Having worked for several years as an Eritrean in East Europe, I came across a quiet unique but somehow to me familiar experience of life.nIt reminded me on the time during the early 80s, when my parents migrated to Germany during the liberation struggle in Eritrea. Back then, I was a young boy in a family with many children and I am still a child today.

Eritrean families used to be rather huge in size at that time.The German authorities settled us far out from every civilisation in a small village near the boarder to France. Hence, the villagers were quiet curios’ and astonished about the newcomers, which I did not understand at that time.

We were the only black family within a radius of 31 miles from the place we were living. No wonder that we were an attraction in many ways for the local people.

Some of the locals felt sorry, and tried to make life easier for us by inviting us to their home or helping us with formalities. I just remember one funny occasion, when our whole family was invited to a nights out at our neighbours place. When we arrived at the place there were many friends and relatives of our neighbours.

To my surprise they had placed three or four African drums at the middle of the living room and expected us to play them. In astonishment we looked at each other not knowing how to avoid disappointing our neighbours. So we started drumming the typical Eritrean “gualia” rhythm, which is no major science to do.

Honestly, no one of us new how to get African vibes and beats out of these drums. To our relieve people got bored quiet soon and the hosts changed the venue to the hobby room in order to show dia slights of their last holiday.

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Two Women from South Africa are being tested on possible infections with the swine flu virus. The results could take some time as the samples have to be sent overseas for analysis. According to the AU health inspections have been set up at East African ports in order to prevent the virus to enter Africa. Read more The BBC.

African countries Burundi, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania discuss how to respond to the current swine flu outbreak in Addis Ababa. Reasd more: Reuters News Agency.

The recession and the economical slowdown is hurting the African aviation sector at the most inconvenient time. Just when it seemed that the sector was experiencing tremendous growth rates due to increased economical activity with the outside world, the recession made an abrupt end to it. The growth motivated African avitaion to improve the quality, safety and service to provide the same standard as western carriers, due to increasing partnership with other non-African airline as well as the growing number of freight and passengers volumes.

In early April European and African representatives have met to discuss the establishment of a common strategic framework for air transport safety (European Commission).

Early during the year in January African aviation traffic dropped by 2.6% according to the International Airline Transport Association (IATA). Many African airlines are reducing capacity by cutting on routes from this year. Eritrean Airlines stopped flying from Asmara to Frankfurt (capitaleritrea), Air Namibia suspended flying to London, Air Senegal stopped operating at all and many other carriers took similar actions. The near future does not look promising as demand for travel and freight is continuing to drop. In addition IATA expressed concerns that the Swine Flu outbreak will further reduce demand when the timing could not be worse. The latest IATA statistics show that airline revenues declined by up to 20% for the month of March.

In March 2008, Forbes Magazine published the worlds richest billionaires. Ranking number 19 was Prinz Al Waleed bin Talal, a Saudi business man who supposed to be the promoter of trade between the Middle East and the West.

The Prinz had a extravagant lifestyle and was the first private person to order a custom made Airbus 380 for his personal use. His risky financial investments during the stock market boom come now to hunt him due to speculative losses when the financial downturn started. The Prinz tries now to shift from business man to politician, in order not to loose everything of his fortune. Read more:

According to the WHO the swine flu epidemic has so far not broken out in Africa. There are no known cases of infected people on the continent. Given the poor medical infrastructure and a lacking response network on the continent, an outbreak in Africa could have devastating impact on the death toll and rate of infections linked to swine flu.