Nametsi in happier times
I have talked at length to my friend in Uganda and with my former employer who I worked with in Nametsi, currently in Namibia. I now have a clearer idea of what exactly happened to Nametsi. I Will not go into it here, it is too dreadful.
The BBC have covered the news and you can find the latest news on Nametsi here, or here to go to IRIN.
Damascus, my friend spent all day yesterday up at Nametsi. He is familiar with Nametsi from our time working there and lives a couple of villages away. He tells me that the place is unrecognizable. Where once there was a valley is now flat. Of the Health Unit there is no trace. An odd bit of concrete here and an iron sheet there.
We are talking about what can be done to help prevent things like this taking so many lives. Natural events like this are unavoidable in this part of Africa, we are powerless to prevent it…ever.
But we may be able to help prepare people on what to try should it happen to them and prevent it from taking so many lives next time.
Early days; I hope to talk to Damascus again shortly, you can imagine, phone coverage is difficult.
Stay well
Tags: nametsi
Nametsi this week
I am too upset to make much sense of this right now. In 1997 I helped build a Health Unit in village called Nametsi in Eastern Uganda.
Nametsi has just been virtually obliterated by a land slide caused by recent rains. Many people are dead and missing. Unfortunately, the Health Unit was the only ‘permanent’ building in the village and so became a natural refuge for the children when they heard the landslide coming….
All gone now; all of it; all of them.
No one knows how many yet, but I know what the total is…….too many. I can’t bear to think about what it must have been like. It would have been pretty dark too when the village was engulfed by the roar and devastation that thousands of tons of mud and rocks brings.
I have been to Nametsi many, many times; always on foot as Nametsi has no road. It generally takes over an hour to walk there from the nearest barely 4×4 drivable track. This is seriously going to hamper any help, even if it is available. It is a logistical nightmare to get equipment and materials to Nametsi, our team even had to break open bags of cement into smaller loads to get them up there. Cement mixers had to be taken apart to get them up the narrow, twisting and often steep track.
This is what it looks like now…..
The survivors in Nametsi are going to need as much help as they can get. I will try to update this page as I get more news from my friend Damascus, who lives in a nearby village. I will also find out if there is anything that we can do directly, but for now…….
Forgive me for asking but please consider a donation to the British Red Cross, go to ‘donate now’ and then down to the Disaster Fund. I can hardly bring myself to sign off as I usually do, but maybe it is more relevant for me now, than ever
Stay well
Well; it is almost over. Our time in New Zealand has flown by and after nearly 18 months we are packing and making plans to have a last minute wander around.
Then it’s back to the UK for a much needed family re-union, curry and a few beers. Not quite sure in which order they will come but I’ll take what I get!
I will miss lots of things about New Zealand and I suspect that these may increase over time as the bits that I won’t miss fade from my memory, rose tinted spectacle style.
Kara Heights Rise
Mostly I will miss the space that we had out here. Many houses come with 2-3 acres (as did ours), which is a pretty ’standard size section’ once you get outside the town.
Imagine the cost of that in the UK or Norway! Here it could be had for a lot less than a £100,000 which would just about buy you a English ’standard’ plot of about 0.2 of an acre!
I won’t miss the houses though, as they are simple affairs. Mr Edis, a friend of ours has a shed of far superior design in his garden! I gather that standards are slowly creeping up though.
It is the spirit of the Kiwis you see. Mend, make do and ‘toughen up’ is the theme!
“If it’s cold when you get out of bed…… don’t bl**dy hang about!”
It must be all those pioneer genes.
Beaches aplenty
Next mostly I will miss the beaches and the sea. Oh, and a couple of good friends that have reinforced the lesson that sometimes you have to follow your heart and to hell with the consequences!
I’ll sign off now for a bit and the next post should have a completely different feel to it, coming from the other side of the world.
Question is, will it be “thank goodness, back to normal” or “why on earth did we leave”………
Stay well
Tags: learning lessons, life, travel
I am reading a great book called South Sea Vagabonds by a Kiwi called John Wray.
1977 Edition
It’s a simple tale full of ingenuity, common sense and daring do, as it tells the story of a young man who decides, (after being sacked for too much daydreaming) to make the dream a reality by building a boat.
But he is nearly broke and the boat grows from a mish mash of scrounged and found materials with a lot of help (and kegs of beer!) from his friends.
The story then simply describes their exploits as they sail around the tropical islands, not quite always staying out of trouble.
Early on in the journey, John comments;
“We learned later that throughout the South Seas there are very few clocks in evidence. No one knows what the time is. No one cares.” John Wray (1939)
Offers anyone?
It got me thinking, what a great goal, to live without wearing a wristwatch. Eating when you are hungry, waking and going to bed when you body tells you too. Being free of work induced unnatural constraints on your natural rhythms.
Alas, I can’t see it being a goal that I can achieve any time soon with at least 4 points in my day which involve me being somewhere definite at a very specific time!
Maybe I could experiment with not wearing a watch at the weekends and see how it feels!
