Cheney Orr/Reuters

Voters line up to cast ballots during early voting in the U.S. Senate runoff election between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, at a polling center in Columbus, Georgia, Nov. 28, 2022. Some 1.8 million Georgians voted early, including at least 76,000 who didn't vote in the November midterms.

Neither Timothy Daniels nor Latoya McGee voted in last month’s midterms. But both were motivated to turn out last week to cast early ballots for Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia’s Senate runoff.

For Mr. Daniels, it came down to character. “I look at a person’s morals and values when I go to vote,” he says, as he emerges from the downtown Convention Center in Savannah.

For Ms. McGee, what mattered most was familiarity. “[Senator Warnock] is from our community, so he understands us,” she explains. “That’s important to me.”

Young Black voters like Mr. Daniels and Ms. McGee could prove decisive in Tuesday’s contest between Senator Warnock and Republican candidate and former football star Herschel Walker. The historic race between two Black candidates, a first for the former Confederate state, went to a runoff after neither won a majority in November’s vote. More than 1.8 million Georgians have already cast early ballots – about a quarter less than in last month’s early vote, but at least 76,000 of whom, like Mr. Daniels and Ms. McGee, sat out the November election, according to the data site GeorgiaVotes.com.

Notably, Senator Warnock edged out Mr. Walker last month by almost 40,000 votes despite relatively low Black turnout. The Black share of Georgia’s electorate fell to its lowest levels since 2006, a trend that was seen in other states such as North Carolina and Louisiana. Senator Warnock made up for that drop by winning over more college-educated white voters – a coalition that is swiftly becoming more Democratic nationwide, and has helped make Georgia politically competitive.

With Mr. Walker’s campaign facing numerous controversies, including allegations of abuse and questions about his qualifications, the November election also saw a resurgence of split-ticket voters. Many who cast ballots for GOP Gov. Brian Kemp declined to back Mr. Walker, who garnered 200,000 fewer votes than the governor. Of course, at least some Kemp-Warnock voters may have been Democrats. But more than 81,000 Georgians also voted for a libertarian Senate candidate who is no longer on the ballot, raising questions about whether they will shift their support to Mr. Walker or simply stay home.  

“You now have about 10% of the electorate that may be persuadable,” says Trey Hood, a political science professor and polling director at the University of Georgia. “When it’s so close, all these things can have an impact. It doesn’t take much movement.”

Still, runoff elections tend to be mostly about base turnout. Senator Warnock will be relying heavily on the Democratic get-out-the-vote operation built by former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams – who has been credited with helping to turn Georgia purple after her narrow 2018 loss to Governor Kemp, although last month’s rematch between the two was not close. Mr. Walker, for his part, has the support of the governor, who won reelection resoundingly and has a strong political organization that he’s activating on behalf of the former Heisman Trophy winner.

Cheney Orr/Reuters

A voter casts a ballot at a polling center in Columbus, Georgia, Nov. 28, 2022. Black voter turnout in Georgia was low during the November midterm elections, but young Black voters – particularly those who didn’t vote in the midterms – could prove decisive in the contest between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.

“At this point, I think people have absorbed about all they’re going to absorb” about the issues or the candidates, says Professor Hood. “It’s a turnout battle, not a persuasion battle.”

Control of the U.S. Senate is no longer on the line. Democrats have clinched 50 seats already, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote giving them the majority, and the ability to confirm President Joe Biden’s judicial picks, among other things. But an extra seat would still be significant since it would give Democrats a majority on committees as opposed to sharing power with Republicans.

It also would prevent the party’s agenda from being derailed by a single senator – which some analysts see as a significant motivating factor for base voters.

“Voters in Georgia who are liberal and liberal-leaning recognize the need to have one more vote in the Senate” to help minimize the impact of a single senator who may not represent as diverse constituents, says Pearl Dowe, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta.

However, given that the GOP has retaken the House and is unlikely to sign on to much, if any, of the Biden legislative agenda, that's going to be less of a factor over the next two years.

Also potentially driving turnout might be the sheer closeness of November’s vote, which seemed to surprise some voters – making it clear how much every vote counts.

