Michelle Shephard Is An Undervalued Stock

You know who I want to be when I grow up? Michelle "Snakefighter" Shephard. The Toronto Star's national security reporter is on assignment in Mogadishu and turns in this affecting report about the never-completed work of a city gravedigger:

Twenty minutes after his relatives depart, the body of 4-month-old Abdullahi Ali is carried in. He was born not far from where he is buried, in Kafi's camp, alongside thousands of others displaced by southern famine and fighting.

A third baby, 7-month-old Batulo Mohamed, is lowered into another grave as Kafi continues to dig deeper.

It is now near 9:30 and the sun is high. Today Kafi will get paid, as the pregnant woman's relatives can afford the burial. A cousin brought a stack of bills in a small cloth bag with the words, “I love Somalia.” In a plastic bag, he brought Kafi some bread, water and a banana.

When was the last time you read a piece of journalism so haunting? One that was written as sparingly, or as beautifully? She raises the bar for the rest of us. 

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