Who knows, maybe one day, there will be a very used and battered Oyster watch for sale on Ebay……….
Incidentally, John Wray’s South Sea Vagabonds was leant to me by another resourceful Kiwi, my friend Warren, who by strange coincidence, also doesn’t wear a watch…………lessons learnt, perhaps?
I imagine that John Wray would have got on with Warren very well indeed.
What about you? Do you watch the clock?
Stay well
Tags: boat building, clock watching, john wray, south sea vagabonds
In my ongoing attempt to learn how the Internet is screwed together I thought that I would have a look at what people are ’searching for’ .
Oh. Well……. I kind of expected that. So with the ‘remove adult content’ filter switched ON….
Oh. I didn’t quite expect that!
Turns out I am on a different planet, a dinosaur, behind the times, out of the loop……however you say it, it comes around to the same thing. I am getting old and out of touch, as I have no idea what half (more actually!) these searches are about!
Ouch!
OK, see how you fare (smartypants!)
According to Google here are the top 20 popular recent searches.
- palo alto plane crash
- palo alto power outage
- lamichael james
- garbage island
- unite in japanese
- cessna 310
- westminster dog show 2010 results
- olympics medal counts
- tanith belbin 2006
- can you eat meat on ash wednesday
- duane reade
- nbc olympics 2010
- county health rankings
- east palo alto news
- hbo go
- mount vernon statement
- birthright
- tiger grant awards
- bo griffin dies
- accenture match play 2010
How did you do?
What I find interesting is that there is only one “how to” result. My use of the internet often revolves around wanting to learn how to do a specific task. Whereas these results appear to be more information based around people or events.
Find it?
What do you mostly use the Internet for? News, events, how to’s, or just as a tool to find information?
Also, how successful are you? Do you sometimes spend ages searching for things? I know that I get frustrated sometimes because I can’t quite find what I am looking for, even though I am sure that it is out there somewhere!
I also wonder what people who study these things make of the social side of ’search’ online; are people really more connected today or are we all in little interconnected but separate cells?
I can’t help but wonder how fast gossip spreads over the garden fence compared to via Facebook?
Stay well
Tags: dinosaur, google search, life, out of touch
I’m fairly sure I have got too much stuff in my life….
Heirlooms or junk?
Stuff I bought that seemed a great idea at the time, stuff I imagined that I really needed and couldn’t manage without. I have even bought stuff because its ‘pretty’ or ‘cool’. Then there is stuff that other people bought me that I probably didn’t need (Sorry mum!)
I seem to forget the bare fact that I have managed thus far without it.
At the risk of alienating my entire family, I have always thought that (given the average spend on a gift)……If I needed it, I would already have bought it myself.
Now, I know that makes me sound like a real scrooge! But I am talking about freeing up time and cash here! People talk about de-cluttering, minimalising, and so on, but the answer is simpler than that.
Stop buyin the darn stuff in the first place and tell other people to stop buying it for you too!
There, I have said it….I’ll probably never get another birthday present again now! But do you know what, I am not sure that I am even that worried 
Half the stuff in our houses we could quite happily manage without so why acquire and accumulate it in the first place?
Here’s the thing. Why don’t we arrange to do something with those we want to spend time with instead, I’m sure that I’d rather do something more interesting than play with new toys……..I think!
Stay well
All life is in here...
I have been a big fan of the New Scientist magazine for many years and often lament that many are deterred from reading it, thinking that it is too scientific or technical. In reality I find that the editorial covers a wide range of topics, many related to everyday life and issues that affect us all, even if indirectly.
Reading through some old back copies in the library the other day, I read an article on peoples reactions after the terrorist attacks on the USA on the 11th of September 2001, (old news I know but hey, good lessons are always relevant).
Basically the article explained that fear of flying after the events of 9/11 caused so many people to travel by road, that vehicle related deaths went up by 1500 that year.
The irony is that 1500 is six times the number of people that were killed on airplanes during that terrible day.
I guess that sometimes ‘big’ and ‘new’ fears overwhelm the ‘everyday’ fears that we no longer think much about, even though statistically the risk goes undiminished. But unless your weekends see you cave diving; everyday tasks like driving or DIY, remain the most dangerous things that you are likely to do.
I guess that I am trying to say that we need to think more about everyday dangers, (after all most people meet their maker in fairly mundane manner). Think about the actual risk involved in daily tasks and don’t just react to seemingly ‘new’ dangers, some of which might not be much of a real risk to us anyway.
Oh, and don’t forget that what you have for your dinner is probably more dangerous for you than anything else, since the number one cause of death is still heart disease!
Stay well
Tags: 9/11, don't react, flying, new scientist, think
Courtesy of Mark Hancox
Just a quickie to pass on a great link from the BBC Nature Dept with the finalists from a Photography competition.
I have always loved birds (thanks Dad!) and admired them for their beauty, complex courtships, ingenuity and above all, their freedom.
They are simply stunning and need no rhetoric from me, follow the link below to the BBC and have a look for yourself.
