The first snow of the season...

Only outside of Bonn do I have the chance to experience some typical snowy winterdays.
This is in front of our house in Velbert (between Wuppertal and Düsseldorf),taken right from our entrance door.

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This is the view from my room, on the backside of the house.

Slowing down

The more the year comes to an end, the more I feel like i am slowing down my pace and switching into a lower gear and the closer the end of the year is approaching the lower the pace, as if trying to gain time before passing the year boarder and as if trying to gain more tranquillity again and at the same time generating energy to be able to speed up again once the starting line of 2006 is passed.

In this mode and mood of tranquillity your environment becomes less fast, more colourful and sharp again unlike in those hectic times when everything might become a bit fuzzy around you, like the passing motions and scenes when sitting in an ICE (fast German train) with 300km/h.

The more i was researching again in the field of Cultural Anthropology and on various rituals among indigenous cultures the more i raised my awareness again on our own hidden rituals and ultimately the ever repeating cycle of the year is one ritual end as well as beginning.

Studying those rites across the globe in the modern world, in this case particularly on new years eve, probably reveals enlightening perspectives on the commonalities of insular and indigenous groups of various origins and locations (which unfortunately are still called primitive every now and then) and modern people.

Anyways , I guess my point came across pretty clear -
Relax, reflect
enjoy and experience fully

Merry Christmas and a great "slide" into the New year!

A great book with insight into African spirit...

On the line of talking about Africa...

Lightning Bird: The Story of One Man's Journey into Africa's Past by Lyall Watson

It is one of those books that was long overdue, waiting for the right moment and environment to be read. Leaving for Nigeria was defnitly a good occassion to dive into the stories and experiences of a 19 year old, who is leaving England and entering African wilderness to live in solitude and on the search of discovering true insights into African culture.

Coming myself from the field of anthropology and archaelogy I was more than delighted to not only read about the adventure of the human spirit but also read more about the scientific context and how it has helped to rewrite Stone Age history.

Today is the World AIDS day

Today is the World AIDS Day and for me a very thoughtful day, as I am still processing the impressions, stories and discussions that I have had with various Africans and other Internationals on that topic last week. Some results of those talks, which were a series connected ones throughout the conference, were that most of us "Non-Africans" are pretty unaware about various issues around AIDS and most Africans seemed to be very unaware about our unawareness, assuming that all those information would be very transparent and known to the world outside Africa.

We were quite lucky to have some experts among us who are dealing with the problems of HIV/ AIDS and potential solutions for the last year's already and gathering all those various experiences of at least 5 different countries made the picture more and more clear and deep with regards to the potential opportunities and threads at the same time. Below just a short extract out of the topics we were tapping into.

What if...

• many Africans with low income would be diagnosed with AIDS without having it, because it' s faster and cheaper to process them this way - even though they might be having another sickness or desease?
• there is a cure existing in many countries but missing means - basically lack of allowance and support to produce it?
• in the next decade there would be a huge increase in medical tourism, urging people to travel to countries like India, or any other Asian or African countries to find a cure and return home healthy?
• Africa would be able to eradicate AIDS within the next 5 years without any support from the developed world?
• The Developed world could do very simple steps to support the eradication within very short time?
  

These were just some of the interesting discussion we had, hopefully soon we will be continouing these discussion virtually on the Learning Network discussion on HIV/ AIDS and on the Genesis online forum

At IDC 05 in Nigeria

Another conference has passed, IDC - International Development Congress in Nigeria and the pictures below show only very few impressions. It was great to chair IDC and also felt good to be an Alumnus ;)

I loved being in Nigeria and also to get to know a lot more about the African countries and their political and historical realities. Luckily there were around 14 countries represented at the conference, the majority of course being from West Africa.
Sometimes during session or connection time it felt like being on an UN conference with speeches in french and english translations.

The last 2 days i was able to visit some more places in Lagos, like the Lakki Beach (see left), where lots of the delegates met up again and simply enjoyed to swim and rest or help us- the poor white people around to bargain and get some good buys on bracelettes and other souvenirs.
Another cool place to see is the Yaba market, which is not too far from the MC office and is typical Nigerian market where everything thinkable is sold. In fact we felt a bit out of place sometimes, being the only White ones around and on top not even being able to purchase anything, cause we were totally broke.

One of the days at IDC was dedicated to community work, which in our case meant to take some brooms, some brushes, colour and the guts to stop heavy traffic to paint a zebra closeby a school.

It was quite some adventure for sure. The Nigerian's didn't appreciate the interruption in the traffic flow in the first place and unfortunatly we even had some smaller accidents, when delegates got hit by cars while trying to stop the traffic.

Nevertheless I was ensured by the Nigerians around that once they would see it finished the next day, there would be highly confident with the new zebra that has been created.

Since we were all wearing red Vmobile shirts, a Nigerian sponsor of IDC, the passing crowd believed that Vmobile would be doing this wonderful community work and obviously we are paid for it - some even stopped their car next to us, asking us to fix their mobile problems. The picture above was actually taken thew next day, since my group was the lucky one to be assigned to the busiest street of the state at the busiest time of the day, we had to come back the next morning at 6 am to finish off the second half of the street. This time though we made sure we wear AIESEC shirts.
When I explained some little school boys, who were highly curious what those partly white people were doing around here, how they could use the zebra, they gave me a huge smile and a big shily thank you.

This was the road, right at a school, without a zebra crossing yet.

You can see the parents picking up their children, in this case with the entire family on the motorcycle.