The Great Migration

After three days of obsessively and feverishly checking, rechecking and monitoring the status of airports, flight schedules, airline information and train schedules across Europe, I'm shortly heading to Sarajevo's infamous little airport to begin The Great Trek Home of 2010. Like some others two thousand years ago, we're makign a laborious and hazardous journey from the East in search of a Christmas miracle: fully-functioning flight connections.

We commented yesterday that in the same way that Irish people still talk about "The Long, Hot Summer of 95" (ah, those were the glory days), we'll probably still remember The Christmas Chaos of 2010 for some time to come. I'm scheduled to leave Sarajevo at 3.05pm this afternoon, and supposed - in theory - to arrive in Kerry some time after 2.00pm tomorrow. It remains to be seen how on earth that'll ever work out.

In the meantime, Happy Christmas to one and all; I hope that your evenings will be boozy, your family not bickering, your presents wrapped with a big red bow, your mistletoe be occupied, and that your own Great Trek Home be not so great, and not so much of a trek at all. See you all on the other side of 2011.

(In other news, Sarajevo's Eternal Flame has finally been relit. Perhaps there is hope for a brighter and warmer new year after all).

Whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to go shopping

A new shopping centre opened this weekend just next to our office, so we went for an expedition at lunchtime today. I have mixed feelings. Yes it's beautiful, shiny, new and convenient. Of course I am going to go there all the time. But.... I know this is going to be an entirely predictable, middle-class ethics rant, but please, humour me.

I mean, some of the stuff in there is just fantastic. Clothes shops, electronics shops, pharmacy, all within reach of your lunchbreak. No longer do I have to trek through the snow, possibly visit two or three different shops and then carry heavy shopping bags home; now there's a really big, really attractive supermarket in the basement. If you're used to Bosnian corner shops run by grumpy old men, or of walking half a mile to get to a big supermarket before paying for a taxi home with your bags, this is a big deal. My word, it was like the first time I ever walked into Marks and Spencers Foodhall. Granite counters, varnished pine and recessed lighting! Imported wine! A take-out deli! Low and behold, untold and unknown exotica like blue cheese and - oh, wait for it - PORK! Ham, sausage, bacon! There are very few things I miss, living in a majority-Muslim city, but pork is - surprisingly - one of them.

And best of all, the shopping centre also has places to eat over there. Anyone who knew me in Dublin will know how often I b*tched about places like Dundrum Town Centre exploiting a captive market with corporate coffee chains charging extortionate prices. Today I threw off all of my principles and eagerly embraced a foodhall. Our office has only two cafés; any kind of extended choice at lunchtime is eagerly welcome.

So yeah, the shopping centre's great. But on the other hand... I walked inside, we looked around, and I thought, just like that, I'm right back in Dublin. Why do shopping centres in any and every part of the world look exactly the same? It's so... depressing.

Today it was absolute bedlam in there, you could hardly walk around for the crowds... but none of the shops were busy. The whole of Sarajevo had gone there for a walk and a look around. But no one has any money to go shopping. Most people didn't even go into the shops and pick things up and look at them. They just looked in the windows and then strolled away. The local joke is that shopping centres here need to have as many cafés as shops, because no one ever buys anything but everyone goes out for coffee.

I've written before about how there's at least a 40% unemployment rate here. Every weekday afternoon, the city centre is heaving with pedestrians, while every seat in every café is occupied by young people slowly smoking, sitting for hours with empty coffee cups before them. Today, all those people left the streets and came to the new shopping centre instead. Yes, the weather's miserable so it makes sense, and everyone wants something new to see. And going by the deserted halls of other shopping centres, I'm pretty certain that in a few days they'll all go back to strolling on the streets and drinking cheaper coffee elsewhere.

But today there was something so grim about everyone sitting around the new cafés in the shopping centre, really delighted with themselves and enjoying a day out. It reminded me of a stressful day in an Irish - American - British - Spanish - anywhere - mall, queueing, getting run over by parents with buggies, getting shouldered by people who couldn't be bothered making space for you as they passed. Ferhazdija and the old town with its pedestrianised streets and alleys are so neighbourly when everyone's out walking, the youth checking each other out, the grandparents with little kids, the middle-aged looking on, disapproving. Because they're all there every day, and most likely all do know each other. That atmosphere was dead in the shopping centre.

And yes, I know exactly that I sound patronising; coming over here and working for an international organisation and begrudging Sarajevo for getting on with what every other country deems progress. Yes, I know, I wasn't here during the war when all of this must have been an unimaginable dream. I don't begrudge it to them in the slightest, but hear me out.

During the Irish boom (oh, back in the day!), almost overnight the whole country was suddenly filled with identikit housing estates, shitty cardboard-box apartment complexes, and vast noisy shopping centres on new motorways around the cities. Very little public transport, just traffic jams outside. Every little town got a big Tesco supermarket, built of pre-fabricated glass, sitting in the middle of acres of parking. Meanwhile town centres (old, unplanned, poky, lacking parking, but hence quirky, charming and distinctively Irish) withered, while locally-owned businesses were replaced with branches of Euro2 and Eastern European food shops. And everyone was so excited about it, and so proud of it. And now where are we?

I find all that as convenient as anyone else - I remember very well having to drive an hour to Cork to do any kind of shopping for clothes, Christmas, birthdays - but I find it deeply miserable that Irish families now take their kids for a day out to shopping centres on Sunday . I totally avoid those places at the weekends because they're full of screaming, tired kids and parents who'll ruthlessly run you down with baby buggies. Actually I avoid them in general, I'd prefer to just get the bus into the city centre and soak it all up. And I know that not everyone can do that, or has the time and energy to do that. I just still don't see this as a trend to be glorified.

I just don't think of shopping centres as progress, so why on earth does Sarajevo need four of them when no one can afford to buy anything there? It can't possibly provide that much employment or income, I don't see this as marking an economic change. Please prove me wrong if you have figures that show otherwise, but the fact that this new centre is located beside two multi-story buildings filled with international organisations and multinational financial firms suggests that this new venture may not be entirely targeting the locals for it's clientèle. Apparently this new centre's been built by an American consortium; the last centre to open last year is owned by a group referred to locally - mysteriously - as "the Arabs".

There's something really quite tragic in imagining Sarajevo deserted because everyone's out in the suburbs.

Ugh. And the worst is I'm almost disgusted with myself in advance because I know I'll be making use of it all the time...

Snijeg!

SNOW!

I can't help it, I get excited about snow. I'm Irish: I was reared on a reality where three inches of snow meant school was cancelled and you were officially given permission to stay wrapped up in a warm bed listening to the muffled silence outside for as long as you liked before spending the rest of the day frolicking like a toddler.

