At first I thought there was some sort of continuing problem in Yemen where many men had extremely large growths sticking out from their cheek. So abnormally large they are, if it were on both checks it would it would look cartoonishly exaggerated, like a squirrel.
I knew what qat was well before coming to Yemen, [...]

“This is the first food I’ve eaten in four days,” Habiba Mohammad Hassan, a 17 year old Somali tells me as we wedged ourselves into the back of a truck with over 40 other refugees and opens a packet of high energy biscuits. Hassan, and 150 others, just spent the last two days crossing the [...]

I arrived in Yemen yesterday with  contradictory mental ideas of the country. It’s the place where Noah’s Ark was launched and Osama bin Landen’s father was born. It is a country where Westerners are kidnapped by tribesmen but rarely harmed, where suicide bombers struck the USS Cole, where young women dance and chew qat with [...]

It arrived just in time - my passport that is. I am part of the camp that says, “what can go wrong DOES go wrong” it’s just a matter of time before odds catch up with you. I have heard too many horror stories about passports getting lost in transit and the hoops people have [...]

In case you missed it, I had an interview on the local NPR affiliate last week. You can still listen to it here.

I grew up backpacking in the Sierra’s with my dad and brother since I was seven. We always mixed it up where we would go, but still to this day, the Eastern side has always been my favorite. This is the real Sierra’s that most never get to experience. The Eastern side is quite different [...]

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