Features

  DPA We are not alone. Fluffy, sharp-featured little creatures scamper inquisitively over the red sand towards us. The meerkats are awake. The sun shoots its fiery rays into the cold morning air, as we stand sleepily on the edge of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park in northern South Africa, near the border with Botswana. “Watch out for your ankles,” ...

  Bulawayo / AFP From jobless youths hired to dig wells to illegal sellers supplying water in buckets and large tanks, some enterprising Zimbabweans are cashing in on the country’s desperate water shortages. Zimbabwe’s long-standing water supply problems have been worsened by a severe drought ravaging the southern African region. Taps in large parts of the country run dry for ...

  Yakawlang / AFP “I make my money for me,” declares Afghan beekeeper Jamila pointing emphatically at her chest. Her small honey-making business provides not only an income, but a sense of pride. In the mountainous central province of Bamiyan, one of the country’s least developed but most liberal regions, beekeeping complements its only other commercial crop, potatoes, and gives ...

  Washington / DPA There’s a certain desk on the right-hand side of the US Senate where a drawers is always stuffed with sweets and chocolates for the taking. Whoever has a sweet tooth or a craving simply has to stop by the ‘Candy Desk,’ though unfortunately for the Democrats, it’s on the Republican side of the chamber. The tradition ...

  London / DPA Almost as soon as Malcolm Kerr has thrown the mackerel, it has disappeared down Tiffany the pelican’s throat. It almost looks as if the bird has sucked the fish in as it passes – unchewed – down its neck, making a large bump as it does so. Tiffany is particularly hungry today and Kerr has to ...

  Nairobi / AFP When Beatrice Athiambo pulls the plastic covering off her stall in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi in the morning, her first customers are already waiting. They want to buy the earth that she sells – to eat. In Africa, geophagia, the eating of clay or stones, is widespread, especially among pregnant women, though estimates vary widely ...

  Butembo / AFP In DR Congo’s war-infested Great Lakes region, carpenter-turned-sculptor Sauveur Mulwana has left a trail of monumental statues over the past decade as part of his self-styled mission to revive local history and boost peace. The 42-year-old moved back home to Butembo, a teeming city of more than a million near the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and ...

  Vienna / DPA Music comes to Alma Deutscher when she dreams. “I sometimes get a melody in the middle of the night. Then I wake up and I sneak out of bed and I write it down in my notebook,” the British girl says. Like many 11-year-olds, Alma also has a vivid imagination when she is awake, but unlike ...

  Puerto Barra / AFP Forced from their ancestral forests by the arrival of big agriculture in eastern Paraguay, the Ache people gave up the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that had sustained them for centuries. Now they have taken up farming themselves — and they want their old land back. The Ache’s homeland was remade in the 1970s by the mass arrival ...

  Valencia i / DPA When winter descends on Europe, Valencia’s famous oranges appear in supermarkets everywhere. While many are cheap, Spaniard Gonzalo Urculo advises orange-lovers to be on their guard. “The really cheap ones don’t taste of anything, they’re neither sweet nor juicy,” he says. Six years ago, together with his older brother Gabriel, the 30-year-old took over his ...