The snow arrived while I was in Zenica at a conference organised by one of the field offices. To give you an idea of how bizarre the Bosnian climate is, it was 18 degrees Celsius when we arrived at 10am; when we left at 4pm, it was 0 degrees with a raging blizzard and psychedelic purple lightening. It was a fun drive back to Sarajevo.

Here are some photos of the vantage point from my window tonight, as I sit here wrapped up on my sofa in a duvet, drinking tea, and dreaming of snowmen tomorrow.

Eternal Flame

On Mar

šala Tita, one of the main arteries running through the city centre, outside the fading bulk of an Austrian imperial mansion - previously the city's grandest hotel, once a makeshift Nazi prison during the wartime occupation of the Balkans, now a government ministry of some kind - sits Sarajevo's eternal flame.

It's not hugely ostentatious. An alcove built into the building's porch is carved with names in that squared, art deco font universally used on Soviet memorials; the alcove curves around a small green metal laurel wreath on the pavement, which contains a flame like a small campfire.

The flame commemorates those who died during World War II; specifically those who fought as partisans against the Nazis for the liberation of Yugoslavia. Not that anyone really talk about it in that context any more, of course; the partisans simply fought against tyranny in the name of freedom. Best not to mention the politics that surrounds the memory of that hard-won state. Somehow, in general, the Yugoslavian resistance manages to be remembered as the fight for the freedom of its' constituent peoples, even though those peoples many years later started killing each other so brutally.

On 28 November - Bosnia and Herzegovina's National Day, the day in 1943 that Yugoslavia declared its modern boundaries, although the occupation lasted into 1945 - the country's three presidents laid wreaths in memory of those partisans before the flame. Two days later, on the 30th, the flame went out. It's still out. Eternal no more.

Nothing I've seen here so far has for me summed up so perfectly the state of this small little country. The eternal flame sits to the side of a wide pedestrian area, where the unemployed and disenfranchised youth of the city walk aimlessly up and down the long, straight Ferhadija all evening and afternoon, gossiping and checking out the other unemployed and disenfranchised youth. The odd tourist poses for a picture in front of the flame, girls approach it to bend elegantly over their high-heeled boots and light their cigarettes, and the beggars stand around it warming their hands. Otherwise, no one takes any notice of it at all. So short, unceremonial and unattended was the wreath-laying on the 28th that a friend who lives directly across the street didn't notice anything going on outside.

And now the flame's gone out. A few days afterwards someone took away all the wreaths, and since then it's just been sitting there, unlit. The thing that strikes me is that no one seems to care. The internationals and the ex-pats are appalled: chatting about it at the Organization meets with small gasps of shock and shaken heads at this terrible faux pas, this symbolic gesture of neglect and disfunction. But there's been nothing about it in the press (or at least in the English-language consolidation of the press that we read, which usually reports almost exclusively on issues of governance, reconciliation and the international community). There's been no official explanation of whether it's due to a fault, or a dispute with the gas company, or for maintenance work, or whether it'll be relit at all. It's just gone out, one more thing that doesn't work properly - neglected, faulty, disparaged, disassociated - in a country which I've heard described a lot more than once since I got here as a failed state.

That image of beggars warming their hands around the flame, of teenagers indifferently using a memorial to light their cigarettes, stays with me. It seems a natural progression to the abandoned metal bracket on the pavement, no longer symbolic of anything.

So much for the memory of the fallen partisans; so much for all that shared history before 1991; so much for violence which had at least a common purpose; so much for commemorating anything that doesn't reflect your own ethnic group's victimhood.

Just another day in the Former Yugoslavia.

(Wish I could take credit for them but the photos are courtesy of Blaseur and Maciej Dakowicz)

Free Ali: Hilary Clinton's visit to Bahrain

Hilary Clinton arrives in Bahrain tomorrow on an official state visit. Jenan Al Oraibi, wife of Ali - who I have written about previously - has this evening issued an open letter asking Mrs Clinton to raise the issue of Ali and the other Bahraini political prisoners' torture and ongoing arbitrary detention with the highest political authorities in the country.

Spread the word.

http://freeabdulemam.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/open-letter-to-hillary-clinton-from-imprisoned-bloggers-wife/

The distinguished Secretary of State, Mrs. Hilary Clinton,

Pleasant greetings,

I am the wife of arrested Bahraini blogger Ali Abdulemam. Ali is the father of my four year old son Mortada and my twin daughters Sarah and Fatimah who are younger than a year old.

I have received news of your impending arrival to my country Bahrain. I would like to send to you my urgent appeal for help in the releasing of my husband who has been imprisoned in Bahrain since September 4th of this year.

My husband was arrested after being summoned before the National Security Apparatus with accusations – which were never proven – of “spreading false information.” The National Security Apparatus publishedan explanation immediately following his arrest . After a global campaignby bloggers and defenders of the freedom of opinion and expression and human rights , instead of reviewing the detention order of my husband, his arrest was publicized in the media and he was depicted as a terrorist in the media and government communiqués.

Madam Secretary,

It has become clear to me that my husband has been subjected to the crudest forms of torture and physical and psychological abuse throughout his time in prison. He was forbidden from meeting with an attorney throughout the harsh investigation and his time with the public prosecution. In fact, my husband met with his lawyer for the first time in the courtroom. The court also denied the lawyers’ requests to present the barbaric torture my husband was subjected to. The court continues to proceed with the prosecution of my husband based on coerced confessions that have no connection with my husband’s personality, which is known by all the people of Bahrain, especially his family and blogger friends all over the world. Furthermore, the media has refused to publish the torture and abuse my husband was subjected to or the proceedings of the trial which we know are full of difficulty and hardship.

Madam Secretary,

My husband was fired from his job at Gulf Air which he was devoted to for thirteen years without a single accusation or examination by the investigative council. Thus, with my husband’s arrest alone we are immediately faced real suffering that increases with the continuation of my husband’s absence which agonizes me and his three children.

I wish to inform you Madam that I consider all that we have faced as a family and all that my husband has faced up to today as a result of my husband’s sincere expression of his views and aspirations in reform and goodness for Bahrain and the region. My husband protests peacefully through blogging on what he considers to be harmful to the interests of the people. Ali supports and calls for reform in Bahrain and Iran by devotion to individual freedom and the freedom to express one’s opinion. That much is obvious from his blog posts.

Madam Secretary,

I am certain that you will meet with the highest officials in Bahrain on your anticipated trip. I am also certain that those officials will immediately comply with any appeal from you to enforce justice and release my husband. Therefore, Madam Secretary, I implore your sympathy, and all that is provided for in the values of American freedoms, as I appeal to you to include my husband’s case on your anticipated trip’s agenda. Your support will surely strengthen the value of democracy and freedom which support the development of justice, peace, and tranquility.

I would like to thank you for taking on this moral responsibility. I sincerely hope you will support my request.

