S’pose I should actually write something on this blog from time to time!!
Well, I’m about to head off on another set of journeys. This time it’s work related. After a short trip to Brussels to take part in the Alliance for Water Stewardship Roundtable, I’ll be heading off to Nigeria for a regional team strategy meeting, supporting their advocacy work. I’m part of WaterAid’s West Africa regional team, one of our regions consisting of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Nigeria. There’s plenty I could tell you about each of the countries, but here are some snippets:
The Sahel region includes part of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Nigeria. Traditionally, most of the people in the Sahel have been semi-nomadic, grazing livestock in the North during the wet season and migrating south during the dry period. Remember that Barclaycard advert with Rowan Atkinson walking off with a burning carpet saying ‘smell those Touareg campfires’?
Niger is roughly 2/3 desert and is currently in the grip of a major food crisis. Every year, the country faces food shortages with a ‘hungry season’ from May to July, but this year it started in February. It is the lowest ranked country in the UN’s Human Development Report 2009. WaterAid has just started working in Niger.
WaterAid has also just started working in the conflict-affected countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia, as a joint programme run from Monrovia.
Nigeria are playing South Korea in the World Cup while I’m there . Go Super Eagles!
After that, I’m heading straight from Abuja through to Bangladesh (well, as straight as the ridiculous aviation industry will allow), where I’ll be for 3 weeks to work with WaterAid Bangladesh on climate change and disaster risk reduction, a combination of some field visits and advocacy work. Bangladesh suffers floods annually – largely due to increases on rain upstream rather than sea level rises (although storm surges from cyclones drive some floods). Flood season is June to September, during the monsoon. Other water related issues that Bangladesh face include arsenic contamination of wells, and salt-water contamination along the coast, driven by over-use of groundwater.
On the sanitation front, WaterAid’s partner, Village Education Resource Centre (VERC) successfully developed the Community Led Total Sanitation (unfortunately abbreviated as CLTS) approach, where communities work to create ‘open defecation free’ villages through changing attitudes and behaviours rather than just building toilets for individual households.
So there we go, a small taste of what I’ll be doing over the next month and some of the challenges in the countries that we work. More to come…
Been struggling to write about my experience of the world’s largest act of faith, Kumbh Mela. So much to say that I don’t know how to start. In the meantime, here are some pictures.
An estimated 5 million people took a dip in the Ganga on Mesha Sankranti Shahi Snan
An estimated 5 million people took a dip in the Ganga on Mesha Sankranti Shahi Snan
Just back from a great week at Lenzerheide in Switzerland. A picture paints a thousand words, so here’s a video – thanks for an awesome week to Jason at Snowmotions and Pete at Alpine Rides. Music is by The New Governors.
I was in Bath welcoming the new millennium at St Peter’s Lodge, an old church that passed as student accommodation, but should have probably been condemned, at a party with all my old school and cadet friends, seamlessly blended with my new uni friends. We were invincible. Pook got a parking ticket from a jobsworth traffic cop who seemed intent on spoiling someone’s new year. Gareth got horrendously drunk but still managed to wander his way back to my place. I laughed, drank, cried and hugged my way into the brilliant new millennium. We were free. Life was fun, spontaneous and crazy.
Day 6 of COP15/CMP5. Copenhagen. Middle Saturday so we’re having stocktake plenaries.
Time to take stock. Here I am, sitting in the privileged position in the main plenary room, with my precious pink badge. And feeling completely detached from the process. There are an estimated 28,000 people here, 5,000 Party delegates, 5,000 press and 18,000 NGOs of various ilks (BINGOs, YOUNGOs, ENGOs, RINGOs, TUNGOs – the listGOs on). In that sense I’m on the inside, beyond the velvet rope, over the fence. Except it’s not a fence, it’s a labyrinth. I’ve hopped the first wall and faced with a maze of ego and barriers, with a sense that the real decisions are being made from the watchtowers. Concentric circles of power and influence – Parties -> negotiators -> EU issue leads -> EU negotiators -> Heads of delegation -> ministers -> Heads of State. Ever contracting and for a while I’ve felt like that influence front has passed me by and I’m now in the rain shadow of power. Feeling increasingly insignificant.
It’s easy to fall prey to criicising those lower down the food chain than you, to mock their sense of self-importance. But the reality is that it hides my sense of self-importance and the fact that my ego feels bruised. There is a genuine sense of disempowerment and acceptance of the state of affairs, but there’s also an ego-driven part of me that wants to play the part.
Now all of this sounds terribly pessimistic, like nothing we do matters, but that’s not true. Nothing most of us do matters here in this forum, but imagine if the energy, passion, creativity and commitment on display here was directed to places that really mattered, where change is possible. What a world we’d live in. But to get there we need individually to look inside and ask ourselves “what am I doing here?” “is this the best place for me to contribute?” “am I here for my ego or to create real change?” “where am I best placed to stimulate change?”. Time to pause. Appreciate the stillness, get perspective. Time to take stock.
I’m going to try to put down what goes round in my head, my worldview, or at least the main thrust of it. It’s an ever evolving kaleidoscope of thought, but I felt it was time to try to share it more. But as I do so, I’m reminded of a quote from a great sage:
“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”
My plan to post meaningful insights from the Bangkok climate talks proved a bit too ambitious. 2 weeks of frantic running around, wheelspinning or as a friend put it, the cha-cha-cha – movement with the illusion of progress.
Impressions? Chaotic, insular, rarefied, self involved, frustrating. Read the rest of this entry »
The sun rises lazily over the Bangkok skyline as I find myself awake and contemplating the coming days.
2 weeks of negotiations between some 200 countries in pursuit of an ambitious global deal on climate change. When you think of what’s at stake, the whole process seems cumbersome and inadequate, but what alternative is there? Read the rest of this entry »
Today I cleaned out my Mum’s cutlery drawer (yes, that’s right – a tidy cutlery drawer is a mark of civilisation. And too much time on your hands) and found out everything you need to know about what it means to be Chinese. See if you can spot: Read the rest of this entry »
Today Ali-bhai (-bhai is Bangla suffix meaning ‘brother’, more polite than just their name), M’s driver takes me on a trip to Old Dhaka. Just as we start off, the last two days of oppressive heat and humidity give way to a deluge from the heavens. Looking at the traffic and rising water levels on the road, I contemplate abandoning the trip, but am glad we continued – about an hour after setting off, we finally reach Old Dhaka (only a few miles away, but traffic makes it longer) and as if on cue, the rain stops. The downpour takes the heat out of the air and makes it all much more bearable. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, I’m about to head off on another set of journeys. This time it’s work related. After a short trip to Brussels to take part in the Alliance for Water Stewardship Roundtable, I’ll be heading off to Nigeria for a regional team strategy meeting, supporting their advocacy work. I’m part of WaterAid’s West Africa regional team, one of our regions consisting of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Nigeria. There’s plenty I could tell you about each of the countries, but here are some snippets:
. Go Super Eagles!
After that, I’m heading straight from Abuja through to Bangladesh (well, as straight as the ridiculous aviation industry will allow), where I’ll be for 3 weeks to work with WaterAid Bangladesh on climate change and disaster risk reduction, a combination of some field visits and advocacy work. Bangladesh suffers floods annually – largely due to increases on rain upstream rather than sea level rises (although storm surges from cyclones drive some floods). Flood season is June to September, during the monsoon. Other water related issues that Bangladesh face include arsenic contamination of wells, and salt-water contamination along the coast, driven by over-use of groundwater.
