San Bushmen, Kalahari Desert, Namibia 

In these faces lies the secret of all our origins, if you believe geneticist Spencer Wells. It all sounds extremely plausible to me.

Wells spent 10 years, and studied 50 groups of people, trying to trace a genetic "spelling mistake" or marker in various groups of peoples, and hypothesises that a group of the San Bushmen left Africa around 50,000 years ago and followed the coastlines all the way around the Middle East, India, South East Asia and across the final stretch of water by boat to Australia. The marker was found in Australian Aborigines, as well as in the Dravidians of India.

It was probably drought that led the Bushmen to leave in the first place, and the ice age in Europe - where his Indian descendants had migrated - that led them across the great continent of Asia, crossing the iced-over Bering Straits into the two continents of America.

Wells' theory has its fair share of detractors, but it does show that we are now able to use much more sophisticated technology in the service of discovering more about our origins. In fact, there is a powerful case for a multi-disciplinary approach to the whole thorny question of the origin of homo sapiens involving the paleoanthropologists, archaeologists, geneticists and historians. You can read more in his book, "The Journey of Man" and an interview.

The attractive thing for me about Wells' theories is the belief that we are all the same underneath. Now we have scientific proof that links all races and colours.

As Wells says, "We are all much closely related than we ever expected. Racism is not only socially divisive, but also scientifically incorrect. We are all descendants of people who lived in Africa recently. We are all Africans under the skin."

Graduation book 

When my daughter graduated from high school recently, she was given a copy of a little book illustrated with woodcuts about a fictional character who discovered the secret and the power of one individual being able to accomplish something really amazing. The book is called The Man Who Planted Trees and is written by Jean Giorno. It was written after one of the world wars, no doubt in the spirit of somehow wanting to see hope in a better future after so much gratuitous destruction and waste of life. It is hard to get the book, but luckily you can read the online story and a bit about the author.

In fact there was a man who made planting trees his life's work. When I started blabbering about him one day, my father recalled having met him during the time he was a botanist and agriculturalist in East Africa. Sir Richard St Barbe Baker was even known as the Man of the Trees and he founded a worldwide organisation called Men of the Trees, which is still active. He accomplished so much to make known the advantages of planting trees - knowledge which is now taken for granted in countries like Australia which cut through whole swathes of lush forest for pasture and ended up with dry, brown, eroded earth. Denuded, scarred, barren earth not even fit for native animals to graze on. It's still there, but farmers are learning to plant trees to raise the water table, to bring the topsoil back, to make the land green again.

Meanwhile, as the annual haze drifts over us here in our beautifully (and deliberately) green garden city, I am reminded of how each generation somewhere has to learn the lessons of responsibility to the environment the hard way. The smoke comes from forest fires in nearby Sumatra, Indonesia, where farmers and plantation owners burn trees to clear land for cultivation, despite a government ban. The air quality is worse in Malaysia and some flights have been diverted, schools are being closed and the elderly and asthmatic advised to stay indoors. In 1997 and 1998 the economic loss to Malaysia (and the region)was reported to be billions of dollars. Not good for us neighbours, but not good ultimately for Sumatra either. Loss of tree cover can lead to tragedy and loss of life in countries which realise too late that cleared land can prove a devastating cause of subsidence, mudslides and flooding on the one hand and the disappearance of diversity in the ecosystem and over-reliance on monoculture, with all the economic precariousness that brings about, on the other.

So it is heartening to hear of grassroots efforts to challenge the way things are done in order to bring back balance in the natural environment and achieve better levels of economic prosperity at the same time. Again it is a true story about one man in Kerala, India who went ahead with passionate determination to green his space. Would that we all followed his example because the warnings are dire and distressing.

So long as greed, corruption and injustice walk this planet so will our fragile biosphere be compromised. We all need to have a bit of the spirit of Richard St Barbe Baker or the farmer from Kerala in us, and never underestimate the power of one, nor the assistance that can be made available.

"Look not at your own capacities, for divine bestowal can transform a drop into an ocean; it can make a tiny seed a lofty tree."

One of the books I go back to time and again is "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran. I love to quote it when I send cards, or read chunks from it if I have to give a talk. When one of my brothers got married, he asked me to read the chapter on marriage. It resonates with everyone, it's universal in its message and the words have a lyrical beauty that wakens your soul from its slumber.

I was intrigued to learn that Gibran had met, and was drawn to, the personnage of 'Abdu'l-Baha, the eldest son of Baha'u'llah, prophet-founder of the Baha'i Faith. He was called by those who revered him "The Master", though he shunned that title and always maintained that his name and his station were simply that of "servant" (his name means Servant of God). Gibran drew his portrait which you can see here and read some more about their meeting.

When I was in New York in November 1992 for the Baha'i World Congress, a group of us set off on a beautiful sunny autumn day to find the house where 'Abd'ul-Baha stayed in Greenwich Village (No 48 West 10th St) at the home of Juliet Thompson in the article mentioned above. (Maybe we were standing right outside the house where Gibran lived!) But the house is privately owned so we couldn't enter. Instead we went a little further down to the Village itself and found a restaurant in the basement of one of those beautiful old houses. All nine of us needed something to warm us up so we all ordered pumpkin soup, and I have to say it was the best pumpkin soup we had tasted or will taste - ever! We called ourselves The Pumpkin Soup Group after that!

Veronica Guerin 

In almost a week, it will be the anniversary of the assassination of someone who stood for truth and justice in the face of greed, injustice and apathy. I had not even heard of the journalist Veronica Guerin before seeing the title on a VCD in the local VideoEzy - and I picked it up because it also had Cate Blanchett's name plastered across it. But I am not sorry I did, because now I know that this woman paid with her life to change the sordid conditions she saw around her.

In 1996, this fearless young woman (she was only 37)was shot six times when she stopped at a traffic light on her way home. She had been previously assaulted by the man who put out the order to murder her, but despite that she had continued to write her exposes of Ireland's leading underworld figures and drug barons. There's an article here which gives more details.

To some extent her death was not in vain as now the law books have changed to make it more difficult for criminals to hide the source of their often ludicrously high income. And the National Union of Journalists and other media associations came up with The Guerin Principles.

At the end of the film it stated that in the 6 years since her death (now it's 8), 196 journalists had died in the course of their vocation. The conflict in Iraq must have pushed that figure up by quite a bit, I imagine.