Jenan Al Oraibi
The wife of arrested Bahraini blogger (Ali Abdulemam)

Saturday afternoon, Sarajevo

Only 5pm but it's already been dark for what feels like hours. Winter has arrived: this week it snowed, wet damp sleet that only stuck around on the hills around the city. All of a sudden it feels a little alpine. When not snowing, the weather has that bone-chilling dampness that endures for months, unshakable and ancestral. I've realised this week my winter boots are not water proof. Some readjustment of plans for the months ahead may be necessary.

As always happens when you move to a new place, after an initial couple of slow-burning weeks of introduction, all of a sudden I've been very busy, and I have no real idea of how or when this started. One day I'm spending the evenings at home alone - using them to get through all the novels I brought with me - and the next, I haven't been home in a week. I've never really understood how this process happens, but it's been the same almost down to the day and the hour in every place I've lived so far.

Anyway, you'll all be relieved (!) to hear that I've found myself a social life. In trying to describe the big picture and the big thoughts that I have about it, I forget to fill you in - dear reader, whomsoever you may be - on the starting details. The Organisation is a very sociable place to work. The majority of my colleagues - i.e. within my own office - are young and good humoured, and within the Organisation itself there must be about 15 interns in addition to a collection of junior officers and temporary consultants. Of this group, most haven't been here longer than a year, mostly they socialise together, and in terms of demographics all are like myself: young, unattached (legally speaking, at least) and not taking anything too seriously other than the mythical quest in search of a permanent contract. The long and short of it was that when I arrived I was handed a ready-made group of friends, all of whom are more or less on the same page as myself.

So the dramatic reduction in blogging the last week or two has been more or less thanks to a resumption of social duties. I suppose I never could have kept that initial frantic pace sustainable. I give you the last week, as an example.

Last weekend I spent away in Korčula, an island on the Croatian coast, on a road trip with as many people as we could fit in one rental car. It's not really the best time of year to spend on the coast, but two nights of open fires, heaving team-effort meals, playing cards, hot drinks, big woolly socks, blankets on the sofa, walks on the beach, buying wine direct from the vineyard, jumping on and off ferries, and proving myself adept at driving on the right hand side of the road were just what the doctor ordered.

Monday evening I had language classes and didn't get home until nearly 8pm. Tuesday night I went in search of the mythical Mercator supermarket and was so excited to find the biggest range of everything I've seen since I was last in Tesco that I spent hours wandering around and planning what to buy and cook and invest in for my apartment, then trying to figure out how on earth I'd carry it all home (oh yes, I'm learning the hard way how used I'd got to having a car). Shopping was followed by the cinema - gotta love BiH, where seeing a move costs less than €3 (I highly recommend The Social Network, by the way).

Wednesday we finished work at 3pm and I spent a pleasant afternoon making guacamole, punch and mulled wine before throwing a housewarming party that evening. I am a domestic goddess: I even got a housewarming gift of a garlic crusher - this means I am officially an adult! I declared the evening a success: my little apartment has been cosier than ever since. Nine bottles of mulled wine later, we had a guitar and a singsong, as is compulsory at an Irish party, of course. Many ridiculous photos involved.

Thursday was National Day here in BiH, so a public holiday. By coincidence, it was also Thanksgiving so an ex-patriate friend invited me to her family's house for dinner. I'd never been to Thanksgiving before so it was really pleasant, and they were great hosts. I really don't know why we don't adopt some kind of equivalent back on the auld sod. A day set aside with no other agenda than eating and drinking (no mass! no presents! no political stress) - a day which means you have two Christmas dinners accompanied by consummate booze within a month can only be deemed a good thing in my book. Came home at 9.30, put on my pjs and lay in a horizontal position while I tried to digest. Super.

Friday - yesterday - I went for one drink after work with some of the other Irish working at the Organisation. Guess how that ended up. When they kicked us out of the café at the office, there was time and money for dinner in a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant, then off to a friend's house to try and work our way through the supplies of wine we'd brought back from Korčula. Then off to the horribly named Cheers bar, which comes complete with a red phone box outside and Guinness memorabilia on the walls, but which is redeemed by great live music at night. There was a move towards a nightclub later but I pulled a disappearing act and vanished mysteriously into the night and into bed.

The point of all this is the spontaneity: it makes the best of most situations. I also think all of this outweighs the possible isolation of living alone. The goings-on and the going-out is great, most especially because its there if and when I want it, but isn't compulsory and is escapable. I don't know why, but lately there comes a point in the night when I've had enough, and whereas previously (in Ireland, surprise surprise) I would have pushed through and felt obliged to stay, here I am more inclined to sod off when I feel like it.

I've always had a partly anti-social side, in that within moderation I really like spending time alone. Today for example, I've yet to leave the house. I'm much too comfortable here pottering around and reading and working on some photos by myself. Very likely living alone is accentuating this side to me; it encourages me to embrace the solitude and indulge in being selfish with my own time. The months that intervened between Uganda and Bosnia in many ways were very difficult; it wasn't a good or an easy time for me, for a whole range of reasons which I won't be going into here. Living alone since then, I think, has been good in terms of letting me retreat when I need to and letting me tell the world to go sod off when I feel like it. Moving to a new country isn't easy and there have been bad days so far - anyone who would ever think of getting into this line of work should be told about the personal costs and the difficulties - but at the moment I think what I needed was to be able to be selfish for a while in a way which I never could back home.

Don't fear - I don't need too much arm-twisting to tempt me out from under my duvet! And I have two friends coming to stay next week who will no doubt keep me social. But for now, somehow, a bit of selfishness seems to be what this underpaid intern needs.

Korčula, Croatia

Have just returned from a weekend staying in a friend's holiday house on the Croatian coast. Spent two days or so of driving along winding Bosnian, Herzegovinian and Croatian roads, tasting wine, playing cards, cuddling up in front of open fires, cooking and tucking into heaving group meals. It was all idyllic, until I came back home last night only to spend 24 hours more or less continually glued to the internet and watching in fascinated horror as Ireland dramatically and spectacularly imploded. Today was the equivalent of watching a landslide happen in slow motion, albeit one that's been foreseen and predicted far in advance. A landslide that people have argued and fought and in-fought about so frantically for so long that in the end, no one actually noticed when it started.

I'm quite exhausted from the whole thing. So in lieu of writing about how lovely Korčula is, here are some photos to simply show you instead. Because that means - yes! - I have a new camera. Nikon is back! And as a friend aptly put it to me the other day, I'm glad I have my security blanket back :)

How to hide a winery...

pomegranates

Aung San Suu Kyi and Ali

As anyone who knows anything at all about me might imagine, I spent much of this weekend following the news of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. For those of you who might have spent the last few days on Mars, yesterday Aung San Suu Kyi was finally freed unconditionally after spending the last seven years under house arrest. She has since called for reconciliation in Burma in recommencing her political work. Her release has been met with near-universal praise from world leaders and Nobel prize winners, while the world media has briefly flocked back to Burma to report on this good news.

