Category: Culture
Ode to Hot Doug’s
A sad day for everyone who eats Friday, October 3, in the two-thousand and fourteenth year of our Lord, the West’s inimitable culinary paragon, the peerless Hot Doug’s, shutters its doors in valedictory glory....
On safari
In Swahili, the word “safari” just means “trip.” So, a safari doesn’t necessarily mean heading out into the bush to see animals. For us, however, it meant exactly that. On our last full day, we...
Kibera start-ups 1.0
Thursday was mostly a repeat of Wednesday morning, so there will not be a great deal more to add. We returned to the Blue House — the popular local name for the church in Kibera...
Down to business… and dancing
We returned to Kibera Wednesday for the first day of the entrepreneurial training class, the part of the trip I’d been most excited about. A local Kenyan businessman and our team leader tag-teamed the morning...
Care for widows and orphans
On Tuesday we went with a group of church volunteers to Kuwinda, a slum in the Karen neighborhood of Nairobi. By comparison, Kibera seemed well-off. The story goes that Karen was a wealthy British woman...
Learning from the Magoso School and Orphanage
Even many Nairobians don’t seem to know how to talk about Kibera. Some told me there are 500,000 people in the slum. Some said three million. Some said it is the biggest slum in sub-Saharan...
And There Was Great Rejoicing in Ongata Rongai
It was fitting that our first full day in Nairobi was a Sunday, a very necessary Sabbath after an eventful and far-from relaxing day of travel. After spending 16 hours in narrow metal canisters shooting...
I Looked at the Calendar and It’s September 11 Again
It may always be impossible for Americans in my generation to say today’s date – September 11 – and not think back to the tragedy, the metal and fire and blood, of the 2001 version. It’s...
Writing and listening after Ferguson
I tried to write about Ferguson. I tried five times. I sat down at my computer, reading and writing, reading and writing. Thinking of conversations I’d had, of classes I’d taken, of what my friends...
For or Against Year Round School?
I just read that some schools in Michigan are getting government funds to test out a new year round school regimen. My first reaction was It’s about time. American schools have considerably longer summer breaks...