Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

In Zambia, Cambodia, Nigeria, Domestic Violence Is Less and Less OK

May 1, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: SYLVIE BOUCHARD/SHUTTERSTOCK)

For all the dastardly, no-good ideas we see spreading today (jihad, jeggings, kamehameha-ing), it's reassuring to learn that some genuinely good ideas seem to be catching on, too. Case in point: the growing rejection of domestic violence around the world. In a study published last week, University of Michigan doctoral student Rachael Pierotti finds that between 2003 and 2008, acceptance of the justifications for domestic violence in 26 different countries—and not just the Luxembourgs and Monacos of the world, but low- and middle-income countries like the Dominican Republic, Zambia, and ... Read More

More like this: Culture
Tags: , , ,

Ghana Bans Killing of Children

April 30, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
ghana

This is real. Well, now it's not real, I guess. No longer will children born with disabilities be killed in order to free a village from evil. In Ghana's northern Kasena-Nankana region, babies born with disabilities—and sometimes even babies born at the same time from some misfortune that befell their family—were considered "spirit children," as in "possessed by evil spirits." To fix that, "concoction men" would make the babies drink poison. And then they would die. From the BBC: Mr. Ayine, from the campaign group Afrikids, said he was "saddened that in today's era, a child ... Read More

More like this: Health
Tags: , , , , ,

Forget the Maps: Why All the Data in the World Won’t Make You a Better Traveler

April 25, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
road-map-fiction

Listen to Life in the Data, Episode 3, featuring Paul Theroux: In the absence of information the only certainty in travel is suspense, with the suggestion of risk, and the possibility of danger. The usual presumption, amounting almost to a conceit of many travelers, is that they will be able to brainstorm a trip before they set out—downloading data, solving the issues of transfer and transition, places to stay, places to eat, the condition of roads, the mood of the locals, the sights, the diversions. It’s pretty to think so. Sometimes, as I have found, this amounts to pure fancy ... Read More

More like this: Culture & Society, May-June 2013
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Uganda: The Number One (Anti-Homosexuality, Anti-Women) Place to Visit

April 8, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
uganda-woman

Here's Lonely Planet on Uganda, its number-one country to visit for 2012: It’s taken nasty dictatorships and a brutal civil war to keep Uganda off the tourist radar, but stability is returning and it won’t be long before visitors come flocking back. After all, this is the source of the river Nile—that mythical place explorers sought since Roman times. It’s also where savannah meets the vast lakes of East Africa, and where snow-capped mountains bear down on sprawling jungles. Not so long ago, the tyrannical dictator and ‘Last King of Scotland’ Idi Amin helped hunt Uganda’s big ... Read More

More like this: Politics
Tags: , , , , ,

Missing Pieces

March 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(ILLUSTRATION: MÁGOZ)

Elaborate greetings are the norm, I’ve found, when one enters a Central African village. So it was a surprise when I noticed that many people weren’t shaking hands the morning I arrived in Tiringoulou, a town of about 2,000 people in one of the remotest corners of the Central African Republic, in March 2010. I soon found out the reason: the day before, a traveler passing through town on a Sudanese merchant truck had, with a simple handshake, removed two men’s penises. As best I could reconstruct from witness accounts, the stranger had stopped to purchase a cup of tea at the market. ... Read More

More like this: March-April 2013
Tags: , ,

Why We Should Drop the ‘Mad Max’ Metaphors

February 18, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
A rare still from 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' with Tom Hardy in the role of Max Rockatansky

Here’s a drinking game: Sit down with some friends and talk about modern life and fossil fuels—supply, demand, embargoes, carbon, cars, batteries, whatever—and see how long it takes for someone to mention Mad Max. Ever since 1979, when an Australian ER doctor named George Miller and his friend James McCausland released a bootstrapped film about a bunch of gnarly drifters driving around looking for gasoline after the apocalypse, Mad Max has become the cultural reference point for fossil fuel depletion and the dystopia that ensues when “people don’t believe in heroes anymore.” ... Read More

More like this: Culture
Tags: , , ,

Can a Test Tell If You’re a Good Entrepreneur?

December 5, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
rorschach

Bankers around the world know there are profits to be reaped by making loans to promising small businesses that fall just short of traditional definitions of “creditworthy.” Ever since Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank pioneered "microfinance" by making tiny loans to single mothers in Bangladesh, development policymakers also have believed that getting credit to small businesses—those too large for Grameen-style microloans but still lacking collateral or credit history—is not only possible, but the key to helping a nation’s economic growth. So how to figure out ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
Tags: , , , , ,

Paul Theroux on What’s Really Wrong With Africa

April 23, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Paul Theroux on What’s Really Wrong With Africa

Paul Theroux’s new novel, The Lower River, is one of a series of books in which the longtime author and travel writer reimagines seminal events in his own life. Like his protagonist, Ellis Hock, Theroux was in the Peace Corps in Malawi in the early 1960s. In his 44 books — fiction and nonfiction — he has never shied from commenting on the possibilities and perils humans face in their quest for solutions. Here is his recent conversation with Pacific Standard Editor-in-Chief Maria Streshinsky: Question: You have said it is contemptible “to stay home and invent the exotic, as Saul ... Read More

More like this: Culture, May-June 2012
Tags: ,

Insuring Livestock in Kenya, Via Satellite

February 27, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Brenda Wandera’s iPhone buzzes in her lap. A text message has made its way through the blurry heat of Kenya’s Chalbi Desert, and it changes her next move. “As soon as we get to Kalacha, we have to go to Network,” she says. Go to Network, I wonder. That must be a Kenyan turn of phrase for “finding a cell tower.” I’ve been warned that Kalacha is off the grid, which would make it one of the more remote corners of Africa, where mobile-phone and Internet service in even far-flung villages can be stronger and more regular than in parts of the American Southwest or Appalachia. ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Magazine Feature Story, March-April 2012
Tags: , , ,

Will Nigeria’s ‘Airport City’ Dreams Take Flight?

February 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

In Nigeria, an Islamic sect called Boko Haram — a name that roughly translates into “Western education is a sin” — is waging war against Christians in the country’s Muslim north, resulting in the deaths of hundreds. The group has stated that it intends to target hotels and restaurants frequented by foreigners for its attacks. In the country’s south, Christian militants continue to fight against the government and foreign oil companies. And kidnappings of Western businesspeople are common. Yet Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa and has many untapped reserves. Its ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, March-April 2012
Tags: , ,