A new book from Guernsey resident and aid worker Diana Penn tells the inside story of the 21st century’s biggest international disasters. The past 20 years has seen conflicts and natural disasters devastate lives and landscapes across the world. The impact of these events is streamed into every home – but can the fly in/fly out reporter’s perspective capture what the recovery from these disasters really entails?
This memoire does.
The Book
Through diaries, emails and vivid, captured-moment photography, aid worker Diana Penn gives the real, on the ground story in Quake, Wave, War. From the conflict in Darfur to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia, extreme poverty in Nigeria to the earthquake in Pakistan, she gives an unforgettable glimpse into the lives being lived in these places. Amongst the vast challenges are moments of joy – people going about their everyday business, children at play – that reinforce the indomitable nature of human beings.
In recent years the dreadful actions of a few have coloured many people’s perceptions of international aid. Absorbing, shocking, immediate and powerful, this book shows the extraordinary job that aid workers do and, more importantly, why that work remains so important – never more so than in the light of the government’s recent cuts to international aid.
