Soon, soon.

My tickets have been booked, and all the preparations (hopefully) have been prepared.  Now, I am just waiting and finding a few more things to keep me occupied in the meantime.  And trying to deal with the ever growing excitement.

To be honest, the last month has been much busier than I thought possible.  I had many hopes of lounging in the beautiful Edmonton summer, reading books about Kenyan culture, practicing Swahili on my unsuspecting loved ones and friends, and otherwise enjoying all the things Alberta has to offer.

In reality, I moved from task to task, and had to be very careful with time management.  My unemployment required large amounts of business acumin!  I had to organize movers, fight with a cell phone company (that will remain nameless), cancel all the 'essential' services that were taking money from me on a monthly basis, pack up years of accumulated stuff (re: junk), put it in a container, watch it get shipped off to the horizon, and, to top it all off, spend 12 hours scrubbing down a 2 bedroom apartment.  Not exactly glamorous.  But I am feeling very relaxed now that all the tick boxes in the checklist are filled in.

Despite that, I have learned a little more of what I will be doing, and have started to come to grips with what you could call the 'legal climate' in Kenya.  That may be putting it a little too strongly - I have a vague notion of a small number of key legal issues in Kenya, and I'm aware that I am barely scratching the tip of that iceberg.  What I am looking forward to is getting more accustomed to and aware of the general legal framework there, especially in the area of human rights.

To that end, it was with great enthusiasm that I found out that I will be working primarily with the Human Rights Protection Programme of ICJ Kenya.  I think that one of my main tasks in helping the HRPP will be to provide commentary on, review and research developments in Kenyan Constitutional Law.  This is fascinating work, generally, and is especially interesting given the fact that Kenya has a one (1) year old constitution. How this constitution is implemented, followed and respected will have major implications for Kenya as a democratic nation, especially with regards to being governed under the Rule of Law.

Just to pump myself up on that note - a light read from the Law Society of BC regarding the Rule of Law, and its place in society:  http://ow.ly/6jh5V.  Enjoy!