Behold, the lion-killer who became an Israeli hero

The ashes of a swashbuckling hero of the British Empire are to be reburied in Israel after a service attended by the country's prime minister. John Henry Patterson was a soldier, big-game hunter and writer, whose exploits inspired three Hollywood movies. The BBC's Kevin Connolly explains why he is so admired in Israel.

The man who was to become a hero to the British and to the Israelis was neither British nor Jewish. Like many servants of the crown in the days of Empire he was an Irishman born in County Longford in 1867 to a Protestant father and Catholic mother. Ireland was then part of the United Kingdom and military service was a popular option for many young Irishmen - partly from a want of other opportunities and partly from a sense of adventure.
In Patterson's case we can assume it was the sense of adventure. By 1898 he'd been commissioned to oversee the construction of a railway bridge over a ravine at Tsavo, in Kenya, but found work was being held up by two man-eating lions who were terrorising the huge camps housing the Indian and African labourers.

It's hard to be sure, but the two lions between them may have killed more than 100 people in all. Patterson wasn't an expert on lions, although he'd shot tigers on military service in India, but to protect his workers and get his bridge finished he resolved to kill the predators.
Man-eating behaviour isn't common among lions - it's possible that the two killers at Tsavo had got the taste for human flesh from the careless disposal of human remains over the years. Over a three-week period Patterson killed both the predators. His workers, who'd been growing fractious, presented him with an inscribed drinking cup to salute his extraordinary nerve. It remained one of his most treasured possessions. Patterson told the whole story in his best-selling book, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.
The book has inspired no fewer than three Hollywood movies - Bwana Devil (1952), the Killers of Kilimanjaro (1959) and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). The American hunter Remington, played by Michael Douglas, who appears in The Ghost and The Darkness is a pure invention - in real-life our Irish hero did it all himself. The lions to some extent are the stars of the story and they were exceptional creatures. These animals measured 9ft (2.7m) from the nose to the tip of the tail, and after they'd been shot each of them required a team of eight men to carry them back to the camp. The stuffed carcases are in the Field Museum in Chicago but the taxidermist's art has apparently somewhat diminished their impact... according to legend the original skins had been used as rugs and so when it was decided to stuff and mount them they came out slightly smaller than they had originally been.

Male Tsavo lions don't have manes - an evolutionary quirk attributed to the fierce heat in the region

Nothing ordinary ever seemed to happen to Patterson. Bwana Devil is generally cited as the first full-colour 3-D movie made in English and so is a Hollywood milestone in itself. When you see those old black and white photographs of movie audiences thrilling to the 3-D experience in their cardboard spectacles with blue and red plastic lenses, there's a good chance they're watching Patterson in action. The film also deserves to be remembered for a slogan designed to reassure audiences that the coming of startling 3-D realism didn't mean the end of old-fashioned romance. "Bwana Devil!", it said. "A Lion in Your Lap; A Lover in Your Arms!"

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Lt Colonel J H Patterson recorded in the 1940s

Having your life turned into a Hollywood movie isn't always a positive experience. A few years after the events at Tsavo, Patterson was involved in a scandal that made him the talk of big-game hunting high society in Africa. On safari a fellow British soldier, Audley Blyth, died of gunshot wounds in his tent, as ugly rumours swirled that Patterson had been rather too close to Mrs Blyth, who was also a part of the expedition. At one point it's believed that Patterson threatened to sue Winston Churchill for slander as the incident became the talk of fashionable London dinner tables. Ernest Hemingway was intrigued enough to fictionalise the story in The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber - and true to form it was eventually turned in to yet another movie, The Macomber Affair (1947).

Big-game hunting is no longer fashionable, of course, but it's worth remembering that hunters tended to see themselves not as despoilers of the natural environment of Africa but as experts in it. Patterson shot an eland in 1906 and had the head mounted. He thought it had some unusual characteristics and when it was eventually seen by a member of faculty at the British Museum in London it turned out to be a sort of unique sub-species that to this day bears Patterson's name, Taurotragus Oryx Pattersonianius.

There was nothing honorary about Lt Col Patterson's military rank. He served with distinction in a British cavalry regiment during the Boer War in South Africa, winning the Distinguished Service Order, and when he was recalled to the colours during World War One he was almost 50 years old.

It was during the Middle East campaign that he found himself in command of the Zion Mule Corps, a group of Jewish volunteers eager to serve the international cause and to advance their own cause of creating a Jewish state at the same time. Patterson became a passionate supporter of Zionism and the ranks of the detachment he commanded included influential heroes of the cause, including Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor.

Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940)

• Zionist leader, journalist and orator born in Odessa
• He founded the militant Zionist Revisionist movement that played an important role in the establishment of the State of Israel
• Convinced the British government to allow military participation by Jewish refugees from the Ottoman Empire during World War One

Joseph Trumpeldor (1880-1920)

• Zionist pioneer and former hero of the tsarist army, born in Russia
• Died at the Tel Hai (Tal-ha in Arabic) former settlement in 1920, in an early battle of the Arab-Israeli conflict

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica

Patterson took his Jewish volunteers to war around the dangerous beaches of Gallipoli in what history remembers as a doomed British effort to attack the German Empire through the territory of its ally, the Turkish Empire. It's often said that Patterson thus became the first commander to lead Jewish forces on to the field of battle for two millennia making him an important figure in the history of Zionism.

