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What Disaster Response Needs to Save Lives is More Volunteers

Ramshackle apartment buildings on the edge of Thamel, Kathmandu’s old city, in 2007.

Thirty-six hours on from the devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck central Nepal on May 25^th, we know that the statistical chance of finding survivors buried in the wreckage of homes, offices and apartment towers is dwindling rapidly towards nil. To date, some 2,200 people are confirmed dead by the Nepalese government, although this is a partial count of known dead that as more rubble is cleared and more reports of missing people coalesce, is inevitably, tragically, going to rise. Scores of small villages, many perched precariously on steep hillsides or beneath towering, notoriously unstable mountains, have simply not been heard from, and may take days yet to reach and account for. We can hope and pray that in those villages, lighter structures and an outdoors-leaning agrarian lifestyle have translated into greater odds of survivability for the families that live there. The likelihood, however, is that with the threat of landslides, coupled with the long distance from medical care for those who have received otherwise-survivable wounds, many more dead have simply yet to be accounted for. The projections of 10,000 fatalities from this earthquake may well prove prescient.

Annapurna Region, Nepal, 2007

The aim of any disaster response- especially rapid-onset- is to save lives. Of course, as any expatriate aid worker (EAW) who has been deployed into a disaster response can attest to, the experience of reality is often less about saving lives, and more about handling the awkward logistics of providing well-needed but often non-critical comforts to survivors. Bedrolls that make sleeping out under tarpaulins more comfortable- but don’t save lives. Temporary toilet blocks that reduce the spread of disease in temporary displacement camps- although historically epidemics following natural disasters (as opposed to human-made mass-displacement events) are very rare. And, as often as not, carrying out coordination between other aid groups, documenting findings of needs assessments, and submitting unwieldy paperwork to institutional and private donors which can take weeks to resolve and turn into actionable funding.

Ditto those Search and Rescue (SAR) teams that are dispatched, who often fly in with much heralding from sending nations and are widely celebrated in the media when they pull survivors from the rubble. I’ve discussed this elsewhere, but generally speaking, your chance of finding many survivors after the first 24 hours have passed are very low. After 48 hours, improbably low. And after 72 hours, with one or two notable exceptions, they are essentially down to nil. Yet international SAR teams are rarely on the ground within the first 24 hours, and in many cases miss the 72-hour window that most professionals will agree is your outside limit of effective action in SAR.

Now, I’m not poo-pooing aid response here. On the contrary, I am a huge believer in the work that the UN, local and international NGOs, host and donor governments, and civil society organizations do to support communities to cope with and rebuild after a major disaster like Nepal’s earthquake. The psychological impact alone of knowing that you’re not abandoned is of almost immeasurable value. Some assistance- temporary shelter that protects people from aftershocks and the monsoon rains, for example- will certainly contribute to saving lives. And in situations of prolonged displacement, primary medical facilities and hygiene/sanitation services are also critical to keeping people alive.

Likewise, SAR teams selflessly risk their lives to find survivors, or retrieve bodies that allow loved ones essential closure to their grief. Every life is precious, and when survivors are found, it can give a disproportionately large psychological boost to responders and survivors. It also allows those teams invaluable training to prepare for a potential disaster in their own territory, when they may well be the first-responders pulling survivors from the rubble.

Durbar Square in Kathmandu, 2007

Durbar Square, March 25, 2015

Moreso international medical and surgical teams, particularly following an earthquake, where they provide an essential supplement to overwhelmed or destroyed local medical infrastructure, performing life-saving surgery, amputations, and dealing with the complications of crushing injuries. If they’re on the ground quickly enough, these guys too can save lives.

But- and feel free to take issue with me on this one- a typical aid response to a rapid onset disaster doesn’t save that many lives in real terms.

By the time an aid response is even at its earliest stages of ramping up, those in peril will have already died, and most of those who are left would probably have coped- albeit less comfortably- regardless of the aid delivered.

If we want to see disaster responses save more lives, then what we need is more volunteers.

Now, I’m not talking about expat aid workers here. International aid workers today tend to be professionals. Individuals who have studied, who have developed skills and experiences in the aid sector over a number of years, and who fit into a number of key roles within a highly complex organizational and inter-organizational structure and who are paid employees of the agencies sending them. Not volunteers.

I’m not talking about SAR and medical response teams- both of which are directly involved (to various degrees of success) in the job of actually saving the lives of survivors. While some of these individuals ‘volunteer’ their time to be sent into disaster zones, these are not spontaneous “I feel like helping so send me” volunteers, but people who have developed highly technical skills in their careers and who have usually received specialized training in disaster response.

And, with respect, I am definitely not talking about people from the general public offering to volunteer their time. However well-meaning, however altruistic, however badly peoples’ ‘I need to help’ button is being pushed, the time to step into the aid profession is never immediately following a disaster. Without experience, training and a knowledge of how the aid sector and disaster response works (coordination, technical standards, lessons learned and past mistakes, etc. etc.), it is very hard to hit the ground in a crisis and be helpful. Most often, offers of voluntary assistance simply add to the noise in an already chaotic situation. If aid is on your heart, get trained, get experience, work for an agency so that you understand what is required, and when the next disaster hits, you’ll be ready to go.

And not just sexy tourist spots like Vanuatu, Thailand or Nepal. We need qualified aid workers in disasters in CAR, in Mali, in DRC and in South Sudan.

Fishtail Mountain behind Pokhara. Disaster sites on the tourist track tend to solicit more voluntourism offers than less picturesque locales.

No, I’m talking about a different sort of volunteer altogether. The sort of volunteer who can save lives. Who’s been proven to save lives, disaster after disaster, and in far greater numbers than international SAR teams, aid workers and medical teams combined. The sort of volunteer who is uniquely positioned to know where the victims are at the moment of the disaster, and how to get to them. Who’s ready to respond in an instant, and who has more motivation than even the most altruistic NGO first responder.

Of course, I’m talking about the members of disaster-affected communities themselves.

Look at the photos coming out of Kathmandu over the last 36 hours, what do you see?

Beyond the devastation, the piles of rubble, the collapsed walls and the pall of dust. Beyond the horror and tragedy of a fascinating, historic city shaken to its core and the flashes of grief on survivors and injured alike.

You see people. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. Nepalese people, crawling over the rubble, hauling at debris, digging out survivors. You see them working in teams, long chains of hands clearing fallen masonry, working as teams, high-visibility vests mixed in with office clothes and people just out in the street. From the images, it’s impossible to tell how many of these teams are spontaneously responding, and how many are being coordinated by emergency personnel. But with very few exceptions, they are almost all local Nepalese. They are acting within minutes and early hours of the earthquake. And anecdotally we know that the majority of this response is happening in an ad hoc manner as people try to save those immediately around them when the disaster hits, or who rush home to save families, friends and neighbours.

These are the people who will save lives by the tens of thousands.

These are the volunteers we need more of.

Swayambhunath (Monkey Temple), 2007

Swayambhunath (Monkey Temple), March 25, 2015

Now, the majority of this ‘voluntary’ action is spontaneous. It’s going to happen, regardless of whether we try and make it happen. If there’s one thing we’ve seen time and again following a disaster, it’s that in those moments of life-and-death, in the midst of horrific tragedy, a huge majority of people simply shine their brightest. In a disaster like this, what you don’t see is everybody just sitting around the piles of rubble going, “hey, let’s wait for somebody else to sort it out”. No, you see people getting in there, getting filthy and bloody, risking collapsing buildings coming down on their heads to save friends, loved ones and absolute strangers. I am a firm believer that, despite the overwhelming crapness that news media chooses to share with us from around the world, most people are inherently good and, when the chips are down, many prone to incredible selflessness.

