Fly Brother Interview on Jay Travels

Atlanta-based fly blogger and brother Jay interviewed me a few weeks ago for his international travel site, Jay Travels. The resulting madness went live this Tuesday, featuring my musings on Greenland, Mickey Ds, and prostitutes. Here's an excerpt:

Have you ever experienced a problem when traveling (passport, victim of crime, etc.)?
Once, in Rio de Janeiro, I was walking home from the gym with a Brazilian friend and while we were talking, a kid of maybe 9 or 10 came up to me and started talking in Portuguese. I told him, in Spanish, that I couldn’t help him and he grabbed my wrist. I, in typical American fashion, yanked my arm back and told him not to touch me (or as we say in Florida, bag back!). He started yelling at me in Portuguese and I yelled back in Spanish, then turned to make my way home. He came up and kicked me in the butt, then ran back across the street.

Things escalated from there, with him throwing a rock at my foot and my friend pulling me away from the scene because Lil Man was about to get the whippin his daddy clearly wasn’t giving him. Meanwhile, my friend kept commenting how kids these days don’t even seem to fear two over-six-foot-tall men anymore. When we got back to the house, my anger had turned to anxiety because I was lucky the kid only picked up a rock as opposed to pulling out a knife or gun. And it didn’t matter that I understand all the socio-economic backstory behind this young, black street kid; I was identified as foreign and subsequently as an easy mark. That ended my short-lived love affair with Rio.

Check out the rest of the interview here. Thanks, Jay!

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The Ubiquitous Fly Brother

As the Beatnuts say, "there's no escaping this:" I'm everywhere, folks. Over the last few months, I've been interviewed or asked to submit text and photos to a couple of travel- and culture-related websites either in anticipation of my big trip, or relating to my time in Colombia. Three features went live this week:

Down-home jet-setter, Brooklyn girl, and Lonely Planeteer Anja Mutic solicited a slice of Fly Brother's life in Colombia for her blog, Ever the Nomad:

[In Bogotá,] altitude and frequent rainy cloud cover conspire to keep temperatures hovering in the 50s and 60s. Colombia's equatorial latitude ensures the city a Frigidaire-like ambiance year-round; ergo its national nickname, La Nevera, “the refrigerator.” With heating systems being a luxury, most houses have barely more than a fireplace to keep things hot; my old apartment in Bogotá's historic district was situated in a drafty, Iberian-style colonial home, built with an interior courtyard intended to cool the structure in toasty Spanish summers but only served to suck out what little body heat I could muster in the Andean heights. Click here for the entire piece.

Expatriate Americans Adrianne George and Reginald Smith of the quarterly online magazine, Black Expat, interviewed me in the spring about permanent wanderlust and my then-current position molding the minds of future Colombian leaders in Barranquilla:

Describe your first trip abroad.
My first trip abroad was a six-week foreign exchange home-stay in Sweden in 1994, organized by Youth for Understanding International Exchange. I spent five weeks with one family in the far north of the country, a place of midnight sun, deadly mosquitos, and stewed reindeer called Råneå. My last week was spent in the capital, Stockholm, where I was first exposed to the wonders of European topless bathing. I was but a mere sixteen years of age. Continue reading here.

Lastly, photojournalist Lola Akinmade of Geotraveler's Niche and the Matador Travel Network was so inspired by my Fly Packing abilities that she asked to republish my luggage photo-odyssey on the Matador Goods blog. Check that out here.

Many thanks to these good people for highlighting a brother on their sites, and thanks to all y'all for reading and inspiring me to write.

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"Sharing Experiences" Gets Fly Brother to Share

Last week, Edinburgh-based writer Andy Hayes featured me on his travel website, Sharing Experiences. This is my first international interview and I was honored to have been profiled. Here's an excerpt:

To explain the name Fly Brother, I need to lay down a little cultural background knowledge. In black American vernacular, “fly” as an adjective refers to something attractive, roguishly sophisticated, and well-put-together, be it a possession, a concept, or a person. “Brother,” of course, is a nod to my being an African-American male. The usage of Fly Brother, then, speaks to both my affinity for air travel and my roguish sophistication (*wink*).

Read the entire interview here, then continue exploring Andy's engrossing site.

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