“Turnout is not just on the issues, but also about how people personally feel their presence is part of the system,” says Professor Dowe.

That’s the case for Ben, a Savannah voter who declines to give his last name for privacy reasons. “I’m voting because my vote means something here in Georgia,” he says.

Polling has shown Senator Warnock with a slim lead. The Democrat, who is also the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, has been a constant presence on the campaign trail of late. Rallying voters at churches and college campuses, and appearing last week with former President Barack Obama, he urged voters to finally elect him to a full six-year term.

“This is the fifth time my name has been on the ballot in less than two years, for the same doggone job,” Senator Warnock quipped.

The Georgia Senate race has been the most expensive of the entire 2022 cycle, with Senator Warnock raising more money than any other federal candidate.

Mr. Walker, for his part, has been winding through rural parts of the state on an “Evict Warnock” bus tour. With analysts predicting the early vote is likely to favor Senator Warnock, the Republican is pushing for a big Election Day turnout, emphasizing his nostalgic appeal in a football-crazed state and his everyman persona.

“Herschel Walker, for all his warts, is a fresh candidate and a fresh face,” says Jon Taylor, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “He’s formidable because he is relatable.”

Some in his own party are concerned about Mr. Walker’s electability, given allegations about abortions that have dogged his campaign. Over the weekend, the state’s outgoing GOP lieutenant governor called him “one of the worst Republican candidates in our party’s history.”

In the closing days, Mr. Walker has campaigned with supporters such as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Governor Kemp. Former President Donald Trump, whose endorsement helped Mr. Walker secure the GOP nomination, did not come to the state to campaign but was reportedly scheduled to hold a “tele-rally” for Mr. Walker Monday night. The former president was blamed by some members of his party for a disappointing performance in last month’s midterms.   

“We’re in a serious fight,” Mr. Walker said at a rally on Friday. “This is not just a political battle, this is a spiritual battle.”

A Walker win on Tuesday would put a clear halt to Democrats’ momentum in the state in recent cycles, making those gains seem more of a Trump-fueled anomaly. Indeed, Republicans won every statewide office in Georgia last month, with the exception of the Senate seat.

Waiting in an hourlong early voting line in downtown Savannah on Thursday, independent voter Jeff Fortson said he was casting his ballot for Mr. Walker. A high school Spanish teacher in a knit Braves cap who describes his policy leanings as libertarian, he sees Mr. Walker as less of a partisan figure and more pragmatic.

“It feels like the great American middle is on the comeback trail,” says Mr. Fortson.

AP

Riot police detain a demonstrator during a protest in Moscow against Russia's mobilization of troops, Sept. 21, 2022. Criticism of the Ukraine war is being quashed by the Kremlin under laws against "fake news" and "defaming" the military or government officials.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started last February, Mikhail Lobanov, a local political activist in the Moscow suburb of Ramenki, put a little sign on his balcony that said “No War.”

It sat there for months, apparently unnoticed, until one day police arrived at his door to arrest him.

Mr. Lobanov, a candidate for the Communist Party in last year’s municipal elections, is not the sort of person who is used to running afoul of Russian laws. But now he finds himself among the nearly 4,000 prosecutions under a pair of new laws that make it punishable to spread any “fake news” about Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, or to make any statement that authorities deem to “defame” Russia’s army or officials.

A growing number of cases involve people speaking informally in workplaces, classrooms, social media, and even in church. The effect is to put people on their guard, even in private settings, creating an atmosphere of pervasive fear that has not been widely felt in Russia since Soviet times.

“These are clearly oppressive laws intended to suppress any criticism related to the war,” says Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the Sova Center in Moscow, a human rights organization that specializes in the study of extremism. “The law on defamation is particularly odd, since defamation is normally a civil matter. Where there is criminal prosecution, it can only be aimed at suppressing criticism.”

“A bureaucratic machine is at work”

For most of the Putin era, average Russians had little to fear from any slip of the tongue or errant social media post, even as the state was selectively cracking down on avowed Kremlin opponents and pro-Western voices. Over the past nine months, it’s become a minefield for many more people, since the new laws are vague enough to trap almost any political speech, and law enforcement agencies seem bent on creating examples.

Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Marina Ovsyannikova, a former Russian state TV journalist who quit after making an on-air protest against Russia's military operation in Ukraine, sits in a courtroom prior to a hearing in Moscow, Aug. 11, 2022. Ms. Ovsyannikova is currently facing a potential 10-year sentence for public protest and appears to have fled the country.

According to a study by the independent Public Verdict Foundation, about half of those arrested since the laws came into effect in March were charged with some kind of overt anti-war activity, such as attending a rally or displaying anti-war symbols.

But there have also been cases of people getting convicted for merely holding up a piece of blank paper in a public place, or a placard containing stars or asterisks rather than words. According to the group, Moscow-area peace activist Anna Krechetova was convicted and fined 50,000 rubles ($800) for carrying a sign that said “fascism will not pass.” Several people have been arrested for simply dressing in the yellow-and-blue colors of the Ukrainian flag.

Mr. Lobanov, after a sweep of his social media posts uncovered two more apparent infractions in his political commentary, spent 15 days in prison and paid 45,000 rubles in fines. Now, he is braced for more trouble.

“Once you get into politics in any form these days, I guess you have to expect this,” he says. “The police tell me it’s nothing personal, but they get lists from above and have to follow instructions. The courts just rubber stamp whatever they’ve been told. A bureaucratic machine is at work. ... So far, I think I’ve gotten off rather easy.”

Alexei Onoshkin, an anti-war activist in the Volga city of Nizhni Novgorod, has seen a lot worse. He was arrested in August after authorities uncovered a social media post of his alleging that Russia had bombed a drama theater in the city of Mariupol where people were taking refuge. He was charged under the criminal part of the law on defamation and held in a SIZO (pretrial detention center) for several weeks until a court medical commission declared him insane and had him transferred indefinitely to a prison hospital.

In a voice message to the Monitor, Mr. Onoshkin also seemed to be bracing for worse to come. “Conditions in the hospital are better than in the SIZO, and the food is better, but my mood is heavy,” he said. “In my view it’s a blatant disgrace to put a person into prison, and then into a prison hospital, for political reasons.”

“It’s absurd, disproportionate punishment”

Experts say the current level of repression appears to be working, at least from the authorities’ point of view.

“I think it’s rather effective,” says Mr. Verkhovsky, the Sova Center director. “At first a big part of these prosecutions were for some street action, such as pickets or graffiti. But since summer it’s mostly about writing in social media. People who want to protest have been pushed from the streets to the internet. I don’t think the government’s purpose is to silence all criticism, but they do want to stop any public or organized expressions of it. In that, they seem to be succeeding.”

AP

A police officer detains a demonstrator during a protest against a partial mobilization in Moscow, Sept. 24, 2022.

Most of the cases so far have resulted in fines of up to 100,000 rubles ($1,600). Repeat offenders, such as journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who made headlines with an on-air protest back in March, can get prison terms. Ms. Ovsyannikova, currently facing a potential 10-year sentence for public protest, appears to have fled the country.

It’s hard to know how many people have been imprisoned under the criminal provisions of the two laws, but it is probably several dozen. The now banned human rights organization Memorial, which was co-awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this year, maintains a list of several hundred nonviolent dissenters that it regards as political prisoners. Most of those are being prosecuted for “religious reasons,” such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Islamists, but 116 are listed as “non-religious” offenders presumably being prosecuted for political reasons.

One such person is Alexei Gorinov, an opposition deputy of the Moscow City Council, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for distributing “fake information,” after he posted on YouTube a speech he made criticizing the war.

“It’s absurd, disproportionate punishment, clearly intended to suppress any public discussion of the war,” says Sergei Davidis, a lawyer with Memorial. “The basic meaning behind it is that a person must know that the information he is spreading is false, while the truth is what state bodies declare it is. Thus the state demonstrates what people can hear and what they cannot. Thus, Alexei Gorinov, who publicly declared that there is a war, and children are dying in it, has been put into prison for seven years.”

