Yvette, Iraniangirl, etc

I just wanted to draw people’s attention (again?) to the blogs I link to here. Which are not many. There’s a phenomenon called ‘Blogrolling’ which means, I think, something like “I’ll link to your blog if you link to mine.” Well, I don’t do that. I just link to a handful of blogs that I think are really interesting.
Anyway, Yvette, who writes “A Taste of Africa” is the most wonderful, talented, sensitive blogger anywhere. Plus, she seems to be doing this amazing community-building work in Somaliland, a country that isn’t even really recognized as a country–sort of like Kosovo or Iraqi Kurdistan, except that Somaliland gets almost zero international attention and almost zero international funding. Which I think makes her blogging even more valuable. Plus, she takes fabulous pictures and– here’s where I get jealous– knows how to get them up on her blog in enjoyable form.
(I’ll learn one day… )
So last month, Yvette’s mom died, and she had to go back home to the Philipines to deal with all that. Then her Movable Type blog machine crashed on her… But now she is up again, on Blogger– in a template that will be VERY familiar to longtime readers of JWN!
And with some great photos of celebrations of World Refugee Day, in Hargeisa, the campital of Somaliland (I think). Go see them!!
Okay, next up we have Iraniangirl, who’s living through some pretty interesting times and in response to them seems suddenly to have become incredibly thoughtful and dare I say it mature? I think this post, from yesterday, is really worth reading.

And then, we have Imshin. She writes with a freshness and honesty that I really admire, and that gives me lots of insights into different aspects of her life there in Israel. But from time to time I’m just plain infuriated by her nationalistic self-absorption. Why do so many people in the midst of conflict zones find it so hard even to try to start to imagine what life must be like “on the other side of the fence”? (In this case, literally.)
Why can’t someone as smart as Imshin ever do this?
I know plenty of people in Israel– and in Palestine– who do take this step. So why doesn’t she??
And finally, Salam, the cosmically-famous author of Dear Raed. He hasn’t posted for a while actually. But if you haven’t read him recently, you should.