Al Jazeera | Small Jewish communities emerge in Ivory Coast

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For Al Jazeera English, I photographed a small but growing Jewish community in Côte d’Ivoire. Inside the country’s first synagogue, the Kol-Yehuda, the community has learned the prayers in Hebrew and adopted Orthodox Jewish practices.

With only 34 registered Jews in Côte d’Ivoire 20 years ago, there are now at least four different independent Jewish communities in Abidjan, each with their respective synagogues and between 20 and 300 members. Most Ivorians who have adopted Jewish practices still haven’t been officially converted to Judaism and are not recognized by Israel.

An Ivorian Jew reads the prayers in Hebrew during Shabbat services at the Kol Yehuda Synagogue and Kabbalah Centre on Friday evening. [Isabel Bonnet/Al Jazeera]

Welcome to the Jungle | Balancing work and exercise while training for a marathon

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For Welcome to the Jungle, I produced a video on balancing work and exercise, particularly while training for a marathon. This project pushed me out of my comfort zone—I not only got in front of the camera but also ran around Brooklyn to stop New Yorkers in the middle of their busy days. But this is a story I felt personally close to:

Just a few months before graduating from my master's program at Parsons School of Design - The New School in May, I decided to run my first marathon this Fall. It's been a crazy ride having to juggle between completing my thesis, recovering from a concussion this Summer, and managing my current role as a freelance journalist. All of this while staying committed to my marathon training.

It's been a challenge – but I'm not the only one! Here are some New Yorkers, like me, who talk about time management, the pain and the excitement of training for a marathon:

Graduation: MS Data Visualization at Parsons School of Design

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In May, I obtained a master’s degree in Data Visualization from Parsons School of Design - The New School, one of the world’s leading schools of design.

During a keynote presentation, I showcased my thesis on the slow but steady return of tourists in Venezuela after years of isolation. Using different methods such as web scraping and archive research, I analyzed over 8,000 flight arrivals to Venezuela since 2013 and combined the results with interviews and maps created with QGIS.

Coda Story | In Nicaragua, there are no more newspapers

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Journalists are either in jail or in exile, as Daniel Ortega sets about destroying the country’s independent media. And the rest of Central America is following in line.

The facilities of the newspaper La Prensa were raided on August 13, 2021 by order of the Daniel Ortega regime. Juan Lorenzo Holmann, editor-in-chief, was arrested a few hours later. Courtesy of Juan Lorenzo Holmann’s family / La Prensa Archive

NBC | Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega goes after the Catholic Church in his latest effort to stop criticism of the government

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While Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega makes much of his own relationship with Christianity, the former leftist revolutionary's government has precipitated an unprecedented crackdown on the country's Catholic leadership.

On national television last month, Vice President Rosario Murillo, who is Ortega's wife, touted her love for and faith in God during celebrations of the 43rd anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. “Our Christian faith will stand,” she said.

At the same time, Nicaragua’s repression of the Catholic Church has intensified.

Courtesy of Padre Rafael

El Pais | El trauma del aislamiento en las cárceles permanece años después de la liberación

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Cada vez que llega a casa, Warren Ovalle se lava las manos siete veces. No le tiene miedo a la covid-19, pero aún puede sentir la suciedad de los años que pasó en su celda de aislamiento. “Cuando no te sientes bien por dentro, no te sientes bien por fuera”, dice. “La prisión está tan sucia que siento que tengo acumulación de suciedad en mi”. Ovalle solo tenía permitido darse una ducha de 10 minutos una vez por semana. Tres años más tarde, su higiene se volvió excesiva y ahora dice tenerle fobia a los gérmenes.

Cada día, alrededor del 9% de las 48.000 personas en las 54 prisiones del estado de Nueva York están encerradas solas en una celda de aislamiento. Pueden pasar meses o incluso años sin ninguna interacción social. Múltiples estudios muestran que este tipo de castigo puede provocar ataques de pánico, ansiedad, depresión, psicosis, aislamiento social, estallidos de violencia y suicidio, incluso años después de haber sido liberados.

Articles written at Columbia Journalism School

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Graduation: MS in Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.

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Despite the challenges of moving to New York City and studying a full degree during a pandemic, I was able to acquire new skills in Journalism. I learned how to tell stories using different tools and software, and got to meet so many talented young journalists in class.

At Columbia, I worked on written and video projects on immigration, the US criminal justice system, the impact of the pandemic on funeral homes, the foster care system and local businesses in Harlem. I also did a 10-minute video on Venezuelan political asylum seekers in the US.

As part of my master’s thesis, I spent five months photographing and interviewing people who were formerly incarcerated to document the long-term effects of solitary confinement.


It still feels surreal that this chapter is over. I spent nine years of my life dreaming about this program at Columbia.

Today, I am grateful to everyone who helped me get here, from my friends in Amsterdam helped me write my application for months to my family who supported me every step of the way.

