Harriet Nakabaale has named her Kampala yard “Camp Green” for the abundant vegetables she is able to produce from it. Photo: Ami Vitale

It’s planting season where I live north of Boston. I’ve never been very good at getting a garden to grow, which is why I was blown away when I walked through the gate into Harriet Nakabaale’s small city yard in Kampala, Uganda, a few weeks ago. She had planted just about every inch of it—and all of it was green and edible. It was a true victory garden, especially in a place like Kampala where the hard-packed earth in crowded neighborhoods can appear so unforgiving. You just have to know how to work it, like Nakabaale does—patiently, with absolute devotion, and the knowledge that all your hard work will pay off in heaps of healthy vegetables.

For all you would-be gardeners out there, maybe this photo of Nakabaale—snapped in a rare moment of repose—will serve as a bit of inspiration to get you going.

And watch for others that we’ll be sharing. They are part of an ambitious effort to advise the Rockefeller Foundation in identifying promising innovations in African agriculture for small farmers. The idea was to do a scan of work being done across sub-Saharan Africa by our peers as well as local citizen groups, organizations,  governments, and corporations, and then to try to identify ideas and projects that might be both innovative and scalable. We are writing up our findings now for the foundation to present at its centennial celebration in Nigeria in July. In the meantime, we have a treasure trove of great ideas, stories, and pictures–including the one above taken by Ami Vitale—of incredible people and innovations to share with you.

Djimon Hounsou speaks to a packed room at a reception at the Japan Society last week. Photo by Control Arms

Those who heard Hollywood actor and Oxfam Ambassador Djimon Hounsou at the Japan Society last week were moved by the passion with which he spoke about the Arms Trade Treaty, now in its final week of negotiations at the UN in New York.  Just back from a week-long field visit to South Sudan—a  place struggling to recover from decades of conflict—Hounsou made an eloquent case for why we need the treaty.

“If you could see the strength and dignity of the people of South Sudan, it would astonish you,” he said. “After all they have endured, they press on for a future that they fought and bled for, a future that they believe in, a future that we can support.”

And it’s not just South Sudan that needs our support in this endeavor, it is every country that has suffered from the consequences of armed conflict fed by the uncontrolled global flow of guns and ammunition. The security and rights of millions of people are threatened daily because of the poorly regulated international weapons trade.

That can change. Countless lives can be improved if nations would agree to one simple principle–that there should be no arms transfers when there is the substantial risk that the weapons will be used for war crimes, for serious violations of international human rights law, or for undermining development.

Negotiators have just a few days left to finalize language for the treaty, language that could help make the world a truly safer place. Add your voice to the urgency of this need, and call on President Obama to support a strong Arms Trade Treaty.

Sometimes people ask me why Oxfam is involved in pushing for an international Arms Trade Treaty. What’s it got to do with righting the wrong of poverty? Everything.

The massive and uncontrolled global trade in weapons causes misery and suffering beyond comprehension. Guns and ammunition in the hands of war criminals and extremists can destabilize whole regions, forcing countries to squander resources they should be spending on things that would improve people’s lives—like schools and medical clinics, clean water and roads. For poor countries that have yet to develop durable education, health, and transportation systems, armed conflict is particularly devastating. It feeds poverty.

To help you understand what the treaty is all about and why we need it now, we’ve put together the short video above. Take a good look, share it with your friends, and then tell President Obama to support a strong international Arms Trade Treaty.

Photo: George Osodi for Panos / Oxfam America

In December, I traveled to southwestern Nigeria to talk with women cocoa farmers about their work and the conditions under which they grow the beans that become the chocolate so many of us here in the US crave—and sometimes pay plenty for. Someone’s got to be making a decent amount of money off those melt-in-your mouth truffles, don’t they?

Well, it’s not the women farmers, especially when you consider all the labor that’s required to nurture the cocoa trees, harvest the cocoa pods, extract the beans, and ferment and dry them for market. According to Oxfam’s research, less than 5 percent of the price of a typical chocolate bar goes back to cocoa farmers. And that makes me marvel even more at what women like Anna Iyiola, pictured above, are able to accomplish.

The portrait says a lot about her—the way she stands so strong, so sure. I admire the strength in her hands, the directness of her gaze. And I think about the answer she gave when I asked what she earns for a kilogram of beans:  320 Naira, or just more than $2.

“It isn’t at all a fair price,” said Iyiola.

She lives in Ayetoro-Ijesa, a small village that, until a few months ago, had no electricity and where there is no running water: People collect what they need to drink from a spring about a kilometer away.