It goes without saying that this news is hopeful, that I am uplifted and encouraged by reports of Burmese shedding tears of joy in the streets of Rangoon, for once unmolested by the police and security agents. Of course I believe that Aung San Suu Kyi is a deeply inspiring figure, probably the Nelson Mandela of our generation in terms of visibility, charisma and popular sympathy. Actually, I think not enough is made of her role as a woman in world politics, of the particular struggles and sacrifices made by women confronting and wielding power.

I also wonder how long she'll be allowed to remain free: previous releases in 1995 and 2000 were followed by rearrest on the flimsiest of pretexts. I cannot see that this release, coming a week after fraudulent elections were 'successfully' concluded, really constitutes the beginning of anything given the strength with which the Burmese junta is willing to enforce its position of authority.

For me a larger issue is no matter how euphoric or cautious, much of the media reporting about Aung San Suu Kyi's release has failed to draw adequate attention to the 2,100 other political prisoners who remain in Burmese jails, many of them detained for taking part in the 2007 protests. Most of them are nameless, faceless and outside of human rights circles, forgotten.

I think one of the things I most admired about Front Line, before and after I worked there, was it's focus on 'the little guy'. Sometimes we used to jokingly refer to the human rights 'rock stars', to the Aung San Suu Kyis, Shirin Ebadis, Liu Xiaobos and Balthazar Garzóns of the this world, along with many others whose names might not be known internationally but who can at least count on support from civil society within their own countries: the Yuri Melinis, Nabeel Rajabs Oleg Orlovs and Emad Baghis. No one can disparage the difficulties they face or the sacrifices they make; take Shirin Ebadi's ongoing exile or Liu Xiaobo's ongoing prison sentence if you want a case in point. It doesn't always translate to protection, but there are immense wells of support for those activists in crisis: the media will report with outrage, students will sign petitions, NGOs are interested and the diplomatic community becomes available.

But for every rock star and for all the applause, there are thousands who run equal risks and pay equal costs without the protection, support and fame which 'fame', of its kind, can bring. With every respect to Aung San Suu Kyi, in the eyes of the world media it helps immensely to be beautiful, elegant, eloquent and tragic. She's everyone's favourite romantic heroine.

I found myself wondering this weekend about the 2,100 other prisoners and whether they had even heard about her release, or whether it meant much. And for some reason, probably because it feels so much closer to home, I found myself thinking about Ali.

Some of you have heard Ali's story already. Ali Abdulemam is - was - the director of one of Bahrain's only independent online news websites, and within online and activist communities was known internationally for his work on freedom of expression and media issues. He spent several months with Front Line in Dublin on a fellowship, working with us in the office, staying in the organisation's apartment a few doors down the street. He ate lunch with us interns, told us stories about Bahrain, promised to bring us Middle Eastern food. He won a staff pitch and putt tournament and we teased him that he'd only won because he had the best golfing fashion sense. By the open fire in the pub he played around with my camera and took pictures of all of us which managed to survive the robbery of my camera and laptop a few weeks later.

On 4 September, a few weeks after his return to Bahrain, Ali was arrested along with about 28 other activists, writers, politicians and clerics. All were accused of taking part in a "terrorist plot" to execute a "campaign of violence, intimidation and subversion in Bahrain". We knew that he was being held incommunicado, without access to a lawyer or his family. We knew that he was most likely being tortured. He and 10 others are currently subject to an unfair trial whose date is continually deferred (from the 28 October, then to 11 November, now until the 25 November), most likely in what I see as an attempt to deter trial monitors from attending and to frustrate defence counsel from adequately representing their clients.

The deferred trial hearings did at least serve the purpose of finally allowing Ali and the other detainees to describe their experiences in detention over the past two months. Ali stated that:

“I was subjected to torture, beatings, insults and verbal abuse. They threatened to dismiss my wife and other family members from their jobs. I was interrogated in the prosecution without a lawyer, and the officer there who appeared to be from the National Security dismissed my denials to the allegations put against me. He never allowed me to respond to the questions he was asking, but rather answering them himself whilst I was stood behind the door as I was not permitted to sit during the investigation".

A blog run by Ali's supporters has in addition reported that he was hung from the ceiling, blindfolded, beaten, cursed and insulted.

If and when Ali and his fellow prisoners of conscience are released, the world media will not report on it. If previous patterns of arrests, tortures and trials are anything to go by, this entire process can be considered a form of punishment for their activities so far, as intimidation against continuing with such actions or activities in future, and of course as a warning to others not to step out of line. Ali he has a wife and young children and extended family at home, and when it comes to personal cost his actions and activism and bravery - to them, very understandably - might or might not seem so clear-cut and worthy of applause. It is perhaps easier to be the one applauded than to be the one left behind.

Aung San Suu Kyi has not been tortured like this, at least not physically in an interrogation cell (on the other hand, she was preventing from seeing her dying husband before he passed away, for instance). I know that one cannot compare different forms of suffering, nor try to quantify the effects of physical 'versus' emotional or mental torture. But does the release of one Aung San Suu Kyi only serve to distract from the very many others?

I suppose that all I want to say is that this weekend I congratulate Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese people, but that I have spent the past couple of days thinking about those who are not congratulated. For myself, I thought about Bety Cariño and Georges Kanuma (both of whom I wrote about before), and I thought about Ali. And I only want to ask you to do the same.

"Welcome Back to Sarajevo"

More or less by accident this afternoon, I came across this article summing up the sights around Sarajevo ten years after the author's previous postwar visit to the city, which I recommend having a look at if you have any time or interest.

More or less it saves me the trouble of writing a succient summary of the city: also it has some good photos attached. I climed up to the Kovaci cemetary the week before last to enjoy the view, I pass by the mosque pictured most days, and there is a photo of a certain skyscraper which might sound familiar.

And she's right on recommending Zeljo as having some of the best čevapi in town :)

The Heavy One

I suppose I have to address it sooner or later. The reality is that in most of the rest of the world, Sarajevo is remembered only for one thing. I was a young child during the siege, but I remember Bosnia as a constant drone in the background, much like the Troubles in the North: an endless succession of grey images on the evening news, of broken windows and concrete and lowcast skies.

I don't like 'promoting' this view of the city. I have a particular distaste for the voyeurism of suffering - car-crash fascination translated into tourism - that attracts one's attention to the locations of atrocities. My first few days here I was impressed by the city - full of beautiful youth, busy nightlife, lots of culture, and a quirky twisted old town, all charm and neighbourly energy, so much at odds with my half-remembered dreams of Sarajevo as a city of devastated tower blocks and snipers. I felt good vibes as I wandered around my first weekend: things were busy, people were going places, and the young seemed to be moving everything forward.

