(source: Al Jazeera English; Some rights reserved: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/)

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I came across a video from a blog that is filled with independence wishes from Sudanese people from the north who offer their wishes and thoughts about the division of their country with the separation of the south and the independence of the Republic of South Sudan. Here it is below.

During a question in Part 5 of the videos about the separation of Sudan, Galloway replies:

I think that the separation of Sudan into north and south is very much to be regretted. I think that a big job was done on Sudan to try and undermine it and weaken it by—Israel by the West—over many years. Supported the secessionist tendencies, which always existed in the south. And this job intensified when Sudan discovered that it were sitting upon a huge ocean of oil. And worse, oil that it had already sold to the People’s Republic of China rather than on the international oil market, priced in dollars.

So, I very much regret that Sudan is now two but we have to accept it. There was a plebiscite. It was overwhelming. The south has now broken away and I can only wish them well. I Hope that they are governed justly and democratically and that their people prosper. But in general, I’m against breaking up countries. I think in the world today, we should be seeking more and more unity amongst peoples rather than separation and separatism. It’s one of the reasons I’m against Scottish separation, and I’m standing in the Scottish parliament elections the 5th of May in a few weeks time on exactly that platform to see what the people’s verdict is.

The entire conference was recorded on video and is included below in 5 segments.

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Part 1

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Part 2

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Part 3 (Questions & Answers)

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Part 4 (Questions & Answers)

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Part 5 (Questions & Answers)

According to the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, 3,755,512 voters registered in Southern Sudan, while 116,857 voters registered in Northern Sudan and another 60,219 voters registered in 8 designated out-of-country locations (Australia, Canada, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, the UK and the USA.)  According to reports like this one, the 60% voter participation threshold was reached on the third day of voting, thereby validating the process.

(Children pose beside a damaged water tanker outside of a school in Abyei, April 2009)

SouthSudanInfo.net’s blogger, David Widgington, spoke with Montréal broadcaster, Gwendolyn Schulman, on the CKUT weekly (Wed. 7-8pm) radio show about African issues, Amandla. In the recording below, Gwen and David discuss the following unresolved issues 1) the border demarcation between north and south, including Abyei; 2) Sharing of oil revenue and infrastructure; 3) the management of the Nile floodwaters; 4) citizenship, right to return and security; 5) repayment of the Sudan national debt.

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PODCAST

Without context, the article is no more than another record of ‘tribal’ violence in an African country already mired by war. Without prior knowledge of the situation in Southern Sudan—and the Canadian media provides very little—the details are meaningless. Actually, Southern Sudan is in a post-war renaissance that may lead to a lasting peace, self-determination and independence; if, and only if, they can hold on to the four-year-old peace that Le Devoir describes as “already fragile.”

It’s important that news about Southern Sudan gets reported because newsworthy stories in Sudan are not just related to Darfur or to the International Criminal Court indictment of Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, which deserve media attention for the international condemnation and reduction of human rights abuses that can come from exposure. But the situation in Southern Sudan is also in need of media scrutiny to support democratization and to help maintain a fragile peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war between the government of Sudan and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

Sudan’s second civil war since its 1956 independence from British colonialism, lasted 21 years and officially ended on January 9, 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in neighbouring Nairobi, Kenya. The CPA set up a power-sharing structure between the central government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement with the creation of a coalition Government of National Unity for all of Sudan and the Government of Southern Sudan; both with new interim constitutions. The agreement allows for the transformation of the Southern rebel forces into a regular army for semi-autonomous Southern Sudan with Joint Integrated Units of both armies in specific border areas. It prescribes oil revenue-sharing protocols and the establishment of a border between the north and south of Sudan, which will transect oil-producing areas.

An interim period of six years is established to implement the peace agreement, after which the South can hold a referendum to decide to remain within Sudan or to opt for complete independence. This is tentatively scheduled for 2011.

