19 January 2010 - One week after Haiti’s cataclysmic earthquake, Baltimore-based World Relief is providing urgent medical care and feeding hundreds of survivors in Port-au-Prince. The relief agency is running several feeding centers in partnership with local churches –providing hot meals every day for hundreds of quake victims, desperate for food and water. In the next few days, World Relief will expand its hot meal network in the capital, and distribute tarps for emergency shelter.

The agency’s country director, Dr. Hubert Morquette, and Dr. Esther Gwan, from World Relief’s headquarters in Baltimore, continue to treat scores of injured around-the-clock at King’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince – one of the few medical facilities still functioning after last week’s quake. World Relief and its partners have set up three operating theaters, staffed by American surgeons, doctors and nurses, at the 300-bed hospital.

"We have treated hundreds of injuries as well as countless open and closed fractures, ”Dr. Morquette said. We work all day and late into the night as patients continue to flock to our facility. World Relief’s Disaster Response team plans to drill a bore hole at King’s Hospital to supply clean water for patients and staff. For 15 years, World Relief has worked alongside churches to combat AIDS, care for vulnerable children and their mothers, and create economic opportunities in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere.

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19 August 2009 - the first annual "World Humanitarian Day" in honor of all humanitarian workers who have lost their lives or been injured in the course of their work.  Among these dedicated professionals is one of the great humanitarians, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died on this day in 2003 alongside 21 other colleagues in the Canal Hotel bombing in Baghdad.  His memory serves as an inspiration to all who carry out humanitarian work today, even as assistance efforts in many places continue to be limited by increasingly frequent violent and targeted attacks on humanitarian staff.

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While in Congo on my recent trip, I was accompanied by some amazing friends -- Ben Edwards (photographer) and Beth Fischer (videographer) from the World Relief NEXT team. The following video by Beth is a remarkable and heart-wrenching overview of the situation in eastern Congo and the work that World Relief is doing there.

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My recent visit to Sudan was a first for me, and I was eager to learn more about the situation on the ground there. My initial impressions can be summed up in these words: poor, few educational opportunities, little or no infrastructure, hopeful people, birth of a new nation, and highly reliant on outside support. I took this picture in the capital of southern Sudan -- Juba -- at the site of a recent IDP camp that had been destroyed by the government to force people back to their homes and land.   

Despite the relative peace that has come to southern Sudan over the past couple of years, there remains significant conflict in the region. A recent article in the Economist states that violent conflict has killed more people in recent months in south Sudan than in Darfur. The article states that "the south is now slipping back into its pristine state of widespread insecurity from which it was supposed to have been rescued by a peace deal in 2005. Most of the recent deaths in the south have been caused by inter-tribal fighting, usually linked to land rights. As the rainy season arrives in different parts of Africa’s largest country, so the traditional competition for the best grazing areas for cattle and other livestock becomes more intense." 

Another Economist article on southern Sudan states that "since 90% of southern Sudan’s people live on less than $1 a day, tightening belts is not an option. They are as hungry, poorly educated and diseased as the ill-starred people of Darfur. ... The UN says 187,000 Southern Sudanese were displaced by tribal fighting last year. This year the number may double." Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, who was recently indicted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague for alleged crimes in Darfur, is nervous about the possibility of Southern Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, running as a candidate for the national presidency. And in 2011 the Southern Sudanese will conduct a national referendum to determine if they want to secede from Sudan to form an independent country, probably to be called New Sudan. 

  

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I have been silent for the past five weeks, as I have been on an extended trip through central and eastern Africa to Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, and Burundi. The purpose of this trip was to visit programs in these countries, meet with partners, perform assessments, and accompany colleagues on a learning and video/photography tour. Over the coming weeks, I will be describing some of what I did and what I learned, with some incredible photography by Benjamin Edwards.

 

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From The Economist: "Bartered Brides"

The kidnapping has been going on for some time, and locals talk of a number of cases so far this year. The abductions follow a pattern: a Hmong girl is wooed by an out-of-towner—whether from Vietnam or China is not clear—who speaks her language. She is lured to a rendezvous to be drugged and smuggled into China, probably near Lao Cai, about an hour’s drive from Sapa. Tall, pretty girls are said to be particular targets.

One 18-year-old recently managed to get back home to tell her tale after a four-day ordeal. Held captive in China, she escaped through a window and contacted the Chinese police, who returned her to Vietnam. Most do not escape. One of those kidnapped last month was a married woman with a son; friends fear her family may never see her again.

There is some tradition of bride-kidnapping among the Hmong themselves, but this gangsterised, cross-border variety is especially cruel. Village girls with little knowledge of the outside world tend to be trusting. And the kidnappers seem to operate with impunity—even, according to one account, seeking a reward for returning two underage girls whom they had failed to sell in China.

Within China itself, the abduction and sale of women has long been recognised as a prevalent social evil. Three decades of strict family-planning policies have exacerbated a traditional preference for boy children and contributed to a shortage of marriageable women.

Relations between Vietnam and China along their 1,300km (800-mile) border have improved: last month officials from the two countries, which fought a brief but bloody border war in 1979, completed a seven-year effort to demarcate the frontier. This, they hope, will open the way for increased links of various sorts. Stepped-up police co-operation to stamp out an evil little trade in Hmong women would be a good start.

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The Burke Museum at the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) has recently opened an exhibit titled "Coffee: The World in Your Cup," which uses photos, maps, texts, selected artifacts, audiovisual presentations, and hands-on demonstrations to explore the fascinating world behind the coffee we drink. The exhibit examines the environmental and social impacts of the coffee industry, recommends ways for consumers to make socially and environmentally responsible coffee-purchasing decisions, and teaches about the impacts of caffeine on our bodies.

The following video on "coffee cupping" was produced from one of the educational initiatives of this project.

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