Editor’s Note: Mark Pryor isn’t a journalist. He’s not a career aid worker or a social media activist. He’s a regular guy, a bartender in Richmond, who took a month off from Get Tight Lounge and a few other familiar haunts to volunteer with Sea-Watch, a German...
*This article originally appeared in RVA Mag #35, on the streets now at all your favorite spots. On the edge of Hanoi's old quarter sits the Hanoi Opera House. A relic of French colonialism and an architectural beauty, it presents and accomplishes a perfect draw for tourists -- but locals know better. They know what's behind it. Quyen Van Minh, a...
Bangalore, the capital of India's southern Karnataka state is an incredibly beautiful, vibrant, confusing, contradictory, and stunning piece of the country. As a friend once told me, "India will attack your senses." He was very, very correct. Living here for one month now, I've been able to pick up on a few of the more common everyday normalities...
Deeply German location names like Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Straße and Ausspannplatz will soon be redubbed in Germany after leaders of the decolonization movement such as Chief Kuaima Riruako, the founding father of the Herero people, and Augistinho Neto, first President of Angola. Community activists in Berlin’s Afrikansche Viertel (“African...
Stepping off the plane onto Turkish soil felt like being transported to another world. Like hundreds of millions of travellers before me, I had come to see Istanbul, the gateway between Europe and the East. Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire for almost 500 years, is still a major cultural site for Muslims and Christians, although tourism has...
*This is a developing story. Germany, ever struggling with their historical demons, has just seen two days of clashes between far-right wing protesters, neo-Nazis, counter-protesters, anti-fascists, and the police. The clashes have taken place in the town of Chemnitz, a town in Saxony in Eastern Germany. Having started after an alleged lethal...
Last summer, my VCU study-abroad students and I stood in the dim but pretty interior of a little house made of corrugated tin in the Soweto township of Johannesburg, South Africa. With us was Thulani Madondo, a 2012 CNN hero, a vibrant, fast-talking South African who was recognized for founding the Kliptown Youth Program and supporting hundreds...
Just a couple years ago, most Americans assumed that Nazis had been firmly relegated to the past, never to reappear outside the confines of history books. When Nazis did preoccupy the American mind they kindly restricted themselves to playing the role of evil villains in video games or on the silver screen. Unlike the fictitious Nazis of our...
I had the opportunity in May 2017 to visit and stay with some international friends working abroad in Taipei, Taiwan. This would be my first trip to Asia, and I was beyond excited to practice street photography outside of the United States. As a Republic of China, Taiwan is a democratic country, which helped with mentally preparing for the...
The city of Johannesburg, South Africa was literally built on a gold mine. Much of South Africa’s wealth was amassed through gold and diamond mining that began in the late 1800s, and it was this mining that shaped the social and political landscape for South Africans for generations. Gold mining also led to the discovery of South Africa’s rarest...
