Another article of mine published on Impakter - under my real name, as usual. This time it's something very different, memories of my time at the United Nations, my first mission to Africa...I think you may be surprised!
Here it is:
My (Adventurous) Life at the United Nations: First Mission, Mauritania
October 1980. The sky is an intense blue over Mauritania’s desert, the Land Rover bumps along, skidding from one pothole to the next. Dust permanently dries the mouth, the blazing light hurts the eyes, I forgot my sunglasses in Rome, and there’s no place here to buy a pair; not today, not until we reach a semblance of a town. I look out hoping to spot a caravan of Berbers but there’s nothing to see except endless sand dunes and an occasional truck filled with dozens of people hanging on…
My thoughts drifted back to my family in Italy, my husband (we are newly married), my little daughter, she was only four months old. I missed him and her, taking consolation in the fact that she was probably too young to miss me.
We had left Mauritania’s capital city, Nouakchott, early in the morning. I write “we”, I was accompanied on this first mission by a 60 year-old Belgian agronomist, a veteran of Africa who’d been forced to leave his research station in the Belgian Congo back in 1960 when the country had achieved independence and become Zaire.
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The rest on Impakter.com, click here.
Here it is:
Diary of UN official: Mission #1 – Mauritania
My (Adventurous) Life at the United Nations: First Mission, Mauritania
October 1980. The sky is an intense blue over Mauritania’s desert, the Land Rover bumps along, skidding from one pothole to the next. Dust permanently dries the mouth, the blazing light hurts the eyes, I forgot my sunglasses in Rome, and there’s no place here to buy a pair; not today, not until we reach a semblance of a town. I look out hoping to spot a caravan of Berbers but there’s nothing to see except endless sand dunes and an occasional truck filled with dozens of people hanging on…
My thoughts drifted back to my family in Italy, my husband (we are newly married), my little daughter, she was only four months old. I missed him and her, taking consolation in the fact that she was probably too young to miss me.
We had left Mauritania’s capital city, Nouakchott, early in the morning. I write “we”, I was accompanied on this first mission by a 60 year-old Belgian agronomist, a veteran of Africa who’d been forced to leave his research station in the Belgian Congo back in 1960 when the country had achieved independence and become Zaire.
...
The rest on Impakter.com, click here.
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