30 Years with UNICEF: India, Bhutan, Somalia, Yemen, Tanzania and Nepal

Robert Tyabji

I'm told that nowadays it's uncommon - quite rare, really, for anyone to be continuously employed by the same company or organization for as long as 30 years. I'm grateful that I am one of the lucky ones and that I earn a pension to boot.

In the early 1970s I was fully engaged in the fledgling Indian documentary film industry and had no inkling that I would soon be associated with an international multilateral humanitarian organization like UNICEF. I was in New Delhi with Cinema Workshop producing 16mm documentary films for the Indology courses in some US universities. The UNICEF regional office noticed our work and asked for assistance in making some of their advocacy materials.  Mr. Ken Nelson was the regional communication officer at the time, and was in need of support in producing UNICEF advocacy documentaries and mini-features in 16mm format. I was able to support all his technical requirements and also started working on his idea of developing a unique filmstrip communication tool for village people to easily communicate visually and escalate local issues to district and state government levels. I accepted a consultancy with the UNICEF Regional Office for South Central Asia (UNICEF/ROSCA), which was upgraded to full employee status in 1979.  And that’s how my career with UNICEF began, with Hootoksi by my side. It's been a 30-year trip through six countries and a lifetime of learning.

My job gave me the opportunity to meet and work closely with many of UNICEF's celebrity ambassadors. There was Danny Kaye, Peter Ustinov, Liv Ullmann, Roger Moore, Harry Belafonte, Mia Farrow, Susan Sarandon, George Weah, John Fashanu, Robyn Carlsson and others whose names I don't recall. I also had the opportunity in my advocacy work to meet Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan and his wife Nane, as well as a few presidents, prime ministers and British MPs.

My separate encounters with President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo are quite amusing (in hindsight), so I'll elaborate a bit. Both encounters took place in lifts in the UN Secretariat building in New York. Both times I happened to be in the lobby and in a rush to make a press conference in time on an upper floor. On the first occasion, I jumped into a lift as the doors were closing and noticed that there were only two people inside. I looked up to see who the person nearest to me was and I had to pretty much crane my neck as he was very, very tall; and as our eyes met I realized with shock it was President Museveni!. His companion must have been his bodyguard. Fortunately for me, Museveni seemed amused and his quick smile was very reassuring indeed!

My next accidental presidential encounter was with President Joseph Kabila who had not so long ago assumed power following the assassination of his father, the formidable Laurent-Desire Kabila. Again, I had rushed into the lift and actually bumped into Kabila. I froze but somehow managed to mumble an apology over his bodyguard's glares. I really feared for my life that moment, but fortunately the lift stopped just then and they stepped out.

Three goodwill ambassadors made lasting impressions. Danny Kaye had an extraordinary set of skills, not just as a performer but also as an actor and a person who had the rare gift of inducing laughter. I saw him pick up a dying child and make it laugh, likely the last thing it did before leaving this world. What a gift! Liv Ullmann was warm and kind and Peter Ustinov the quintessential gentleman. Here are photos of some of these wonderful people.

My professional life, especially my 30 years with UNICEF, was unique, satisfying and rewarding. Here's how it went.

New Delhi, India, April 1971 - December 1980

I started working at UNICEF's regional office for South and Central Asia (UNICEF/ROSCA) which was located in residential buildings in Jor Bagh, New Delhi. Initially, I was retained as a consultant. My job was to assist UNICEF's Regional Communication Officer, Ken Nelson, previously a Californian documentary film maker, in producing various communication materials. These included documentary films and audiovisual materials advocating and promoting parental behaviours to support the survival and development of their children. In addition, there was plenty of advocacy work to be done with key government organs. That was in 1972, barely a year after Hootoksi and I were married and had moved to New Delhi.

One of my earliest assignments with UNICEF was to accompany the UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Danny Kaye to a vast refugee camp which had sprung up at Salt Lake near Calcutta in West Bengal. 10 million Pakistani refugees of Bengali descent had fled to India to escape the carnage when erstwhile East Pakistan broke away to form Bangladesh. An estimated 20 million people were internally displaced inside just-born Bangladesh -- about 40% of the population. Desperate, traumatized refugees gathered at Salt Lake to form a huge, impromptu camp of about 250,000 men, women and children. There were no amenities of any kind, no drinking water and no sanitation. The Indian government was overwhelmed and had been drawn into the conflict, mainly to repel the Pakistan army units from the area. Aid agencies from around the world began mobilizing whatever assistance they could provide. UNICEF brought tents, blankets, high energy food, medicines and immunization for young children. Danny Kaye's tour of the camp did an admirable job of raising awareness of the humanitarian disaster and was successful in raising the emergency funding needed.

Ken and I made many advocacy films together. He was an extraordinary cameraman and did most of the shooting with a 16mm Arriflex BL camera (BL stands for 'blimped' meaning it runs silently), and sometimes his wind-up Bell & Howell when the shot required handheld mobility and flexibility. I was responsible for recording all the audio; sync sound for dialog, 'wild' (unsynchronized) location sound and ambient audio we called 'atmosphere' as well as live music. 1/4-inch magnetic tape was used on all our shoots. I was fortunate to have available the best portable recording equipment in the world, a Nagra 3 and later a Nagra 4. When the shoot was done for the day and I was back in the office, I transferred the sound from 1/4-inch tape to 16mm magnetic film which would later be matched to the corresponding film on a Steenbeck flatbed editing table.