Unfortunately that impression didn't last long. Within days I began to see that the city is so young because it's youth are so disaffected and have nowhere to go but to the cafes and street corners. There is significant begging - you can write them all off as the gypsies if you're so inclined, but they are still poor people sitting on the street. The elderly especially look worn out by a lifetime's troubles: they trudge with shopping bags, wearing headscarves and old overcoats, their faces lined so that I have no way of telling if this is really middle or old age.

Want an idea of what to see in Sarajevo? I live approximately 25 minutes walk from my office and on my way to and from work each day I pass a memorial to the media workers killed in the conflict, an eternal flame for those killed in World War II, and most difficult, the Monument to Murdered Children. I skip over at least three Sarajevo Roses, splatters of red paint across the pavement which fill in broken concrete shattered by falling shells, many of them representing the place where someone was killed. I pass by the Markale, the open air fruit and vegetable market which was the site of two massacres during the siege. 68 people queuing for food were killed in the first instance, and 37 in the second. It was this second attack which finally spurred the NATO intervention which very quickly ended the war.

Some buildings are still bombed although most of the city centre has been rebuilt. Many more buildings are still-bullet scarred: no one has got around to replastering yet. On the day I moved into my apartment I noticed that the wall of the house next to mine, which faces my living room window and is not more than five feet away, is pock marked and scarred. My house faces the hills; it's to be expected. I presume that they've simply repaired my building.

The strange thing is that this already seem pretty commonplace. I don't wander around gaping at bomb-marks. But it's an ever present reminder that bad things happened here very recently, and that I don't have to live with the memories of those bad things like almost everyone else here has to.

Smoke gets in your eyes

... and in your hair, and in your clothes, and in your coat, and in your food.

Everyone smokes in Sarajevo. Constantly. In all places, at all times. I sometimes feel like I'm living in an episode of Mad Men, (for those of you unfamiliar, this fabulous Mad Smoke video should explain everything).

Actually, at odds with Sterling Cooper, our office is literally the only place where people don't smoke and I know for a fact that this is only because I work for an international organisation. No doubt the nationals working in the Mission would say the Organisation simply lacks a sense of humour. But this is a policy of the Organisation and not the building: there's smoking on every floor of our tower unoccupied by Organisation I work for. Even the toiletpaper holders in the ladies' room have an ashtray built into the top. Smoking on the loo: now there's a pleasant mental image.

I don't smoke. I've never smoked. I don't even find myself tempted on nights out when all my friends have suddenly revealed their inner social addiction or when I've spent the whole evening outside in a smoking area chatting, because everyone knows its the best place in an Irish pub for flirting. I tried it once or twice but never liked it. I never really got the point (prior to the addiction setting in, at least). But at the same time I'm not particularly anti-smoking. I've got better things to do than give a lecture about suicide to the unsuspecting devotee who has the bad luck to light up alongside me at a bus stop. I don't sigh and cough and insist on changing my seat if someone sitting alongside outside a cafe waves her marlborough around nonchalently. And I am fully aware of the fact that Western Europe is one of the only parts of the world where the majority of people share my aversion to le fag, not to mention having got around to legislating for it. More importantly, I believe quite strongly that now that I've left my own country it's up to me to get on with it and assimilate, and to accept that some things are socially acceptable here rather than elsewhere.

But.

Really I can honestly say - as I struggle to hack up the phlegm clogging my throat - that I have never experienced smoke as dense as I have here. And I've lived and worked in Spain for chrissakes. When I say "dense" smoke I really mean literally that; I had forgotten what it was like to be unable to see the other side of the room through the cloud. BiH is a country where hourly breaks from work to pop out for cigarettes are not just permitted but seen as a basic human necessity. Friends from the hostel who have bussed around the Former Yugoslavia recounted how on 10-hour bus trips (to Belgrade, for example) the coaches generally stop every hour or so. For toilet breaks? I asked. How they smiled at my innocence.

I had forgotten, for example, the hazards of dancing in nightclubs where cigarettes are lit up on the dancefloor and people's wildly waving arms shower all those shorter than them (i.e. me) with sparks. During my week in the hostel, every single item in my suitcase stank of stale tobacco because I unthinkingly tossed a t-shirt onto the top of the case after coming home one night. Passing a beauty parlour the other evening, I saw a girl having a manicure done at a table inside the window, one hand being given over to the beautican while smoke twirled from the other, presumably while she left her nails to dry.

I went out one evening last week and didn't bother to wash my hair the next morning, simply tying it up and running out the door to work. I spent the whole day at my desk sitting in a little invisible cloud of dirty ashtray, following me wherever I went, wafting from my steeping, reeking hair.

Perhaps my favourite is in the restaurants. Silly me, being a little startled by the staff behind the counter making my veliko espresso with a cigarette clamped stubbornly between their lips, putting it down only briefly to come and deliver me my coffee. I wasn't so startled one evening last week, having dinner in a little cave of a restaurant down an alleyway in the Ottoman part of town. We were the only customers and were seated only a few feet from the kitchen door, the entire place comprising no more than a small room. As the door swung open and closed, I could glimpse a professionally-fitted kitchen and the chef wearing regulation apron and whites, furiously puffing as he cooked our food. The kitchen was not full of steam, dear friends, but of smoke. That was something new.

Am I fussy? Am I unnecessarily disturbed by this public health issue? Am I going to turn into one of those people who lectures smokers at bus stops? Hopefully not. But I think I will be importing industrial size bottles of Febreeze when I come back after Christmas.

Contradictions

Sarajevo is a funny little city. A few contradictions in terms which I’ve noticed this week:

The place is buzzing. The main street is continually thronged with neighbours wandering up and down, spotting the talent and gossiping. Its bars and cafés are packed all day, every day. On weekday afternoons you can’t get a seat beside a window anywhere on the main streets. This seems to me entirely at odds with Bosnia’s poverty stricken economic situation: why does the nation look so leisured? Why aren’t they all out there somewhere ‘struggling’? The reason: the 46% unemployment rate. Almost a full half of the working population literally seem to have nowhere else to go and nothing better to do all day, every day. At least they seem to spend their time sociably.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has a 46% unemployment rate and is still struggling to overcome the economic and industrial destruction of the war. What seems a curiosity to me however is the certainty of this magic number: how can they calculate an exact unemployment rate, when there has been no census carried out since before the war. The authorities have very little idea of exactly how many people are in the country, where in the country they are (a highly significant issue in this federally divided state), what ethnicity they belong to, or which of the many governments they vote for.

As for the government, don't get me started. I refuse to even begin describing it here, but BiH is divded into state, federal republic, cantonal and local governments, all of which I suppose are a source of that all-important employment. You thought Belgium had it bad? Try a country smaller than Ireland which has 162 ministries. The political arrangements are so complicated that frequently there is no clearly defined hierarchy between ministries, governments, civil service departments or even the courts. And similar to the census, it seems to be more convenient for the sake of many interests not to have to clarify things.

