Hey Loons

Adventures on a chocolate scooter #2: Down a hole and across a cliff in Formentera

A hole appears in the ground before us. The huge white lighthouse to our left stares south and to our right is a field of quivering brambles and loose stones that lead to a cliff edge and the orange, western sky. It’s a barren, desolate scene at Formentera’s southern tip, Cap de Barbaria. We’re alone…

My mum, the pilot

Once upon a time, a little girl was told that women shouldn’t fly airplanes … I grew up knowing ‘mum flew planes’. This was one of a series of simple facts in my childhood: my sister and I were born in London; our parents came from India; dad sang; mum flew. She told us stories…

Peter and the soup confusion

Peter, my Rwandan housemate, is a man of many talents – he’s my gym training buddy, my security guard, a law student and a boxing champion for the Kigali Police First Team. I don’t really need a security guard, Kigali is the safest city I’ve ever lived in, but I enjoy his company especially at…

Varanasi: Notes from the banks of the Ganges

India wakes early and Varanasi is no exception – at dawn the eastern sky above the sandy floodplain shines pink and the ghats, ancient stone steps on the edge of the Ganges, Hinduism’s holiest river, are glowing and already abuzz with life. From the hotel roof terrace we see devotees in the water’s edge at…

We Need To Talk About Why People Kill Each Other

Continuing the series, Letters from the Heart of Africa No narrative on Rwanda can really ever avoid the genocide. Its magnitude and barbarism is unfathomable. In 1994, one million people were murdered in a hundred days; neighbours and friends turned on each other; the nature of the killing was especially cruel with the majority killed by…

Cambridge blue and the red herring

Last weekend we went for a long punt in Cambridge; we glided on the glinting River Cam in a flat-bottomed boat, a punt, pushing ourselves with a pole, drifting lazily past ancient sandstone colleges and perfect lawns which spilled in to the riverbank. The University of Cambridge is my alma mater so we popped in…

The Little Fish Mystery

This is a true story that happened in my kitchen – it involves multiple murders, male-only breeding, a sex-change and suspected cannibalism. It’s also about my pet fish. It had all started so well: a glass fish tank, pure white sand, aquatic plants, ornamental rocks, a bubbling filter and a small heater that kept the…

The importance of memory

Continuing the series, Letters from the Heart of Africa. We all want to go places, forwards, like a car, pressing on the gas, looking out of the windscreen; but to be really safe, we need the rear-view mirror. And so it is with memory in Rwanda, for there, memorials, like the Genocide Memorial Centre, take…

The blue hill and the temple of the goddess of love

Assam, in India’s north-east, is known as the Land of the Red River and the Blue Hill. The Red River is the Brahmaputra, by now on its course from the Tibetan plateau it’s rich with red silt and keeps the valley fertile; its slow glide seems to set the pace here, for Assam is also…

The fox in the box

One evening a fox was dying in my back garden. Its fur was patchy, its eyes were sad and watery, and it sniffed pitifully amongst the bushes. I have mixed feelings towards foxes. One part of me, the idealistic, romantic side, likes them. They are beautiful, shy creatures of sharp senses, swift and playful, with…

Help! I’m a businessman going to work in an NGO in Africa

One of my life goals was to volunteer in Africa but I was never quite sure if my career path could ever take me there. What use would I be in an NGO in Africa? Surely African NGOs needed doctors, nurses, teachers, humanitarian workers and engineers – not suited business people like me. How wrong…

Adventures on a chocolate scooter: beach towels and helmets in Formentera

We’re on Formentera, a small island just 19kms across, to the south of Ibiza, it’s the worst kept secret of Europe’s pretty beach destinations; the waters are aquamarine and clear, its sands white. Its beaches are like the Maldives but without coconut trees or seaplanes. There’s a laid back air. No clubs, no loud music,…

A Rough Guide to the Various Forms of Rwandan Handshakes

Rwandan body language is fascinating. As someone born in England,where office handshakes are either hard, soft or damp squib, Rwandans, who love to shake hands, offer a new level of workplace sophistication when it comes to the handshake. The first thing to note is the frequency. Hands are shaken ad libitum and can be shaken…

Going bald: the journey through pain and pleasure

Once, when I had hair, I revelled in it joyously; I had a quiff that sat up proud like a duck’s bum, sometimes spawning a rebellious love-curl; my side-burns dropped to the bottom of my earlobes; my back and sides were ‘grade one tapered’; the rest, back-brushed in to a bouffant coiffure. I thought I…

A special place of remembrance, hope and beauty

It was the most beautiful place I’ve ever worked in: a creamy-white building with balconies facing the hills of central Kigali, nestled in rose gardens and shaded by palms, in a peaceful air filled with birdsong. But more than just beauty, this quiet, modest site, the Kigali Genocide Memorial is one of the world’s truly special…