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Nah maties, the bastards not able to finish me off yet. Just been a rough year, family wise and the urge to write temporarily diminished. Still travelling though as you can see, and having got over my jetlag from the longhaul back from Dhaka, ready to fly out to Arusha in Tanzania in 10 days time for a one week trip.
Bangladesh? No, don’t hate it although prefer the wide open spaces of Africa. Everything is so congested and in your face here, especially Dhaka, but country-wide. However had an nteresting field visit to the north last week and enjoyed the Rangpur and Rajshahi regions which were more relaxed. Very wet, green and lush.
Oh hi Penta, you’re right, I never did get around to writing anything on Gaza although I did write something on Jerusalem which doesn’t seem to have made it onto the site. Difficult year since then with all sorts of bad family shit gone down and didn’t put me in much of a mood for writing anything. Currently in Bangladesh though, a new country for me, but only for a couple of weeks mission then home. Interesting but a bit too bloody congested for my taste. Prefer the wide open spaces really.
In general, I think your growing respect for NGO types and the UN is ironically matched by my decreasing respect for them. lol Though I am glad you’re seeing an improvement among them.
Sorry you feel that way Rob. What is it about ‘us’ that you no longer respect and what is cuasing this change of heart?
Look Q, I’m pretty upset by your post. It really sounds like you are talking out of your arse and really, are you so inarticulate you have to swear constantly to get your point across? It doesn’t impress (pretty much the opposite really) and does nothing to advance your arguments. Put together a reasoned cogent argument and I’ll listen to you, but write a load of bollocks laced with abuse and I’ll treat it with the contempt it deserves. I am not some sort of hippy do-gooder, I am a professional with over 30 years of experience in these programmes and pretty much feel I know what I am talking about.
If you have a point to make about the role of Aid workers vis a vis the military then make it in a way that we can understand and empathise with, otherwise shut the f*(K up!Nope, Penta, afraid not, they turned me back at the border and told me my security clearance still hadn’t been approved (after being submitted 7 weeks ago). I’ve heard of other recent cases of delays in approval of up to 6 months so I shouldn’t be surprised. Now back in East Jerusalem and ready to fly home shortly. Trying again in the autumn.
I was in Cairo last week and although smelt a lot of shit so far it wasn’t yet hitting the fan. Informed sources in Egypt though were telling me that they are down to their last 3 months foreign currency reserves, unemployment is skyrocketing and discontent with the results of the revolution are definitely in the air. I passed by Tahrir Sq which still has a semi-permanent demo going on, which remains relatively good natured but people are getting weary waiting for the positive results of the revolution and as pointed out above paraphrasing Pete Townsend, ‘Meet the new shits, same as the old shits’.
As the conflict in Libya drags on a large proportion of the one and a half million Egyptians who were employed in Libya come home jobless and join the growing pool of unemployed and disgruntled. Seems like a powder keg is starting to smoulder and I wouldn’t be surprised if Revolution Part Two is still to come.Thanks Penta. Gaza article will wait a little while until the Hebron/Nablus article has gathered some dust and Rob gets out of bed early enough to post another article for me. I’ve just spent 5 days in Ramallah, which is an utterly different experience to Hebron and Nablus; much more liberal and laid back and plenty of bars and cool cafes to hang out in. Now in East Jerusalem and waiting for a Gaza permit which is starting to look more and more unlikely this time. May have to head back to England in a week without getting into Gaza on this trip.
Hah! Tell me about it. Once upon a time we could do our job with a degree of respect from the population and without feeling under particular threat (apart from petty, and sometimes not so petty criminals). Now we’re all lumped together with the military and ‘contractors’ and the rest of the belted, booted and armed hordes in the more interesting parts of this f*[k£d up world.
Yeah, there is sometimes a need to provide armed assistance to aid delivery but more often than not it leads to confusion over who is the humanitarian and who is the soldier and whether both are anyway following the same basic agenda, albeit under different rules. We all now have to undergo HET (Hostile Environment Training) before we can step on a plane these days and learn how to deal with ambush, arrest, kidnap, survival under fire, under air attack etc
It ain’t like the old days when I used to get sent into civil wars with a box of British Army compo rations and a pat on the back and told to come back alive in six months.
By the way I’m back in Palestine now waiting for security clearance to enter Gaza again and hoping I won’t have to put my HET training into action!Thanks Penta, good examples of what I was talking about. Worth looking at Bill Parry’s book on the art of the West Bank Wall, called ‘Against the Wall’, see this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Parry_(photojournalist)
I met Bill Parry in the bar of the Jerusalem Hotel last December just after the book launch.Yeah FlipFlop, spent the first few days in Sulay before moving on to Erbil Which water slides mate? Travelled around up near Halabja, Chamchamel and north into the mountains close to the Iran border. Will post an article soon with more detail once I have got a couple on the West Bank and Gaza done and dusted.
While my photos keep you amused I have been working up some ideas for articles. It’s been a combinaiton of being incredibly busy, a bit lazy and having too much to write about that has delayed me so far. I think I will break the stories down into 2 or 3 separate articles rather than try and cram a lot of stories into one article. A bit more time perhaps over Easter for me to work on this and my next visit to WB/Gaza not planned until end of May or June, security permitting, so maybe will get round to this now.
