What to do in a situation when one side is being violated? It seems straightforward to chose the victim’s side – but how many of us do that? Do we look for excuses to not chose the victim’s side – he seems so nice, surely that story is not true…. …
The Dutch press is giving a lot of attention to the new amendment to the amnesty law in Suriname. The amendment now protects the suspects in the ‘December murders’, a 1982 rounding up and extra-judicial execution of critics of the government. The current president of Suriname is in fact one …
What is culture? We learn about cultures from the past. For many of us, our main thoughts about culture might come from museums. We know from archaeology that the cultural artifacts include burial methods and ceramic pots. (As a child, I felt vaguely threatened by museum trips focussing on mummies, …
I have been describing this trip through four countries in Central America as having a theme of what people in the Global North can do to alleviate or reduce poverty. The trip is just finishing, and so I present here some of my thoughts – and some key thoughts from …
I am back in Nicaragua, and I must say I am happy to be again in a place where warm welcomes are given freely. My short time in San Salvador was tainted by fear: getting fixed stares when sitting on a bench in a central square. The men staring at …
Book exchanges are truly wonderful resources – one often picks up (for free) a book one may not have chosen otherwise. In this way, I recently read Paulo Coehlo´s The Fifth Mountain, and now I am finding the work of Heather Montgomery on child prostitution fascinating. Montgomery provides a welcome …
Everywhere you look when seeking images or travel information on Guatemala, you see photos of the brightly coloured textiles of indigenous women. And tourists here are snapping photos of women on the street – it is true they wear their handwoven clothes as daily wear, and that their embroidered patterns …
I am finally going to have to discuss drugs. You know what drugs are: coffee, tobacco, alcohol, and all those things people use to alter their feeling or state of mind. Coffee and rum abound here, but the main drugs of concern here in Central America are those not legal. …
I went to a Mayan ceremony today. At the beginning, one of the leaders asked people to not take pictures, so that all present were focused on the ceremony. He also pointed out that, in the past, participants would have had a long walk to the site to mentally prepare …
Panajachel, Guatemala- I am quite proud that I can read the entire newspaper now in Spanish. It does mean that my vocabulary includes a breadth of words relating to crime, drugs, and jail, and also quite a few relating to commerce and development. The World Bank recently published figures about …