July 2011

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in the central plazas of cities around Spain during and after the May 22 elections.

The high unemployment rate was the primary focus of the protesters.

On May 23, another volcano began erupting in Iceland. In 36 hours, the Grímsvötn Volcano ejected 10 times more ash than did the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano in all of April 2010. With the ash cloud drifting east, airports in Europe and Russia were put on alert, and many flights were canceled or diverted.

In Guatemala, a massacre of at least 27 men and women in the town of Caserio La Bomba on May 15 is being called one of the country’s worst mass killings in a generation.

A suicide bomber killed 16 people and wounded 20 at the popular tourist market Djemaa el-Fna in Marrakech, Morocco, on April 28. The government placed responsibility on al Qeada groups, and police presence was increased in the square. This is the first major terrorist attack on a tourism locale in Morocco since an attack in Casablanca that killed 45 people in 2003.

Militiamen and security forces in Yemen loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh have continued armed responses against demonstrators intent on removing Saleh from office. Protesters have been shot in the cities of Taiz, Ibb and Sana’a.

In May, the violence escalated to a battle between opposition tribesmen and Saleh’s forces, using tanks, grenades and guns in the capital city of Sana’a. The US and UK issued warnings against traveling to Yemen.

After Osama bin Laden was killed in his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by American forces on May 2, the US Department of State alerted US citizens traveling and residing abroad to the enhanced potential for anti-American violence, stating, “US citizens in areas where recent events could cause anti-American violence are strongly urged to limit their travel outside of their homes and hotels and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations.”

Taliban and al Qaeda militants carried out three attacks in Pakistan during May, reportedly in reprisal for the killing of Osama bin Laden. Suicide bombers killed more than 80 at a paramilitary academy in the northwest city of Charsadda; a car bomb injured American consulate workers in Peshawar, and an assault on a naval airbase in Karachi killed at least 12.

When we were in Hong Kong in October ’09, it was raining too hard to hike Lamma Island, so we decided to look at old maps at Picture This! Gallery (Ste. 1308, 13th Floor, Office Tower, 9 Queen’s Rd., Central, Hong Kong, China; phone +852 2525 2820).

My husband, R.C., and I had booked our flights on Jan. 2, 2011, and committed to a trip to Egypt and Jordan for April 13-May 3. Then the uprisings began in Cairo. On Jan. 25, Internet and cell service were cut off. A full month would go by before we could make contact with our tour provider.

by Gordon Kilgore; Sharpsburg, GA