The people are very kind, both my Dutch hosts, their expat friends and the Ugandans I have so far talked to. The country is exceedingly beautiful, and very very poor. The contrast between the cozy expat life here and the lives of Kampala locals just a few streets away is harsh.

I wrote a very long text in my Finnish blog and am now kind of out of words. So you’ll get some hipshots from the nearby market and a promise for more details later.

I will try to keep you up to date more! And maybe even upload some photos.

Will add links later. Am exhausted, a long muggy day in Amsterdam and tomorrow a long workday also in Amsterdam.

I noticed Pierre Faure’s photobook Japan while browsing in the bookstore today. I love the feel of the thing; the juxtaposition of japanscapes and people. I’ve done something similar when I was there. Only much more by chance and not by assignment.

Some of the photos can be seen here, only sadly in a really small size.

I don’t really know what to think of the concept, though. Isn’t it a bit National Geographic to have a book titled only “Japan”? Could you also have “Germany”, or perhaps “Denmark”? Or would that be boring, while Japan for us westerners is exciting and exotic?

For me, almost everything that has to do with Japan is dear, so… I could not buy the book at the bookstore – it was €60 – but managed to order it used via Amazon. €20 with shipping, not bad..

Very nice to finally have an exhibition, although I must admit I am feeling exhausted after the collective evaluations. I did not sleep properly in a long while; am now definitely in need of a vacation… But first the exhibition + helping the fourth year students with their examination exhibition!

Finding your way will hopefully prove to be easy. You can read the blog chronologically and in publishing order; most recent things are here first and then in the bottom of each page there is a link called “Previous” which will take you back in time. Or you can use categories to browse posts about different subjects; clicking on Photography, for example, will show you all my posts under that category. You can also use Tags to find even more detailed categorizations. The frame you see in the right hand side has a so-called “tag cloud” which shows you different tags. The larger the tag name, the more it contains posts. As you can see, Photography is definitely the largest tag, followed by Politics and Photojournalism. In a way, the tag cloud, besides helping with navigation, shows you which things and issues have interested me most…

I would recommend looking through the diary first chronologically. As this is a blog, it also has the possibility of commenting. Comments are welcome in all posts. Besides diary posts, there is a conclusion and an explanation about my methods of keeping this diary. Just follow the links and you’ll get right to them.

This will stay as the first post on the top page until the diary project has been evaluated. After that, the blog will continue!

An 8-year-old ethnically Somalian girl was pushed out of a train on the platform by an adult Finnish male, who also called her “a monkey” and told her to get out of his way.

The discussion following this on the newspaper website concentrated on calling the story “a probable lie”, blamed the girl herself for some invented bad behavior “since that’s how they are” and called the news story propaganda since it told of an act of violence towards the Somalian minority. And, oh yes, someone managed to disparage the girl and her family and of course many times they were told to go back to Somalia.

In the Finnish parliament, a parliament member compared gay and lesbian families to “someone marrying a dog”. The discussion following this on the newspaper website lauded him for his “values”.

Sometimes I do not miss Northeast Europe at all.