ABOUT WORLDS APART

There's a refugee camp in northern Kenya which in 15 years of existence has developed an air of permanence. In Guatemala indigenous Mayan people still find themselves losing their land to mining concessions. And in Darfur, the horror that is genocide continues. As the south Sudanese slowly leave that Kenyan camp to return home to test the post-war mood, their fellow countrymen from Darfur replace them at the same camp as their lives at home remain under threat.
This year Rodney began his journey in that Kenyan camp where small numbers of Darfuris and large numbers of Somalis replace the home-going southern Sudanese. He continued to Tanzania where he visited its game parks as well as the exotic spice island of Zanzibar to see if international tourism is alleviating the poverty in what is still one of the world's poorest nations, or if its profits slip overseas to hotel and tour groups.
Next came Mozambique, a favoured country by international donors. But does aid offer value for money even in a calm and ordered land? There's calm and order in the Maldives, a honeymoon heaven for, among others, increasing numbers of young Irish brides and grooms. But behind the calm, a dictator is being challenged and is trying to juggle the demands of democracy with his own desire for political survival.
The Q'equchi' Indians, a Mayan people of Guatemala, are also trying to survive. But their claim to land is being over-ridden by a government deal with a mining company. Who will win that one? And whoever wins drug wars that scar Colombia's image, the journalists there will remain nervy as their attempts to report accurately bring death threats - and sometimes death - from the vested interests. Some of them tell their story to Worlds Apart.
Back in Africa, Darfur and Somalia apart, internal war increasingly looks like a thing of the past. But how is the massive Democratic Republic of Congo faring in its attempts to recover from the destruction of recent war? How are ordinary Zimbabweans coping, not with war, but with the hardship forced on them by the delusions of their own President? And, back in Darfur, can the latest UN peacekeepers re-established end the misery, the internal and cross-border displacement, the horrific murder of so many?

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