The first major film assignment was to cover an emergency situation that had developed in Afghanistan in the fall of 1972. Hundreds of internally displaced Afghan families had fled a disaster zone near the border with Iran, and had paused for the winter in the mountains high in the province of Ghor, near Balkh. They were totally destitute, with no proper clothing, not ever footwear. The severe Afghan winter was fast approaching and I was horrified to see many people with their feet wrapped in raw leather, and with scant clothing. These families were huddled in mountain caves in the hope of surviving the winter, and they were starving. Afghanistan was still a monarchy at the time and the local governor was not happy with the presence of these unfortunate people, and even less happy to learn that an international film crew had arrived to film them, albeit with royal approval.

UNICEF had arranged for food and emergency aid to be delivered to the area and this was already arriving in a convoy of trucks. Our mission was to document the plight of the migrants and cover the arrival and distribution of food, blankets and other essentials. The film would be shown widely on the TV networks in Europe and North America as a documentary and fund raiser.

The governor was outraged by this and had us arrested and locked up in an empty building. Fortunately, Ken was able to send an SOS to Delhi and the UNICEF Regional Director, Gordon Carter, arrived with orders from Kabul, and had us freed. We rushed to the nearest airport and were just in time to catch the very last Afghan Air flight of the season to Kabul, and thence back to Delhi. I believe the film succeeded in raising substantial contributions through UNICEF National Committees in north America and Europe to fund humanitarian relief efforts in Afghanistan.

Another film called To Be a Doctor, was about the challenges a young physician had to overcome when he was sent to a remote health outpost in western India. The purpose of the film was to explore why medical graduates were so reluctant to join the obligatory two years of government service in rural areas; and also to motivate medical students to forego for just a few years their ambitions of private practice in the big cities, for the good of others not so fortunate as themselves. We made other films to support government efforts at educating and emancipating girl children, improve food security, reduce drudgery of women, provide clean drinking water in villages and promote breastfeeding and diarrhea management practices.

Diarrhea was a major cause of death among children under 5. This was a huge problem among infants and was linked to aggressive advertising of baby milk formula by corporations such as Nestles. Millions of poor women were influenced by these ads and were buying formula they couldn't afford, and feeding poorly mxed milk solutions to their babies using unclean water and unwashed bottles. The age-old tradition of breastfeeding was being eroded and was in serious decline. This exacerbated a pandemic of diarrhea that was going untreated and killing millions. Meanwhile it had been discovered that diarrhea can be effectively and easily treated at home. This treatment became known as the 'simple solution', an effective, affordable home-based cure for the dehydration that caused the diarrhea: just a pinch of salt and a fistful of sugar dissolved in a glass of clean water! Alternatively, the water left from boiling rice or potatoes could also be used. These simple remedies had the effect of miraculously replenishing the salts lost in the infants' body through defecating and vomiting, and provided the strength for complete recovery. This simple solution evolved into the Oral Rehyfration Salts (ORS) that is available in pharmacies worldwide. Unfortunately, oral rehydration therapy was not taught in medical schools at the time, so doctors tended to prescribe anti-diarrheal drugs which did nothing to rectify the underlying dehydration. The promotion of breastfeeding, diarrhea management, immunization against childhood's 5 most deadly diseases, and the provision of clean drinking water became the focus of my work with UNICEF.

These priority issues had to be communicated widely but this presented many difficulties in a huge country like India, where 80 percent of the people were poor and lived in villages. Ken observed that local people lacked the means to effectively communicate these worthwhile ideas widely amongst and between themselves, in their own local way. If this hurdle could be overcome, communicating lifesaving and other worthwhile information would naturally be more effective and successful in bringing about behaviour change. He was convinced that, given the appropriate communication tools, communities would use them to empower themselves and improve their lives. Ken and I often discussed this and concluded that with a simple still camera anyone with basic skills could produce a strip of film that tells a story or describes a process. But that strip woulkd have to be processed at the village well, edited and projected on a screen for many people to see (remember, there was no video at the time for consumer use). From that idea was born the UNICEF Filmstrip Kit - click HERE for more on this.

After a year or so I had become a full-time consultant to UNICEF's communication team in Delhi. I then gladly accepted a local staff position. I became involved in the design of training materials for village handymen/women in the upkeep and maintenance of the 50,000-plus deepwell handpumps UNICEF was installing in India's hard rock regions, as well as in other countries in Asia and Africa. The India Mark-II handpump was being developed at the time, based on the successful use of a simple yet revolutionary design improvement over the old, regular handpumps. These traditional handpumps could work only where the water table was within 25 feet of the surface, whereas most of central India is at an elevated altitude and composed of rock where water is retained in fissures as deep as 600 feet under the surface. Normal handpumps, even if modified and fitted with deepwell cylinders, would not work properly because the mechanical links between the pump handle and rod which operated the cylinder at the bottom of the well would break with the strain. The new deepwell handpumps used a quadrant and chain to connect the handle to the rod, a design which proved over time to be very reliable. These pumps can be operated even by young children. I spent many months traveling around central and southern India to participate in field trials and suggest improvements not just to the pumps themselves but also to the way the platforms and drains were constructed, so that the area around the pump remained dry and hygienic. I also visited the manufacturers' factories to verify the quality of the pumps before UNICEF purchased them. I'm not sure how many deepwell handpumps have been installed, but I get a huge surge of satisfaction whenever I see an India Mark-II handpump in use, be it in India or anywhere else in the world!

