100 days!

So I have a little "countdown calculator" to our departure date on my computer so I can keep track of how much time we have left, and today it said we have (just) 100 days left in Africa before we return to Canada.

Time is really flying, it seems!

Wednesday and Thursday of this week, I attended a conference (or, a "high-level symposium," as it said on all the press material) at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, which is very, very posh:



The conference was on "garnering the political will for promotion of the Responsibility to Protect in Africa," quite a mouthful.

The responsibility to protect is a relatively new international principle -- apparently launched by Canadians -- which, in a nutshell, maintains that states have an obligation to protect their civilians, and that the international community has an obligation to act -- with diplomacy, sanctions or in the worst cases military intervention -- when states are unwilling or unable to prevent threats to civilian livelihood, such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc.

Anyway, it was extremely interesting, although a bit intimidating to be around all these international tall-foreheads and big thinkers. Now I just have to boil it all into something readable for the Chronicle.

In other news, I found a place with an espresso machine!



That's in the cafe at MaxMart, a grocery and household goods store up near the 37 lorry station (Still no idea why it's called "37," other than it's near the "37 Military Hospital").

That's actually the second espresso machine we've seen -- there's also one in Mamma Mia's, a little Italian restaurant near our house, except we can't go there very often because the pizza is too, too good. It may be the best pizza I've ever eaten, anywhere, anytime, ever. Seriously.

Also, the tradescantia (also, I'm told, called spiderwort or purple heart) is blooming in our yard:



This is one of my favourite houseplants at home. It's still so weird to see houseplants growing wild here.