Field notes

Olympic Dreams Spending time with the boxers training at Kibera...

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:30:00 +0300

Olympic Dreams

Spending time with the boxers training at Kibera Olympic, you realise you have no excuses. For anything. These guys have so little, yet are so dedicated to their sport, and to use boxing as a way to rise out of Nairobi’s largest slum.

They have a few skipping ropes and the odd pair of gloves. Once, they had a punch-bag, but that got damaged, and now slouches in the corner of the hall where they train.

They shadow-box, spar, jump rope, and do press-ups and sit-ups. No ring, little equipment, and yet there are still those amongst them who win bouts, and tournaments, in competition.

Chemi and I will be publishing a piece on this; today’s session with them was just the start. There are those that aspire to reach London in 2012, and their coach has confidence in them reaching the national team.

Back in South Sudan It was all set-up. The contacts were made,...

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 20:30:00 +0300

Back in South Sudan

It was all set-up. The contacts were made, the logistics organised, and the story there. Conflict has been raging in Blue Nile state in Sudan, following the fashion of South Kordofan.

But then things fell through, and this trip to South Sudan turned into a waiting game. And an expensive one at that.

Juba is not a place to live cheaply, and as I paid $85 a night for a bed in a container—the smell of the local abattoir wafting over—I was given plenty of time to reflect on how fast this city is developing. I was last here in July, covering the independence celebrations. Roads are transforming from dirt to tarmac, buildings are going up, and businesses are opening.

The main basketball courts have been refurbished—basketball is the national sport here in the land of six-foot-plus being the “average” height—and tonight, it was full. Two former NBA stars were here to promote sport and peace.

But in many parts of South Sudan and its borders, peace is still far from arriving. And so was I. Funds have run low, plans have fallen through and promises not kept. An empty-handed return to Nairobi looks likely. Whilst the city is developing, much of its bureaucracy and procedures are not. Things take a long time here

Kidnapping in Lamu In the early hours of Saturday October 1st,...

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 17:30:00 +0300

Kidnapping in Lamu

In the early hours of Saturday October 1st, a French lady was kidnapped from Manda island, in the Lamu archipelago, two weeks after a British lady was kidnapped and her husband shot dead, further north up the coast towards Somalia.

I got the call on that Saturday morning, and was asked to take the first flight down. This was a different type of journalism to everything else I have hitherto done.

Arriving in Lamu, nobody on the island could believe that “the Somali pirates” could be so “audacious” to come to Lamu. It was hard to believe that the Kenyan government, police and coast-guard had not stepped up security following the previous kidnapping.

Local hoteliers had themselves organised an aeroplane to fly up the coast and try to track the kidnappers as they fled towards Somali waters. The coastguard did not have a boat, it was rumoured.

The fate of Marie Dedieu is still unknown, but the impact on tourism in Lamu will be enormous. Over eighty per cent of the island relies on the tourism industry, which immediately sunk as news trickled in. Over two hundred people that Saturday cancelled their holiday to Lamu. It will take a long time to rebuild the reputation of the island; the Kenyan tourism indusyry is still recovering from the hit it took following the post-election violence several years ago.

The last time I came here, I came for two or three days. I left ten days later. It was easy to fall in love with the place. It will be harder now.

The Hurri Hills of Kenya, north of Marsabit and across the...

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:30:00 +0300

The Hurri Hills of Kenya, north of Marsabit and across the Chalbi desert, seemed to be the remotest place on Earth. I hadn’t seen tarmac for days, and small, rocky tracks stretched across the plains and wound their way through the hills.

Small communities live nestled in these hills, miles from anywhere. They draw what scarce water there is, where they can. And that water is becoming increasingly scarce with the drought affecting the Horn. They walk with their cattle across the vast plains, in search of pasture. It is rare that they see outsiders in these parts.

Borders mean little up here. An ageing man in one village I visited told me “our nearest water is the other side of those hills”, pointing towards the horizon. The other side of those hills is Ethiopia, a journey they would make daily. The nearest market, a source of produce as well as an outlet for their goats, was also in Ethiopia. No-one holds a passport.