As long as the war continues, the environment for public freedoms is likely to deteriorate, says Mr. Verkhovsky.

“The government doesn’t really need to tighten the laws, but they will probably grow tougher,” he says. “There is a kind of repressive inertia at work. And Russian lawmakers always feel like they should be doing more. So, this atmosphere will probably just keep getting worse.”

It was shrapnel that made orphans of Andriy and Olha.

The Russian shell landed outside their home as a battle between Ukrainian and Russian forces pummeled their village of Torske in eastern Ukraine. The brother and sister were inside their two-story house; their father, a single dad, was outside in the garden.

“They saw the moment their father was killed,” says combat medic Nika Cherniavska, who helped rescue them. She had bonded with the children over several previous visits to their house, attempting to persuade them to leave. “They saw everything.”

Just hours after the attack, in the nearby town of Lyman, the siblings sit in traumatized silence in a minivan, awaiting evacuation to a hospital. Olha stares into space. Andriy is lost for words until he remembers something crucial: his prized collection of military patches. Ms. Cherniavska grasps their emotional value and asks where he kept them. When the children are driven off to the nearest city, Kramatorsk, she returns to Torske in search of the insignias.

Protecting children has been a struggle since day one of the war in Ukraine. From families like that of Andriy and Olha caught in the crossfire, to the tens of thousands of children who lived in state-run boarding facilities before the war, Ukraine’s children are seeing their support systems stripped away while facing mortal danger. It is a challenge that foster parents, child charity workers, and combat medics like Ms. Cherniavska confront with courage.

Indeed, Ms. Cherniavska nearly cut her own life short going back for Andriy’s patch collection: A shell landed just a few yards away from her as she did so. But the risk feels worth it when she returns to the hospital. The badges bring immediate comfort to Andriy who lays them out on a hospital bed.

Dominique Soguel

Andriy sits in a minivan awaiting evacuation from Lyman, a city recently reclaimed from Russia by Ukrainian forces, after his father was killed by shelling in the nearby village of Torske, on Oct, 25, 2022.

“I thought it was irrational for me to die getting the kid’s badges,” says Ms. Cherniavska, but “it was perhaps the only thing that could make him feel someone cares.”

For Olha, Ms. Cherniavska’s familiar face and warm embrace matter more. The girl had crumpled, and refused to move, when a nurse tried to take her to another room for food. “I don’t want to go to an orphanage,” she wailed.

“Big chaos”

Official figures suggest that over 400 children have been killed and 850 wounded since Russia invaded its neighbor. 

Another 3,000 have been left without parental care for one reason or another, while about 100,000 minors have had to leave the institutions, such as internat boarding schools, many of which closed when the war began. With 702 boarding institutions as of early 2022, Ukraine held the largest number of children in institutional care in Europe before the war.

One in 10 were orphans, mostly teenagers, groups of siblings – whom the authorities tried to keep together – and children with disabilities who were hard to place in foster care. Others hailed from poor households or from families whose adults had been deprived of their parental rights – serving prison terms, struggling with substance use disorder, or prone to domestic violence.

When the war began, orphans in regions at risk from fighting were relocated to safer institutions in Ukraine and abroad. Most minors in institutional care were sent home to families ill-equipped to care for them. What happened to those children is not always clear. UNICEF said in September that it was still trying to trace 26,000 missing minors.

Dmytro Malashko helped coordinate evacuations in the Kyiv region as Russian forces encircled the capital last March. “It was big chaos,” he says. “It was decisions, decisions, decisions, decisions. I was on the phone all the time. Sometimes on two phones at the time.”

Dominique Soguel

Dmytro Malashko and his foster son, Pasha, sit in the office of a children’s charity in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 23, 2022. They helped evacuate children from a state-run boarding institution as Russian forces advanced toward the capital earlier this year.

His foster son, Pasha, helped evacuate 20 residents from a children’s home in a suburb-turned-conflict-zone. “At the checkpoint, the soldiers would ask the children, ‘Do you know him?’ ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ they answered,” recounts Pasha. “I didn’t even know their names.” But he did know that he had to use the password “Ivanov” to get the children on a train carriage that had been specially designated by social services to shuttle orphans from Kyiv to Poland.

