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French Speaking Blogs of the Caribbean, Africa and Oceania in 2006

Alice Backer · 23:56

Logo of the Madagascar Blogger's Meeting that took place January 5-6, 2007 in Antananarivo.

By and large French speaking blogs and bloggers of the world have reason to envy English, Spanish and Brazilian speaking counterparts in volume and in interaction with each other. Very few bloggers (Madagascar and Reunion being notable exceptions) are actually talking to each other, even when they come from the same country. However 2006 saw some interesting developments in certain parts of the French speaking world.

DRC
Until the election of interim President Joseph Kabila, the DRC-based blogs were quite active and vigorously in opposition of him. Most of the bloggers were journalists who turned to blogs to speak with diaspora or western audiences. GlobalVoices featured an interview of the most prolific DRC-based blogger, Tony Katombe of Le Blog du Congolais. We brought you blurbs from counterparts such as Prince du Fleuve du Congo Phillipe Liondjo and Etienne Ngandu. UDPS Liege, the blog of opposition party UDPS did its best to lead the blogging opposition to Kabila from Liege, Belgium. UDPS leader Etienne Tshisekedi never actually ran in the race so UDPS Liege spent much time justifying his choice.

Immediately after Kabila's election late November, activity dropped off for a while in the DRC-based blogs.

(Note that English speaking diaspora blogs such as The Salon have been doing a great job as well and generally brought a refreshing if moderate counterpoint to the staunchly anti-Kabila perspective of its French speaking DRC-based counterparts.)

Senegal
Blogs in Senegal had been relatively sleepy with spotty updates until Blog Politique du Senegal came along halfway through the year. Much like the blogs of the DRC, the blog is obsessed with their incumbent President (Wade) and has spent much time unveiling perceived excesses and failures of his administration. Humor is always present in these parts and posts were short and concise.

Haiti and its Diaspora
Much of the exciting news in Haitian blogs has been in English: 3rdworldgirl, for example or even AyitiToma who unfortunately posted just once. But what a post that “Open Letter To Haiti” was! Roody Edme, however spotty, started a very promising blog Ailleurs Vu d'Ici on which he bombarded us with well written and well informed posts on New Year's Eve. It seems the blogger was saving his best goodies for last. And best yet his commentary is not just limited to Haitian affairs but spans the planet! Call this blogger anything but ill-informed.
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Global Voices is hiring an advocacy director

Ethan Zuckerman · 22:35

Global Voices (globalvoicesonline.org) is seeking a part-time Advocacy Director. The advocacy director will coordinate Global Voices's efforts in supporting online freedom of expression. This will include responsibility for building online relationships between national anti-censorship and anti-net filtering movements, interacting with international press freedom organizations, producing educational guides to anti-censorship tools and reporting on the movement for the Global Voices website.

Suitable candidates will have a strong understanding of the international blogosphere, technical understanding of the mechanisms of internet filtering and circumvention (proxies, Tor, anonymizing techniques), and journalism or technical writing experience. Active involvement in developing world anticensorship efforts is a strong plus, as is active involvement in the Global Voices community.

Global Voices expects that the Advocacy Director will focus 20-25 hours per week on the position, with a great deal of schedule flexibility. Some international travel is required as part of the position, including attendance at the Global Voices annual meeting (travel funding will be provided.) The Advocacy director reports to the acting managing director of Global Voices, and later to the managing director - the advocacy director will be expected to participate in the Global Voices editorial process, serving alongside regional editors, translation editors and our human rights video editor, and to contribute advocacy-related posts to the Global Voices website.

Update Several people have asked if this job requires relocation. It does not. All Global Voices jobs are virtual - people work from their home countries and connect with other Global Voices staff via the Internet. This job is open to residents of any nation.

We are able to offer an annual salary of $25-30,000 USD for this position, based on experience. To apply, please send a letter of interest along with CV or resume to ethan@globalvoicesonline.org

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Argentina's King Fish, Panama's Year, and Easy Kerala Parotta

Melissa De Leòn Douglass · 15:28

#1: Jeremy Shapiro, the Chef behind Stir the Pots, narrates his adventures during his trip to the Ecuadorean Andes:

The array of colors and smell was inspiring as a chef.All I needed
were my knives, a stove and a kitchen!What surprised me about such a humble town was the cleanliness of the market and the real pride and
friendly faces I met. My brother-inlaw a one time "Rey de bolon"(bolon typical dish of plantain) in Guayaquil, described to me the different
fruits and vegetables. With each picture of the women in the stalls he showed them the instant images of themselves as they giggled, probably musing about the silly guy taking pictures! Read the complete post…

#2: La Majuluta from Argentina writes about "El Pejerrey," a fish available in the cold waters of South America. Read the post in Español. Read the post in English…

Odontesthes bonaeriensis, the "king fish", is a native freshwater species. With its delicate and tender white meat it's highly apreciated around here. It was the only fish that I used to eat as I was a child. My mother always prepared it for me with head and tail, "dressed" in breadcrumbs and in the oven. More than a year ago I did it this way. Now I wanted to repeat with some little changes.
Full belly, happy heart we use to say here.

#3: From Panama, the CookingDiva explains why 2007 is Panama's year!

Panamá is an easy country to fall in love with. The tropical bounty, gifted by our location and climate offer a spectacular opportunity to experience some of the most exotic and unique produce that mother and father nature have to offer, ranging from the complex herbs and seasoning of the tropical forest used by the indigenous tribes to the organic farms of vegetables and edible lowers. Read more…

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China: Return of the Wang

John Kennedy · 06:49

Or King, according to the title of Wang Xiaofeng's January 10 post which brings with it the news that the eighties and nineties badboy of Chinese literature and one-time “spiritual pollutant” Wang Shuo will be on the cover of the next issue of Life Week magazine, for which Wang (Xiaofeng) works.

So if Wang Shuo's back, what's he up to? Wang Xiaofeng's not telling, not even in his follow-up post today, in which he may or may not have interviewed eight hours and thirteen thousand characters worth of Wang Shuo's cohorts from his heyday almost a decade ago.

According to Wang Shuo's Wikipedia entry, he's written five screenplays since his last novel was published in 2000, and not much else. Wang Shuo was mentioned on journalist-blogger Zhao Mu's Bullog space late last month, with the news that the writer has plans to open a pay-per-view blog, making him the first mainstream blogger to do so. Wang Shuo had a Sina celebrity blog, but hasn't updated it since March last year. He currently has a blog of sorts at Flower Village, where he posts only his latest works piece-by-piece. Open since November 17 last year, it's currently free for the reading.
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