Driving from Marsabit, crossing the Chalbi desert, we got lost...

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:30:00 +0300

Driving from Marsabit, crossing the Chalbi desert, we got lost at night, in the vast expanse of black. We were headed to a small town where we could spend the night, but there are few lights in this part of the world, and once we lost the track, it wasn’t easy to find. Our faith was in the driver. In the end, he turned up trumps.

Sacrificing the lambs Remaining on the subject of the Horn of...

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:30:00 +0300

Sacrificing the lambs

Remaining on the subject of the Horn of Africa drought, I spent yesterday on the road, driving up to Marsabit in northern Kenya. Road investment has got as far as Isiolo, with smooth, tarmac roads. But from then on, things get rough.

Little seems to reach here, and when it does, it is expensive. Kenya has seen massive fuel increases this year, not least due to the conflict in Libya.

Many people here rely on their livestock to live, even more so now that many crops have died due to the drought; animals are more resilient than crops. But many are wavering, skeletons with skin seem to wander much of the landscape.

Prices of these animals has hit rock-bottom in the markets. Nobody wants to buy them, and nobody can keep them. There is not enough feed, not enough water. People cannot afford the meat.

To try and help these communities, an international aid group is working here to provide a solution. As well as helping to keep livestocks healthy, they are also buying off-take of sheep and goats. The owners receive money for the animal, as well as a third of the meat for their family. The remaining two-thirds are divided amongst other families in the community.

This is a short-term solution to the problem, and the money from a goat may keep the rest of the herd alive for another week or two. But it is by keeping those herds alive long enough until the rains come that offers the best chance of survival for the people living here. Their animals are all they have.

Nairobi’s Urban Food Crisis There is food in the markets,...

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:30:00 +0300

Nairobi’s Urban Food Crisis

There is food in the markets, but people can’t afford it.

The drought that has been hitting the headlines in the Horn of Africa is not just limited to the arid scrublands of Somalia and northern Kenya. In the slums of Nairobi, the drought has contributed to an increase of food and fuel prices, meaning that people are going hungry whilst the shops next to their shanty houses are stocked with goods.

Milicent, above, is sixteen months old, and was suffering from malnutrition. Her mother, Rosemary, noticed that she was not putting on weight, and sought help from an aid group working in Nairobi’s Korogocho slum, where they both live.

“Sometime we eat just once a day”, says Rosemary, who describes the food prices right now as very high. Milicent is one of five children, and a typical meal is ugali, a Kenyan staple made from mixing maize flour and water. To feed her children, Rosemary will sometimes have to skip a meal herself, drinking just a cup of tea.

Her husband is a casual labourer, and with irregular work, the family has problems affording enough food for the family. They moved to Nairobi two years ago from the country in search of work. “Life is much harder in the city, if there is no work you won’t eat” Rosemary says.

Segregation It was with more than a little trepidation that I...

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:30:00 +0300

Segregation

It was with more than a little trepidation that I took this assignment in Belfast. Not because of “The Troubles” (and I still can’t get over the understatement in this term), but for photographing something that looks so familiar, something so much like where I grew up, and what I took for granted.

Since I began making a living out of photography back in January, much of my work has been centred around events, and all of it in Africa - from Libya, through the Sudans, to Kenya and Somalia. They have been stories of conflict, of voting, of famine and drought. And if I was working on quieter stories, it was still “exotic”; a different scenery, and different peoples, for the largely western audience that views (and buys) my work.

Here in Northern Ireland, the terraced houses reminded me of Sheffield. The faces looked the same as those who I grew up with. I wouldn’t have that “safety net” of the exotic on this assignment.

I was working with a journalist who I first met in Libya, as we crossed the border from Egypt. The story was for a weekend supplement of Le Monde, and would have roots in a civil war that took place in my own country as I was growing up, but which I realised I knew less about than many other conflicts in other corners of the globe.

