Category: Uncategorized

Originally posted on The African Book Review: ‘Sir, you know, when I was small, I met with a situation which was pretty similar to this. In the neighbouring village, where my grandfather`s brother was the chief, almost everyone died with a very highly contagious disease that we used to call Bush-curse. Then my father, who…

Originally posted on The African Book Review: The African Book Review : What drew you to writing about Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia ? Pramudith D. Rupasinghe :”I worked as a humanitarian diplomat in that area and explored a lot of West Africa, and stayed there for five years. I don’t write about something if…

Originally posted on Book Reviews Cafe: Book Title: BayanAuthor: Dr Pramidith D RupsingheFormat: Kindle My ThoughtsIt is with a happy heart and thoughtful mind I congratulate and thank the author for penning down this book. There are many times my father, a 65-year-old man, comments about the cultural, climatical, political and lifestyle changes that have…

Disasters do not discriminate, but unless inclusion rightly mainstreamed humanitarian assistance to affected population may lead to discrimination and result in hampered community resilience, retard recovery and tearing social fabric. It was towards the end of the second week of November in 2019, Neera was chewing a mouthful of betel leaves, squatting on the doorstep…

Au cours de ma carrière humanitaire qui a duré 17 ans, j’ai été impliqué dans plusieurs réponses aux principales flambées épidémiques mondiales: Ebola, fièvre de Lassa, dengue et maintenant COVID-19. Devoir mener une riposte au niveau national à cette pandémie s’est avéré être une expérience intense. Il était nécessaire de mettre au point une réponse…

This book travels into melancholia voiced by an old soul, sharing his multiples lives; what he has left in an environment many of us would have considered as hostile. Ivan sings his lost glimpses of happiness, the cruel reality of class struggle, the void of the implosion of USSR and the living myth of communist.…

By Emmanuelle Paris Cohen I read Bayan on a plane heading to Mali, shortly after having met its author, Mr. Rupasinghe in Paris in March 2018. I was to go to the Sahel, Pramudith was traveling to South East Asia. As two fellow nomads fascinated by the human condition and the fine thread that connects…

Response to public health emergencies requires changes in regular behavioural patterns. Encouraging these changes requires coordination and an understanding of the culture and communities affected.  During my seventeen-year humanitarian career, I have been involved in several responses to major worldwide disease outbreaks: Ebola, Lassa fever, Dengue, and now COVID-19. Having to lead a national-level response…

Walking through the muddy paths between the long-houses, hearing the infants cry and seeing boys and girls fetching water, men sitting and desperately looking up at the empty sky which held  all their hopes , children playing in the stagnated  greenish water behind common toilets and water points, and then again hearing Dhuhr payers fusing…

Amid a worldwide pandemic, with cities and even entire countries  in lock down, many of us are in  regions that have already been severely affected by COVID-19, and others are bracing for what will come. And all of us are watching the news or reading newspapers and wondering, “What is going to happen to the…

At the hour of golden rays of dying Sun, Fusing with symphonies of returning crows, Inhaling poisoned air with fading flowers, She walks along crowded street with eagle eyes. Roaring scream of rolling wheels on dusty roads, With the barbaric beat of Kottu maker’s plates, rapping words emitting from the lottery huts, composing a song for satanic move…

When you hired “X”, did you think she would turn out to be a vicious office gossip? Who knew “Y” would be a serial saboteur of team projects? And take “Z”; how many times does his supervisor have to write him up for arguing with his coworkers? Sound familiar? These are some of the behaviours…