During the 1970s, when America recognized Taiwan as the “real China,” an exemplar of free market economics and bulwark against Maoist Communism, I lived in Taipei as a young reporter…
In late October last year, about six weeks after I arrived in Kenya, I interviewed a Chinese minister and commercial counselor in Nairobi. Dr. Guo Ce bowled me over with…
What a Nairobi radio hostess who busts marital cheaters can teach us about love. Yes there has been a huge hiatus in my writings here. Since my last post, I’ve…
A few weeks have passed. After awhile the string of conversations and interviews begins to blur. The faces don’t, exactly, but the impressions they make are something like Georges Seurat’s…
My 24 year old landlady, the R&B rapper, Wangechi Waweru Mwende, survived a horrific car accident four years ago. Today she’s rebuilding her life and career without much fuss or desire…
Try making judgements about human beings and groups and tribes and nations just by what you read in the media. Then, go out into the streets. Hire a bilingual Uber/Littlecub/Taxify…
I wrote the story on Indonesia’s attempts at natural disaster warning and prevention for Earth magazine last April, based on reporting I did in Indonesia in late December. Now with…
After staying in Nairobi 24 hours on no sleep, I took a flight to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania to attend a conference entitled Africa-Asia: ‘A New Axis of Knowledge 2.’ …
Dawn: Mwingi Rd., Kileleshwa, Nairobi. My Lufthansa flight -an Airbus A340-300 — touched down last night at 8:11 pm local time. It has taken me an entire summer to prepare…
Harbin, Manchuria: Officials here seem reluctant to spotlight the Japanese germ warfare scientists and what they did to thousands of local inhabitants here in 1932 and beyond. Perhaps that’s the…