What shocked me the most were the “Peace Walls”. We talk about—and deplore—the Israeli wall that separates the Palestinian Territories from Israel, segregating two peoples. But these exist in Belfast today. Under the shadow of it, gardens are covered in netting and mesh, resembling small prisons, to protect them from bricks and other missiles thrown over from the opposite side. I had seen the same thing in Hebron.

And these are not relics of the past, now that peace talks have brought about a relative calm. People here say that the walls are still needed, to keep two opposing communities apart. Integration is a long way off yet.

» Read Belfast, en paix mais toujours divisée — Le Monde des religions
» See the tearsheet in my portfolio

A day-trip to Dhobley - Somalia I haven’t been back to...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:30:00 +0300

A day-trip to Dhobley - Somalia

I haven’t been back to Europe for nearly two years. A few days before I was due to fly back to England I was asked if I could go to Somalia, for a day trip just over the Kenyan border. “Sure”, I said, “when is it?” I was keen to see as much of Somalia as I could, and I had failed to reach the other side of the border when Chemi and I drove up a few weeks previously.

“The eleventh” came the reply.

“Euh, that’s the day I’m flying back to London.”

“What time is the flight?” asked my editor.

“Not ‘til the evening” I replied.

“It’ll be fine. You’ll be back by the evening. Can you go?”

And so, with a bag packed for five weeks in the UK and in France, I drove to Wilson airport at some un-Godly hour of the morning, and boarded a small charter plane for a visit by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation to Dhobley.

We did our work, I became a convert to the idea of giving money to cattle rather than people - preventing their deaths would save many more lives and is more cost-effective, they tell me - and then flew back to Nairobi. An hour spent in traffic, a spot of writing and editing the pictures, and I just about had time to take a shower before jumping in another taxi for the airport.

The following day, I would be in London, a world away from the conflict and famine of Somalia, and trying to explain everything I have seen over the last two years.

Fleeing Drought Hassan Ali has a canteen of water slung over...

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 15:30:00 +0300

2col:Hassan (left) and his companions

Fleeing Drought

Hassan Ali has a canteen of water slung over one shoulder, in his right hand he holds a walking stick, and in his left, a blackened kettle. A scarf is draped over his head to protect him from the midday sun, he stands in thin, cracked flip-flops, and wears a blue, short-sleeved shirt over polo-shirt, with a Somali wrap-around skirt around his waist. This is all he has left.

With the sun beating over-head, he pours a little water from his kettle over his feet to wash them, ablutions before the dhuhr (noon) prayers.

Hassan is forty-two years old, and fifteen days ago he left his home in Dinsour, Somalia, his livelihood destroyed by the drought that has ravaged Somalia. Two kilometres behind him stands the Somali-Kenyan border, and ahead of him lies the Dadaab refugee complex - the largest refugee camp in the world.

This is where Hassan and his five compatriots are heading. Hassan’s wife and children left Dinsour for Dadaab several weeks previously, whilst he stayed on to try and struggle through the drought, to save his home and land. Now he is walking to join them, a small family amongst 380,000 refugees.

When he arrives, Hassan will register with the camp authorities, and try to locate his family. The camp is already several times over capacity, and it can take days to register, and weeks to receive a refugee—and therefore ration—card.

But before he can do that, Hassan has over one hundred kilometres across the hot sands ahead of him, with little respite. The few, small villages en-route are themselves suffering from the drought, and have already seen so many refugees heading to Dadaab.

Dadaab & Drought The bus bounded over pot-holed roads,...

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:30:00 +0300

Dadaab & Drought

The bus bounded over pot-holed roads, heading north-east from Nairobi into the arid scrubland towards the Somali border. We were seven, crammed into the back seat of this behemoth, thrown upwards out of our seats on some of the nastier bumps, my head once hitting the roof.

Past Garissa, all that lay ahead of us was the Somali border—an unruly frontier—and Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp.

