PERNILLE BÆRENDTSEN
pernille@duniaduara.dk / Signal & WhatsApp +4529717068
Performer during the parade openening the Sauti za Busara, the music festival in Unguja in Zanzibar in Tanzania.
'Kahawa' - coffee, in Swahili, is boiled in big kettles and served in small cups with kashata (sweet peanut with sugar and coconut) in Uhuru Park in Tanga in Tanzania. Cups are made in China, and are seen from here over Juba to Sarajevo!
The bodaboda drivers gather on the corner of the church and the hospital, which forms a busy joint between the quite peninsula and the loud uswahilini split by Kimweri Avenue. Named after one of the biggest chiefs in Tanzania.
Performer during the parade openening the Sauti za Busara, the music festival in Unguja in Zanzibar in Tanzania.
MA in African Studies, journalist & former development worker. Home is Copenhagen/Lolland. Heart tilted towards the Balkans & Africa.
© Design, Photo & Text by Pernille Bærendtsen
Copenhagen is home, but since the late 1990s I have lived for longer periods of time in Serbia, northern Uganda, South Sudan and Tanzania, where I have engaged along the intersections of development and humanitarianism with a special interest in people, politics, media, culture and activism.
I was a short-term volunteer with BOSFAM in Bosnia in 1997 and with Volunteers' Centre Zagreb in Croatia in 1998. In 2000, I co-established the Next Stop Serbia campaign in Belgrade, and took part in developing the foundation for the South East European Youth Network based at the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights. More here.
In 2005-2007, I lived and worked as a development worker along and across the northern Ugandan border to South Sudan with focus on refugees, resource centres and civic education. Subsequently, I moved to Tanzania to work as information worker from 2005-2010. I returned to Denmark for one year to work with Civil Society in Development as communication officer. From 2011 to 2019, I freelanced as an independent journalist, trainer and consultant for longer periods of time in East Africa.
In 2017, I completed an MA in African Studies from University of Copenhagen with a thesis based on fieldwork among local politicians in opposition parties in Kigoma Mjini in Tanzania. I started a PhD at Copenhagen Business School in 2019, which is part of the research project Everyday Humanitarianism in Tanzania that examines practices of ordinary people engaging extraordinarily in helping outside of the formal humanitarian action.
I have drawn upon my experience with the aim of nuancing public debate, learning and communication by putting emphasis on collaboration. I've worked as media trainer with the Cross-Border Network of local radio stations in northern Uganda and South Sudan, as Project Coordinator at the Main Library of Copenhagen working with the Sudanese cartoonist Khalid Albaih and International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN) (2018), and as co-curator for the photo exhibition at the Museum of African Art in Belgrade in Serbia exhibiting the work of young African photographers’ nuancing of everyday lives on Instagram in East Africa (2019).