But we can- and must- do things to facilitate this action to happen. Governments, the UN, NGOs and donors (especially donors) need to make sure that local community members- be they Haitians, Nepalese, Ni-Vanuatu, or any other disaster-prone location- are prepared, resourced and enabled to respond to save lives.

This is the domain of what in the aid industry is called “Disaster Risk Reduction” (DRR)- one subset of a large and [finally] growing set of programs that aim to make nations and communities in disaster-prone areas more resilient, more able to cope and respond, and- crucially- less vulnerable to disaster events.

The earthquake in Nepal was not (unlike that in Port-au-Prince) in any way unexpected. Disaster professionals have been talking for years- decades- about the earthquake threat to Kathmandu. The city’s location on a fault-line, the high population density, the poverty, the poor building practices and the way fragile brick structures were piled one on top of the other, and the isolation of the city high in a ring of mountains, were all factors that combined, made alarm-bells ring.

Kathmandu skyline, 2007

Nor were these alarm-bells ignored. There have been trainings, response plans, mitigation plans, public policies and drills. The UN, NGOs, and the government have all worked together, on paper and in practice, to prepare Kathmandu for an earthquake. We won’t know until the after-action reviews come out just how effective these measures have been. But the very fact that the conversations were happening and contingencies considered means that both government and aid workers were in a mindset to respond once the disaster hit- a critical psychological edge.

I know anecdotally that my own organization has carried out multiple response drills, has extensive response plans in place, and has a cadre of disaster-ready personnel among its local staff, as well as in its community programs. Their country director, a friend of mine, has a long pedigree of disaster response, which no doubt contributed to her being placed in a position of responsibility in an earthquake-prone office. She and I joked when she was first appointed that I’d be joining her shortly, once the earthquake hit.

We were all expecting it, and we were all planning for it.

So how do we save lives? We make sure that local community members- everyday citizens- in the countries we work are prepared and equipped to the best extent possible. And we encourage them to get on and do it.

1. Awareness-Raising (as a conversation)

As with any activity, the first place to start is making sure that everyone has the same information. It’s patronizing to think that external organizations can walk into an urban or rural community group and tell them “these are what your risks are”. In most cases, they know these things far more acutely than you do. That said, in many cases, certain risks (such as a massive devastating earthquake) may be deprioritized in a community because it’s been so long since one was experienced that it may not be perceived as a critical risk. Mutual learning has to take place. As external actors, it’s essential to respect communities’ perspectives on what is important to them. It’s also important to learn what their existing coping mechanisms and plans are- it’s unlikely that you’ll be coming in to a blank slate. They may have traditional responses. Elders may have memories of earlier events and what was done. All of this has to be factored in. At the same time, however, if a threat is genuine & building (such as an imminent earthquake), communities not already aware of this threat need to be brought up to speed. It’s a conversation. Facipulation? Try and avoid it. Apart from anything else, communities are made up of people, and people, by and large, are smart- especially when it comes to survival- so it shouldn’t be a hard job. Just do it right and do it respectfully and humbly. But between external actors and community groups, there needs to be a common understanding of what the threat to the community is, and how best to tackle it.

Community artwork as part of an NGO DRR program in Latin America

2. Invest in National-Level Response Structures

In more developed countries, emergency response is a blend of professional emergency services (911 operators, police, fire brigade, ambulance drivers, etc.) and trained volunteers. Here in Victoria, mobilizing large-scale civilian emergency response happens in a very structured way in response to large-scale disasters, either through the State Emergency Services (SES), or the Country Fire Authority (CFA). Both agencies have a similar structure and approach, with a relatively small core staff of full-time professionals who oversee the organizational integrity, and a very extensive network of trained volunteers with appropriate skillsets. Volunteers are drawn from and attached to community-level response teams, with the possibility to deploy into other geographical areas, which means that at their most basic, volunteers are often motivated by the desire to protect their own towns and suburbs, and by extension, homes and families. It’s a highly effective structure, and one that gets utilized year in and year out here (in Australia, the country where everything is trying to kill you).

Less developed nations are increasingly adopting similar mechanisms, to greater and lesser degrees and effect. Investing in these structures, from central government to regional and sub-regional levels, is critical to ensure sustainability, continuity, and effectiveness. These government programs are usually national in scale and with a reach that no single aid agency or donor is going to be able to achieve. The most successful models I’ve seen on the ground- primarily in Latin America- have brand recognition down to the community level, and are present in pretty much every at-risk administrative zone. Supporting and enabling these organizations will have far greater multiplying consequences than a stand-alone program.

What does this look like? Obviously, it means funding them. It means training their core staff- at higher levels, in effective response management, and at lower levels, the critical technical skills required to respond. But it also means that in your community-level engagement, your DRR messaging is in line with that of the national response agency’s (and if you disagree with that messaging, then negotiating directly with that agency, rather than going cowboy). It means ensuring that you’re identifying gaps in their training and resourcing, and working with them on agreeing how to fill those gaps. It means ensuring that any community-level structures you put in place are directly compatible with national disaster response agency processes and structures. And it means that, when you launch your response, you ensure your agency (and any community-level mobilization you do) is slotting in to that structure, not working over or against it.

Civil Defence personnel working with an NGO DRR program in Guatemala

3. Drill, Drill, Drill

The most effective way to ensure that responders will do the right thing in an emergency is to have them dry-run it, in simulation exercises and in repetitive drills. The more you can do this, and the more realistic the circumstances, the more likely people are to get it right when the real event happens. Not only are their skills more robust, but they understand what to expect (which boosts psychological resilience), and how to fit in more efficiently and effectively with higher-level structures. This in turn allows them to more effectively mobilize additional resources.

Community brigades need to understand basic SAR techniques, and life-saving first-aid. They will be responding, regardless of whether any external actors get involved. They will inevitably be at their homes, scrambling through debris to pull out loved ones. How can we help them more effectively work together as teams? Prioritize disaster sites? Safely remove rubble and ensure nobody else is hurt and killed? Communicate when communication lines are down and they need a medevac, or critical resources? What equipment can we help them acquire and maintain that might save lives, which can be kept on-hand and be ready to use when disaster strikes?

None of this is without its challenges. First aid supplies get pilfered, equipment rusts or is sold when it appears defunct and no emergency has occurred, and training has to be maintained to stay current and effective. But we have to look at communities as our first responders, as the people who are going to save the lives whose fate will have already been resolved long days before our teams actually reach them.

At a higher level sophisticated simulations allow national response agencies to understand how to interact with the inevitable international response system that will arrive in force in the hours following a disaster. Teaching them how to work within coordination mechanisms, how to leverage for support and how to communicate and fill gaps in capacity and response is crucial. Likewise, the UN and agencies absolutely must drill their responses with national response agencies involved, or they risk ignoring or undermining the single most critical activities taking place during the first 72 hours following a rapid onset disaster.

Community members, part of an emergency response committee in Ecuador, drill first-aid and casualty evacuation in preparation for a disaster event

4. Give, Give, Give

This one’s for the donor agencies. DRR isn’t sexy. DRR investment is increasing, largely on the back of advocacy campaigns that have increasingly called on donors not to neglect preparedness funding. The Hyogo Framework has assisted this process as well. When I first started in this industry 12 years ago, getting disaster preparedness funding was like pulling teeth. This, at least, has changed.

