So, the biggest problem I have with blogging – and I am sure many of you will relate – is making time to do it regularly enough.
More specifically the fact that, after a month or two has gone by with no sign whatsoever of a blog post, it becomes harder and harder to write a new one. Each additional month adds to the pressure of “the next one better be good after all this time”, making it ever harder…
Even though I know that this is unimportant, nobody really cares (not even my 8 followers! Joke, ish! ), it creates a mental block that seems to say “after this long you can’t get away with just a brief paragraph, an event promo, a guest blog…” even though any of these things would be entirely legitimate…
So, in the interests of unblocking my blogging (unblogging?), a brief update of what’s been going on since my last update in . . . January!? Sheesh… Anyway, moving on…
- The last quarter of 2015 ended up with a lot more travelling and a lot less working than I anticipated – Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, India (cycling tour then Christmas in Goa) and Dubai (for New Years). Not that I am complaining… Ahem 🙂
- In January I finally started some serious sabbatical work in Nairobi, Kenya.
- Initially for a very cool civil society group who support pan-African social movements and political activists (Fahamu) and publish the well-known pan-African news website Pambazuka News.
- Later, my colleague George Flatters and I undertook some extremely interesting research for Oxfam’s ICT in Programme , looking at the state of “ICT4D” in Horn, East and Central Africa and identifying gaps and opportunities where NGOs (or others) could play a useful role. Watch this space, the research will be published soon and I will promote it here.
- In June and July, knowing I was exploring opportunities in Latin America, I decided to brush up on my Spanish and spent two months living and studying in Valencia. Interesting to learn the (over-stated) differences between Spanish and Latin American Spanish (not much apart from vosotros and being very careful with the verb coger!), although ironically… not as useful as I had hoped… (see below)
- In August, my brother was finishing some work with an NGO in India and suggested we go to Burma. Well, it would’ve been rude not to…
- I then had to get to Latin America from Burma, which involved travelling through Bangkok, Hong Kong, Japan, California and Florida. Ok, admittedly there may have been more direct routes, but what’s the point of an unpaid sabbatical if you don’t use the time to see the world and spend way more money than you can afford eh?
- Finally… I arrived in Latin America this month… In Brazil…
- Yes, Brazil… that famously NON Spanish-speaking country…
- So, I am now working with a very well-known ICT4D NGO here, who until recently were called CDI (Committee for Democratisation of Information or the Centre for Digital Empowerment, depending where you look), and are currently rebranding but for the moment are known as RECODE (Digital Empowerment, Recode your life, Recode the system, very in-line with their Paolo Freire inspired roots).
- So I am now living in Rio de Janeiro – probably until Christmas, who knows.
Whew.
So, now that is out of the way, I have no excuse anymore not o start blogging regularly again.
Entonces… então…
Nos vemos pronto (6 months…)
🙂
Matt Haikin 