Approximately two million people were killed during the war and about four million were displaced from their homes to other regions of Sudan and nearly one million refugees fled to neighbouring countries. Since its independence 53 years ago, Sudan has been at peace for only 15 of those years (1972-1983: Addis Ababa Agreement, and since the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement). Despite these statistics, almost no editorial space in Canadian media is given to the current situation in Southern Sudan.

Media attention of the region was particularly abundant during the 1988 famine when more than 250,000 people starved to death. But since the signing of the peace deal, the media has focussed more on the conflict in Darfur than the tenuous peace in the South. The negotiations of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with former southern rebels may have added to the current civil war in Darfur, whose own rebels wanted to be included in peace negotiations but were kept from it.

Sudan presently hosts the largest United Nations mission in the world (not including the UN African Union Mission in Darfur) with a mandate of “supporting the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement… [and] facilitating the voluntary return of refugees and displaced persons.”

Why is the movement of refugees and displaced people more newsworthy when they flee war and persecution than when they return to the homelands they were previously forced to flee? The story of returnees to the south is a mirror into the future for Darfur refugees whose current situation is a glimpse into the past for the Southern Sudanese still struggling with their new peacetime conditions.

According to Amnesty International, the civil war now raging in Darfur has displaced more than 2.25 million people since 2003, while IRIN reports that more than 2.24 million Southern Sudanese have returned to their homeland since 2005. Both are impressive migrations of people that require an important amount of support from the United Nations and other NGOs to help them resettle. Donor countries like Canada (via CIDA, page 16), which provides $66.8 million in humanitarian aid to Sudan, have an influence in Sudan’s future and also need journalistic scrutiny.

Those that return to their homeland in the south believe that the peace deal will endure and are eager to help rebuild the country, while many are still unwilling to return for fear of the reoccurrence of war. Those that do return, discover that—in many areas—living conditions in the war-ravaged south are more difficult than the areas where they are returning from: lack of sufficient drinking water, no schools, nor clinics and a difficult means for livelihood generation. Most arrive in their homeland after more than a decade of absence with little more than a few belongings. NGOs provide some with a tarp to set up a temporary shelter, blankets, water containers, cooking utensils and other non-food items, while the World Food Program provides food subsidies.

Being a refugee from war and a returnee to peace—both in Sudan—look all too similar and deserve equal attention. Media attention about Darfur needs to continue to help end the war there and it needs to begin about Southern Sudan to help it cling to its tenuous peace.

[translated and published in French in Le Couac)

I recount anecdotes of my time in Southern Sudan to friends, family, journalists and am reminded of how little we know about the place, which beckons a second visit. How the media focuses on the war in Darfur, or the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir but completely ignore the immense challenges facing the southern part of the country as it adapts to times of relative peace four years after the signing of the January 9, 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended 21 years of civil war.

Few people I’ve spoken with realize that Sudan is divided in two: Sudan and Southern Sudan with a coalition Government of National Unity dominated by President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party for the whole of Sudan, and a semi-autonomous Southern Sudan led by President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. Salva Kiir is also First Vice-President of Sudan under the power-sharing peace deal. Even fewer people I’ve spoken with are aware that under the mandate of the CPA, Southern Sudan is scheduled—at the end of its post-war six-year interim period—to hold a referendum in 2011 that will determine whether or not Africa’s largest country will be divided, giving independence to the South.

In the meantime, what has happened to the one million people that have been living as refugees in neighbouring countries for up to two decades, or to the four million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) who were uprooted from their homes when they fled the fighting? More than two million have already returned to their traditional homeland in the south, which was devastated by the war. How are the returnees adjusting to the tenuous peace now that they have returned to regions they no longer recognize, or for the younger ones, have never lived in?

Below are IDPs during their return to Southern Sudan in 2008 as coordinated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Nearly all of the Southern Sudanese I had the pleasure of speaking with while visiting the south have returned to their traditional homelands only within the last two years. Many left when they were very young while some were born in exile, which required of them complete readaptation to a homeland they do not know.

