During the United States primaries, I had to consciously limit my fascination with US politics and remind myself that it was getting daily updates on the campaign trail shenanigans wasn’t much different to reading about foreign celebrities in gossip magazines. I had better things to do with my time and attention. And then Trump got elected. […]
Last month, the newly elected Parliament of Myanmar chose Htin Kyaw as the country’s first non-military President since 1962. It was another step towards democracy, and a happy one, but Myanmar’s path to recovery is likely to be long and windy. The military still controls much of the government and has veto power over constitutional changes. They could […]
I remember when I first read a report of how women and girls were suffering under the Taliban in pre-9/11 Afghanistan. I think I was about sixteen. Widows were starving – literally dying of hunger – because they weren’t allowed to shop for food without a male guardian. Girls were kicked out of schools and […]
Have you gasped or shaken your head or cried over refugees this week? Was it when you saw a picture of Aylan Kurdi, a little boy wearing sneakers just like my son’s, lying dead on a beach? Was it when you saw a picture of him and his brother, smiling on a sofa, before their […]
One of my very favourite places in Melbourne is Sandridge Bridge, home to the Travellers sculptural installation. Enormous steel figures fan out along the bridge (they used to move out at sunrise and in at sunset) representing the indigenous people, and then nine successive waves of migrants. The bridge also hosts 128 panels for Melbourne residents’ […]
Before Would you sponsor me to cut off my hair? Even better, let’s cut out the causality and put it like this: would you donate to our Partners fund to help us get to South East Asia to bring free, full lives to children affected by conflict and oppression? And in unrelated news, I’m going […]
On New Yearâs Eve, 2014, our daughter Hazel was born at Wellington Hospital, by emergency caesarean section. Gosh, we were lucky. âYou must be disappointed,â a healthcare assistant commiserated with me the next day, assuming I would be sad that what started as a straightforward, natural labour had ended in the most dramatic of all […]