My Life Coach is Dead

I am lying in the middle of my non-existent Christmas holidays like a corpse on a fruit cake.

I'm havin' a good time, but it doesn't feel like I'm having any time off. My supervisor is a few days away from the start of her 70 weeks long maternity leave and she brought her daughter to the office. Not the one she carries around in her belly, but the one she gave birth to about 10 years ago. They go together like APRILE and THE SON'S ROOM.

There's a book that's keeping me prisoner of its pages these days. It chronicles 50 years of African independence, starting right at the end of colonialism and pretty much embracing all of Africa. It is ambitious. But I am afraid that its 700 or so pages aren't enough. The explanations fly by. Nothing is deepened. It is called THE FATE OF AFRICA and is written by Martin Meredith, a long-time correspondent for the Times of Zambia.



It is so far a sad tale of freedom. The Algerian civil war has just ended, in '62. The French are letting go of their stronghold on l'Afrique Française. The brits have already let Ghana go after the political success of Kwame Nkrumah pretty much forced them to. And Meredith's tale reads like a good fiction story.

Which echoes the recent (2005) capture of a monster named Charles Taylor. And the hanging of Saddam Hussein on Saturday morning. Monsters are caught, monsters are getting rid of, but will it convince monsters in the making to give up on their blood-splashing ways ? History repeats itself, and it's been like this since the beginning of mankind, so I guess it's not about to change.



Which reminds me I didn't write a single word about James Brown's death. He had a rather peculiar physique, and when CD's first started replacing cassettes, my father bought a live album. Don't know why, but I never really went with it. His songs might be highly regarded by the musical community at large, but they ain't doing nothing for me. Which is not to say he wasn't an icon. I liked his dancing. He looked like a sweet guy, even after spending some time in jail for beating the crap out of his wife.

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My friend Michel has been in Dubaï since the end of the summer, and judging by the steady stream of pictures he's sending us by email, he seems to have an awful lot of fun over there. Not a word about his work, ever, but his travel pictures are sure worth a look.



He has recently been in Oman's capital, Muscat. Oman is a country roughly the size of Yémen, sharing borders with Saudi Arabia & the United Arab Emirates, and surrounded by the Arabian Sea on its Eastern coast.



Sinbad is supposed to be originating from Muscat and from Michel's account, it looks like one hell of a port city; the streets are made of marble and the roofs of gold.



Of course, oil revenues is what made the country rich.



The territory is what we call a "sultanate", ruled by sultan Qaboos ibn Said, who has absolute power over every living soul in the country.



35% of the country's budget goes towards the military. The territory covers 309 500 square kilometers and hosts a population of 2 567 000. It was a British protectorate from 1891 to 1971.



The majority is of course muslim, but is culturally more "permissive" that your usual Middle East lair. English was officially adopted as second language and even though the country is mostly a big desert, it looks like a very interesting one. It is a timeless, ancient land with a rich arabic culture and buried secrets. Yours to discover, as they say.