Last May, Maksym Nudga, who works for an organization helping youths coming out of the internat system, got a call from social services. Could he take in three teens who had just arrived in Dnipro, they wondered? He did not hesitate. But he did insist on meeting the teens first and laying down the law: no alcohol, no drugs, keep your room tidy, do your own dishes and laundry.

Ruslan Zuenko, Oleksii Visiagin, and his younger brother Sasha Visiagin agreed to those terms. They had been living in a sports-oriented internat in Lysychansk, a city in eastern Ukraine that came under fire as Russian troops advanced.

“We tried to stay put for as long as we could,” even though the school had closed, recounts Oleksii, who wears a black hoodie proclaiming his love for wrestling. “But we were going crazy from doing nothing. We couldn’t do sports. The gym wasn’t working.”

The three friends moved to Mr. Zuenko’s home, but the fighting grew more intense. “There was no gas, water, or electricity, so we just had to leave,” says Ruslan, who lost his mother years ago and has no immediate plans to join his father, who fled to Kyiv without him. 

Lysychansk fell to Russian forces just weeks after the boys left. Now they share a room in a house run by Mr. Nudga’s charity, wrestling together for fun.

“A lot of the problems for children who attend internats start after they leave,” says Mr. Nudga. “They lack social and financial skills. There is a high risk of alcohol and drug abuse, and criminality. For the girls, the risks are prostitution or a high number of sexual partners, which results in early pregnancy. As a result, the girls are giving the children to orphanages or they are taken from them [by social services], so the system just goes in circles.”

Dominique Soguel

Ruslan Zuenko, Oleksii Visiagin, and his younger brother, Sasha Visiagin, sit together in a house run by a children's charity in Dnipro, Ukraine, on Oct. 24, 2022. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian kids lived in institutional care before the war. The conflict has displaced them; some have been taken to Russia, while others have disappeared.

Caught on the wrong side of the front line

Shifting front lines makes it hard to stay safe, as Liudmila Khazai, an accountant, knows only too well.

She was caring for three youngsters when Russian troops took over her city of Izium in April: 17-year-old Rostyslav and 16-year-old Zhenia, orphans whom she was fostering, and her 10-year-old biological son, Kyrylo.

“From March to May we were sleeping in the basement,” Ms. Khazai recalls, pointing out the bomb craters and the rocket remains scarring her neighborhood. “It was never quiet here. That’s why we sent [two of] the children to summer camp in Russia. They needed rest.”

SOURCE:

Institute for the Study of War and AEI's Critical Threats Project

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Before the war, summer camp in Russia had been a regular part of life for many Ukrainian children in Izium, but with Russian troops occupying her city, Ms. Khazai was hesitant. “It is very hard to let your child go when there is a war,” she points out. But her children needed some proper sleep, decent food, and the chance to have some fun. The fact that other youths had gone to Russia for three-week camps in June, and returned, reassured her.

So, reluctantly, she signed them up at the Russian-run local department of education. “They didn’t want to give too much information for security reasons,” Ms. Khazai remembers. “We only knew that they would be going to a region in the Black Sea.”

Zhenia and Kyrylo went off to Russia on Aug. 27. Three weeks later, Ukrainian forces recaptured Izium; Zhenia, Kyrylo, and about 50 other local children found themselves on the wrong side of the front line.

Dominique Soguel

Liudmila Khazai stands with her children Zhenia and Kyrylo, who recently returned from summer camp in Russia, in Izium, Ukraine, Oct. 26, 2022.

Ms. Khazai and her fellow parents overcame their panic and banded together. With the help of Ukraine’s Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories, they set about tracing the children and devised a complex plan to get them back, including crowdfunding the costs of their journeys to Russia.

Those journeys took them all the way across Ukraine to its western border, into Poland and through Belarus to Russia, then back again.

“There were no obstacles from the other side,” says Ms. Khazai of the Russians. “It was fine for them there, but they wanted to get back home. Home is best.” 

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this article.

