Straight out of Fashion Week! The only difference is that this couple looks so much better than Posh Spice in all her cheesy zebra-print outfits.
AngeAngerson took this photo in a game park in Nairobi, Kenya in 2006.
Seriously, how cute is the baby zebra??
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Sidney Pollack died of cancer yesterday. When I heard the news, along with feeling sad about his death, I flashed to a certain restaurant in Hurley, New York that’s one of my favorite “when I go back home for a visit ” eateries,although it’s changed hands since Pollack used it as one of the settings for Tootsie.
The Hurley Mountain Inn where Dustin Hoffman bellied up to the bar with Charles Durning has been serving up family fare for years. My mom always headed here with friends for the spaghetti and meatballs. The last time I was there, my son was happy playing video games without the money to actually have them do anything.
Hurley is near Kingston in the Hudson Valley and the restaurant is worth the drive. Nothing fancy, but you’ll feel like you’re in a place that means something to the people who eat there. Along with Hurley, if you do a Sidney Pollack film tour of the world, you’ll see a lot. Consider these alone and you’ll be busy:
Kenya, with its pristine white beaches and game parks teeming with wild animals, has been kind of a ghost town this winter. The post-election violence that killed more than 1,200 people and displaced 250,000 has left a huge dent on the billion-dollar tourist industry there.
Many countries advised their citizens to stay away from Kenya after the riots triggered by the December 27 election. According to Reuters, 99,602 holiday makers visited Kenya in January 2007. In January 2008, the number dropped to 55,906. The Kenya Tourist Board said the impact from the political unrest had been worse than after bombings in 1998 and 2002 that were blamed on al-Qaeda.
The dollar has hit a new low against the euro, America is on the verge of recession and global food prices are on an upward spiral. In fact, global food prices have risen by 40% in the last nine months. Add to that the fact that food reserves are at their lowest in 30 years and the global economic situation looks grim. But beyond percentages and figures what does this really mean?
To showcase the real effects of the global rise in food costs the BBC has put together an interesting piece featuring six families from around the world, their shopping lists and exactly how their shopping habits have changed because of the rise in prices.
The six families are from Guatemala, India, Kenya, China, Egypt and the UK. In Guatemala the Rodas family has gone from eating meat five times a week to two. In Egypt the Abdulwahab family speculates a household used to be able to eat for one Egyptian pound; today it costs more than five.
The article also itemizes each family’s shopping list, which provides for some eye-opening figures. The Classik family from the UK spends 10% of its monthly income on food, while in Egypt, the Abdulwahab family spends about 80%. Makes you think twice about complaining about how expensive everything is going to be on your next trip to Europe; travel is still a luxury.
Read the whole BBC article here.
Kenya has long been one of the safest and most politically stable nations in Africa, a distinction that, given the media’s typical coverage of Africa, is not unlike being declared the smartest individual to be arrested on Cops. Kenya usually places just behind South Africa in the amount of tourists that visit each year, thanks to its relative stability, its Indian Ocean beaches, and its wildlife safaris. All that peace and stability was disturbed, however, by the disputed presidential election that took place on December 27, 2007.
In a nutshell, the incumbent Mwai Kidaki was declared the winner of the election and he was sworn in on December 30. But the supporters of his opponent Raila Odinga, in addition to a number of outside observers, said the election was marked by corruption and possibly rigged. Immediately after the results were announced, rioting broke out among various ethnic groups, with Kibaki’s influential Kikuyus clashing with Odinga’s Luos. Hundreds were killed in the ensuing violence.
A spokesman for the Kenyan government recently declared, “We are not in a civil war,” which is the second-to-last thing you ever want to hear from your government spokesmen.
What does all this mean for Kenya’s positive reputation among tourists? The news is not pretty. “The Kenya Tourist Board had projected a total of 314,995 tourists would visit the coast in the first quarter. It has now revised that figure down, by more than half, to 134,450.”
The chairwoman for a group of Kenyan tour operators had this to say about one coastal town: “Mombasa is down on its knees and we are now digging our grave, if something does not change immediately.”
At this time, the US and British governments are strongly advising tourists to forego all but essential travel to Kenya.
The New York Times has more coverage of how tourists are affected by the recent violence, and check out Jerry Guo’s recent post on Kenya here.
