What was it like to cover a war in the pre-smartphone era? As we pose this question to former BBC cameraman-turned-social entrepreneur Peter Henderson, nostalgia takes over. The truth is: there is no one answer. “The first time I was personally involved in covering a war was basically a time when we had to set up a satellite dish and broadcast those pictures live. When I tried doing it on the roof of Hilton hotel in Tel Aviv, the Israeli Defence Forces were quick to stop us and even threatened to arrest us. We had to tread the fine line between keeping people safe while reporting the truth.” And then there was that time when he walked into a meeting of Azanian People’s Organisation in South Africa when everyone began to stare at Peter and scream, “Burn the white guy!”
“I walked up to the microphone, which was on the podium and said, ‘I am a part of people too.’ I told them that I may not have been a part of the group but had done more for the liberation movement as a visual journalist than anyone else. A woman publicly embraced me and managed to walk me off the stage. She took the personal risk of saving my life,” Peter recalls.
Cut to the present, and covering a conflict has become a whole new ballgame. Peter says that is primarily owing to the fact that anyone with a smartphone can be a journalist. And as much as you would like to challenge the notion, somewhere we know he is right. Wars today are covered on social media and they are reported from the point of view of the one filming the footage, journalist or no journalist. “It’s a story from everybody’s point of view. There is no right, there is no wrong,” he says.
Today, Peter finds himself returning to the zones he covered so empathetically and diligently through a social enterprise that ensures people in war-torn areas receive nutritious food. Hearing of the concept, the first thought that comes to mind is if those with empty stomachs even care about nutrition. When you go hungry for days and fear for your survival and that of others, food itself appears to be a luxury, let alone anything nutritious. But that’s where the thoughtfulness of Eat-2-Grow truly shines. Every 120 gram food bar is essentially made of dates, oat flakes, spirulina, among other things, and is manufactured in factories here.
When we meet Peter at Khaleej Times’ headquarters in Dubai, he is preparing to send at least 10,000 of these food bars to Gaza as part of Donate 2 Gaza campaign. “A factory in Dubai can make 300,000 food bars in a day, and we have planes and other modes of transportation to deliver them to our partners. The reason I chose Dubai as a destination to produce these bars was its logistical ability to transport food pretty much globally. The next step is in choosing the right partners on ground who have distribution networks. For example, in Afghanistan, WeWorld with Gulzar company is the biggest distributor for the World Food Programme. In reality, logistics have been made easy by technology. In Gaza, the closing of Rafah Border Crossing and other restrictions have made delivery tougher, but the only way to get through is when you align with organisations like Emirates Red Crescent or the Red Cross.”
The gravity of the question we posed earlier is not lost on Peter. He argues that food is not only a means to satisfy hungry bellies, nutritious food can help the younger generations come out of poverty. “Human beings instinctively want to stay where their home is. Displacement is almost always the result of famine, or conflict. When you provide people with tools to be able to stay where they are, there is a good chance they will. When they eat well, they grow well; when they grow well, they learn well, and this allows them to come out of poverty,” he argues.
The Eat-2-Grow Food enterprise took root 18 months ago, and this September, it launched a Track Your Impact app that allows donors to monitor the difference their contributions are making in conflict zones. The idea of tracking the impact was meant to demystify how humanitarian aid is delivered. “I was inspired by my wife, who I was sitting with a couple of months ago. Suddenly, she receives a text message that informs her that her blood is being used in Southampton. The information was empowering and satisfying, and I wanted to do the same for Eat-2-Grow.”
The larger mission, however, is not simply to feed communities but also to empower them to create their own food. “Eight hundred and fifty million people go to bed hungry every night. You cannot simply feed communities because that’s a one-way ticket to run out of food,” says Peter, who is also a Harvard Business School grad . “You need to help people feed themselves. Our project in Zimbabwe enables people to grow spirulina. We have donated close to $100,000 (Dh367,299) on the project.”
On other occasions, Peter and his team have come to realise that it’s not just the survivors but also the first responders who are in urgent need of food. “One of my classmates from Harvard Business School, who lives in Istanbul, sought my help when a devastating earthquake hit Turkey. When we sent the food bars we realised that the first responders — doctors, on-ground staff — need as much access to food because they do not have time to go home and cook.”
The ideas that informed his decision to start Eat-2-Grow can be traced back to Peter’s formative years. Growing up in South Africa during the apartheid era, he had been witness to the challenges that othering a community does to a society. From school, he dove straight into journalism when he was hired by BBC as a cameraman. His lens witnessed the end of apartheid, release of Nelson Mandela. To his 20-something mind, the world was expanding and contracting at the same time. “In one way, it’s a privilege to show the world what’s going on, but there is also this feeling of guilt because you feel lucky as compared to those you film. Sometimes, when you are a journalist observing what is happening around you, you feel helpless about not being able to do much,” he says. “On one particular occasion, I was in South Sudan where there were a lot of displaced people because of the war. I saw two young kids who were screaming because they were hungry. They had been on the road for a few days, they were cold and hungry. That’s the first time I realised what hunger can do to a human being.”
Looking back, however, he considers it an “adventure” to witness history unfold on a daily basis, even though he firmly believes that conflict journalism is not the same anymore. “I remember a friend, Rory Peck, who was killed in Moscow while on an assignment as a freelancer. His wife and kids were left helpless because he did not have any life insurance. Some of us put together funds and created a trust to help journalists and their families who are affected by conflict. And every year, we attempt to raise money,” says Peter. “This, however, has been the worst year ever of journalists being killed in conflict. There are close to 113 of them who have lost their lives covering Gaza,” he says.
From being a war chronicler to a social entrepreneur, Peter has never stopped keeping his ear to the ground. Has looking at the pain and suffering all these years led to wear-and-tear of the mind? “I have just focused on staying positive. My grandmother would always say there is a guardian angel looking out for me. I guess it’s the power of staying positive and not feeling sorry for myself.”
