by Victoria Aitken
-UK-

The Sinai desert has a new underground radio station - the only one to escape a ban on live radio transmissions - and it is breaking records for a radio station of its size. Radio Sharm’s secret location in the Sinai desert and its Disc Jockey’s code names like “The Mad Monk,” “The Girl with No Name,” and “Little Miss Slumdog” add mystique and character to Sharm el-Sheikh’s only live radio station.

I visited this holiday location on the Red Sea famous for its picturesque beaches, coral reefs, and year-round sunny weather; and discovered Radio Sharm. Who has ever heard of a secret radio station in the desert? Just the inhospitable location was intriguing enough to want to discover more about the radio station.

by Victoria Aitken / photography by Piera Constantini Scala
- UK -

Inspired by her friend Piera's lost heritage, writer Victoria Aitken traveled to Western Sahara to understand more about the plight of a people ousted from their land.

The mineral-rich region of Western Sahara, on the northwest coast of Africa between Morocco and Mauritania, was occupied by Morocco (and initially, by Mauritania) after the Spanish, her original colonizers, left. Despite the International Court of Justice’s ruling in 1975 that Western Sahara should not be immune to the rules of decolonization, no other country has stood up to Morocco or tried to make her back out of Western Sahara, or even denounced the construction of a 1500-kilometre fortified wall. No one talks about a wall that divides every Saharawi refugee family from their relatives and friends in the occupied parts of Western Sahara.