The potential of exploiting wind energy to pump water, grind grain and power agricultural appliances intrigued me. I was always looking for an opportunity to build a windmill and one day my friend Bunker Roy who founded and ran the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC - now known as The Barefoot College) in Tilonia, Rajasthan State, agreed to support construction of an experimental multipurpose windmill. The challenge was to make maximum use of locally available materials and workmanship. A windmill with six canvas blades was built beside the SWRC's big water well. It could power the grinder and other implements, and even run a generator. A few years later I built a 3-bladed windpump at the Comprehensive Rural Health Project in Jamkhed, Maharashtra State. While UNICEF was not associated with the projects, a lot of interest in using alternative energy sources was raised. These projects could not have been executed without Hootoksi's support, encouragement and hands-on assistance, as well as the immense contributions of my indispensible techie Avtar Singh. Click HERE for this story.

As explained above, UNICEF ROSCA had me working on film production, photography, rural water supply and quality assurance, as well as producing advocacy material to support breastfeeding, diarrhea management, childhood immunization and rural water supply. I was associated with the elimination and eradication of many deadly diseases, smallpox and the five most dreaded childhood diseases: tuberculosis, polio, whooping cough (pertussis), hepatitis and diptheria. Later, in Bhutan, I worked with public health experts in Bhutan, India and Australia to establish a salt iodation plant in Phuntsholing. Iodated salt has played a key role in eliminating iodine deficiency disorders (IDD - these disorders are responsible for impaired childhood growth, mental development and learning ability, birth defects, miscarriages, goitre and cretinism) in Bhutan and many other parts of the world. My book on the subject is a textbook description of the issue and the nuts and bolts of salt iodation. Click here for the IDD story.

The promise of utilizing the unlimited potential of solar energy had already captured people's imagination, mine included. Thousands of communities in India had no electric power and many more had power, but only intermittently. The national development effort would benefit hugely if just small amounts of electricity were available to energise radio receivers in schools, balwadis and community centres, to augment teaching and learning. Developing a solar radio was a feasible project since solar panels had become available by the mid-1970s. However, most portable radios weren't powerful enough for classroom use. I convinced CSIRO (Indian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) to design a simple radio receiver with a built-in horn instead of a normal loudspeaker (photo). I carried the radio to Leh on my bike (along with clothes, essential supplies, food and fuel) and had it installed in a suburban school. I was later told it had been receiving educational programmes from Delhi and that it was powerful enough for a classroom of more than 30 students.

That memorable Ladakh trip is described HERE, please click to read it. Later one evening, I showed slides of the trip to a group of senior UNICEF officials at a regional meeting. Those slides impressed UNICEF's regional planning officer, Satish Prabasi, who was responsible for oversight of UNICEF's programmes around the region, including Bhutan.

Satish may have spoken about the slides with his counterparts in Bhutan for I received an invitation from the Royal Government of Bhutan to visit and discuss the production of a film about children and development. The film was to be Bhutan's contribution to the forthcoming International Year of the Child, 1979. The film was produced in English and Dzongkha and was called A Tale of Bhutan. I also made a shortened version for worldwide distribution which became popular for use in classrooms in the US, Canada and some European countries for courses in development education. Click HERE for this story.

Bhutan then requested UNICEF to send me over to assist their development efforts on a longer-term basis. This raised HR and budgetary issues but my promotion to international status was ultimately approved. So it was in December of 1980 that Hootoksi and I packed up, bundled our three sons, the maid, our Labarador Akbar and two pet tortoises into a train, and moved to Bhutan. Read about it HERE.

Thimphu, Bhutan. December 1980 - April 1984

Living and working in Bhutan was one of the most interesting and exhilarating experiences of my life. Because I was the only UNICEF'er in the country (with the brief exception of a rural water supply engineer who left soon after I got there), I had almost complete freedom of decision making and could work unhindered with the director of the information ministry, Dasho Rigzin Dorji and his staff. My supervisor for the first three years or so was Satish Prabasi, UNICEF's Regional Planning Officer in New Delhi. Satish, in consultation with Dasho Rigzin, set out broadly defined roles and objectives for me and I was left to carry out the work with minimal oversight. It was not easy to communicate with New Delhi as there was no direct telephone connection available. The most effective channel was also the slowest: morse code! If I wanted clearance for a particular course of action or expenditure, I wrote a short note and send it with the driver to the communication centre up the hill. There, the message would be tapped out in morse and transmitted to the Bhutan Embassy in Delhi, where the message was copied and sent with an embassy driver to the UNICEF office. Often, it would be a week before I received a reply, by which time the job I had wanted clearance for was long done!

Hootoksi was employed by the Royal Government's information department to train and assist staff with their writing skills. She also assisted in collecting and translating Bhutanese folk tales. The Foreign Minister's converted farmhouse overlooking Thimphu was assigned to us as our home. Michel and Farhad were admitted to the Lungtenzampa School (Adil at two was too small for school). Dasho Rigzin established a new division called the Development Support Communication Division (DSCD), with Tashi Phuntsog as the manager and me as the adviser. A 2-storey building in Thimphu was provided and set up as the office. Soon the DSCD was staffed with nearly a dozen technical and support personnel and was producing communication materials for all the Royal Government's development programmes.

