JOURNALIST & PHOTOGRAPHER
I've reported on arts, environment, politics, and migration from the U.S., Morocco, Tunisia, Trinidad & Tobago, and Cape Verde. Previously, I worked as a staff writer for Inside Arabia and Afropop Worldwide, and have contributed to PRI's The World, OkayAfrica, Al-Monitor, Roads & Kingdoms, Morocco World News.
Under lockdown in Morocco, Ramadan celebrations get a quiet reset
PRI's The World | May 22, 2020
It’s sunset. In parks, beaches and living rooms across Morocco, families crowd around tables overflowing with food, waiting for the call to prayer. It’s time to break the day’s fast with an iftar meal, a lively, social affair, whose upwelling of energy continues until dawn.
But not this year.
(With Lauren Schenkman)
Moroccan YouTubers forced into silence
Al-Monitor | December 19, 2019
Mohammed Sekkaki felt that Mohammed VI, the king ruling his country, Morocco, made big promises that were never kept and his fellow citizens stayed silent while the government abused their rights. Sitting next to a shelf of emoji pillows, he recorded a witty 12-minute rant and uploaded it to his 330,000 YouTube followers. In the early hours of the following morning, the police raided his home and arrested him.
Young Moroccan Activists Rally for Climate Action
Al-Monitor | October 1, 2019
They came in school uniforms, bee costumes and T-shirts with fiery slogans, buzzing with energy. As they arranged into marching order, they chanted, “Who are we? Students! What do we want? Strong action!” The 600 or so young activists were there for one of Morocco's first-ever youth climate marches, joining their peers leading strikes worldwide.
North Africa Meets Korea On a Volcanic Island
Inside Arabia | January 6, 2019
Some 60 miles off of the southern coast of South Korea is Jeju Island, an oblong nugget of volcanic rock, blanketed by lush green and laced with lava tubes. On this subtropical island province, Omar and the Eastern Power have found a home for their intercontinental psychedelic rock music. But their hazy, honey-dripping sound has its roots far from the Korea Strait.
UN Migration Compact Divides Nations, Wields Little Power, But Offers Hope
Inside Arabia | December 18, 2018
Most of the world’s powers, with several conspicuous absences, gathered in Marrakech, Morocco, on December 10 and 11 to adopt the United Nations’ Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). The GCM seeks, for the first time, to establish universal agreements about the governance of international migration and its causes. But the world's nations are finding it difficult to come to consensus on such a defining issue.
Learning Between the Lines: Protecting Immigrant Children’s Right to Education In Morocco
Inside Arabia | October 21, 2018
On a summer day in Fez, activists, social workers, and administrators gathered to envision a brighter future for immigrant children’s education in Morocco. For parents seeking to settle in Morocco, questions about their children’s education loom large. While Moroccan legislation guarantees education to everyone living within its borders, immigrant and refugee children face many barriers to entry into the school system.
ÌFÉ Plays Elsewhere
Afropop Worldwide| July 5, 2019
ÌFÉ is divine. This is music, leveled up. It’s futuristic, spiritually enormous, electro rumba-batáworship, and supreme dance music. The Puerto Rican sextet performed, just a hair past the navel of the year, at Elsewhere in Brooklyn, under stormy skies.
Beyond the tourist's lens: 9 photos that show a different side of Morocco
The National| April 8, 2020
Like many of his peers, M'hammed Kilito tries to change the way Morocco is seen through his images. The country is photographed extensively, but often the pictures are restricted to its desert, technicolour souqs and geometric architecture. He wants to upend the stereotypes, but his priority is to bring Moroccans into step with their own reality.
How Bus Ban Reflects Morocco's Broader Migration Policy
Al-Monitor | November 25, 2019
Earlier this month, images circulated online of a poster in a Moroccan bus station. Apparently hung by the major transport company CTM, it announced it would be "strictly forbidden to sell CTM tickets to Africans" traveling to cities near Europe if they couldn't produce a valid Moroccan residency permit. It was clear “African” referred to black sub-Saharans and not Moroccans.
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Mayra Andrade Is Pushing Cape Verdean Music Forward
OkayAfrica | September 4, 2019
Mayra Andrade is something of a musical mermaid. Now living in Lisbon, the Cape Verdean pop singer firmly plants one half of herself in her mother island while the other swims into sounds from beyond. Her fifth and most recent album, Manga, released in February, is a fresh take on old styles.