John Henry Patterson (left) with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's parents

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told me that his older brother, Yonathan, was named in honour of John Henry Patterson, who had come to know their father when he lived in New York campaigning for the Zionist cause in the mid-1940s.

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Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to Kevin Connolly about John Henry Patterson

The family still has an engraved goblet given to Yonathan by Patterson to celebrate his birth. Yonathan went on to become an Israeli national hero who died leading the extraordinary raid on Entebbe in Uganda in 1976 in which commandos from Israel's special forces rescued hostages who were being held at an airport by members of the German Baader-Meinhof gang and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Prime Minister Netanyahu told us he regarded Patterson as godfather to the Israeli Army as well as the godfather to his brother and says it's right that Israel should honour him. He's expected to attend the burial of Patterson's ashes on Thursday.

Little village of naked poeple

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At first glance, this sleepy little village looks like any other to be found in the heart of London’s commuter belt.
But the manicured lawns and neatly trimmed bushes are hiding a multitude of skin.
For this outwardly respectable Hertfordshire village is the home of Britain’s oldest naturist colony.
And while you don’t have to be nude to live here – they probably won’t sell you a house if you’re not.
Splashing in the swimming pool, mowing the lawn, even enjoying a pint in the local, its inhabitants are always stripped for action.

Dave King Photography

Fancy a pint: Mark and Tina

 
But after 85 years of quietly enforcing its undress code, the secret village of ­Spielplatz – the name means playground – is about to bare all to the rest of us for the first time.
Next month it opens its doors for the first time for a no-shorts-and-all TV documentary for More4.
The nudists next door will be exposing to the world what their neighbours, postmen and supermarket delivery drivers get to see every day of the week.
But veteran resident Iseult ­Richardson, 82, who has lived in the village nearly all her life, can’t see what all the fuss is about.
“There is no difference between naturists and people who live up the street,” she insisted. “We all live normal lives but are just lucky enough to live in this extraordinary place. It’s like a small estate.
“We have all sorts of deliveries. The milkman comes and delivers and we used to have a paperboy though that’s stopped now.
“The postmen and tradesmen know us and take us as they find us. They never seem perturbed.

Laid bare: Iseult a resident since 1930. Here in her younger years

 
“Sometimes they have to walk all the way into the middle of the site, if they are carrying something heavy like a cooker.”
The village was founded by Iseult’s father Charles Macaskie, who bought the leafy 12-acre site for £500 in 1929.
It’s in Bricket Wood, a few miles outside St Albans, and is a permanent home to the owners of 34 of its smart little bungalows.
There are another 24 houses ­available to rent to summer visitors.
The mainly two-bed bungalows come with all mod cons, including mains ­electricity, water and sewage.
The heart of the village is its club house where the residents get together in the altogether for discos, karaoke sessions, quiz nights and pool tournaments.
A few hundred yards away, ­unsuspecting motorists crawl past on the busy M1 motorway.
The idyllic, heavily-wooded village is not so much dingley dell as dangly dell.
But as TV viewers will see, there’s trouble brewing in the nudist ­paradise, as property developers home in on the village as the perfect spot for a multi-million pound housing estate.

Repairing the mast: Nudist village

 
At the moment Spielplatz is run as a club and anyone who wants to buy one of the bungalows – a bargain at an average of £85,000 – has to be vetted by the board.
Usually, they will have been part- time members for at least a year, according to Iseult.
She said: “The places get bought and sold like anywhere else. People sometimes move on when they retire and go to somewhere sunnier.
“Recently one was bought by a couple who didn’t quite like it, so they got planning permission to knock it down and build a new one. It’s nearly finished and they’ll move into their new home in a couple of months.”
As resident Tina Yates, 64, says: “It’s just a small community where ­everybody gets to know everyone else.”
But like any community, the nudists have their flash points. ­Property ownership is far from the only bone of contention.
Residents are struggling to agree about how to deal with family members who love ­dropping in, but won’t drop anything else. Die-hards insist it should be a case of get your kit off or clear off.

Dave King Photography

Happy community: A villager

 
But moderate members of the board want to admit people wearing clothes for taster sessions.
Financial director Vic Lightfoot, 68, a twice married father of three originally from High Wycombe, has had trouble persuading girlfriend Maggie Fitzgerald and daughter Joanne to enter into the spirit of Spielplatz.
Joanne was even asked to leave for failing to disrobe at an open day.
Vic admits: “You can’t just have anyone there who isn’t a naturist – it would turn into a housing estate for voyeurs.
“It was embarrassing for the people who told me of the objections. It might sound weird, people who are naked being uncomfortable with people with clothes on.
"Since then we have had discussion and I have come up with a couple of suggestions. Perhaps if we had sarongs for hire...”

Would you like to live in a nudist village?

His girlfriend Maggie, 66, thinks she should get a pass because she can’t expose her body to the sun for health reasons.
“No one has ever said, look Maggie you need to get you clothes off. I have helped put quiz nights on, prepare food, been one of the crowd.
“When you swim, you’re not allowed to wear clothes and I have been swimming. I don’t have a problem with it. People go there to escape the real world. And taking clothes off is the ultimate escape.
“I have to remind Vic when he’s at my place to put his trousers on. To be fair, he keeps his ­underwear on if he’s sitting on a plastic chair.
“There are some things you don’t want stuck on a plastic chair."
■ The Naked Village, 9pm, More4, December 11.

