Christinaswwworld Unlimited

Exploring my benelux surroundings, Dordrecht is a darling town I've enjoyed discovering in the Netherlands. It's such a friendly place - local families socialize on front porches and terraces. Though it's not a super tiny town (worthy of 2 train stations!), everyone knows everyone. A man who spoke with me on the street for a moment told me so. He knew right away that I was a stranger since the don't get many tourists in Dordrecht. He thought maybe I'd come for the little fair that was in town that weekend. Altogether a lovely late afternoon. In case the embedded slideshow below doesn't show up, there are some photos on flickr I've shared over here .

My Christinaswwworld blog feeds into my Facebook profile, and nobody else is paying attention to it right now... so as I think about starting to blog again, the dear family and old friends who I've found through Facebook over the past year or so are the audience I find myself wanting to write to . Just in case you didn't know this about me, my calling in this life has turned out to be organizing creative ways of bringing people together to make good things happen. Some of you will remember that since way back in High School I have loved throwing parties and designing fun events. For over a decade now, I've been making a quasi-career out of it. I've done a lot of pretty wacky community building and community event stuff in the online world, and in Africa, as well as at the intersection of the two. Over the coming year I'll be developing yet another social experiment online, involving the use of several platforms for managing my connected life and making good things h...

We have come back to Lake Bunyonyi to spend Christmas - I am in town today to connect and say happy holidays before heading back out to the lake with more supplies this afternoon. It was a special treat for me to be able to participate in facilitating an " appreciative inquiry " process last weekend with about 40 households on the peninsula where my friend Wilfried is developing the Amasiko eco-tourism and youth training community development project . Women, men and youth were divided into groups and facilitated through the same exercises for discovering their own capacities, developing their own visions, and making mini action plans for change that builds upon what they already have. Then we combined everything to develop a vision for the village 5-10 years from now. It was my appointed role to watch all of the groups and identify what was working and not working in the communication process, and advise the facilitators on how to get back on track. The facilitators were wo...

There are stories I am afraid to tell. I wish I could tell you it's been all sweetness and light, working to try to empower African communities. I wish I could tell you that I achieved all - or at least part of - what I set out to accomplish. I wish I could tell you that I clearly see the lessons in whatever these trials and ordealswere supposed to teach me. Were I able to find nuggets of wisdom in the wreckage, I would want to share them in a way that inspires others to do better, to be smarter, to achieve more. I fear sometimes, that I might never find them. And yet, there is the painful process of sifting through the mess of memories that my mind's eye is compelled to try and do. I lie awake nights imagining where to begin, and how to combine the memories of magical experiences with an acceptance of how things changed... of how my understanding of what I was up against changed... of how I changed. Writing is a tool that can help me with the sorting through. But I fear som...

View from the Amasiko peninsula, Lake Bunyonyi (Uganda) Uganda's Lake Bunyonyi has got to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. Sprawling through valleys created by southwestern Uganda's very old volcanic mountains, it's said to be Africa's deepest lake. Mountains caught in the middle become islands, large and small. I've been told there are over 100 of them, mostly family owned and terraced to grow crops which are ferried by canoe to a small dockside market near the main road to Kabale, South Western Uganda's largest town. My family has a decade of gorgeous memories from weekends spent at Lake Bunyonyi. It was the ladies in these mountains who originally inspired what would become the Life in Africa logo, almost 10 years ago, and there is an energy there that calls us back every 2-3 years. We've stayed at many places on the lake. This past weekend, we visited the future site of a wonderful community based eco-tourism project that our old family ...

... and then there was the time I started a project in an African war zone. My journey into the war-torn heart of Africa's Pearl began with an aim to motivate the members at Life in Africa's WE Center Kampala to join hands behind a cause beyond their own poverty. A community like ours could do something to help the children of Northern Uganda. We held a great fundraising event , we got a contract making bracelets to support awareness of the plight of children in Northern Uganda, and we went to Northern Uganda in small groups to facilitate art therapy workshops with groups of night commuter children and former child-soldiers. After interacting with children at different organizations in Gulu, we'd developed the strongest bonds with one night-commuter center in particular. The volunteers that were keeping the place running were horribly under-resourced. We started thinking about setting up some of our adult community activities there, involving the volunteers and the chil...