Rose George » Media

COLORS, Shit & Vanity Fair

rosegeorge — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:59:22 +0000

COLORS: SHIT

rosegeorge — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:40:28 +0000

After my book came out in Italian, I was asked, and was delighted to be asked, to edit a special issue of COLORS magazine, my training ground, alma mater, place that taught me to write about huge topics in short captions. The result is SHIT: A Survival Guide. Why survival? Because shit can kill, obviously. 2011, and we are still letting children die more often from the shits than from AIDS or measles. So this issue of COLORS will introduce you to the weapon of mass destruction that is diarrhoea. But it will do more than that. You will also learn how to perform a faecal transfusion (possibly my favourite story in the magazine, thanks to an amazing colour reportage in a Brooklyn operating room); how to build an emergency latrine, as instructed by the survivors of the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand; how to use biogas, as illustrated by my visit to Rwanda’s prisons, where mass murderers eat food cooked with the produce of their own bowels. And there is more, more and more.

I am extremely proud of my book. But it is so exciting to see its themes illustrated so powerfully, so visually. Powerful photographs; fantastic illustrations by Nam. And of course exceptionally good text. Buy it here, and also dive into the Lab, which has even more enticing shit stories.

WHYY, the return

rosegeorge — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:31:56 +0000

I did an interview with Marty Moss-Coane on Philadelphia’s public radio station WHYY this morning. We talked mostly about seafaring, with a little bit of sewage thrown in. The show – Radio Times – has a site here. And here is an MP3 of the show, too.

UPenn, The Return

rosegeorge — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:23:58 +0000

I’ll be returning to the University of Pennsylvania next week to give a talk about shit and ships. It’s very flattering to be invited back, and also to be called an “investigative journalist” in this release about the event though I never ever feel like anything of the sort. I’m looking forward to a public conversation with my former Thouron Fellow Litty Paxton, now the esteemed director of Penn’s women’s centre, along with being a professor and all sorts of other high achieving things. The Provost’s office asked me for some anecdotes from our time together at Penn in 1994, but none of the ones we could remember are publishable.

I’ll also be returning to Philly’s NPR radio station WHYY, where I spent a delightful hour with the host of Radio Times, Marty Moss-Coane in 2008. Marty has asked me back next Tuesday 25, 10-11 am East Coast Time. A treat. Internet radio listeners can listen in here. More on Marty and the show here.

Det Stora Behovet, II

rosegeorge — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 23:35:43 +0000

Here’s the cover of the Swedish version of the book…

Det Stora Behovet

rosegeorge — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 15:38:31 +0000

The Big Necessity is now available in Swedish. Det Stora Behovet, published by Shibstedt, can be read about/purchased here. Just for the joy of posting something in Swedish, here is the summary:

Med vass humor blandar Rose George lättsinne med allvar och tar upp en fråga med ett trängande behov av att lyftas fram, ett ämne vi helst inte talar om, men som har allvarliga konsekvenser för vår värld. Det handlar om det mänskliga avfallet, avföringen, en naturlig del av mänskligt liv, något som vi alla måste göra oss av med hela tiden.

I Det stora behovet tar Rose George sikte på tabut: det är dags att börja prata öppet om vad som är viktigt när människor hanterar eller inte hanterar sitt personliga avfall. Hon tar oss till kloakerna i Paris, London och New York, och visar upp system som snart kommer att bryta samman. Befolkningsökningen slår ut de mest avancerade vattenbaserade avloppssystem, och spridningen av smittsamma sjukdomar orsakade av dålig eller obefintlig hantering av mänskligt avfall dödar fler människor i världen än någon annan enskild orsak. Fyra av tio människor i världen har ingen toalett. De måste göra sina behov varhelst de kan. Detta trots att mänsklig avföring i vatten bidrar till en av tio världssjukdomar. Ett barn dör var 15:e sekund av diarré som orsakats av förorenat vatten.

George visar oss också de trender och idéer som kan vända den hotande utvecklingen: från de fem miljoner biogasanläggningarna i Kina och hjältarna i tredje världens sanitetsrörelser till uppfinnaren av den enkla mobiltoaletten.

Korrespondenterna

rosegeorge — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:59:39 +0000

Belatedly, here is an interview I did a while ago for the Swedish foreign affairs programme Korrespondenterna. There are clips and information – but in Swedish – on the programme in its entirety here, but this is the bit I did. If you’re wondering about the red nose, I was freezing, and am still grateful to the cameraman for his gloves.

WASH media awards

rosegeorge — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 02:43:24 +0000

I was chuffed, as we say in Yorkshire, to present awards for this year’s WASH media awards to all sorts of wonderful and tenacious people. I’ll list the winners below and post the winners’ video, as well as a video of the ceremony filmed by the Pulitzer Center. They all fully deserve the awards, and it was a great honour to meet them (not least the fabulous Finnish women Nina and Anu, who deserve a special prize for making a cracking documentary about shit, but also for scrabbling around in compost while wearing wonderful floaty scarves). Congratulations to all (and many thanks and spasiba/multumesc to Oleg for the Moldavian wine). Sadly Teresa couldn’t be there but for the very happy reason that she is about to give birth, so long-distance congratulations to her too.

So, the winners:
Teresa Rehman, freelance, India, “Sanitation in the time of floods”, English category
David Onofre González Travieso, Diario el Nacional, Venezuela, “Una sequía de obras”, Spanish category
Arsénio Basilio Manhice, Jornal Noticias, Mozambique, ‘Stress hídrico’ abala mulheres e crianças”, Portuguese category
François Koami Amégnignon, Radio Zéphyr, Togo, “Etat des lieux de l’eau l’hygiène et
l’assainissement au Togo”, French category
Natalia Silitskaia & Oleg Banaru, freelance, Moldova, “Damocles Sword above the Moldavian Komarovo”, Russian category
Juana Salamanca, freelance, Colombia, “Los ángeles guardianes de los humedales”, Gender category
Nina Stenros & Anu Valve, Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE, Finland, “Shit happens 1 / 4”, High-income country category.

Water Cube TV

rosegeorge — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 02:34:53 +0000

I did an interview for the Water Cube at Stockholm Water Week which is here or below. Check out their site for all sorts of good interviews with good people, or sanitation’s stormtroopers, like Eddie Perez of the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program; Jack Sim of the World Toilet Organization; Barbara Frost of Water Aid; Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak of Sulabh; Kamal Kar; John Sauer of Water Advocates, one of the sector’s best movers and shakers; Dave Trouba of the excellent Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council. In fact, to see what everybody in my book looks like, the Water Cube site is the place to visit.

La Repubblica

rosegeorge — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:12:16 +0000

Today I am front page news in Italy. I suspect that won’t happen often again in my lifetime. La Repubblica writes about Il Grande Bisogno, which is published in Italian on May 5 by Bompiani. Headline: “Rose, the lady of the sewers.” The newspaper first page is below. The article itself, by Francesco Merlo, follows.