UN high-level politics and how to simplify things....

This must be the picture of the month, if not of the year.

Addressing the UN General Assembly this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu illustrated his concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions, with a complex drawing.

I thought the US hit the UN's intellectual bottom when they came up with their fabricated evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, back in 2002. But Netanyahu showed one could go lower. (Full story)

Story filed under #KinderGardens and #HowToAddressWorldLeaders


Picture courtesy AP/Richard Drew

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The worst photoshopped press pictures

Gone are the times where the press was the only source of information. Social media is here! So when state run press agencies think of getting away with mis-information or propaganda, social media kicks in.

As when this string of Photoshop woo's got exposed through social media:

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, is made to believe he swore in the newly appointed governor of the troubled Hama region, last week. However, the photoshop artist who doctored this picture should rethink his career development plan.

This one was done better: The Egyptian state-run Al-Ahram newpaper photoshopped image of President Hosni Mubarak and other leaders at the 2010 Middle East peace talks. Mubarak clearly leads the pack:


All was fine, until the original photo came out, with Mubarak and his short legs trailing behind:


(Un-)Luckily, Mubarak has other worries right now.


The Chinese head the "booboo"-pack with this And one would think they could do better, at a time where they hack half of the world's computers, and are a serious competitor in space... But apparently not.
In this picture, Huili local officials "inspect" a highway project in China's Sichuan province:


Talking about floating in space, hey?


And then there is of course this classic: A photoshop boo of Baroness Ashton, given a less revealing outfit by an Iranian newspaper last year:


Would've been better for everyone if they'd covered her face entirely, me thinks...


Sources: Guardian, The Horizon and BoingBoing

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Musing on India - Part 5: Faces from Bihar

Here are some people we met in Bihar, North India



Ramiwash is a small farmer, but probably one of the most create ones we met. On his plot, he combined fruit trees and several vegetable crops. He also implemented convervation farming, planting crops in small holes rather than ploughing his entire field. That way, he could preserve more water, a very scarce resource.




Anil talked to us about the dire need for water, now that the rains have become more scarce and the water level decreased over the past years.




Indramani is a widow taking care of her grandson. Her son, daughter in law and another grandson moved away to the city. She had a small plot with wheat and one buffalo to barely make ends meet.




Susila had to rent out one of her plots, as she had no access to water. Her husband has a mobile temple which he drives around to bring in a bit of extra money. She could read and write, and stressed the importance of educating her children, so they could move to the city and "get proper jobs".




Vidyabhushan invested in a set of teak tree seedlings, which he wanted to plant along his land, so he could harvest the timber and sell it in the years to come.




Arti lived alone with her three children. Her husband worked in the city and came home only once a year. She worked as a day labourer on other people's farms. She told us how the opportunities to work have drastically decreased as people leave their land barren in the summer due to lack of access to water for irrigation.




Arjun is the village chief (or "president") from four villages. He is also the chairmain of PACS, a cooperative bank who gives micro-loans to its members, and allows the farmers to ensure their crops against calamities.

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Musing on India - Part 4: Faces of Punjab

Here are some people we met in Punjab, each with their own story on how they were coping with the changing climate:



Gurbachan Singh is the village chief of Bhoda, a town which was flooded in the middle of last year. He told us the story of how they got 24 hours notice a flood was coming in, how they evacuated the villagers and constructed an emergency dam with sand bags.





Mohamed is a dairy farmer who migrated from the north. Last year, his house and that of his neighbours got flooded, and they moved to a new location. He told us of his difficulties to find feed for his animals.





Dilbar Singh (R) and his neighbour Paramjit Singh (L) explained how new hybrid seeds helped them to cope with the changing rainy season. Paramjit was planting poplar trees so he could harvest the timber as an extra income.





Dr. R.P.Singh works at the Punjab Agricultural University where they have an active breeding programme, selecting varieties of wheat which need less water, yield more and can grow over a shorter period.

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Musing on India - Part 3: Four sisters

I ended my previous post with the phrase "False beauty is only skin deep..."
Likewise, true beauty is endless...

For any country I travel thru,
no mountain view can take my breath away,
no river descent leaves me gasping,
no dew-dripping leaves can grab my heart,
as does the glister in a child's eyes,
the curl of a child's smile,
and endless echoing sound
of its laughter
and song.

Children are the true joy,
the true future.
The only purity we have left.

Here are four sisters, daughters of Mohammed, a dairy farmer in Punjab. He has forty buffaloes. But he would sell them all, he said, if that could give his daughters a good education, and a job in the city.