The three camps that comprise the Dadaab refugee complex, and which are already over-capacity, have swelled in recent months, their numbers growing due to the drought (and subsequent famine) ravaging Somalia.

I began working on the drought back in May, covering the drought-displaced in Mogadishu. Conditions were terrible back then, and people were arriving into the war-torn capital in a deplorable state. I had never seen malnutrition this bad.

This did not prepare me, however, for what I would encounter in Dadaab. The size of the place is overwhelming; the sheer number of people living here, as refugees from a war-torn country, many for over a decade. The camps are overwhelmed by the number of people arriving, unable to process that many (over 1000) people each day. And in the hospitals, the severity of the malnutrition was unlike anything I had encountered, neither in eastern Sudan, South Sudan nor Mogadishu.

When I was in Mogadishu, it seemed like no-one was covering the drought, it took over a month for the pictures to appear on the Guardian website. Now, half of the Juba independence press corps. The drought is all over the international news, and rightly so. Through a proper response, political will and, admittedly, with cooperation from al-Shebab, much of this could have been prevented.

» For more coverage of the drought in the Horn of Africa, see my portfolio

South Sudan Int’l The first game of South Sudan’s...

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 19:30:00 +0300

South Sudan Int’l

The first game of South Sudan’s international squad. Admittedly, not a fully international fixture, for they were playing a Kenyan team, Tusker F.C.

The newly rennovated Juba stadium was packed. People pressed up against the wire fences, sitting on walls around the grounds. Every seat in the stands was taken.

South Sudan got off to a good start, scoring the first goal. The final score was 3-1. The South Sudanese had scored three! Unfortunately, two of them were in their own net.

Pole, pole, as the Kenyans would say. “Slowly, slowly.”

South Sudan’s Independence Day As the crowds swelled...

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 18:30:00 +0300

South Sudan’s Independence Day

As the crowds swelled below the podium where AFP had a spot and a very long lens, the scene lay out below me reminded me of the history books. Of the black and white photographs of African independence from the sixties. The Colonialists handing back the countries they had taken, and ravaged. Here in Juba, Omar al-Bashir, the president of the previously unified Sudan, was in attendance, ready to hand over South Sudan to Kiir and his men.

Thousands had come out, and sat through the day under a baking Juba sun. The lines of soldiers, many who had fought through the long, bitter war with the north, occasionally had someone drop amongst their ranks. The sun taking its toll as Red Cross stretchers whipped away the feinted.

The armoured vehicles of South Africa swept in, their gunmen training their huge rifles on the thousands gathered as Jacob Zuma made his way to his seat. Museveni’s entourage seemingly went on for almost as many years as his rule.

I had had two hours sleep since last night’s celebrations, little water and less food. We wrestled with the over protective security, freshly laminated badges hanging around our necks. Elbows were out. Tempers were fraying with some of those around me who were fresh to South Sudan and its protocol.

Everything was inevitably delayed. Speeches went on. And on. There were not enough seats for the dignitaries; but the generals of this army chivalrously gave up theirs for these fresh-faced “guests of honour”, amongst them, Britain’s own foreign secretary. (We heard rumours that someone had the unenviable job of advising him to wear a cap to cover his balding head from the Sudanese sun.)

But I felt immensely fortunate to be here, six months after covering the referendum and its subsequent results announced preliminarily in Juba and then formally in Khartoum. Honoured to be here at this moment in history, to be one of the (many) photographers to capture this moment and leave a record on the history books.

As the sun dropped, I jumped on the back of a motorcycle and sped across the eerily empty streets of this new capital, a dash to file my images.

Tables of exhausted journalists sat around our usual haunt, and despite resolves for an early night, a few of us stayed up until the following sunrise, high on the adrenaline of the day.

As the clock strikes twelve I had been worried that it would...

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 03:30:00 +0300

As the clock strikes twelve

I had been worried that it would not be so.

Juba is increasingly on lock-down ahead of tomorrow’s independence celebrations, with more heads of states coming to town than the city has ever seen, and the eyes of the world on this fledgling nation.

