Ever since arriving in Angola for work last year, I had been pouring over maps of the region, examining what travel opportunities my new location afforded me. One neighbouring country in particular stood out: the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The true heart of the Dark Continent, the Congo still seems to capture the imagination, over a [...]

It’s been four years since I stepped on the sands of The Sudan, so coming back felt both familiar and a bit strange. Arrivals at Khartoum airport seemed much the same, though arriving at 2.30 a.m. on a Turkish Airlines flight meant that more than half of the only 30 or so passengers on board [...]

Enough of this… In Mogadishu for how many days – running around in circles, militias in tow – adding to the quantity of armed men surrounding us every time we crossed an arbitrary barrier. Indeed, each time we had to cross into another warlord’s territory, another militia truck would have to [...]

I spent three weeks in Zimbabwe in December 2009; it was my first return to that country in a little over two years. The last time I was there, in late 2007, inflation was heading into outer space, with more OOOOs on the banknotes than a Venetian orgasm; Comrade Bob was [...]

The Baloch have been living in a state of siege ever since 1948, when their territory was incorporated into the nation of Pakistan. Under the thumb of Islamabad, their rights and autonomy have been deliberately ignored by the international community, which has its own agenda for the region. Balochistan declared its independence on August 11, [...]

Luanda’s domestic terminal is a crowded, dim, smoky place that definitely has not been affected by the obsession with banning cigarettes that has swept across the globe. Amongst local Angolans hauling piles of luggage were crowds of men from the Philippines and China, packed closely together, dutifully handing their passports over to their handlers when [...]

Victims of Stalin´s cartography of yesteryear, the inhabitants of this unrecognised territory face an uncertain future. Transnistria could end up as a bargaining chip in the often difficult relationship between Russia and Moldova.