Why is our media uninterested in following the story of an African region the size of France after the end of what has been described as the Twentieth Century’s longest and bloodiest civil war? Five million displaced and two mimmion dead! What is it about the initiation of peace and democracy that persuades news editors to look elsewhere for stories? This virtual blackout of information about Southern Sudan is what led me to visit. I wanted to meet the people who are making the transition to a peaceful society.

Now that I’ve returned, I have more questions than before, but they are no longer based on a total lack of information. How does a rebel army like the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) make the transition from rebel forces to official army of Southern Sudan and member of the Joint Integrated Units with its former foe, the Sudan Armed Forces? How is former soldier, Lt. General Salva Kiir Mayardit adapting to his new job as President of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) and First Vice President of  Sudan’s interim Government of National Unity (GNU)? What are the most imposing obstacles to the peace agreement (and there are many: serious underdevelopment, food insecurity,  intertribal conflicts, international pressures, border disputes, resource sharing, slow/non implementation of CPA requirements, census results, February 2010 national elections, the 2011 independence referendum, etc.)

I will attempt to address the above questions and others in future posts to this blog so I invite you to return here and comment on what your read. I am in regular contact with people I met in Southern Sudan and will be following their stories and the story of Sudan as it unfolds. I’ve just begun to review the thousands of photographs, hours of video footage, dozens of audio interviews, and the pages and pages of notes taken throughout my trip. I’ve started reading the books, reports, newspapers and documents I picked up while in Southern Sudan and have consolidated the names and contact details of people I met there. I’m reviewing websites of organizations I came across in Sudan and am adding links to the relevant ones to the sidebar on this blog. There are many news blogs that provide regularly updated news about Sudan, many of which I’ve added RSS feeds here as well.

Burningbillboard.org is my South Sudan resource gathering point. If you are interested, it can also be yours.

I’ve been hesitant to take mefloquine from the beginning because of the potential side effects (see previous post), which—according to the prescription—include but are not limited to “a sudden onset of unexplained anxiety, depression, restlessness or irritability, or confusion (probably signs of more serious mental problems).” Like most people, I’ve never been treated for depression, but I have felt ‘depressed’ before, lacking in confidence and motivation. A concern of mine is, would a drug like Larium (the brand name for m) instigate the “more serious mental problems” that the manufacturer delegates as the responsibility of the consumer? Besides, I don’t want to feel more anxious or depressed than what naturally occurs during episodes of cultural shock and adaptation, particularly not in situations that may already have their own normal levels of stress and misunderstanding that comes when being in unfamiliar cultural surroundings.

The warnings continue on the box with, “you may develop other serious side effects, including persistently abnormal heartbeat or palpitations,” but this time without the disclaimer blaming the person taking the medication. I’m not sure if I’ve had palpitations before but I may have. Are they warning that a heart attack may follow while taking these pills? Not something I want to contemplate from Southern Sudan or anywhere else for that matter!

Last night while chatting with Carla (the guesthouse owner) and another guest at Miti Mingi , we decided to make some tea. The only choice in the house was a herbal tea made of crushed leaves from the neem tree (Azadirachta indica). On the back of the box is written, “… Neem has remarkable healing properties…” Then it continues by listing them: boosts body’s immune system, stimulates the production of T-cells, purifies the blood, and prevents or cures during treatment of sore throats, colds, fevers, food poisoning, lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, irregular heartbeat… and the list finally mentioned malaria. Finally, an alternative and natural treatment against malaria. This tea was produced from trees in Kenya, and in the Kaswahili language the tree is called Muarubaini, which can be translated as the tree with forty cures.

According to Vandana Shiva, physicist, environmental activist, intellectual, author and future Nobel Prize winner(!?), the medicinal and chemical uses of the neem tree’s bark, leaves fruit and seed oil have been known and used in India for more than 4000 years.