The previous evening, walking back home at around one in the morning along an unlit, dirt street takes me back towards the Nile, a group of soldiers had emerged from the shadows. “What are you doing here, at this time?” they demanded. It was not the first time. The police seem to have adopted the curfew imposed by the United Nations and American Embassy on their staff, thinking it is city-wide.

Would people be out on the streets at midnight, celebrating the moment when this fabled day, the 9th of July, comes into being?

The answer was a resounding yes, and the heavy-handedness I feared from the police, was instead smiling, uniformed men, illuminated by the flashing sirens of their cars, as people danced and waved flags around them. Long live freedom.

As candles and car headlights provided the only illumination in this city of few street-lamps, groups marched down the thoroughfares, rolling on the tarmac (where it exists), car horns mixing with vuvuzelas.

Injury came to me by my own stupidity. I had spotted a slow moving car with women hanging out of the windows. I jumped on the back to try and capture them in motion. But when the car sped up, and not wanting to be carried into the darkness of outlying streets, I jumped off. My legs could not carry me as fast as I thought, and so I ended up spilling down onto the asphalt, tucking my camera into my chest and rolling over my exposed forearm.
A policeman ran up to me, and I thought “I’m in trouble now…” But he was more confirmed by my well-being than my traffic misdemeanours. “Kulu-shay tamaam” I assured him. Everything is fine. And it was.

Tomorrow, I will wake in two hours from now, and walk towards the show-ground, ready to watch South Sudan become the world’s newest nation.

South Sudan Independence Preparations The army is marching, but...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 10:30:00 +0300

South Sudan Independence Preparations

The army is marching, but it is not on its way northwards. Having returned to Juba from the war in the Nuba mountains, it is easy to think that the Nuba were right: the South has forgotten them.

Here in the southern capital, the trumpets are warming up, the choir rehearse the (rather terrible) new national anthem, as do soldiers their march, and people are out in the street celebrating. Deservedly so. They have suffered for decades, and many thought this moment would never arrive.

Tomorrow, heads of state will sit on the (still being constructed) stands outside the John Garang Memorial, the band will play and South Sudan will secede from the north.

And we, the international press, our numbers swelling by the day, will be running around taking pictures, absorbing the atmosphere, collecting quotes and recording speeches. If the day doesn’t end in sunstroke, I’ll be surprised.

The villages empty, the hillsides fill A pair of eyes appears...

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 17:30:00 +0300

Children shelter above Kauda

Children shelter above Kauda

Overlooking Lwere

Fleeing aircraft above Lwere

Hiding from aircraft above Lwere

Hills above Kurchi

Hills above Kurchi

The villages empty, the hillsides fill

A pair of eyes appears out of the blackness of a small cave, formed by boulders lying upon each other. Another pair of eyes peer out from behind the first. And then another. Fifty metres further up the hillside, ten children sit on the rocks of a dry river bed.

Children from a small village outside of Kauda in the Nuba mountains are now living in this hillside, their parents hoping to save them from the bombs that have already destroyed too many families here.

In the hills above Lwere, the drone of an aeroplane cuts through the air, and mothers and their children flee from the sun-dappled rocks where they sit overlooking their village, into a cave. The path that leads down from this rocky outcrop is littered by craters and bomb fragments.

Above Kurchi, where artillery booms from the other side of the plains, a grandmother sits under a rock, her head in hand as her grand-daughter sleeps behind her. Further up the hillside, another family has turned one cave into their kitchen, a small fire burning under a blackened kettle.

To read more about the conflict raging in the Nuba mountains, the Guardian has published the reporting of my colleague Matteo Fagottto along with my accompanying photographs
» Nuba mountains bear scars of Sudan’s forgotten war

When bombs fall on villages A boy sits on a bed surrounded by...

