The Road to the Horizon The Road to the Horizon Short stories about travelling to remote places, working in unusual places, life as a humanitarian aid worker, expeditions and sailing. But mostly about enjoying the road more than reaching the destination. 
Articles
Picture of the day: Hindering the Hungry
2008-06-07 20:02:00 Poor Bangladeshi boys share a bowl of rice while in Rome, the world leaders assembled at the UN summit in Rome to find a solution for the food crisis.The Guardian published a critical look at the summit titled "Hindering the Hungry ".Source: The Other World NewsPicture courtesy Rafiqur Rahman (Reuters) More About: Picture of the day
Rumble: No fish today: Italian fishermen on strike.
2008-06-07 19:59:00 Often, in weekends, I stroll along the port of Fiumicino near Rome , a base for the local fishermen. Today , there was something different: there was no activity by the fishing trawlers, they were on strike.Banners on the boat said in English (and strangely enough, also in Arabic): "High Fuel Prices Kill the Fish ery", "High Fuel, On Strike " and "Fuel Prices Kill Us. Only Imported Fish Today."More posts on The Road about Rome. More About: Italian
News: Expensive Food, Poor Farmer.
2008-06-07 12:35:00 1. The global export food prices have been skyrocketing since months (Post)2. Combined with the raising fuel prices, it has caused - what is called - "A Global Food Crisis", urged by world leaders to be tackled urgently. (Post)3. The crisis has sparked the question if the world can produce enough food to feed itself and how we can find ways to increase crop yields. (Post)Yet, something is wrong with this picture... Take the case of Thailand :1. 3 billion people worldwide rely on rice as a staple food (Source)2. Thailand is one of the world's main rice exporters (Source)3. The price of Thai B grade rice, a widely traded variety, reached $795 per ton in April, an increase of 147 percent from a year earlier. Source)4. And yet, Thai rice farmers are getting a lower price for their produce, because of the highly successful crop this year (Source), urging the Thai government to bring in a subsidy scheme buying up 2.5 million tons of rice at a higher-than-market price. (Source)Do you see t... More About: News , Poor , Farmer
News: Zimbabwe suspends aid agencies
2008-06-05 22:50:00 Zimbabwe's government has indefinitely suspended all field work by aid groups and non-governmental organisations.The suspension of all field operations by private voluntary organisations (PVOs) and NGOs ordered by Zimbabwe's government comes nearly a week after President Robert Mugabe banned some aid agencies from the country.One of the largest organisations, Care International, was forbidden to work after being accused of campaigning for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) ahead of the presidential election run-off on 27 June. Care has denied the accusation. (Full)More posts on The Road about Zimbabwe.Source: The Road DailyPicture courtesy usafricaonline.com More About: News , Zimbabwe , Agencies
News: Food crisis: Who will win the battle for fertile land?
2008-06-05 01:31:00 In The Global Food Crisis - A Perfect Storm, I outlined in causes of the global food crisis. One of them was the struggle for arable land, either through the increase 'need for food' to feed the increasing world population, and the decrease of available land through climate change and desertification.Already several years ago, the "food crisis" alarm bells started ringing fearing the world is running out of fertile land.Back in 2005, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison combined satellite land cover images with agricultural census data from every country in the world to create detailed maps of global land use. The maps showed roughly 40% of our planet (is being used for either growing crops or grazing cattle. By comparison, only 7% of the world's land was being used for agriculture in 1700. The research indicates that there is now little room for further agricultural expansion. (Full)Amplified by the current food crisis, food-deficit countries (countries that can not... More About: News , Land , Battle
News: Cost of solving the food crisis: $30 billion/year.
2008-06-04 22:44:00 "Resolving the global food crisis could cost as much as $30 billion a year and wealthier nations are doing little to help the developing world face the problem", UN officials said at the Food Summit in Rome.Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), opened the summit by sharply criticizing wealthy nations cutting back on agriculture programs for the world's poor and ignoring deforestation ? while spending billions on carbon markets, subsidies for farmers and biofuel production."The developing countries did in fact forge policies, strategies and programs that ? if they had received appropriate funding ? would have given us world food security," Diouf, said, adding that international community finally began to mobilize to help after images of food riots and starvation emerged in the media. He said there had been plenty of meetings on the need for anti-hunger programs and agricultural development in poor nations in the last decade but not enough money to ma... More About: News , Cost , Crisis , Year
News: Dunkin' Donuts, a scarf and extremism.
