There's a ton of stuff still to write about my two months in Kalk Bay, Cape Town. These include the guitaring sessions with Sifu Roy MacGregor, the One Summer Breeze gig with Alex Bozas, the free jazz reviews, Easter Sunday and the pink sunset that marked the last evening I was to spend in the Portofino Building, 3 days before I left for Nairobi.

I'm writing this on my last evening in Istanbul, a city of 17 cultures and something in the order of 20 million inhabitants, many of which have blood lines going back 1000 years or more, much of which influences the culture so present in the city today, from its music to its poetry, from calligraphy to mosaics the culture is richer for it even in the face of growing homogenization and the demands imposed on its poorest citizens by developers and their government supporters.

Arrived in Nairobi very early. No sleep. Got to hotel, set myself up and headed out to meet two young Sudanese men, both former refugees from the camp in Kakuma, Kenya.

The most important outcome of this meeting is the realisation that we may not be able to run Home Lands, in its present form, in Kakuma at all. The situation there is much more dire than what we had been told. Getting a camera in for what we had planned for sounds near on impossible, but getting someone in to document what goes on there on a more deeper level is essential.

I believe there can be ways and means to get footage shot in the camp and out safely, but it will take a site visit to confirm this is possible. There are accessible terminals near the UN compound but apparently use of them is entirely vetted. In short, telling stories from the camp about life in the camp, and doing so on video and getting that stuff out via the net is going to be complex. Publishing incident reports via SMS will be much less so...

More from my meeting on the apc.au blog.

How does one tackle the problem of loneliness? Some say we are all intrinsically alone. I tend to think otherwise. We are never alone... Depression is another matter all together, but lonliness ain't real!

When and if I feel what could be described as loneliness, I deal with it by keeping things in motion, by reading, by playing guitar, by writing, by going for walks, by choring for example. On this trip, this impromptu sabbatical, since Sept 2007, I've been visited by the loneliness monster more than once. However...

I'm learning to appreciate all that I see and do, the times I spend by myself, as a kind of school, to see, to hear, to articulate that which passes through one into that which may be passed on to others in what ever manner best suits at the time... being alone can be a treasured experience!