Haiti - a very different Caribbean

Haiti  has taken a battering down the years; dictators, the catastrophic earthquake, a cholera epidemic Hurricane Matthew and now in 2025 another cycle of gangs and intervention missions.

Yet cruise liners still stop on day trips to stunning beaches and the Oloffson Hotel - (Petit Trianon in 'The Comedians') has rooms  named for all the stars that stayed in better times. The house Band RAM fronted by the hotels owner as lead singer, are not to be missed.

Voodoo remains a powerful force in this culture.

I was based at Port Salut in the south west for a while. It may have now been improved, but the road from Port au Prince to Port Salut stopped me complaining about African roads ever again - ever.

Port Salut is a reminder of what much of the rest of the county may have looked like before deforestation and overgrazing.

Despite all its setbacks, Haiti remains a unique culture.

Liberia

For a country adjacent to Sierra Leone the difference is striking. From Graham Greene’s ‘Journey Without Maps’ and Barbara Greene's ' Too Late to Turn Back' , little appears to have changed outside of Monrovia. There are remote settlements frequently cut off in the rainy season and in the dense forests a real sense of  a more ancient Africa, a place where the spirit world is close and deep rooted secret societies hold sway.

The Poro and Sande societies exist across Sierra Leone and parts of Guinea as well, but here in remote forest clearings they feel all pervading, particularly when you see a fully enrobed 'devil' moving through a village as dusk falls.

Liberia has taken a battering from the civil war and the Elbola outbreak, but then with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to lead the country, the basis of relative political stability was established.

Liberia is noted for dangerous rip tides. Once in the water the shore was suddenly very far away.  Rip tides are narrow currents so swimming parallel to the shore is the quickest way to get out of  the flow.  

Security has improved greatly, but the  infrastructure is still limited in Monrovia and minimal elsewhere.  The hinterland of Liberia is a journey into an Africa that much of the continent lost a long time ago.

Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is home to one of the nicest peoples on earth.

The welcome and the humanity are breathtaking. They have the greatest beaches in West Africa and without doubt  the best snapper and chips anywhere.

Sierra Leone also had one of the worst  mortality rate in the world - dead before  40 was not uncommon and that was before the arrival of the RUF .

Almost every  time I collected my team up to go to the field someone has died. It was simply tragic, These were really bright people of graduate standard with huge potential and it was all over for them before they really got into their stride.

 village blacksmith using hand bellows

I was based around Lunsar on a swamp rice programme with  Liberia busily arming the RUF near the border in return for the wretched diamonds.

Diamonds are the curse of this country because of their alluvial deposition. In other places you simply fence off an area, guard it and dig a hole. Here they can be found across river beds, often near the surface - anyone can find a diamond, although only a few of the well connected will really benefit.


The British army did the most outstanding job to stabilise the horrors of what the RUF did to this country

Today everything has changed, which is a mixed blessing. There are  construction programmes which are great for the economy but concerning for the environment especially the beaches. Sierra Leone needs to quickly get a grip before it ends up with similar problems to Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh.

Somalia

Somalia is not just a country, it is a state of mind. No one who travels here leaves untouched. Like the climate it is a place of extremes invoking passions unlike anywhere else.  Many leave promising that nothing on earth will ever make them return, or like me you are hooked.

I love Somalia. Once long ago, a Somali friend and I walked four camels from Kismayo up to Hargeisa, travelling mostly at night. It was an unforgettable journey. Then the dictator Siad Barre was overthrown and Somalia descended into a long nightmare.

I returned in 1991 to set up a relief programme for one of the British NGO's and ended up staying a year through some of the worst fighting. The bravery of the Pakistani soldiers in an impossible situation  and the eventual arrival of the Americans and Operation Restore Hope are not scenes easily forgotten.

It was like a tower of Babel. So many nations had soldiers there. From America to Zimbabwe with just about every letter in between. The French Foreign Legion had their first base on the roof of my compound. Then despite a huge effort we had Black Hawk Down and the rest is history.

Now there is finally  tangible progress. Somaliland has a vibrant economy and Puntland has  seen a sharp reduction in attempted piracy from its coastline. The changes down south are also making a real difference. The diaspora are slowly returning as are the refugees from Kenya.

 For those of us who have had the privilege of living there, Gerald Hanley's 'Warriors and Strangers'  encapsulates Somalia's magnetic appeal.

Northern Kenya

For what now seems a  long time ago I was fortunate to live with pastoralists in Northern Kenya.

I worked on  on a stock substitution programme to introduce camels to their traditionally cattle based society.  Cattle are more than livestock in this part of the world. They are financial banks on the hoof and for many  societies the bedrock of the curse of lobola (the bride price) which is an endless source of grief across Africa.

Occasionally Wilfred Thesiger used to wander up from his base at Maralal for conversation and just to ensure I was still alive. He was a great man and an outstanding writer, but  could never be persuaded to pack his own camels.

Camels and sand dams are two of my passions. In the right context they are both environmental superstars for arid lands. The more familiar boreholes for watering livestock do work, but more often open a pandora's box of conflict over ownership and access rights.

In those days local news travelled slowly and the endless cycle of cattle theft between the Turkana, Pokot and everyone else was fought out with spears.

Camel scraping out a seasonal dam

Today the land is drier and competition for resources has increased, with automatic weapons replacing spears as the weapon of choice.

This however remains a unique land that  shape's perspective on your own life.  The sense of light and space  is immense and the people are of a special quality to both survive here and enjoy this wonderful place.

Central Asia - first steps into a new world

It has been a roller coaster ride for the region since the Russians pulled out.  Some countries like Kyrgyzstan have taken tentative steps towards democracy, whilst others have veered sharply towards repression. Tajikistan is breath taking, but remains unstable, particularly  in its eastern province.
Now the old colonial power is making a concerted attempt to re-establish its influence in the region.

All the Stan's have one thing in common, they are a panorama of stunning landscapes and amazing peoples.

In the early 1990's, I was one of the first westerners into southern Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan after the fall of communism to establish what became a regional programme for one of  the more effective British NGO's.
The Tien Shan and the High Pamirs are utterly unforgettable but my lasting memory from the first few weeks was an outdoor shashlik (kebab) stall in sub zero temperatures. The vendor passed me a beer and in the seconds it took to open the lid and bring the bottle to my lips the contents had frozen solid and tragically remained undrinkable.

Central Asia in winter is not for the unprepared.

Beginnings - Kipling, Thesiger and Bouvier

Where do you begin after thirty years in remote places with amazing peoples?

The reasons are numerous but in the end it boils down to Kipling who as in many ways hit the nail on the head  'There are two types of men in this world: those who stay home, and those who do not' and as Nicolas Bouvier observed ' You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you'.

Africa  has changed out of all recognition from when I lived in isolation  years ago with the Pokot with only the occasional visit from Wilfred Thesiger  to see if I was still a going concern.

That world  has now long gone, replaced by mobile phones and the internet.  Once it was an ocean of wildlife with islands of people and now the reverse is true.

I remain grateful for the opportunity to have lived with a unique people content in their marginal existence and to have met some truly outstanding individuals along the way.

This blog is really my take on how so much has changed  in a few short decades for so many peoples in the remoter parts of the world.