logo
Live Aid spurred me into becoming a GOAL volunteer on the ground in Africa

Live Aid spurred me into becoming a GOAL volunteer on the ground in Africa

Irish Timesa day ago
I was just one of many who were moved to action by the Live Aid concert 40 years ago and that harrowing video segment, introduced by David Bowie, of huge suffering in a world of plenty set to the song Drive by the Cars.
It planted a seed which led me to board a plane to Khartoum in 1986 as a GOAL volunteer, with £10,000 sterling strapped to my waist, necessary hard currency for the agency's running expenses.
The plane landed late at night, and the equatorial heat hit me immediately as I struggled my way across the tarmac, sweating profusely, burdened as I was with a jacket containing a bottle of contraband whiskey.
I wasn't a doctor, a nurse or a logistician. I was on a year's leave of absence from the Irish Press and my brief was to help write donor reports and newspaper articles on GOAL's work and generally to make myself useful.
READ MORE
By the time I got there in 1986, the great hunger that had swept the horn of Africa in 1984, had abated. Happily ensconced in the GOAL house in Khartoum, I had a false sense that the worst was over as I perused a well-thumbed copy of Bob Geldof's autobiography
Is that it?
The office work of an aid agency reliant on funding from the European Union et al is drudgery of a high order so at any opportunity I accompanied GOAL nurses on their expeditions into the slums around Khartoum where they provided desperately poor people with the only health services available to them.
I was never proficient enough in the art of home brew to become a member of the KGB or the Khartoum Guild of Brewers, set up to circumvent the local ban on alcohol, and which bestowed the blasphemous title Defender of Sharia on whoever offered up the worst beer for tasting.
In those days, a GOAL volunteer got full board and $15 a month. Any traveller's cheques I had were stolen soon after my arrival, so any social outings had to be at someone else's expense. Luckily the GOAL nurses always had plenty of invites to expat parties and would bring me along with them.
I saw Crocodile Dundee in a free screening on the roof of Khartoum's oldest hotel, the Acropole, a home from home for aid workers, journalists and archaeologists, with reliable phones and telex machines, run by George Pagoulatos and his extended Greek family.
Behind reception, they proudly displayed a love letter from Bob Geldof on Band Aid headed notepaper to George and staff in which he makes light of the hotel's lack of material comforts.
Despite the shambolic state of the roads and footpaths, the appalling heat and mosquitos, and the squatter encampments that ringed the more affluent urban centre, Khartoum had a certain other worldly charm.
It lies at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles with a street plan in the shape of a Union Jack. In the evening it was pleasant to walk the tree lined riverbank dotted with kiosks and drink an ice-cold soda.
Khartoum was untouched by war except for the stories brought to the city by refugees fleeing conflict and repression in neighbouring Eritrea and Ethiopia, and the civil war that would give birth to South Sudan.
And then there was Darfur.
A mechanic and I delivered a new vehicle, 1,500 kms across the desert, to the GOAL operation in El Geneina, Darfur, which supported a local midwifery school and provided outreach to remote settlements including refugees along the border with Chad.
It was a hair-raising three-day drive. We stopped at El Daein train station in east Darfur and saw the remains of the wagons where hundreds of Dinkas were burned alive in a massacre carried out a few weeks earlier in March 1987 by a local Arab tribe, the Muraheleen militia.
It was a reminder of how isolated Khartoum was then from the mayhem in other parts of the country.
The Muraheleen became part of the dreaded Janjaweed, a militia armed by the government and held responsible for a death toll possibly as high as 300,000 and the displacement of millions in ethnic cleansing across Darfur some 20 years ago.
They morphed into the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) who fell out with government forces and took the proud, once inviolate city of Khartoum in April 2023 committing war crimes on a scale hard to comprehend and destroying many of Khartoum's institutions including the humble Acropole Hotel which the Pagoulatos family had run for 71 years and where GOAL and other aid agencies collected their mail.
After 50 years or more of warfare, Sudan's ruin now seems complete. The sacking of Khartoum and the withdrawal of all support by the country's biggest aid donor, the US, means that Sudan risks becoming the world's largest hunger crisis in recent history as famine takes hold and 24.6 million people, almost half the population face food insecurity.
Last year the US gave $830 million to keep four million people alive in Sudan.
Withdrawing that funding is a very perverse way to mark the 40th anniversary of Live Aid which helped create the mood music – no pun intended – for George Bush, Tony Blair and other G8 leaders to forgive debt and increase aid to Africa on Live Aid's 20thanniversary.
That seems so long ago.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Letters: Live Aid put starvation of children in spotlight, yet this type of cruelty persists today
Letters: Live Aid put starvation of children in spotlight, yet this type of cruelty persists today

Irish Independent

time12 hours ago

  • Irish Independent

Letters: Live Aid put starvation of children in spotlight, yet this type of cruelty persists today

