Mixing It Up in the Canary Islands

Mermaids of the Canary Islands

The Brown Girl mermaids in this lovely painting reflect a true cultural crossroads of all of the interesecting cultures that populate The Canary Islands. The Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago, consist of 7 islands in the Atlantic Ocean located just off the NW coast of mainland Africa 100 km west of the disputed border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. With a Canarian population of a little over 2 million (of which over 1.5 million are Canarian-born and close to 200,000 of which are from the Spanish mainland), the cultural mix includes foreign residents that are Portuguese, Italian, Flemish, German, British, Colombian, Venezuelan, Cuban, Argentinian, African and Moroccan. How about that for mixing it up? ;-)

The Brown Girl World: An Anonymous Brown Girl's Story

A Pakistani Brown Girl's Story: An Immigrant Remembers

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I suppose we cannot blame our friends for associating Pakistan with endless angry mustached mobs and the pervading image of a tortured Daniel Pearl. When one thinks of Pakistan, one thinks of burning effigies, corrupt army officials and of nukes.
A truly informed outsider might even venture to say something about the cricket team or about the female face of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto [1953 - 2007; pictured above].
But behind the oblong shadow cast by the media's coverage of a rotting political situation is a nation teeming with undiscovered potential. After all, how does one explain the fragrance of the orange blossoms that line the roads between Lahore and Islamabad? Trees clutch wearily to the weighty burden of their citrus offspring, hesitant to let go, stooping against a backdrop of aurous sarson fields. Read more here.