Archive for June 2012
Skill. Ability. Discipline. If becoming a sportsman is hard work, becoming a sportswoman in Zambia is even tougher. You need the mental strength to challenge the assumptions of nearly everyone around you, including your own family. Sharon Museke, who I first met at the 2006 Toronto World AIDS Summit, embodies these qualities. In Sharon's community, [...]
My first four months in the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Lashkar Gah have been heavily livestock themed – of the poultry family especially – with the construction of Helmand's Bolan Farm chicken house, the birth of the Helmand Poultry Association and a steady supply of slightly squashed, mostly melted Easter eggs through the post. In [...]
My alarm goes off at 6.15am. I hit the snooze button and realise I've been dreaming about work. I must be nervous. Not surprised really. Today's going to be busy, despite the fact that the "text" - all 283 paragraphs of it - was agreed by negotiators yesterday. Today is the high level summit - [...]
Olympic fever is running high in the UK. London 2012 kicks off in late July, and the excitement is palpable, even from an Embassy a whole continent away from home. So it's no wonder that everything we do this year – setting targets for our teams, communicating key messages – is couched in terms that relate [...]
The great, the good and the glamorous are gathering in Washington DC this week to talk about some really big issues affecting the world's poorest and most vulnerable children and adults. Anyone who is anyone in global health and development is in town. Nobel prize winner President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Malawi's President [...]
Since December last year, UNICEF has been warning of a looming food crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa, where more than one million very young children will suffer from life-threatening malnutrition this year. I've just returned from a visit to Chad, one of the eight countries affected by this crisis that has resulted from [...]
The UK and Tajikistan are really very similar. They are a similar size (both around 140,000 square kilometres), they are home to several ethnic groups, and their capital cities (London and Dushanbe) are the largest cities in each country, and home to the wealthiest residents. The recent Sunday Times "Rich List 2012" listed a number of billionaires [...]
Tuesday morning found me sitting on the proverbial 'dock of the bay', waiting for a speedboat to emerge from the calm blue horizon of Lake Kariba - a massive man-made lake formed 50 years ago by damming the mighty Zambezi river. We waited for Mr Melendro - our senior regional European Commission manager from Brussels, who [...]