2008-06-02 16:27:00 Only in America... On May 7, Dunkin? Donuts began running an ad, featuring local celebrity chef Rachael Ray wearing a black-and-white fringed scarf.The ad has now been revoked due to protest that Ms. Ray?s scarf resembled "to the type typically worn by Muslim extremists". (Full)Apart from thinking "Only in America!", the whole story truly saddens me. Even if the scarf was a keffiyeh, the traditional scarf of Arab men, then why does this have to be automatically associated with extremism, or seen as a symbol of support to terrorism? Is this a sign of the depth of the world's polarization into Arab and non-Arab, Muslim and non-Muslim?I have lived in Dubai for five years. I don't think I ever lived in a more tolerant society with respect for other cultures, religions and opinions. Far more tolerant than back home in Belgium, and certainly far more than the US. Sometimes I am ashamed on behalf of us, Westerners. Picture courtesy boston.com More About: News , Dunkin Donuts , Extremism
News: When Green goes Commercial: the new colonization of Africa
2008-05-31 23:14:00 More than a century after the last ?scramble for Africa ?, when European powers fought to colonise the continent, there is a new stampede into one of the world?s biggest areas of uncultivated terrain.Last year, by one estimate, the government of Mozambique received bids from foreign investors to buy 110,000 square kilometres of land, more than an eighth of the entire country.In neighbouring Tanzania , a Swedish company, is bidding for 50,000 hectares on the banks of a lake in the Rufiji province. And that is just one example.Why? A rush from European companies to grow biofuel.(Full)It begs to think if agrable land can not be used for better purposes. Using the same two examples: Tanzania has more than 40 percent of the population in chronic food-deficit regions where irregular rainfall causes recurring food shortages. Mozambique has 660,000 vulnerable people in need food assistance, and suffers from yearly flooding displacing hundreds of thousands of people.More about biofuel on The R... More About: News , Commercial , Green
Rumble: The plane with the shortest life, crashed before its first take-off
2008-05-30 23:43:00 Those of you frequently reading this blog, know I am a frequent traveller. There were times, I averaged 40 flights a month. That is why I frequently post stuff about planes, airports and air travel in general...As an aidworker, I often fly "bush planes", "special charters", or at least fly in areas where ummm... air travel might not be as strictly controlled as it should be. I gave some examples in The Road's short story "Italians, the art of flying and the laws of probability".However, this story, beats all odds:Back in November last year, a brand new Airbus A340-600 from Etihad left the Airbus factory hanger in Toulouse, France. It had never flown before, and was being tested by its crew, who were to pick up the plane for its final testing. According to a friend, here is what happened:The crew of nine taxied out to the run-up area. They took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually an empty aircraft. This was their first mistake as they obviously didn't read the run-up... More About: Life , Plane , Crashed
News:Tegucigalpa air crash
2008-05-30 22:02:00 Remember a previous post The World's 10 most dangerous landing strips"? Remember how to those landing strips I added to the list, as I had experienced them as "more than scary"?Tegucigalpa in Honduras was definitive "my top favourite": coming in between mountains, a final approach skimming just a few meters above a small hill, just before diving onto a runway which seems almost tucked away in a valley. Each time, it amazed me we could actually pull the brakes in time, without tumbling off the end of the runway... It surely seemed to take all of the pilot's skills. Have a look again at the video on this post, and you will understand...Today Tegucigalpa airport seemed to have proven its sad reputation as "one of the world's most dangerous landing strips" as a TACA flight overshot the runway.(Full)Picture courtesy AFP/BBC More About: News , Crash
News: Bush on Global Food Crisis: "Indians eat too much"
2008-05-29 18:38:00 George W. Bush , in a press conference in Missouri on May 2, touched the subject of the soaring global food prices (taken from the official transcript):"Worldwide there is increasing demand. There turns out to be prosperity in developing world, which is good. It's going to be good for you because you'll be selling products into countries - big countries perhaps - and it's hard to sell products into countries that aren't prosperous. In other words, the more prosperous the world is, the more opportunity there is.It also, however, increases demand. So, for example, just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That's bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up. (Full) More About: News , Indians , Food , Global
News: Aid Shame
2008-05-29 18:16:00 A report called ?No One to Turn To,? released by U.K. charity Save the Children, highlights the sexual abuse by humanitarian aid workers and UN peacekeepers in impoverished, war-torn countries.The report is based on 38 focus group discussions with a total of 341 people living in chronic emergencies in Ivory Coast, Southern Sudan and Haiti, and meetings with 30 humanitarian, peace and security professionals.The interviews revealed instances of rape, child prostitution, pornography, indecent sexual assault and trafficking of children for sex.Allegations and investigations into UN peacekeepers? sexual abuse of international children and teenagers have been circulating for more than a decade, beginning with U.N. soldiers in Cambodia in the 1990s. (Full)Even though the report is only a fragmentary snapshot, does not distinguish between "factual" and "hear-say" observation, and is a partial repeat of earlier reports (which I quoted before on the Road), abuse of any kind can not be highlig... More About: News , Shame
