After a year in Cape Town, I returned home. However, my visit in the States only lasted three weeks. Between 1 October and 22 October I visited Knoxville, Nashville, New York City, and Boston to see close friends and family. Along with spending time with friends and family, I was also motivated to come back to the States to attend a wedding of a dear friend and give a presentation at Belmont University about my Lumos Award in South Africa.

Once the three weeks were over, I boarded a plane to come back to Cape Town to work for the SAHRC for four more months. I’m living in the same house in Observatory, but it is much warmer than when I left it. It seems as though my timing has been spot on since I was able to catch nice weather in the U.S. while winter ended in Cape Town. Yesterday my neighborhood had a street festival and today I took a stroll by the coast.

Tomorrow I start work again and am in for a hectic week. Basically, this will be a perfect storm of work deadlines.

I’m hoping to be rested for the busy week, but jet lag is affecting me more than usual. Friday I stayed up the entire night and got absolutely no sleep because I was reading a really fascinating book– Against a Tide of Evil: How One Man Became the Whistleblower to the First Mass Murder of the Twenty-First Century by Dr. Mukesh Kapila. The book is Dr. Kapila’s memoir of  his work as the Head of the United Nations (UN) in the Sudan leading up to his discovery of the Darfur crisis. Also, he discusses his influences leading to his decision to publicly condemn the Sundanese Government’s responsibility in crimes against humanity and the UN and World’s neglect to intervene in the matter while fully aware of the situation. I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Kapila speak at the Open Book Festival, and bought his book directly after. If you do not read it, you are a fool.