Bogotá, Colombia — On a brisk, rainy day in late March, eight determined protesters held a seemingly endless vigil outside Santa Ana Parish on Calle 33A. With all the solemnity of a requiem, they directed their prayers at an off-white building across the street. I approached them curiously, and one woman shuffled over to me. “They perform abortions over there,” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth.
Over the past few years I have spent extended periods of time on both sides of the Thai-Malay border living in the two neighboring countries that bisect the Malaysian Peninsula. Sitting up my last night in the garment factory/townhouse I have been lodging at on and off in Bangkok for the last month before heading back …
I won’t pretend to understand everything that Hinduism stands for. When faced with such a foreign belief as this, I’m inclined to fold. That’s how attending Thaipusam made me feel at least: present, yet oddly unaware. Since moving to Malaysia about eight months ago, I had etched out in my mind a specific set of …
Continue reading Thaipusam, Batu Caves, Malaysia: A Burdensome Path
If I were to write a narrative of my first (nonconsecutive) weeks in Kuala Lumpur, it would be one of heady political chaos followed by a contemplative decrescendo into the month of Ramadan. It would start out in KL and it would begin with a bang – namely originating from the disbursement of tear gas …
Continue reading First weeks in KL: Bersih 2.0 protest to bazaar Ramadan
The name Baghdad tends to give rise to visions of war and relentless instability. But this is not always the case. In a suburb of Istanbul, on a road of the same name (known locally as Bağdat Caddesi), you couldn't be farther away from the sight of violence. At least this was the conclusion I drew from …
Justin Calderón 