ethiopianxo

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Since two days ago I’m in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Today, like every Sunday, many locals go to church. Christianity in Ethiopia dates to the 1st century AD.

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She’s Muslim, but her best friend, another young woman who owns this small terrace, is Christian.

While traveling in Ethiopia, in February, I admired the way Christians and Muslims get along. I saw many beautiful friendships that go beyond religion.

But in the same country, there are dozens of terrible ethnic conflicts, based on other reasons than religion.

While traveling around the world I realised that is not the religion, the colour, or the ethnicity the real reason for conflicts and intolerance. But something else.

The truth is that some people always take advantage of these conflicts. They conceive them by raising anger among us, just to feed their pockets or their ego. It was always like that, but today I think we have more opportunities to make a change.

Our love can be stronger than their greed.

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Christina is from Athens, Greece. I continue my journey in this wonderful country and I still cannot believe that I have the privilege to visit so many diverse places of the world with The Atlas of Beauty. I don’t know what I did to deserve all that, while so many people are not even allowed to cross a border, because of their nationality. Maybe the world gave me this great chance for a reason and I hope this project will convince more people that the diversity of our planet is our biggest treasure, not a premise for conflicts.

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I photographed this folk dancer dressed in her performing outfit last year in Harar, Ethiopia.

These days I’m in New York City with The Atlas of Beauty.

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Leeda is a musician at the beginning of her career. I met her in February, in New York City. My next destination will be Belgrade, Serbia.

In a few months The Atlas of Beauty book will be released and I’m so happy about it. I can’t wait to hear your impressions after you’ll see it. If you wish to pre-order it just press Shop Now button at the top of this page. It would greatly help the continuation of the project.

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I met them in New York, in February.

Abby and Angela are sisters born to an Ethiopian mother and a Nigerian father. Both parents worked for the United Nations so the sisters grew up in six different countries, on three different continents.

This gave them a broad perspective and allowed them to see where need was the greatest. After graduation, they both plan to move to Africa and put their knowledge in the service of that amazing continent. Their enthusiasm is inspiring, and Angela’s words express that perfectly.

“Among my peers in my age group, I want to start a movement of coming back to the continent. I want to shine a light on the potential of my people, and I want to lift the entire region out of the health confict it is in, putting power in the brilliant youth, using local talent, and customizing policies that work in the African setting rather than transposing Western policies.”

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our little beach hut | hopkins, belize wildhoney.co

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Trump’s idiotic, shortsighted, belligerent move to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is going to have long-term and far-reaching consequences.

There will be violence.

It’ll embolden Israel’s numerous right-wing hawks to expand their programs to depopulate Palestinian neighborhoods and restructure them as Israeli.

It’ll lead to more brazen settlement expansion, including the controversial Jerusalem settlement projects that effectively cut the southern West Bank of Palestine off from the North.

It’ll make it even more difficult for Palestinians to enter Jerusalem, let alone live and work in it, as Israel will inevitably capitalize on this declaration to further erase Palestinian identity, culture, and history from the city.

It’ll allow the Israeli Ministry of Education to prohibit Palestinian curriculum (which it has been trying to do already) and replace it with Israeli curriculum that entirely erases the history of the Palestinian people, instead referring to us as invaders and uneducated hicks.

It’ll further deepen Palestinian hatred of Fatah and lead to a direct and sharp rise in support for Hamas. Palestinians have been fed up with Abbas and Fatah for years, but this move cements the weakness and infectivity of Abbas, while more people will abandon the idea of diplomatic resolutions and instead support armed resistance against the Israeli occupiers.

It will embolden Israeli settlers, who already carry out numerous incredibly underreported terror attacks against Palestinians, usually with the backing of the IDF.

The only few benefits to this move are that people can finally drop this charade that the US is some impartial mediator in all of this and see the US for what it is - Israel’s puppet, and that hopefully we can finally get rid of Abbas and Fatah as Palestinian leadership. I want to say that I’m even hopeful that this will rekindle support of the Palestinian cause throughout some of the Arab world… But I’m not so sure about that.

Either way, Trump is an absolute idiot.

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