When Ellen Najala rides her motorcycle through the streets of Dandora, one of Nairobi’s crowded informal settlements, people stop and stare. As she cruises past on her blue bike, with a Jesus decal on the fender, a pot leaf sticker on the gauges, and “Fire Mama” scrawled on the gas tank, kids and adults alike wave and call out. 

“Fire Mama, Fire Mama!” 

Ms. Najala is one of an increasing number of young women who have joined the ranks of Kenya’s bodaboda sector – an army of motorcycle taxi drivers that props up the often chaotic public transit serving Nairobi’s roughly 4 million residents.

The work of bodaboda drivers, whether along the potholed pavements of Nairobi or the rutted dirt roads of upcountry villages, has been almost exclusively the preserve of men. But as the cost of living rises in Kenya, and gender roles loosen among younger generations, more and more women are donning helmets and becoming motorcycle taxi drivers. But even as the work provides better flexibility and pay than many traditional jobs, women must fight to overcome harassment and danger working in a role widely considered to be a man’s job.

Under the shaded awning of the taxi stand where Ms. Najala works, the men have come to appreciate her skills. “They like to joke, but they show respect,” she says of her fellow drivers. 

One colleague, who goes by the nickname Joker, was quick to praise his workmate. “She’s a good driver,” he says. “She gets many customers.”

Paul Stremple

Ellen “Fire Mama” Najala poses with her motorcycle at a taxi stand in Dandora, the neighborhood in Nairobi where she lives and works.

Driven by necessity

Back in 2015, when Faith Asibwa started working as a motorcycle taxi driver in her neighborhood of Kibera, a woman in the field was so rare that she was touted as the first one in Nairobi. Now, the 32-year-old is the chairwoman of the Nairobi women’s chapter of the Boda Safety Association of Kenya, representing 42 female members. 

“There are lots of young women trying to get into the bodaboda business,” she says. With her experience, she’s able to help them navigate the industry. “I help them find training and getting the proper gear so they can work safely.”

Despite recent strides, a lack of female representation and parity remains persistent across Kenya. Historic elections in August brought more women than ever to power – one-fifth of parliamentary representatives are now female – but that still falls short of Kenya’s own constitutional aims for gender representation. 

Meanwhile, out of an estimated 1.5 million bodaboda riders – the unregulated nature of the industry makes it difficult to determine an exact number – there are just 5,000 women drivers, the Boda Safety Association of Kenya says.

Still, the recent rise of women into the field has been noticed by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which helped launch the women’s chapter of the Boda Safety Association of Kenya. The organization provided education on gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health, seeing the drivers as both beneficiaries of training and on-the-street ambassadors.

“They are more affected by most of these issues because of the patriarchal nature of the society,” says Kigan Korir, a UNFPA Programs Specialist.

“I think the motivation for a better return has emboldened most of them to join the otherwise male-dominated sector,” adds Mr. Korir, noting that most of the women drivers have challenging dual roles as single mother and sole breadwinner. 

Safer alternatives

Motorcycle taxis are ubiquitous across Kenya – and most of Africa – but the sector is heavily stigmatized. The vast majority of riders are young men, collectively known as vijana in Swahili, and considered by many to be a downside of city living. From accusations of unsafe driving, outright thievery and harassment, or even fueling political unrest, the group is a catchall for whatever ills plague Kenyan cities, intensely disliked by car drivers and pedestrians alike.

In March, a woman involved in a traffic collision with a motorcyclist was attacked by a large group of motorcycle drivers who surrounded her car. The incident went viral, further undermining the sector's reputation. 

But such incidents are rare. And motorcycle taxis are a key part of the transportation chain across Kenya, providing a “last mile” solution for inadequate public transit systems and an affordable, if considerably more dangerous, alternative to taxis. 

Paul Stremple

Faith Asibwa, a longtime bodaboda driver, at the taxi stand where she works in Nairobi’s central business district.

For passengers, women bodaboda drivers are perceived as a safer alternative to male drivers. It’s less the fear of robbery or assault, they say, than the women riders’ extra care and responsiveness to concerns.