Iyiola works on her own cocoa farm, about 1.5 acres in size. Her husband helped her get it going, but since then she has taken care of most of its operation—except for the hardest parts, like spraying to keep pests and fungus from attacking the trees and their pods. Her days are long, starting at 6 a.m. with household chores that include fetching water.

But cocoa farming and household responsibilities aren’t all that consume her time. Like many other Nigerians driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, Iyiola has more than one way of contributing to her family’s finances. She buys kola nuts and resells them at a local market that’s held weekly. Proceeds from that enterprise help fund operations on her cocoa farm.

But, perhaps, the greatest focus of her energy is her seven children and the future she is working hard to help them reach: all of them have graduated from, are in the middle of, or are waiting for admission to colleges and universities.

“My vision is to provide my children with an education so they can be empowered to be able to contribute to the progress of their own life,” said Iyiola.

Take action now to help women cocoa farmers achieve their dreams.

When I catch the eye of the woman in the first photo below and recall the camps for displaced people I visited a few years ago in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I know why an international arms trade treaty is more important than ever. Conflict, fueled by a steady flow of poorly regulated weapons, continues to drive families from their homes in Congo—and in many other places around the world.

In November, photographer Katie Holt snapped these photos. Rebel groups in Congo’s eastern provinces had forced tens of thousands of people to flee.  Many sought safety in camps around the city of Goma. Study the pictures—the line of people lugging their belongings along the edge of the road; the plastic sheeting that serves as a home; the crowded water collection point—and you get a glimpse of what life is now like for countless Congolese.

“Chaos breeds chaos,” said Oxfam’s Humanitarian Coordinator Tariq Riebl in November. “Every day we hear of another attack against farmers as they work in the fields or traders as they go to market. There are hardly any places left that are safe from conflict and violence.”

Isn’t freedom from conflict and violence what we all want? The arms trade treaty could help pave the way.

Read my colleague Scott Stedjan’s blog on the truth about the treaty, and then write your senators and urge them to sign onto a letter to President Obama calling for his support of the treaty.

The weight of conflict

Photo: Katie Holt

People who flee conflict often escape with very few belongings. At a water point in Lac Vert Camp in Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a scrap of plastic, twisted tight, helps to keep water sloshing from this jug. Oxfam has been providing aid, including water and sanitation services, to people in three camps around the city. “We can’t shout loudly enough,” said Oxfam’s Humanitarian Coordinator Tariq Riebl in November. “This violence has to end. It has caused decades of suffering and grinding poverty.”

On the move

Photo: Katie Holt/Oxfam

In 2012, insecurity displaced more than 760,000 people in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. When government troops pulled out of much of the east to focus on a rebellion by a group known as M23, the number of other rebel groups mushroomed. By late November, at least 25 of them were active across the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.

A rocky home

Photo: Katie Holt/Oxfam

Anchored by sharp rocks on rough ground, plastic sheets serve as shelter for Mahawe Francini and her three children in Mugunga camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Like countless other families, Francini and her children fled their home when fighting broke out between M23 rebels and Congolese government soldiers.

Clean water

Photo: Katie Holt/Oxfam

Taps in camps around the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo provided a clean supply of water in November to some of the tens of thousands of people who had fled recent fighting. But shortages of water and power in other parts of the city had left thousands of people with no option but to pull water directly from a nearby lake, heightening concern about the potential spread of waterborne diseases.

Photo: Anna Fawcus/Oxfam America

What I love about this photo of Haiti’s Artibonite Valley is the stillness—and the huge sense of possibility that winds with the river through the landscape. It reminds me of how I felt on one of my early trips to Haiti, shortly after the devastating earthquake destroyed so much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, three years ago.

Leaving the city behind, we drove into the countryside. The roads were rough and many people lived in poor conditions. But I had the keen sense that with some smart investment—by the government, by the international community—these rural regions could hum with agricultural productivity.

That’s been the recent focus of some of Oxfam’s work in the Artibonite Valley, where we are partnering with local organizations to help farmers revive a rice industry that once played a key role in the nation’s economy. Today, more than 80 percent of the rice Haitians eat is imported. But through the efforts of 5,000 farmers in the lower valley, that could begin to change.

Since the start of 2012, more than 760,000 people in North and South Kivu have fled their homes seeking safety elsewhere, like in this camp on the outskirts of Goma. Photo by Colin Delfosse/Oxfam

If anyone wonders why a world so over-loaded with weapons needs a treaty to regulate their irresponsible sale, just listen to the words of villagers in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are words of the deepest suffering, almost impossible for some of us to fathom from the safe places in which we live, cocooned in the security that strong and responsible governments provide. They are blunt words like rape, mutilate, and despair—words for what happens when an uncontrolled flow of weapons washes over a region.

