Latitude Adjustment

In October of last year a brutal killing at the hands of Nigerian police was captured on video. It quickly went viral across the country, across, Africa, and then around the world. The police involved in the killing belonged to Nigeria's SARS unit, short for "Special Anti Robbery Squad". The notorious SARS unit has long been known for acts of extortion, abuse, sexual harassment and violence, torture, and murder, and as the #EndSARS hashtag started to trend on social media, young Nigerians poured out onto the streets to protest and to voice their outrage against SARS and against the corrupt and oppressive system that it has come to exemplify.

The #EndSARS movement started to gain more international attention as members of the massive Nigerian diaspora organized protests and raised supports, and as parallels between the demands of Nigeria's youth and the demands of #BlackLivesMatter became more prominent.

Our guest today, Rinu Oduala. A 22 year-old woman in Lagos, Nigeria, Rinu played a key role in the viral #EndSARS campaign, helping to mobilize both Nigerian youth and international support. This episode should be a valuable source of information not just for those following Nigeria and Africa, but for those who wish to see systemic change against police brutality and impunity, and government complicity, around the world.

This episode also marks our first selection for Black History Month. Look for more episodes in February and be sure to check the post for this episode on the website for links to relevant shows from our archive.

UPDATE: you can now support the growth and sustainability of the Latitude Adjustment Podcast Academy by contributing to our GoFundMe campaign. Help to elevate the voices of displaced peoples by making them podcast producers!

In this third episode of the Latitude Adjustment Podcast Academy four young Afghan women share their greatest hopes and fears since arriving to Lesvos and the borders of the European Union.

Be sure to check out the other two episodes from the students, and the short preface episode as well.

UPDATE: you can now support the growth and sustainability of the Latitude Adjustment Podcast Academy by contributing to our GoFundMe campaign. Help to elevate the voices of displaced peoples by making them podcast producers!

In this second episode of the Latitude Adjustment Podcast Academy a young Afghan woman tries to find the perfect word to capture the essence of her journey to Lesvos to seek asylum, and her aspirations for the life ahead.

Be sure to check out the other two episodes from the students, and the short preface episode as well.

UPDATE: you can now support the growth and sustainability of the Latitude Adjustment Podcast Academy by contributing to our GoFundMe campaign. Help to elevate the voices of displaced peoples by making them podcast producers! In the first episode of the Latitude Adjustment Podcast Academy you will hear four Afghan men open up about some of the unique struggles they face living under lockdown in the new "Moria 2.0" refugee camp. The first half of the episode is in English and the second half is in Farsi/Dari.

Be sure to check out the other two episodes from the students, and the short preface episode as well. You can find them all here.

If you would like an update about what's been happening on Lesvos over the past year, then be sure to check out this episode.

UPDATE: you can now support the growth and sustainability of the Latitude Adjustment Podcast Academy by contributing to our GoFundMe campaign. Help to elevate the voices of displaced peoples by making them podcast producers!

Before you hear the episodes from the very first graduating class of the Latitude Adjustment Podcast Academy, we'd like to take you behind the scenes to share some of the challenges and the lessons learned during the production of our shows with asylum seekers here on the Greek Island of Lesvos. The story behind the stories will provide you with a lot of helpful context for the episodes created by our students over the course of our 5-week program. And if you'd like an update on all that has happened on Lesvos over the past year, and more information about why we decided to start the academy here, then be sure to start with this episode. Welcome to the Latitude Adjustment Podcast Academy and to the first class of what we hope will be many more! And a special thanks to ReFocus Media Labs for connecting us to their students and for their support and guidance throughout the academy.

UPDATE: you can now support the growth and sustainability of the Latitude Adjustment Podcast Academy by contributing to our GoFundMe campaign. Help to elevate the voices of displaced peoples by making them podcast producers! Latitude Adjustment returns to Lesvos to launch a new phase of our programming, a podcast academy.

Over the next several weeks Latitude Adjustment Podcast work with students and asylum seekers from the Refocus Media Labs team to help them produce their very own podcasts. Be sure to look for their episodes in the coming weeks!

In the meantime, be sure to follow our progress on Instagram, and check out our four-part series about Moria the conditions of refugees in Greece, from earlier this year.

This episode is the second of a two-part conversation with Tity Agbahey. Tity is an attorney and a staffer at Amnesty International. Based in Senegal, her current work focuses on central Africa, though her previous work has focused elsewhere on the continent, and her life and travels have taken her to points beyond.

This pair of episodes should appeal to two types of listeners, those who know what it feels like to be the only one who looks like you in your university class, in your staff meetings, or on a discussion panel at a conference, and those who don't but who want to understand .

This is also a conversation about colonialism, paternalism, and racism in one of the last places you should expect to find it, in the international aid and development sector. It's also a conversation about the world's general ambivalence towards African suffering, the benefits and limitations of African to African-American solidarity, privilege within an African cultural context, racism in France, internalized colonialism, an African perspective on racism in the US, and everything else we could think to get off of our chests during a very open conversation.

This episode is the first of a two-part conversation with Tity Agbahey. Tity is an attorney and a staffer at Amnesty International. Based in Senegal, her current work focuses on central Africa, though her previous work has focused elsewhere on the continent, and her life and travels have taken her to points beyond.

This pair of episodes should appeal to two types of listeners, those who know what it feels like to be the only one who looks like you in your university class, in your staff meetings, or on a discussion panel at a conference, and those who don't but who want to understand .

This is also a conversation about colonialism, paternalism, and racism in one of the last places you should expect to find it, in the international aid and development sector. It's also a conversation about the world's general ambivalence towards African suffering, the benefits and limitations of African to African-American solidarity, privilege within an African cultural context, racism in France, internalized colonialism, an African perspective on racism in the US, and everything else we could think to get off of our chests during a very open conversation.

This re-release episode closes with a short update interview with Abdul, completed in November, 2020. It starts at 59:18. The original show was published in December, 2018.Abdul Saboor worked with the US military in Afghanistan before having to flee the country after receiving death threats and having several friends and family members killed by the Taliban. What followed was an overland odyssey across Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, the Balkans, and back and forth across the EU, until he was able to claim asylum in France, where he currently lives. Along the way he endured prison, forced labor, beatings, deportations, and kidnapping. His is one of the more remarkable stories of resilience that I have come across in my years of traveling and working in the Middle East and anywhere else in the world. And he's a remarkable photographer.

We were connected by the people at No Name Kitchen, a Spanish NGO that provides food, sleeping bags and supplies, and a community space for the growing numbers of refugees stuck in Serbia and more recently in Bosnia.

Being at a loss as to how to manage the political conflicts within my own social circle I reached out to my old professor, Tatsushi Arai, to learn how Americans might apply the principles of Conflict Transformation to our interactions at the personal, professional, and community levels, whatever the outcome of the US election.

But it should be noted that this discussion is not specific to America, and that Dr. Arai has worked all over the US and all over the world as both an educator and as a field practitioner, mediating conflicts in West Asia, East Asia, Africa, and between more groups, and in more places, than we have room to list. Every community stands to benefit from a better understanding of this much undervalued, underutilized, and much misunderstood field of the social sciences. So, wherever you're listening from, and whoever you're voting for in your next election, or if you're simply hoping to have a free election, you'll likely find something in our conversation that can make engaging with your fellow citizens both more civil and more productive.