Gwen Thompkins
Gwen Thompkins hosts Music Inside Out on WWNO in New Orleans.
Up until recently, she was an NPR foreign correspondent covering East Africa. She was based in Nairobi, Kenya, reporting on the countries, people and happenings from the Horn to the heart of Africa.
Since arriving in Africa in 2006, Thompkins has reported on the toppling of the Islamic Courts Union government in Somalia, ethnic violence in Kenya, insecurity in Darfur and Sudan's first nationwide elections in a generation. She has also written a series on the Nile River, traveling from the shores of Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea. Heading south, she has reported stories from South Africa and Antarctica.
From 1996 to 2006, Thompkins was senior editor of Weekend Edition Saturday. Working with Scott Simon she learned — among other things — that when a horse walks into a bar, the bartender has to say, "So, why the long face?"
While at Weekend Edition, Thompkins also reported from her hometown of New Orleans. In the months following Hurricane Katrina, she and senior producer Sarah Beyer Kelly filed stories on the aftermath of the storm and the rebuilding efforts.
Before coming to NPR, Thompkins worked as a reporter and editor at The Times-Picayune newspaper.
A graduate of Newcomb College at Tulane University, Thompkins majored in history and Soviet studies. While on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, she was in Eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall fell. Fortunately, she says, she was not injured.
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About 14 million Kenyans were eligible to vote in Thursday's presidential election. The main contenders are Kenya's current president, Mwai Kibaki, and his one-time ally, Raila Odinga. The race has been too close to call, and some feared it would result in vote-buying and tribal violence.
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A political suspense thriller is unfolding in Kenya. No fewer than nine candidates are running for president, but from nearly every angle, it is a two-man race between Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki.
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A painfully familiar scene unfolded last week in Mogadishu. Somalis triumphantly dragged the body of a dead Ethiopian soldier in the street, recalling what has become known as the Blackhawk Down incident of 1993. -
A weekend conference in Libya intended to bring peace to Sudan's troubled Darfur region was hobbled in part by the absence of key black rebel groups who are considered essential to any lasting agreement. What their absence portends has become a main topic of the discussions.
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In the Darfur region of Sudan, a humanitarian disaster has taken more than 200,000 lives and displaced millions to refugee camps. The addition of rebel conflict to an already desolate region has been devastating.
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The conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur has raged for four years. More than 200,000 people have been killed, and more than two million have been driven from their homes. But there are optimists in the midst of the tragedy.
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The new head of the U.N. World Food Program is visiting Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and millions have been displaced by fighting between African rebels and Arab militias known as janjaweed, which are backed by government troops. -
When member nations of the African Union meet this weekend, representatives hope to find a way to stabilize Somalia, where a weak government has beaten back Islamist forces with the help of Ethiopian troops. There is concern that the fighting will resume unless peacekeepers are introduced into the country. -
There are reports of at least two U.S. military strikes in Somalia, said to have targeted al-Qaida figures wanted for the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. The Pentagon refuses to confirm or deny the operation.
