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Troubled Waters
Lake Victoria's waters have begun to fall dramatically in recent years. Climate change, hydroelectric dam projects and increasing pressure on its threatened resources have some environmentalists suggesting the lake may be destroyed within twenty years.
As featured on PBS's Foreign Exchange with Daljit Dhaliwal.
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Sarah Stuteville's East Africa Blog
The Most Dangerous Men in Kenya
NAIROBI—The first thing I thought of when I saw the scorched whitewash, shattered windows and collapsing skeletons of businesses in Kisumu's downtown was my father's furniture store in Seattle, Washington.
Poking through the remains of doctor's offices, electronics shops and grocery stores—plastic vials and discarded packaging cracking and rustling beneath my sneakers—I imagined the nights of heartbreak the owners of these business lived through in the anarchic weeks following Kenya's most recent elections.
Being Typical
Nairobi, KENYA—One of the first pieces of advice I received before leaving on this reporting project was from an Ethiopian diplomat in the States that requested that I “not be a typical journalist” in my coverage of Africa. What he meant, and what he went on to say more specifically, was that he didn’t want to see any more stories about African poverty in the news.
Heading South Part 4: A Night Under the Stars
The word travel traces back to the Middle-English word travailen, meaning to journey, labor, strive and most importantly, to torment.
Much of traveling does feel a little like torment and as the strange bug bites, desperate trips to the bathroom and embarrassing cultural misunderstandings mount (who knew that blowing raspberries was one of the rudest things you can do in traditional Ethiopian culture?) I often wonder how I’ve found myself so far away from home.
An American's Water Shortage
Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA —The water in our new house in Addis has been turned off for days and my back is so sore I’ve been squirming around on our dirty couches all evening begging for a position that doesn’t hurt.
It’s shameful how annoyed I am by the conjunction of these inconveniences given why I’m in Ethiopia at all. I’m here to research and write on water scarcity issues. In the past three days I’ve interviewed a woman whose son died of typhoid and a man who held four of his children as diarrhea from waterborne dysentery drained the life from their small bodies. I watched an old woman fall to her knees and kiss the ground in thanks of water.
Ethiopian Epiphany: Timkat in Addis Ababa
According to Ethiopia's unique calendar, the year 2000 started last September. Christmas was two weeks ago, on January 7th, and this weekend, at the end of the twelve days of Christmas, the country's 33 million Ethiopian Orthodox Christians celebrated Timkat, or Epiphany, a commemoration of the baptism of Christ. CLP Audio Producer Jessica Partnow brings us this report from the nation's capitol, Addis Ababa.
Dawn in Addis
Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA -- 5:30am and still dark. But the rooster knows the sun is coming and his crow trills up past the sulfurous street lamps into the still night sky.
He’s woken the dogs, and suddenly their frantic howling seems to come from the top of every hill in Addis, making the city seem surrounded by their feral packs.
The sharp barks are soon undercut by the rising moan of the muezzin. He sings the same words that have woken me around the world, but his melody here is unique, more of a monotonous chanting than the sung declaration I’ve heard before.