The Dag Hammarskjöld Scholarship Fund for Journalists

I was six years old when Bob Geldof organized the Live Aid mega concerts. It was 1985 and this almost two meters tall Irish rocker with messy hair left behind his band, The Boomtown Rats, to engage in activism to raise awareness towards the extreme poverty and epidemics in Africa.

That time I didn’t knew about those concerts. Not only because I was very young, but because in those years we didn’t have cable television and also because Peru lived its own drama because the terrorism and human rights violations committed by some members of the Armed Forces.

He experienced freedom before he died, but could not avoid his sad end: fried between two slices of bread and soak in BBQ sauce.

The day just began last Thursday 18th when the residents of Woodhaven in Queens, New York, saw a strange scene: a young bull was running very fast on the Atlantic Avenue. Behind him, a guy with a white apron with red spots was behind him, very angry.

Era 1979, mi padre estaba en Estados Unidos como parte de un curso de entrenamiento para la compañía en la que trabajaba entonces, y al llegar a Nueva York lo que más le llamó la atención fue ver en la calles a grupos de habilidosos jóvenes afroamericanos que se contorsionaban sobre un pedazo de cartón al ritmo de la estridente “Funky Music”.

Casualidades de la vida, 29 años después, mi edad, llegué a Nueva York y, al igual que mi padre, vi este maravilloso espectáculo.

Era finales de junio cuando me enteré que me habían seleccionado para ocupar uno de los cuatro cupos que la fundación Dag Hammarskjold ofrecía a periodistas de países en desarrollo para cubrir la asamblea general de las Naciones Unidas, en Nueva York.