None the less, because government donors often use overseas aid as a domestic policy tool, they give in accordance with the attention of their constituents, which in turn is driven by media attention that goes into a frenzy following a tragedy but tends to ignore the day-to-day stuff. An oft-quoted figure is that $1 spent in DRR programming saves $10 in disaster response spending. And that’s just cash. Never mind the lives that are saved by effective DRR.

This spending needs to go into the high-level stuff: Government policies, retrofitting, building codes, urban planning & development, and training and equipping national disaster response agencies. It also needs to go into the community-level stuff. Local risk mitigation plans, training and disaster simulation drills, and everything in between.

Agencies need to do likewise, and never stop pushing the DRR agenda. And- for both donor agencies and aid organizations alike- continue to push for the understanding that DRR is not an emergency response issue- it is a part of any and all good development. This conversation, I’m happy to report, is a mature one in many parts of the development sector- but DRR can still feel like a tag-on or optional extra, and often gets left on the sidelines like an ugly step-sibling. It mustn’t be. DRR done right will directly contribute to more saving of lives than most other development or response activities out there.

5. Post-Disaster Support

In the communities that response agencies ‘take on’ as their own, they need to treat community members less like ‘beneficiaries’- which is really just a politically-correct way of saying ‘victims’- and more like staff-members. Community members are our first responders. They are in a very real way our partners on the ground. They are doing the work of saving lives, and our hope as response agencies has to be- very humbly and carefully- finding a way to support them as best we can.

Just like our staff members need support in a post-disaster setting, so do our community first-responders. For the first 24-72 hours, these people will be running on adrenaline. They will be driven by the primal need to save the lives of people they love. Some will be successful. Many will experience devastating grief.

And like all humans, that grief will have different impacts, and will need to be handled differently. Response agencies moving into a community need to be acutely cognisant of how to support people in this situation.

Agencies need to learn how to utilize Psychological First Aid (PFA) and other basic psychosocial programming. Just as psychological support for aid staff is becoming increasingly mainstream, this needs to be extended to community-based first responders. For some of them, being kept busy- utilized further in response programs, either as volunteers or as newly-hired staff- will be critical. Others may require rest, and being allowed to stop and mourn. In response activities, flexibility to cater for a range of first-responder needs has to be built in across the program- ‘mainstreaming’, to use a dirty word.

But the critical thing to remember here- communities are never passive victims. They are our first-response partners, they are the people who risked their lives to save others while we were still sitting in airport business lounges, and they are the people who will carry the weight of what just happened for the rest of their lives. They are, and must be, our number one priority as external responders. We must celebrate them and their achievements, enable and support them, and avoid disenfranchising or patronizing them at all costs, lest we add to the harm they have already experienced.

Let’s make sure that in all our response and pre-response programming, we are enabling community-based volunteers at every opportunity. These are the people who will save the lives we never get a chance to.

World Humanitarian Day 5 Years On- 5 Security Trends

Note: All aid worker casualty statistics in this article drawn from “Humanitarian Outcomes (2014), Aid Worker Security Database, https://aidworkersecurity.org/”

It’s been 5 years since the first official World Humanitarian Day, August 19^th 2009. The UN sanctioned the day in memory of the suicide bombing of the Canal Hotel, the UN Headquarters in Baghdad on that day in 2003. 11 years ago today, a suicide bomber drove a flatbed truck into the UN compound, parked beneath the window of the UN Special Representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and detonated his payload. 22 people, including de Mello himself, were killed, most of them UN personnel.

World Humanitarian Day commemorates their sacrifice, but also remembers aid workers who are targeted by violence while carrying out their work on behalf of populations in need around the world. Each year, and in increasing numbers, scores of aid workers experience violence in the field while bringing aid to people affected by war and disaster. Many, like de Mello and the 21 others who died August 19^th 2003, pay with their lives.

As somebody who was involved in a serious security incident some years back, today is a day that means something to me, too, and a chance for me to reflect on the co-workers who were with me that day, some of whom still carry the wounds they sustained. Many of my friends and colleagues in the aid industry have themselves survived security incidents, and many have lost friends and colleagues to violence.

The Aid Worker Security Database is a project which compiles global information about attacks on aid workers. Specifically it looks at acts of violence (as opposed to accidents and illness, which claim even more lives) in which aid workers are killed, seriously injured or kidnapped. The project began gathering data in 1997, so that now, 17 years on, it’s becoming easier to determine trends in the sector.

Let’s take a quick look at the figures.

In 2000, the AWSD recorded 42 violent incidents involving aid workers, involving 91 aid workers around the world (variously with UN, INGOs, LNGOs, IFRC and Red Cross/Red Crescent societies). Of these, 57 were killed, 23 wounded, and 11 kidnapped. 21 were expatriate staff (23%) while 70 were nationals (77%).

In 2013, thirteen years on, the database recorded 251 violent incidents against aid workers, with 460 aid workers caught up in violence. 155 aid workers were killed, 171 injured, and 134 kidnapped. 59 were expatriates (13%) while 401 (87%) were national staff.

The 11-year mean has seen an average of 112 attacks per year against aid workers, with 217 aid workers involved. 80 aid workers a year have been killed, 80 a year injured and 58 a year kidnapped. On average, 18% of aid workers involved in violence are expatriates, while 82% are nationals.

Since 2000, there has been a dramatic shift in the security landscape for aid workers. While the dataset is still relatively small, what is reflected in the figures is backed up by anecdotal evidence from the field, by individual agencies’ experiences and records (most large agencies and the UN have their own internal security incident tracking database for analysis and risk management purposes), and by trends and behaviours within belligerent groups.

Note as well that the AWSD only captures the top end of security incidents- instances of death, serious injury or kidnapping. It excludes less serious incidents (illegal detentions, muggings, threats, robberies, etc.). The AWSD does not factor in the psychological consequences of these incidents, which for victims of violence, including rape, can include a lifetime of psychological distress or struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (a report by the Antares Foundation this year reported up to 30% of aid workers exhibit symptoms of PTSD upon returning from the field). It also doesn’t capture the ‘near misses’- times when good management or pure luck has averted a much more serious incident in the field.

On top of this, remember that since 2000 (when most agencies considered themselves ‘neutral’ and therefore relatively immune to being targeted by hostile actors), the UN and other international aid agencies have seen a massive increase in their risk management strategies- increasing their protective and deterrent measures in particular to make it harder for them to be targeted, and generally trying to reduce their exposure to threats.

Despite all this, there has still been a huge increase in incidents and casualties in the field. Between 2000 and 2013 there has been a six-fold increase in the number of attacks, a five-fold increase in the number of casualties, with deaths up 270%, injuries up 740%, and kidnapping up by a substantial 12-fold increase. The only trend that has remained relatively constant is the proportion of expatriate vs. national staff involved in attacks, which hovers for the most part in the 15-20% range.

Overall, the absolute numbers of aid workers in the field (national and expatriate) has increased- so the rate of attacks on aid workers is not quite as pronounced. The AWSD estimates a modest increase in the attack rate against aid workers over the study period, without divulging the precise figures (they are based on its estimates of numbers of aid workers in the field- a difficult figure to pin down).

During the period 2006-2012, this fluctuated between 40 and 60 victims per 100,000 aid workers. Using the average figure of 50 victims per 100,000 aid workers, this results in a probability of a 1 in 2,000 chance of becoming victim of a serious attack as an aid worker. In perspective, the chance of being hit by lightning is estimated at 1 in 1.6 million. The chance of dying in a plane crash (if flying one of the world’s bottom-rated 25 airlines) is 1 in 800,000. The chance of dying in a plane crash (if flying one of the world’s top-rated 25 airlines) is 1 in 12 million. The chance of being killed in a car crash this year is about 1 in 7,000.