“I’m not a rough driver,” says Ms. Najala, from Dandora. “We’re more careful, and women passengers trust me to drive well and not be drunk.”

Often, she says, that means slowing down when asked and not recklessly overtaking cars in the oncoming lane or splitting traffic at high speeds. 

Safety is a concern for both drivers and passengers. For women drivers, there is physical danger present in their work. Very few are willing to work after dark. Everyone knows a story about a driver who was guided by a passenger into an ambush, where they were beaten and robbed of their motorcycle by waiting accomplices. 

The women cope with that reality by devising their own personal safety rules, ranging from never carrying two passengers to avoiding dangerous neighborhoods or texting their location to others while riding.

Despite the dangers, there’s been a steady increase in women drivers. Many, like Vivian Atieono, enjoy the flexibility provided by the work as they juggle work and child care. 

Ms. Atieono can now take her daughter to school, work for a few hours, take a break to play basketball, look for more fares, and still be home in time to get her daughter from school, she says. For the 21-year-old, the benefits go beyond setting her own schedule. The work also pays better than traditional jobs like cleaning houses. After paying the bike’s owner a daily rental fee of 500 shillings (about $4), she takes home at least as much herself at the end of each day.

With riding motorcycles all day – being exposed to the hot sun or the pouring rain, bouncing over speed bumps and down rutted dirt roads – the work takes a toll on drivers. Most of the women in the industry are young, and while the money is good now, they’re already looking to the future. 

Sitting astride her bike at the downtown intersection where she works, Ms. Asibwa gives the same answer as just about every other motorcycle driver when asked what’s next: driving a taxi.

“I’m hoping to move to another level, maybe driving an Uber – but it’s difficult to afford a car,” she says. “When you are getting paid in cash each day, not a monthly salary, it’s hard to save money.”

Before she could elaborate on her plans, a woman in a brightly printed dress approached, phone pressed to her ear, and fluttered her hand to indicate she wanted a ride. She climbed aboard the motorcycle; Ms. Asibwa kick-started the bike, donned her helmet, and was gone in a moment, disappearing into the ceaseless flow of Nairobi traffic.

A bright blue sky highlights the leaves of oak trees and white birches that line the clearing where La Fête d’Automne is underway. It’s a yearly fall festival that honors the French roots here in the Old Mines region, an hour south of St. Louis. The comforting smell of French donuts and hot cider hangs in the air. Hundreds of festivalgoers rummage through displays of wicker baskets, fabric, artwork, and books.

Soon all eyes fasten on Dennis Stroughmatt and his fiddle as he takes center stage with L’Esprit Créole, his folk band that’s been performing at the festival for more than two decades.

Mr. Stroughmatt, his hair pulled into a ponytail and the sleeves of his calico shirt rolled up to the elbow, smiles at the crowd as he lifts his bow and begins to play toe-tapping French Creole music as he sings in Missouri French. He’s doing what he loves, and in the process raising awareness of a fast-disappearing dialect and culture.

“He plays, he sings in French, and everyone comes,” says Natalie Villmer with pride in her voice. She’s one of the directors of the local historical society that runs the festival.

“Not everybody understands [French], but they still like it,” she says. “C’est une jolie journée.” (It’s a beautiful day.)

Arnold Kalala

Festivalgoers dance to songs sung in Missouri French.

Since first visiting Old Mines three decades ago as a student at Southeast Missouri State University, Mr. Stroughmatt has fiddled and lectured his way to becoming one of the foremost experts on Missouri French, also called pawpaw French after a local fruit. His efforts are gaining regional and national recognition. In 2012, he was a featured performer at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center in Washington. He received an award from the Missouri governor in 2014 and was inducted into the National Oldtime Fiddlers Hall of Fame in 2015.

Mr. Stroughmatt sees himself as a musical ambassador who aims to transcend language barriers and show the richness of the local heritage.

“I’m doing my part, and I’m proud of that,” he says when asked about his motivation for preserving a dialect spoken by fewer than 20 people. “I’m a big believer in the people and this pawpaw French culture; it’s a representation of who we are,” he adds. “So we need to protect that.”

