Here's the thing...

Here's the latest from the Hoppe Studios... Chasing Misery

I have to take back everything that I've said about Dubai. For those of you who hadn't heard of my dislike for the place the feelings went a little something like this: "There are two things in this world that drain my will to live faster than anything else. Those are: 1) airports, 2) shopping malls." Dubai is, essentially, nothing more than a combination of those two and, therefore, one of my least favourite places on earth." Mind you it also has something to do with how it's a hot, dry, dustbowl and the airport usually looks like a morgue with bodies sprawled all over the floor sleeping through their 10 hour layovers. Well, I gave my friend James the challenge of changing that all for me and he did an excellent job. First, I received an e-mail that contained those 9 little words that thrill me like no other: "I'm having a car meet you at the airport". Seriously, if . Next, when I disembarked from the plane there was someone standing there w...

After sitting in my little tukul almost all day on Saturday I had enough. I needed to get out and so I went for a walk. And once I started walking I was overcome by the strangest urge to just keep on walking. I mean, just keep going. Now, I’m the person who coined the phrase, ‘if God had intended us to walk he wouldn’t have given us cars’ so I’m not normally a fan of ‘footing’, as they call it here. I think of walking as a means to an end, just like driving - only the latter is more expedient. You walk, or run, or hike, or trek, or drive in order to 1) get where you’re going, or 2) exercise, or, 3) see some beautiful mountain/hike as the case may be. That’s it. I have never gotten some high or endorphine rush from either walking or running. That’s why I found it so unusual that on Saturday I just felt like walking. It might have something to do with being in the middle of nowhere and I was on a dirt track that goes somewhere. It wasn’t to get anywhere, it wasn’t particularly beautiful...

"Careening," I thought putting the New Yorker down on my lap. That is the word for what we are doing right now - in this taxi - through the hills above Nairobi. Careening. Under the heavy grey sky, over these pot-holed roads, between the jungle threatening to come over the garden walls. It struck me as funny - or funny enough to stop reading a magazine - that the word just came to me like that. After so many months of having no words pop into my head to describe anything. After years of not having really anything to write. Having no words compose themselves in my head. One just pops up. Just like that. Careening. I guess we are all careening in life - which is a great metaphor for life if, in the words of someone famous, you're stupid enough to want more metaphors for life - careening along roads on high mountain cliffs, over hills, being shifted in our seats from side to side by bumps and turbulence. We rarely, if ever, just stay perfectly still. Not even wh...

It’s a strange thought, isn’t it. I’ve thought about it for the past few mornings when I took the road the opposite direction into town. It’s a flat and dusty road – fairly good by South Sudan standards and, if you take it in the opposite direction, it passes through some oil outposts, dry flat bush occupied by a mud tukul here and there, and the army’s checkpoints. You make a left at one junction and then you’re headed straight into Mayom County. I went there a few weeks ago because I had destroyed my computer (another tedious story involving my falling through the floor and spilling tea on it) and some friends were on an official visit and it seemed like something interesting to do with an otherwise wasted day. Apart from a couple of buildings, a bunch of tukul compounds surrounded by dried reeds, a broken tractor - there’s not much to Mayom town. There’s just a bunch of people living out there with their kids running around playing with tire rims and trucks made out of tin. Ou...

I like to think of myself as a fairly 'tough' person. I'm not afraid of snakes, scorpions, spiders, or other animals in general. I like to think that if you leave nature alone it tends to leave you alone. But then I came to Unity state and am living at the UNMIS team site. Within the chain link and barbed wire fence there is a strange ecosystem of animals and insects that seems to have gone crazy. I'm afraid that nature is considering not keeping up its part of our little bargain. What makes me think this? Well, nothing in particular but let me give you some examples: There are packs of mongoose (mongeese? mongi?) roaming the grounds. I like mongoose (singular). I've never seen them (plural) travelling in packs but the team site is ridden with them - they travel in packs of 40-50 and have been seeing taking on the packs of feral dogs (will get to that in a moment). Now, in general, they stay out of my way and I stay out of theirs but when I go out for a run ...

I think that if I pretend that I haven’t ignored this blog for an exceptionally long time and just start writing again that no one will notice… Today I was struck by several acts of generosity that were conveyed to me for no apparent reason by people who stood nothing to gain by giving them. Let me back up… I am in Bentiu, Unity State – a state that was ravaged by war, dominated by oil, and is, still, as close to the wild west as you can get in the world today. Different political factions swagger around town with their bodyguards (read: private militias) in shiny suits and land cruises with guns pointing every which way out the window. It is hot, and dusty. At just about any moment you expect a show down to in the open street complete with tumbleweeds and that classic western music. It’s not a place where you expect extreme civility but one is always surprised. I am helping the Ministry of Labour and Public Service to implement an HR system. That might seem like a mundan...