There are some key trends we can draw out of these figures.

1. Kidnapping is a rapidly growing threat.

The sheer number of aid worker kidnappings- from 11 in 2000 to 134 in 2013- is not just a statistical spike, but reflective of a well-understood development within the operational mandate of belligerent groups. Since the globalization of al Qaeda, its subsidiaries (AQIM, AQAP) and other similar extremist insurgency groups such as al Shabaab and the Taliban, their own experience has taught them that kidnap for ransom is an extremely lucrative trade. Indeed the rapid growth of AQIM in particular has been substantially attributed to the ransom payouts by European nations for the safe release of kidnapped nationals.

As such, AQ has developed guidelines for how to run a kidnap-for-ransom operation targeting foreigners, which has been widely disseminated, and acted upon. And because in the areas where these groups operate, aid workers make up a large, visible and vulnerable population of foreigners, it’s not surprising that they are frequently targeted. In fact, until this year, aid workers have been the #1 victims of overseas kidnap-for-ransom operations. In 2014, employees of global corporations apparently face a higher kidnap risk than aid workers now. But the threat to aid workers is so pronounced that the AWSD released their key 2012 report with the title “The New Normal: Coping with the Kidnapping Threat”.

If there’s a silver lining to this, it’s that kidnappings are, overall, survivable. While in the earlier years of the Iraq insurgency (2003-5) there were a number of high-profile executions of kidnapped foreigners, AQ and its partner agencies have realised that there is a better business-model, and as such, kidnapped foreigners are quite clearly valuable assets, worth protecting to exchange for prisoners or large sums of money. Since 1997, just 14% of aid worker kidnappings have resulted in the death of the hostage- and most of these deaths have occurred either during the hostage-taking itself (generally agreed as the most dangerous time of any kidnapping situation), or during an attempted rescue or escape (also highly dangerous). In short, if you survive the initial hostage-taking, you don’t attempt to escape, and nobody tries to rescue you by force, then your survival chances jump into well above 90% probability.

Yay!

Just be prepared for a wait. The average holding period prior to release for an expatriate aid worker is a little under 2 months. So be patient, wait it out, and keep your spirits up.

Also, do a hostage survival course.

2. Far more national staff are in the line of fire.

This is has always been a given, and this is why the average trend for expatriate v. national staff victims is relatively flat. There are simply a lot more national staff members on the ground than international ones, and therefore when something happens, they’re much more likely to be involved in the incident.

There’s some important reflection for agencies to do around this one, namely because inadvertently or deliberately, aid agencies manage the risks of national staff differently to expatriates. There is a good reason for this. Expatriates do generally have a higher risk profile than national staff (this may not be the case in some contexts, such as those involving ethnic or local political tensions). They cannot blend in, or disappear into a crowd if things go bad. They do not have the language skills to diffuse a tense situation. They have more economic value as a hostage and more political value as a target than nationals (depending on the context). Therefore there need to be more stringent risk management processes around expatriates in most contexts.

And on the flipside, dead national staff members are less damaging to the reputation of an organization than dead expatriates. The abduction and murder of CARE Iraq’s country director, Margaret Hassan, in 2004 was a high-profile media event and crisis for that organization. Ditto the kidnapping of the 2 MSF-Spain aid workers Montserrat Serra and Blanca Thiebaut from Dadaab in 2011 who were held for nearly 2 years, and in both cases would have required a massive organizational response and extensive damage-control. By contrast, while the murder by death-squad of 17 Sri Lankan ACF staff members in 2006 was a tragic event, and likewise the killing in a militant raid of 7 Pakistani World Vision staff members in 2010, neither event made a comparably big splash in the media, and neither had significant political, fundraising or profile consequences for the organizations in question (though I am confident that both events resulted in extensive internal changes to security management processes within those organizations).

As a result, we see the following:

1. National staff are more likely to be given clearance to travel into hostile environments, with the expectation that their risk profile is lower and they are better able to navigate the hazards (both statements often true, but they still end up exposed to risk)
2. Relative numbers of expatriate staff in the field are reducing. This is partly as a deliberate risk-management strategy, but also reflective of the increase in capacity of national staff members globally. Where many roles used to require expatriates to fill them, the number of field roles for expatriates in most large organizations is decreasing, as nationals are more and more capable to do the jobs, and do them for less than it costs to put an expatriate in that role. Note that this reduces risks to expatriate staff (who are not in harm’s way as a result), but can also reduce the overall risk to the national organization, as with fewer expatriates, the organization’s risk profile reduces, and its interest as a target goes down.
3. There is an increasing use of remote-operations in hostile environments. In places like Syria, Somalia and Iraq, agencies are less likely to put their own staff on the ground, and more likely to build a relationship with a pre-existing grass-roots NGO already operational in the field. They then channel programs, funding and resources into those partner agencies to do the work for them- which partly explains the big jump in both absolute and comparative numbers of LNGO and local RCRCS victims in the AWSD. This is known as ‘risk transfer’.
4. There is an increase in absolute terms in the number of local start-up NGOs. Similar to the previous point, with the increase in education, global connectivity and awareness in many less developed nations, locals have increasingly recognized the value in the NGO model to access and deliver assistance to needy local populations. As a result, there are far more spontaneous local NGOs appearing in hot-spots around the world, exposing more and more locals to security risks. Not only are these local personnel often directly implicated in crises (see for example many of the community-based organizations that operate in Syria, who will be identified by belligerents as being on one side or the other and therefore as potential targets), but these LNGOs rarely have the resources or the skills base to invest in significant security risk management for their staff and operations.
5. Expatriates are more likely to receive security training. Partly because of the higher individual risk profiles of expatriate staff, and the very high cost per capita of providing security training to personnel, most large agencies have prioritized training up their senior managers and deployable expatriate staff in hostile environment survival and risk management. The result is that many field-level staff in hostile environments have little or no security training, and as such may be engaged in more risky behaviour. This is something that is increasingly acknowledged by aid agencies, and programs are beginning to be put in place to rectify this, but it is a slow process. Training 10,000 national staff globally for a large organization takes a lot of time and a lot of precious donor funding in an environment where agencies are being given less and less. For small agencies, it can be a financial impossibility.

3. Expatriate staff face a disproportionate risk in hostile environments.

For reasons already discussed- their perceived political and economic value, their lack of awareness around local risk contexts, their inability to blend or disappear- expatriates do still face a higher risk profile when compared to their local counterparts. In short- they are more likely to be targeted by a belligerent.

Although on the surface this may not appear to be borne out by the accompanying statistics, it very much is. While 2013, for example, saw just 13% of victims being expatriates, recall that there are far fewer expatriates relative to national staff in the field. Even your typical large NGO program with 100 or so local staff might only have 5 to 8 expatriates. In some cases (e.g. Ethiopia, where expatriate numbers are strictly controlled), the ratio can be far lower- just 2 or 3 expatriates for several hundred staff. Many LNGOs- whose ranks increasingly populate the statistics- have no expatriates in the field at all. The AWSD estimates that expatriates are at least twice as likely to be targeted as national staff.

This does make developing a balanced risk management strategy challenging, and ultimately, agencies need to decide where their thresholds of acceptable risk lie, how critical their programs on the ground are to the populations they are supporting, and therefore the extent to which they are willing to place their staff at risk.

4. The majority of security incidents occur in a handful of global hotspots.

This goes without saying, really. There’s a reason nobody books vacations to Syria or Mogadishu– because we well understand that bad things regularly happen in these places, and going there puts us at unnecessary risk. The same is true of aid workers.