The popular perception of BiH as a conservative Islamic society. Reports of the war, the atrocities carried out here, the post-conflict rebuilding efforts and the war crimes trials all described the effect of the conflict upon a particularly enclosed, modest, traditionalist community: of ostracisim and stigma and shame. Yet this simply doesn't seem bourne out once you're here. Take the female victims of the conflict for example, hundreds of whom have been exceptionally brave in testifying to the courts about their experiences without suffering rejection or shame. I can’t speak for rural areas, but in Sarajevo at least there is no such thing as conservatism: couples kiss on streets, beer and the rakia (plum brandy, local moonshine) are flowing, the nightlife goes on for six rather than two nights a week, and hem lines are short. Really short. Shorter than I would ever wear… certainly shorter than I’d wear in conjunction with the fake tan and the FMBs and the blond highlights. The style on a night out here is something quite shocking. Conservative, moi?

And last but not least: the contradiction of the beautiful women. They're stunning. On my first afternoon here, wandering around the streets while I tried to find a lonely traveller’s supper, the sheer beauty of the girls was startling. The heels, the hair, the dresses. The eyes. Those cheekbones could kill a man. And the contradiction? The women are so beautiful, and the men, well, are… not. I won’t offend any Balkan male sensibilities by going any further. But one-sidedness this marked is a contradiction. And going by the reactions of the (predominantly male) backpackers in the hostel, Sarajevo is a good place to be a guy.

Vaulting myself back up onto the blogging horse

I am writing this with my laptop on my knee, in the centre of my sofa, surveying my new apartment. On Friday I moved into an attic almost nearly in the old Ottoman Quarter, Baščaršija. I urge you all to come visit – I’m so delighted with this beautiful perch up on the third floor that I’m fidgeting for someone to come visit so I can show the place off. I have a sweet little loft with a spare bed and two magnificent sofas long enough to accommodate even the fussiest of tall sleepers. The big news: I’m living alone – this is all belong just to me! Obviously this must be viewed as an important scientific and social experiment: if my open invitations to come visit turn into polite requests, and then pleading, and later into desperate cries for help and company, we’ll know whether this was a dreadful mistake. Does living alone meaning you’re turning into a grown up? We’ll have to see.

From my perch under the eaves, past the mosques and the minarets, past the Sebil fountain which promises a lifetime in Sarajevo for those who drink its waters, I look out on the hills ringing the city, which at this hour after dark twinkle in the distance. Sarajevo is a neat little city tucked into a tight valley, its gabled houses spreading up the hillsides like mould speckled on a bathtub. The Centar is long, narrow and pointed, probably no more than 500 or 600 metres wide, so that at most moments as you move through the city you can see a steep hillside beginning close by on both left and right sides. On cold mornings the city is a bowlful of mist and fog lit through by sunshine. On clear nights, lights twinkle on either side like pierced cloths have been strung across the sky. And when it rains – as it did for two days without pause last week – it felt like we lay in the bottom of a cistern.

Thanks to my friend Sven from whom I shamelessly robbed this photo without his knowledge.

Sunset on Sunday 31 October 2010

From my office on the 14th floor of one of the city’s only skyscrapers, I have yet to get tired of the view, one of the strangest mixes of a vista I think I’ve ever seen. Tapering up to the hills which begin only 200 metres away and which are dusted with the year’s first fall of snow, I can see the minarets of Turkish mosques, Austrian-style red gabled houses, socialist tower blocks, gracefully engineered mountain-side roads, a Croatian supermarket chain, a Chinese restaurant, an empty new shopping mall and the improbably smooth and gleaming Parliament building, rebuilt only in the last few years after being burnt during the war. My own skyscraper was shelled early on during the siege. I try to imagine it at as I listen to the hum of central heating and printers and the jingle of new emails, looking down at some of the bullet-scarred buildings below. The tower must have projected its 21 storeys of desolation over the low-lying city like some kind of spectre of the nightmare.

Sarajevo reminds me in lots of ways of Cork. It’s probably about the same size: 300,000 people, with a tiny, twisted centre and a sprawl of suburbs. It seems full only of young people, packed with old bars to which you need directions, little families running closet-sized cafes. They even have a jazz festival starting this week and of course, the locals speak a tongue-twisting lingo which defies all attempts of translation!

I may be starting Bosnian classes next week – another intern from the office is organising a teacher so I have decided I may as well embrace the opportunity, if only to manage ordering food, taking taxis and getting a coffee that actually corresponds to what I wanted in the first place. Bosnian is called Serbian in Serbia, Croatian in Croatia, and Slovenian in Slovenia, but it’s also almost the same as Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian and Polish. The touristy cafes in Bascharciza have waiters who can snarl “Pancake? Mixed grill? Soup?” at you when they see you looking confused, and the taxi drivers who claim not to speak English mysteriously know how to explain their charges, but in general it’s more difficult than I had anticipated to muddle by without the language.

Take Mr Brano, the caretaker of my apartment. I found the place through an agent, who handles all contact regarding the apartment in lieu of the landlord, who lives abroad. The agent, poor thing, is also my personal translator as Mr Brano does not speak a word of English. And I do mean literally, not a word. ‘Please’, ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ mean nothing to him. I suppose he must be in his 60s, wearing frayed trousers with a few faint streaks of paint and sturdy winter boots. On Friday he was waiting at the apartment to meet me when I arrived, three friends (i.e. helpful bag-carriers) in tow, huffing and puffing and rushing in with suitcases. We had to wait half an hour for the agent to arrive and sign off on everything.

While waiting, Mr Brano carefully and thoroughly walked me around the apartment, showing me with the delight of a skilled craftsman how each individual switch, plug and fitting in the place worked. All of it was accompanied by a stream of detailed description in darkest, densest Bosnian – it was entirely irrelevant to him that I – and my three friends - didn’t understand a single word. He revealed how each individual light fitting, table lamp and spot light turned on and off. He demonstrated how to light the gas stove. He opened the fridge and gestured to show me it was cold. He opened and closed the windows, he slid the venetian blinds back and forth, he turned the shower off and on. He gave a thorough and complex demonstration of the sliding doors of the fitted wardrobe in the bedroom. He showed me the blankets in the closet and the drawers built in for storage under the sofas. He indicated the television and showed us the channels, but he reserved particular attention for the thermostat for the central heating. 20 degrees would be about normal, but because the place hadn’t been heated in months it was turned up to 30 for the afternoon. This required a tremendous explanation on his part; never mind that it was entirely unintelligible – he gave me the most thorough convincing of the merits of turning the temperature down to 10 or 15 while I was out during the day, before putting it back up higher at night. 30 was too high! 30 was only for today!

“Super, super,” I nodded, knowing no other word to express my anticipated pleasure with all of this. He seemed delighted – I think he sensed my profound appreciation of the marvellous system of switches and lighting in the apartment! I know that I certainly had a profound appreciation of the agent when she finally arrived and could reassure Mr Brano that I had understood everything. He went home for the weekend, happy with what seemed to be the gratification of a well-satisfied craftsman.

