The Cellar Image of the Day

This woman is in Somalia, just west of Mogadishu, in front of makeshift houses at a camp there, probably as people try to avoid the fighting.

When I saw this entry in today's Washington Post Day in Photos, I was struck by two things. One, how massive this encampment is, and thus how terrible it must be.

Two, how it eerie to see this one, after enjoying last Thursday's IotD.

That's a good question. I wonder a lot of things that have to do with logistics.

How do you choose the location for a camp? Do you take the resources of the area into consideration, or do you just set up camp where you get tired? Does the camp just naturally grow as people see a tent and decide to pitch one nearby, or is it planned by some tibal leader?

Where do you get water?

Where do you get food?

What is in the area? I don't see any people in the picture, except the one woman. Where is everyone? Are they in the shopping mall that is just outside the frame?

If you've been away for a while, how do you find your way back to your hut?

I have many more questions than observations with this image.

The sheer enormity of these camps is mind boggling... then stop and think about just finding the most basic needs - fresh water, food.... omg.

The availability of wood for framing the huts and for cooking fires is probably the first consideration for siting these camps. Once it's exhausted, then they move on.

I now feel officially guilty for even having thought of upgrading to a bigger camp trailer.

I dont know about this camp, but most camps like this are set up by an NGO. who will distribute aid suppies etc..
Unless the NGO is pretty well equipped, initially they will have to go to the toilet everywhere. Its a big problem. Eventually they will dig trenches for toilets.
Logistics and Disaster Response/ Risk Management for situations like this involve huge amounts of money and organisation, (you probably know that already). I am studying to work in this area. I find it extremely interesting and mostly overwhelming.

there are more people in the top left of the image.
toilet?: anywhere
why there?: the landscape is no different for the next 300km
food?: whatever is chewable
water?: dig under plants?

I have a friend who worked for a few years running food aid distribution for the WFO in Namibia and Angola. She organised large shipments of food from donations, organised the transport of the food aid from the ports to the refugee camps, and she ran the monthly distributions at the camps. Each month she would go with a handful of other aid workers to the camps with trucks of food, and over the course of two or three days at each camp they would hand out a one month ration to each of the tens of thousands of people queueing up at the trucks. Obviously keeping track of which refugees already had their ration was tricky, as was making sure that people too sick to get to the trucks also got their share. So that's how people in massive refugee camps like this get food.

These are the people I was talking about in this thread. Taken from camps like this and plopped down in Massachusetts, in a school system that's unprepared to handle them.

now compare this to that Japanese indoor beach IotD. kinda puts the world in perspective. a bit.

Told'em to vote republican. Missed their tax cuts. BTW. That sucks. MIght be a preview of the VA homes for new vets.

It looks like there are about ten people in the hut behind the woman. What strikes me as strange is how people in these areas always dress like it's winter, regardless of the weather.

Business opportunity alert: Tent repairman. Cash only.

I can only speak from my own personal experience. I've been to many places in the U.S. that are known for being hot like Arizona, or Vegas (gonna be there on Thursday - sweet!) the sun is hot and it heats up your whole body. I went to Australia. It's like being in a microwave - your skin feels like it's sizzling. I guess the lack of an ozone layer really makes a difference down there.
Kagen?? Alianthe?? somebody?? lend a hand here.

north queensland can be like a wet oven. the air is thick and hot, just like many/all tropical locations.

down south in melbourne. the air can be hot and dry and can be compared to putting bare skin on a metal seatbelt after its been sitting in the sun for hours on a hot day

Quote:

The danger of war spilling over
Two months ago, rebels hoping to depose Chad's strongman, Idriss D�by, drove through neighbouring Sudan in a convoy of brand-new Toyota jeeps and burst across Chad's eastern border near the town of Adr�. Plainly egged on by the Sudanese government, they had no trouble passing through Sudan's many checkpoints, from Port Sudan on the Red Sea, a journey of some 1,600km (1,000 miles), to Chad's border. But Chadian troops loyal to Mr D�by, some of them recently trained in counter-terrorism by the Americans, beat off the rebels and chased them back into Sudan.

So far, this scrap among Chadians has not blown up into a war between Chadian and Sudanese government forces, though Mr D�by has declared a “state of belligerence” with his eastern neighbour. The battle of Adr�, he suggested, was nothing less than a Sudanese plot to replace his African regime with an Arab one. His Chadian army has concentrated its forces around Adr�, exposing the southern bit of Chad's border with Sudan to banditry. Despite a peace agreement signed recently under international pressure in Libya, a nasty proxy war is in the offing, with Chad upping its support for rebels in Darfur, while Sudan backs the Chadian rebels camped in Darfur who still want to overthrow Mr D�by's regime.

The Economist also provides this map since one cannot understand such politics without grasping the graphics. Somolia is off to the right and not on the Red Sea.

ummm you wont find brisbane/goldcoast getting much above 30�C. and never in many or any places in the world would it get up to 66�C

80F is 26C and 43F is 6C

you would die at 66C

edit: after research highest temp ever was: Al'Aziziyah, Libya 57.7 C (135.9 F) on the 13th September, 1922 from here

Hey - I was just copying and pasting!
We are going to be spending most of our time in Surfer's Paradise & at the Bond Uni campus.

sizzle sizzle....

*edit -oooohhhh whoops.... I just went back to wunderground.com, and realized that I misunderstood what the 66 degrees meant.... gawd... I am such a dork.
Carry on people, nothing to see here..

Quote:

After Battle in Capital, Chad Threatens to Expel Sudanese
With the unrest in Sudan's Darfur region spreading into neighboring countries, Chad broke off relations with Sudan on Friday and threatened to oust 200,000 Sudanese refugees after staving off a rebel incursion into this sand-strewn capital.

The embattled government of President Idriss D�by of Chad described the rebels as little more than mercenaries acting on behalf of Sudan. Eager to show it has defeated them, his government paraded several hundred captured fighters, some of whom appeared to be children, in a central square. The corpses of some fallen rebels and an array of seized armaments were also on display.