Photostory about Ebola on theIRC.org

Please click on this link for a visual essay on the IRC response to the ebola heamorragic fever outbreak in Mweka...

http://www.theirc.org/resources/essays/responding-to-an-outbreak-of.html?

Great Western Radio's Christmas Message

African Darter

On Friday night I took a friend to see the Belgian bridge over the Lulua river...
a straight concrete structure spanning 800 meters, straight and bold as the colonial despots.
They say in Kasai that they used to 'feed the blacks to the crocodiles' off this bridge.
There is blood on the rails of the bridge, and slavery has as way of not disappearing.

As the sun set, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water flowed beneath,
this meisterwek of bridge building....
to harness the power of this torrent would mean untold richness and development of this
lost little world.

The sight of the green savanna and the pregnant river fills me with joy and i start to sing.
Dayo- Me Say Dayo!

And then i see him, approaching me with swagger. He must be fifteen, a fisher boy of the river..
He reacts like a little man, his dreadlocks are braided, with bright colored cotton.
I think of a Lost Boy, a child soldier in Monrovia, a Mai Mai infantry man with a Kalashnikov out sized.
In his left hand a brace of river fish, blood dripping onto the concrete, the fish are for sale.
In his right hand tied to a piece of fishing line, is a river bird, shimmering and shivering.
Iridescent, petulant eyes, bright orange webbed feet for negotiating the currents of the water.

The bird is for sale he announces, 12 Dollars!
I hand him a brand new five dollar bill... he scowls and raps the fishing twine around my hand,
spitting an cursing he rambles off towards the town...

After ten minutes i have untied the twine, with the help and concentration of my friend,
the river bird, more and more nervous struggles against my attempts to free it from the tangle of nylon.

I find my way to a sheltered cove on the river bank, under the cover of mangroves, i find a huddle of small pirogues; and there on the roots of a mangrove I place the river bird, who without even nodding
Plunges like a stone into the river and is gone without even a trace of bubbles..

My friend said: You did for the Bird what Jesus did for us.
I did for the bird what anyone who listens to his ego would do,
its a lame dog over styles thing!

And i wonder, who was the real slave here? the Bird? the boy who in order to live, taps beauty and does his bit to eradicate our biodiversity

...in order to survive?