Taboo babies

Saving Kenya's children born of incest

Some babies are as young as one day old when they arrive at Kanduyi, says welfare officer Alice Kimotho

Baby X is sleeping quietly, wrapped in a warm blanket and held close in a motherly embrace in a Kenyan orphanage and children's home.

But, as the name we are using for him would suggest, he is no ordinary child.
For Baby X, now one month old, was born as a result of an incestuous union.
Like many others at Kanduyi Children's Home, in Bungoma county 400km (250 miles) west of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, he had to be rescued from his family before they killed him.
In Baby X's case, just two days after his birth the security forces, acting on a tip-off, raided his home and took him away, saving him from a death sentence condoned by elders of the area's Bukusu community.
There are others like him at Kanduyi, a clean if ageing collection of stone buildings with corrugated iron roofs - children with ages ranging from one day to 18.
'Taboo babies'
Incest is taboo in this part of Kenya as it is almost everywhere. According to Kenyan laws it is punishable by five years in prison or life imprisonment for sex with a minor.
But for centuries the traditional punishment in many Kenyan communities has been death - and among the Bukusu it is not necessarily of the man or woman involved but of the child born from the forbidden union.

'We are having rampant irresponsible sexual relations”

Stephen Kokonya Bungoma county culture minister

And while it is not legal for a community to impose a death penalty - only a judge can do this - in rural areas it is part of customary laws as such babies are considered cursed.

The Bukusu call them "be luswa" meaning "taboo babies", fearing they will bring curses such as infertility and mental problems.
"Any time we receive a report that a taboo child has been born somewhere we rush to save it - otherwise you may reach there only to be told that the baby died," Alice Kimotho, the children's welfare officer in charge at Kanduyi, told the BBC.
"Most of these deaths are very suspicious."
Titus Kolil, an administrative officer at the home, says incest is "very frequent" in this part of Kenya, blaming "cultural biases".
He does not give further details but speaks of three or four new cases each month just for Kanduyi to handle.
The nature of a taboo is such that there will be other cases about which the local authorities never hear.
"We are having rampant irresponsible sexual relations," says Stephen Kokonya, the Bungoma county culture minister.
"And most of these relations... are actually relationships between very close relatives, including even fathers having relations with their own children."
Girls growing up in rural homesteads are particularly vulnerable when they reach puberty because they have to move out of the family hut to sleep in the kitchen or another building.
Force
Mr Kokonya said his administration was using "cultural leadership structures" to address the problem.
"We are campaigning against retrogressive values.

The 15-year-old mother of the rescued baby is now back at school

"We believe we shall be able to communicate what is positive for communities to embrace and what is negative for communities to discard."

He threatened to beat me up if I leaked it to anybody”

15-year-old girl raped by her uncle

The records at Kanduyi Children's Home show that Baby X's mother is a 15-year-old, who was impregnated by her 17-year-old uncle.

The girl has since been moved to live with relatives 25km away from her home, and is now back at school, repeating the year she missed during her pregnancy.
I go to visit her at her guardian's home.
With her aunt present, she quietly tells me what happened.
"He used to force himself on to me," she says. "He threatened to beat me up if I leaked it to anybody."
She says she has no love for her uncle or their baby.
"Since I begot him with my uncle I can't love him. They say it is bad."
Later I ask her what she would like to do when she finishes school and she says she would like to become a doctor.

Officials say educating cultural leaders will be the best way to change attitudes in remote areas

Tears are now rolling down her cheeks, and she asks her aunt to help her finish her education.
The 17-year-old uncle, who did not have to relocate from his home, declines to speak to the BBC when we contact him.
'Right to life'
At a nearby shopping centre I meet some members of a Bukusu elders' council.

They suffocate the baby by pressing the mother's thighs together killing the baby discreetly”

One of them declines to comment on Baby X but tells me how an unborn taboo child is often killed.

"When the girl is about to deliver, they summon some women who pretend to help her deliver but instead they suffocate the baby by pressing the mother's thighs together, killing the baby discreetly.
"They believe the baby should die for the girl to live peacefully in the community."
Villagers in this region sometimes also kill second-born twins, as they are thought to bring bad luck. Those who want to keep their babies are forced to flee their homes.
Another elder says the practice of killing taboo children might stop if perpetrators of incest were sufficiently punished.
"The government lets rapists and those participating in incest go scot-free," he says.
"If these criminals were arrested and punished then cases of taboo children would be eliminated."
Mr Kokonya says proving cases of infanticide in these rural areas is difficult - so few cases are prosecuted.
But the culture minister said he wanted to remind "those old men who are sitting down and making such a decision" that they are "interfering with the basic fundamental right to life".
At Kanduyi, as Baby X wakes up and older children play noisily outside the classrooms, it is clear that those who might have died are very much alive.

But how many born in similarly unhappy circumstances have been less fortunate?

