Louise Lief's Blogs
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- February 17, 2010
- Peru
- by Sean Carberry
Promise and Pitfalls in Peru
Back in November I spent a couple of weeks in Peru on an International Reporting Project Gatekeepers Fellowship. The program was a whirlwind tour of the country. We began with a few days in Lima, flew to Cusco, visited Machu Picchu, trekked off to the Amazon region of Madre de Dios, and back to Lima. Along the way we met with government, business, academic, and development figures. We explored public health, development, environmental, and political
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- January 13, 2010
- Haiti
- by Ruxandra Guidi
Earthquake devastates Haiti
The presidential palace was, at least at the time of my visit a little over a year ago, one of the most solid-looking buildings in Port-au-Prince. Located at the center of the Champ de Mars plaza, the white structure was said to have been modeled after The White House and meant to inspire reverence.
But as we drove around the potholed streets surrounding the plaza and saw the piles of garbage and rows of crumbling buildings located within a few blocks, I remember thinking that it
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- November 23, 2009
- Pakistan
- by Amna Nawaz
Filling a gap in Pakistan’s school system
KARACHI, Pakistan – No one is exactly sure how old Taimur Muslim is.
A soft-spoken, lanky lad with a chipped front tooth and eyes undecided between green and gray, Taimur told me that school is his favorite part of the day, that he hates having to watch over his younger siblings at home, and that he wants to join the Army when he's older.
"I’m not very good in classes," he said through a shy smile. "But I don’t want to be a loafer. Teacher says we musn't be loafers."
Taimur
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- November 23, 2009
- Peru
- by Rafael Cores
Microcréditos en Perú (Spanish)
Sheethal vive con su marido en Nueva York, donde tiene su propia empresa de marketing. Antes estudió su carrera y su maestría en la Universidad de Columbia, así que debe gustarle la Gran Manzana. Pero esta pequeña estadounidense de origen indio lleva ya más de dos meses viviendo en Cusco, trabajando duro a más de tres mil metros de altura y sin cobrar un sol -aunque dice que está gastando muy poco-.
Sheethal ha hecho un paréntesis de seis meses en su vida para trabajar como
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- November 21, 2009
- Peru
- by Tom Barton
Rambling in Peru, Days 10 and 11: Gold fever
Think gold rush. Think boomtown. Think untamed frontier.
Think dusty streets jammed with three-wheeled jitneys and scooters. Think “Romancing the Stone,” the movie where Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner wander into a remote South American jungle town and are confronted with people with guns.
“I don’t think I’d want to get into a bar fight here,” the leader of our merry band of visiting journalists, John Schidlovsky, said of Puerto Maldonado, a backwater city of
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- November 20, 2009
- Peru
- by Tom Barton
Rambling in Peru, Days 8 and 9: Attack of the Flying Ants
In some Savannah neighborhoods, you slowly learn the difference between the sounds of firecrackers and serious gunplay and whether to dial 911.
In the Amazon region of South America, you learn the same thing about monkeys. Except the learning curve is much faster.
About 5 a.m., which is when it starts getting light in the rain forest of southeast Peru, I heard a sound outside my room at the Posada Amazonas lodge, where our group of editors from the International Reporting
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- November 20, 2009
- Peru
- by Rafael Cores
Cebiches en La Mar (Spanish)
Llevo menos de dos semanas en Perú y creo que habré ganado ya unos tres kilos. Ya hablé en un post anterior de la cocina Nova Andina, y anteayer nos escapamos a mediodía a La Mar, el restaurante de Gastón Acurio que sólo abre para dar almuerzos y tiene exclusivamente platos con productos del mar. Lo mejor, los cebiches, una delicia. Eso sí, algunos lugareños me dicen que Acurio se lleva la fama, pero que hay muchos chefs tan buenos o incluso mejores en Lima.
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- November 20, 2009
- Peru
- by Matthew Clark
Would Peru lawmaker Keiko Fujimori free her jailed dad?
LIMA, PERU – Keiko Fujimori, daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, came within an inch of admitting Wednesday that she would pardon her jailed father if she is elected president in 2011.
Prodded repeatedly during a meeting with a group of American journalists visiting Peru, she said she did not want to comment until her father’s bid to appeal his 25-year sentence for ordering kidnappings and killings during his tenure in the 1990s is finished. But she added twice
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- November 20, 2009
- Peru
- by Tom Barton
Rambling in Peru, Day 7: Gone fishing
I caught a piranha this morning. I hooked it with a stick pole (from a sturdy tree called a Pintana) and a piece of raw meat while standing on a pontoon-type boat on an oxbow lake in the Peruvian Amazon.
I’d like to say that this feat was a classic struggle between man and fish, an outdoor epic that left me physically whipped, yet nobly satisfied. Actually, it was beginner’s luck.
Unlike Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue’s “Go Fish” program, the Peruvian government isn’t
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- November 19, 2009
- Peru
- by Rafael Cores
Madre de Dios (Spanish)
La carretera interoceánica a la altura de Puerto Maldonado, donde falta por construir el puente que cruza el río Madre de Dios.
Madre de Dios es el tercer departamento más grande de Perú, pero sólo viven en él poco más de cien mil personas. Aunque el Amazonas no pasa por él, sus ríos sí desembocan en la cuenca más caudalosa del mundo, así que Madre de Dios es pura Amazonía.
De hecho, algunos consideran esta región la más remota de Perú y aloja a algunos de los
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