Ayen Rivera has been taking odd jobs since his undergraduate college days. He told his Korean students, in simple English words and in violent pantomime, what's wrong with this country. He convinced kids from expensive private high schools that Oedipus Rex was not related to a certain dinosaur. He shivered in a cold room in Malacanang Palace while he typed regret letters to people wanting to see the President. He hated writing stuff in a Makati office (his job) while fixing everyone else's cranky PCs (not his job at all). He clocked in five years as an info officer at the University of the Philippines Diliman Information Office, where he started to blog. He was managing editor of and contributor to "Sites and Symbols 2" (published 2005), a coffee table book about the buildings and landmarks in UP Diliman. He lost sleep as a night shift web content writer in Ortigas. After serving as an Affiliate Marketing Manager for an aircraft scale model company, Ayen realized he'd rather earn from what he does best: web content writing. His sudden fiction "Notwithstanding Pigs" is included in "Very Short Stories for Harried Readers," an anthology of sudden fiction published by Milflores, December 2007.

when the fog clears

I'm not even sure I want a cake. But my wife insists, and I think she's right (I'd probably want something to see that sets the theme), so I'm hovering over images of nothing but chocolate in my head, and the memory of my not wanting something so sweet. Maybe something with some filling inside, something that, when I rub my eyes in the wee hours of dawn, when the refrigerator fog clears, pokes me awake (a discovery): hey there's a cake here--I'm digging in. Over and over. Because it's not so sweet. And there's some filling inside. The last thing you want is to keep seeing cake and keep being reminded there's cake and whose birthday cake is it again, and that oh, there's cake, you want some cake?

Ayokong maumay. 

And please, no two candles stabbed into the cake spelling out my age. We almost always eventually have to pull them out of the cake. Because the cake won't fit in the ref with the candles jutting out. And we're sure we'd see the candles later, in the same drawer where we keep the kitchen stuff, like old knives, barbeque sticks, plastic forks and spoons, electrical tape, and an unused can opener. Someone but someone on someday will slide open that drawer and see a 3 and 2 with wicks burned long ago and holler, huy, birthday ni Yayen, eto o, look: proof.

But that's in the foreseeable future, far and away from here, which is now, and now is the time for a cake. My cake. Darling, you buy. You choose. You know me better than any other psycho with thinning hair.

I'm gonna go grab the cat and hose him in the bathroom. It's my birthday after all.

"On your left, poverty" - tourists flock to Kenyan slums

Nairobi (dpa) - "On your left is Kibera, Africa‘s largest slum," says James Asudi, sitting in a large, white safari van ferrying tourists to the informal settlement.

The van, the type which is ubiquitous in Kenya‘s game parks, hobbles down Kibera‘s bumpy roads, passing scores of people in bedraggled clothing, barefoot children with mucus running down their faces and little girls with tightly braided hair playing skipping rope they‘ve made out of various pieces of rubber.

Asudi runs one of at least three tour companies that offer visitors to Nairobi a chance to get away from wildlife and see a different side of impoverished Africa.

But this type of tourism has generated some controversy in the East African country, where half the population lives on less than one dollar a day, many of them in congested slums, in tiny shacks made of mud and corrugated tin.

Asudi said he brings tourists here to expose Kibera and Nairobi‘s other informal settlements to the world, but critics charge he is exploiting the residents of the sprawling slums.

"People say I am operating like a zoo. I don‘t conduct Kibera tourism for my benefit," said Asudi who added he is known as a "rogue tour operator" in Kenya‘s flourishing industry.

"I want to expose Kibera to the whole world so misfortunes are known the world over and the people here can get donations," he said.

Asudi has had 12 visitors embark on his slum tours since he began them in January, compared to about 40 clients who have ventured on more conventional tours like wildlife safaris.

On the way to the slum, tourists can pop open the safari van‘s detachable roof to get a better look and a better shot of Kibera residents going about their business and once out of the car,
tourists walk past the sights of everyday life in the slum.

Women hunched over a big basin of soapy water, scrub clothes vigorously. Visitors pass common toilets run by various aid agencies which residents must pay five cents to use. And they meander past tiny rooms equipped with a pool table or cramped bars airing the latest football match.

The tour guides, a couple of Kibera residents, explain about flying toilets, plastic bags used when toilets are just too expensive or unavailable, and then flung high above the tin roof shacks.

People lining the serpentine streets hardly flinch when they see tourists mostly because visitors - from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to comedian Chris Rock - seem to flock here.

Kibera, which houses between 250,000 to a million people, gained notoriety in the British film The Constant Gardener and has since become a prime location for high-profile names to spur some publicity.