Source:BBC

Drinking urine and bat blood to live

How I drank urine and bat blood to survive

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In today's Magazine

• Left to the mercy of the Taliban
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• The Taliban's psychiatrist

Mauro Prosperi was 39 years old when he took part in the 1994 Marathon des Sables - a six-day, 250km (155-mile) race through the Sahara described as the toughest race of its kind. Following a sandstorm, the former Olympic pentathlete was lost in the desert for 10 days. Here he tells his story.

What I like most about running extreme marathons is the fact that you come into close contact with nature - the races take place in beautiful settings such as mountains, deserts, glaciers. As a professional athlete I hadn't been able to enjoy these surroundings because I was so focused on winning medals.
I found out about the Marathon des Sables by chance. I had already retired from the pentathlon when a good friend said to me: "There's this amazing marathon in the desert - but it's very tough." I love a challenge so I started training immediately, running 40km (25 miles) a day, reducing the amount of water I was drinking to get used to dehydration. I was never home.
My wife, Cinzia, thought I was insane - the race is so risky that you have to sign a form to say where you want your body to be sent in case you die. We had three children under the age of eight, so she was worried. I tried to reassure her. "The worst that can happen is that I get a bit sunburned," I said.
When I arrived in Morocco, I discovered a marvellous thing - the desert. I was bewitched.

Prosperi runs with fellow Italian Mario Malerba in the 1994 Marathon des Sables

These days the Marathon des Sables is a very different experience, with up to 1,300 participants it's like a giant snake - you couldn't get lost if you tried. But back in 1994 there were only 80 of us, and very few who were actually running, so most of the time I was on my own.
I was always the first Italian to reach the next stage and I'd put up a flag on my tent so that we could all get together in the evenings. It was fun.
Things went wrong on the fourth day, during the longest and most difficult stage of the race.
When we set out that morning there was already quite a bit of wind. I had passed through four checkpoints when I entered an area of sand dunes. I was alone - the pacemakers had gone ahead.

The camaraderie of desert running

Suddenly a very violent sandstorm began. The wind kicked in with a terrifying fury. I was swallowed by a yellow wall of sand. I was blinded, I couldn't breathe. The sand whipped my face - it was like a storm of needles. I understood for the first time how powerful a sandstorm could be. I turned my back on the wind and wrapped a scarf around my face to stop the sand from wounding me. I wasn't disoriented, but I had to keep moving to keep from getting buried. Eventually I crouched down in a sheltered spot, waiting for the storm to end.
It lasted eight hours. When the wind died down it was dark, so I slept out on the dunes. I was upset about the race because, until then, I had been in fourth place. I thought: "Oh well, I can't win now but I can still make good time. Tomorrow morning I'll get up really early and try to reach the finish." You have 36 hours to run that stage of the race - any longer and you are disqualified - so there was still a chance. What I couldn't have imagined was how dramatically that storm would change everything around me.

Marathon des Sables competitors battle a sandstorm in 2006

I woke up very early to a transformed landscape. I didn't know I was lost. I had a compass and a map so I thought I could navigate perfectly well, but without points of reference it's a lot more complicated.
I wasn't worried because I was sure that sooner or later I'd meet someone. "Who knows how many others are in the same situation?" I thought. "As soon as I see someone we can team up and get to the finish together." That was my plan, but unfortunately it didn't work out.

Marathon des Sables runners snake across the sands in 2009 - it attracts more than 1000 people a year

After running for about four hours I climbed up a dune and still couldn't see anything. That's when I knew I had a big problem. I started to walk - what was the point of running? Running where?

Continue reading the main story

Find out more

• Mauro Prosperi spoke to the BBC World Service programme Outlook
• Outlook airs Mon-Thurs
• Tells personal stories from around the world

• Listen to the interview
• Subscribe to Outlook podcast

When I realised I was lost, the first thing I did was to urinate in my spare water bottle, because when you're still well-hydrated your urine is the clearest and the most drinkable. I remembered my grandfather telling me how, during the war, he and his fellow soldiers had drunk their own urine when their water ran out. I did it as a precaution, but I wasn't desperate. I was sure the organisers would find me soon.

When running the Marathon des Sables you have to be self-sufficient, and I was well-prepared: I had a knife, a compass, sleeping bag and plenty of dehydrated food in my backpack. The problem was water. We were given fresh water at the checkpoints, but when the storm hit I only had half a bottle of water left. I drank it as slowly as I could.
I'm very resistant to heat and I was very careful. I would only walk when it was cool, early in the morning and then again in the evening. During the day, when I wasn't walking, I'd try to find shelter and shade. I was wearing two hats - a baseball cap with a red woollen hat on top - to keep the temperature as constant as possible. Luckily my skin is quite dark so I didn't really suffer from sunburn.

Prosperi's map of the 1994 Marathon des Sables

On the second day, at sunset, I heard the sound of a helicopter coming towards me. I assumed it was looking for me so I took out my flare and shot it in the air, but he didn't see it. It was flying so low that I could see the pilot's helmet, but he didn't see me - he flew right past.
The helicopter, on loan from the Moroccan police, was returning to base to refuel. Since 1995, because of my experience, runners have been equipped with the kind of flares they use at sea - which they're not happy about, because they weigh 500g - but at the time the flares we had were really small, no bigger than a pen.
Nevertheless I remained calm, because I was convinced the organisers would have the resources to find anyone lost in the desert. I still thought I would be rescued sooner or later.

