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Africa

The Last Lioness: Lady and Herbert

"A haunting call echoes across the Liuwa Plain. There is no answer, there hasn't been for years. She has no pride, no support - she alone must safeguard her own survival. Her name is Lady Liuwa, and she is the Last Lioness.

Isolated by a scourge of illegal trophy hunting that wiped out the rest of her species in the region, Lady Liuwa is the only known resident lion surviving on Zambia's Liuwa Plain. For four years, cameraman Herbert Brauer watched her lonely life unfold, until, in her solitude, she reached out to him for companionship.

But Herbert knows he is not the companion this lonely lioness needs - she should be amongst her own kind. Now, in May of 2009, plans for a male lion translocation have come through, and there is hope for ending her isolation. Lady Liuwa will no longer be the Last Lioness - find out how she copes as lions return to her plain for the first time in over five years."

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Director of Photography
HERBERT BRAUER (the photographer who worked with Global Voice on Music that Floats From Afar and Notes from Afar)

The Land of No Men: Inside Kenya's Women-Only Village

Where the foothills of Mount Kenya merge into the desert, the people of Samburu have maintained a strict patriarchy for over 500 years in northern Kenya. That is, until 25 years ago, when Rebecca Lolosoli founded Umoja village as a safe haven for the region's women. Umoja, which means "unity" in Swahili, is quite literally a no man's land, and the matriarchal refuge is now home to the Samburu women who no longer want to suffer abuses, like genital mutilation and forced marriages, at the hands of men.

Throughout the years, it has also empowered other women in the districts surrounding Samburu to start their own men-excluding villages. Broadly visited Umoja and the villages it inspired to meet with the women who were fed up with living in a violent patriarchy.

Source and credit: Broadly