Maria Ferreira

María is a doctoral student in international security, analyst in conflict contexts, advisor on medical and humanitarian missions, and writer. It combines its work in the field—especially in health-related fields, violence and forced displacement—with literary writing and the narrative essay. He has lived and worked in different countries in Europe, Africa and Western Asia, and his writing is nourished by that migrant experience, as well as a radically human look at power systems, war and intimacy.

36 articles

Chicken blood against ebola: Damn healers!

Why an AIDS-infected man can rape his daughter because he believes that having sex with a virgin girl will cure? Belief play a causal role in behavior, and there are behaviors that can not be respected or understood. A wretch who performs ablation her daughter is a miserable, it protect him in the belief that protect him.

byMaria Ferreira

4 November, 2014

Vengeful sick and the young man who swallowed his ear

I spent a few months of silence, debating between having and not having, trying to find how or why. Several times a day I found myself thinking, "This is outrageous, this I have to tell the tale. "Or" This is beautiful, I have to share this ".

byMaria Ferreira

24 September, 2014

Laughing at fear in Africa

Before he could realize, my dear friend crossed the precipice by way of the train. The steps agreed with the old wooden boards; one misstep and you fell into the river. And he was high. And I was afraid.

byMaria Ferreira

23 July, 2014

Ishak: "It's still spring, the revolution lives on

Topara chance made me George Ishak, political founder of Kifaya, movement in 2004 He paved the way for the Revolution. broke, somehow, the culture of fear of getting the right to demonstrate under the Emergency Law and the right to elect president.

byMaria Ferreira

5 June, 2014

Elections in Egypt: the retransmitted truth

It's exhausting trying to find something real. I look at the pictures and see the joy of the people and I think happiness is sustained by the desire to be happy, not by the facts.

byMaria Ferreira

27 May, 2014

Francis: the hero betrayed by his memory

You have 95 years, a white mustache that makes you look like a wise mouse, a smile that lights up the world a thousand times and an early Alzheimer's that sometimes makes him forget that he is a hero, and turns him into a little boy who pees on himself

byMaria Ferreira

21 May, 2014

The crossroads of Egypt: "Do not be sad, mom, If I die young"

I landed in Cairo a month and a half ago. After a quick shower, I was in an old Corolla with Abu Maamar, a jihadist who was silent. I was playing with a bracelet, compulsively, wondering whether to speak or not.

byMaria Ferreira

14 January, 2014

The spectacle of poverty: come and see

Poverty has become a commodity, Gentlemen. Perhaps to blame the false belief that misery is true, absolute. But even that: Now the misery is manipulated and makeup, becoming increasingly melodramatic dyes.

byMaria Ferreira

5 November, 2013

Nairobi: arrested 48 hours for not paying a bribe

Once more, The setback was wearing a police uniform. He informed me that he had offended the law, but failed to name infringement. In the last year I spent more than 700 euros in such things, which of course denounce "anti-corruption" and that, course, never solved. This time, shift the bastard asked me 15.000 ksh (150 EUR).

byMaria Ferreira

12 August, 2013

No medicate the Leopard Man

When I was a kid and saw the bus shelters advertising plagued NGOs, I imagined something different. Something easier. More heroic. But working in Kenya means swallow the ego every day and assume you really do not know anything about anything.

byMaria Ferreira

25 July, 2013

Makuyu, "Land of witches"

There are two things boundless in Makuyu health center: death and madness. Both are treated from the horror, incomprehension and denial. The first meaning is found through various religions and madness is explained in that society through curses, evil eyes, divine punishment ...

byMaria Ferreira

17 July, 2013

Bendita crisis

Cuts, in the case of the NGO I lead, assume that psychiatric patients have so far benefited from the project will be without medication. Nor will we pay the ambulance transfers. Neither the food. But this is not a tragedy today, called personal anecdote.

byMaria Ferreira

19 June, 2013

Naples 1944: Magistral chronicle of a surreal city	9,75/10
"The dead and the journalist": "inevitable" death	9,75/10
"The innocent anthropologist": Africa, heartily	9,75/10
Tierra de Brujas: When it doesn't rain do the blue veins dry up??	9,70/10
Of the ruins of the empires: Asia's adjustment with European colonialism	9,45/10
“A possible life”: The scar that leaves the memory	9,40/10
"Quijote in the Congo": They were not giants, It was a river	9,25/10
"Pilgrims of beauty": Italy and Greece Bacanal	9,20/10
"Travel with Charley": Raw portrait of the US 60	9,05/10
Winter notes on summer impressions: Dostoevsky in front of the mirror	8,90/10
The city of God: the guts of Rome	8,75/10
On the road: the “American Dream” of the underworld	8,60/10
Strengthen the foundation: Africa raises its voice	8,15/10
My trip to Africa: Churchill takes his rifle	7,50/10
"Mexico. Memories of a traveler ": The cursed book that clears the country	6,25/10
“Bangkok”: the adventures of a westerner among prostitutes, bars, massages and excesses	5,50/10