The holy man's tomb that almost became Prosperi's tomb

After a couple of days I came across a marabout - a Muslim shrine - where Bedouins stop when they are crossing the desert. I was hoping it was inhabited, but unfortunately there was nobody there - only a holy man in a coffin. But at least I had a roof over my head, it was like being home. I assessed my situation: it wasn't rosy, but I was feeling all right physically. I ate some of my rations, which I cooked with fresh urine, not the bottled urine that I was saving to drink - I started to drink that on the fourth day.
The marabout had filled up with sand from all the sandstorms, so the ceiling was very low. I went up to the roof to plant my Italian flag, in the hope that anybody looking for me could see it. While I was up there I saw some bats, huddled together in the tower. I decided to drink their blood. I grabbed a handful of bats, cut their heads and mushed up their insides with a knife, then sucked them out. I ate at least 20 of them, raw - I only did what they do to their prey.
I stayed in the marabout for a few days, waiting to be found.
I gave in to despair only twice. Once was when I saw the helicopter and it didn't see me. The other time was when I saw the aeroplane.
I had been in the marabout for three days when I heard the sound of a motor - an aeroplane. I don't know if it was looking for me, but I immediately started a fire with whatever I had - my rucksack, everything - in the hope the plane would see the smoke. But just then another sandstorm hit. It lasted for 12 hours. The aeroplane didn't spot me.
I felt it was my very last chance to be found. I was very depressed. I was convinced I was going to die and that it was going to be a long agonising death, so I wanted to accelerate it. I thought if I died out in the desert no-one would find me, and my wife wouldn't get the police pension - in Italy, if someone goes missing you have to wait 10 years before they can be declared dead. At least if I died in this Muslim shrine they would find my body, and my wife would have an income.

Prosperi worked for the mounted police in Sicily

I wasn't afraid of dying and my decision to take my own life came out of logical reasoning rather than despair. I wrote a note to my wife with a piece of charcoal and then cut my wrists. I lay down and waited to die, but my blood had thickened and wouldn't drain.
The following morning I woke up. I hadn't managed to kill myself. Death didn't want me yet.
I took it as a sign. I regained confidence and I decided to see it as a new competition against myself. I became determined and focused again. I was thinking of my children. I put myself in order - Mauro the athlete was back. I needed to have a plan. I still had quite a lot of energy left, I wasn't tired. As a former pentathlete I was used to training 12 hours a day and I had trained well for the Marathon des Sables so I didn't feel too weak. I still had some energy tablets, too.

Prosperi started in Zagora and was found in Tindouf 300km from the finishing line

I regained my strength and mental lucidity. I decided to get out of the shrine and start walking again, but where to? I followed the advice the Tuareg had given us all before we started the race: "If you're lost, head for the clouds that you can see on the horizon at dawn, that's where you will find life. During the day they will disappear but set your compass and carry on in that direction." So I decided to head for those mythical clouds on the horizon.
I walked in the desert for days, killing snakes and lizards and eating them raw - that way I drank, too. I think there are some instincts, a kind of deja vu, that kick in in an emergency situation: my inner caveman emerged.
I was aware that I was losing an incredible amount of weight - the more I walked, the looser my watch felt on my wrist. I was so dehydrated I couldn't urinate anymore. Luckily I had some anti-diarrhoea medicine which I kept taking.

Is it a good idea to drink your own urine in an emergency?

• Drinking urine is not recommended.
• Urine is a waste product containing salts and the more dehydrated you are, the more poisonous your urine becomes.
• The first "catch" of urine is more dilute and may be of some benefit, but that's likely to be before you know you're in trouble.
• Drinking blood may help to prolong survival - survivors at sea have drunk turtle blood, of a similar concentration to human blood.

I wanted to see my family and friends again and I concentrated on that. I wasn't afraid. At the same time, I started to view the desert as a place where people can live. I could see the beauty of the desert. I paid careful attention to every trace - even dried excrement gave me clues about what direction to go in.

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“Start Quote

I started to think of myself as a man of the desert”

End Quote Mauro Prosperi Desert survivor

I learned that there is food all around you, if you learn to look. As I was walking through the desert I recognised dried riverbeds where succulents grew, so I squeezed their juice out and drank that.

I started to think of myself as a man of the desert. Later, a Tuareg prince dedicated a poem to me - according to him I was a "chosen one" because I survived for so long in the desert.
Meanwhile, the organisers were out looking for me. My brother and brother-in-law had flown in from Italy to join the search. They found some of the traces I had left behind, like my shoelaces. They got to the marabout and found signs of me. But they were sure they were looking for a body.
On the eighth day I came across a little oasis. I lay down and drank, sipping slowly, for about six or seven hours. I saw a footprint in the sand, so I knew people couldn't be far.
The next day, I saw some goats in the distance - it gave me hope.

