Tanzania Faces an Encroaching Coastal Crisis

New Lines Magazine, February 2024

As dawn broke over the coast of Tanzania, the sun creeping up over the four-star hotels and high-rise apartments of Dar es Salaam’s Msasani Peninsula, a modest fleet of fishing boats, packed to the gunnels with fishers and their catch, made its way toward a small fishing community pressed between the city and the sea. Jumping into waist-deep water, the men waded ashore holding stringers dangling motley fish, bright in the golden morning light. They trudged up the beach to the fish market, where a crowd of buyers was assembled, ready to bid on the day’s catch. In the shadow of a luxury beach hotel, I sat with Musa, a lean fisher in his mid-50s, drinking hot chai on a bench […]

How the Conflict in Las Anod Called the Diaspora Home to Fight

New Lines Magazine, November 2023

On an evening in late May 2023, the men sat in front of the hotel, some smoking, some chewing khat. They were outside in the dark to enjoy a slight breeze that provided relief from the blazing heat of northern Somalia, while the boom of artillery shells rolled in from the hills. Here, on the edge of Las Anod, the administrative capital of the central Sool region, at a cheap hotel with intermittent power and sweltering rooms, a rotating cast of Somalis had returned from their stable lives abroad in the diaspora to a city under siege […]

Hospitals Face Shortages as MSF Withdraws from Las Anod Amid Continued Shelling

Al-Jazeera, August 2023

Eight months into a conflict between armed forces of the breakaway state of Somaliland and local Dhulbahante militias in Las Anod, Somalia, hospitals in the embattled city are desperately working to maintain lifesaving supplies.

Although the conflict has been effectively reduced to a deadlock, with neither the Somaliland forces nor the Dhulbahante militias able to decisively shift the balance of the fighting, the Somaliland army has continued to indiscriminately target civilian areas of Las Anod with mortars and artillery […]

Aid Slow to Arrive for People in Northern Somalia Fleeing Las Anod Fighting

The New Humanitarian, June 2023

Hundreds of thousands of people are stranded in Somalia’s drought-hit countryside after fleeing fighting in the disputed northern city of Las Anod, with cash-strapped aid agencies struggling to reach those in need.

Heavy fighting began in February between the security forces of breakaway Somaliland, which have occupied Las Anod since 2007, and local clans demanding separation and direct administration by Somalia’s federal government in Mogadishu.

As mortar shells fired by Somaliland soldiers started falling in Las Anod […]

Kenya’s Khat Farmers Expected a Trade Boom After COVID-19—Now They Want the Gov’t to Help

Al-Jazeera, March 2023

Even as drought continues in parts of Kenya, rain has started falling in the hills outside Maua town, in the highland region of Meru, famed for the quality khat grown there.

Farmers like Eric Mwiti have been waiting for a change in weather – and in market conditions.

Mwiti, 28, manages five acres (two hectares) of khat trees on his family’s farm, but even after the expensive drilling of a well to sustain the crop through longer dry seasons, he can only water half his plants […]

‘Fire Mama!’ How women are rising through Kenya’s motorbike taxi ranks

The Christian Science Monitor, December 2022

When Ellen Najala rides her motorcycle through the streets of Dandora, one of Nairobi’s crowded informal settlements, people stop and stare. As she cruises past on her blue bike, with a Jesus decal on the fender, a pot leaf sticker on the gauges, and “Fire Mama” scrawled on the gas tank, kids and adults alike wave and call out. 

“Fire Mama, Fire Mama!” 

Ms. Najala is one of an increasing number of young women who have joined the ranks of Kenya’s bodaboda sector […]

Karate Helps Tanzanians With Albinism Fight Back

Al-Jazeera, July 2022

Now that he’s learned to fight, Hassan Farahani doesn’t feel he needs to do so anymore.

“When people make jokes or harass me in the street, now I just leave. I have the confidence of martial arts—my strength is here,” he says, gesturing towards his chest.

Farahani, 29, is part of a group of Tanzanians with albinism learning karate in Dar es Salaam, their country’s largest city. The group meets in the evenings to train in a small dojo above an Indian restaurant, shuffling across foam mats under the glare of fluorescent lights, practicing kicks, punches and throws […]