Roadtrip March-April 2014
Emily Ellis
The Prince Philip Movement
The world is full of people who bond together over the strangest things: violent video games, 70’s science fiction novels, and, in the case of the Kastom people from the island of Tanna, Prince Philip of England. The Prince Phillip movement is based around the ancient Tanna legend that the pale-skinned son of a mountain spirit would travel over the seas to a distant land and marry a powerful lady. In the 1970s, the Kastom concluded that Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband, must be the son from their legends. Prince Phillip and the Katsom often exchange gifts and photographs, although he has yet to fulfill any prophecies.
The Maya of Morganton
The Maya of Morganton
In the late 1980s, hundreds of Q’anjob’al-speaking Maya fled from Guatemala to settle in the small Appalachian town of Morganton, North Carolina. Their nearly decade-long struggle to gain worker rights in the poultry plant where they were employed, which included the plant’s first ever worker protests, multiple arrests, and hunger strikes, resulted in a successful union election campaign in 1995. Their story was documented in Leon Fink’s book, The Maya of Morganton, and remains proof of what bravery, determination, and cooperation can accomplish.
Community Healing in Rwanda
April 2014 marks the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. The NGO “Association Modeste et Innocent” has been working on a project to encourage forgiveness and healing following the years of terror. Through extending counseling sessions, AMI aims to bring the Hutus and Tutsis (the two opposing groups of the war) together, a process that cumulates in the perpetrator’s formal request for forgiveness from the person whose family
they had harmed. Pieter Hugo’s stunning series of photographs show each perpetrator and victim together, a shattering of cultural taboos and a powerful gesture towards rebuilding a broken community.
Iran’s Gay Underground Railroad
In Iran, the harsh laws against homosexuality require the country’s gay com¬munity to remain hidden. However, the “The Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees,” founded in 2008, works with the international gay community to grant gay Iranians asylum in other countries, allowing them to live a life free of secrecy and fear. Farzam Z., a refugee who was helped by IRQR, admits that while the solution is not perfect, the tremendous support from the gay community has helped him adjust to his new life. “Either you want to leave, or you want to die,” he says. “ So I prefer to leave.”
