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Archive for the ‘Seychelles’ Category

Using what ya got: Girl Power in Africa

Posted in Sex, Seychelles, Women's rights on April 30, 2009| 4 Comments »

I am all for girl power, and here in Africa it can take some dynamic forms.

Liberia’s president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is an example of a woman taking the reins and driving forward.

Here in Seychelles it manifests in business and government, where women hold positions of power in the National Assembly and the Cabinet and run the show in many companies. (Not the 50+% represented in the population, but a better than average ratio when compared globally.)

For millions of African women, however, power is rationed out, when at all, in tiny, sweat-laden droplets and overwhelmed by the lack of.

Too many women have no power to protect their children from deprivation, starvation and disease, and hundreds of thousands have lost theirs to war, either as casualties or to soldiering.

They have no power over what is done to their bodies, aren’t allowed to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS or unwanted pregnancies, and often don’t have any voice in defending their own genitals. (For a country-by-country look at FGM in Africa, see this from Amnesty International.)

So, when women step up, we should pay attention no matter what form it takes. That’s why this report, “Kenyan women hit men with sex ban”, catches my eye this morning.

Womens activist groups in Kenya have slapped their partners with a week-long sex ban in protest over the infighting plaguing the national unity government.

The Womens Development Organization coalition said they would also pay prostitutes to join their strike.

The campaigners are asking the wives of the Kenyan president and the prime minister to join in the embargo.

I’m trying to imagine a nation of men not only gettin’ none for a week, but knowing that the none gettin’ has been orchestrated by the women folk. Do they have it in them to take whatever energy they might have expended in the sack to the table? Can they put aside base urges for the greater good? Will appreciation for the value of their women increase through unattainability?

Or will that DSB (Dreaded Semen Backup) clog the works completely and result in nothing more but a giant circle jerk that leaves a sticky blob?

Whatever …

It’s worth a shot, Ladies. And I can only hope that you’re not stuck cleaning up the mess … again.

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Friends in photos

Posted in Friends, Island life, Peeps, Seychelles on April 27, 2009| 6 Comments »

This is the 300th post here on PP, and having written yesterday about the importance of friends, I thought I’d post a few photos today of me with some of the more recent additions that have come into my life in the last 100 posts.

Evi, me, Marketa

Evi, me, Marketa


Me and Ernesto

Me and Ernesto


Me and Magnar

Me and Magnar


Shrone and me do beach

Shrone and me do beach ...


Kim, me and Calina

Kim, me and Calina


Me & Paris

Me & Paris

Guillaume likes my boa

Guillaume likes my boa


Magnar, me & Jacques

Magnar, me & Jacques


Me with Kimmy

Me with Kimmy


Bart & me

Bart & me


Me and 'Enzo

Me and 'Enzo

Italians! gotta luv 'em!

Italians ... gotta luv 'em!

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Friends For Life

Posted in Friends, Health, Island life, love, My Chinese Checkered Past, Peeps on April 26, 2009| 11 Comments »

Robbie ... a photo of an old friend, by an old friend ...

Robbie ... a photo of an old friend, by an old friend ...

There has never been any doubt that I’m social.

My brother once remarked, perhaps disparagingly, that there is NO ONE I won’t talk to. Although that’s not completely accurate, I do believe that I can learn something through conversations with most people, even if we don’t happen to speak a common language.

So, no surprise that I’ve taken to online social networks like a termite to timber. Not only have platforms like facebook, myspace and Twitter allowed me to reconnect with friends I’d thought I’d lost forever, new people have come into my life … people I don’t want to imagine being without.

I hadn’t spoken to my high school bud, Virginia in 30-some years, but now we’re in touch almost daily. Robbie, my bbff and neighbor in a previous life had all but disappeared from my radar until he joined fb and skype, but we now wet ourselves on a regular basis and give each other stomach cramps from the laughs we share.

My cyber sister, Jo, and I have never met, but our lives intersect sometimes hourly, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who thinks my exact thoughts as often as she does.

Thanks to the Internet, my love life is … well … lovely, or as lovely as long distance relationships can be.

A week or so ago I trimmed my facebook friend list by 100, as I’ve arbitrarily set a max of 500 and had exceeded that limit. I’m already back up to 450, so I may have to up my quota, but even though this can stretch me a bit thin I do have some level of closeness to each and every one of the people who poke and chat and banter and comment on my status as if they cared.

My up-close-and-in-person friend clan is large, too, and even though scattered around the world, we remain close. I’ve not seen Michael in years, nor Magnar in months, but I have a pretty good idea of what’s up with them, and they with me.

Turns out, that all this friend stuff may keep me and my friends alive.

As this article in the NYT reports, that’s just what friends do.

Researchers are only now starting to pay attention to the importance of friendship and social networks in overall health. A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends.

And luckily for some of us, the role of friends is even more important than that of a spouse.

Bella DePaulo, a visiting psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose work focuses on single people and friendships, notes that in many studies, friendship has an even greater effect on health than a spouse or family member. In the study of nurses with breast cancer, having a spouse wasn’t associated with survival.

