07
Six months after being evicted from Kidepo National Park in Uganda, near the Kenya border, over 4,000 Toposa warriors from southern Sudan reentered in early May along with their 10,000 head of cattle.
The livestock competes with wildlife for pasture, and the herders someimes kill predator species, like endangered cheetahs, to protect their animals.
A Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800 crashed on May 5 after taking off from Douala, Cameroon, on a stop en route from Ivory Coast to Nairobi. There were no survivors among the 114 people from 27 countries. The cause is unknown. The aircraft was six months old, and the airline has a good safety record.
By Ed Kinney, following the Euphrates River in Syria. See the May ’07 article.
by Philip Wagenaar, M.D.
The following essay was inspired by a letter from ITN reader Mrs. Carey Casey in Cathedral City, California.
Dear Reader, my December 2006 account of being lost in France and getting directions from a local jogged the memory of Patricia Arcaro of Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. She and a friend had lost their way in France when a motorcyclist stopped to help, going out of his way to take them to their hotel, driving through a series of backstreets, main streets, construction sites and, finally, an alley.
Claire McElarney is the energetic and always-smiling Activities & Dive Mate aboard the S.V. (sailing vessel) Mandalay, one of the fleet of four tall ships run by Windjammer Barefoot Cruises (Box 190120, Miami, FL 33119; 800/327-2601, www.windjammer.com).
I interviewed Claire on the deck of the Mandalay in summer 2006 as the 236-foot vessel sailed from Grenada to St. Vincent.
Q: Tell me about your background, Claire.
A: I am from Fleet, Hampshire, in the U.K., and I’m 25. I have an unmarried older brother.
by Jay Brunhouse
On a trip to Ethiopia with Elderhostel (Boston, MA; 877/426-8056, www.elderhostel.org) in October ’06, I had the opportunity to feed a wild hyena.
I have a great deal of experience in learning another language by studying and later teaching English to Brazilians and, several years later, teaching Spanish to Americans.
Nakhichevan or Naxcivan: whatever the name, it’s a small piece of land separated from but part of Azerbaijan. It’s located 250 miles west of Baku, the country’s capital, and is surrounded by Armenia, Iran and Turkey.
When I visited the domestic airlines office in Baku in late January ’07, the staff looked at me as if I’d just turned green and walked through a wall. Foreigners don’t go there, they told me, and they tried to discourage me by saying that a special visa is required, which is not true. On it went for two hours before I finally received my $100 ticket.