I noticed the mention of neem on a back page of a pamphlet given to me at the Santé Voyage clinic where I received my vaccinations and consulted about malaria prevention. None of the medical staff mentioned any natural products as a possible alternative for the common prophylactics like mefloquine, aralen, chloroquine, etc.

In Senegal, there is a movement to bring neem to the masses to decrease the numbers of unnecessary deaths from malaria. Below is a video from the Al Jazeera show ‘People & Power’, dating from December 8, 2008:

The Forestry Department at the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations have coordinated since 1994 the International Neem Network whose activities are documented in their recent, The Activities of the International Neem Network. Other online documentation can be read from the website.

So, I’ve decided to forgo the mefloquine prescription by leaving it in my bag. I will now drink neem herbal tea and will look for neem soap to wash with as an added repellent. Or course this will be done in tandem with my other preventative measures, like sleeping under a Permethrin-impregnated mosquito net, and using mosquito repellent on uncovered skin areas between dusk and dawn when mosquitoes are most active.

One such gaming developer is Copenhagen-based Serious Games Interactive, which was founded in 2006 “to revolutionise the use of computer games for purposes beyond entertainment.” They initiated a series of video games called Global Conflicts that challenges 13- to 19-year-olds to be critical and reflective citizens in a globalized world. They offer two versions of the game: one based in Palestine and the newer one in Latin America.

The Global Conflict: Palestine was released on July 5, 2007 and takes an interesting approach to gaming. The player takes on the role of a journalist within a simulated environment in contemporary Jerusalem. When I played the demo available for free download, I was assigned to write a story about checkpoints in the city. It began with me meeting my editor in a café who sends me off to research a story. In the demo version, there is only one story idea option: to write an article about the checkpoints. All the research comes directly from other characters the player/journalist meets and interviews within the Jerusalem gamescape. Another demo version of the game can be played directly online and is set in Latin America.

There is a notepad to copy direct quotations from people interviewed. You can see which characters are interactive because their names are tagged beside their characters within the game. The choice of questions to ask are limited. The player also decides which answers or comments come from those interviewed. The objective is to be as neutral as possible and to get as wide a perspective as possible so that an ‘objective’ article can be written. You even get to choose which newspaper to write for, either a Palestinian paper, an Isaeli paper or an international paper.

A second game I cam across is Food Force, an interactive game produced for the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). It can be downloaded for free from their website. The game has six missions for the player to accomplish that relates to the six stages related to the delivery of food aid in a crisis situation. The six missions are chronological to follow the logistical steps for delivering food aid from the beginning of the need of food aid until the recipients are no longer in need. They include: 1) Air Surveillance to assess the crisis, 2) Energy Pack for creating a formula for nutritious meal; 3) Air Drop to deliver emergency food aid by air; 4) Buy and Deliver of food aid from around the world; 5) The Food Run to overcome land obstacles to deliver food; 6) Future Farming to help the fictitious country feed itself over a 10-year timeline.

The game does a pretty good job at portraying the varying stages of food crisis aid from the perspective of the United Nations. The game is basic but good for elementary or secondary  school-age kids, but for those interesting in digging deeper into UN food programs, they have a ‘The Reality’ link to video clips, a photo gallery, and links to WFP programs and to the WFP website for more detailed information. Unfortunately, the game maintains a Euro- or Western-centric perspective where mostly-white people help black people get out of a food crisis on the fictitious island of Sheylan in the Indian Ocean. The only black man has an American accent that resembles the voice of a polite Eddy Murphy. The attitudes of the “Crack Squad” project managers of the WFP crisis mission in Sheylan seemed modelled after American army types that makes the game’s WFP desire to solve the food crisis more cynical in line with US foreign policy as we are used to seeing it.

