Working sunday

Im supposed to write my quarterly report to our Foundation Board. Im supposed tor write about the project I have been nursing for three and a half years. The plans for the future. Fulfilled goals. Funding requests. Sales statistics. Im supposed to write about how Im now planning to recruit someone else to take over my job. To within 6 months make myself useless...or maybe useful...as something else.

Im trying to find energy and motivation to start writing. You know how it is. When you HAVE to do something boring... So I decided to take the morning slow. After my jog in the sunrise I sat down with my tasteless instant coffee, some music...and painted. I havent had time for that in weeks. And it felt good to try to put the colours in the right places again. Organize the chaos of shades and forms. I will shar the painting once its finished...its of one of the women in the project. Staring at the viewer, colourful with all her bling bling....


By the way...valentines day was yesterday... This is how I dream love will finally feel like. Just love this painting...the person that painted it is clearly a genius...a romantic genius...

Handmade baskets

Today my head is all into baskets.



Im doing this consultancy in a week or so for a handicraft project up in norther Kenya. Its a group of Rendille and Samburu women who have been weaving traditional camel milking baskets for quite some time but needs a bit of help when it comes to design, quality, marketing....well almost everything...

Im a bit freaked out about this whole thing. First of all, I have never taught a intense workshop with 60 illiterate bush women before on how to think about design and quality... I mean I have been working with it for some years now but in a project where it has come gradually, over time. The place itself is also scary enough, probably stunningly beautiful, but very far far away in a arid and harsh landscape. I will be there for a week. Relying on the plane to come and pick me back to civilization and mobile phone network again.

Ok, so HOW do you make these baskets look more appealing? How do we sell them?
That is the big question of today...

And I better come up with something good...my career and future development lies lurking within this...

Panic...slightly...

Kindness

I read this great article in the Guardian Weekly on the concept of kindness.
I suppose most of us dont think about it so much...kindness...and what it does to us. What it is and why we do acts of kindness.
Kindness controls our world. Its something we are teaching ourselves to live without. Because people are mean, evil and always have hidden motifs. Many of my friends have become bitter cynics, and we are just in late 20ies/early 30ties... why? because we dont believe that there is kindness in everyone anymore.

A act of kindness from someone can bring out all sorts of emotions. No matter what, it is emotional. Has a random stranger ever been nice to you? For no reason?

In the animal world apparently kindness is a bit different. There all supposedly random acts of "being nice" are to gain something personally. To survive. Does that apply to us too? Or can we still just be genuinely kind?

Im trying to think, when did I last do something that was just kind? Without a hidden agenda..? And Im thinking of my friends and people I know, and how they are sometimes choosing kindness and sometimes not.

Can we even call it kindness when there is a hidden motif?

Is kindness more about the general goodwill and group survival or about individuals? Is it a habit or something more random?

However...at the end of the day...kind actions is what makes us feel, trust, love, share and bond. So Im gonna be more kind. From today. Kindness is beautiful word.