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'We have a boy!'

Fanny Carrier Friday 10 June 2016

I am finishing up my story for the day when Captain Alex, red with joy, runs onto the bridge, smiling.

“We have a boy! I feel like I'm the father!"

In May, AFP's deputy bureau chief in Rome Fanny Carrier spent a week aboard the Aquarius, one of a small armada of ships that are rescuing migrants all along the Libyan coast. This is the third and final part of her series on the voyage.

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AFP / Gabriel Bouys

‘Here, we are alive. There, we were no longer men’

Fanny Carrier Thursday 9 June 2016

“Thank you and goodbye,” Captain Alex says to the captain of the tug boat over the radio. “I hope we’ll meet another time in different circumstances.”

“I hope not,” comes the reply.

In May, AFP's deputy bureau chief in Rome Fanny Carrier spent a week aboard the Aquarius, one of a small armada of ships that are rescuing migrants all along the Libyan coast. This is the second of a three-part series on the voyage.

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‘If we don’t go, how many will die?’

Fanny Carrier Wednesday 8 June 2016

"That night, I have trouble falling asleep. I look ahead of us, into the darkness, toward Libya," writes Fanny Carrier, AFP's deputy bureau chief in Rome.

"There, at this very moment, smugglers are in the process of getting the people who have paid them enormous amounts of money to the coast, to be loaded onto dinghies that often are hardly more solid than beach toys, then take off to the open sea in darkness."

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AFP / Rijasolo

The sweet harvest

- Rijasolo Tuesday 7 June 2016

"Every year around this time, the lush green hills of this corner in northeastern Madagascar fill with the unmistakable, pungent smell," writes photographer Rijasolo.

"You can’t get away from it, it seeps into your clothes, your hair and for the uninitiated like me, it can make you dizzy at times. It wafts through the streets of Sambava, especially those around the warehouses where the origin of the aroma is stored, before its journey to all corners of the globe. It’s vanilla harvesting season."

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AFP / Mohamed Abdiwahab

'Couldn't believe my eyes'

Mohamed Abdiwahab Monday 6 June 2016

"I have covered bombings and attacks in Mogadishu for years, but this one was completely different," writes AFP's photographer Mohamed Abdiwahab. "You probably think that after years of photographing death and destruction, the attacks would stop affecting me. But it’s not true. When I got to where it happened, I couldn’t believe my eyes."

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