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:30:00 +0300

When bombs fall on villages

A boy sits on a bed surrounded by mosquito nets in a medical facility in Sudan’s Nuba mountains. Sudanese Armed Forces have been bombing the region for several weeks, the fallout of disputed elections in South Kordofan State. In this ward, all are civilians, and around this boy lay the injuries caused by these bombs. Others lie beneath the soil of their villages.

Sixteen year old Winassa Steven, a student from Kurchi, was hit by a bomb fragment last Sunday (26 June) whilst washing clothes at the water pump in Um Dorain when her village was bombed by a Sudanese Armed Forces Antonov bomber.

Four year old Jacomo Tia Jibril lost his hand and half of his forearm as a result of the bombing of his village of Kurchi by Sudanese Armed Forces fifteen days ago. He was washing clothes at the only borehole in the village when the bombs fell.

Ten year old Mursila Timas has an injured thumb and infection, risking the amputation of her hand. She has also had one foot amputated, and the other is seriously injured after bombing by Sudanese Armed Forces of her village in the Nuba mountains.

Viviana Issa lies in a bed at a medical facility in Sudan’s Nuba mountains. “I don’t know what to do with this girl” says the only doctor in the facility. She is leaking spinal fluid, and paralysed from the chest down after her spinal cord was severed by a bomb fragment hit her in the neck, breaking vertebrae. The bombing also killed two of her siblings.

A return to Kauda, a return to war It’s been a little...

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:30:00 +0300

A return to Kauda, a return to war

It’s been a little over a year since I was last in Kauda, a small village nestled in Sudan’s Nuba mountains. I must admit, I was surprised to be back.

The intrigue that brought me here on my last trip was that it was the base of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army during the north-south civil war. When I visited last year after a gruelling journey by 4x4, signs of that past were few; peace had been signed in 2005, and Kauda was a remote market village, bustling with its few inhabitants. Some hillsides were off-limits: mines still lay in the earth. But people were moving on from the war.

Coming back now, it has largely emptied. Many of the village’s inhabitants have fled to the hills, fearing the bombs that have rained down in the past few weeks, putting the airstrip out of action.

Fighters that had gone through a disarmament campaign are now donning their uniforms once more, saying that they are ready to fight and waiting to be called-up. “I don’t think peace will ever happen again with these people [the Khartoum government]”, one tells me, standing outside a local coffee shop.

The few aid groups that are still working here have dug bomb-holes around their compounds, into which they jump at the sound of an aeroplane.

Meanwhile, the fertile, arable land remains largely unplanted. In the coming months, if things don’t change, food shortages will be acute, and devastating.

Arriving in the Nuba Mountains It’s hard to get to the...

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:30:00 +0300

2col:

Arriving in the Nuba Mountains

It’s hard to get to the Nuba mountains right now. It’s even harder to get out.

Sudanese Armed Forces’ (SAF) Antonov planes have been bombing the area for weeks. Reports of ethnic cleansing have been seeping out of the provincial capital, Kadugli; the UN peace-keepers there seemingly having done nothing to protect the people of South Kordofan. Aid groups have been banned, and journalists forbidden from going there; Al-Jazeera bravely tried, but were stopped. A few Nuba have escaped it to Juba, where colleagues have interviewed them—gathering eye-witness reports—and written their stories.

It started back in May when Ahmed Haroun—wanted by the International Criminal Court for charges of war crimes committed in Darfur—won the provincial elections. The Nuba, the majority people there, claim that the vote was rigged, and that their own candidate, Abdulaziz Al-Hilu, had won. SAF forces moved into the region to disarm Al-Hilu’s followers.

Within half an hour of arriving, we heard the sound of bombs detonating and the whining of a plane overhead. The vehicles hid under the cover of trees, their bodywork smeared with diesel and mud to camoflage them in the bush. And a line of people walked, bags in hand, trying to find a way out.

Horror and uncertainty on Sudan's stricken border

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:30:00 +0300

Horror and uncertainty on Sudan's stricken border:

An article published by AFP about those displaced from Jau from my recent trip to Unity State.