Author Archives: Simon Waters

Pygmy Health Project part 3

I was a refugee from the fighting in Goma, and the threatened attack on Bukavu, temporarily settled in a friendly Rwandan NGO just across the border in Cyangugu. But the project was in ruins. We had been driven out of Minova by the M23 rebel assault on Goma, and my colleague and friend Jean Claude had had to travel into rebel held Goma to pick up his two year old daughter. I was at a loss, as I was thousands of miles from home, and yet still a half dozen of miles away from my colleagues

Bambela, Etogo, Zali

Naming our daughter among the Ewondo 1700 words/12 minutes Felix with Judith and la belle mere A few weeks after my daughter was born, in the Central hospital in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, Judith and I prepared to register her birth at the town hall. Having a baby in Cameroon is not as simpleContinue reading “Bambela, Etogo, Zali”

Volcanoes, Pygmies, and M23

I was worried I might need to cancel my field trip in the eastern Congo, and the Foreign office travel advisory was less than reassuring: We advise against all travel to eastern and north eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The only exception to this is within the towns of Bukavu and Goma, where we advise against all but essential travel. In Bukavu and Goma we advise against travel at night and to avoid travelling alone at all times.

The Lions Gate Bridge Caper

Greenpeace Daze part 6 15 minutes In the spring of 1987, Greenpeace launched an important new international campaign called Nuclear Free Seas. Most of the nuclear weapons in the world are carried by the world’s nuclear navies, especially the US and the USSR, but also by China the UK and France. With the majority ofContinue reading “The Lions Gate Bridge Caper”

A Short Walk in the High Sierras

The mountain Sequoias are the most massive trees on the planet, with a deeply furrowed scaly bark of a beautiful red. They tower over two hundred feet and an old postcards shows a carriage driving through a hole cut in a tree a hundred years earlier.

An early Christmas (fiction)

A tale of the joys and tribulations of homesteading in the Canadian wilderness 20 minutes Michael was first up. He slid out of the double bed, onto the sleeping platform above the kitchen, and went quietly down the ladder. Slipping on a warm coat from behind the cabin door, he unhooked the latch and wentContinue reading “An early Christmas (fiction)”

Agadez, Heart of the Sahara

Hitch-hiking across the Sahara in 1972, I got a ride with Jacques across the most isolated part of my route, the 1,000 km from the Tamanrasset, Algeria to Agadez, Niger. We had run out of spare tires at the tiny community of Tegguiada In Tessoum, and Jacques had managed to get a ride with four flat tires and an empty jerrycan into Agadez, leaving me to look after the car until he returned.