Close friends of ours from Delhi, Sanjay and Sonya Acharya, were already in Bhutan when we arrived. Sanjay was the government's official photographer and he too, was assigned to DSCD.

This setup in which a UNICEF officer was running a government department using government funds was unprecedented in the UN. I remember with amusement the time a UNICEF auditor, a German lady, visited from New York. She was completely taken aback by my work setup but to her credit, she accepted it with aplomb and even advised me how to avoid potential problems with the next UNICEF auditor!

UNDP had a large office building in the city centre and I was provided with an office there. Hence I would divide my day between my DSCD office and my UNICEF office.

The entire government, with just a handful of exceptions, was staffed by men and women in their thirties and early forties. The King, HM Jigme Singye Wangchuck who was crowned at the age of 17, was barely 20! Many of the ministers were under middle age and most department directors were in their 20s and 30s, roughly my age. Nearly all of them spoke English fluently and were very forward-looking. The ones my work brought me into frequent contact with - health, education, information and planning - enjoyed dropping into my office after work (which began and ended an hour earlier than mine), often lubricated with a shot of scotch. I kept a small bar in my office, a trick I had learned from David Haxton, the UNICEF Regional Director in Delhi.

I got to meet the King a few times. He had become quite accustomed to my presence when on his regular planning tours around the country and I had many opportunities to observe him working and interacting with local communities and officials. I was privileged to attend many of his archery and basketball events. He summoned me once and told me he wanted to start a national television service; and what were my views on pros and cons? He was a unique monarch in that he spent a lot of his time and energy on urging people to help him update Bhutan's archaic system of governance, from an absolute monarchy to a more democratic parliamentary setup with a Prime Minister as Head of Government and the King as Head of State. He wanted a multiparty political system to be established. But this idea was not popular with the majority of citizens who revered the king and were unwilling to accept any other ultimate authority. These revolutionary ideas had been introduced by his father, King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, who sadly died before he could institute the reforms that were so close to his heart.

A house not far from ours belonged to Yab Ugyen Dorji, an influential politician who had been a close adviser to Bhutan's first king, Sir Ugyen Wangchuck, King Jigme's grandfather. One of Yab Ugyen's four beautiful daughters, Sangay Choden, became friends with Hootoksi and would visit us frequently. After we left Bhutan we learned that the King had fallen in love with Sangay's elder sister, Dorji Wangmo but had been declined permission to marry her by the Je Khempo (the Chief Monk and Head of the monk body). The Je Khempo was the only person with authority over the monarch and only in matters of religion. The marriage could not be blessed because the intended bride had been married previously. However, the monks arrived at a novel solution to the impasse: the marriage could go ahead if the King wed all four sisters. Thus, Hootoksi's friend Sangay became a queen with whom we still exchange greetings every Losar (New Year). Hootoksi and I met her and her daughter Ashi Euphelma Choden Wangchuck when we visited Bhutan in 2002.

The ideas behind Bhutan's Gross National Happiness policy was developed by Lyonpo (Minister) Lam "Benjy" Penjore, Minister of National Planning. I got to know him quite well and was shocked and saddened when he was killed in an accident on the steep and winding road to Phuntsholing on the Indian border. Bhutan is celebrated worldwide as the sole country with a functioning Gross National Happiness (GNH) index. Bhutan has also earned world attention as the first country to attain carbon neutral status, in large part due to the untiring efforts of Dasho Paljore "Benji" Dorji. I first met Benji on a plane shortly after we moved to Bhutan. He was Bhutan's Chief Justice at the time and before long he and his wife Dechen had become close friends of ours. As a cousin of the King and very influential, his friendship was immensely helpful to me in my work. In 1981, he acted alongside Hootoksi in the play Rashomon. Another influential Bhutanese official who became a friend was Dasho Jigme Thinlay. He, too acted in Rashomon, as the brigand Tajumaru. He became Minister of Foreign Affairs and was later elected as Prime Minister (Lyonchhen) in 2008. We remain in touch with both of them.

Lyonpo Dawa Tshering was the Minister of Foreign Affairs during my time in Bhutan and he was also our landlord. He and his family became close to us and he would drop in for a cup of afternoon tea when on his regular constitutional walk.

Sadly, by 1994 my term in Bhutan was drawing to a close and my then supervisor Rolf Carriere was keen for me to return to Delhi. He was in need of assistance in setting up an interregional programme to combat iodine deficiency disorders in the region based on the Bhutan experience and example. UNICEF arranged to transfer me back to the regional office in Delhi until an expected assignment in Somalia materialized.

Back in New Delhi, April 1984 - January 1985

My reassignment to Delhi was intended to be temporary, until an expected assignment in Somalia materialised. My job was to work with Rolf Carriere in establishing an inter-regional programme to control and ultimately eliminate iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) in Asia. The temporary nature of the posting prompted us to send Michel to a boarding school in Panchgani, in the interest of his continuing education. Farhad and Adil were younger and we managed to get them admitted in the British School in Delhi. We rented an apartment in Greater Kailash and I got down to working on IDD with Rolf Carriere (UNICEF's Regional Programme Officer,) and Indian and international health authorities. Eventually, nearly a year later, in January 1985, the Somalia post became available. By then, I'd had enough time to make substantial progress with the Interregional IDD Programme. The Bhutan salt plant was operating to capacity, a full-scale exercise to administer iodised oil injections to young and expecting women in IDD areas, and other interventions were underway in India and in neighbouring countries.