The third video game can be played online. Darfur is Dying was created as a result of the Darfur Digital Activist Contest that was launched by mtvU in partnership with the International Crisis Group and the Reebok Human Rights Foundation. This type of foundation is typically set up to associate a corporate brand name like Reebok with words like ‘human rights’ in response to bad press relating to its reputation as manufacturing its shoes in factories with less than stellar working conditions, as this report from China labour Watch describes. I’ve been searching the net for documentation but their campaign is obviously working because it is difficult to find reference to this show company without its foundation getting in the way. Websites that advocate for worker rights in the clothing manufacturing sector include: Behind the Label, Maquila Solidarity Network & Sweatshop Watch, whose website is no longer online.

In the image above, a screen shot taken while the character ( a young girl from a refugee camp) runs around looking for water for the camp. In the image, she is hiding behind a rock while heavily armed Janjaweed drive past. If they catch her she is taken away and can no longer help out at the refugee camp. The player is then forced to pick another refugee to seek water.

The three games have very different esthetics and objectives but provide an interesting approach to dealing with global issues using video games.

On February 16, I catch a KLM flight to Nairobi, Kenya. Fifteen hours of flying with a three-hour stopover in Amsterdam to get a scent of Europe before heading for Sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. Very exciting! Now I have an itinerary to plan out, a budget to establish, a what-to-bring list to determine, people to contact…

This all started with the desire to better understand what happens to a place once 21 years of civil war slips into the past with the signing of a peace agreement. In Sudan that translates with the January 9, 2005 signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the ruling government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). I introduce this in a previous post.

So from Nairobi Airport, I will take a cab the Miti Mingi bed & breakfast in in the Muthangari neighbourhood of the city. I chose this place because it was referred by a friend of a friend’s friend. And because it is in the same par of town as the Sudan Radio Service (SRS), an “independant media dedicated to peace and development in Sudan” that I will be collaborating with in Nairobi, where it is based, and in Juba where it has journalist correspondents. It is also near the offices of Africa 24 Media, whose directors I will meet with to discuss their work in the African media landscape. As a Africa neophyte, starving for information about the continent mostly abandonned by North American media, A24 covers interesting stories I should have already known about but hadn’t. There may be place for collaboration.

(source: Sud Academy 2008)

While in Nairobi, I will also be visiting Sud Academy, a school established to provide a basic education for the child refugees from Southern Sudan who found themselves in Nairobi after fleeing the civil war. I’ve been in conversation with Jane Roy, who, with her husband—and Canadian Member of Parliament— Glen Pearson, started Canadian Aid for Southern Sudan (CASS).  I will be interviewing Jane Roy before I leave about CASS’ recent trip to Southern Sudan in January 2009. CASS provides funding to Sud Academy and have recently returned from their anual January visit  there. I will be meeting up with Kellee Jacobs, a CASS volunteer at the school. She is keeping a blog, The World as a Stage, about her experiences there.

After about ten days in Nairobi, I fly to Juba, where the journey continues. While in Southern  Sudan, I will visit and write about several United Nations managed projects in the region. I have a contract with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to write “Stories from the Field” about these projects. In Juba, I expect to visit UNICEF‘s Mine and Unexploded Ordances Risk Education project. I will also meet with SRS journalists, and other media outlets to gain a better understanding in the role the media plays in promoting and maintaining the tenuous peace in Southern Sudan as mandated in the CPA.

I will also be providing radio reports on a weekly basis on CKUT 90.3fm’s weekly Amandla. The pieces may be replayed on the station’s daily Morning After shows (7h00-9h00) and on Vancouver’s Co-op Radio . short video peices will be produced for the National Film Board of Canada’s CitizenShift web portal in the dossier: A Tenuous Peace. I will also write a couple of articles in The Dominion magazine. So stay tuned for lots of mobile journalism in the next three months.

From Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, I expect to fly north to visit another UNICEF project in Abyei, one of the transitional areas just north the border between Southern Sudan and the rest of the country. The project provides support to basic education in the three transitional areas: Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile states. Via email, we are establishing the itinerary and schedule to get to these project areas. If all goes well, I expect to then go to Aweil in Northern Bahr el Ghazal State, where the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) runs the Basic Infrastructure and Livelihood Support to Highly Impacted Communities of Return in the area. I am also planning on visiting a World Vision Tonj North Emergency Response and Returnee Assistance Project a bit further south in Warrap State.