But luck was not with him. Nor with his girls. They did not get the opportunity to go to school, limiting their options in the future.

How the crib in which you were born, decides what you can become in life.

Maybe one of these girls could have been a doctor. Maybe one would have become a famous poet or a singer, or a politician, or a peacemaker. Maybe one would have invented a new drug that eradicated malaria. If only they'd have the chance to go to school.


(to be continued...)

PS: While I was publishing this post, Latika's theme played through my mind. (mp3 - 4 Mb)

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Kids in Ghana - Smiles worth a thousand words

Two weeks ago, we were driving in a remote ares, near Jirapa, on Ghana's North-East border with Burkina Faso. As we slowed down to negotiate a series of mudholes, I saw a car coming from the other side with a familiar emblem on the side. I waved them to stop.

They were a WFP team on their way to check one of their school feeding programmes. I guess they were as surprised to see me there, as I was to meet them, in the middle of nowhere.

We followed them to the school, and took the opportunity to shoot some pictures and do a video interview with the school in the background.

Some of the pictures. I just loved their smiles...

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Kids in Kenya

During the interview tour in Kenya, I had little time to take pictures from the people other than the interviewees, but I could not resist some of the kids.

We were in pretty remote places, so three muzungus with all kinds of equipment talking to their mum, grandma or neighbour stirred up quite some interest amongst the youngsters. And in turn, the youngsters stirred up my interest.

A girl minding her baby sister.

This little girl was too shy to come from behind the tree,
but still wanted to see every bit of what was going on.


Two sisters.


These two boys were fascinated by the video camera.


Not sure of those muzungus!


Serious face

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An update from the African dust tracks

Mali village chief

We did not have too much connectivity during this trip, so could not post regular updates. I will catch up during next week.

During this trip, we interviewed 17 farmers and people who assisted farmers to adapt to climate changes.
After over 2,000 km, half of it off road, I am writing this from Ouagadougou while we are waiting for the flight back to Europe.

Next week we will start editing the videos.

I still wanted to share some pictures from this trip.


A nomad in Mali with his cattle


Yousif in Ghana spoke about the difficulties to find grazing grounds for his cattle


Jumuo in Ghana described the way the shortened rains had insects attack his fruit trees up to the level they would no longer bear any fruits.


While Naakpi stood in front of his large green vegetable field, he told us how most of it would be lost, as the rains had stopped, and the water level was too low to continue irrigating the crop.

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On the road once more

I am on the road in Mali, Ghana and Burkina Faso for a new series of interview with farmers on the impact of climate change on their daily life.

Looking forward to see the differences with Kenya.

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About reforestation and conservation farming in Meru Kenya

Today we did our last interviews in the neighbourhood of Meru, right under Mount Kenya.

Every single interview reveals new material, lets us discover new angles, and stories. More over, every single moment, we meet beautiful people, with a spank in their eye and stories to tell.

I have been amazed how little problem people have to stand in front of a camera team and start talking. Shows how proud they are of their work.

A couple of pictures from today's trip:

Edward is a retired teacher, who has also been farming since he was a little boy. He talked about the pests introduced with the cotton culture, and the way he is now planting trees to conserve the soil, protect his shamba from the wind, for the fruits and as an income by selling fire wood.



On Margereth's farm, we found a dozen women who showed us everything about "conservation farming", a technique which requires less efforts to plant, weed and irrigate, and at the same time, has a higher crop yield and is kinder to the top soil than traditional planting.





More snapshots of the people we met yesterday:

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Second day of farmer interviews in Kenya

Today, we did a second row of interviews in Emru Kenya, trying to understand how farmers cope with climate change.

We interviewed Ruth, a widow who was looking after her grandchildren, trying to find inventive ways to adapt to the shorter rainy season. I told her my first girlfriend was called Ruth too. She teased me "You should have married her, why did you not?".



I felt privileged to spend several hours with Celeste, with a blessed age of 88, and his wife Julia. They proudly welcomed us in the warmth of their farm, the largest I have seen so far. "I inherited nothing. Everything you see here, we worked for hard, with our bare hands", Celeste said.



And we had another day on the fields. Women are forming cooperative groups cultivating a common piece of land. As we arrived, they were sowing potatoes.











Some of them proudly showed a harvest of sweet potatoes, as one of their ways to adapt to the frequent droughts. They told us that root vegetables were far more resistant to the dry spells than other crops like maize or beans...

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