People unclear of the concept (of human rights):
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Kampala — Uganda Human Rights commission is advocating for the Death sentence as an extreme penalty to perpetrators of Torture.
The demand is made on the eve of the UN International Day against Torture, its part of a campaign to eradicate torture and on Humanity.
The main thrust of this year’s commemoration is advocacy for the Prohibition and Prevention of Torture Bill, 2009. The bill which was developed jointly by the Uganda Human Rights Commission and members of Coalition against Torture
It seeks to address some of the gaps in the current legal provisions that deal with torture in Uganda. It is intended to criminalize torture in Uganda, accord torture a comprehensive definition and spell out punishments to perpetrators of torture, the commissions secretary Gordon Mwesigye says.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200906260793.html
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I’ve began naming my lotions and making little cards listing the name and the ingredients (I don’t think labels look anywhere as good). The names will help me differentiate them in the future, when I go back and look at the recipes, in case I want to repeat one. But I’ve noticed that I don’t actually want to do that – just like with food, what I want is to create something different each time. Though, I must say, lotions don’t differ from each other anywhere as much as dishes.
I got this recipe from Snowdrift Farm, an online merchant of cosmetic-making products. I haven’t bought from then yet – and who knows when I’ll get bored of this hobby. I was looking for a cocoa butter recipe, so that I could use some of the cocoa butter I bought, and this fit the bill perfectly as I had almost all the other ingredients (I substituted the recommended preservative for the one I have at home).
I’m quite happy with the results. The lotion is creamy and silky, perhaps a little too oily, but I seem to say that about all the lotions I make. I like it quite a bit. My only complaint is that the fragrance I added cannot hide the smell of the cocoa butter (they sell deodorized cocoa butter if you want to avoid this problem). It’s not a major issue, though, I just smell somewhat chocolaty 🙂 Indeed, I named the lotion Tropical Sun because it has cocoa and coconut oil (we’ll forget about the jojoba for now).
Here is the recipe: all the measures, except for those specified as ml, are in weights.
Tropical Sun Body Lotion
Put the cocoa butter, jojoba oil, emulsifying wax and coconut oil in a small bowl and microwave for 30 seconds. Mix and continue microwaving, for 30 seconds at the time, until the mixture is completely melted. Set aside
Put the water and glycerin in a medium size bowl. Mix and microwave for 1’30”.
Mix the water solution with your stick blender
and very slowly start pouring in the oils into the water. Continue blending. Add the fragrance oil and the phenonip and blend for 3 minutes, until well emulsified.Pour the lotion into bottles while still warm and liquid – it will thicken as it cools down.
I love reading mysteries, and in particular mysteries that are situated in places I am, have been or will visit. Those are not necessarily easy to find, unless the title is somewhat explicit or the author is very famous. Fortunately for me, Blood Sacrifice
Both books are from the early 90’s, so they don’t reflect the Yucatan (or the Cancun/Riviera Maya area, as it’s now called) as it is today. I traveled through the region in ’91, so they are pretty much contemporary to my image of the Yucatan. That doesn’t mean that I loved Blood Sacrifice, but it was entertaining enough. I liked that the detective was Maya and poor, and it was amusing that he was a travel guide. I skipped over the descriptions of Maya culture/history, as I’m reading about this in another book, but it was cool that it was included. In all, it’s a good book to read to help put you in a Yucatan mood. As a mystery, though, it’s pretty mediocre.
One of the main reasons why I bought this house is because I fell in love with the patio in the back of the house. It’s by no means a “pretty” patio, there is absolutely no elegance to it. The uneven cement floor shows traces of gray and red under its green paint. It has an OK glass table, but the chairs are cheap plastic (at least they don’t rot under the rain and I don’t have to worry about bringing them inside). The vegetation, controlled while the previous owner lived here, has gone wild: there are ferns and fig branches and tree leaves and so forth. Our patio clearly has its own micro-climate, and if anything, it resembles a tropical jungle. I love it! 🙂
What I like the most about my patio is my hammock. It’s multi-colored and tacky and absolutely lovely to lay on. It’s made in the Yucatan, and the Yucatecans make the absolutely best hammocks in the world, definitely the most comfortable.
I first came across Yucatecan hammocks when I traveled through the region 18 years ago. I found out that many, if not most, Yucatecans sleep on hammocks rather than beds and I had to find out for myself why that was the case. It doesn’t take long to figure it out, in the oppressing heat of the region, a hammock keeps you much cooler than a bed. I bought two for myself, a cotton one and a “silk” one (these are made from artificial fibers, not real silk). Cotton hammocks are said to be more comfortable (not my experience) and I think they’re cheaper, but silk hammocks are able to withstand the rain. I used the cotton one during my trip and then I stored them for seven years. There was no place to hang them in our little apartment. But I kept them, and when I saw the patio, I knew immediately my hammock would have a home.
And so it did. For seven years my “silk” hammock happily hang on the back and I spent many a happy morning or afternoon laying on it, reading a book or dreaming. I remember going there with my babies, swinging while telling them stupid made up stories about the garden. They were too young to understand 🙂
I also hang up my cotton hammock, but I was too lazy to remove it once the rains came, and it didn’t last more than one or two seasons. It wasn’t a huge lost, my patio can’t really fit more than one hammock in any case 🙁
After seven years, however, my hammock gave up. It was still usable, but it looked frumpy and tired, and its holes were starting to grow. I figured it was time for another one. Despite the fact that we had a hammock we had bought in Brazil a couple of years before, I wanted another Yucatecan hammock. Fortunately, these are easily (if expensively) available over the internet.
I can’t remember where I bought mine, so I can’t give you store recommendations, but if you do a search for “Yucatecan Hammock” you’ll find a bunch of places that sell them. I think I paid $85 for mine, which I hope is several times what they cost in the Yucatan (now that I’m going, I’m planning on buying another one), and it wasn’t as tightly knitted as the one I had before, but it’s great nonetheless. I love it! Indeed, I think it’s the one item in the house that makes me the happiest.
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