Tag Archive : Podcast

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I’m back in Copenhagen, I’m back in my hood on Vesterbro down town Copenhagen. Today I went back to my ‘office’ – a local restaurant BOBs where it is possible to work all day if you are a member of Sp8ces. Through sp8ces (no I don’t get paid to tell about it) you have access to several working lounges in Denmark and Norway – they make agreements with hotels, restaurants, etc. to use timeslots where their spaces are not occupied. It is a great concept – and cheap.

I’ve spent the last couple of days sleeping, doing absolutely nothing besides catching up on Netflix. It will take time before I have processed all my experiences from my journey. I have travelled many kilometres, met so many people – not only humanists, but also other locals and tourists, seen the most amazing landscapes and met fantastic animals. Earth is an amazing and beautiful place.

I know I’m privileged – I have the possibility to visit places where the usual tourist never goes. I’m glad this journey is a combination of following the usual tourist path and meeting people living their lives in these countries. It adds so much more when you talk to people living there and not just other tourists or people from travel agencies.

My journey has showed me the diversity of the different countries. There is so much prejudice in the western world toward the African continent – yes, it is a continent and not a country. Africa is unfortunately often perceived as a country and treated as such in popular culture and media. Africa is three times larger than Europe and occupies 20% of the land mass on Earth – it is huge.

In eastern and southern Africa where I have been travelling, they have many challenges. I travelled during the rainy season but in most of the countries, if not all, they got lesser rain than they need to avoid drought. Climate changes are already impacting this part of the world. The growing population is also impacting the infrastructure – water supply, electricity and transport.

I’ve been travelling for 10 weeks, visited 8 countries and held 30 interviews with non-believers. During the next 3-4 months all the interviews will be published as podcast episodes through Babelfish and I will continue to write articles for POV International.

At the same time, I will plan the next steps of my journey. Which means I will be pretty busy while in Copenhagen – I also want to see, to hug and talk to my friends and family. Right now it is cold and rainy – I hope spring is coming.

Succes – finally

2019-02-01 | Babelfish, Uganda | No Comments

After struggling with slow performing internet connections I now have access. I am in a the MVUU camp in the middle of the Liwonde Nationalpark in Malavi and the internet connection is the fastest I have experienced in this country.

So today I have published another episode of my podcast. In this episode I talk to Max from HALEA Uganda. He tells how he tried out different religions before realising he don’t believe in a god. And we learn how ‘the Secret’ influenced him, how he has been shunned and lost friends, but also how he gives medical support through Rotary.

Find it in your favourite podcast app or on this website. Enjoy.

Challenges

2019-01-30 | Babelfish | 3 Comments

Unable to upload podcast

For the first time while travelling I faced some challenges – challenges not related to transport, accommodation, food or money. Not at all – instead I was not able to get online – I have never experienced an internet connection performing this poorly. And this in a large hotel in the capitol of Malawi.

For several days I tried to upload new episodes of my podcast. Again, and again the upload failed after a while. It has been so frustrating not being able to do anything about it. When talking to the reception they promised to investigate it, unfortunately they never gave me any feedback – I had to ask them again and again. I never got any explanation, not even a ‘we are sorry for the inconvenience’, nothing. I’ve stayed at much cheaper guest houses where the service was 10 times better.

To make matters worse I discovered the subscription feature on my blog had stopped working. It was not possible for people to sign up. And I was not even able to log in and check up on it – the pages wouldn’t load due to the poor internet connection. I think I could have punched someone at this point, several times.

In the end I gave up and went to bed.

And the next day I asked for help on LinkedIn – not that anyone could fix the performance issues, but if someone could look at the issues with the subscription feature, I would be very happy. A former colleague from CGI Maria Ana from Sweden helped me and will help me in the future – I got myself a wingwoman 😊

The subscription feature is working again – or it’s partly working. If you have already tried to sign up without any success it is not possible to sign up again (we are working on solving the issue).

If you are one of the unlucky ones… please send me an email and I will register you manually – sorry for all the inconvenience.

This blog post should have been about something completely different related to Africa & humanists, but I have been too frustrated to write anything that made sense.

I know this is first world problems – people living here are facing much more serious problems than this. They have power outages, floods, droughts, lack of clean water, climate changes, a growing population they cannot feed.

I can leave – I can go home, turn on the electricity, get clean water out of the tab and be sure my internet connection is fast.

I’ll be back… with new podcasts and blog posts when the connection is good… I’ll be back

With more than 120 tribes (& same number of languages) no tribe has majority in Tanzania, the melting pot of migrations. The last tribe migrated to this country less than 200 years ago. Tanzania is even more diverse and complex than the other countries in East Africa – migrations from all over Africa, from India, from Europe, from almost everywhere.

Like the rest of East Africa, Tanzanians are very religious, conservative. The population is equally divided between Christianity, Islam and traditional religions, which means no religion has majority. This makes Tanzania different from the other countries – they had to find a way to live together, co-exist, no matter tribe or religion. They have succeeded in many ways, even though there can be tensions (as an example Zanzibar which is predominantly Muslim would like to be independent). Tanzania is peaceful and you don’t have to worry about security.

