Drawing by Augustine (age 7), Kenya
This week, Kenya has their elections. Much respect for Kenyans who faced long line-ups to cast their vote:
..and made it meaningful, truly Kenyan:
The reality is, there is extreme poverty and unemployment in the day to day life of many Kenyans. Even though Kenya has one of the most robust economies in Africa, with vast natural resources (coffee, tea, sugar), a population of 48.5 million and 90% enrolled in school, more than 42% of Kenyans still live in poverty.
Despite reports in the international mainstream media, people of different tribes, of course, make friends, work and live together in peace. (Just as Catholics and Protestants do in Northern Ireland, despite reports). No one wants violence. People want shops to open, they want to feed their families. Like the vast majority of people, Kenyans just want a functioning democracy, so they can live.
A friend in Kenya says,
You do not know what peace is, until you do not have it.
Kenyans want peace. Democracy brings hope.
And no matter the results of this election, I’m thinking about my students:
…and praying for peace, justice (and some soda) for them.
Tuonanne.
Toronto Star Books Section Saturday October 24
–> support independent CDN publishers/bookstores = that support local CDN & Indigenous authors:
& honoured to be invited to International Festival of Authors Toronto this year:
a little interview, click:
looking forward to Words Aloud 2015 in Durham Ontario – reading at Sunday main event with super cool writers Mark Truscott and Armand Garnet Ruffo
& reading with a group of great Exile+ writers @ The Bookshelf in Guelph:
<–independent bookstore supportive of CDN authors
Two baby orphans at the elephant orphanage in Nairobi. They’re both small. The little fellow on the right – less than 4 feet tall. At the orphanage just two months, he was very quiet. He stared at the ground most of the time.
30,000 African elephants die every year because they are hunted for ivory.
Jambo. In Kenya with my first book of poetry: Sword Dance (Exile, awesome publisher)
jambo…tembo. elephant orphan at the sanctuary in nairobi. this little fellow was found fallen down a well after his mother was killed for ivory tusks. click the pic to read more about ivory poaching.
two small orphans at the sanctuary. elephants are very quiet animals.
I keep missing Detroit, so I’m back.
In the empty lot – a place not natural, but wild – among the trash of human absence, the slough and shamble of the city’s seasons, a few old locusts bloom. (Wendell Berry, “The Wild”)
Masanobu Fukuoka, the founder of organic rice farming in Japan, says in The One Straw Revolution:
Artists and poets must also help to decide whether or not it is permissible to use chemicals in farming….
Workshop!
Please bring a pencil, something to write with, and a passion for the great outdoors. (No experience necessary).
Time/Day: Saturday March 21 2015 10:10 am
Location: EMU Porter Lobby then the Great Michigan Outdoors.
Photo: Detroit Heidelberg Project
Veronica Gaylie 