Led by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, almost two billion people worldwide watched the concerts as images of emaciated and starving children filled our TV screens urging us to donate ('Bob Geldof on why Live Aid still resonates today, 40 years on from concerts that united the world', Irish Independent, July 14). Today, thousands of children are being starved and killed by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza and the world looks on ('Israel blames 'technical error' for deadly drone missile that killed six children in Gaza', July 13). At the same time, settlers, who are essentially modern-day thieves, are forcibly removing Palestinians from their lands in the West Bank. There is no plausible deniability here – settlers aren't defying the state; they are doing its bidding. This culture of impunity towards Israel must end. Otherwise our whole world order and way of life will be upended. Tom McElligott, Listowel, Co Kerry Internet has transformed our lives, but it has given a platform to village idiots The internet has profoundly transformed how the world functions, impacting communication, commerce, information access and social interaction. Its influence is pervasive – affecting nearly every aspect of modern life. Before the internet, most people thought villages only had one idiot. We certainly did not get that one right. John O'Brien, Clonmel, Co Tipperary My late mother's wisdom still rings true, especially when it comes to women God rest my mother – a woman full of sayings, sense and the kind of quiet wisdom that tends to surface years later when you least expect it. As a young lad setting out on the treacherous terrain of romance, she once said to me: 'Don't just look at the girl you're dating – look at her mother. That's who you might be sitting across the room from in 40 years' time.' She meant it kindly, and she was right. My wife has indeed grown into many of her mother's finest qualities – including her good looks, warmth, and sense of humour. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more But how I wish my mother had added just one thing: 'And pay attention to how she stacks the dishwasher.' Now, there's a lifelong learning curve. Enda Cullen, Tullysaran Road, Armagh Taskforce to look at surge of abortions in Ireland should be welcomed by all The organisers of the recent Rally for Life that took place in Dublin have ­reiterated their call for the Government to establish a taskforce to investigate the reasons behind the high increase in abortions that are taking place in Ireland yearly. These calls have fallen on deaf ears when the Government has been approached on this subject in recent years. The Department of Health released the data available to them late on Friday evening past, which confirmed that 10,852 abortions took place in Ireland last year. This equates to one in six pregnancies ending in abortion. Whatever one's viewpoint on abortion is, surely we can all agree that any taskforce which may gather information on the reasoning behind these numbers should be welcomed by all. Equipped with the relevant information, the Government would then be in a position to establish supports that would enable any woman experiencing a crisis pregnancy to have all the necessary societal and financial resources at her disposal in assisting her whatever her choice may be. Eamonn O'Hara, Manorcunningham, Co Donegal Are greed and discomfort about our State's history at the heart of GPO plans? Far more articulate speakers have, and are, responding to the proposal to, once again, attempt to bury our country's past. But I must write this because during the extremely one-sided approach in dealing with the more recent Troubles – where there was effectively a burying of our revolutionary past by Ireland's establishment, sometimes in favour of outrageous demands like re-erecting the Lord Gough statue in the Phoenix Park – there has been a general attempt to rewrite and revise history. From a recent proposal to commemorate Black and Tans (by proxy through the RIC), to a tacit approval of the wanton destruction of The O'Rahilly home in Dublin, to the wilful desecration of Moore Street with all its historical significance, these two government parties now want to destroy the highly symbolic GPO by adding shops and offices at the site. We must ask why? What has happened to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to allow these base and ignorant plans to go ahead? Bear in mind, Éamon de Valera was sentenced to death after the 1916 Rising, and WT Cosgrave was the next man on the list for execution before they stopped the firing squads. 'Was it for greed?' as the late Luke Kelly sang in The Sons of Róisín. Or is it something far more deep-rooted? I could cite the usual Irish self-hate, shame of the State's revolutionary origins and an unwillingness to remember. As a tour guide in Galway, I'm conscious the sole person Galway City Council officially remembered in the recent Centenary celebrations was an RIC constable killed in 1916. ​ Has the fear of Irish republicanism in the shape of Sinn Féin driven certain parties to want to turn the wheel back full circle. But, you may say, back then there was overcrowding in rented tenements, slum landlords, rotten electoral boroughs, an imperialistic world of privilege and poverty. It couldn't happen today, could it? Yes, indeed, 'for what died the sons of Róisín'? Jim Ward, Salthill, Galway 'The final we have all been waiting for' – except the other 30 counties, that is Not for the first time, and we heard it again at the weekend from the football experts: 'It's the final everybody wanted'. Oh yippee! The other 30 counties must be jumping for joy. Tommy Heneghan, Balbriggan, Co Dublin Thank heavens for Irish weather, when you look at world's climate calamities With wildfires, freak storms and record-breaking temperatures all around the world, I can't help thinking that we in Ireland should be thanking the heavens for our climate.