For example, in 2012, of 170 incidents, fully 130 took place in just 5 nations- Afghanistan (56), South Sudan (21), Syria (18), Somalia (17) and Pakistan (17). (Note that in relative terms, the rate of attack against aid workers was highest during this period in Somalia, as there are vastly fewer aid workers inside Somalia than inside Afghanistan and other locations). This dynamic is pretty easy to interpret looking at global and humanitarian news headlines. As an aid worker, if you’re in one of these places (this last twelve months, other security hotspots include Nigeria, Iraq and Gaza), your proportional probability of being involved in an incident is dramatically increased.

In addition, you can cross-reference this against the most deadly belligerent groups. For example, in IntelCenter’s latest analysis, Boko Haram has revealed itself as the most deadly terrorist group so far this year, with nearly 3,000 attributable killings since the start of 2014 (not, obviously, restricted to aid workers). The Islamic State comes in second place, while other groups with an honourable mention include the al-Nusrah Front, AQAP, al Shabaab and the Taliban. Again, no real surprises here if you follow security trends. As always, good security management tends to begin and end with common sense. But when you map these groups, global hotspots, and areas where aid workers operate, you immediately get a very skewed focus as to where real investment in aid worker security needs to begin.

5. When it comes to expatriates, your veteran EAWs are more likely to be involved in a serious security incident.

This is a very simplified and anecdotal descriptor, but there’s a key learning here. The sort of aid worker most likely to be involved in a major security incident is not your excited, idealistic newbie sent off on her first overseas assignment from head office. Why not? Well, because she’s far more likely to be aware of her own limitations, will probably be taking risk advice (like curfews & no-go areas) seriously, and is less likely to be placed into a highly threatening environment. If she’s just arrived in country, her senses will be up and therefore her situational awareness more likely to be running high. Frankly, she’s probably going to be a little edgy- as is the norm when you first arrive somewhere unfamiliar. It’s a basic human reaction.

By contrast, the primary at-risk descriptor here (which I know goes a long way to capturing a number of readers of this blog, and this author hits quite a few of the criteria too) is probably 10 or more years into their aid worker career, have done three or four long-term assignments overseas, and are several months into their current posting. They tend to have a been-there, done-that attitude, which means they will- deliberately or inadvertently- expose themselves to more risks. They are more likely to be deployed to a hostile environment. After the first few months, they’ve settled into a routine and have lost the initial awareness and heightened focus that comes with being in a new environment. And they’re more likely to settle into a ‘nothing’s happened so far, so I’m not really expecting anything to happen now’ mindset.

In short, it’s not just the inexperienced young expatriate staff that agencies need to concentrate on, but critically, the experienced, somewhat-jaded older hands who are moving into the peak of their humanitarian careers.

***

The sad reality is, any UN, Red Cross or NGO response necessarily requires placing staff at ever-increasing risk these days, and that much is borne out very clearly in the accompanying statistics. The absolute number of attacks, the number of victims, and particularly, the drastic increase in the kidnapping threat, means that being an aid worker- national or expatriate- in many of the world’s hotspots is dangerous business.

For any agency that operates in hostile environments- UN, INGO, LNGO, IFRC or RCRCS- security has to be a central component of operational budgets (donors, please take note), and putting in place a robust, well-informed security strategy is critical for every country office. Management staff need to be trained up in risk management processes, clear security SOPs need developing, a skilled and experienced cadre of security staff need to be employed to support response capability, and field staff need to be trained in basic survival procedures.

Even with all these things in place, sooner or later, chances are most large agencies will face one or more major security incidents, so they must be drilled in critical risk management and containment procedures. It’s sadly so commonplace as to be almost inevitable. But with good processes in place, the chances can be reduced, the impact minimized, and, hopefully, lives spared.

Long Exposure Extravaganza

I said in a recent post that I wanted to get more daylight long-exposure photos happening, and this is me making good on that promise.

(Below shot at normal exposure)

I’ve a growing collection of photos of this pier- I’ll try not to post all of them- as it’s one of the more photogenic in the area. Not too long ago I headed down with my setup and spent a little while shooting long-exposure and time-lapse photos. It was a perfect day for it- the sea was choppy, the sun was out, and the early morning light leant itself to using the polariser I layer with the ND400 filter (which allows me to darken the image without affecting the colour, so I can leave the shutter open longer). I shot at a few different exposure lengths, but found the sweet-spot with some 45-second exposures (like the one at top of this post) that turned the sea to mist, and some shorter (1-3 second) frames which allowed the waves to blur but still kept some of the choppy texture.

You can see the effect of the long exposure in the silky water, and also (in the longer exposures) the blurred clouds. Amazingly, the seagulls at the end of the pier were relatively sedate, mostly sitting around and bobbing their heads in the breeze, so they remain fairly static even in the 45-second frames.

It’s some of the details I love in these sorts of images, as the effect essentially ‘distorts’ or ‘re-represents’ reality. The streaming dribbles of water from the pier struts, for example.

I also enjoy the contrast between the 45-second exposure frames and shorter 2-second ones. Both blur the water, but the shorter exposures still give you some of the heave and swirl of the water. You can see this in the two shots below- the first at 45 seconds and the second at 3 seconds.

I actually shot a series of these at 1 second and turned them into a 3-second time-lapse movie. The effect is great, and marries two of my favourite photographic techniques- long exposure and time-lapse. Unfortunately I can’t figure out how to upload it without a catastrophic loss of image fidelity, so until I do that, you’ll just have to imagine it.

As I get more comfortable, familiar and proficient at taking long exposures, I’ll aim to get a few more into my portfolio. I’d love to be out more often when the light is changing, but unfortunately that tends to be at the busiest time of the day for families- breakfast and dinner. At any rate, this is a style of photography (and an effect) I really enjoy, so watch this space for more as I get my head around it a little more…

Incidentally, I’ve started hosting my photos at the photosharing website “500px”, which I quite like as a setup. It’s a little like flickr used to be before flickr got a bit too big for its own good, and a place where you can still get some decent interaction between photographers. My portfolio is still small, but I’m building on it. You can find it here if you’re interested.

Peace out.

-MA

Shifting Light

Trying to balance the light across a frame is a fundamental part of photography. When the sun is out, this is easiest, as the sun throws lots of light onto the foreground of the shot, while the sky is comparatively darker. The variation of light coming off both ground and sky is relatively similar, and all parts of the image can therefore be quite well lit.

When the sky is cloudy, less light reaches the ground. At the same time, counterintuitively in some ways, the sky itself is far lighter than on a sunny day- because light is being reflected among the clouds. When the camera tries to account for this, it has a choice- it can either expose for the sky, leaving the foreground dark, or it can expose for the ground, leaving the sky blown out without texture. On the whole, unless you’re looking for silhouettes, this doesn’t result in the most appealing photos.

As such, photography on a cloudy day can be a frustrating experience. That said, it can also be extremely rewarding. As I’ve posted a few times, I love the sky, and clouds in particular. On days when the sky is full of texture- particularly partly-cloudy days when gaps open up in the sky and the full vertical extent of clouds and their textures can be seen- photography can be a lot of fun.

I took the following photographs a couple of weeks back with the family at a botanical garden east of Melbourne. It was a cloudy, rainy day and opportunities for good shots might have been limited- it was a great location and could have produced some really colourful shots under full sun. However, working with a few approaches, I was able to snap a handful of images that I quite liked, and that I think show some of the things you can do to try and account for less uniform lighting conditions. All these images (including the title image above) were taken over a 90-minute period on a single afternoon.

