Aaron Sharghi blog: March 2006

Inauguration of my blog

This is no April Fools Day joke. But, it is an experiment. Introducing the Aaron Sharghi blog.

I have my reservations. Blogger is a Google company. When I was young, google was a little-known word and I would use it to get the best of my 7th grade math teacher. Today, the company that has made the word a household name seems to be everywhere. And they don't seem to be finished. Earlier this month, it was revealed that Google wanted to classify all information that exists, including what you ate for breakfast this morning.

If you heard about my blog, you probably got an email from my personal account - my gmail account - Google again. And the photos that I uploaded? Ah, that was Picasa - yet another Google product.

Big brother is here. Don't believe me? Have a read (and you can find more by doing a search at google.com): http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06030819.htm

And so, I am contributing perhaps to Google's domination of the web. And why not, it makes life easier - for the moment.

Thanks to my friend Hilary Huler - fellow lover-of-Africa - for introducing me to Blogger. Once you have exhausted your senses here, you can have a look at her blog at http://hilaryheuler.blogspot.com.

Welcome to my blog.

Originally written 29 March 2006
I just finished up an absolutely fantastic vacation in Kenya. Yeah, the plans to Iran fell through, but this was certainly the next best alternative. My friend Dimitri is doing an internship with a UN agency there and has been living there for three months. He invited his daughter and her mother for a couple of months to visit as well. His daughter Icy is three now - she was 16 months old when I carried her to the US from Guinea.

The vacation was fantastic! All of these pictures are from the first 3 days, when we went to the Masai Mara game reserve in the east of the country, on the border with Tanzania and the Serengheti.

In addition to these three days on safari, I spent two nights (and no days - I was in transit) in Addis Ababa where I ate some great Ethiopian food and saw lots of dancing and traditional Ethiopian outfits. An Ethiopian friend of mine took me out to show off her country.

The other 6 nights, I spent in Nairobi, or Nairobbery as some like to call it because of the extreme crime in the city. Nairobi was wonderful, and I just basked in some of the luxeries of the big-town. Good food, shopping malls, nightclubs, etc.

Overall, it was a real pleasure to get out and see completely different parts of Africa and a very different African lifestyle than that I am used to. Also, I will now be able to answer that question "Oh you live in Africa, do you see lots of animals?" with a resounding YES! (Then I will say that I eat them too, like ostrich, crocodile, camel, and wart hog!) I was due for a good vacation to discover new things, and this was a good way to go - and I add two more countries to my list of places visited.

Now, I am back to work in N'Djamena, Chad, feeling a bit refreshed now. There was a solar eclipse today - we had about 80% coverage. Reminded me of when I was in high school and we had a solar eclipse that passed through Ohio.

Hakuna matata