Still alive...

It's been a long time now without updates. Christmas is approaching. For me that means long days behind the counter in a bookstore in Oslo. I've also been working on a different project. You can see the result of that at www.actingnow.blogspot.com. It is a blog for Act Now - the exchange program that brouth me to Uganda and back again last year, and it will provide snippets from the blogs of all the participants. In Uganda, even if you live in a town or city, everybody has a village. The village is the place you long for when the streets become too noisy, too congested, when your job is too stressful. When everything is going too fast, you long for the quiet life of the village. And at Christmas time, the village is the place to go. In Norway, its kind of the same, at least this time of year. Everybody goes "home for Christmas". Earlier, I didn't really get the proper feeling of homecoming, since I've been living very close to my parents. But this year, having spent the previous Christmas in Africa, and living in Bergen for the past semester, I really enjoy coming home. Seeing my family again, my friends in Oslo, going back to my old job (if only for a week), it really feels good coming home. So what have I been doing since I came home, since I've been too busy to update my blog? Well, as I have said, I've been working. I've also been busy translating. This year's project is called The Curse of Salamander Street. It's the long awaited sequel to the best selling children's book Shadowmancer, and its gonna be really cool. I stumbled upon an interesting blog the other day, called AfriGadget (thanks to Jackfruity for the reference). AfriGadget presents gadgets made "the African way", celebrating "African ingenuity". The philosophy behind it is this: When all you have is nothing, you take what you have and make something out of it. I have a friend who runs an internet café in Mbale, Uganda. He was a bit behind on his electricity bill, and in the end, the inevitable happened - his power was disconnected. Without power, you can't run and internet café, and being out of business, you can't raise the money to pay the bill. So, my friend does what? Well, first he asks friends, neighbours, relatives. He manages to raise half of what he needs to have his power reconnected. And now what? This is where the African spirit comes in: My friend thinks about his possibilities: He does not have enough money to cover his bill - but he does have enough to buy a petrol generator. Sure, running on a generator is more expensive than regular power, but now that he is again in business, he is able to raise the money to pay the bill. And he now has a sign in his shop that says: "We use a generator, even when the power is off" (and the power is off frequently in Uganda these days - at least every second 24 hours). My friend has turned what seemed like an impossible situation into a business opportunity. In conclusion to all this: You don't need much more than a brain to make something out of nothing... On this day in 2005: Ugandabloggen: Dar es Salaam, kveld