IPA in the NYTimes

I have mixed feelings about Nicholas Kristof and the way he portrays poverty and foreign aid in his columns, but I can't resist this blatant endorsement of two of my organization's longest-running projects, both right here in Busia.

And just for some Thursday morning giggles, here is Mac during last night's thunderstorm:

Announcement

I would hereby like to announce that rainy seasons suck, mostly because the rain comes every afternoon right as you were thinking "hey, today looks nice, I bet it won't actually rain today. I know, I'll go play soccer!". Exceptions: (1) when it's late at night and you get to fall asleep to the deafening sound of rain on an iron roof. (2) when you get super-bright rainbows every afternoon. (3) when you do not want to play soccer. Which is never. Disregard this exception.

On the plus side, I am now a proud investor in my friend Paul's new video shack, to the tune of two whole iron sheets for the roof donated in my name, which gets me free admittance to all English Premier League showings for life.

Actually, I just wanted to say that I am kind of tired of being so very bad at blogging, so I have decided to instead be bad at it in smaller, more frequent chunks. Hopefully three or five times a week, if you can stomach it. I am, however, not hip enough for tumblr and not ADD or capable-phone-possessing enough for twitter, so we are together stuck with this veritable dinosaur of an Internet-life-sharing format. If you would like to keep up with the things I am reading and thinking about on an even more frequent basis, I encourage you to follow me through your Google Reader, where I regularly share articles and posts about poverty & development that I find particularly insightful or well-written. If you need help setting up your Google Reader or figuring out how to follow people, go out to the road, find a car with no driver inside, and follow it until you get to someone who looks like they (a) know their way around a computer and (b) rather enjoy stepping on people's privacy rights. Or me. I can also help.

Finally, I would very much appreciate your prayers, thoughts, and goodwill right now for my good friend George Onyango. George is one of the guards who sometimes works at our house and office, and he has a great smile and an insatiable thing for reading--not a week goes by that he doesn't ask me for a new book to borrow, and he's worked his way through some long and heavy literature thus far (though the only one he ever told me he learned something from was "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"...he quoted Dumbledore to me verbatim over the next week or so). He's also an animated discussion-ist of all things Kenyan, societal and political, and he loves to give examples, in which the main roles are usually played by Mac (who has to this point represented the Ministers of Finance, Agriculture, and Education, as well as the Busia police chief and, in an unusual casting choice, a young Kenyan woman who feels forced to turn to prostitution to support herself). He's smart, friendly, dog-loving, and even a trained and qualified accountant.

I tell you all this to show you what kind of person George is, and to give you more context for the tragic place he finds himself in. George lost his daughter this week. She died suddenly and unexpectedly, and her mother, now separated from George, has placed the blame on him. He has taken it very hard, and has sounded sadly fatalistic in our last few conversations, expressing a desire to give up on advancing his accounting education and trying to find a better job. He took out a loan to cover the funeral expenses, and is now struggling to pay it back. I think if it weren't for his other children, he would be hard-pressed for reasons to get up and go to work each morning right now. Pray that he'll find strength and hope and comfort. Thanks.