Disembarking at Cairo, we were confronted with an enormous billboard welcoming delegates to the COP27 climate conference. 40 000 delegates were meeting to discuss, among other things, the painful question of financial responsibility for fixing the climate crisis caused largely by the activities of developed countries. Visiting Egypt was a long-held dream. It was wonderful for many reasons, not least […]
This Mournable Body, Tsitsi Dangarembga
Imprisoned minds in colonised bodies Tsitsi Dangarembga and Julie Barnes were arrested on 31st July 2020 for walking down a street in Harare carrying placards that simply said “We want better. Reform our institutions.”. They were convicted on 29th September 2022 and given suspended sentences and fines for inciting violence. Dangarembga is a writer and filmmaker who has worked with […]
Fly with me
We have a wonderful red Chinese kite that we bought in Shanghai in 2007. It’s a giant squid that flies with beautiful ease, but needs both space and wind. Here in our village we have space, but not much wind. That’s changing with the climate. The wind we get now is gusty, dusty and inconstant. In Zambia I would see […]
More or less around the world in eighty days
The New Version The new version of Eighty Days with David Tennant is such fun that I’m blogging about it this week! The main scriptwriter, Ashley Pharoah, played with some of the realities of that era rather than continuing with Jules Verne’s romanticised view. I saw the original 1956 film as a teenager and loved it. Shocked to learn that […]
Journeys of courage and imagination
African people in the Americas Two years ago we visited Belize and Livingston in Guatemala and encountered Garifuna people for the first time. I was interested to learn how the Garifuna came to live in Central America and still retained the culture of their African heritage, while it seems to me that so many Afro-Americans who endured centuries of slavery […]