The song of the Tuareg
Singing springs under the palms of the green oasis, listen to the call of the Tuareg in the night, in the calm/ At the pace of my pale camel I go, I travel without destination/ The desert is a world, a land of thirst and hunger/ The immense dunes stretch out, like an ocean of misfortune, from the waves of stirring sands.
Excerpt from a poem dedicated to Mauro Prosperi by a Tuareg prince

Then I saw a young shepherd girl. She saw me too and ran away, scared. After nine days in the desert I must have looked quite a sight, I was black with dirt. The girl ran towards a large Berber tent to warn the women I was coming. There were no men in the camp - they had gone to market - but the women took care of me. They were so kind. An older woman came out of the tent and immediately gave me some goat's milk to drink. She tried to give me some food as well, but I threw it up. They wouldn't allow me into the tent because I was a man, but they put me on a carpet in the shade of their veranda. Then they sent someone to call the police - they like to camp close to military bases for protection.

A visibly thin Prosperi returns to a hero's welcome in Italy

The police came and carried me to their Jeep. They took me to their military base, blindfolded, because they didn't know who I was. They thought I might be dangerous. They had guns and I thought at times that they were going to kill me. When they found out I was the marathon runner who had got lost in Morocco they took off my blindfold and celebrated. I discovered that I had crossed the border into Algeria. I was 291km (181 miles) off course.

Prosperi has run the Marathon des Sables seven times: in 2001 he came 12th

They took me to hospital in Tindouf, where finally, after 10 days, I was able to call my wife. The first thing I said to her was: "Have you already had my funeral?" Because after 10 days lost in the desert you would expect someone to be dead.
When they weighed me in the hospital I had lost 16kg (35lb) - I weighed just 45kg (99lb). My eyes had suffered and my liver was damaged, but my kidneys were fine. I couldn't eat anything other than soup or liquids for months. It took me almost two years to recover.

Prosperi plans to run a 7000km race across the Sahara next year

Four years later I was back at the Marathon des Sables. People ask me why I went back, but when I start something I want to finish it. The other reason was that I can't live without the desert. Desert fever does exist, and it's a disease that I've absolutely caught. I'm drawn back to the desert every year to greet it, to experience it.
I ran eight more desert marathons and am now preparing for my biggest yet. Next year I'm planning to run 7,000km (4,350 miles) coast-to-coast across the Sahara from Agadir (Morocco) on the Atlantic Ocean to Hurghada (Egypt) on the Red Sea. Sport and nature are part of my life, and these races allow me to experience them first-hand.

My wife was a saint. She coped with me for many years but at a certain point, because of my lifestyle, we decided to split up. We are still best friends, maybe more so now than when we were married. I have a new partner but she knows I am a man on a mission. I can't change.

Source:BBC

Obesity or Smoking, which is costing the world more?

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The worldwide cost of obesity is about the same as smoking or armed conflict and greater than both alcoholism and climate change, research has suggested.

The McKinsey Global Institute said it cost £1.3tn, or 2.8% of annual economic activity - it cost the UK £47bn.
Some 2.1bn people - about 30% of the world's population - were overweight or obese, the researchers added.
They said measures that relied less on individual responsibility should be used to tackle the problem.
Lost output
The report said there was a "steep economic toll", and the proportion could rise to almost half of the world's population by 2030.
The financial costs of obesity are growing - for health care and more widely in the economy. By causing illness, obesity results in working days and output lost.
The researchers argued that a range of ambitious policies needed to be considered and a systemic rather than piecemeal response was essential.

What is obesity?

The report said the right measures could save the UK's NHS £760m a year

A person is considered obese if they are very overweight with a high degree of body fat.
The most common way to assess if a person is obese is to check their body mass index (BMI), which divides your weight in kilograms by your height in metres squared.
If your BMI is above 25 you are overweight. A BMI of 30-40 is considered obese, while above 40 is very obese. A BMI of less than 18.5 is underweight.
Where are you on the global BMI scale?

"These initiatives would need to draw on interventions that rely less on individual responsibility and more on changes to the environment," the report said.
If the right measures were taken there could be long-term savings of £760m a year for the UK's National Health Service, it added.
The initiatives assessed in the report include portion control for some packaged food and the reformulation of fast and processed food.
'Crisis proportions'
It said these were more effective than taxes on high-fat and high-sugar products or public health campaigns. Weight management programmes and workplace fitness schemes were also considered.
The report concluded that "a strategy of sufficient scale is needed as obesity is now reaching crisis proportions".
The rising prevalence of obesity was driving the increase in heart and lung disease, diabetes and lifestyle-related cancers, it said.

Dr Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at Public Health England (PHE), said: "The report is a useful contribution to the obesity debate. PHE has consistently said that simple education messages alone are not enough to tackle obesity."
Dr Tedstone said obesity required action across national and local government, industry and society as a whole, and there was "no single silver bullet solution".

The report was produced by McKinsey Global Institute, the business and economics research arm of consultancy firm McKinsey & Company.

Rape of a three-year old.

Listless and silent, three-year-old Neelofar lies in the arms of her grandmother in the back of a taxi speeding towards the Afghan capital Kabul.

A plastic tube protrudes from her body.
One hand is wrapped in a bandage where an intravenous drip had been inserted at her local hospital in the north.
Neelofar is in a critical condition after being raped and urgently needs specialist medical treatment which she can only get in the capital.
The car descends the winding, mountainous road from the Salang tunnel onto the Shomali plain on the last leg of the gruelling eight-hour drive to Kabul.
A few days earlier she had been playing with her friends outside her home when a man picked her up and carried her to a nearby garden.
According to her family and medical staff, he gagged, raped and then it seems, tried to murder her.

