As a writer and correspondent I have barbequed with the Latin Kings street gang, shared tea and almonds with a sponsor of the Taliban, and chewed knotty stroganoff in the crumbling desert palace of a fading Maharaja. (“There is only one explanation for the rapid expansion of the British Empire,’’ he told me, pointing with a manicured finger to his dining room’s cracked and vaulted ceiling. “Divine providence.’’ A jungle’s worth of tatty stuffed tigers looked on dubiously.)
I was at Newsday’s New York City edition for seven years covering the bombast of the Rudolph Giuliani era. I later moved to South Asia, where my topics ranged from militancy in Pakistan and Afghanistan to the dying art of the hand-painted Bollywood movie poster. I reported from Egypt, Sudan, Uganda and Libya between 2005 and 2008, covering the conflict in Darfur, the looming struggle for oil in southern Sudan, Libya’s bizarre attempt at glasnost, and the effects of climate change on the Nile ecosystem.
During that time I traveled down the length of the White Nile, from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea, through the entirely of Uganda, Sudan and Egypt. That six-month journey is the basis for my first book, THE BLACK NILE,which was published by the good people at The Viking Press and Penguin Books.
I am back in South Asia now, where I report on science and the environment for National Geographic News, a website of the National Geographic Society, and research my next nonfiction book.
That’s where it’s at. I hope you’ll come to my website for interesting posts about Africa, India, Bangladesh, books, the media and my hometown New York City.
Best regards,
Dan Morrison
Dear Dan
I found your article on the Sudanese elections a lot more perceptive and nuanced than most of what I’ve read about the elections. But then I guess you have been in Sudan quite a lot to write your book, which I look forward to reading.
I have been living outside the US since basically 1991 and traveling alone through India for nine months, Katmandu, Hong Kong, two years each in Taipei and Rome and since 1996 in Cairo, Egypt.
I loved the excerpts I have read of your book! And, am deeply impressed by the honesty and integrity of your account. Maintaining respect and balance isn’t always easy, but you seem to have accomplished that. I love Egypt and have much admiration for its culture, tradition and optimism. There is a new generation that has eyes and ears and they are Egypt’s hope.
What a nice meeting at the Gange sping’s !
Hi Dan,
Thanks for posting the Unmis report on southern Kordofan. I just spent 12 days there…just got out last week. Visited by the antonovs and mig daily. In one county i visited (el buram) 600 people had been injures by the aerial bombing among which 152 died. People are sleeping in the rocks and caves because sometimes the bombing is at 3 or 4 am.
The word needs to get out about the war crimes being perpetrated again in Nuba by two indicted war criminals Al Bashir and Ahmed Haroun.
Thanks again for your work
BP
Hello Dan !!!
Great contribution to environmental journalism. I think these issues have some common characteristics world wide.