Live Aid spurred me into becoming a GOAL volunteer on the ground in Africa
Live Aid spurred me into becoming a GOAL volunteer on the ground in Africa

Irish Times

timea day ago

  • Irish Times

Live Aid spurred me into becoming a GOAL volunteer on the ground in Africa

I was just one of many who were moved to action by the Live Aid concert 40 years ago and that harrowing video segment, introduced by David Bowie, of huge suffering in a world of plenty set to the song Drive by the Cars. It planted a seed which led me to board a plane to Khartoum in 1986 as a GOAL volunteer, with £10,000 sterling strapped to my waist, necessary hard currency for the agency's running expenses. The plane landed late at night, and the equatorial heat hit me immediately as I struggled my way across the tarmac, sweating profusely, burdened as I was with a jacket containing a bottle of contraband whiskey. I wasn't a doctor, a nurse or a logistician. I was on a year's leave of absence from the Irish Press and my brief was to help write donor reports and newspaper articles on GOAL's work and generally to make myself useful. READ MORE By the time I got there in 1986, the great hunger that had swept the horn of Africa in 1984, had abated. Happily ensconced in the GOAL house in Khartoum, I had a false sense that the worst was over as I perused a well-thumbed copy of Bob Geldof's autobiography Is that it? The office work of an aid agency reliant on funding from the European Union et al is drudgery of a high order so at any opportunity I accompanied GOAL nurses on their expeditions into the slums around Khartoum where they provided desperately poor people with the only health services available to them. I was never proficient enough in the art of home brew to become a member of the KGB or the Khartoum Guild of Brewers, set up to circumvent the local ban on alcohol, and which bestowed the blasphemous title Defender of Sharia on whoever offered up the worst beer for tasting. In those days, a GOAL volunteer got full board and $15 a month. Any traveller's cheques I had were stolen soon after my arrival, so any social outings had to be at someone else's expense. Luckily the GOAL nurses always had plenty of invites to expat parties and would bring me along with them. I saw Crocodile Dundee in a free screening on the roof of Khartoum's oldest hotel, the Acropole, a home from home for aid workers, journalists and archaeologists, with reliable phones and telex machines, run by George Pagoulatos and his extended Greek family. Behind reception, they proudly displayed a love letter from Bob Geldof on Band Aid headed notepaper to George and staff in which he makes light of the hotel's lack of material comforts. Despite the shambolic state of the roads and footpaths, the appalling heat and mosquitos, and the squatter encampments that ringed the more affluent urban centre, Khartoum had a certain other worldly charm. It lies at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles with a street plan in the shape of a Union Jack. In the evening it was pleasant to walk the tree lined riverbank dotted with kiosks and drink an ice-cold soda. Khartoum was untouched by war except for the stories brought to the city by refugees fleeing conflict and repression in neighbouring Eritrea and Ethiopia, and the civil war that would give birth to South Sudan. And then there was Darfur. A mechanic and I delivered a new vehicle, 1,500 kms across the desert, to the GOAL operation in El Geneina, Darfur, which supported a local midwifery school and provided outreach to remote settlements including refugees along the border with Chad. It was a hair-raising three-day drive. We stopped at El Daein train station in east Darfur and saw the remains of the wagons where hundreds of Dinkas were burned alive in a massacre carried out a few weeks earlier in March 1987 by a local Arab tribe, the Muraheleen militia. It was a reminder of how isolated Khartoum was then from the mayhem in other parts of the country. The Muraheleen became part of the dreaded Janjaweed, a militia armed by the government and held responsible for a death toll possibly as high as 300,000 and the displacement of millions in ethnic cleansing across Darfur some 20 years ago. They morphed into the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) who fell out with government forces and took the proud, once inviolate city of Khartoum in April 2023 committing war crimes on a scale hard to comprehend and destroying many of Khartoum's institutions including the humble Acropole Hotel which the Pagoulatos family had run for 71 years and where GOAL and other aid agencies collected their mail. After 50 years or more of warfare, Sudan's ruin now seems complete. The sacking of Khartoum and the withdrawal of all support by the country's biggest aid donor, the US, means that Sudan risks becoming the world's largest hunger crisis in recent history as famine takes hold and 24.6 million people, almost half the population face food insecurity. Last year the US gave $830 million to keep four million people alive in Sudan. Withdrawing that funding is a very perverse way to mark the 40th anniversary of Live Aid which helped create the mood music – no pun intended – for George Bush, Tony Blair and other G8 leaders to forgive debt and increase aid to Africa on Live Aid's 20thanniversary. That seems so long ago.

The Indo Daily: Self Aid: How Ireland tried to sing its way out of unemployment
The Indo Daily: Self Aid: How Ireland tried to sing its way out of unemployment

Irish Independent

timea day ago

  • Irish Independent

The Indo Daily: Self Aid: How Ireland tried to sing its way out of unemployment

Forty years later, Live Aid is remembered as a cultural and humanitarian high point – a moment when music tried to change the world. But in Ireland, it sparked a very different idea. Less than a year after Live Aid, Dublin hosted Self Aid. This wasn't about famine relief in Africa. It was about Ireland's own wounds: rampant unemployment, economic stagnation and a generation losing faith. The goal was to rally support, raise funds and – perhaps more importantly – raise morale. It featured the biggest names in Irish music: U2, The Boomtown Rats, Van Morrison and Thin Lizzy. It was the first and only concert of its kind in Ireland But did it work? Today on the Indo Daily, Fionnán Sheahan is joined by Tony Boland, former music director at RTÉ, and by Tony O'Brien, former Irish Independent journalist and now media consultant, to go back to the day Ireland staged its own Live Aid – and ask why, nearly 40 years on, Self Aid still raises eyebrows.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store