Thank you and congrats to the Columbia University - Graduate School of Journalism Class of 2021!

Vice | The Ivory Coast's Government Has Forced Thousands Into Homelessness

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© Isabel Bonnet

© Isabel Bonnet

Côte d'Ivoire is one of Africa's fastest growing economies.

Much of the country’s success has been credited to President Ouattara, whose curriculum of new infrastructure seems to inspire dreams of a modern, emergent and growing economy. It is, realistically, only the wealthy who have benefited from this.

I went to six different districts in the country's economic capital, Abidjan, and wrote about the human cost of such emergence.

Graduation: Bachelor's degree from the University of Amsterdam

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My journey in Amsterdam has ended. I am glad to share that I have successfully graduated from the University of Amsterdam in Communication Science, with an 8/10 in my thesis "The Role of the Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic".

In the past three years, I joined several student associations (Study Association Mercurius, ISN Amsterdam - Erasmus Student Network, UNICEF Nederland), but more importantly, I founded the independent student-run newspaper The Amsterdammer.

I also did a Summer internship at La Silla Vacia in Bogota, and two internships at the photo agency NOOR Images. On top of that, I was able to volunteer at the UNSEEN festival, the International Journalism Festival and at the World Press Photo festival.

I was able to grow both in an individual and professional way. I will be forever grateful for the opportunities that living in Amsterdam brought me and the people I was able to meet during my bachelor's.

Due to the pandemic, I will be moving in January 2021 to New York City instead of in Fall to continue my studies at the Columbia Journalism School.

If you are interested in reading about my research project as part of my graduation thesis, you can visit its dedicated website:

Rostra | Africa's Impossible Task: Preventing the COVID-19 Outbreak in 2 Weeks

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On Monday, there were roughly 5,300 registered cases of COVID-19 and over 200 deaths in the African continent.

On 17 July 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Ebola a global health emergency for the fifth time. As the world’s poorest continent continues to fight against this virus and other life-threatening diseases such as HIV and malaria, the first case of the novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, was confirmed in the region on February 14 in Egypt. It spread faster across the continent than it took for the testing kits to arrive.

© Isabel Bonnet

© Isabel Bonnet

The Amsterdammer | Investigation: Dutch student media threatened to lose their independence

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Ending its second year, The Amsterdammer seeks to understand the development of student journalism in the Netherlands by taking a look at the past.

Since their inception in the beginning of the 19th century, student magazines quickly gained importance around the country and today, there are roughly 45 university publications in the Netherlands. The Amsterdammer was able to talk to 17 of them.

The Amsterdammer | Black Pete’s Controversy is the New Dutch Tradition

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On November 16, 2019, the first Saturday after Sint Maarten, 25,000 people enthusiastically welcomed Sinterklaas in Apeldoorn. For a couple of years, the arrival of the Dutch St. Nicholas and its traditions, brings with it, the ever-controversial debate of Zwarte Piet.

Since 1945, Sinterklaas has been accompanied by multiple “Piets”, his helpers—or servants. Commonly known as Zwarte Piet (“Black Pete” in Dutch), they are represented with  blackface, red lips, gold earrings, and dark curly hair. 

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Rostra | Controlling Forced Evictions to Fight Extreme Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Earlier this year, the Human Rights Watch published a report revealing that over 20,000 people would have been forcibly evicted in Conakry between February and May 2019. Bulldozers and other heavy machinery demolished the buildings to free the land for government ministries, foreign embassies, businesses, and other public works. “The Guinean government hasn’t just demolished homes, it has damaged peoples’ lives and livelihoods,” said Corinne Dufka, West Africa director at Human Rights Watch in a press release.

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Forced evictions are, however, not exclusive to Guinea. Demolitions and evictions throughout the national territory, without guarantee of rehousing to all those concerned, have become an ongoing issue in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Ghana, vendors were evicted from downtown Accra in 2010 and a project to redevelop the rail system around the country with the support of the Chinese government in 2013, led to more evictions. In Cameroon, 300 indigenous people were evicted using bulldozers to expand the Catholic University in Bamenda in 2014.

 In August 2013, President Alassane Ouattara’s plan to build the Abidjan-Grand-Bassam highway and the plan to embellish the littoral led the economic capital Abidjan to massive evictions. Ever since then, there has been an increase in the speed and frequency of residence destruction. Their main targets are local markets and marginalized neighbourhoods.

The Amsterdammer | Pop-up Store Sells Banana Bread to Fight Food Waste

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During National Banana Day on Wednesday, the Banana Bar popup store opened its doors for one day, only to promote the recently-funded organisation SUNT. Visitors were invited to bring banana leftovers in exchange for banana bread. By 4pm, about 40 people had already stopped by at the Banana Bar to drop off their leftover fruit. The term “Sunt” means ‘waste’ in Dutch and ‘tasty’ in Norwegian.