On the edge of a barren sun-baked hill, Amina is hastily filling sand bags while her husband digs trenches in front of their bamboo and plastic shelter. She stops and looks up at the gathering clouds. She knows what’s going to happen when the rains come. Everybody knows. The monsoon season is approaching and will wreak a devastating blow to the world’s largest refugee camp, an hour drive south of…
It’s an odd feeling being the lonely guest at the Hotel Colombe and the only toubab in town. I must stay indoor at night, move around face-covered with a scarf, low profile, watching my back: “white spotting” is the first step in the business of kidnapping foreigners. Five years after the French chased the jihadis out of Timbuktu, armed groups still roam the countryside, ambush humanitarian convoys, attack military bases…
It’s hard to hit the streets of Tehran. You must endure traffic jams and big crowds, survive pollution, crazy drivers; but sailing through its bowels, alleys and highways makes for an eye-opening journey into the heart of Iranian society. Start at night in Baam e-Tehran, the roof of the city. Here you have the whole town at your feet: an endless, glittering ocean of lights where twelve millions are living….
One street-end is closed by a towering concrete wall, the other is barred by a tangle of road-blocks swiftly manned by guards in combat gear. I hear the familiar clicks of safety locks let loose on their weapons as they stare at me through the car front window. But as I walk past the reinforced metal gate and step into the courtyard, I suddenly feel at home. The mighty ficus…
From above it looks like an ancient Roman encampment in the middle of nowhere: hoary plastic roofs in regular rows split in geometrical sectors with wider go-through lanes of mud; tiny swirls of smoke billowing in the muggy weather, swamps all around. Down on the ground you get closer cautiously. To enter you must show a proper ID, then you’re allowed to cross the gates, guarded by private security and…
Step One is crossing the pirates-infested Arabian sea on a boat from Djibouti. Step Two is sweating for days in the war-ravaged port of Aden in search of a travel permit, which includes endless khat chewing sessions with local officials in ruined hotel rooms and getting used to militiamen, nightly rounds of bullets, power blackouts, poor food, beggars, displaced people and piles of garbage. Step Three is negotiate a car…
Nearly nothing is left. The little house in Faras Magala square where he spent his last days is gone. The Arthur Rimbaud museum, hosted in a grand Indian merchant’s mansion, just shows a couple of his grainy photos among other century-old images. And young folks take the poet for Sylvester Stallone’s “Rambo”. Yet the ancient fortified city of Harar, one of the oldest Islamic centers in East Africa, hasn’t changed…
A somber mood shrouds Habana while Fidel’s ashes are buried under a stone in Santiago de Cuba. Most bars are closed, streets are unusually quiet and people gather to watch the tv: old black and white footage of the Comandante en jefe resting after a battle at a Sierra Maestra hideout, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos entering Habana on January 8th 1959, their jeep surrounded by cheering crowds, Fidel blasting…
I spent a week trying to find a bright spot in Caracas, but beside the warm cordiality of the people I only ran across the crumbling landscapes of a failing state: kids eating garbage from the streets, empty stores, rising prices, queques for everything outside the shops, hospitals desperately short of drugs, corruption, black market’ sharks, water rationing, armed thugs, angry demonstrations, rampant crime. Until I went to Petare. The…
When my phone rang last night at 10 p.m. I knew why Paco was calling. “It’s downtown in Urdaneta. Make it fast!” I grabbed my camera, ran through the empty alleys to the avenida Costera and jumped into a taxi. It took barely fifteen minutes to get there. I couldn’t miss it: the marines and the forensic staff were already there, flashing red and blue lights on the concrete walls….