It appears that children, stuck in a hospital are not the only ones to suffer the torture of clowns; they've now moved on to refugees. As was reported, a troupe of clowns from the group, 'Payasos Sin Fronteras' (Clowns Without Borders), has apparently been covertly moving around DR Congo, red noses and all, "entertaining" people in refugee camps.

Okay, let me be up front. I've never liked clowns. I don't find them funny. In fact, they generally scare the crap out of me and not just because of films like IT. It's people running around in face paint, acting weird, and often dropping their pants. I never knew how that got to be acceptable behavior in modern society and if you took the face paint out of it, they'd probably be arrested in normal settings. I suppose it's a good part of the reason I enjoyed Shakes the Clown so much as it tore open the sordid underbelly of the clowning world. Well, not really, but it make clowns out to be the terror that I find them to be.

There was always the longstanding joke that the reason clowns went to entertain children in hospitals was because the kids couldn't run away (see, it's not just me that's wigged out by clowns.) It appears that after working in Syria and former Yugoslavia, these clowns have gotten wind of the refugees in the camps around Goma that, gosh darnit, need some cheering up. What they actually need is a long-term development plan, de-mining, warlords to stop being funded by greedy international mining operations, and a functional government so that these camps can be shut down someday. But, until then, we have clowns. For me, it plays a good deal in to this argument wherein, since the refugees have nothing, a few hours of slapstick comedy will obviously make things better. I'm going to lean towards the 'not' side of things and toss this in the rather large pile of "people not gettin' it". This becomes even more clear when reading their blog wherein the title is "Lo nuestro es de risa" which is an idiom best translated as "this is a joke" in that it's not be taken seriously.

On a related yet unrelated side note, somehow I've managed to tie the Balkans and Africa together for two posts in a row. That just blows my mind.

Ever wondered whether the websites allowing yo buy or sell via Mpesa ever work? Well, I wondered the same and decided to try out. I decided to access the Sovaya wireless and was asked the payment mode for the internet airtime.

Mpesa was the easiest for me, so was asked to send money to 0715 592168 and wait for confirmation, that is before I can surf using the credit bought. For starters, I decided to buy a shs. 100 voucher, just to test whether it will work.

The Mpesa went through without any hitches, only that I waited for 30 minutes with no response from the Sovaya side; either a text telling me that I could use the credit or saying it bounced, or a web message allowing me to surf.

So I decided to call the customer care number given, but the person who received the call could not even get my number, it took two minutes for the person to take my number so that they can get back to me.

I always get irritated when someone gives you poor service then on top of that they waste your credit because they just can get what you are saying. You repeat the number five times....first to allow them pick a pen....then the number,....and on and on...

Anyway, maybe the service is not so much in demand or not in use thats why...

My curiosity made me lose my 100 bob...

Maneno looks like an easy to use and clean design blogging tool. The admnistration panel looks user friendly, though I do not find yet how to upload a photo in order to illustrate my first article. I went to the browse button and manage to bring up one from my computer, but I do no find the way on how to procceed.

I found about Maneno, via Rising Voices´ leader David Sasaki. I hope to use this platform when working in blog workshops in rural areas.

Published by Alesha Saldanha on Global voices Online

April 23 is UNESCO World Book Day – and just because the Global Voices team loves blogs, doesn’t mean we have forgotten other forms of the written word! In fact, because we think reading literature is such an enjoyable way to learn about another culture, we have a fun challenge for all Global Voices contributors and readers, and bloggers everywhere.

The Global Voices Book Challenge is as follows:

1) Read a book during the next month from a country whose literature you have never read anything of before.

2) Write a blog post about it during the week of April 23.

If you would like to know what you should be reading from Vietnam, Bolivia, Mozambique or New Zealand, or any other country, just ask in the comments below! Someone is sure to give you suggestions.

And if you have any recommendations for any must-read works from your own country, please leave a comment too.

Once you have read your book (and written a post!) let us know – we’d love to discover what you learned on your literary expedition.

Feel free to use the images above and below to spread the word of the Global Voices Book Challenge!

You know how Caucasian people often have trouble distinguishing between the faces of African people even if they're comparing say, a Somalian and a Senegalese? It's usually attributed to being racist or ignorant and while that may be the case, it has more to do with cultural facial recognition patterns that one gets ingrained with from birth. I say this because it goes the other way as well in that random Caucasians will often look the same to Africans. Again, it's an issue of how a person optically addresses facial patterns to see the unique qualities of an individual. Most of the time it's just an amusing side note, but as was the case for Igor Majeski, it ended up in his getting arrested by the Kenyan police because he was thought to be the extremely wanted Bosnian Serb war criminal, Ratko Mladić.

I haven't been able to find out how the authorities were "tipped off" to this, but I'm sure once word got out that they could make the arrest of their career by getting the #1 Wanted ITCY Fugitive and also getting the $5 million reward, they got a wee bit excited. This then ended up in arresting poor Mister Majeski, who is a Croatian (not Bosnian Serb) that has been in Kenya for 23 years managing a hotel in Mombasa. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this may the one and only instance of my Balkan background meshing with my African interests.

For those interested, there's a video on Reuters of Igor as well as a nice side by side comparison on the guardian.co.uk website. (How can the Guardian spell it 'Majeski' at the beginning of the article and then misspell it at 'Mejaski' the rest of the way?)

I would also like to add that had this actually been the real Ratko Mladić being arrested, Twitter would have broken the story first. When it happened, there was a flurry of activity on Twitter and absolutely nothing on not only news sites, but also on Google Blog Search as well. So, while there have been some flops in reporting the breaking news on Twitter, it's only a matter of time before serious stories emerge from this system that I once hated, but am now getting to love and build for.

BREAKING NEWS, SORTA!

It appears that Igor has finally been released from jail. I loved how the article was written up in a very understated British wit from the title of, "Kenyans release Mladic mix-up man" to this quote:

Mr Majeski's mother told reporters that he was coping with health problems and also facing a bad tourist season.

She said the last thing he needed, in the circumstances, was to be falsely branded as a war criminal.

So, so true. Being falsely branded as a war criminal really craps all over my day as well when it happens.

Bloggers and website owners in Africa are getting taste of a new scam. Naturally, it's probably not originally created to be a scam, but it's turned in to that for those in Africa who use Google AdSense, Miquel reveals. ( source : Global Voice, written by Ndesanjo Macha)