News: US presidential candidates united in support of Darfur
2008-05-29 02:37:00 There don't seem to be many issues that the US presidential candidates Clinton, Obama and McCain agree upon, but one which caught my eye: their stand against Sudan and the genocide in Darfur.Extract from their statement:After more than five years of genocide, the Sudanese government and its proxies continue to commit atrocities against civilians in Darfur. This is unacceptable to the American people and to the world community.We deplore all violence against the people of Darfur. There can be no doubt that the Sudanese government is chiefly responsible for the violence and is able to end it. We condemn the Sudanese government?s consistent efforts to undermine peace and security, including its repeated attacks against its own people and the multiple barriers it has put up to the swift and effective deployment of the United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force. We further condemn the Sudanese government?s refusal to adhere to the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) th... More About: News , Presidential , Support
Picture of the day: Survivor
2008-05-26 21:36:00 A quake survivor tries to make the most of what is left of his home in Yinghua, China . The earthquake on May 12th killed 65,000 people and left 5 million homeless.More Picture s of the Day on The Road.Picture courtesy Oded Balilty (AP/Times) More About: Survivor , Picture of the day
Picture of the day: Violence in South Africa.
2008-05-26 00:41:00 Violence in South Africa 's townships against foreign nationals has claimed 42 lives and displaced 22,000 people. (Full)The incidents are mapped at United for Africa.More "Picture s of the Day" on the Road.Picture courtesy Joao Silva (The New York Times) More About: South Africa , Picture of the day , Violence
News: Bangladesh trees to stop cyclones and floods
2008-05-25 22:15:00 Over 49.8% of Bangladesh 's 144 million people live below the poverty line. 84% live off less than US$2/day. 41.3% live off less than 1 US$1/day. With those demographic poverty figures, not much is needed to push Bangladesh's poor over the edge.Natural calamities, such as floods, tropical cyclones, and tidal bores occur almost every year. Most parts of Bangladesh are less than 12 metres (39 ft) above sea level. If the sea level would rise by one metre (3ft), it is believed 50% of the land would be flooded. No wonder the yearly cyclone season is a season of despair and disaster for many Bangladeshis.Last summer the country was hit by two major floods while Cyclone Sidr tore through its coastal districts in November, killing at least 5,000 people and leaving tens of millions homeless and desperately short of food. Environmentalists said the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, stood as a "green bastion" against the cyclone. If it were not for the Sundarbans, the death to... More About: News , Trees , Stop , Floods
Rumble: Recruiting in the 21st century
2008-05-25 12:56:00 Many bloggers like myself use Feedjit widgets to monitor and track traffic on their blog.This morning, I was reading the Feedjit blog and found this recruitment ad: Feedjit is Hiring -- February 27th, 2008 We?re hiring!! Feedjit is based in Seattle in Pioneer Square - home of the worlds best coffee shops. We?re interested in chatting to Rock-Star ModPerl (2.0) developers and Ubuntu/Debian ops folks with cluster management experience.The encrypted string below is derived from an email address. If you can crack it, send an email to the address with your resume and we?d love to chat over coffee!aa5jCQfLReMvQClue: The salt is ?aa? and the username matches ^[a-z0-9]{4}$ Reminds me of 2003, when we recruited out of our old Al Quoz office in Dubai, "where the streets have no name"... We would explain interviewees only once how to get to our office. If they don't find it, or did not make it on time, they could not work for us...Actually it was an effective method to make the first selec... More About: Recruiting , Century
Rumble: Internet is older than we think - the evidence
2008-05-25 12:54:00 I came across this post on Shoutwire, a social bookmarking site. The post seems to be published 733,130 days ago. According to my calculations, this must have been around year 0, the year Christ was born...This must be the proof the Internet is older than we think.So where does Al Gore stand with his claim to have invented Internet? Or would Al be as old as Christ? Maybe Al is nobody else but JC, "the man"? Cool! Would that make "global warming", a "divine warning", like one of the prophecy thingies those dudes make? Who needs scientific evidence, hey?Ah.. the revelations, the signs, the unbearable lightness of insights...Ok, dear listeners, that concludes our programme of "The Nutcase" for today. More About: Evidence
Rumble: Recommended: The Reluctant Fundamentalist
2008-05-25 00:40:00 Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America.Thus starts the monologue of "Changez", the principle character in "The Reluctant Fundamentalist " by Mohsin Hamid.Seated at dusk at a Lahore cafe, Changez tells his story to a stranger, an American. A story of a Pakistan i who studied in the US, found work in a prestigious company, met a girl and became singled out after 9/11. Gradually he starts question his path of life and how different he was from the people around him, in a Western country.The story is told with a light, almost frivolous, sometimes ironical English, jumping between the subjects of love, culture, religion, prejudices and the war on terror. Despite the weight of the topics, the story remains so light it almost starts to resonate with irony or sarcasm without giving away any hint of the faith both Changez and his American acquaintance will face towards the end of the book.Very well wri...