Mr Brano is probably one of the reasons I want to learn a little Bosnian. I want to be able to say thank you, or make small talk. But I also want to be able to say something to sweeten the old ladies who frown at you sceptically as you walk down an uneven street of patched concrete houses. I want to be able to get bartenders to take me seriously and bother to serve me rather than pass me over for the beautiful – no, strike that – stunning, all the women here are absolutely stunning – girl next to me at the bar. On my third day it took at least four minutes of wild gesturing and pointing and pulling faces to get the man at the deli to cut me some cheese. I want to be able to order coffee and get it right. I’d like not to get jostled on the tram.

For all that, I make it sound hostile and defensive here, and yet for all that, somehow it’s not. Mr Brano smiled and patted my arm before leaving, after all. After a day or two the man at the deli began to smile and greet me with “ciao ciao!” when he saw me coming. Smiling at the old ladies helps a lot – in truth I think they’re just not used to seeing people with blue eyes. And yesterday, a five year old came up to me in a park and said hello, before telling me that she didn’t learn to speak English in Sarajevo, because she learnt it in Tokyo. Yes!

I think it’s just that the Bosnians are tough, and I don’t think anyone would hold that against them, all considered.

Miss Sarajevo

Because its so beautiful, and because it's been stuck in my head for the last two days...

First impressions: how sad it is that a city - a whole country - can be known for one thing and one thing only: atrocity. It's not fair.

I'm back!

Greetings from Sarajevo - that's right, in Bosnia.

Only three months after leaving Uganda, I've begun another spontaneous adventure. This is as much a surprise to me as it might be to you - I was offered this internship only about three weeks ago, I took a plane on Saturday, and here I am.

For the next six months, I'm going to be working on justice and legal issues - specifically on the war crimes trials being held in the local courts here, which are increasing now that the court in the Hague is trying to wrap up its business within the next year or two. I'm working in a large international organisation - I won't say which one in case I ever want to entertain myself making catty little comments about it here on a future basis. Suffice to say its not the not the organisation I worked for in Uganda... I leave it to your imagination.

I bid Front Line an emotional farewell last week. I can't believe my year there has come to an end already. They were incredibly good to me, and were a home to me as much as an employer - they literally put a roof over my head for a couple of weeks at one point, besides making my Ugandan, Armenian and Swiss adventures possible. As a parting tribute, as a chance to make it public - Front Line and your valient human rights defenders, I salute you!

Hopefully I'll keep up the blogging much as I did down on the equator - I didn't realise how much I'd enjoyed writing until I didn't have the excuse to blog back home. Thanks to my beautiful new shiny Sony Vaio and a pretty reasonably decent internet connection (take that, Uganda!), I'm actually looking forward to trying to upload here without spending half an afternoon on it...

So stay tuned for some musing and updates on this cosy little city.... although no photos this time around I'm afraid, thanks to the asshole who robbed my house in Dublin last week. The robbery could have been worse - I was insured - but the timing could not. Leaving home without a lens has been excruciating. Funny to think how I attached myself so much to that black little mechanical eye on the world.

More to follow soon....

Ireland

I'm home.

There's a whole world contained in those two words, most of which I can't really explain here. If there are any takers out there for a pint and a boozy chat, it might be possible. On paper (can you call a blog "paper"?!) I don't have the time or the energy right now. I would say that I haven't formulated most of it yet, except that - as I always knew would be the case - after only four days back in Ireland, my Ugandan experience is already slipping away from me, and I have a terrible fear that if I don't write about it very soon it'll slip away from me forever.

I flew out from Kampala on Friday night, and arrived back in my small little Irish home town on Saturday lunchtime. By Sunday afternoon I was already on my way to Dublin and on Monday morning I was back at my old desk in the office, fumbling my way uselessly through the same work I was fluent with a few months ago.

There's so much I haven't written about - so many things happening, so many places seen, new people befriended, new journeys made, new events (some magical, some tragic and horrifying). This blog was as much for myself, to remember things, as it was for anyone to read about them. The month of lost blogging thus really does seem a loss - too many things I'll have forgotten, some day. It's not that I gave up blogging the past month, its simply that circumstances conspired against it. Armenia swallowed a large chunk of my Ugandan time - I spent ten days away. I spent a week recovering (literally - a large proportion of the week after I came back was spent in bed recovering from some kind of bug I picked up along the way). I spent another week almost totally without internet in the office, frantically trying to wrap up the work I needed to finish before my successor, Daniel, would arrive for a handover. My last week in the office was only three days long, all of which was swallowed by workshops, speeches and the launch (a big deal) of the Human Right's Centre's first report. And then I spent about a week traveling with two friends through southwest Uganda and Rwanda before coming back to Kampala to fly home.

It would take me days to write about our Great East African Road Trip. Suffice to say it involved:

• Crossing the Equator for the first time. Disappointingly the world is not as upside and back to front down there as one would hope.
  
• A series of long-winded bus journeys, the last of which was ten hours long, which all seemed to involve broken bags, babies on laps, questionable roadside food, near-death experiences on Rwandan mountaintops, Nigerian soap operas, Christian music, the total absence of personal space, amorous Ugandan and Rwandan men, out of date newspapers, postal deliveries and sore bladders.
  
• An inexhaustible succession of Scandinavians of various shapes and sizes.
• Africa's deepest lake, and wooden dugout canoes upon it, and fish inside it, diving into it, and lying in hammocks beside it.
• Day-long card games, which no one ever won.
  
• An earthquake. Yes, really, an earthquake. It was a good 5-10 seconds long and as thrilling as it was bloody frightening.
• Crayfish. Oh god, so much crayfish. So delectably good. Sigh.
• Omelets. Some good, some bad, always reliable.
  
• Unfathomable and indecipherable exchange rates. I currently have six different currencies in my purse.
  
• Walking to the Congo, standing and looking at the Congo, and ultimately failing to get into the Congo. Must go back to climb the volcano another time.
  
• Incorruptible Rwandan border guards. We would know - we tried our very best to corrupt one, and emerged morally bankrupt. Absolute shame on us.
• Children - hugging us, squealing at us, being dumped on our laps. Life affirming.
• Genocide memorials. Really nothing witty I can say about this.
  
• Terrorism.

This last one is nothing to joke about either. 76 people were killed in Kampala on 11 July while they watched the World Cup Final. A week later there is still very little I can say about this. All the usual adjectives apply - sickening, horrifying, terrifying - and all of them seem very pointless because they are so obvious. Something like this deserves something more than words, or perhaps something less. Perhaps only silence can suffice.

