Things seem relatively back to normal. We're opening the office at 9am with the strict proviso on all our staff to check their local news before venturing out.
I'm sure we'll have an update on the situation when the office opens but my thoughts are that this is a rather deceptive quiet. No substantive measure have been annonced to deal with the crisis in the short term and the leaders of the demostrations have said that they would give the government up to Monday noon to come up with a better package or else... Not very reassuring.
Just thought I'd share an another article on food prices from Al Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/731157E1-133D-490D-ACF7-3405744C491D.htm
They also mention the shift to biofuels as well as speculation on the market as causes for the world-wide explosion in food prices. What I found especially interesting was the mention of the percentage of household income spent on food between the poor and rich countries:
"Most people in the world's wealthiest countries take food for granted.
Even the poorest fifth of households in the US spend only 16 per cent of their budget on food.
By contrast, Nigerian families spend 73 per cent of their budgets on eating, Vietnamese 65 per cent, while Indonesians allocate half.
Last year, the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 per cent as food prices rose to levels not seen in a generation."
It reminds me of what George Alagiah wrote in his book "A passage to Africa" about how you could measure the poverty of a family by how often they go out to buy food. Pretty good measure that - should add that into the HDI...
Anyway, off to work.
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