The President is just back from a whirlwind tour of Africa. He swept across the continent in 6 days, leapfrogging to friendly and peaceful countries while dispatching Secretary Rice to areas that need a little work (see my Kenya post). While much of the headlines these days deal with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration has been waging a more silent war against AIDS in the developing world. I’ve spent the last month in Northern Tanzania, observing the work of an NGO called Light in Africa. Light in Africa, or LIA, began as a children’s home on the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. Since work began in 2000, founder Lynn Elliot (aka Mama Lynn) has gradually expanded its ministries to include food, nutrition and medical programs to the surrounding areas. The operation has since moved off the mountain to be mainly concentrated in the village of Boma N’gombe. LIA[…]

No one predicted what has come over Kenya in the last month since its disputed presidential elections. But since then, the country has fallen from the grace of being one of the most-stable countries on the African Continent to being the host of machete wielding street mobs of young, angry, disenfranchised men. Tourists and ex-patriots have largely left the country as security and the economy have plunged amid the unrest. In all likelihood, Orange-Democratic Movement leader, Raila Odinga, won Kenya’s presidential election against incumbent Mwai Kibaki on December 27th. Raila, an ethnic Luo, widely led in opinion polls up until the election, accusing Kibaki, a Kikuyu, that he had not done enough to tackle corruption. Kenya’s other various minority tribes have long been hungry for a more prominent role in government. With the slow and non-transparent way the votes were counted in the days following the election, many were convinced[…]

Heavy, loud, and concentrated. These are words I use to describe Haiti’s assault on the American senses. But its more than the intense atmosphere and lack of polish that keeps westerners away. People from developed countries are a rare sight in Haiti due to its poor security and lack of infrastructure. Those that come remain sealed off in walled compounds and are sped away in the relative safety of a tinted-window, 4-wheel-drive rent-a-car. The warnings of violent crime issued from behind the desks of those at the US embassy in Port-au-Prince are not unwarranted; kidnappings, robberies and murders of the wealthy do occur. But the situation here is one that requires vigilance and common sense, not paranoia and seclusion. For those of us who step beyond the boundaries of our comfort zone, the rewards seem endless. Investing in a good insurance policy is also recommended. 700 miles to the South-East[…]

Situated on an oasis along the Pacific Ocean, Lima is surrounded by desert dunes and dozens of ancient archaeological sites. Streams of settlers from the countryside come to Lima to make their homes on the miles of sandy bluffs that surround the city. They build them with whatever materials are available: cardboard, straw, tin sheets, driftwood. Such settlements are known in kind terms as pueblos jovenes, young villages. Other times they are called invasiones, invasions. I’d seen pictures of these “young villages” during my research of Peru and was fascinated at the initial sight of them: row after row, mile after mile of makeshift housing perched on sandy hillsides and rough desert terrain attesting to the pioneering spirit of these settlers. I had to visit them for myself to find out if the transition to Lima was worth it for these immigrants. One of the first people I encountered was[…]

The sun rises in Belen, and the dock workers prepare to go home for the day. They’ve been working all night to carry in the day’s produce, charcoal, iron, petroleum, you name it, in time for the 7AM customer rush. “Dock” should be thought of in loose terms. It really means where the water meets the shore at any given time of the year. Banana carriers have to be the most skilled of all the laborers. Balancing the bunches on their backs, sometimes three at a time, they transport them past the muddy riverbanks, up the hills of Belen and through the busy market alleyways, doing their best to evade the children who sneak up to pilfer the fruit from the stems. As the Nile was and is to Egyptian civilization, the Amazon and its many tributaries are the lifeblood to the communities it penetrates, beginning in Peru at the[…]