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AFP / Farshad Usyan

Saying goodbye to Kabul

Allison Jackson Friday 22 March 2019

"Several weeks before finishing my posting as Kabul bureau chief, I had a dream that olive oil could be the unlikely panacea for my insomnia," writes Allison Jackson, who has just finished a year and a half posting to Kabul.

"In the dream I walked into an organic supermarket in the Afghan capital’s heavily fortified green zone – imagine a minimalist version of a Whole Foods Market outlet, but surrounded by concrete blast walls and razor wire."

"A senior UN official chopping up kale shared the olive oil remedy for my chronic sleeplessness."

"And then ... boing! I was awake again."

"But at least, for once, I hadn’t been dreaming about a suicide attack."

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AFP / Stringer

Waiting for the Taliban

David Harding Tuesday 19 March 2019

"Around 3:40 each afternoon, Anastasia sits at a piano below a huge chandelier in a Qatar hotel and begins playing," writes David Harding, based in Doha.

"For the next 90 minutes, the Moroccan-style cavernous lobby echoes to songs including Beyonce's +Halo+, Adele's +Hello+, +A Whole New World+ from Disney's Aladdin and Henry Mancini's +Moon River+'."

"So far, so normal."

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  • AFP / Zinyange Auntony
  • AFP / Zinyange Auntony
  • AFP / Zinyange Auntony
  • AFP / Zinyange Auntony
  • AFP / Zinyange Auntony
  • AFP / Zinyange Auntony
  • AFP / Zinyange Auntony
  • AFP / Zinyange Auntony

Travels through Zimbabwe

Ben Sheppard Friday 15 March 2019

"Recently, I was back in Zimbabwe to take a 1,000-km road trip...to report on the country's troubled post-Mugabe 'reboot' and to seek stories away from the news headlines and outside the political scene of Harare," writes Ben Sheppard, a reporter based in Johannesburg.

The stories he found "all offered glimmers of hope for Zimbabwe's future, but they also exposed how much resilience is required on a daily basis... and .... the excitement of being on the road in Zimbabwe was tempered by the sense of its decades of wasted potential during the Mugabe years -- and a gloomy feeling that the country's struggles are far from over."

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AFP / Paul Faith

Brexit borderlands

Joe Stenson Monday 11 March 2019

"Peace came to Northern Ireland when I was just seven years old -- I have no memory of the bitter violence that defined three decades of life in the British province," writes Joe Stenson, a reporter based in Dublin from where he covers the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland for AFP.

"Twenty years on, I spent a week travelling its 500-kilometre border with the Republic of Ireland to speak to locals about the fear that Brexit could bring back the bad old days."

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