Never have coffee alone again…

Become a blogger and you’ll never have to have coffee alone again.

I’m in London for three days packed chock-filled with meetings for Open Society Institute. But when Sokari Ekine mentioned she was also in town, I realized that meeting one of my favorite African bloggers was far more important than catching up on those hours of sleep I failed to get in a coach seat on British Airways. So I finished the stack of reading I’m plowing through for the OSI meetings, took the tube from Hammersmith to Victoria, and spent two hours talking about blogs, the universe and everything with Sokari and her partner, who are visiting their former hometown for a few weeks in the midst of moving from a village in rural Spain to a new urban life in Granada.

Sokari’s blog, Black Looks, was one of the first blogs I found when I started searching for blogs by Africans and Afrophiles. A few comments on each other’s blogs and an email exchange, and I discovered that her nom du blog, “Owukori”, was a psuedonym, chosen to honor her grandfather. A few more emails and we arranged an interview via instant messenger. Then a chat over Skype, which we recorded and podcast… until I ran out of SkypeOut credit and abruptly ended the call! And then Sokari agreed to join Global Voices as our Africa editor – she’ll pick up the mantle in a few weeks, once she’s settled in her new home.

All of which means that, when we sat down in Victoria Station, it was more like sitting down with an old friend than meeting someone for the first time. This is one of the miracles of blogs – they can give you context and a history with people you’ve never met face to face.

I’ve got photos, but wasn’t bright enough to bring the cable that lets me load photos onto my Mac, so you’ll have to wait…