top travel tip: olive oil

This is one of those nuggets of information that changes your life forever. Especially if you travel a lot, between different climate zones. I'm not exaggerating.

It comes from my human encyclopaedia of health and wellness wisdom, Lisa Martinovic, creator of the stunning Lingua Flora.

When your nasal passages dry out on planes, it makes your tissues vulnerable to viruses. To avoid this, daub the inside of your nostrils throughout the flight with organic olive oil –which you have remembered to bring in a handy little squeeze bottle in your pocket, right?

I took a small vial of olive oil with me on my last two trips, and it was miraculous. I breathed better, slept better, felt WAY better, through 72 hours in airports and on planes.

I also found this remedy worked equally well for winter zones. It protects delicate nasal tissues from the alternating shocks of sub-zero outdoors and central heating indoors.

sun in a box

A gift from Deamer Dunn, my favourite digital artist / renaissance person, to keep me warm in Sweden next month. Somehow, he guessed I was blenching at the average April temperature range in Uppsala: one to eight degrees celsius. I'm soaking up Nairobi heat right now, stockpiling it in my cells, for the weeks ahead.

I love the glow against the darkness in this image. The sense of both looking down into a box, and upwards out of a window, simultaneously. It evokes fireflies on hot nights. And the most potent dream I've ever had.

Open Wound

Feature-length article on Kenya in yesterday's Público, Spanish daily national newspaper geared towards a younger left-leaning readership. The journalist, Isabel Coello, contacted me a few weeks ago, for my thoughts on where we are one year after the signing of the mediation agreement.

The article does a terrific job of highlighting the state's role in the post-election violence, pointing out that 35% of the deaths were police killings. It also brings us the stories and voices of Kenyans who lost families, homes, livelihoods, and have still not received justice. One error, though - it quotes me as disagreeing with my colleague, Kwamchetsi Makokha, fellow member of Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice (KPTJ), on the proposed Special Tribunal to try politicians named in the Waki report as drivers of the violence. In actuality, we both reflect KPTJ's position that:

a) There can be no impunity for politicians responsible for the violence
b) For a domestic tribunal to be effective in any way, it would have to be totally independent of the state actors implicated in the Waki report.