The first is look for the sun breaking through. Every so often, a patch of sun will come through and light the foreground. If the sky is especially dark, this can produce some dramatic effects. In this shot, light is falling on this stand of trees, while behind the clouds are dark and menacing. The contrast makes for an unusual and interesting image.

Of course, such breaks are relatively rare, and you have to be in the right position and ready to take them when they do appear. Another benefit though is that the softer light of a cloudy day, while perhaps leaving landscapes a little dull, make portraits much more viable. Strong, direct sunlight light casts shadows on faces that may not capture the detail and interest of a face in the way you want. Cloudy days, however, offer great portraiture opportunities. In this shot, the fact that the sky is a little blown out and textures are soft really doesn’t matter, as it’s Miss Nine in the foreground that you’re interested in.

Here she is again. You can see that the soft light coming from multiple directions (scattered by cloud) means her skin is gently textured without any hard shadows or patches of contrast. There’s some sunshine coming through at this particular juncture- enough to light up her hair- but it’s watered down. Not great for landscapes, but perfect for this sort of thing.

Sometimes the light just won’t cooperate when you’re in position, and you won’t have the luxury of waiting around. Here’s where using graduated neutral density filters can help you out. You can apply these onto the camera or in post-processing. I’ve done the latter with this image, where in the original frame, the foreground was underlit. By manually lightening the foreground, I’ve pulled up enough colour and detail to keep it interesting, and still maintained the darkness of the sky for drama and contrast. This is a slap-dash job, five minutes of fiddling with Lightroom. Doing it properly takes longer, but avoids darkening treetops at the horizon or leaving an unsightly glow where objects touch the sky. HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing does something similar by layering two identical images with different exposure values and blending the best parts of each. Unless done well, I find HDR tends to look artificial and unappealing.

Click to view a larger size.

Again with the portraiture. Watch for moments, even if there isn’t direct sunlight on the foreground, when there is just enough soft light on the foreground and an especially heavy background- this can be all the contrast you need to capture a really nice moment. Here, the surrounds are not really well lit enough for a landscape, but there’s enough of a glow on Miss Nine, and enough darkness in the sky, that the effect works well. Here, the clouds themselves provide the interest for the backdrop- depth, texture, movement and drama- and a nice compliment to Miss Nine in the foreground.

Using fill-flash can achieve a similar effect artificially, if natural light is not cooperating. This can also be achieved in post-processing to some extent, although you will need to ensure that your original exposure is within certain margins. If whites blow out or darks are too pronounced, you will not be able to recover them.

The real trick, though, is to be ready when the light does change- and it will. When you’ve got foreground sun and background clouds, you’ve got a recipe for a nicely-lit and often dramatic shot, and this is when your colours are really going to pop as well.

I would like to head back to the Australia Gardens in full sun and take a handful of landscapes, but I wouldn’t change the conditions we had that afternoon for anything. Not only does the changing light make for interesting, contrasty and often dramatic photography, but it keeps you on your toes. You have to be watching, ready and in the right place, trying to predict when that next shift in the light will come, and then pounce on it. Admittedly, you need a lot more time and patience for this sort of snapping. But when the light does work for you, it’s so much more rewarding.

All photos taken at the Australia Garden at Cranbourne, VIC.

 

 

Passing Time

All photography, at its most basic, is the way in which light exposes itself to a recording medium (plate, film or sensor). Three metrics govern this- the size of the hole the light passes through (aperture), the amount of time the medium is exposed to the light (shutter speed), and the sensitivity of the medium to recording light (ISO). A ‘well exposed’ image balances the three metrics to produce an image that reflects the artistic vision of the photographer. Typically, this is an image wherein the darks are not lost to textureless shadow, the whites are not blown out, the colours are representative of the scene the photographer viewed, and the main subject of the image is well represented in form and emphasis.

Of course, changes to each of these metrics affects how the photo turns out, even if the overall exposure of the medium to light remains the same. Changing aperture affects the amount of the image, front-to-back, that is in focus. Changing ISO affects the grain, or texture of the image. And changes in shutter speed sharpen or blur moving objects.

Generally, blur in a photo is unappealing. However it can be used to artistic effect. One form of this is to give the sense of motion. Panning on a slow shutter speed with a moving runner, bird or vehicle can, done well, freeze the subject in sharp detail but blur the background, giving a sense of speed and movement.

When part of the image is stationary and another part moving, the effect can also be pleasing. In the above image, the beach and rocks are stationary, while the sea and clouds are moving. Typically, waves move slowly enough that a moderately fast shutter-speed (say, 1/50th of a second) will freeze them quite nicely and eliminate any blue. As you lengthen the amount of time the sensor is capturing light (generally longer than 1/10th of a second), waves start to blur a little. The longer the shutter is open, the more the waves begin to disappear, the surface of the water becomes smooth, and areas of turbulence appear to mist over.

The above photograph was shot over 60 seconds- a full minute in broad daylight. Typically, leaving the shutter open so long at any aperture will cause so much light to hit the sensor that the image will simply wash out- all you will see is an empty white frame. To overcome this, I use a Neutral Density (ND) 400 filter- a colourless dark glass that goes over the front of the lens which does not change the colour of the light, but reduces it 400 times- allowing you to open the shutter 400 times longer than you would under other circumstances. I stack this with a polarizer- because in bright daylight even the ND400 can become overwhelmed- and this allows me to keep the shutter open for up to around two minutes in full sun.

I enjoy taking shots like this, as they paint reality from a different perspective. Time folds in on itself, and you get to see the world in a way it doesn’t usually appear. However they take time to set up. You need to frame the image on the tripod and adjust the polarizer first. Once you have the right composition and have pre-focused the image, you need to switch to manual focus, and then you can then screw on the ND400. You need to do this without rotating the polarizer, or you will shift the tones and contrast in the image. You also mustn’t twist the lens or you’ll throw the image out of focus. You also need to turn Image Stabilization off (if you have an IS lens), as on long exposure, the IS motor can create a feedback loop that actually causes the lens to vibrate. Then you use your remote trigger to take the photo for the desired length of time. Even this can be a bit fiddly, as the camera is giving you no real feedback as to how long to expose the image for (it goes beyond its metering parameters), so you often need to bracket several long-exposure frames before getting it quite right. Each frame might take anywhere from 30-120 seconds to take (in broad daylight), so getting just one shot can take you ten minutes of fiddling. Do five or six, and you’ve used up your allotted photographing time for the day!

To see the image in more detail, click to view the larger size. If you zoom in on the rocks you’ll see the misting effect of the breaking waves. See if you can spot the moving ships. And please forgive the lens spots…

This isn’t a particularly exciting variety of long exposure daylight photography- it’s just the only one I’ve taken in a while. I do enjoy it though- for both the challenge and the output. Now that I’ve rediscovered my ND400, I hope to have a few more of these pop up from time to time.

Farewell Colours of Biderap

While the Northern Hemisphere heads for summer (lucky buggers), we here in the antipodes have firmly dropped off the cliff into an early winter season. Although Australia officially recognizes the 4 seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, here in southern Victoria the seasons are less-well defined in practice, and certainly not the clearly-differentiated stages that western Europe and northern North America tend to experience. We have a warm-to-hot dry season during the summer months, and a cold wet winter season, between which are two shoulder seasons whose length varies from year to year, and which are generally punctuated by unstable weather cycles- the collision of cold wet cyclonic systems coming off the Southern Ocean and warm air masses pushed south from the hot desert interior. It’s what gives Victoria its ever-changing weather patterns and its much-bemoaned Four Seasons In One Day reputation.