Mogadishu, Somalia, January 1985 -December 1988

My new contract for Somalia finally came through in January 1985. Hootoksi and I were rather apprehensive about the move as the political situation in Somalia was historically unstable. However, we had been reassured by Di McNab, who we'd met in Delhi during one of her visits from Somalia. Di was the wife of Stewart McNab who was UNICEF's senior progremme officer in Mogadishu.

Our Air India flight to Somalia was uneventful but we were totally unprepared for the unique experience of our arrival at Mogadishu International Airport. The approach was fascinating as the aircraft flew really low over the deep blue Indian Ocean and seemed to land right in the water. When we alighted, all the passengers were ordered to form a straight line on the hot apron and march toward the terminal building which was just a small, square structure. Once we marched inside, we were subjected to one of the most bemusing experiences ever. In hindsight, it all seems trivial, almost amusing. However, over time, we became accustomed to the idiosyncracies of departing and arriving at Mogadishu International.

The UNICEF 'fixer' who received us at the airport helped us check into the city's then premier hotel, the Juba. Our Juba Hotel experience and some of the more memorable happenings during our 4-year stay in Somalia are described elsewhere. Stewart and Di McNab came over to help us settle in. I had never met Stewart and Hootoksi and I took an immediate liking to him. He was a short Scotsman with an irrepressible sense of humour. His wife Di, whom we had met in Delhi was a warm, kind lady from England. We made friends with them almost immediately and have remained so till today (sadly, Stewart passed away on 27 July, 2017).

The Mogadishu office was headed by Dr. Gregorio Monasta, a specialist in pediatric lung and cardiac diseases and a truly wonderful human being. He was my supervisor till he transferred to New York in 1986. My new supervisor was Mohammed Baquer Namazi, an affable Iranian American. It so happened that the WHO Representative in Mogadishu was also an Iranian, and believe it on not, from the same town as Baquer. They decided to throw joint events and parties which took UNICEF-WHO relations to new heights in Somalia! Anyway, at one of their events, Baquer's maid who for some reason was angry at him had decided to teach him a lesson. She served up ice cubes she had made with kerosene, which naturally ruined all the drinks!

The office was quite large with about 80 staff. Nora Mariano, one of the local professionals, became a good friend and was a mentor to me in learning to understand and appreciate the ways of the Somali people. She was from the only Christian family in the country. Her sister Catherine, also a friend, emigrated to Canada around the time I transferred to Yemen. Hootoksi and I got to know the locals quite well although the Somali language, while written in Roman script, remained indecipherable to us. Traditionally, the Somali are a nomadic people and were known as the Poets of Africa. They are the most impressive people I know, with seemingly endless knowledge of everything under the sun, and fiercely proud to boot. They are Sunni Muslims with deep-rooted beliefs and traditions, and very loyal to their individual clans. Friendship is deeply valued and your Somali friend is a friend for life and will expect similar unlimited loyalty and generosity in return.

Somalia presented major hurdles to my work, which was basically to communicate information and advice about the main issues of concern for Somali children. The main messages were to continue breastfeeding for upto two years, how to treat diarrhea with oral rehydration, ensure that all immunizations were administered, how to improve nutrition with local foods, and to protect children from abuse. First, there was the language barrier (although many people spoke English and Italian). Everything had to be expressed in colloquial Somali, but the literacy rate was low. I had to find other communication channels that used spoken and body language, but there was no television in the country and the majority were nomads with no fixed location. Radio, audio and video cassette and the 'bush telegraph' were the primary channels for information at the time.

But good fortune smiled and I discovered Hobalada Waberi, Somalia's national dramatic society, which was underemployed due to government budget cutbacks. Hobalada's members were dramatists, vocalists, musicians, writers, composers and poets. They were a community and lived in a dedicated compound. This was a goldmine of a find! Group members enthusiastically took up my challenge to create and perform new content. They composed music, songs and plays about the issues I wanted to promote and performed in all the important towns. Many of their dramas were made into videos, some of which can still be seen on YouTube. Unfortunately I wasn't able to carry out proper evaluations but the high public demand for Waberi's productions indicated a good measure of success. Even President Siad Barre got interested and he publicly administered polio vaccine to a child cradled in his arms.

Hootoksi was employed as a Teaching Aid at the American International School, where our children were admitted. Mogadishu was an important control point for air traffic entering and leaving eastern Africa, so it was vital for air traffic controllers to be able to communicate clearly with pilots from around the world with their different accents. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) employed Hootoksi to impart speech training to controllers, for which a classroom was provided at the airport.

The UNICEF office was located in a compound in the old Lido part of the city. My office was in a rather crumbly old building which stood separately from other similar old buildings in the sprawling, sandy compound. There was an informal, holiday atmosphere about the place. Adding to the informality were a few small apartments for single international staffers. The compound had its own generator, a necessity in Somalia. Wang computers had recently been installed and I had one on my desk. It had a green screen, a 7-inch floppy disc drive and a 10 MB hard drive which was later upgraded to 20MB. This was considered huge at the time! We used word processing software which would be totally unusable today. What the screen displayed as one typed had no relation to how it would appear when printed out. One could edit but there were no graphics at all. Nevertheless, using those machines was quicker and easier than typewriting! Friday was the weekly holiday. One Saturday morning I entered my office to find that chunks of cement and plaster from the ceiling had crushed my desk and chair, and destroyed my computer!

