he next time I am asked whether I can be an advocate for people and places with the least information, access to, and ability to obtain a just, healthy, and resilient future, and have a career, I can confidently answer “yes!” After my first day at Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW) in Eugene, Oregon, I knew I found the type […]
At 3 am on Sunday morning, while waiting for the 2 train to make an appearance at a crowded platform in Brooklyn, I sat down next to a group of noisy young tourists my age. Head down, music plugged in, I focused on drowning out the noise around me when yet another garbled announcement about schedule changes played overhead. I […]
After an amazing whirlwind honeymoon through Italy, my husband and I hastily parted ways at the Turkish Airways terminal of Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. Our goodbye was much too fast for my liking, but the traffic police and our driver hurried my husband back into the car to drop him off at American Airlines. He was heading home to Pennsylvania and […]
I’m writing from Gisakura, in the tea fields just outside Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda. I’m two weeks into my internship with the Wildlife Conservation Society here, where I’ve mainly been working with the education and outreach team. It has been a rich and interesting experience so far. For my next few posts, though, I’d like to write more about […]
“Why do you want to protect the elephants?” A friend of mine asked me this on Weibo after the death of Bonsai, a 26-year-old mother elephant who was shot on my seventh day in the Samburu National Reserve in Northern Kenya. My friend is a Chinese conservationist who has for years strived to protect the wildlife in his hometown. He […]
The crowds seem to converge under the massive wood and tin structure looming ahead: the Arusha market. It is here that fresh fruits and vegetables, smoked fish, dried beans and rice, and baggies of aromatic spices are brought, showcased, and sold every day. In the fresh food area, women wrapped in brightly patterned kanga sit on stools in front of […]
My days quickly molded to the local culture. I subsisted off of potatoes and coca tea and woke up and went to bed with the rise and fall of the sun (this meant 12 hours of me huddling under spider eggs and reading Game of Thrones; sleep often eluded me). People start each meal with steamed potatoes which they peel […]
June 9, 2013 Delhi Slum Neighborhoods On our second day in Delhi, the US PIRE students learned firsthand about the social and public health implications of poor urban infrastructure. Dr. Tapan Jyoti, a Peer PIRE participant sponsored by USAID, first introduced us to the director of a local office of the Gender Resource Center. The GRC supports women’s empowerment in […]
June 2, 2013 Yamuna River Tour The US contingent of this summer’s PIRE participants arrived in Delhi on the evening of May 31. We spent three whirlwind days getting a feel for the Delhi and India before joining our Indian counterparts at the IIT Kanpur campus on June 3rd. The 8 students from the US, each coming from disciplines as […]
Greetings from Cusco, Perú mis amigos de FES! I am in here to conduct research, though what that entails exactly becomes less and less clear every day. In New Haven, I was so ready to spout off my plans for summer – “I’m going to do research in the Andes of Peru, studying communities that are part of a joint […]
Hi FES! I’m writing after my first week in Rwanda, where I’ll be spending the summer—first as part of a study tour led by Amy Vedder (with Yufang Gao and Lily Sweikert), visiting conservation and development projects throughout the country, and then for a two month internship with the Wildlife Conservation Society in Nyungwe National Park. We started the week […]
Wednesday At Tempelhof ere I am at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, Germany, one week after turning in my final Environmental Campaigns paper in New Haven. I biked here from my brother’s flat in the Kreuzberg area of a city I am quickly becoming extremely fond of. I cycled onto the tarmac from the road surrounding the airport, past the main […]