Last night in Beirut. Been a busy week – they always are – but busy with trainings rather than with photos, which is my usual work when I’m on the road. So, bit of a different twist for me on this pass through. No matter how much I travel, it still always sort of amazes me to pass back through the same place you’ve already traveled. In fact, I’m two doors down from the room I stayed in Beirut’s Ashrifiyeh neighborhood during the summer of 2006. Then, Israeli jets were bombing the southern suburbs of the city – which I could watch from the balcony of the office nearby, and which I could certainly hear from my own room. Last night someone set off some big fireworks from that part of town, and for a second I was instantly back there. So strange to me how small the world can be when you move around in it as often as I do.
On a bit of a whitewater tour at the moment – caught up in the rapids as it were. Back to the US tomorrow for two days, then off to Europe for a couple weeks, then back for two weeks and off for what is shaping up to be a long Africa trip. Spring and summer always seem so busy. But life is good – beats a desk job.
May 25th, 2009 | by David in Travel
Back in Lebanon after only a few months – you never quite know in this work where you’ll end up and how quickly you’ll be back. This trip so different from most that I take in that it’s centered mostly around training – while all of my others are for photos and stories. Working here with OTI – the Office of Transition Initiatives – part of USAID here in Lebanon. They work with local partners to build their capacity in a range of areas. Each day this week I’ve been giving trainings on how to take better photos. It’s a training I’ve given often enough before, and one that’s catching on with a lot of NGO’s because of the huge need that exists out there for better photos from NGO staff and partners.
The idea first took root years ago when I used to edit newsletters for Catholic Relief Services. Often I would see the same kinds of mistakes repeated over and over again in the photos staff brought back from the field. 13 years later I still see those same mistakes being constantly repeated in the photos used by other NGO’s. After a few hours of class time, looking over a wide range of photos and discussing what works and what doesn’t, we head outside to take photos, then come back in, upload the shots we just took, and collectively look them over, deciding what we like and what we don’t like.
The feedback has been great, I think because it’s very hands on and very practical. The shots people have come back with after only a few hours of class time have been fantastic as well, I have to say.
Fourth time now in Lebanon. Always a fascinating trip, for so many reasons.
May 21st, 2009 | by David in Travel | 1 Comment
Wrapping up my trip to Haiti – off to the airport in an hour. This place always begs some reflection, I find, as you can’t witness Haiti without some kind of reaction. Having seen much of the country this week, from Gonaives I the northwest to Les Cayes in the southwest and Belladere in the east, a few hundred feet from the border with the Dominican Republic, I have taken in a lot of the country. Always here I am shocked by the environmental destruction you cannot escape. The country has been denuded of 98% of its forest cover. Consequently, the hurricanes that pound the island each year wash millions of tons of mud unto the city streets, especially in cities like Gonaives, as we saw last year after Hurricanes Ike, Hanna and Gustav. Downtown Port au Prince is perhaps the most polluted environment I have ever seen. There is no solid waste disposal system, and millions of city residents simply dump their garbage in the streets and canals of the city. At one site we visited yesterday, plastic bottles and Styrofoam containers several feet deep clogged a canal, it’s polluted and stinking water overflowing into local homes with each rainfall.
As I get a little older, I leave places like Haiti with more fear than I used to. The current economic downturn has been a wake up call, I think, for American used to living their lives in a bubble of rarified air, seemingly immune from the troubles that plague much of the world. Those troubles have come home to roost 1,000 times over in Haiti, and while I know that the US is far removed, still, from such blight, trips like this make me want to buy a piece of rural land, build a small, clean, comfortable house, and try to forget that the future is bleak for many so close to our shores.
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