So much to do. So little time: ten weeks in all. Come along for the ride.

Since the bombardment of the Gaza Strip began on December 27, 2008, there are certainly fewer refugees than before the attacks, considering the escalating death tole, which according to the BBC is now higher than 600 deaths. The BBC’s Gaza Conflict Map, shows that the Shati, Jabaliya (including its UN school) and Rafah refugee camps have been directly bombed. This map follows the conflict, offering two separate views: one of the latest attacks and another of the accumulated attacks since the Israeli offensive began.

A friend sent me this link to a blog about making a push to get up to date maps of Gaza in OpenStreetMap. It could be an interesting place to document in detail the bombardment of the Gaza Strip. This wiki-type mapping can rival BBC’s Conflict Map if Gazan’s mapped out their own relationship with the present war. If only they had electricity, among other essentials like sufficient food, water, fuel and medicine.

How is it possible that the military of one country can attack United Nations refugee camps without the condemnation by the United Nations Security Council? According to a Jan 5 article in the Jerusalem Post, the United States chose to veto a statement proposed by Libya calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza because they considered it “unbalanced.”

What makes UNRWA refugee camps different from other refugee camps elsewhere in the world? First, the UNRWA is the United Nations’ first organization of its kind and was created by UN General Assembly resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949 to carry out direct relief and works programmes for Palestine refugees following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Originally established  as a temporary organization, UNRWA has been forced to adapt its programs to meet the changing needs of the Palestinian refugees. Today, UNRWA is the main provider of education, health, relief and social services to more than 4.6 million registered Palestine refugees throughout the Middle East living within camp in Lebanon (12 camps), Syria (9 camps), The West Bank (19 camps) and Jordan (10 camps), and living outside of camps. The United Nations General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA’s mandate, most recently extending it until 30 June 2011.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established on December 14, 1950. UNHCR’s mandate uses the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention as its major tool to ensure the basic human rights of vulnerable persons and that refugees will not be returned involuntarily to a country where they face persecution. The organization also helps civilians repatriate to their homeland, integrate in countries of asylum or resettle in third countries.

One of the problems for Palestinian refugees is that when the UNHCR was established, UNRWA’s mandate was not integrated and assimilated into UNHCR’s mandate so they do not benefit from the same protection and rights stipulated by the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention.

In Canada, UNRWA-registered Palestinians who seek refugee status are not considered refugees as they would be if they were registered by the UNHCR. Many Palestinian refugees deported back to refugee camps (sometimes via the United States through the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement).

An earlier post from June 2008 includes a short documentary about the situation of Palestinian refugees facing deportation from Canada that was produced in 2003 by following the campaign by the Montréal-based Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees. It includes images of the flattening of a portion of the Jenin Refugee Camp by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in 2002.

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An interesting article in the TimesOnline, We must adjust our distorted image of Hamas, is well worth the read as a counter point to the regular image we get of Hamas in Canadian media. The article is written by William Sieghart. And an Op-Ed piece written by Rashid Khalidi in the Jan. 7 edition of The New York Times is titled, What you don’t know about Gaza, some of which I already knew, some I didn’t.

Al Jazeera has recently put on its website a Creative Commons repository of broadcast quality video footage from inside the Gaza Strip, called the War on Gaza. The videos have no subtitles so during interviews are in arabic only, however the videos are well annotated with a short description of every image sequence.

Favourite books read in 2008

About Sudan and Africa:

In preparation for a three-month trip to Southern Sudan with a departure date in early February, I’ve come across several books that have helped my better understand the situation in Sudan, in the Great Lakes region, and on the continent Africa. The effects of European colonialism  continues to ravage the continent with civil wars, coup d’états, and constant foreign interference. Post-colonial democratization in Africa is still in its infancy with Sudan representing a prime example three years into its six-year interim period after 21 years of civil war. Southern Sudan is three years away from a referendum that will decide whether it remains within a New Sudan or whether it will become autonomous as a sovereign state. This democratization process is something I plan to follow closely beginning with my first visit in 2009.

