Short Term Observer, Thomas Bell took these gritty pictures in Ukraine last month.
Note how long the ballot papers are in the first round of the Presidential election in which there were thirty-nine candidates.
International observers are recruited from almost all of the fifty-seven member countries of the OSCE and some travel a long way – the West Coast of America, for example, is just shy of 10,000 km.
Thomas Bell travelled a mere 2,500 km from his home in Kathmandu where he has lived for twelve years. If you are planning to visit Nepal, Thomas is the man to talk to. If you are an armchair traveller order his book, Kathmandu; Biography of a City.
I have ordered a copy but until it arrives read this comment on Amazon from Daniel Lak.
I would normally take a recommendation by a friend of the author with a pinch of salt but I reckon Lak is to be trusted.
“Daniel Lak is the Canada correspondent for Al Jazeera English since January 2012. Previously, he worked for the BBC in South Asia from 1992 to 2004, based in Pakistan, India and Nepal. He was in Kabul for three weeks after the Taliban took the city in September, 1996.
In 2001, his reporting for BBC radio on the Gujarat earthquakes earned him a nomination for the One World broadcasting award for developmental journalism.
Returning to North America in 2005, he worked for the BBC, CBC and other media outlets covering Haiti, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Mexican general elections, the Caribbean and a range of stories in Washington, DC.”
Here are some more encomia.
