A portrait I took of Mr. Kipchoge in the garden of his house.
The Greatest Of All Time (🐐), also known as Kenyan marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge, is setting up a new sports camp as part of his own training camp in the northern village of Kaptagat, near Eldoret. With radio host Sophie Derkzen in NPO Radio 1 programme Bureau Buitenland, I talked about what this ‘INEOS Eliud Kipchoge Cycling Academy’ can mean for the cycling scene in Kenya.
In the Netherlands we have far more cows than we need, I tell the Maasai elder. He nods approvingly.
The Netherlands feels far away, here in a house made of cow dung and sticks in southern Kenya. It is hot and stuffy in the manyatta, where I sit on a small wooden stool between eight playing children. My eyes sting from the smoke that comes from a small fire, above the flames a blackened pan with heated goat's milk boils over.
Even the contrast with the capital of Kenya, which is a few hundred kilometers to the north, is large. In Nairobi, the metropolis where I have now lived for about four and a half years, I have superfast internet everywhere, my girlfriend and I order sushi through Uber Eats and our baby crawls around in Pampers – no, over there, the difference with life in The Netherlands is quite small.
Yet today the men and women who are seminomadic Maasai pastoralists from southern Kenya, want to talk about the similarities. Like the Karamojong, Fulani, Samburu or other herders and hunter-gatherers I've met in recent years, they mainly focus on what connects us.
'Do you also have cows in the Netherlands?' is the first question I get when I ask after the newspaper interview whether they also have any questions for me. Yes, I answer, much more than we even need. Ole Ndaika, the elder I am interviewing, nods approvingly.
I know why the old man likes to hear this: for the herders who roam here in southern Kenya with their cattle, cows are the greatest asset – just like for farmers in the Netherlands. The more cows you have, the richer you are. Ole Ndaika may only wear a checkered shuka cloth over his underwear, but with his hundreds of cows he is also a multimillionaire (in Kenyan shillings, yes, but still).
Then my translator tries to explain what I say next about the ongoing nitrogen crisis in the Netherlands. The elder looks at me in surprise: isn't cow manure good for the environment? I decide to take a different approach and say that there is actually too little land in the Netherlands for farmers and their livestock.
'Mmm', Ole Ndaika agrees again. ‘Just like here.’ And so we come back to talking about why I'm here in his house in the first place: just like in many other places in Africa, the way of life of the nomadic shepherd is under pressure – I'm writing a story about that.
On my way to this Masai settlement I could clearly see the cause of the problems: along the road large tracts of land have been fenced off. The land that remains for the itinerant herders is also shrinking due to climate change, or they have to make way because the government wants to turn the grazing area into a wildlife park.
Ole Ndaika, despite the challenges, is cheerful. After all, he still has a lot of cows, his walking savings account is filled plenty. The longer we talk, the more excited he gets. Are the elderly in the Netherlands addressed differently than young people? In addition to cows, the Dutch also keep goats?! The distance between the Netherlands and the Kenya of Ole Ndaika is getting smaller and smaller – we actually are a lot alike.
When I say that I should probably hit the road, the man smiles and gives me a firm handshake and a slap on my shoulder. 'We are all family', Ole Ndaika concludes with a laugh. 'Now I get it. The Dutch are the Maasai of Europe.'
Read the original column (in Dutch) on the website of de Volkskrant.
In the hilly Kenyan capital of Nairobi, a growing number of cyclists are hitting the streets. In monthly bicycle demonstrations, they are demanding more rights and safety. Cyclists hope that the introduction of e-bikes could gain momentum for cycling.
To read my first Volkskrant reportage, click here.
Some personal news: from today onwards, I’ll be the new Africa Correspondent of Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant! From Nairobi, Kenya, I’ll be covering stories in West, East and Southern Africa. Next to my work for the newspaper, I will still be available as a freelance photographer. For anything Volkskrant-related, drop me a message at joost.bastmeijer@volkskrant.nl!
Prinicipal beacons commemorating Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee have lit up the night sky yesterday, as ceremonies took place right across the Commonwealth. For The Telegraph, I attended such a ceremony in Kenya, the country where she acceded to the throne, after King George VI had passed away in 1952.
On Friday, Burkinabé architect Diébédo Francis Kéré will receive the profession’s highest honour, the Pritzker Prize. In my last piece for Dutch daily Trouw, I interviewed Kéré about his work, inspiration, using locally available materials and his quest to inspire young Africans to build their continent.