Life with UNICEF in Somalia was a never ending series of learning experiences and surprises. Please click HERE to read more about it.

Our 4 years were drawing to a close as the northern Somali clans, disenchanted by Siad Barre’s increasingly populist and violent policies, started insurgencies which soon spread into full-scale warfare between the clans. What followed is history; the attempted assassination of Siad Barre and his exile in Saudi Arabia, the wanton killings, the siege of the American compound, Black Hawk Down, the mass emigration of Somalis, and the complete disintegration of the once-proud Somali Republic. Fortunately, my transfer to Sana'a, Yemen happened before Mogadishu descended into conflict and outright war.

Sana'a, Yemen, December 1988 - July 1994

It still amuses me to recount the story of my 1988 recce visit to Yemen. Stewart McNab had moved to Yemen the previous year as the UNICEF Representative there and my potential transfer to Yemen was at his behest. I accepted his offer to fly to Sana'a for a few days to check it out and decide if I wanted to live there for the next 4-5 years. The shortest way to reach Sana'a from Mogadishu was via Jeddah; the first leg on Somali Airlines and the final leg on Yemenia, Yemen's national airline. I was informed that I would need a visa to transit Jeddah and that I would have to be interviewed by the Saudi consul general in Mogadishu himself, who might grant the visa at his pleasure.

His office was huge with a nice view of the town and the ocean beyond. He wanted to know the reason for my travel. He asked if I was Muslim and when I said no, he said I should read the Quran which was the most beautiful of all written works, and would I do that? When I said I had a Quran in English and would indeed read it, he stamped the visa into my passport.

The flight from Mogadishu to Jeddah was occupied mostly by Somali women. I noticed all of them were laden with heavy gold jewelry on their hands, wrists, arms, ankles and around their necks. I later learned that they were couriers and dealers, selling Somalia's famed gold jewelry in Saudi Arabia and then flying to Malaysia to buy furniture which they sold back home, to repeat the process again.

The transit in Jeddah turned out to be an adventure in itself. When security scanned my backpack, an office clip could be seen stuck in one of the seams. I was ordered to remove the offending clip and when this proved impossible, they wanted to cut the seam open. Fortunately, the commotion attracted the attention of a senior officer who told them to ignore the clip, and dispatched me in the company of a guard brandishing an automatic weapon. I was shown into a small room where I was ordered to wait until my flight was announced. I was allowed to visit the bathroom but only under the guard's baleful eye. I felt he was just waiting for an excuse for some target practice! An hour or so later, I heard shouting outside and recognized my name being called in a jumble of Arabic. The guard opened the door and there was a man in Yemenia uniform shouting for me. He was quite hysterical as he said they had been announcing the departure of the Yemenia flight for the past 15 minutes and now the aircraft was leaving and why hadn't I reported? I tried to explain but he was jabbering into his radio and I could see the aircraft pushing back from the jetway. But the guy was really good - he got the plane to stop! He put me on a high-lift truck which drove me over to the waiting plane! I was assigned a front seat on the 737 and from that day on I was called Mr. Late every time I flew Yemenia!

My work at UNICEF was very rewarding, largely because my excellent working relationships with government counterparts with whom I interacted daily and traveled often around the country, and also because of the richness of the Yemeni culture and the stark beauty of the countryside. My main counterpart was Dr. Ahmed Mohammed Al-Hamly who directed the country's health education and communication programme. He was a very dynamic and forceful personality. We became good friends and I was often invited for lunch at his house. My other regular contacts were Ahmed Said, EPI (Expanded Programme on Immunization) director responsible for running the country's child immunization effort and Dr. Adel Barakat who directed the national diarrhea management programme. I was also a UN Security Warden, a key responsibility later when tensions escalated and led to the outbreak of the Yemen civil war of 1984. Our good friends from Somalia, Stewart McNab, was the UNICEF Representative and my immediate supervisor.

It was a wonderful posting for the family too. Hootoksi immensely enjoyed her work as an EFL teacher at the Yemen American Language Institute (YALI) and she met and befriended many local women. Adil was doing well at the Sana'a International School, Farhad celebrated his 18th birthday and Michel his 21'st. in our home. The Sana'a climate is perfect for growing fruit of all kinds and we had pomegranate, fig and quince trees in our garden, as well as grapevines. I used to make plenty of wine from the grapes, and even a pungent quince wine! We had a 2-storeyed stone house with an extensive garden and parking under a canopy of grapevines. We made many friends from the oil and gas and other expatriate communities, and it was in Sana'a that we first met and became close to our very dear friends Steve and Zarine Watson. We would make family trips around the country whenever possible and often spent our Friday weekends doing day trips. Yemen is a stunningly beautiful country of high mountains, verdant valleys, and barren deserts. The Hadramaut region in the south is the birthplace of the Arab oasis culture and the Arab nation worldwide. In convoy with friends we drove across part of the bandit-infested Empty Quarter (Rub-al-Khali) to get there, and visited Shibam, Hadramaut's ancient city of high rise buildings known as the Chicago of the Desert.

