a birth and a death

The Tompkins welcomed Emelyn, their third child, into the world
yesterday morning at 9am. After a somewhat stressful week, she arrived
one week late and without any complications. I've blogged about this
before, but it's a little bit weird being expected to make the medical
decisions for your friends and people that you live with closely; it's
difficult to maintain a good perspective on things and still be
respectful to what other people want to do. Fortunately, my role was
basically as a remote observer, as two of our nurses did all of the work.

The president of Zambia, Mr. Mwanawasa, died yesterday after being in a
coma in France for over a month. Zambia has traditionally been a very
stable country, with orderly elections and a good democratic process.
Like during any crisis, at home or abroad, this democratic process will
be tested as new elections take place over the next few weeks.
Sometimes it's difficult to remember what it's like for a country to be
only 40 years old or so; the pull of inertia to keep the status quo may
not be as strong as a place like America.

I'm pretty optimistic that it will go pretty smoothly, however, in
contrast to the debacle in Zimbabwe just to the south of us.