(I think I’ll tattoo that somewhere: … having a spouse isn’t associated with survival. Funny thing is, that’s exactly what all my friends told me when Mark bailed, bless them!)

Anyway …

Friends. I love mine.

Now, if I could only get that damned Rembrandts song out of my head …

Photo credit: Trudy Fisher

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Happy Easter

Posted in Fun, Seychelles on April 12, 2009| 1 Comment »

Happy Easter!!!!

Happy Easter!!!!

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A tribute to my youngest on her 4th birthday …

Posted in Cambodia, Children, Family, Friends, Fun, International Adoption, Island life, love, Older Parent Adoption, Seychelles on April 10, 2009| 5 Comments »

With thanks to all who filled in the PP survey, and who asked for more about my kids here … here’s a vid I put together in tribute to the beauty and sweetness of Cj … my youngest, my baby, my darling little girl.

Enjoy!

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PP Reader Survey … Inquiring mind wants to know

Posted in Adoption, American thoughts, Cambodia, Celebrities, Entitled to opinions, Family, Fun, Health, I wanna, Island life, love, Music I like, My Chinese Checkered Past, Older women, science, Sex, Seychelles, Writing for a living, Writing for fun on April 9, 2009| 5 Comments »

Please click here to fill out a few little boxes that may lead me out of some of my cluelessness …

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Just hearing the jokes … ’bout time … thinking that it’s not SO bad

Posted in Elections USA, Island life, The USA from the outside in, World politics on April 6, 2009| 1 Comment »

Pardon me for being way behind the curve here, but I do live on an island in the middle of nowhere with only an hour and a half of CNN per day …

Thankfully, however, I read blogs so came across this link to the transcript of the Bush Roast at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, given by a guy I’ve never heard of … as if that matters to anyone, especially Stephen Colbert.

Okay. Okay. This is going back about a thousand days, but … shit … it’s really funny, and worth recalling, if for no other reason than to make one feel better about today.

Yeah … the world is a mess and people are suffering and life sucks, but BUSH IS GONE!!!!!

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GMT+4 and 4 Degrees South

Posted in Island life, Seychelles, Writing for a living, Writing for fun on March 30, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I did some bloggy housecleaning last night and accidentally deleted this post.
Forgive the rerun, but I like it and want to keep it up.

The moon is still a very long way from setting into the Indian Ocean, and so bright that it has dimmed my stars. The Big Dipper … upside-down on this side of the Equator, which is why here it is called the Plow … has lost its usual impact on the night sky, but is hanging before me, indicating, as always, North.

North … roots, history, family, Ernesto. I long for North, and sometimes the pull of that Pole is strong.

It’s the Southern Sky that covers me now, and has for thirteen years. I’ve grown to know it, and on mornings like this during the pause between darkness and dawn, I love it more than I ever recall loving a sky before.

Loving it, I worship.

Straight from my bed perched on the edge of sky, I rise, and naked I stretch out on my balcony and moonbathe. Even this grand and bright, this huge moon’s light brings no heat, unlike the golden sun that waits just over the island to brown my skin with its rays, but it pours through air that is amniotic … warm, wet, all-enfolding … and brushes my body with silver.

I would like to close my eyes and shine, but don’t want to miss a minute of the beauty before me, this gift of light, so I stare in wonder and search the moon’s well-known face that stares back at me and smiles.

Luna.

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Seychelles Economy in the News

Posted in Seychelles, World politics on March 27, 2009| 1 Comment »

Big thanks to a reader for the heads up on this article on the state of the economy in Seychelles.

… Seychelles now has the unenviable stature of being perhaps the most indebted country in the world. Public and private debt totals $800 million – roughly the size of the country’s entire economy.

In every country in the world … to a greater or lesser degree, of course … excessive spending, poor management and political ass-covering drop a bottom line below the bootstrap level that would allow pulling up in times of global economic meltdown.

Not all that long ago, I would have suggested that a move toward countries being run more like businesses would have been a step in a responsible direction, but now it’s pretty clear that the sort of mismanagement government machines are noted for is writ big in the corporate world after all.

The phrase “a world of hurt” comes to mind a lot these days.

Shit.

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Human Rights Report: Seychelles

Posted in Seychelles, World politics on March 24, 2009| 2 Comments »

The US Department of State has released the 2008 Human Rights Report on Seychelles. Anyone interested in reading it can click here.

Some of the highlights … and reasons I like living here:

There were no reports of street children.

The law prohibits trafficking in persons, and there were no reports that persons were trafficked to, from, or within the country.

There was no discrimination reported against persons with disabilities in housing, employment, or education, or in the provision of other state services.

There were no reports of discrimination based on sexual orientation.

There were no reports of discrimination against persons with HIV/AIDS.

The law prohibits forced or compulsory labor, including by children, and there were no reports that such practices occurred.

The law prohibits forced exile, and the government did not use it.

Of course, this being the real world and all, the report is not all sweetness and light.

I have to wonder how other countries, the US included, stacks up.

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