This Week

This has been a busy week, too busy that I could not spare a moment to update my blog. I felt sorry.

Sorry because this is a social contract: that you log on or visit the blog with hope for something new. And I know how bad it feels to visit and be greeted by old articles. But there were good reasons.

It was all because of the training I am undergoing here in Germany. I was busy all day Sunday and Monday. Tuesday, we had to leave for Nunberg and travelled for six hours on the road, seeing the real Germany.

I saw maize farms. What do they do with the maize? I asked our course manager, Charles, a brilliant Ugandan who is a German now.

"They us it here," he said. But most of it, he added, is bought by government and kept for donations to people who may lack the cereal. I saw cattle as well and spent time admiring their countryside, which is not as country as in Malawi, but still countryside.

On the afternoon of Tusday we visited several old cathedrals of Nunberg, a largely Catholic area in Germany.

Catholicism, as I have been learning, is not adored here. Most young people go to church once a year on Christmas and they disagree a lot with the Pope, especially on use of condom and contraceptions.

Wednesday morning was for more visits, and the afternoon for more travelling, six hours, to Mainz, outside Frankfurt.

I was tired that it was refreshing to start Thursday with a visit to Gurtenbeg Museum, this man who, according to European history, invented printing. (You should also read Indian and African history and decide where printing as we know it today started.) We saw the bibles he printed, 40 of the 70. Some are in other parts of the world.

The afternoon was for more educational visits to TV stations, just like Friday morning, just before we had eight hours on the road back to Berlin.

It was like a journey back home, everyone of us was happy to be back to Berlin. This is the city where we came first. This is the city that we know best. We know where to eat, where to buy telephone cards, where to walk and all that.

The other cities we visited were just part of a journey. We checked in at a hotel on Tuesday afternoon and had to check out on Wednesday morning. Tiresome. But it is all part of learning management.

Now I am back in Berlin and can sit here, at the lobby of Motel One to browse and update my blog. Internet is free here but very expensive in the hotels of the cities we visited.

I am happy to be here, very happy.