How Long is Now? Lagos’ fast-evolving architectural landscape
LAGOS, Nigeria – May 1st, International Labor Day, was a public holiday in Nigeria. In Lagos Island, partying police officers were sprawled in plastic chairs beneath an overpass next to the stadium. Vendors hawking cigarettes and beer lined the curb and called to passengers in the bright orange buses inching past the revelers. Past the
Rays in Flight
Enjoy this video shot by Fellow Jessica Reilly featuring a group of rays “flying” out of the ocean. Through video Jessica shares with us a glimpse of some of the spectacular sights that can be found at sea.
Burkina Faso’s Gay Rights Debate: What Role for Foreign Voices?
An aide would later say that the whole exchange happened “very quickly.” On the morning of Feb. 23, 2015, Tulinabo S. Mushingi, the American ambassador to Burkina Faso, met with Chérif Sy, who is heading the country’s interim parliament in the run-up to elections following the toppling of President Blaise Compaoré last year. According to
Migration Crisis in Spain: Where are the Xenophobes?
June 2015 Pilar was 24 years old when she and her husband decided to go to France, to work as agricultural laborers on a farm owned by a wealthy Frenchman in 1955. Born in Albuñuelas, a tiny pueblo of 5000 people an hour north of Granada, Pilar knew what it was to live frugally. Both
The Battle Over the Córdoba Mosque-Cathedral and Spanish Identity
May 2015 The first time I saw the Córdoba Mosque-Cathedral was during a vacation to Spain. I remember walking into the building, and feeling a sense of awe as I stared up at the rows of striped arches, dimly lit by elegant brass lamps. Nestled in the heart of the mosque is a cathedral bathed
The Revolutionary Tour Guides of Burkina Faso
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso – On Nov. 1, 2014, the day after Blaise Compaoré resigned as Burkina Faso’s president and fled the capital in a convoy, abruptly ending his nearly three-decade hold on power, a 40-year-old man named Prosper looked on as an opposition lawmaker exulted over the autocrat’s hasty departure while giving a radio interview
Talk That Talk: On Narratives and Elections in Lagos
LAGOS, Nigeria–Election day dawned cloudy and cool in Lagos; an odd tranquility filtered through my window. I heard birds, and the wind, rather than the normal honking and hawking—the ambient sounds that permeate the air here, fueling what seems to be endemic insomnia among its residents. The silence was particularly notable after the clamor
Portrait of an Improbable Politician
By Allyn Gaestel AG-1 / NIGERIA / FEBRUARY 2015 LAGOS – Comrade Agbodemu Ishola Musbau strode through Ebute-Metta, a bustling neighborhood of concrete block homes interspersed with fading colonial houses, their deep brown, mint green and mustard yellow stucco walls stained with watermarks and exhaust fumes. Weaving between bright yellow vans and golf carts—the
A West African protest novel
ABIDJAN – Thiossane and Moctar meet in classic West African fashion. Trying to send a text message one day to an old friend from school, Thiossane, an educated but unemployed resident of Dakar, the capital of Senegal, enters the number incorrectly and instead reaches Moctar, an uneducated grave-digger who has recently lost his job. Moctar
“Yo no soy Charlie”: Spanish Muslims react to the Paris attacks
Malia Politzer January 2015 \MP-16 PARIS, France – Earlier this month, France experienced its worst terrorist attack in 50 years. It started the morning on the 7th of January, at approximately 11:30am, when two men wearing balaclavas and bulletproofed vests, and armed with Kalashnikovs, forced their way into the editorial meeting of the Paris-based