News: Saudi Arabia becomes major UN donor
2008-05-24 22:30:00 The UN appealed for US$755 million to cover the high costs of food and fuel which have risen dramatically since June 2007, hampering the world's most vulnerable nations in the global food crisis.31 countries responded in donating a collective US$460 million. Saudi Arabia now close the gap with a US$500 million donation.The half-billion dollar contribution puts the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the forefront of the large-scale, high-level, multilateral UN action by the global community. (Full)Picture courtesy Tom Haskell/WFP More About: News , Middle East
News: Ugandan UN Peace Keepers accused of selling arms in Somalia
2008-05-24 22:14:00 A report by the UN monitoring group on the Somali arms embargo says Ugandan peacekeepers in Somalia have been selling arms to insurgents.It cites one incident in which a group of Ugandan soldiers allegedly received $80,000 for a transaction. Some peacekeepers are accused of setting up an arms trading network through translators. The soldiers received a wish-list of weapons from arms dealers and the weapons were then supplied from stores of equipment seized from insurgents. The monitoring group says the weapons find their way back to the insurgent group they were captured from in the first place.The Ugandan army has already dismissed the accusations as "absolutely ridiculous." (Full)More posts on The Road about UN Peace Keeping operations.Source: International Aidworkers TodayPicture courtesy Gambia News Community More About: Selling , Africa
News: UN Peace Keepers muffle negative inspection report
2008-05-24 22:06:00 I wrote before about the BBC and the Human Rights Watch reports on abuse by UN peace keepers in Congo , smuggling gold and drugs out of the country in exchange for weapons they gave to the rebels.The UN decided that "in the absence of corroborative evidence" its investigators "could not substantiate the allegation" that Pakistani peacekeepers supplied weapons or ammunition to the militia.The New York Times just published an article by Matthias Basanisi, the UN's deputy chief investigator in Congo at that time. He reveals nothing short but an orchestrated cover-up of the scandal:I was the investigator in charge of the United Nations team that in 2006 looked into allegations of abuses by Pakistani peacekeepers in Congo and found them credible. But the investigation was taken away from my team after we resisted what we saw as attempts to influence the outcome. My fellow team members and I were appalled to see that the oversight office?s final report was little short of a whitewash.The ... More About: News , Peace , Report , Negative
News: Humanitarian airlift to Myanmar
2008-05-24 16:01:00 I am back in Brindisi .I am sure you have seen the news of humanitarian relief goods being flown into Myanmar to assist with the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. I bet all of that footage was on the Myanmar side...Those first relief flights actually all originated from here, from the UN Humanitarian Response Depot in Brindisi.Here are some pictures from the first relief flights into Myanmar on May 10th. This particular flight had cargo from OCHA and Irish Aid, containing water purification units, moskito nets, blankets, kitchen sets, tarpaulins and water storage containers.View the picture slide show of this airlift.Pictures courtesy Fulvio Pirato (UNHRD/WFP) More About: News
News: Tough hurricane season coming up.