Like in the other countries it is difficult to be a non-believer in Tanzania. Family and friends might consider you a devil-worshipper if you openly come out as a non-believer. Like in Kenya Tanzania has a secular constitution including the human rights declaration which protects non-believers even though they might face discrimination in every day life.

There are a small group of freethinkers who try to reach out and find likeminded people in order to build a community. The internet and social media have helped a lot, since almost everybody has access to information online these days. So besides being enthusiastic the freethinkers are optimistic and know things will change slowly, but they will change. Many more non-believers will come out – because they are out there, they just think they are alone. Through the social media they will discover they are not alone in the world, and they will find a place to belong, a community.

Tanzania is also the biggest country – it is 22 times the size of Denmark, 22 (!). It’s huge – with the speed limit being 80 km/hour (down to 50 km/ hour many places) you’ll never manage to visit the whole country. It takes forever to drive from a to b. The traffic police are everywhere, you would be ruined before managing to drive from Arusha to Dar es Salaam.

For a Dane it is difficult to comprehend why they haven’t built highways like in Denmark where the whole country is covered in highways. Our highways have a speed limit of 130 km/ hour which makes it easy to get from one end of our small country to the other in no time. In addition, there is no railways of importance in Tanzania (again in contradiction to Denmark), which means everything must be transported on the same roads – goods, containers, people, schoolkids, cows, goats etc.

Halfway through my journey I have almost adjusted to the African way – which means you must be patient, don’t rush, take you time greeting people in a proper way, a lot of handshakes and talking. It seems like I have adjusted to the hot African weather as well – just arrived in Malawi, it’s 23 degrees & I’m freezing (!).

Halfway through my journey I have visited 4 countries in East Africa – the other half will be spend visiting 4 countries in Southern Africa.

My visit to the cradle of humankind – the Serengeti – made an impact. I think it is an amazing place. I would like to go back some day, and spend at least one week in the Serengeti, sleeping in tents among the wild animals, spending hours looking for them, spending hours staring at them. It’s beautiful, overwhelming, majestic – pictures can never show how it feels to be there.

Goodbye Tanzania & East Africa – hopefully I’ll see you again on the Serengeti – Hakuna Matata

Some facts:

Tanzania (Denmark)

Population:   60 mio. (5.8 mio.)

Area:   945.000 km2 (43.000 km2)

Density: 64/km2 (133/km2)

Life expectancy: 63 years (80 years)

It’s alive !!!

2019-01-16 | Babelfish, Uganda | No Comments

Finally – the podcast has gone live. The first 3 episodes has been published.

Kato Mukasa

In the first episode I talk to Kato Mukasa who has several roles within the humanist community. Internationally Kato is member of the IHEU Board. He is also involved in coordinating activities in Africa and Uganda. In Uganda Kato is Legal Director for HALEA Uganda, and manager of the Pearl Vocational Training College.

Wasswa Peter Mukasa

In the second episode I talk to Wasswa Peter Mukasa who, besides being Kato’s brother, also is deeply involved in HALEA Uganda.

Viola Namyalo

In the third episode I talk to Viola Namyalo, a young humanist, involved in HALEA Uganda. Just after I left Uganda Viola was elected Chair of the African Working Group of Young Humanists International (YHI). YHI is the youth section of IHEU.


You’ll find podcast in your favourite podcast app: iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher. Or you go to the Babelfish page in the above menu.

I expect to release 1 or 2 episodes per week. Bear with me – English is my second language.

Enjoy.

My Crazy Idea

2018-12-08 | Denmark | 4 Comments

The Happy Human 
– logo of the Danish Organisation

For some years I have been active in the Danish Humanist Society (Humanistisk Samfund) a humanist life stance organisation. Our foundation is humanism and human rights. We offer humanist rituals (confirmations, weddings, name giving’s and funerals), work for equal rights for all life stances & a secular state. I have mainly been involved in the political and international work.

After I decided to take a year of and travel around the world, I got the crazy idea to create a podcast telling the stories of people from the humanist movement in the countries I visit. There are more than 150 organisations around the world representing humanist, freethinkers, atheists and other non-believers.

I’ve met many of them at our general assemblies in the international organisation IHEU (International Humanist and Ethical Union). In many countries non-believers are facing prejudice or jail, some are even risking their lives. Their struggles and stories are worth telling.

I’ve decided first to visit the African countries south of Equator. My idea has been received very positive and all the organisations would like to participate. It is amazing that my crazy idea will come to life.

So far, I will visit Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Botswana, South Africa and Namibia. Even though there are organisations in DR Congo and Burundi as well, but it is to risky to travel to those countries for me. Zimbabwe is also a possibility but could be risky. I’ll need to decide at a later stage.

I’ve invited my daughter to spend Christmas with me in Uganda. We have travelled all over the world and like spending Christmas in other countries. This will be a good start on my journey. I plan to be back in Denmark in March.

The first episode of the podcast will hopefully be published in January… stay tuned.