Pchum Ben Festival, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
I set out early this morning with a group of my coworkers who had invited me to take part in Pchum Ben, a 15-day religious festival in which Cambodians pay respect to their deceased relatives. Crouched barefoot in the corner of a colorful pagoda on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, small groups gathered to place...
Postcard from Sudan: Rebirth of a nation
By Heather Stilwell In many ways, this tiny classroom was just like any other: rows of young students looking up at their teacher, the day’s lesson displayed on the dusty chalkboard overhead. But this day was not about grammar or arithmetic. It was about the long fight for freedom. In South Sudan, it is rarely...
Independence Day
Happy Independence Day to the world’s newest country, the Republic of South Sudan. To show a bit of the area, below is a short collection of video clips I took throughout South Sudan and in parts near the North-South border. You might wonder why I seem completely unable to hold a camera straight, but much...
The Royal Media
Leading up to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s Canadian tour, the CBC News website posted an article under the headline, “Royal visit a tough assignment for world media.” I tried to ignore it. I had vowed to stop reading about the Royals ever since choking down a piece in the Globe and Mail which described...
Understanding Conflict
Leading up to Sudan’s referendum in January, I traveled back to the Kauda radio station in the Nuba Mountains to help lead a workshop on reporting in times of conflict. Over three days of dissecting the local context and history with journalists, we discussed ways they could report to promote peace. But as much as...
The Other Side of Reality
The Montreal Gazette published an article today about Fabienne Colas, a Haitian actress who left Port au Prince eight years ago with hopes of advancing her promising career. After settling in Quebec, Colas was struck by what she saw as one-sided media coverage of Haiti, coverage that did not do justice to all that was...
Violence in Sudan
In my last post, I wrote about my friend and former colleague Musa John and described a brief period of his life in the Nuba Mountain’s of Sudan. I purposely kept the post short because I wanted to allow anyone reading the chance to gradually get to know the people and places that I have...
Seeking Refuge
A few weeks ago I worked with NY-based Nepali journalist Kashish Das Shrestha on a piece about Bhutanese families who resettled to Canada from refugee camps in Nepal. Since fleeing ethnic persecution in the early nineties, more than 100,000 Bhutanese have been living in the Nepali camps with little hope of returning home. Starting in...
Welcome
Welcome all! So, here it is. To all of those who checked this site for news from my travels only to find a perpetually blank page – thank you for remaining inexplicably supportive despite the vague and sporadic updates of my whereabouts. It may be later than hoped, but I would like to start regularly...
