Dr. Menkhaus

You never know who you are going to run into in Kenya. In a downtown supermarket yesterday I ran into Dr. Ken Menkhaus, a political science professor at Davidson specializing in Somalia and East Africa. He was in town as an international observer of the recent elections in Somaliland; a self-proclaimed independent sector of northern Somalia that has yet to be recognized by any other nation. (African nations have fiercely and desperately tried to maintain their colonial borders - established by European countries in the Berlin Conference of 1885 - in an effort to maintain peace and stability. Land is a valuable resource with over 70 percent of the continent dependent on land production for survival. Whether these borders cause more or less civil conflict is debatable.)

Dr. Menkhaus commented that he runs into Davidson students all the time during his travels; a testament to students' engagement of the world beyond the bubble of college life. So who will I run into next in Kenya? Any takers?