Pix Aid

As you’ve probably read on the “Who we are” page my “day job” is freelance photo-journalist, cameraman. I’m lucky to be able to work at something that I really like. Of course, not all assignments are interesting, but many are and a lot depends on how you go about the work. I mean even a simple interview can be interesting from a photographers point of view… trying to get the best possible lighting, angles, etc.

Today, though, I’m off to Spain to do a story for the European television Euronews. I have been working with Euronews for many years and they call every once in a while with a report to do and they are usually very interesting. I am flying from Luxembourg this morning, through Barcelona to Almeria, Spain.

I will be doing only camerawork on this report and they don’t usually fill the cameraman in on what the story is about until he/she arrives! So, I will meet the journalist at the airport in Almeria and I’m sure he’ll brief me. All I know now is that we will do the first half of this story in Spain and then, next week, finish the story in Nairobi, Kenya. Another hint is that it has to do with water. We’ll see!

1 March 2007 Almeria, Spain

Almeria is in Andalusia just East of Granada on Spain’s southern coast. The city of some 180,000 people receives the most sun of any city in Europe and apparently the second sunniest city on the earth. Wikipedia didn’t say which city is the sunniest in the world.

We’ve come here for the sun. It seems that if you fill a plastic bottle with dirty disease-ridden water, close it up and set it out in the sun for four hours, it will then be safe to drink (but it doesn’t improve the taste or color!).

About a half an hour outside the town of Almeria, past the ghost towns set up for filming old westerns (the landscape resembles southern California’s dry rocky deserts), is the Solar Research Center. An impressive site of hundreds of mirrors, not solar panels, concentrates sunlight on three towers where scientists experiment on solar thermal power. Apparently, solar thermal power is much more efficient than solar panels charging up batteries. Solar thermal power concentrates the sun’s rays to heat water to 1000 degrees Celsius and the resulting pressurized steam is used to create electricity.

An "other world" landscape of giant mirrors, pipes and towers at the Solar Research Center in Almeria, Spain. Some 120 personnel conduct experiments mostly in solar thermal power.

The site is only for scientists and a group of them has come from all over Europe, from South Africa and Cambodia to coordinate efforts to find out more and improve this simplistic idea. This study is financed by the European Union to the tune of 1.9 million euros. But it is more work than one would imagine. The idea is simple, but in order to convince NGOs and governments, they have to test the idea in different conditions. Here at the Solar Center, they are testing different chemical additives to make the natural process more efficient. They are trying to work with additives, which would be readily available in poorer regions to keep solar disinfection cheap.

Today is an intense day of information flow! I will write a more structured article about all this when we get back from Nairobi, so bear with me!

2 March 2007

This doesn’t happen very often, but this time my flight back isn’t until five this evening and Julian, the journalist from Euronews has already flown back to Lyon, France on a very early flight. Usually we film right up until we’re almost late for the plane and I have to pack up the equipment at the check-in counter.

So I have the day to play tourist in this beautiful city, which is especially nice because it is clear and 25 degrees (77 F) while in Luxembourg it is probably 8 degrees (46 F) and raining. At the right is the view from my hotel, a very nice hotel which the Research Center got us at cheap rates! The big wooden structure near the horizon was built by the British to bring the production of their mines to the port, where it was directly loaded onto ships.

I’m now sitting on top of a fortress tower at the Alcazaba, which gives a panoramic view of the port and city of Almeria. The Alcazaba was the seat of power during the Arabic era. It was founded by Abd al-Rahman III. The fort is divided into three sections, the gardens, the Arabic fort composed of houses and the royal palace. The third section is the fort built by the Catholic Kings when they took the city in 1489.
One curious footnote: Entrance to the Alcazaba is free to citizens of the European Union... all others must pay 1.50 euros. I wonder why that is? You'd think to be fair, everyone should pay or not pay the same amount. It may not be very much anyway, but the principle bothers me.

Lunch in the moorish gardens is a "Bocadillo tortilla espanola", a sort of omlette with potatoes. Delicious and remindes me of days long ago studying Spanish litterature at the University of Salamanca summer classes. The Arabs had an elaborate system to capture water in this dry climate... holding areas for rain water, filters for run-off, pools and, of course,

hammam or hot baths. At right, a pond adorns the palace grounds. So, here am I, sitting on what used to be the front lines of a long war between Christian and Islamic forces, which probably had as much to do with religion as today’s conflicts… waiting for my plane and then the next blog entry probably from an airport waiting for another plane to Kenya!