On a recent trip by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, residents voiced their disappointment at the visits which they said never result in any tangible benefit for them.

"Slum tourism has become an inevitable result of raising the profile of the slum situation in Africa. The idea should be looked at seriously so that it benefits the community and doesn‘t exploit it," said Sharad Shankardass, spokesman for the UN‘s housing agency, Habitat.

Slum tourism is relatively new in Kenya. The idea took off about 10 years ago in South Africa‘s Soweto slum where tourists can pop into former president Nelson Mandela‘s home and then stop for a bite to eat at some of the restaurants that cater to the visitors.

Shankardass highlights Soweto as a successful form of slum tourism where the community actually reaps some rewards.

But residents of Kibera say they don‘t see the fruits of welcoming strangers into their neighbourhoods.

"I feel like I am in a zoo," said Amos Lewick, 18, who sells mandazi or donuts, for eight cents a piece on a main pathway. "If they can help us fix this slum, they are welcomed."

Asudi, the tour operator, said he charges tourists 100 dollars for the trip into the slum - 40 dollars is for transportation and 60 dollars is a recommended donation which is used to buy staple foods like sugar, flour and cooking oil.

The food is distributed to women who are all "affected by HIV," Asudi said. And tourists actually hand the goods over to the residents themselves.

But the 10 women Asudi referred to are all neighbours of one of the resident tour guides, which elicits some questions from tourists about how far donations raised actually reach.

"I‘m not sure that I would recommend the trip because I‘m not sure it benefits the people on the ground," said Yvonne Meyer, a German native who has worked in Kenya for three years and brought her mother to see the slum.

And while the majority of Kibera‘s residents said they did not mind having tourists stroll through their streets, some are taking advantage of the influx of foreigners.

One woman, dressed in a colourful head wrap and matching dress, sold dried fish on the side of the road - a perfect photo opportunity, despite the wafting smell and swarming flies.

"One hundred shillings (1 dollar and 50 cents)," she said, as a blond tourist approached her, camera in hand.

"Twenty shillings for fish, 100 shillings for a photo."

Image: "A mama mzee at Nyumbani village, near Kitui, Kenya" by Tia Goldenberg

I remember how it will
happen. Leaves will fade
and brown, the sky will
grow wider. Snow will
thicken in the mountains.

The news will speak of war,
famine, extinctions. Coasts
will tremble beneath storms
called rare, unusual, brutal.

Widows and mothers will
grieve; fathers will fold flags
on the sideboard. Children
will not understand, but

they will rage. Skies bared
by fallen leaves will close
again with fog and falling
snow. Winter will come.

'Skellie' offers blogging tips, writing services and more at her main site, skelliewag.org

My mother passed away fourteen years ago this month. There is not a day goes by that I don't remember her with love, affection and gratitude for the life and love she gave to me.

My wonderful Mum came to Australia as a war bride. She lived in India until she was 21, when she met my Dad who was on leave from the war. They met, married and three weeks later were on a boat to Australia.

Poor Mum, she had no idea what she had let herself in for. She came to a strange country, was left to live with slightly hostile relatives she had never met before and who had never even heard of her, and her husband went back to the war. She then found out she was pregnant and her son (my brother) was born. He did not get to meet his father until the war was over and he was six months old.

After the war ended Mum began her life as a farmer's wife. They had no money, lived in an old dump of a house with borrowed and secondhand furniture, and Mum began teaching herself how to cook, sew, keep house and raise children - three in all. She also had to deal with the fact that she had no family in this country and so was very isolated. Dad's family and friends had to become her family and friends. Over the years she gradually lost all members of her family and my heart broke for her when the inevitable telegram arrived, or phone message was received.

To all who knew her she was an absolutely amazing woman. Besides having a heart of gold and helping anyone who needed any assistance of any sort, my Mum quickly learned how to sew, knit and crochet all of our clothes, she was a brilliant cook and entertainer and she worked very hard on the farm assisting my Dad. People of all ages came to Mum for advice and she intuitively knew how to comfort and console people in their hour of need.

As far as being my mother, well, she was just my whole world. I loved her for her generosity, caring, her love for her children and grandchildren and I loved her particularly for the wonderful role model that she was. I was so grateful because I was lucky enough to have her as my Mum. She was the centre of our family, and now life without her has changed us all. We've had to learn to be without her physical presence, to be without her love and support, and to try to become the example that she would want us to be.

We all miss you so much - My Mum. (Marjory Helen Poett (nee Speirs) 1922 - 1993)

Buffy's profile and more of her work can be seen by following this link to Helium

My thanks to prolific blogger Keith K, for the  following piece, published on his blog, "Travelrat's Travels" recently.  Keith also occasionally writes for Helium.