Posted by Richard Boucher on Jan 08, 2008 - 09:04 PM
![Dawn at the U.S. Department of State building in Washington, DC. [AP file photo]](http://blogs.state.gov/images/UNGA/field/2008_0108_state_bh_m.jpg)
Reading the Washington…
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Posted by Matthew Cassetta on Jan 04, 2008 - 01:23 PM
![Hippos basking in the Ishasha River, between Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo. [State Dept.]](http://blogs.state.gov/images/UNGA/field/2007_0104_hippos_bh_m.jpg)
It is nearly midnight and my colleagues and I are under a perfect sea of stars in a remote forest village in northeast Gabon, near the border with Cameroon. There is a bonfire blazing, and we watch transfixed as a parade of wildly painted dancers leap, imitating leopards and forest spirits. Women shake palm leaves and sing the high, haunting notes of traditional pygmy song. It is a lulling, vivid night of magic to treasure.
We were in the village to make a donation of tools to its leaders and to discuss the new national parks law, which was widely heralded by conservationists but little understood locally. The visit was also a microcosm of why I have told people many times that…
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Posted by Walter Braunohler on Jan 03, 2008 - 09:54 AM
![This undated photo shows USAID Officer John Granville in Sudan. [AP/USAID]](http://blogs.state.gov/images/UNGA/field/2007_0103_sudan_bh_m.jpg)
My wife and I woke up on New Year’s Day at 4:00 AM to the news that two of our colleagues at USAID had been attacked in a neighborhood near ours in Khartoum. Over the next few hours, the Embassy vaulted into crisis mode. Facts and rumors swirled as we attempted to make sense of what had happened.
We learned that John Granville, 33, an American officer, and Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama, 39, a locally employed Sudanese national, had been shot. Abdelrahman died at the scene. John was immediately taken to the hospital. After hours of surgery, where volunteers from the Embassy stood by to give blood, John succumbed to his injuries and passed away. Both John and Abdelrahman died serving the common interests of…
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