Je me souviens the beautiful singing of hymns from tens of thousands in the streets, the soft sounds rolling for miles like an endless dirge before coming back to start again.

Je me souviens the lonely UN helicopter hovering above the dark city, like an angel aghast.

Je me souviens the distant fires by the sea that gave shape to a soft night than had no end.

Je me souviens the quiet streets in the hot sun where stoics carried boards with corpses in sheets.

Je me souviens the U.S. Marines guarding State Dept. employees rushing scared through the throngs in the dark.

Je me souviens la crie, Il est mort, encore et plus encore.

Je me souviens, Medicin! Medicin!

Je me souviens mega tons of concrete reshaped by a rupture in the earth.

Je me souviens the beautiful way Haitians pronounce Haiti in Creole — ah-EE-ti.

A new back channel has opened up in Arab-U.S. relations, based on doing business from the bottom up. That’s what I concluded after attending the Ashoka Arab world Social Innovation conference in Cairo last year, and which I wrote about for the Global Post:

“In the last decade, the dialogue between the U.S. and the Arab Muslim world has focused on radical Islam, terror, security, profiling and, occasionally, oil. Those topics still dominate media coverage, but since President Barack Obama’s 2009 “new beginning” speech in Cairo, a new back channel has opened — entrepreneurship.”

Read full opinion piece here….

Telenor, majority owner of GrameenPhone in Bangladesh and developer of the EasyPaisa mobile-money platform in Pakistan, tried to develop a website in Urdu, according to ProPakistani website. Take a look!

ProPakistani reports that the Urdu site for Easypaisa was once up, and showed this translation from the Urdu:

“Telenor Pakistan has always been a pioneer in innovative services. For easypaisa, Telenor Pakistan has partnered with Tameer Micro Finance Bank to introduce branchless banking for the first time in Pakistan. The innovative product umbrella of easypaisa will give you complete convenience and empowerment that you have always wanted in life.”

“The shop near you could become your neighborhood bank, if the agency banking model launched by Kenya’s Equity Bank takes root.

The model, which has been developed over a period of five years, will engage local shopkeepers as agents for financial transactions.

Equity Bank chief executive James Mwangi said the shopkeepers will be trained and provided with the necessary technology to handle all banking transactions – withdrawals, deposits, loans, account opening and advances, among other things.”

See full story at AllAfrica.com.