Tag: culture
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Wish You Were Here: Playa Del Carmen
I don’t know how an unseen man playing the saxophone on a rooftop can make it feel like Christmas on a sunny afternoon in October, but he does. My husband says he’s seen the man, but I can never find him. As I sit out on our narrow balcony and search the uneven landscape of…
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The Philippines: Steam and Ghosts, Part III
The zoo is an hour’s drive in the rain, through soupy fields of rice paddies. Occasionally we pass a farmhouse that seems to float in the water around it. A family sits on the porch: a grandmother, a mother, and a small boy watching a teenaged boy steering their water buffalo through the muddy furrows.…
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The Philippines: Steam and Ghosts
They send a car to fetch me in the morning, even though the call center is only a kilometer from my hotel. I am a client, and they are careful about security. On the drive we pass through shafts of dusty sun that pierce the dome above us. Even the sunny days steam here, even…
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Conversations with the Tribe
“The gardener is Luke. He’s wonderful, he’s from Malawi.” I follow Bronwen’s elegant pointer finger to the smiling man on the lawn. His grin splits his face into deep lines. “How are youu?” he calls. … “Don’t worry about making friends,” Amanda says. “We’re not as cliquey with foreigners as we are with each other.”…
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The Sangoma
The clapping of their feet on the pavement reached a crescendo as they rushed into the alley where Prince hid. They looked wildly to the right and left. They wailed from deep in their gravel throats, the beads clacking in their hair, on their necks, on their arms. Prince crouched in the weeds, knowing that…
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Watching His Children Mourn Him
The night Nelson Mandela died, a violent wind blew dark clouds across the yellow sky in Cape Town. The air here is never completely still; it brushes against your face with the weight of the sea every time you step outside. Once every few weeks it’s so windy that the flower sellers pack up early,…