Burness Global: Stories

I saw a ring in one of the jeweler’s stores that was nearly big enough around for two of my fingers. What woman, I wondered, could possibly wear a ring that big? Haven’t you noticed the women’s hands here? Lo replied. It wasn’t until several days later, in Ain Chaib, that I understood.

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At a conference in Nairobi that focused on how more trees on farms could help reverse climate change, Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Wangari Maathai had a story to tell. It was about a fire that broke out in a huge forest.

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We approached a man carrying a machete and what looked like the trunk of an oil palm tree. In French, one of us asked, “Why do you bury dead here, in front of your house?”

He smiled. “So that they can watch over me and my family,” he said.

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At the start of the story-telling festival at L’Alliance Française, a cultural center in the heart of Nairobi, the host imposed a condition on the audience: we must promise to share the stories we hear. “Deal?” he asked. “Deal” we answered. “Sawa sawa,” he said, and the storytelling began, the first from Kenya.

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In the window, I glimpse a book that immediately takes me back years, to my days of trekking in the uplands north of Nairobi and down into the Rift Valley with four Green Belt Movement members. We went village to village to speak to women about planting trees across their treeless lands.

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But the impacts linger, just out of view. This morning, I was interviewing Machira Gichohi, managing director of the Kenya Dairy Board, and he brought up how the violence affected the dairy industry.

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ACCRA, Ghana – Over the last decade, support groups for HIV-positive people have flourished around Africa. The best of these groups offer so much: a safe place to talk about the range of issues they face; endless empathy; even connections that can lead to jobs. But rarely have I seen such a need for a [...]

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About an hour drive from Kampala, in a place called Namulonge, you’ll find Hadji Wanonda, a Ugandan farmer, who grows locally adapted and resilient varieties of rice on his one-acre plot of land. For years, Hadji planted cassava, maize and a few other crops for his family to eat. Now with improved rice varieties provided [...]

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I have traveled around the developing world since I was barely out of my teens. I’ve been in more places forgotten than remembered. But people often stay with me. Rosa does. I met her last fall in a rundown quarter of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She was 16, with black unruly hair that ran in all [...]

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It is the rainy season, and there is no rain. We take the road toward Monkey Bay, and pass a pick-up truck, people wave wildly. The driver stops the car; it is Justice and Eddie who have jumped out of the pick-up, and who run toward us. “Forgive me if I am tired today,” Justice [...]

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