Travel

At the end of the day, there is no Shangri-La and El Dorado, or even Atlantis or the Lost City of Z. These only exist in the fascination of the colonizers, a figment of their imagination stemming from an exploitative greed. We talk of colonization as a thing of the past. We read about it…

It was my second time in Mbokop, and unlike the first time, I traveled there alone to this remote community in NW Cameroon. It hasn’t been a year since my last trip there, and it seemed like nothing had changed. It was harvest season, which meant that most adults (which there is anyone over 14…

Driving through the hustle and bustle of Lusaka, it is really hard to imagine that the vast majority of this country live in rural communities. Bumper-to-bumper traffic, high rises and expensive cars – one can almost see the development of Zambia happening in front of his eyes. And then I drive a couple of hours…

It’s very easy to miss The Gambia on a map of mighty Africa. The smallest country in mainland Africa is but a sliver of land, merely 500 km long, and 50 km wide. Small as it may be, two weeks in The Gambia during the summer of 2014, have left a big impression on me….

The Lilayi Elephant Orphanage right outside Lusaka, Zambia, is one of only two elephant nurseries in Africa. Six young elephants currently live there, ranging in age from four months to three years. At some point, each elephant was traumatically separated from its biological family. Although elephants are herd animals and these elephants were complete strangers…

As part of Hand in Health and Books for Africa’s project to expand ICT in The Gambia, I had the chance to tour the Sulayman Junkung General Hospital (SJGH) located in Bwiam, The Gambia. A government hospital built in 2003, SJGH has undergone a radical transformation over the past decade, and is now an exemplary institution not…

Dhaka is so much more than just a city. It is a whirlpool that pulls anything and anyone that comes close to it – sending them around and around like some wildly spinning fairground ride bursting with energy. It is organized chaos – millions of individual pursuits churning together into frenetic collective activity. I cannot guarantee…

Three years ago, I traveled to the community of Rincon in the Ngöbe-Buglé Comarca of Panama to visit my friend Gillian, who was working there as a community mobilizer with the organization Health Empowering Humanity. The Comarca is inhabited by the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous tribe – one of the most historically marginalized tribes in Central America….

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson Traveling is one of my greatest passions, and if you are reading this, probably yours too. Traveling is when you stop thinking of how things may be, and see…

I still remember that day vividly. I was in a rural community in Mexico, constructing a computer center with Engineers Without Borders. After two long years of assessments and design, January 12, 2010 was the day the remote community of San Miguel got computers and the internet. As I hit the enter button on that…