It is just 270 miles, six hours by car, from Mandera to Mogadishu but it is perhaps the most dangerous six hours of your life.
Militias and kidnappers roam the scorched lands, hunger and disease are rife. Somalia is now one of the world’s most hungry nations and is also preparing itself for a return to all out civil war just three years after government returned to its soil.
Despite these problems, Somalia goes seemingly unnoticed by the world’s media, enduring quietly the violence of Ethiopian forces and militants, steadily making it their own personal battle ground.
Anyone who witnesses such tragedy can’t help but be left with a determination to tell the world what is happening to the people who are forgotten in the midst of our own everyday interests.
The latest arrival to the Re-Everything team, Ian Pocock, did just that in his previous role as a reporter for the BBC and World News, a job which he says is motivated as much by passion as any sense of adventure. Although, as Ian quite rightly points out, remaining a detached observer as you watch the destructive impact of a Kalashnikov is virtually impossible.
Equally bearing witness to famine or walking through a hospital full of AIDS patients with no drugs and no-one to look after them, engenders a passion for changing the terms of the conversation.
Ian chose to leave the world of international journalism in order to try to change some of the things he had witnessed as a reporter.
In his words, “Joining a company like Re-Everything takes you from being an observer of events to someone who can influence them. Supporting business to deliver profits with principles, and ensure that for every pound made, a way is found to make it work to build a sustainable environment.
While the requirement for aid to Africa and other impoverished nations will remain for generations, it will be the increase of trade with those same nations which will ensure truly sustainable development.”
And the desire to create truly sustainable business is the passion and the motivation that drives everyone at Re-Everything.
