The James Logan Courier

By Paul Salopek
Chicago Tribune(MCT)

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Petroleum nearly killed Eskedar Demissew. Or at least the illusion of it did.

In the pre-dawn gloom of a morning in April, insurgents rousted the stocky truck driver from his tent at a remote oil prospecting camp in Ethiopia's Ogaden desert. They lined him up in the sand with other workers. And without further ceremony, they sprayed them with machine-gun fire.

Demissew survived, just barely, by playing dead. But 74 other people, including nine Chinese contractors, died in one of the worst attacks on an African oil facility in recent memory.

"I will never work in oil again," Demissew said quietly at his tiny house in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, where he was popping painkillers and hoping to regain full use of his nerve-damaged arms. "It isn't worth it."

From The Courier archives:

From wikipedia:
Edward John Eyre (5 August 1815 - 30 November 1901) was an English land explorer of the Australian continent and a controversial Governor of Jamaica. South Australia's Lake Eyre, Eyre Peninsula, Eyre Creek, and Eyre Highway (the main highway from South Australia to Western Australia) are named in his honour, as are the villages of Eyreton and West Eyreton in Canterbury, New Zealand.

Early life
Eyre was born in Whipsnade, Bedfordshire, shortly before his family moved to Hornsea, Yorkshire, where he was christened. His parents were Rev. Anthony William Eyre and Sarah (nee Mapleton). After completing grammar school at Louth and Sedbergh, he moved to Sydney rather than join the army or go to university. He gained experience in the new land by boarding with and forming friendships with prominent gentlemen and became a flock owner when he bought 400 lambs a month before his 18th birthday. When South Australia was founded, Eyre brought 1000 sheep and 600 cattle overland from Monaro, New South Wales to Adelaide and sold them for a large profit. He also discovered Lake Eyre.

Read Edward John Eyre's Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the Years 1840-1: Sent By the Colonists of South Australia, with the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines and the State of Their Relations with Europeans, free from Project Gutenberg.