in the still of the night

listenin to: president mbeki's live speech at wsis tunis 2005
workin on: pics for wsis tunis agenda edition 2

as i look up at the wondefully imported plasma screen in the newsroom, i spot the mug of a certain zimbabwean president as he makes his speech at the opening ceremny at wsis tunis. today marks the official opening day of a 3 day global summit. the media centre is jam packed from front door to back plasma screen with media from everywhere you can think of. indeed if there are exhibition stands for croatia, kerela, azabaijan and bahrain, then it is definite without a doubt, that journalists from every spot on the map, have travelled here.

i am running on two and a half hours of sleep. i guess i'll save the long and traumatic version for when i get home. i blame the drop off. we were two hours behind deadline and had to make it through as many of the police barricades as we could to get as close to the printer as possible. he would meet us as far in as he could drive to. it became virtually impossible to explain to the multitude of bayonet carrying policemen exactly why we had to meet a man to give him a flash disk in the middle of the night. after 3 long attempts we finally met a police escorted printer man, handed over the proofs and by now we had to find food. we had not eaten since 3pm. so we had to drive back to the Kram conference venue to catch a bus that would go either in the direction of food or our hotel. here is where i have to cut down the details. here's the short version. the bus we got on with app. 30 other people drove around tunis for 3 hours, refusing to let us out, ask for directions, stop or communicate with people who could speak the lingo.

we eventually jumped ship at 3am this morning, at a 5 star marble clad hotel, called for a taxi, got 4 large pizzas, 2 schwarmas and drinks for R80, went back to our crummy hotel and ate like never before. i fell into bed at 3:30am.

there was a point when casper, colin and i reached the point of hysterical laughter. as tears rolled down our cheeks, i took out my sony voice recorder. after all what's a journo, who finds herself in a fix and does nothing about it. the sound clip will be available once i have edited it and found some sleep.

did destiny's child really know what they were taking about when they sang, 'i'm a survivor'?