by David Grant
How do kids in a rural, West African Muslim village manage to “get krunk” with each other on a Friday night in a culture that doesn’t allow dating, or even holding hands?In mid-November, 2006, my cousin David Agbemabiese and I visited Ghana’s Mole National Park. My agenda for this first trip to Ghana […]

By Tuan Phan
My friend Omar and I were sitting at an outdoors bar in Florence, sipping six Euros beers in silence. In front of us was the Piazza della Signoria. Hercules had some hapless chap under his heel, his carved marble thigh muscles rippling with success; David was tensed, poised to defeat his gigantic enemy […]

By Jann Huizenga
“I built that block of flats,” says Lule, pointing past a disemboweled Fiat to a boxy tenement where litter has drifted into hillocks around the entryway. We’re just off Skanderbeg Square in the crumbly center of Tirana.
“What do you mean, you built that?” I try to picture this professor, a freckle-faced sprite of […]

by Scott Crawford
In 1540, a new instrument was invented in the Italian town of Cremona. It was called the violin. Over the next 500 years, the violin would prove exceptionally versatile and today is one of the few instruments to be equally at home adorning the shoulders of classically trained musicians in symphony halls or […]

by Joshua Berman
The pre-dawn sky is as dark and sparkling as it was when we ducked into the mosquito net, only a few hours ago. The last of the goat hadn’t been eaten until after midnight, and the party broke up soon after that. Now Tay and I are barely awake, awash in candle and […]

by Todd Pitock
In 1992, Jean-Yves Brizot, not yet 30, went to Niger to create a guild of blacksmiths. He had spent most of his 20s guiding young adventurers in rugged environments all over the planet, but the place that captured his imagination was the Sahara. There, he’d encountered Tuareg blacksmiths creating exquisite silver jewelry using […]