Kate Thomas
Kate Thomas worked on the foreign desks of two national British papers before heading to Africa as a stringer. After two years in post-conflict Liberia, she now roams a little more freely, documenting human stories in fragile parts of Africa and the world. Kate writes for major newspapers and magazines worldwide, collaborates with aid agencies and is also a travel writer for Bradt and Loney Planet.
Liberians sing the refugee blues
In a world fairer than this, Sarah Mayson might have been a soul singer. With a dark indigo headband, long purple earrings and eyelids painted to match, she looks the part. And the girl can sing. Her voice, strong and velvety, drifts through the refugee camp, sweetening the thick, stagnant air. I don't understand her native language, Madingo, but the tone of her lyrics makes me think of WH Auden's World War II poem, Refugee Blues. ...
Eastern Congo: Looks like heaven, feels like hell
The government official spun around in his chair, kicked an empty beer bottle with his heel and stared out of the window. "North Kivu looks like heaven," he said. I agreed. A sunbird sang and we sat for a moment in silence, lost in the sunset. In the distance, cormorants and cuckoo hawks circled high above the glassy waters of Lake Kivu. ...
Losing everything in Congo's violent North Kivu
The only thing Manga Mutaka thought he would lose at the Mugunga camp for internally displaced people was his eyesight. In the end, he lost everything. Mutaka and his family are Twa, or Pygmies, from the volatile Ngongo region of North Kivu province in war-torn eastern Congo. When they tired of a life on the run from escalating rebel clashes, they gave in and came to Mugunga, a camp that houses nearly 30,000 people, 15 km (9 miles) from North Kivu's capital Goma. ...
Indignity and despair in Liberia's biggest prison
When Richard Lovelace penned the 17th century love poem that begins "Stone walls do not a prison make", he obviously hadn't been to Liberia's most overcrowded jail. For at Monrovia Central Prison there is little else but crumbling stone walls, rusty iron bars and the stench of rotting dignity. ...
Conditions grim in Sierra Leones diamond mines
It could have been a scene from a movie. Another long, hot day was coming to an end and the African sun was sinking into the dusty red earth. As the blue sky blushed, he knelt in front of me and held out a sparkling rock. But this was no proposal. And if it were a movie it could only have been "Blood Diamond". Last year the Hollywood blockbuster brought the story of Sierra Leone's brutal diamond-fuelled war to the silver screen. The conflict ended in 2001 and since then the recovering West African nation has made great strides in combating illegal exports of blood diamonds. ...
Next entries
