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Field notes

Saif on a footbridge above Sule Pagoda Road, Yangon

Featured · Guides · 22 min read

Is Myanmar safe to visit? My nine-day travel guide

Yangon, the Shan hills, Inle Lake, Bagan and Mandalay on a Bangladeshi passport — the visa, flights, cash, checkpoints, halal food, and a drone at Yangon airport.

Saif Afrisian in a white T-shirt squatting by a big steel pot of Qurbani meat, smiling, with a bowl of spices in his hand, Mozambique

Story · 8 min read Qurbani in Mozambique: the cow I missed, and the Eid meal I cooked A cow gone before I got there, prayer in a new mosque, and the first pot of Qurbani meat I cooked.

Saif Afrisian in a blue top, standing in dry bush beside a dirt path in Mozambique, talking to the camera

Guide · 13 min read Is Mozambique safe? The day I heard, “We can put you in jail” In 2024, police and a local chairman questioned me over a market video. What happened, and what the unrest of December 2024 showed me.

Saif Afrisian in a red farm coat, hands open, beside free-range chickens and goats on a wooden ramp

Story · 11 min read A Bangladeshi farm in Uganda, one year later I went back to a Bangladeshi farm in Uganda and asked the owner, on camera, where the profit is.

A bride in a white gown on a red mat, ringed by children and guests at a village wedding in Mozambique

Story · 9 min read The parents of five who finally had their wedding A year apart, one in Zimbabwe and one in town, to pay for a village wedding with a cow, a goat and many chickens.

Mourners dancing beside a grave in a Mozambique village

Story · 7 min read Dancing at a funeral, and a healer with five wives A village that dances beside the grave, and a healer's hut I wasn't allowed into.

A yellow shop with blue trim in a Mozambique market town

Story · 7 min read Why some men in rural Africa marry more than once Seven wives and five shops, five wives in one yard, and one rule: if it's meat, both wives get meat.

Saif at the airport holding his printed South Africa ETA, boarding pass and passport

Guides · 8 min read South Africa's new ETA: the visa I got in eight minutes Approved in eight minutes on a Bangladeshi passport. How my application went, and why approval isn't entry.

Saif and his younger brother eating lunch with a Mozambican family

Story · 7 min read Lunch at the Master's house: African hospitality up close “When a guest comes, chicken is a must.” Three Mozambique homes, one rule, and a chicken to take home.

Saif holding a small child at a thatched cooking hut in a maize field in Mozambique

Story · 9 min read My “jungle grandfather” and the African families who took me in A grandfather with 14 children, a lunch that ended with a live chicken, and a dadi who prayed for me.

Clothes for sale under a grass roof at a new market in a Mozambique village

Story · 7 min read “Like Bangladesh in the 90s”: seven years in a Mozambique village Two years without papers, bricks burned at home, and plastic money that can't go home.

A young Saif at Dubai airport in 2018 holding his Bangladeshi passport

Story · 8 min read Who is Saif Afrisian? Four years to reach Africa My mother's jewellery, a broker in Delhi and a second try through Dubai. How a village boy got to Mozambique.

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