Twenty-two years ago, I sat beneath a scrawny, brave little tree in an internally displaced persons camp in Darfur. It was 102 degrees F/38 C, and the Sudanese women I was meeting drew their brightly-patterned headscarves over their mouths to keep the gusts of sand and dust away. They apologised because they had no tea […]

Twenty-one years ago, just before my first trip to Rwanda, I attended a lecture on the Rwandan Genocide at London’s Imperial War Museum. One of the speakers explained that the men responsible for gang raping Rwandan women were being given food and anti-retroviral medication in jail by aid agencies. Meanwhile, the women they had raped […]

It can be annoying to be told you are over-thinking an issue. We hear the expression often in our projects in Africa, but it has a different meaning. Survivors of conflict who are troubled by horrific flashbacks tells us they “think too much.” Not all societies have the same familiarity with mental health that people in the […]