David Eggers (2006) What is the What: the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: a novel — non-fiction/memoir/Sudan — isbn 978 -0-307-38590-1 (the book follows Valentino, on of the Lost Boys of Sudan, through the 21-year civil are that ended in 2005: his long walk away from the fighting with thousands of other boys toward refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya then eventually to the United States as a refugee.)

Jok Madut Jok (2007) Sudan: race, religion, and violence — isbn 978-1-85168-366-6 (An investigation by a Sudanese man who “delves deep into Sudan’s culture and history, isolating the factors that have caused its fractured national identity. [Jok] critiques a country in turmoil and addresses what must be done to break the cycle of racism, poverty and brutality that grips Sudan and its people.”

Ryszard Kapuscinski (2001) The Shadow of the Sun — non-fiction/history/Africa — isbn 978-0-679-77907-8 (Kapuscinski is Poland’s first and only foreign correspondent in the 1950′s. He is sent to cover Africa as the continent unravels from colonialism, providing him with insight into a continent where he has witnessed firsthand more than 38 revolutions. His knowledge of this period in Africa’s history—and the journalistic integrity of his descriptions of the events and people he meets—has been invaluable for me, this first-time visitor to sub-saharan Africa.)

Ishmael Beah (2007) A Long Way Gone: memoirs of a boy soldier — non-fiction/memoir/Sierra Leone — isbn 978-1-55365-299-1 (A Long Way Gone is similar to What is the What, which tells the story of childhood as affected by war. Where Valentino escapes being absorbed into the rebel military as a soldier, Ishmael Beah is not so lucky. the killing he has witnessed and committed has not left him unblemished and his recovery is not easy. A fascinating read for anyone going to visit Sub-Saharan Africa!)

Comic Books:

These are some of my perennial favourite comic books. I have a particular interest in non-fiction and comics journalism.

Guibert, Lefèvre & Lemercier (2003) Le Photographe — non-fiction/comics/photo journalism — isbn 2-8001-3372-4 (This excellent book follows photographer, Didier Lefèvre, on his first major photo assignement following a Médecin sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders) team through Afghanistan in 1986, during the war between the Soviet Union and the Mujaheddin.)

Guy Delisle (2005) Pyongyang: a journey in North Korea — travel/comics/memoir — isbn 1-89659-789-0 (An unfamiliar, inside view of North Korea from the perspective of Delisle who is sent to the reclusive communist country to supervise the work his French animation studio subcontracted to a North Korean firm. It is a rare glimpse inside a country at odds with itself and the world.

Jason Lutes (2004-2008) Berlin: City of Stones — history/comics — isbn 1-896597-29-7 (This first of a trilogy that is published in individual comic books with eight more issues to come, is set in the twilight years of Germany’s Weimar Republic. With meticulous documentation, the book covers the struggle between the communist Left and the rise of fascism in a late 1920′s Germany.

Rash & Tamada (2007) Chroniques du proche étranger en Tchétchénie — history/comics — isbn 978-2-84999-046-9 (In July 2000, nine months since the beginning of the second Chechnya conflict, a young French doctor and his driver  attempt to deliver medical aid to refugees. The country is administered directly from Moscow and its residents live in constant terror. Thousands of civilians have sought refuge in neighbouring republic of Ingoushetia, which is where the aid is to be delivered.)

Joe Sacco (2000) Safe Area Gorazde: The war in Eastern Bosnia (1992-95) — history/comics/journalism — isbn 1-56097-470-2 (Cartoonist/reporter, Joe Sacco, traveled four times to Gorazde in late 1995 and early 1996. The area was a U.N.-designated safe area during the Bosnian War and was always on the brink of extinction during that period.)