Across Australia, seasonal variation differs again. In the far north, the climate is primarily monsoon-driven, with a warm-to-hot clear dry-season and a substantial warm wet season. The desert interior sees a continental-dry climate with extreme dry heat in the summer months and a winter season characterised by warm dry days and cold-to-freezing nights.

Of course, Australia doesn’t really fit into western European notions of seasonality- it has its own distinct climate across multiple regions, and it is indigenous Australians’ descriptions of the seasons that often bring far more insightful descriptions. The Kulin people, from the environs of Melbourne, have a seven-season annual calendar based around weather patterns, and animal and plant life visible during that period. It’s made up as follows:

Biderap (Dry) Season (January-February)- Hot and dry with low rainfall

Iuk (Eel) Season (March)- End to hot winds, cooler temperatures. Iuk (eels) are fat and ready to harvest.

Waring (Wombat) Season (April- July)- Misty mornings and cold, rainy days. The wettest and coolest season. Wombats are seen during the day seeking the warmth of sunshine.

Guling (Orchid) Season (August)- Cold weather eases and Guling (orchids) are seen blooming.

Poorneet (Tadpole) Season (September-October)- Temperatures begin to rise but rain continues to fall.

Buath Gurru (Grass Flowering) Season (November)- The weather is warmer but it still often rains. Kangaroo grass flowers.

Kangaroo-Apple Season (December)- Changeable, thundery weather. Fruit appears on Kangaroo-apple bushes.

While the exact timing of those seasons might vary somewhat, any native to the Melbourne area would recognize the broad trends the Kulin identify, and quite frankly make a whole lot more sense than “Autumn: March 1- May 30”. I really like the descriptors- and the way that they’re tied to observations of the natural world- animals, plants, weather and the stars. Something we lack in today’s society is a connection to the natural world that we would do well to re-discover.

This year we barely seemed to have an autumn. We hit Easter and, as so often happens, seemed to drop off a cliff straight into the depths of winter- even though winter isn’t ‘supposed’ to start for another few weeks. Which the Kulin get- we’re in the Waring Season now, and it’ll be like this for a few months yet. Regardless, as we bid a mournful farewell to the warm months of ‘summer’, I thought I’d share a few colourful photos taken during the Biderap Season, when the light was strong and the air warm. And for those of us living on the edge of the Southern Ocean, I hope it brings us a little extra warmth.

CldPrn

I’ve talked about the sky on more than one occasion here. For any outdoors photography, the sky is a critical component of the shot- either because the nature of the sky dictates the quality of light falling on the subject (particularly in portraiture), or because the sky makes up a component of the photograph’s composition- and therefore interest. Even a neutral (e.g. monotone grey or white) sky contributes to a photograph- although if not done correctly, can have a negative effect, either leaving an image appearing dull and flat, or washing it out.

The great gift that varied clouds lend a photograph is a sense of depth and magnitude. Generally, the more textured and varied the cloud, the greater the sense of dimension in the image- although of course, there are times when a sky is so patterned with clouds that it can take away from the subject in the foreground (particularly when dealing with crossed contrails which can leave a sky looking messy and even polluted- though they can also add interest and depth to a photo).

There are times, however, when clouds are so full of texture and character that they take over the photo entirely and become the subject themselves. The taking and enjoyment of such images is often playfully referred to as ‘cloud porn’, and I confess I am a bit of an addict. I love to incorporate skyscapes into my scenic photography, and most of my strongest landscapes are not taken with a featureless blue backdrop, but with a variety of textured clouds. The times I find myself wanting to rush out with my camera are not those cloudless blue days, but times when I look outside and the clouds are doing all kinds of interesting things. As I mentioned in a recent post, since taking up photography I find myself watching the sky- and in particular, the clouds- all the time.

Here are a handful of cloud shots- some where clouds form backgrounds, and others exclusively of the clouds themselves- that I enjoy for the presence of the clouds’ texture and quality.

When taking photos of clouds, it’s important to consider issues such as lighting and contrast. Generally, there is a lot more light reflecting off clouds than off the ground. Under these circumstances, exposing for the ground will usually wash the clouds out and make them a featureless (and often unattractive) grey-white. Likewise, exposing for the sky will darken the foreground, often to obscurity.

You can do a few things to get around this. One is to accept the foreground as a lost cause and try and put an interesting silhouette in front of the clouds.

On a day where the light is patchy, wait for the sun to come out onto the foreground. Some of the most dramatic photos around are of dark skies with a well-lit foreground, and the sense of contrast can be wonderful.

Alternatively, using a gradient neutral density filter (a neutral grey filter that progressively darkens the higher or lower it goes without affecting the cast of the image) can allow you to have a dark sky but a well-lit foreground. This can be applied in-camera or in post-processing. A variant on this dual-processing is the use of HDR (High Dynamic Range) which essentially does away with the varied lighting by mapping two separate exposures one on the other to draw the best of both. Done well, it can [occasionally] yield dramatic and striking effects, although to be honest, most users of HDR blow it out and leave the image looking artificial and tacky. I don’t use HDR- partly because I don’t have the patience to learn how to apply it well- but there are some great examples of it.

Using a polarising filter on a partly cloudy day can increase the contrast in the sky and make for a very attractive image too.

Whatever you do, don’t forget to actively involve the clouds in your outdoor portraits and landscapes- and even if you’re out with a camera, make sure to look up and enjoy the puffs of condensing water vapour performing for your enjoyment.

 

 

On Kidnapped Schoolgirls

Adapted from a Facebook status update. With apologies to my FB friends who have to put up with prolonged status rants. I don’t put up photos of babies or food or link to Candy Crush Saga, but this is my one Social Media foible.

Linda Raftree (@meowtree) posted this excellent article from journalist Jina Moore (@itsjina) on why it may cause more harm than good to post the names of the schoolgirls kidnapped last month by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria. It is an excellent piece and worth reading. Jina is one of the most switched-on grass-roots writers covering Africa, and her take is invariably focused first on the wellbeing of the people she covers.

“Stop Naming Nigeria’s Kidnapped Girls”

But in the political fray of finger-pointing, and the international frenzy of “raising awareness,” no one seemed to have noticed perhaps the most important part the plea from the spokesman of the governor whose state the girls were kidnapped from:

“Our fear,” Gusau said in his April 30 statement, is that “to reveal names that would reveal religion and family backgrounds … could at the end, compromise the safety of these girls.” He also pointed out that publicizing the girls’ names could make it easier for Boko Haram to identify their parents and demand ransom, and he feared listing the names could undermine the rescue operation or simply become sensational.

And he was afraid that if any of the named girls managed to escape, or if Nigeria managed to rescue them, a public list would mark them for life.

“Abductions of girls are sometimes interpreted to mean automatic rape, [and] where the identity of these are revealed, they could be stigmatized even after being rescued,” he said.

It’s worth reflecting on the extent to which social media campaigns can actually be catalysts for good outcomes, versus the potential for achieving nothing- or worse, harm.

The issue with Boko Haram and the security crisis in northern Nigeria (of which the kidnapping of these girls is just one outrageous symptom) is a highly complex political-security issue ingrained in a largely dysfunctional governance breakdown. The solutions, far from requiring a hashtag or ‘public awareness’, are long-term, and require careful, thought-through international interventions over a period of many years.

We like to call for quick-fix solutions (“Send in US Special Forces to rescue the girls/kill Joseph Kony, etc.”) without necessarily understanding the complexity underlying such a request that makes it almost impossible to begin with- never mind the potential of creating more damage, rather than less, to the situation. The desire for these responses comes from a good place- we care, and we want to see the suffering of innocents end- but the reality of the world we work in makes these fantasies without an actionable reality behind them.