Badly injured in the attack, the young girl is being treated in hospital.

"He was suffocating her, trying to take her life away because he was afraid," said Monija, a doctor who treated her in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
"There are several marks on her neck."

Father's journey

Neelofar's father and mother were both away at the time.
By chance, the family says, another man happened to walk past the garden and heard noises.
He found Neelofar bleeding and took her to the village mosque.
The police have arrested an 18-year-old man in connection with the case.
He is allegedly a neighbour and known to the family.
At the time, Neelofar's father, Abdul, was on the eighth day of a marathon journey to the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas where he had hoped to find work.

The girl's father fears the authorities will not ensure the man responsible is prosecuted.

A large section of the journey had been on foot.
Afghan colleagues told him they had heard rumours of an incident in his village and when he called home, his worst fears were confirmed.
He turned round and began the long journey to Kabul.
Exhausted, hungry and thirsty - he had not eaten for days - he told me his daughter's life was now over.
In this male-dominated and segregated society, rape victims are viewed as outcasts, even as prostitutes.
Marriage is almost impossible and a sense of shame hangs over the entire family.
But Abdul also fears that because they are poor, the authorities will not take the case seriously and ensure the man responsible is prosecuted.
"The president is not listening to people who are poor and don't have money," he said.
"If the government does not give me my rights based on Sharia and Afghan law, I will bring my other six children and kill them in front of the presidential palace and I will leave Afghanistan. My wife and mother also say they will kill themselves."

The case has shocked even women's rights campaigners, such as Najia Nassim.

"Are the children of poor people like dogs, so nobody cares about them?" he added.
The local police insist they will bring the case to court as quickly as possible and are calling for the person found guilty of the rape to face the death penalty.

Widespread problem

The rape of three-year-old Neelofar is just one of several attacks on young Afghan children which have come to light so far this month.
But Neelofar's case has been particularly shocking.
"I have never heard of a three-year-old being raped by a man before," says Najia Nassim, country director of the NGO Women For Afghan Women.
"I cannot express how upset I was when I looked at the pictures. She is such a little girl.
"You cannot call the man [who did this] a human being."
Child rape is a widespread problem in Afghanistan.

Lawyer Benafsha Efaf says it is better the case is heard in Kabul so the man is properly punished.

But women's rights campaigners are encouraged by the fact that more cases are now coming to light instead of being hidden away because of the perceived shame it brings on the victim and family.
In what is being seen as another important development, a Muslim cleric or Mullah was given a 20-year prison sentence and a fine of $26,000 last month for raping a young girl in northern Afghanistan.
He was convicted by a court in Kabul even though the attack had taken place in Kunduz province.
The girl - as has now happened with Neelofar - had been brought to a hospital in the capital, which also ensured the trial was held in the city.
Human rights' lawyers feared the cleric might get off lightly in his home province.
"If the case had been heard in Kunduz, he might have been sentenced to 80 lashes and then freed," says Benafsha Efaf, a lawyer with the NGO Women for Afghan Women, which was involved in bringing the case to court.
"But 80 lashes for what he had done would have been nothing, it would not have been justice, nowhere near so.
"That is why we wanted the trial in Kabul."

Victims of rape face being shunned by their communities.

After the long, gruelling journey from her home to the capital, Neelofar is now being treated at a well-equipped children's hospital where she has already had an operation.
Doctors are hopeful she will survive her injuries.
But it is not clear if she will ever be able to return to her village because of the stigma of being raped.
When she recovers, she could stay at one of several children's shelters around the country where some rape victims are being looked after and given an education.
A girl at a shelter in Kabul is now doing so well in class that she is planning to become a doctor.

She is the only girl from her village who has learned to read and write.

A policeman's head per day

Pakistan's police are on the front line battling the Taliban. Not just in the remote north of the country, near the border with Afghanistan, but in Karachi, the country's economic and cultural heart.

Five months ago the Taliban staged an audacious attack. Ten heavily armed men dressed as security guards stormed the cargo terminal of Pakistan's busiest airport, in Karachi, aiming to hijack aircraft. In a prolonged overnight battle most of the militants were shot and the rest blew themselves up. Altogether, at least 28 people died.
Karachi Police are fighting back against the Taliban by trying to root out militants hiding in the city suburbs, but it's dangerous work. Out of 15,000 police officers in the city, on average one dies every day.
"They are not pious. They are common criminals," says Ijaz, a senior officer in Karachi Police Criminal Investigation Department.
"They generate money from drug sales, extortion and kidnap to fund their war. Any crime you can think of the Taliban is involved in. You will find them in gambling dens, with liquor bottles and they often use the services of prostitutes."
Ijaz is in his early 30s but he has the look of much older man. When I walk into his office, he's enveloped in a cloud of thick smoke. He always seems to have a phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
"It's easy to fight them in the north of Pakistan because there is a clear target," he says. "But in a city like Karachi it's very difficult because there are more than 70 splinter groups… and you don't know who your enemy is. We are in a real war."

