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Khat Market in Harar, EthiopiaBy Steven W. Thomas*

As I mentioned in my first Finfinne Diary about my trip to Ethiopia, I was quite surprised by the size of the khat trade (a.k.a., qat or chat), but as someone commented there, I probably should not have been since American newspapers and magazines have been blabbering about it for years. For instance, I could have read about the popularity of this narcotic plant in Esquire, The Christian Science Monitor, Time Magazine, and The Village Voice. When I travelled to Harar, I was expecting khat to be around, but dang! — I soon discovered that it was not simply around… it was everywhere;  men and women carried bunches of it to and fro in their arms the way a young lover might carry a dozen long-stem roses to his date on Valentines Day, and huge piles of it were on the side of the road.

By Oromsis Adula*

In the closing minutes of a spectacular sporting event, organized by an African nation for the first time, a twin bomb blast rocked the capital of another African country – Kampala, Uganda. The simultaneous attack left an estimated 74 people dead and scores wounded. The two targets, an Ethiopian restaurant and a rugby club, were in ruins. Authorities in Uganda are said to be digging through the wreckage to find more victims.

Pics: Benedicte Desrus/ReutersBy Xan Rice in Kampala for  guardian.co.uk

For young, middle-class football fans in the Ugandan capital there was no better place to watch the World Cup final. A giant screen had been erected beside the clubhouse of the Kyadondo rugby club. Hundreds of white plastic chairs were neatly arranged on the grass in front. The beer flowed freely – for a $2 entrance fee you got two free bottles of Guinness.

Somali Refugees in EthiopiaBy Jina Krause-Vilmar

Food is scarce in Ethiopia, where most of the population lives in rural, drought-prone areas in a state of chronic poverty. In 2010, the Government of Ethiopia identified 5.2 million people in need of emergency food aid. Not surprisingly, this hunger crisis also impacts the thousands of refugees living just within Ethiopia's borders.