Hootoksi and I lived very happily in Sana'a for five years until the start of the Yemen civil war of 1994. Fortunately our children were away in boarding school in England by then. Hundreds of thousands of expatriate workers from India, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Canada, Europe and USA were evacuated by air, sea and land. Hootoksi and hundreds of 'non-essential' UN staff were evacuated to Jordan. I remained along with a band of a dozen UN staff to 'hold the fort' until the war ended. Read all about our life in Yemen, please click HERE.

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, July 1994 - March 2001

Neither of us was a stranger to Tanzania as we had visited a couple of times to experience their wonderful national parks and safari adventures.

The chance to work in Tanzania came when I was a UN security warden as the Yemen civil war of 1994 raged. When negotiations for the job were finalised, Hootoksi had already been evacuated from Sana'a and was with her parents in Kuala Lumpur. I was lucky that our Indian household help Mohamed was still around and he helped me pack up our stuff and load it into the container that we had purchased in Somalia nearly 10 years before. The container was shipped to Dar es Salaam via Djibouti while the war wound down and I said my goodbyes to a country and a people I had grown truly fond of.

When I arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania was in the grip of an international emergency caused by what became known as the 100-day Rwandan genocide. The mass slaughter of 500-600 thousand Tutsis and other tribes by Hutu tribals had triggered a wave of refugees crossing the Kagera River into Tanzania. This was in April 1984 and was the biggest concern of UNICEF and every other agency, as well as the government, when I got there. Massive refugee camps for the half million Rwandans had been set up and essential infrastructure like tented accommodation, water supply, sanitation, food supplies, fuel, education, medical services and security was being put in place by the UN and a plethora of NGOs.

The scope of my work was different from Yemen. Here, I was initially responsible for preparing and publishing information on the ongoing refugee situation. As time passed and the severity and urgency of the refugee issue diminished, I was able to shift focus from information to communication to support the development programmes UNICEF was assisting. Promoting ways to apply the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in planning and executing development programmes was a priority and became my focus. Much of my work involved organizing workshops and training events for government and NGO people around the country. In addition, I was the one to manage visits from people and organizations wanting to observe and monitor UNICEF support in the country, ranging from foreign politicians and government missions, UN missions, visits by UNICEF National Committees and Board members, to tours by UNICEF's Goodwill Ambassadors.

One of the highlights was collaborating with NGOs to organize the Peace and Harmony Festival for African Children in September 2000. Michel and our daughter-in-law Rosa, both audio engineers, had come to Tanzania for a change of pace from their hectic lifestyle in New York. The government saw opportunity in their presence and contracted them for a project to preserve Tanzania's rich musical traditions, which were rapidly dying out as the traditional masters succumbed one after the other to the raging HIV/AIDS epidemic. Their inputs greatly contributed to the huge success of the festival.

Much of the grassroots development work in Tanzania was carried out by local NGOs, with financial and material assistance from international NGOs, UNICEF and a few others. I developed close working relationships with three NGOs, namely Kuleana in Mwanza, Kiwohede and the Youth Cultural and Information Centre (YCIC) in Dar es Salaam. All of them were concerned with rehabilitating, training and caring for street children and orphans. Kiwohede focused on girl children. YCIC was the main organizer of the Peace and Harmony Festival.

Hootoksi enjoyed teaching English as a Foreign Language at the British Council in Dar es Salaam. She also worked with Kiwohede on specific projects, described separately.

Please read about our life and times in Tanzania HERE.

Life in Tanzania was wonderful. We had a beautiful home and made many friends, some of whose friendship we value to this day, and others who sadly have passed. Some of our friends played musical instruments and would gather at our place to jam. Our clay badminton court was in great demand on Sunday afternoons. We got to enjoy and love the local music scene and there were lots of night spots with live music, beer and dancing nearby. We spent as much time as possible exploring the country and the world's biggest and best wildlife parks were just a few hours' drive away. Dar es Salaam is on the Indian Ocean coast with many beaches nearby. I learned to sail and bought a used racing dinghy, a Laser named The Dogs. This type of boat is difficult to master so on my early outings the boat routinely tossed me into the warm waters of Msasani Bay. The sheer joy and thrill of sailing to the nearby islands' pristine beaches and stretching out on the warm sand is unforgettable! The Dar es Salaam Yacht Club was our favourite hangout place and the casting-off point for me and my sailor buddies.

On the morning of August 7, 1978, Dar's peaceful ambiance was shattered by a bomb explosion that destroyed the US embassy and killed many. At that very moment I was delivering a speech to a large crowd in Dar's main downtown maidan (field), with many government and embassy people seated around me in the pavilion. Suddenly there was a rumble and the ground shook, and in the distance a massive plume of smoke arose in the clear blue sky. Confused, I stopped speaking as a dozen cellphones started ringing and government guests scrambled to leave. I assumed one of the stores in the Namanga shopping area selling cooking gas cylinders had exploded; but it soon became clear that the blast came from the US embassy, and that the US embassy in Nairobi had also been bombad and destroyed along with neighboring high-rise office blocks. A good friend of ours in Dar, Chips Carpenter, the US embassy's first secretary, escaped certain death as the truck bomb had exploded underneath his office, which was completely destroyed. Luck smiled on him that day as he had just stepped out of his office to speak to a colleague in another part of the building. That was the start of a long series of attacks against American assets that continue to this day.

