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The Rise of Mobile Technology in Africa
A few months ago, as I walked down narrow Dubois Road, in the Central Business District of Nairobi, Kenya, I came to a small shop selling cell phones. There are thousands of these stores across the...
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Mountains Never Meet but People Can Meet Again
Last fall, I got a long overdue chance to go back to Arusha, Tanzania, where I lived and taught English in the 1990s. It was a great trip, and shocking to see how much the place has changed, all of...
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People are People (Africa version)
Sort of basic, but sadly necessary, as Kony2012 made all too clear:
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We Aren’t the World: Kony 2012, Kenyans for Kenya and the Cultural Roots of...
A few years ago, I was on an assignment in the northern Ugandan city of Gulu, when I stopped at a cafe run by the organization called Invisible Children, now made famous by their Kony 2012 video. The...
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Travels in the Real Nigeria: Looking for Transwonderland
My review over at The New Republic: NIGERIA HAS AN unsavory, and largely undeserved, reputation in the United States: the home of scammers trying to bilk Grandma out of her life savings. Yet across...
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On Time Travel, Temporal Diversity and How the Timescape Changes Us
One recent morning in Nairobi, Kenya, I was sitting in the ninth-floor lobby of a downtown office building, waiting for the Tanzanian High Commission to issue me a visa. Several Kenyans were also...
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Dispatch from Djibouti
From my story about Djibouti, a bridge, and why we wander in the new Nowhere Magazine: Standing on the edge of the Red Sea 60,000 years ago, the first people looked across the water, saw mountains...
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The Year in Words (or 2012 Recap)
It can be hard, as a writer, to watch your stories slip into the past, particularly the ones you love because there is a piece of you in them. So if I can steal a page from Teju Cole, in a vain...
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The Bridge of the Horns
Here’s a slick, bizarre, unintentionally hilarious video promoting the Bridge of The Horns that I wrote about in Nowhere Magazine last year. Is the distance between rhetoric and reality greater than...
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On the Power of Money
From The Rotarian: “America,” said the exercise in our grammar book, “is the (rich) country in the world.” It was a lesson about the superlative, and the answer was, of course, “richest.” I was...
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RIP Tabu Ley
Very sad to say goodbye to one of the greatest musicians in one of the greatest musical traditions. Tabu Ley Rochereau, 73, passed away November 30, 2013. Here’s some old footage of him with another...
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Runner, Interrupted
A story I’ve been working on for two years, Runner, Interrupted, just hit news stands in the February issue of Runner’s World: The sounds of the city grow faint. The air smells of pine, and the wind...
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Lean Out, Lean Back
After seven years on Facebook and Twitter, it’s increasingly clear that they fill a need without satisfying it, and that time is too short and there’s too much to do.
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Beyond Borders
From The Rotarian: Mara Egherman, a college librarian, was sitting at her desk when she saw an email pop up: Ryan Ahmad, a Muslim exchange student in Iowa from the Philippines, needed a place to stay....
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The Art and Science of Hope
From The Rotarian: A few years ago, I was passing through the northern Nigerian city of Kano when I stopped at a roadside stall for some tea. The proprietor asked me where I was from. I told him. “I...
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The Lost Girls of South Sudan
From the Christian Science Monitor and The Rotarian: The girls were alone. Their families were dead, or gone, or lost in the broken landscape of southern Sudan. They had nowhere to turn, and no one to...
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Rain the Color of Blue With a Little Red in It
The Tuareg remake of Purple Rain. More here.
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A Few of my Favorite Books, 2015
As usual, reports of the death of printed books have been greatly exaggerated. There were lots of incredible works published this year (on paper and otherwise), too many for anyone to read, let alone...
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Runner, (Re)Interrupted
A few years ago I traveled to Anchorage, Alaska to spend time with Marko Cheseto, a Kenyan runner who lost his feet to frostbite. Now that story, Runner, Interrupted, has been chosen as one of the...
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