delayed reaction..

towards my poor blog. I have been inundated with floods of work. It is 10pm now and I've been at the office working back to back since 6.30am this morning and going home isn't on the horizon anytime soon. The weekend cannot come soon enough. I've actually started daydreaming about trivial things like reading books in bed, cooking, going to the park, watching TV (see I'm getting carried away again!).

I was covering a youth event over the weekend in Virginia where plenty of youngsters gathered to connect and exchange knowledge and information. Very well organised, with experts of all fields in abundance. Sadly some of the typical old Somali men decided to tag along and managed to shift the focus away from the event's purpose and tweak it towards.. you've guessed it, SOMALI POLITICS! In particular when professor Ahmed Samatar (who's highly intellectual but known for being controversial) was doing his speech. They started reciting flipping poetry from 1879 and 1764 arguing with him over irrelevant subjects like Al-Shabab, each fighting for the microphone so that we can all 'have the privilege of benefiting from their elaborate intellect'! The average age of the audience was between 13-18. How these men expect the kids to comprehend and benefit from whatever palaver they were banging on about is beyond me. On top of that they were wasting time that could've been utilised towards a much more productive activity (like actually allowing the guests that were invited to speak, speak!)
Apart from that it was a great success and I really hope they'll organise more of them since there is a clear need for them.
I also had a good opportunity to take advantage of the experts that attended so I ended up gathering audio for two programs on top of covering the event. All in all, though I've disappeared from the blogosphere I had a productive weekend.

Back to work and all the news is happening in Kenya! Clinton has started her tour around the African countries America is planning to help there but has met with president Sharif on the sideline. What's amazing is that the plight of Somalia and the core issues the country is facing has been overshadowed by Clinton and Sharif's hand shaking. Go figure.
Living up to my job title, I am now off to record a discussion between two Islamic scholars about whether women and men shaking hands is allowed or not... drums please.