“They took my son of 18 years old. I paid $150 for him to be freed. He was released, but I found him already in a mutilated state,” said a man from Kalehe.

“Those who try to defend themselves or raise their voice are killed immediately,” added a man from Masisi.

“After having been raped, a woman can no longer go to her field, but then hunger will attack her family,” said a woman from Fizi.

Oxfam and local partners collected these words, and many more, during interviews with 1,328 villagers in the eastern provinces where new waves of violence have forced more than three quarters of a million people from their homes this year. On Tuesday, as machine-gun fire cracked the air, rebels overran Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu. And now, experts worry about the destabilization of the entire region. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson

As the mother of soccer players (both of whom are now too old for schoolboy sports, but never too old for pickup matches wherever they can find them), I read a story in the New York Times today that made me smile. “Joy that lasts, on the poorest playgrounds,” said the headline. It was about soccer—the universal language for love of a ball—and a new kind of material to play it with: PopFoam.

It was a story about an entrepreneur driven to develop PopFoam soccer balls for kids in some of the poorest parts of the world, where a ball is often just something that can be made to roll, even if it’s more oblong than round.

How many times have I witnessed that joy the headline heralds? It’s one of the thrills of any visit to the field I have ever taken  for Oxfam—to catch sight of a game on a patch of rough earth, on the foundation of a ruined house, beyond the mud walls of a compound. Plumes of dust billow at each bounce of the ball, feet flying after it. No shoes? No one seems to mind. The ball is all that matters.

 A whoop. A score.

And the game goes on. Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to begin to understand some of the challenges the Democratic Republic of Congo faces today, there’s no better place to start than with Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, the history of the brutal exploitation of one of Africa’s most resource-rich nations. I read it a few years ago and instantly became a Hochschild fan, not only of his storytelling but also of his passion.

What, I wanted to know, makes Hochschild tick?

It wasn’t until last month, when I got my hands on Half the Way Home–a memoir and his first book–that I had the answer to my question. It’s the story of the sometimes difficult relationship between Hochschild, an only child, and his father, the head of a major mining company with interests all around the world. Raised in the kind of luxury familiar only to the top of today’s One Percent–house servants, chauffeur-driven limousine, a private summer estate in the Adirondacks–Adam Hochschild tells of his gradual awakening to what propped up that life of extreme privilege.

“All though it took a long time to sink in, growing up in such surroundings was the best political education I could have had. I did not need leftist theorists to convince me that class is the great secret that everyone wants to deny…As I grew older, I became more accustomed to this way of looking at life. What I mean buy that is an ever clearer perception of how the joys, the power, and the riches of the world are divided so unfairly: between classes, between countries, between races, between men and women. When you feel the injustice of that division in one category–and for me it was the first–then your eyes begin to open to the others as well.” Read the rest of this entry »

Read Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai undercity” and it will open your eyes about what it means to really get to know a place and its people and to tell their story accurately–no small responsibility. This is the story of Annawadi, a desperately poor community of families trying to carve a life for themselves just beyond the luxury hotels circling India’s international airport in Mumbai. It’s the story of worlds colliding in a global economy.

To tell it, Boo–a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post and now a writer for The New Yorker–spent more than three years listening to and watching all that went on in Annawadi, conducting countless interviews, scouring thousands of public records, videoing, photographing, scribbling. She had married an Indian and was determined to get to know his country on its own terms.

“I had felt a shortage in nonfiction about India,” Boo writes in her author’s note, “of deeply reported accounts showing how ordinary low-income people–particularly women and children–were negotiating the age of global markets. I’d read accounts of people who were remaking themselves and triumphing in software India, accounts that sometimes elided early privileges of caste, family wealth, and private education. I’d read stories of saintly slumdwellers trapped in a monochromatically miserable place–that is, until saviors (often white Westerners) galloped in to save them. I’d read tales of gangsters and drug lords who spouted language Salman Rushdie would envy.”

Boo’s book is none of that–though her language sings with Rushdie’s. It is the story, as she says, of ordinary people, the extraordinary things they do to survive, and truths that may change the way you see the world. What more can you ask of a book?

OxfamBuzzList is a new blog series about the movies, books, blogs, TV shows, music, and more that have Oxfam staff and supporters talking. Please leave a comment, or offer us your own contribution (400 words or less). E-mail Andrea Perera, Oxfam America’s Web Editor, at aperera@oxfamamerica.org.