Category: Blog
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Laura
The sun was setting over Underberg, a small cattle farming community in the Mzimkulu River valley of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The sun was almost surreal, like a giant ball of fire drifting slowly below the horizon. I was sitting beside a pool drinking Spier Pinotage, planning my hike in the Drakensberg mountains, the highest mountain range in South Africa.…
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Bull-Jumping Ceremony
It was early morning in Tumri, a village in southwestern Ethiopia famous for its open-air market. I timed my visit so that I could witness this weekly buying and selling of goods between the Hamar and other neighboring tribes. The vendors were only beginning to set up their booths, so I sat in a small…
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Spirit of the Sulu Sea
A blue, cloudless sky. The limpid Sulu Sea. Wooden huts hovering over the water on stilts. Narrow, handmade canoes docked in front of each. In the hull of an indigenous lepa-lepa boat, a woman cooks a fish over an open fire. Children paddle between the huts in their own canoes. A young woman washes clothes…
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White Rhino
“Today, poaching for their horn is the main threat. The white rhino is particularly vulnerable to poaching because it is relatively unaggressive.” A single bullet was all it took. Now I am lying in a pool of my own blood, dying. I was looking up at the sky, wondering if it was going to rain,…
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A Ghost Town in the Arctic Circle
Pyramiden is a ghost town in the Svalbard Archipelago. The nearest small town is Longyearbyen, approximately 31 miles to the south. Pyramiden was a place founded by Sweden in 1910 to house coal miners. In 1927, Sweden sold the land to the Soviet Union. After World War II, the Soviet Union started developing the town.…
Small Piece of Happiness 