To read the interview, click here or buy a copy of today’s newspaper!
Mediastorm, a television programme about media logic and stories behind the news, asked me to talk about my day to day work in African countries. How do you take pictures in an IDP camp where many people are suffering? And how is the way we perceive Africa linked to the small amount of correspondents that are active on the continent? I tried to answer some of these questions in Mediastorm, which was aired last Saturday.
While the world is focused on the war in Ukraine, there still is a drought ongoing in the Horn of Africa and parts of East Africa. Together with Saskia Houttuin, I talked in Dutch talkshow Op1 about what is happening in Somalia and how Putin’s war is making the situation even worse. To watch the interview, click here. To watch the whole episode, hosted by Hugo Logtenberg and Nadia Moussaid, click here.
“I like to let corrupt Kenyans take a hard look in the mirror, to show them how greedy they are. I just can't stand the hypocrisy. If you like going to a prostitute, why shouldn't I make a work of art about it?”
Kenyan artist Michael Soi (1972) doesn’t shy away from controversy. His bright, colored paintings are about political sensitivities and sex work, and he finished a series of 100 artworks on the Kenyan-Chinese relations. But the Chinese are not happy with his statements about their "political interference" in Africa.
To find out more, read the full piece (in Dutch), tap on this link or get a copy of Trouw!
The construction of a China-funded toll road has led to the demolition of thousands of houses in a Nairobi informal settlement called Mukuru Kwa Njenga. The demolition painfully exposes the large gap between the rich and poor in Kenya. Through shadowy constructions, high-ranking government officials are said to have used the construction of “the road for the rich“ to drive residents from their land.
For Dutch news programme EenVandaag, I spend a few days with residents of Mukuru Kwa Njenga, who have lost all they have after bulldozers came to demolish their homes. A longer version of the story was also published by Dutch daily Trouw – tap here or on the picture below to read that article.
Japanese AFP photographer Yasuyoshi Chiba won the World Press Photo exactly two years ago, with a picture from Sudan depicting Mohamed, who was reciting a poem on a dark soccer pitch in Khartoum. The photo has brought Mohamed a lot: he’s now studying in Maastricht and hopes to one day become president of Sudan.
For Trouw, I made a reconstruction about how Mohameds life was turned upside down because of Chiba’s iconic photograph. Click on this link to read the piece (in Dutch).
Millions of people are facing severe hunger as a result of the worst drought in 40 years in the Horn of Africa. For 8 days, I traveled through the country for Dutch and international media and what we witnessed was heartbreaking and harrowing. People have lost everything because of the drought, children die because of malnutrition.
As the situation deteriorates, aid agencies fear that a focus on the Ukraine crisis is likely to overwhelm the agenda and donors at a critical time for the East African country of Somalia in particular. According to a statement by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, only 3.2 percent ($47.1m) of the required funding ($1.5bn) for its humanitarian response plan has been received so far.
The Guardian: ‘There is not enough food. The situation is dire’: Somalia’s drought crisis
Der Spiegel: With the World's Attention on Ukraine, Suffering Is Rising Elsewhere
Der Spiegel (pictures): Dürre und Hungersnot in Somalia: Nie wieder – hieß es vor zehn Jahren
NPO Radio 1 (Met Het Oog Op Morgen): Hongersnood dreigt voor miljoenen mensen in Hoorn van Afrika
VICE World News: Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Is Putting Millions of Lives at Risk in Somalia
El País: Somalia se quiebra por la sequía histórica y la invasión rusa de Ucrania
NPO Radio 1 (Humberto): Droogte in Hoorn van Afrika, 500.000 Somaliërs ontheemd
Al Jazeera English: Drought in Somalia worsened by funding gap, Ukraine war
De Morgen: De vergeten hongersnood in Somalië. ‘Door de droogte zijn we alles kwijtgeraakt’
The New York Times: how the ongoing drought is affecting kids in Somalia
Trouw published a four page story I wrote about the drought in Somalia.
Dutch comedian Dolf Jansen showed some of my pictures in Dutch talkshow Khalid & Sophie.
Now that platform companies such as Uber have embraced Nairobi's motor taxis, the Kenyan capital has seen a large proliferation of these 'boda bodas'. There are attempts to replace the millions of polluting motorbikes with electric ones, but not everyone is enthusiastic about these plans.
Read my latest for Het Financieele Dagblad (FD) by clicking on this link.