As the years flew by and my career with the UN would have to end in just a few years, when I reached 60, I started applying for various senior UNICEF posts around the world. Finally, as the new decade dawned, I was offered the post of Communication Adviser at the UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia (ROSA), in Kathmandu. My career had been field oriented and I loved my work not just because it brought me into productive relationships with governments, communities and NGOs but also because I could see the outcomes of my efforts. So it was with some trepidation that I accepted the Kathmandu assignment knowing that it would be more desk oriented than ever before and that I would have to curtail the field work I so loved doing.

Kathmandu, Nepal, March 2001 - March 2003

Our 20-foot container which I had purchased in Mogadishu for 25 US dollars would not have made it to Calcutta and overland to Kathmandu, so I was lucky to find a buyer - for 600 dollars! That good deal boded well for us and our move to Kathmandu on Qatar Airways was easy. I had had an opportunity to do a quick recce in Kathmandu beforehand and had already chosen our house. Located at a height in Budhanilkantha in the northern outskirts of the city, it was a modern 2-storey bungalow set in a terraced, landscaped garden with a stream running through. It overlooked the city in the distance and the hills beyond. Thickly wooded hills rose steeply behind the house. There were other houses around, as well as a large monastery and a Vipasana centre nearby. We got to know some of the neighbours well and were very happy in our new home.

The office was in the central part of the city, just 5 km or so from home. I had purchased a Nissan Patrol 4WD vehicle which I believed to be the appropriate vehicle for Nepal's mountainous terrain. We hired a driver who would ferry me to and from the office and then be with Hootoksi for the day. This arrangement was perfect for her to carry out her work with the various development and charity groups she got involved with.

My regional responsibilities were quite different from what I was accustomed to. There was very little communication support work as this was carried out by the individual country offices around the region; my inputs were minimal and only when requested for. Rather, I was focused more on assisting the Regional Director, Sadig Rasheed, in organizing seminars and conferences in Nepal and other countries in the region, to advocate issues of concern for children in the region and beyond. The focus themes were the rights of the child, the girl child, child protection from neglect and abuse, nutrition, health and immunization, corporate social responsibility, working towards a world fit for children, funding, etc.

While living in Nepal was generally peaceful barring the occasional bandh (shutdown of certain areas of the city) due to demonstrations by Naxalites and other opposition groups, other parts of the south Asian region were not so lucky. Based on my experience of tense situations in Somalia and Yemen I was asked to prepare a policy paper on dealing with the media in emergency situations. Click HERE to view the draft which was shared with all the UNICEF offices in the region.

To be honest, I found the bulk of my work uninspiring (in comparison to field work) and navigating the politics of these high-level interactions was not what I enjoyed. So by March of 2003, six months ahead of my 60th birthday and D-day for retirement, I threw in the towel and opted to leave.

As D-day approached there were many farewell parties to attend. Saying final goodbyes to friends was never easy but these partings were more difficult than ever before. Then on Friday 7 March, the office organized a farewell on the front lawn. I spoke about life with UNICEF and there were speeches with snacks and beverages. It was nice that there were visitors from other regions present that morning and I was particularly pleased that my old boss and friend Rolf Carriere was there too.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning out my desk and computer files. I sat and read letters from my sons wishing me Godspeed and I ended my last office day in a very pensive mood.

That evening I got home well after dark, exhausted and ready to crash. But when I opened the front door, I got the biggest - and best - surprise of the day: the living room was packed with colleagues, friends and some neighbours, and a party was in full swing! The music was thrumping, the drinks were flowing and the conversation was animated. Sometime later Bill Musoke (who headed the UN Fund for Population Activites in Nepal) gave me a parting 'gift' - a make believe walking stick... or scepter? - and then there were farewell speeches by Bill, my colleague Samphe Lhalungpa and Hootoksi. I also had to say a few words and was made to sit on a makeshift 'throne' (to stop me falling over I suspect). I was pretty drunk by then so I don't remember much except that it was a fantastic sendoff, the best I'd ever had!

Hootoksi and I had already selected Malaysia as our retirement destination so that we could be closer to her parents who had been living there for decades. I applied for Malaysia's Silver Hair Programme for foreign retirees. The possibility of driving our Nissan 4WD from Kathmandu to Kuala Lumpur was very enticing. It also intrigued the Myanmar Ambassador in Nepal who was very helpful in liaising with Yangon and providing valuable route information that could not be found through normal channels. But three months later, the Myanmar government declined permission for us to transit overland, citing security issues. So I sold the car and we took a flight to KL while our most precious belongings were dispatched by sea.

Thus ended my 30-plus years with UNICEF. It was a fantastic learning experience for us and for our children. We led a rich and varied life and learned to live happily and peacefully in different cultural settings and amid hardships and risky security situations. We made acquaintances and some lifelong friends with folks we met in our postings and on the job. It was a privilege and an honour to be involved in some small measure in bettering the lives of the underprivileged, especially children, in the countries I served. But it sometimes also came at a cost especially for Hootoksi and the children who were separated from us in the interest of their schooling. There are few regrets. Just immense gratitude. And the anticipation and excitement of a new life ahead.

Post script, Shah Alam, Malaysia, 2022

Living in Malaysia all these years has been an absolute pleasure. However, my liberal worldview has been shaken by world events which are increasingly influenced by and the result of right-wing thinking which seemed to have gained major impetus under President Donald Trump's stewardship and beyond his presidency. So I was greatly relieved and encouraged when I saw the video of Prof Jeffrey Sachs speaking at Davos 2022. Finally, here was a man worth listening to!