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When words lose meaning

Leila Macor, Ricardo Arduengo, Eleonor Sens, Hector Retamal, Jose Osorio Monday 23 October 2017

If you use words too much, they begin to lose their meaning. After you write and read “devastated” and “destroyed” hundreds of times, the effect begins to wear off.

So how to explain the magnitude of the destruction in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria destroyed swathes of the US territory home to 3.4 million souls? You can read that most of the power went out on September 20, but do you realize how exactly that affects the people living there?

AFP had a team of reporters, photographers and video journalists covering the disaster. Some were used to documenting calamities, others arrived and got stuck on the island when calamity struck back home. Here Leila Macor, Ricardo Arduengo, Jose Osorio, Hector Retamal and Eleonore Sens recount how they kept going to bear witness to the worst natural disaster to hit the island in a century.

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  • AFP / Pedro Pardo
  • AFP / Pedro Pardo
  • AFP / Yuri Cortez
  • AFP / Ronaldo Schemidt

When a 'workquake' strikes home

Joshua Howat Berger Saturday 21 October 2017

Joshua Howat Berger, newly arrived on a posting in Mexico City, learns hard and fast that the city is earthquake-prone, how much work is involved in covering one, and how a quake can wreak havoc on your work-family balance when you become one of the victims, albeit a fortunate one. 

"It all started with an earthquake on September 7, just before midnight," he writes.

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/ A picture taken on October 15, 2017 shows a general view of the scene of the explosion of a truck bomb in the centre of Mogadishu. AFP / Mohamed Abdiwahab

Gone forever

Mohamed Abdiwahab Friday 20 October 2017

"People from abroad always ask me -- 'What’s it like to live in a place like Somalia, where blasts and car bombs are a regular part of life?'" writes Mohamed Abdiwahab, a photographer based in Mogadishu.

"Well, I suppose it’s like living anywhere else. We love our families. We like to spend a day with our kids when we can. And when an attack happens, we hurt. We mourn the people lost. The fact that it happens more often here than, say, in Europe, doesn’t inure us to the pain, the loss, the suffering."

"Let me tell you about my last Saturday."

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  • AFP / Josh Edelson
  • AFP / Josh Edelson
  • AFP / Josh Edelson
  • AFP / Robyn Beck
  • AFP / Justin Sullivan

Heaven turned hell

Julie Charpentrat Thursday 19 October 2017

"At a certain point, I just began to run out of words to describe the devastation that I saw around me," writes Julie Charpentrat, a correspondent based in San Francisco who covered the wildfires that ravaged the north of the state. 

"Desolate. Lunar. Apocalyptic. What else can you say when hundreds and hundreds of homes turned to ash surround you as far as the eye can see?"

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  • AFP / Fred Dufour
  • AFP / Fred Dufour
  • AFP / Fred Dufour

They were like ghosts

Fred Dufour Monday 16 October 2017

"Once, during the night, I was waiting for them on the beach, wanting to photograph them as they disembarked from the boats," writes Fred Dufour, a photographer based in China of his reporting trip to document the Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar for Bangladesh.

"They walked on the sand in silence, utterly exhausted, paying no attention to me. They looked like ghosts, coming onto land from the sea. Out of the dark, one little boy walked toward me, attracted by the light of my phone. He stopped in front of me, no expression on his face, holding his head in his hands. He seemed completely lost, not sure what to do next."

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