We were safely in Rwanda when we heard the news, and thankfully no friends or colleagues were affected. This is less surprising than you might think - one of the bombs, at the Ethiopian Village Restaurant, went off in my neighbourhood, Kabalagala (which I've written about before), about halfway between home and the office. I've driven past twice a day for the past three months; I've eaten there before. If I had been in Kampala I probably would have been in a neighbouring bar or restaurant that night - in fact a good friend of mine was in a place just up the street and heard the explosion. But noises and whooshes and bangs happen all the time in Kabalagala, especially on the night of the World Cup Final, and no one took any notice. Fifteen people died in that whoosh.

I've been trying to explain to people that while you in Ireland or Europe or North America might think that these things happen "out there" all the time, in those far flung places whose names are linked to suicide bombings every week, these things did not happen in Kampala. Security concerns in Kampala involved taking precautions against petty theft, or avoiding political rallies and protest demonstrations where rowdiness and beatings are a growing trend in the run-up to the elections. No one worried about bombs and fundamentalism and extremists. Kampala was - and is - a city of bars, and shacks selling beers, and restaurants with live music; a town obsessed with football, where even the rundown local joints screened satellite channels from South Africa; a place where a typical Friday night out involved changing your bar every hour until 5am, before sipping beers through the sunrise and dryly taking a boda boda home after grabbing the first rolex from a street vendor at 7.00.

Bombs in bars didn't happen in Kampala. I only returned on Thursday night before flying out on Friday, but you could see the place was jumpy. People are calling in suspicious packages to the police, and shopping bags are checked by security guards going into shopping centres. The embassies send regular text messages with up dates to ex-pats. Yet even still, town was buzzing. "The jam" was as bad as ever, the street food sellers were doing their usual trade, and although the Western muzungu bars were probably deserted, friends have told me wild stories about spontaneous house parties that were thrown up around town all weekend.

I hated hearing about them: I wasn't there. I was watching soft, gray Irish rain beat off the window panes in Kerry, paying €3 for a cup of the coffee I'd so craved, hearing - before I saw - the girls in fake tans and tracksuits. Well, that's a harsh invocation - Ireland's really not that bad. Today, my second day at the office, was better than yesterday, my first. True, the sun was shining today, and I'd forgotten how beautiful Dublin is when you take the train out along the bay; had forgotten the smell of the sea; was startled once again by how O'Connell Bridge at 8.30 on a fine summer morning has the strange quality of a film set - tidy, vivid, wide, calm. And yet, still, what continues to upset me is not that I'm so unhappy here but the fact that I'm already settling back in; the fact that I can get on very well outside Uganda and that I'm already forgetting it and re-adjusting, faster than I want to.

You don't realise how immersed you are in Africa until you leave it; going to Armenia and then returning was in this sense a very strange and emotive experience for me. Reverse culture shock for me isn't, after all, the unfamiliarity of what should be the home environment. It isn't no longer feeling at home in your own place, amongst your own people. It isn't seeing the same old same old with new eyes, marvelling at what you never bothered to notice before.

Reverse culture shock for me, upsetting and disorientating, is in fact the inevitable, crushing sameness of everything when you come back. Nothing has changed. This is obvious, as much to me as it is to you, reading this, and its the almost-sense of shame and stupidity that comes from knowing this and recognising this, the whole, well, what else did you expect?

I've tried to reason it all out the past four days. The obvious answers are: you have changed, and home has not. You have changed, but the people at home have not, and most of them cannot relate, and most of them really aren't all that interested anyway. Other friends who have traveled to the developing world have talked to me about how friends, family and acquaintances project a defensiveness when you return - even if you were never to talk about your experiences, they expect you to, and expect you to express dissatisfaction - which they take to be a criticism of themselves - and expect you, somehow, to project a sense of superiority because of what you've done and where you've been. And even if this couldn't be further from the truth, it won't make any difference to those who'll keep you at arm's length because they expect to find you changed. And you don't want that to be the case; you just want your friends, who you very likely missed while you were away.

Reverse culture shock is all of these things, and yet for me that's not exactly it either. In addition to all of that, there is the sameness of things flattening everything else out. The sameness took the good out of all the modern conveniences that I looked forward to my last week in Africa, trying to console myself at the thought of going home: the long hot showers, the drinking water direct from the tap, the bewildering choice of food, the fast internet, the being able to go out alone after dark. Home is so utterly and crushingly the same, from the instant that you get back here, that all these things are just the same too, unnoticed and unappreciated. I thought I would have forgotten how to drive, or would marvel at the hundreds of choices in Tesco, but I did not. I thought I'd never been able to choose what to eat for lunch, but I just got on with it, and that was what was most upsetting.

No matter how long I'd been in Uganda, no matter how comfortable I felt there, every so often there would come a moment - of beauty, of kindness, of friendship or simply of something random that could only happen in Africa - and you'd jump in your own skin, look around and think - This is amazing. How did this happen? How did I get here? I can't believe this is my life now!

Yesterday, running late for work, lacking change for the bus, getting wet in the rain - that crap Irish half-rain, muggy and humid with mildness - it was my very first day and yet simultaneously so eternally as if I'd never been away. And I looked around and though.... how did this happen? how did I get here? is this really my life?

Because when I thought about where I had been only five days ago - bumping on buses over the Rwandan hills and the Ugandan plains, laughing about nicknames with Jenny and John, being welcomed by the Rwandan border guards who remembered us from passing through on our way the week before, flying on a boda boda through the balmy Ugandan evening, being called Auntie by Mama Sharon and Paul the boda driver, looking at Kampala's twinkling nighttime hills with Paulo, having pizza while surrounded by friends on my sofa, getting ridiculous text messages from Hubert, seeing the tears in Sharon's eyes, guiltily thinking of the people I didn't even get to see before I left, eating chapatti, gossiping over lunch with everyone from the office, listening to the birdsong and the rooster crowing and the call to prayer in the morning, counting banana trees on my way to the airport - I had no idea how I had come from there to here in what seemed like the passing of a few moments. The idea that all of that was over was so deeply upsetting. I wasn't ready for it to end. I still amn't.

I don't know if I'll keep blogging. If I have the time there are stories and thoughts about my last weeks there which I'd like to write about. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the kind of thing which simply loses momentum in the atmosphere of home, although I try to tell myself I'll be different this time. Perhaps this is my last entry, until my next travels; the thought makes me think of the very last anecdote I have from Uganda, and of how perfect - in summing up, and in all the hopes I have for the future - it was.

On my last morning I went to a supermarket to buy an extra bag for my luggage. I took a cheap holdall to the till, where the man whose job is to pack your shopping bags picked it up and turned it over, folded and unfolded it, opened and closed it, and handed it to me as if he'd made it ready for me.

"Thank you please. This is a very good bag," he said, and it wasn't small talk. He really meant it. "You must be planning a journey if you are buying a bag. Eghh. I wish you safe travels ,and good health wherever you will go with it."