Rain Returns Life to Iraq’s Marshland, For Now
Inside Arabia | May 23, 2019
Dense stands of tall green reeds wave in the marshes of southeastern Iraq. Under a blazing sun, little birds flit through the grasses and buffalo wade through the waters, as their caretakers float beside in long, thin boats. But this time last year, the wetlands had turned into cracked, dry earth, crisscrossed only by muddy creeks. Climate change, dams, and warfare have pushed Iraq’s legendary southern marshes to the edge. Rains revived them after they nearly dried up last year, but the wetlands’ uncertain survival depends on international cooperation.
Acting Against Racism and Xenophobia in Morocco
Inside Arabia | June 9, 2019
One evening in Tangier, a young woman from Guinea begs her brusque Moroccan landlord to give her a lease, so to apply for a residency card. Unsympathetic, he refuses to budge. Then they fall silent. The lights come on and a facilitator steps out in front of the actors. “Any volunteers to take her role?” she asks.
The scores of sub-Saharan African immigrants who have settled in Morocco in recent decades have been treated with both hospitality and hostility. One group of activists is trying to use theater to bring their struggles to light and lessen the racism and xenophobia they face.
Tunisia’s Undemocratic Three-Year State of Emergency
Inside Arabia | March 20, 2019
One drizzly November afternoon last year, a local youth troupe danced to the music of Bruno Mars on a tree-lined avenue in downtown Tunis. Crowds of Tunisians and foreigners watched or walked by, drawn to the international film festival screening nearby. Barricades and heavily-armed police officers were the only reminders that, five days earlier, a young Tunisian woman had carried out a suicide bombing on that same avenue, just a stone’s throw from the stage.
Interview: Bunji Garlin and Fay-Ann Lyons on Soca Music Today
Afropop Worldwide| September 19, 2017
The unrelenting party sounds of Trinidadian soca music dominates the streets around Carnival season. Among the many soca stars, there are a few that are changing the game with innovative, cross-genre, international collaborations and experiments. Two of the leaders in this game are the royal couple of soca, Fay-Ann Lyons and Bunji Garlin.
Solidarity Swells in Morocco After Crackdown on Free Expression
Al-Monitor | January 16, 2020
Omar Radi was in good spirits, mostly.
The Moroccan journalist had just been let out of a Casablanca jail on New Year’s Eve, five days after being arrested for criticizing a judge on Twitter. His freedom was uncertain, pending a second trial in March, but the flood of public support for him and other political prisoners made things lighter.
Field Report: Morocco's Festival Taragalte, Part 1
Afropop Worldwide | November 12, 2019
To be honest, I didn’t have very high hopes. The website of Festival Taragalte gave the impression that it would be curated as a fantasyland for European tourists to ogle “the nomads” in their desert habitat in southeast Morocco. I was quite pleased to be proven wrong.
Afrikayna Brings Morocco Home to Its Roots
Inside Arabia | March 9, 2019
Morocco should be a plural word. Perched upon the northwesternmost node of the African continent, the kingdom has never been able to fully define itself. Is it African? Arab, Amazigh, Andalusian, Mediterranean? Can it be all of these at once? And can art be the force that brings it all together?
“Brotherhood” Brings Home Tunisia’s Struggle with Radicalization
Inside Arabia | December 22, 2018
Since the transformative Jasmine Revolution in 2011, an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 Tunisians have left to fight with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). At least 700 have returned. With her masterful short film “Brotherhood,” Tunisian-American director Meryam Joobeur opens a tragic, intimate window into one of these homecomings.
UAE Launches Ambitious Fujairah Coral Reef Project
Inside Arabia | July 29, 2019
Coral reefs—those technicolor, undersea alien worlds brimming with fish and sea life—tend to be associated with the Caribbean or the south Pacific, not the United Arab Emirates. The UAE’s coastline is home to extensive reefs, but warming waters, severe weather, and rapid coastal development have all but devastated them. In the emirate of Fujairah, the UAE plans to develop the largest artificial coral reef in the world.
The Gnawa World Music Festival in Essaouira
Afropop Worldwide | July 10, 2018
For lovers of Morocco’s inimitable, irresistible Gnawa music, the place to be is the annual Gnawa World Music Festival in the breezy port town of Essaouira. Every summer, Gnawa masters from around the country and a unique patchwork of musicians from around the globe come together for three days of music. You can’t get this anywhere else.