Archive for 'Chad'
Until I arrived in the desert-like terrain of Chad, West Africa, and had driven the eight hours to the region of Guera, an area that sits on the periphery of the Sahel belt, I was struggling to visualise how the incredible amount of money raised through Soccer Aid was already changing children’s lives here. The [...]
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 [...]
What’s this then? A whole day dedicated to humanitarian workers? Don’t they get enough air time as the face of disasters, recounting tales of untold suffering on our TVs? Well, no, actually. The sad fact is that regardless of how globalised and technologically advanced we become, disasters still happen; in fact, as a result of [...]
I am standing on the bridge over the Chari, the river which forms the border between Chad and Cameroon. I came here as a sort of a pilgrimage – one year ago today, this bridge was a jostling mass of people; 30,000 people crushed across to escape the fighting in N’Djamena. Today, at dawn, it [...]
A few rapidly snatched possessions, some sketchy shelters made from branches and grass and barefoot children being herded out of sight by fearful parents. You have seen it before on TV: another population fleeing from a vicious low-level war. But this group living in the bush somewhere east of Abeche in Chad is not quite [...]
Last Sunday morning, N'djamena city rang with the sound of thousands of clashing pots and pans. It was a few minutes of noisy defiance in Chad's capital, an indoor expression of rage. Indoors, because when women demonstrated in the streets a few weeks ago, it turned ugly – police and soldiers had broken up the [...]
The first time I visited Chad in February last year, I picked the wrong weekend. It was the weekend that the rebels reached N’djamena. The day had started normally enough – breakfast of dry pastries in the terrace restaurant overlooking the river Chari which snakes past the hotel. But by midmorning, a rebel column of [...]