There were reports of at least two huge blasts during Jinnah International Airport attack in June

Fire fighters at the smouldering cold-storage facility after the attack on the airport

For more than a decade Pakistan's economic capital has been plagued by politically motivated targeted killings but now all the parties have a common enemy in the Taliban, who turn its ethnic diversity to their advantage.
"They hide in the slums where no one raises an eyebrow if you are Pathan or Punjabi or from the tribal areas," Ijaz says. "You can come from any part of Asia and no one will look at you twice. You can go completely undetected."

Ijaz and his team of 25 heavily armed officers carry out regular night raids in some of these hiding places, which have fast become no-go areas for other police units, especially after sunset.

I ask if I can accompany them and I'm told to be patient. Then suddenly one night after dinner my phone beeps. The message reads: "Raid tonight - I'll pick you up at 23:45. I have bullet proofs for you."
When we set off Ijaz explains that we're on our way to the house of a suspected handler of suicide bombers. Police believe he is responsible for taking them to the places where they blow themselves up.
Soon the bright lights of central Karachi are far behind us. We drive past buildings which look like empty shells and I can see swirls of dust in our headlights. Ijaz tells me his force often carries out multiple raids between 1am and 4am in crowded, run-down neighbourhoods. In some, locals have to pay protection money to the Taliban and outsiders can't move around freely.
"There are hideouts, there are sympathisers and there might be weapons so we need to be careful," says Ijaz.

The wreckage after a car bomb attack targeting a senior police officer in Karachi in September

But as our cavalcade of five vehicles bumps off the main road and drives noisily down a dirt track I can't help thinking that our approach is anything but discreet.
Ijaz explains that when we arrive, some officers will use ladders to go up the walls of the two-storey house, while others search the premises. "In the meantime our drivers will be turning around our vehicles so we don't have to wait for even a few seconds. When we arrest someone we get out of the area as fast as possible."
Eventually the car screeches to a halt and Ijaz puts on a mask. Police are routinely targeted by Taliban-affiliated groups.
A couple of officers shine torch lights into the courtyard to see if there's anyone awake. A policeman with a gun is climbing over the fence while another hammers on the door.
Moments later a sleepy looking man in a vest is brought out of the house. Police ask him his father's name then bundle him into the car and drive back to the station.

Policing Karachi

• The police in Karachi are stretched, with 15,000 active officers in a city of more than 20 million people
• On average, one police officer a day is killed on duty
• The judicial process is very slow - in the 12 months since September 2013, police in Karachi have filed 322 terrorism cases and 115 cases of kidnap for ransom but none of these have come to trial yet

In Ijaz's heavily armed compound, there are always suspected Taliban members being held for questioning. He is open about the use of what he calls "arm twisting". He admits waterboarding is sometimes used, and I spot a taser gun in his hand although I do not witness him using it.
"You can't present a suspect with a bouquet and ask him to tell the truth," he argues. "You can't say, 'I'll give you a Snickers bar if you tell me the truth,' because they are not kids, they are hardened criminals and they need to be treated like this."
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, however, takes a different view. It has accused the Karachi police of torturing people in custody and even carrying out extrajudicial executions.
I am not permitted to speak to the man police have just picked up but Ijaz does later allow me to speak to another Taliban suspect.

The man brought in has sweat dripping down his neck, but he's not nervous - in fact he tells me he wants to talk. He's wearing handcuffs, and a blindfold designed to keep me and the police safe from reprisals.
It's impossible to know how honestly he will answer my questions, especially as Ijaz is standing over him in the windowless interrogation room wielding a cane.
But he seems eager to tell me what he's done.
"I prepare boys for suicide missions. We get teenagers, 13 or 17 years old. We give them passion for violent jihad and tell them they should sacrifice themselves for their religion," he says.
"I've planted bombs in this city. I can put a bomb in a car, a rickshaw or a cement block. I've killed 20 or maybe 25 people in these attacks. When I see the news about people dying, it makes me happy because these people are hypocrites. I can use guns too. I've killed four or five policemen too. I use a 9mm pistol."

Police officers in Karachi attending the funeral of one of their colleagues

The prisoner is chillingly clear when it comes to his motivation for carrying out such attacks. "These people are partners of America. They are all hypocrites. The police, the army, they are all partners of America."
When I point out that murder, extortion and selling drugs are all explicitly un-Islamic, he retorts: "We have to pay for guns and bullets. Do you think these things are free? Our leader has said these things are OK because we are at war. We are fighting a holy war."
It's impossible to know whether he is speaking honestly or if he sees our conversation as an opportunity for Taliban propaganda.
Later, I hear that he has been charged with murder and conspiring against the state. When his case will come to court is hard to predict, but it's unlikely to be soon as Pakistan's judicial system is notoriously slow.
In the 12 months from the start of September 2013 to the end of August this year not a single terrorism case resulted in a conviction.
Ijaz says this has a demoralising effect on his colleagues.
"Witnesses are fearful for their lives. Testifying in court against the Taliban is a risk that many people are just not willing to take," he says. "We also have a real lack of resources in terms of phone-tapping and forensic evidence. It can often take 10 years or more for a case to go through the courts. Justice delayed can often be justice denied."
But Ijaz himself remains motivated.

"We will not be bullied by these terrorists," he says. "That is the moral victory. We will gain physical victory one day, inshallah."

Source :BBC