2008-05-24 11:15:00 According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the approaching 2008 Atlantic hurricane season is likely to be above normal, with 16 named storms and up to five major hurricanes.NOAA attributed the above-average outlook to the lingering affects of La Nina. The agency has urged residents of hurricane-prone areas to be prepared for the season, which begins on June 1 and will run until 30 November. (Full)Atlantic-born hurricanes threaten the Caribbean, Central America, Southern US and Northern Latin America every year. In 2007, there were 17 named storms, of which hurricanes Dean, Felix and Noel, and tropical storm Olga wrecked the most havoc.Picture courtesy ThinkQuest NYC More About: News , Season , Tough , Hurricane
News: Humanitarian airlift to China
2008-05-22 17:04:00 The boys and girls from the UN Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) have been busy the past weeks.There were several airlifts of relief goods into Myanmar, and since a week, relief agencies requested for the shipment of humanitarian goods to China , in support of the earthquake disaster.Yesterday and last night, an Airbus 310 from Skycargo (Emirates Airlines) was loaded with relief goods from the Italian Civil Protection. Contrary to the normal practices, the plane was parked on the civilian side of Brindisi airport, so all goods had to be trucked to other side of the airport. All stuff is fixed on special pallets before being weighed and loaded onto the plane.The cargo consisted of family tents and a full field hospital from the Italian Civil Protection, one of the agencies that stores their goods at the UNHRD depots in Brindisi.The loading crew was ready at 2 am and the plane took off a few hours later. Next stop: China earthquake zone.Pictures courtesy Lucien Jaggi (WFP/UNHRD) More About: News , Italy
Rumble: Race for the Cure
2008-05-21 09:44:00 Last Sunday, we participated in Rome's Race for the Cure , an advocacy and fundraising walk/run for the benefit of breast cancer research.Despite the rain and wind (which cleared up the moment the walk finished), I would guess over 10,000 people showed up!Tnx to "E" for the picture. More About: The Cure
News: Cutting agricultural aid research or how to dig your own grave...
2008-05-18 21:56:00 Giving people fish or teaching them to fish?A few years back, I had a meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Ruler of Dubai, Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE.I told him of the humanitarian work we did. He listened attentively, and kept a silence after my explanation. Then he said candidly: "You know, you are giving people fish, instead of teaching them how to fish. Give a person a fish and he will eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he will have food for the rest of his life!"I was quick to respond: "Your Highness, when people are starving, they are not interested in being taught how to fish. If we give them fishlings for their pond, they will eat it, rather using them for breeding. Our organisation gives people the fish, so they are not starving anymore, and have the energy to be taught how to fish, and to fish themselves. Other organisations we work closely with, teach them how to fish, how to breed fishlings. After that, others come in and teach ... More About: News , Research , Grave , Agricultural , Cutting
News: From Cyclone Sidr to Cyclone Nargis - an aidworker's perspective
2008-05-18 13:08:00 An aidworker from Oxfam explains how the immediate effect of the cyclone devastation is only the beginning of misery for those affected.Those on the ground (in Myanmar) are estimating that at least 100,000 people were killed by the storm. The numbers are devastating, each one of them painfully reminding me what a difference an investment into disaster preparedness and early warning systems ? like those that have been implemented in Bangladesh ? could have made for the families in Myanmar.Surface water that people are used to drinking is likely to be contaminated not only by dead bodies and livestock carcasses, but also human and animal waste spread by floodwaters and overflowing latrines. The weather forecast for this week predicts more heavy rain, and even a new storm approaching the cyclone-affected area. With people?s resistance to disease already weakened after days of living in overcrowded conditions without food and proper roofs over their heads, the children and elderly are l... More About: News , Perspective , Cyclone , Nargis
Picture of the day: Desertification
2008-05-18 12:10:00 Desertification is the degradation of land into arid (desert) areas. Caused primarily by human activities and climatic variations, desertification is on the move. We loose fertile land and nature's biodiversity at an alarming rate.The Sahara is expanding south at an average rate of 30 miles per year. In Nigeria desertification overtakes about 1,355 square miles (3,510 kmē) of land per year. More than 80% of Afghanistan's land is subject to soil erosion and desertification. In Kazakhstan, nearly half of the cropland turned intow wasteland since 1980. (Source)More "Picture s of the Day" on the Road.Picture courtesy Reuters (Der Spiegel) More About: Picture of the day
News: US politics, commercial interests, war and humanitarian aid. A danger
More articles from this author:2008-05-17 23:54:00 US president Bush recently laid out a detailed budget request for $70 billion.It includes $45.1 billion for combat operations for the war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, $3.7 billion to help expand the Afghan forces and $2 billion for Iraqi troops.Also included are $2.2 billion for projected increased fuel costs for military and intelligence operations and $2.6 billion to transport and maintain Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAP) used for US forces in Iraq.This will bring the total allocation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to more than $800 billion.Oh, and the budget request also covers $770 million in additional food aid donations, including food vouchers, seeds and purchases in the developing world. (Full)Oh, and the Bush administration also slipped a controversial ingredient into the $770 million aid package, adding language that would promote the use of genetically modified crops (GMO) in food-deprived countries... (Full)Picture courtesy ickypeople.com More About: News , Politics , Commercial , Danger , Interests 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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