Back in Kenya

My month long sojourn to Ethiopia has come to an end, and I am now happily back in Nairobi. Unfortunately I seem to have brought the grim Ethiopian weather with me, with grey clouds and thunderstorms marring the weekend. With only about 4 weeks left of this deployment I'm trying to figure out what needs to be done, what can be done and how best to do it, which is at the same time frustrating and exciting. There is no lack of work when one thinks for more than a minute.

Someone on twitter linked to an article by Thomas Keneally, the Australian author, on the famine and food crisis. It's a great read, and I think it's summed up perfectly by the following:

Perhaps we must try a new theorem: to try to get the Somalis and the Ethiopians fed precisely because their governments have not yet created societies in which supply and support are taken for granted.

Aid agencies could be given breaks from endless pie charts about administration costs and aid delivery per donor dollar and stop pretending that they will be permitted to go everywhere they like and to do all the good they can. They should simply invite us into the general struggle to deliver aid as energetically, cleverly and well as the malign circumstances on the desolate ground permit them.

Hear hear! And here's the link to the article "War and corruption are responsible for famines, not droughts".