How I learnt the art of boketto: Gazing vacantly into the distance without thinking anything specific. The bus wound its way down Ecuador’s Andean foothills along a forested road. I was travelling from Baños, a mountain town known for hot springs, to the coastal city of Guayaquil. My ears popped…

An Agatha Christie superfan gets suspicious and finds her soulmate. Mattie turned the corner onto her street, huffing as she entered the final stretch of her three-mile morning power-walk. She immediately noticed a man lolling against one of the stone pillars bracketing the Moskovitzs’ gate across from her house, arms…

Part III: After starting my trip in Sweden, a fitting ending in expat Qatar. I started my odyssey in Stockholm, where I lived as a baby. The contrast between Northern Europe and my Africa could not be more extreme. Lagos, Nigeria, is vibrant, the vivid colors and patterned cloth, its…

Part II: Delving into the deep past, where my life began in colonial Zambia. After Lagos, I fly to Johannesburg and from there into the abdomen of Africa, to Zambia, where I was conceived and almost born. As the prop plane descends over Zambia’s Copperbelt Province, I press my forehead…

Part I: Looking for my childhood home in Nigeria, I end up in a cop station. “Don’t get out of the car,” my Nigerian driver instructs as he winds up his window. Joseph is going to talk to the policewoman who has pulled us over because she spotted me taking…

A reclusive serial killer falls victim to his own vanity. Pepper was sparking in his veins. At least that’s what it felt like. Tucker Macrae switched off his hot plate and stared at the slices of stale bread he’d been frying in bacon fat. He wasn’t hungry, although he’d barely…

The origin of El Salvador’s gang problem: The United States Marvin wears the story of his life carved on his skin. The scar near his eyebrow from a machete blow, his ear lobes that bear the tattoos “1” and “8” to proclaim his membership in the Calle 18 street gang…

A homeless cop breaks the rules & finds empathy with a homeless man. The mobile phone blared its over-loud, over-cheery tune. Desi bolted upright in bed and bashed her head on the top bunk. She seized the phone and slid the button to answer, more to silence the ringtone than…

I had four accents from my childhood moves around the world. I now switch among them unconsciously. A Kiwi friend of my mother’s popped by for tea one day a few months after our arrival in Australia from New Zealand. …