Last week, Development and Peace sponsored a series of premieres of the new Salt and Light documentary A New Leaf, which features the response of Development and Peace to the food crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa, in five Canadian cities across the country.
This summer, I travelled to Niger and Mali to report on the food crisis that was gripping the Sahel region of West Africa, as well as the impact that political instability in Mali was having on the population. Accompanying me for the Niger part, was a crew from Salt and Light Television, who we had invited to come to document how the population was coping and our response. Together, we visited villages where the threat of hunger was a daily struggle. We also visited a refugee camp for Malians fleeing the violence in their own country. We could see the despondency of the people in the camp, having been completely uprooted from their homes and without any real idea as to when they would be able to return, if ever. It was a journey of discovery for all of us, and I was anxious to see how this story would be told in the documentary.
Geneviève Talbot, Program Officer for Emergency Relief
I have arrived in Burkina. It was more or less of a chaotic arrival! I was meant to fly to Bamako, Mali, to later travel to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, but the situation being what it is, the flight to Bamako was cancelled and I landed directly in Ouaga. Fortunately, our partner OCADES knew what to do and I found myself in good hands!
