But Juliana’s passions and talents aren’t restricted solely to Ushahidi, in fact, she’s something of a renaissance woman, a talented drifter unafraid to push the boundaries of her talents. Her Twitter bio highlights some of her varied interests: “African, Kenyan, Blogger, Globalist, Renewable energy cheerleader and Tree planter. I love Africa, tech and world music.” The sight of blood, pushed this med school hopeful to pursue other vocations. ”I worked at a nursing home and realized that I cannot stand the sight of blood, or open wounds,” she said, as she once again checked to make sure the navigation system was taking us in the right direction, “I realized there was no way that I was gonna cut it.” Nice.

“It got to a point where I had to pick something, and finish.” As a nod to her father’s influence,, she quickly switched to architecture, loved it, and promptly abandoned it for the call of databases and code. “I still think I take way too many pictures of buildings…,” she said.

After an hour drooling over new Macbooks, and balking at the price of a replacement battery at the Apple store, we sat down for lunch at PF Chang’s. The conversation, shifted effortlessly between Ushahidi, remittances, Global Voices, her experience as a first-time sky diver, and her thoughts on being a valued member of Kenya’s Diaspora and the lack of broad-scale development efforts targeted at the African Diaspora. “The only time that the Diaspora are directly engaged, is at Western Union. No one is pitching to the Diaspora. A centralized strategy? No! Especially for development, not even Kiva,” she said, and pointed out that it was “not a criticism, just an observation.”

Juliana had these gems to wisdom to share on how Africa’s Diaspora community can start to better engage themselves:

“…find a way to engage that part of you. Don’t get stuck in survival mode (the cycle of living to work, and working to pay bills). If it wasn’t for volunteering for Global Voices, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. I wouldn’t have travelled to the countries that I have travelled to now. Wether you are a nurse or a teacher, find a way to effect change and be engaged. We need not let our dreams die. Home never leaves us!”

We talked of many things that day, much more than I could cover in a single article. We covered politics and the environment, intra-Africa trade and the exciting, geeky, newness of discovering science at an early age in Africa. We peered deep into Africa’s future to see where tomorrow’s leaders will come from as the old-school leadership is nudged to give way to new schools of thought and governance. It was a nice road down memory lane that left us yearning for even more long lost memories of childhood bliss and old friends. Speaking of which, Juliana is in search of her old friend, Jesse Oponyo. If you have a lead to her childhood friend, drop Juliana a line.

I must say that I enjoy and am constantly energized by her talents and passion for Africa. If you follow her closely as I do (and that’s not in the stalking sense, but more in-line with today’s tech-assisted connectedness that is Facebook, Brightkite, and Twitter updates), you’ll discover that she has a penchant for random humor. She could be ranting about her mobile misgivings on her Afromusing blog, memorializing chance encounters on her Flicker account, or–as she did when I discovered we were at the same airport in Europe this past month–highlight the lack of adequate wifi at Schiphol airport on Twitter. It doesn’t matter. Juliana Rotich is worth a follow, and a listen.

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