Somewhere in Africa - McClatchy Newspapers

I had to chuckle when I saw this headline on a Sunday New York Times story about technological innovation in Kenya. Nairobi the next Palo Alto? Relatively few Kenyans have Internet access, and the bloggers, computer programmers and self-proclaimed tech geeks I've met in Nairobi complain of slow, expensive Internet connections (although these reportedly are getting better) and thick bureaucracies that stifle innovation.

Word comes today that Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai are ready to start negotiations over last month's universally condemned election in Zimbabwe. The BBC says the two sides "are close to signing a deal outlining a framework for talks." This, for Zimbabwe, qualifies as a breakthrough, although I wouldn't be too quick with the champagne.

When the International Criminal Court''s chief prosecutor announced charges of genocide and war crimes against Sudanese President Omar Bashir, the immediate response from the legions of diplomats, experts and humanitarian officials who cover the war in Darfur was not to celebrate a victory for international justice.

Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday on Friday is the talk of South Africa.

The line outside the South African Department of Home Affairs office in Crown Mines, an industrial section of Johannesburg, began forming late last night and was well into the hundreds by the time I got there this morning.

I'm in South Africa for a few days, and today in Johannesburg I paid a visit to Abel Mutsakani, a Zimbabwean journalist in exile. Abel is the editor of ZimOnline, an independent newspaper covering Zimbabwean politics. Before that he was a top editor in Harare at the Daily News, a popular independent daily -- and the only one in recent history in Zimbabwe -- until Robert Mugabe shut it down in 2003.

The U.S. ambassador in Nairobi, Mike Ranneberger, hosted a party yesterday to commemmorate American Independence Day. It was not your typical July 4th barbecue.

In this clip, a journalist with the ITN news network, covering the recent African Union summit in Egypt, gets about as close to Robert Mugabe as any Western journalist has in years. Predictably, the reporter gets manhandled by Mugabe's security, and then, even more predictably, Mugabe uses the opportunity to lay into the British yet again.

I'm just back from Zimbabwe, where the events of the past couple of weeks are familiar to pretty much everyone. Robert Mugabe remains in power, the opposition has been butchered and outmaneuvered, the world can't agree on what action to take, and the suffering of ordinary Zimbabweans continues.

Last week I briefly traveled to Burundi to help with a McClatchy special report on the world food crisis. Burundi, situated just south of Rwanda along the shores of Lake Kivu, is rarely in the news except for stories about its long civil war, which is nearly over. But it's also one of the poorest countries in the world, with 90 percent of people living on $1 a day or less.

It's been an eventful week since I posted. First I attempted to get on a UN flight from Gore back to N'Djamena, but a heavy rainstorm got in the way.

In April we published a gripping, first-person account by Ahmed, our former freelance correspondent in Mogadishu, of the near-death experience that forced him to flee Somalia. He was safe in his new home, he wrote, but far from comfortable:

I just wrapped up a short trip to eastern Chad, a harsh, dry landscape of sand-swept plateaus and scorching temperatures. It's the kind of place where the sun feels super-charged and you feel like you're squinting at everything, even while wearing sunglasses.

Some jokes are lost in translation, and others simply aren't funny in any country:Comedian Chris Rock victim of practical joke in South Africa

We drove eight hours across sand and scrub today -- with the outside temperature gauge in the car registering 109 degrees -- to reach a Darfur rebel meeting deep in eastern Chad. I sat down on a mat outside a mud-walled house with four officials of the Justice and Equality Movement, which staged a dramatic raid last month on the Sudanese capital that left many dead and has raised the stakes in the Darfur conflict.

Here's a sign you don't often see in a major government building:

Allow me to set the record straight: there are indeed street signs in N'Djamena.

Two years ago, on my first trip to N'Djamena, the capital of Chad, I spent barely a few hours -- long enough to grab the appropriate government permits and set off for the east of the country, where thousands of Darfur refugees live in camps.

Kenya's all-important tourism industry, battered by the bloodletting of January and February, is gearing up for what typically is the most lucrative time of year.

I saw this in downtown Nairobi yesterday: a mural calling for propriety during Kenya's elections, which were five months ago. In Kiswahili It reads: "A free and fair election. Be vigilant; it's your vote, it's your country."

The pictures out of Johannesburg today, like the one at left by Bloomberg, are deeply troubling, if not unexpected.

May 23 Correction: The Associated Press has issued a correction to the story referenced in this post.

A final observation from my recent Mideast stint: I challenge anyone tofind a more American corner of the world than Terminal 2, Queen AliaInternational Airport, Amman, Jordan.

  The battle for Iraq has shifted to Sadr City, the massive slum in northwest Baghdad that's home to about two and a half million people.

With violence in Baghdad creeping back up, I find myself spending more time in the office than I'd like. The air-conditioning, artificial light, drone of TV news and steady hum of the generator gets to be too much after awhile. So I'm grateful for any respite.

It's sandstorm season in Baghdad. The thick, gritty blanket that blew into the city Sunday hung around well into Monday, providing Iraqi militants with cover and emboldening many to target American forces. When U.S. troops struck back, it produced some of the deadliest fighting here in weeks.