Interviewing a Department of Agriculture official in Bamyan When I sent this photo to my sweetheart, he wrote back: “I think you may have found your calling.” And I think he might be righ...
After a couple of weeks in Afghanistan I’m reminded just how broken, in many ways, the international aid machine is. Which is not to say that I didn’t see anything good happening. I did. ...
Starting the day with a friend in Ghor Chopper ride The ancient Russian helicopter was specially selected to make me look young. Stunning scenery as a birthday treat. Birthday celebrations at the she...
Yesterday was my 40th birthday. I woke up, for the first time in my life, thinking of all the people who I’ve loved who didn’t make it to 40. I was sad and deeply grateful at the same tim...
Yesterday was World Press Freedom Day. As with International Women’s Day last month, not everyone around here feels like celebrating. This morning I met a young journalist whose exposes on corruption...
When I was in Herat I drove past my old guesthouse several times. It is no longer a UN guesthouse, the guard box out the front is gone. Every time I drove past I wanted to stop, go inside and climb u...
Yesterday I returned to Herat. I haven’t been here in four years. I’m staying in the guesthouse where I lived when I first moved here in 2006. I was met at the door by the same house mana...
On 6 May, I’ll be 40 years old. I will be celebrating my birthday in a guesthouse in Herat, where the only people I know are highly well-behaved Afghans, and one (relatively, by Afghan standard...
I had lunch with an old friend today. Scott was one of the very first people I met in Afghanistan and during the six months I lived in Kabul we became close. Close enough that when I inscribed his bo...
As I type this I’m sitting in a quiet, almost entirely beige room in a guesthouse in Kabul. The muezzin just began the afternoon call to prayer. The sounds is soothing and familiar. Everything ...
Earlier this year Zen Under Fire was published. It’s the story of the two years I spent in Afghanistan – the people I met there, the lessons they taught me. Four and a half years since I ...
Back in January, someone asked me: Do you have any plans to go back into the field? And my honest answer was: Yes, actually I do. Or more accurately, I have a won’t-go-away, ache-in-my-belly desire f...
This summer Jen Louden and Susannah Conway and I are lead a Creative Joy retreat. So we’ve been on a bit of an adventure, exploring what exactly we mean by Creative Joy – how it can be fe...
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. ~ Rabindranath Tagore This quote opens my book. It expresses what was possibly the si...
As I write this post, a battle is raging in Kabul. The Taleban have apparently launched their infamous Spring Offensive in the city. I’ve been checking in on friends via Twitter and Facebook al...
First up, I have a new site! If you are reading this post in a feed, then you may not know that I have a beautiful new website. It’s beautiful thanks to Charlotte Oliver and Kate Harding. It ha...
I started out calling these posts ‘A few good things’ And then I realised the links I’m drawn to, the things I want to share, are often a little bit intense (see today’s poem)...
One of the more uncomfortable things about doing humanitarian and human rights work is the (unearned) credit people give you for being more saintly, and more brave than others. It’s one of the ...
If you are on Facebook (or Twitter) then you almost certainly have seen a link or reference this week to the new Invisible Children video, which is part of their campaign to ‘Stop Kony’ &...
I launched my book this week. Which left me very little time for curating interesting links from across the interwebs. So here is a very short (and utterly slanted) collection of good things: Kimberl...
Today my book Zen Under Fire is officially launched in to the world. Well, mostly it is being launched into New Zealand – but thanks to the magic of the internet you can order it from wherever ...
My favorite link this week is from a journalist writing about the solace she finds in food while working far from home, in Afghanistan. “As I stood in the morning light in my grimy Kabul kitch...
Finally, I can share this special offer with you. I’m really proud of my book Zen Under Fire, and incredibly grateful to everyone at Penguin NZ for helping bring it into life. I’m also pr...
Activism in a ‘Post-Occupy’ World There are some great ideas in this article on activism and social change in a “post-occupy” world. Including this gem (which I would love to ...
My latest post at Huffington Post builds on something I wrote here recently, Why your passion isn’t enough. I wanted to update and deepen that piece by including the perspective of someone who ...
Psychology of aid It seems Alessandra Pigni and I are of one mind. In this short feature on Channel Four she talks about why ‘changing the world starts from within’, and acknowledges that...
When I wrote ‘your passion is not enough’ I knew I was beginning to say something, not finishing. I was opening a conversation with myself and with you. Today I was walking home from a visit with a f...
1. I made a book! (Wait, did I already tell you about this?) The first (VERY) good thing this week is that my book is available for sneaky-sneaky pre-launch preview. It won’t actually be offici...
This week I had dinner with friends. She’s the casting director for The Hobbit movie. He’s the man who created Gandalf’s nose and King Kong’s hair and who invented the process by which the Navi in Av...
I think I may take a leaf out of my friend Susannah’s book and generally post my round of links on Friday so you can click through them at your leisure over the weekend. But this week I wanted ...
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