If we’re serious about wanting to see the world become a better place, we too have to take a long-term focus. It’s much harder, and needs to become a structural part of our lives. It requires patience, and the making peace with the uncomfortable reality that we alone are probably not able to actually alter this particular crisis right now. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless or cannot make a difference. We just need to think differently. How do our spending habits impact down the line to matters of poverty, inequality and justice (probably our single biggest potential to influence the world, given its dependence on money)? Do we vote for the party most focused on helping solve problems of global inequity- or the one most likely to give our already-well-lined pockets another tax-break? Do we lobby our representatives to push through justice-focused legislation? Do we actively seek out relevant stories about global injustice and take time to understand them and the action required to solve them, rather than waiting for a hashtag to tell us what to get outraged about

This thought-steam brought to you courtesy of caffeine, and a burgeoning frustration with the fallibility of slacktivism.

/endsoapbox

Alberta Rockies- Monochrome

There are some spectacular drives in the world- probably too numerous to mention, and varied in their beauty and uniqueness.

I reckon I’ve had a chance to enjoy a few of them- but not nearly as many as I’d like. Among those that spring to mind immediately include the highway between Lausanne and Montreux, along the northern shore of Lac Leman with the Alps rising from the opposite shore (in fact, almost any road through the Swiss and French Alps would have to qualify, including the highway entering Chamonix from direction Annemasse, and the road that snakes into the Val d’Aosta from the Tunnel St. Bernard); PNG’s North Coast Road between Madang and the Ramu River after dawn, with the coastline gleaming in tropical sunlight; the desert track that winds through Niger’s rugged and barren Air Mountains; the road running into Yosemite Valley via Tioga Pass- a truly jaw-dropping scene as you finally round the bend and catch your first glimpses of Half Dome and El Capitan; the Nairobi-Naivasha road as it drops into the East African Rift Valley with sprawling, cloud-speckled views of Lake Naivasha, Longonot Volcano and the plains; and almost any road you care to mention in Ethiopia once you’ve cleared Addis Ababa.

Among my very favourite is the road running between Canmore, Alberta, and Golden, British Colombia. Taking in the length of Banff National Park, it is an unending array of glorious mountain peaks one after the other that tower into the sky in dizzying proximity. The first time I drove it end-to-end was an early March morning after a heavy snowfall, when the sky was almost indigo, utterly cloudless, and the peaks sagging under a fresh carpet of white. It was so crisp, so utterly beautiful that at points I had tears in my eyes just watching it slip by.

(A little aside for any skiers among you: Kicking Horse Resort, above Golden, would have to be the greatest on-station ski terrain I have ever come across. Make it your Mecca.)

I haven’t had much chance to spend time in the Rockies of late, but a brief detour from a business trip let me spend a couple of days with dear friends in Calgary who, knowing my love of all things vertical, took me for an afternoon drive out to Banff. We had a lovely time, and it did my soul good to be back among mountain peaks. I find myself inspired when I’m among them, more in touch with my spirit. Mountains are my church and my cathedral, a place where I feel closer to God and most inspired to worship.

The photographer in me was stoked as well. My last trip to the Rockies, my equipment had been a Canon Powershot G6. It was fun for some skiing snaps and a bit of backcountry footage, but having a serious camera with me this time made me hope for a repeat of the scenery I saw those years back on that brittle spring morning.

Alas, the weather was not on my side. I didn’t end up with that aching blue sky, nor the fierce light that makes the snowcaps shine. We had patchy cloud, a finger-numbing wind, and shifting light.

But I wasn’t disappointed. As a photographer- literally a ‘writer of light’- you adapt. Photography is about making the most of the conditions you have, and while I’m not adept enough to come out with anything truly great if the conditions aren’t precisely in my favour (heck- I’m not going to come out with anything truly great even then), one thing I feel I’ve been blessed with is the ability to see beauty in nature under most circumstances.

While patchy cloud doesn’t necessarily allow the most spectacular nature of the mountains to be showcased, it does lend a drama to the scene that a blue sky doesn’t. Not only that, but the shifting cloud means no two pictures are the same. I mean, a blue sky is a blue sky- a plain backdrop that looks more or less the same. The angle and colour of light and shadows might change with the time of day. But with blowing cloud, the mood shifts from one minute to the next. And while colours may not sing out in the most vibrant fashion, the sense of contrast, depth and darkness- white on black- make for some great black and white shots. You get to celebrate texture, detail and form in a way that hones the eye, and which can be lost by the distraction of colour.

I took a lot of these shots at the time with monochrome in mind. It was clear looking through the viewfinder that they were only going to be a step or two above dull in colour, but the potential to celebrate the contrast was evident even at the time. As a photographer, you compose the image you want in your mind even before you look through the viewfinder. You look for form, for light, for colour. It takes only a subtle shift to turn those colours into a greyscale palette as you look at them, and once you’ve done that, you can appreciate a view in a whole new way. And while the electronic conversion of the files from colour into black-and-white happened after I loaded them into my computer and post-processed them, the conceptual conversion happened before I pressed the shutter release.

The photos are nothing more or less than a record of one of my favourite drives, an afternoon spent with friends (even if those friends don’t appear in the image, they were at the heart of that afternoon), and my own take of what I was seeing. In that sense, they are neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’- they just are, and I think anybody who enjoys creating should try and see their work in that light. I’m no Ansell Adams. I flinch at every flaw and shortcoming in my own work, and want to go back to do better. I also want to go back and take more photos under different lighting conditions. Heck, I just want to go back and enjoy the mountains. There are few places that draw me more fiercely than the Alberta Rockies. Cham maybe. Nepal. The Southern Alps. At least on a par.

Regardless, these are a few of the gorgeous peaks, dressed in a particular fashion and captured, like models, in a particular moment of glory. And for me, just another opportunity to work with the light I’m given, and learn.

NB: A couple of these photos I’ve linked to the original large-size image so you can explore the detail- it’s well worth clicking through and taking a look, in my impartial opinion as the photographer… 🙂

Touching the Sky

One thing I love about the sky is that it’s constantly changing. We forget, I think, that the air is, from a mechanical standpoint, a fluid. Moisture, temperature and pressure interact to give us weather, and while to our busy, narrow perspective at ground level that change may seem a little slow or plodding, a simple time-lapse of the sky shows us cloud fronts breaking like waves on a shore, building up and breaking down like foam, or boiling away- as ethereal as steam from a kettle.

I don’t think I ever noticed the sky before I started photography. Not really noticed. Now, I love to stare at the clouds and study the layers, watch the way a low-angled sun strikes clouds differently at various altitudes, the range of textures of different cloudforms, or imagine what those clouds might look like from a plane window amongst them.

Even monochromatic skies have depth and interest. Using a polarizing filter teaches you about the different way that sunlight moves across a blue sky, and even with the naked eye you can see dark, rich spots and paler areas where the light seems to desaturate. Blue skies vary from place to place. My family have always enjoyed the very rich, pure blue that seems to accompany sunny days in Australia and New Zealand; growing up in Europe, somehow the sky there used to seem just a little washed out. In western Afghanistan, the winter sky was so clean, so void of moisture, that the edges of every building and every mountain spine stood out, close and sharp, a clarity I’ve rarely seen elsewhere.

Life- any life- can have its monotonous stretches. Daily routines, slogs and grinds, times when things seem slow or bogged down. That will change- it’s the nature of life to shift, particularly when people want it to. But even when it feels like more of the same-old same-old, don’t forget to look up. The sky’s always changing, and that makes every day it’s own. If we can learn to celebrate those little things, we can touch the sky every day.