (that's what people say...), so i have a moment to write:)

nairobi looks good. it's just a very big city and in comparison to cotonou (i cannot refrain from comparing everthing to benin right now, but i'll get over it) it's almost europe... kenya lives now in the pre-election fever. in september they'll have to choose between the actual president mr. Kibaki and mr Odinga (Moi's sucessor, I think...). it's going to be really interesting!!! www.kenyaelection2007.com

we're also getting into politics ;) we had a dinner today with his excelency the embassador of poland in kenya :) wery nice man. helped us a lot! only, he got really scared that we're going to mombasa on a train in 3rd class....

time to go

in a couple of hours i'm leaving again

warsaw-brussels-bujumbura-nairobi (tomorrow @ midnight!)

naturally, i'll keep all you posted :)

keep your fingers crossed so that they don't arrest me for trafficking a bomb in parts (i'm carrying some cables and wires in my backpack for some friends)....

i should be back in warsaw in mid-september!

daily picts

the bikes of me and simo, my messy room and a new toy that made it all possible :) there's a good chance for better picts this time. atleast, i'll be able to upload the photos while I'm there so you won't have to wait for them until I'm back!

from summer to winter

destination information

Brussels, Belgium close details

Averages High: 22 Low: 12.0 Rainfall: 70.0 " Average

Nairobi, Kenya close details

Averages High: 21 Low: 11.0 Rainfall: 17.0 " Average

Warsaw, Poland close details Averages
High: 18
Low: 9.0
Rainfall: 39.0 "

Average

too open

the open space was just too open.... i'm just getting old and grumpy i guess. still, i had some fun...
now i'm having much more fun struggling with grant proposals :)

tanzania coundown has started!! 8 days to go :)

the space was quite open :)

how to make education sexy?
that was THE question!

the three musketeers. marco and andrejs

no surprise

it was easy to guess that i won't spend much time at home, even though warsaw's beautiful and they've finally fixed my favourite fake palm tree at rondo de gaulle... :)

i'm going to wroclaw tomorrow for a couple of days for UNESCO opens the space

then i have some time in warsaw and on July 21 st i'm flying to Nairobi in Kenya!!! (and then crossing the border with Tanzania asap!!) we'll be researching local art and learning colloquial swahili!!! 1,5 months of fun! :)


but right now i'm in warsaw. over the last couple of days, when i was recovering from physical fatigue, i've put some order in all my pictures and i've found some old fun ones :)


who would guess that they'll be married in 4 weeks and 3 days ? (dobrze liczę, Julciu?:)) Uwielbiam was!!! / in mexico. of you could only see my face better....


we love you karol. zawsze :) / why is pyzia trying to lick me ???

pyzia and my paper-mache "man who cares about the world". i made him for a anti-war rally, but he never made it there... he still lives in spiral-Q in philly and cares about the world / my favorite view of warsaw. at a distance, rondo de gaulle and my beloved fake palm tree :)