Conservation Agriculture

Another article. While global warming is going to have some terrible impacts in southern Africa, there is some hope in conservation agriculture.

Finally

I'm finally back at journalism again with the first of what will hopefully be many articles for IRIN, an independent news service under the UN's financial umbrella that focuses on humanitarian issues. There's no glorious byline because it's a wire service designed for redistribution anywhere (Reuters, among others, distributes stories). The article is here.

Mike and Morris

On Wednesday night, we were walking on a trail off Johan Rissik Drive which runs along a high ridge above Pretoria and has great views of the city and is relatively empty and peaceful. It's a good place for walking the pooch because we can let him off the leash and he can harass the guinea fowl that live on the grassy hillsides. When we were almost back to the car, we walked across a small pullout - think "Scenic View" stop in U.S. - and there sat a South African police car with two white officers looking over the city. One of them greeted us in Afrikaans and I replied hello in English and then officer Mike started talking. He is a voluble man who was excited to see the city, his favorite, from this perspective again since he and his partner Morris were transferred to a different district. He said he and Morris were on special assignment, "We're not your regular policemen", but that the day's work was done and they wanted to revisit this view. He compared it to the other city people mention incessantly here for its beauty, Cape Town, and how he was assigned to working the "Flats Wars" in the northern townships there during the late '90s but that his favorite place was still Pretoria. One of his first assignments was in Pretoria during the '80s and he clearly relished those days as did Morris whose rounded ears and tired eyes gave him a generally circular appearance. Morris was very tan. Mike was tall and mustachioed with hound-dog eyes and a certain vigor. They both wore navy blue cargo pants tucked into combat boots and bullet-proof vests with 9mm pistols holstered on the front. He said he left his Pretoria duty for an assignment in Soweto during the wars there in the early '90s when he said it really seemed like the country would fall apart. I've read a book about that time in Soweto and it seems like it nothing short of a brutal hell. He said, despite it all, he still loves the country and won't leave. "Someone has to stay," he said in reference to the two million Afrikaaners who left, many for Australia, when Mandela was elected in 1994. Morris smiled and nodded along. I offered to take their picture because they were holding a camera and they said a friend of theirs was making a scrapbook for them so they wanted a picture from one of their favorite views and cities. They welcomed us effusively to the country and hoped we enjoyed it. M said that it was the best interaction she's ever had with a policeman and I agreed. Earlier in the day they had blown a tire at high speed so Morris decided to turn the car around to the side that still had two hubcaps and then I took their picture with Pretoria's lights behind them and dusk falling.