At the Conference

I'm finishing up the first full day of the African eLearning conference and it's been a mixed bag, although definitely more good than bad. I woke up around 3:30 and couldn't go back to sleep, which might ezplain the bad. After breakfast I had no trouble catching a taxi to the Mulungushi International Conference Centre - 30,000 kwacha ($6). It took me an hour to check in for a conference for which I had pre-registered and pre-paid, but I take it that things were much more chaotic yesterday. The president of Zambia was supposed to welcome us, nut at the last moment he backed out and we had to wait for the vice-president to show up - which meant that everything got started and hour and a half late. Of all the "times" - India time, Arab time, Africa time etc - Africa time is the most "flexible," so I was not really surprised. On the plus side my presentation was very received. Over one-hundred-fifty people showed up, and around twenty hung around afterwards to get information, I ran into my friend Wainaina and we had a great lunch together. He's thinking about starting a model high school in Kenya and asked me to serve on the board of directors - for some reason I find this very moving and think it's one of the greatest honors I've ever received. Right now I'm sitting through the last plenary of the day before the reception - free food, which helps.me stretch my travel budget. For some reason I have the blues tonight. It seemed that although last spring was really horrible - and I was a million miles from what I wanted - that at least I could tell myself that things would get better. And now I've worked for a year and I think two million miles away (grin). Oh well, at least I'm productive. I'm sure it's a temporary bump and one that a cold Mosi will alleviate.