by Natalie Karneef | Oct 31, 2016
It’s 5:30 a.m. and I’m climbing out of a van in the middle of a large field in central Turkey. It’s still dark, but I can see the silhouettes of half-filled hot air balloons scattered about on their sides. We watch a man inject the closest one with...
by Natalie Karneef | Jun 17, 2016
Bronzed bikini goddesses gaze through mirrored sunglasses over ocean waves. Bleach-haired surfers with six-pack abs you could see from space look as cool and unperturbed as Roman statues. You are in Bali. Specifically, you are in Canggu, Bali; and currently, you are...
by Natalie Karneef | Feb 10, 2016
It is 1960 in Uganda right now. At least that’s what it feels like in a bare, windy classroom in Nyakagyezi, a rural village 400 km from Kampala, where volunteers are imparting sexual health information that would be considered basic knowledge, or even archaic...
by Natalie Karneef | Aug 1, 2014
I spent May and June of 2014 in rural Uganda, volunteering as a blogger, videographer and teacher with the Nyaka AIDS Orphans Project, an organization that supports children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, their guardians, and their community. This happened on one of my last...
by Natalie Karneef | Jun 13, 2012
Ten years ago last Sunday, I sat by a window at a breakfast restaurant on de Maisonneuve, ordered a plate of pancakes, got out my journal, and wrote: “What have I just done?” x I’d been in love with Montreal for years. From the night I’d...