Click here to see the beautiful birds, you wont regret the moment it takes to see them.
Pass it on too, everyone should see these, lest we forget that we are not the only ones on this planet!
Stay well
P.S. If this inspires you to know more about the incredible birds of the UK, please take a look at the Bird Books
It changed me for the better and although not everyone would agree, I see that as their problem not mine.
After all, I cannot expect other people to feel the way I do, as they have not seen exactly what I have seen, experienced exactly what I have experienced. All I can do is try to explain.
OK, so how did it change me?
- It forced me to grow up quite a bit and I learned to look after myself.
- It educated me about another part of the world and showed me a completely different way of life.
- I realized that my ‘normal’ upbringing was actually very privileged.
- I learned to appreciate how free I was to make choices about my life.
- I was reminded how many people don’t have food security or proper health care in the world.
- I realized that my home town was only the center of my little universe, not everyone else’s!
- I learned that many people live lives that are neither fair or easy.
- I learned that many people die young and often for the most pointless reasons.
- I learned that a great deal of my ‘proud’ history was in fact quite shameful.
OK, you might think that this is all very obvious and that I must have been very naive……well, you would be right, I was naive and shallow and self centered and selfish and ignorant. What a great education I had huh!
Well, the beauty of education is that it can start at any point in your life and continue for as long as you want. I learned that a person does not have to stay ignorant, that a person can learn to make a difference, even if it is for just a single person. Does it really matter you might argue? I argue that it matters to the single person that you helped.
Sure, it would be easy to dismiss the plight of Africans as being nothing to do with me, sure its sad an’ all but hey…..I put my money in the bucket when it comes round don’t I?
But rationally, because I have lived there and seen it first hand I somehow feel that I have more responsibility than normal to inform other people, although I now realize that it is almost impossible. Lots of peoples minds just can’t take it in; as they say, one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.
I guess that if Africa was a terrible wasteland it would be easier to write it off as a poor place to ‘choose’ to live. But, since Africa itself is fine, I can’t dismiss it. An old boy once told me on market day (when men sit around and discuss ‘important’ business), that:-
Africa is not poor……Africans are poor, but Africa itself is rich.
The next question is why? Many better brains than mine have been trying to answer this question for decades and indeed many blame the Africans themselves. My view is that there is ‘blame’ on both sides. There is no doubt that rampant tribalism has held back social development, but then carving up the continent with a bloody pencil and ruler can’t have helped matters either!
The irony of todays uber respect and lip service paid to minority groups, makes me smile, looking back at ‘our’ behaviour in history. Guilty conscience………very possibly?!
In the end……
Africa had a deep and meaningful affect on me and I yearn to return. For me, even with its bloody and terrible past it seems ‘real’ to me because:-
- Respect is everywhere and not just towards the ‘big’ men.
- People are humble and helpful, even if they have nothing.
- People endure incredible hardships with hardly a murmur of complaint.
- Sharing is a way of life, even if you have almost nothing to share.
- You would never cook just for the house because you never know when a visitor will call.
- You don’t need to ‘call’ in advance, to pay someone a visit.
- You are always welcomed and you would never be an ‘inconvenience’, just join in!
- Status is measured more personally; what you do and how you do it, matters more.
- How much money you have and what you spend it on, is somehow separate from status.
- A smile and laughter is never far away…………….
We would do well to learn a lot from the African way of life, hardships and tribalism apart, for true happiness shouldn’t be something that we have to search for…….it should be the norm. Because for some people, life really is too short.
Stay well
p.s. I found this post most difficult to write and I am not convinced that I have made my point anywhere near how I wanted it to sound! Oh well…..
Tags: africa, death, happy, learning lessons, lessons, life, rwanda, taking for granted, travel, uganda, world
I have just had a few days exploring the North of New Zealand, enjoying the rather open roads and the quiet contemplation that goes with such driving.
It was along such a stretch, with everyone else having dozed off, that I suddenly realized that I was very probably, half way through my life.
So, there you have it.
Middle age could be defined by reaching that point in life when you realized that you probably didn’t take full advantage of the first half of your life, or even that you might have actually…… carelessly squandered it!
Worse still, is the realization that by now, you are probably not going to live long enough to do all the things that you imagined or thought that you would be doing or seeing all those places you wanted to visit.
I wonder if this means I am having a mid life crisis? Although I always associated that with running away with ones secretary (which I don’t have!) or buying an unfeasibly large motorbike……(although actually, I would quite like a motorbike!)
Seriously though, I aways thought that a mid life crisis happened to guys who were bored with life, stuck in a rut kind of scenario, office bods and the like.
I now realize that middle age is not so much about what you are doing right now, but rather what you have been doing your whole life up to this point and more importantly, where your life is heading from tomorrow onwards.
So, what do you think makes a good mid life crisis? What makes you want to throw it all in and do something that others may consider daft?
Stay well
Tags: learning lessons, life
Chris Guillebeau
Visit Flip Over Saw Stuff