In Old Mines, or La Vieille Mine, the first French settlers came to extract lead as early as 1723. The rural community, which will be celebrating its 300th anniversary next year, spoke French decades before any English or Spanish word was heard. Today, Mr. Stroughmatt’s efforts come at a time of increasing national awareness around marginalized American cultures.

“I’m originally from Vincennes, Indiana. We didn’t really call it Missouri French or pawpaw French. Just French,” says Mr. Stroughmatt. “My interest grew from ... my fascination with the area’s heritage.”

Fabrice Jaumont, a researcher on bilingualism and co-editor of “French All Around Us,” a 2022 book that focuses on the presence of Molière’s language in the United States, says that emphasizing community roots reflects the spirit of our times.

“Keeping this connection with our linguistic heritage and passing it on, that’s growing in importance,” he notes. “It’s a combination of people recognizing how valuable bilingualism is today while also striving for dignity and wanting to honor their past through the language.”

There are signs of growing acceptance in the U.S. for languages other than English, adds Mr. Jaumont. Efforts to promote local languages are happening across the U.S., from the French-speaking communities of Louisiana to the Native tribes of Alaska.

Research shows that bilingualism can be beneficial to a child’s development and facilitates cultural understanding. In a globalized world, it’s a skill that helps connect with other mindsets and ideas, says Mr. Jaumont. Now, more than 40 states offer the Seal of Biliteracy, an award given to high school students who have gained mastery in two or more languages by graduation.

Arnold Kalala

“Music itself ... can transcend verbal language. And I hope it shows one thing: that French is not a foreign language. It’s part of this land,” says Dennis Stroughmatt, fiddler and proponent of the Missouri French dialect.

When Mr. Stroughmatt was in his 20s, he wanted to learn to play his great-grandfather’s fiddle. That’s when music helped him reconnect with his family’s past.

During a trip to Old Mines, he met local Missouri French musicians Charlie Pashia and Roy Boyer who became his teachers. They saw a future for their language and culture in Mr. Stroughmatt’s passion to learn. In 1997, Mr. Boyer pushed him to perform at La Fête d’Automne. He belted out “Le Rossignol Sauvage” and “Chevaliers de la Table Ronde” – and he’s been doing it ever since.

The more he performed, the more he wanted to share the region’s unique history. Soon he was visiting schools with his fiddle to lecture about Missouri French and share the songs that have resonated for three centuries. Mr. Stroughmatt has given nearly 1,000 school performances over the past 24 years.

Robert Green, a horn player and conductor, is part of the Alpine Artisans nonprofit – an organization that provides western Montana schools with live musical performances. “We’ve invited Mr. Stroughmatt three times, and each time it’s a hit,” says Mr. Green. “In his case, we have some wonderful applications for social studies, history, and music classes, because he knows a lot about the upper Mississippi French culture,” he adds. “He’s been a tremendous asset to us in many ways, singing of course, but also even sharing his insights on French Creole cuisine in a high school culinary class.”

Mr. Stroughmatt and his band mostly perform in Missouri French. The language is a combination of French and Native American vocabulary that emerged when French settlers came to North America in the 18th century, followed the Mississippi River downstream, and traded with the Missouria, Illinois, and Osage Native American tribes.

Pockets of French language remained for centuries in what used to be called Nouvelle-France, a territory that stretched along the Mississippi River all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River regions. Some 17th-century French words still linger today in Missouri French, like ouaouarons (bullfrogs) and chats-chouages (raccoons). But with the emergence of the middle class in the U.S. after World War II, speaking English was associated with success and prosperity, often leaving non-English speaking communities, like those of the Missouri French, behind, says Mr. Jaumont, the researcher.

At La Fête d’Automne, Mark Boyer is selling vintage novels and history books, including his own “300 Years of the French in Old Mines.” He’s a Roman Catholic priest, a historian, and a teacher at the University of Springfield, Missouri. Mr. Boyer grew up in the Old Mines region and recalls a time when he was discouraged from speaking French in school as a boy, even though at least four generations of his family had spoken it at home.

“My generation never learned it,” says Mr. Boyer. “In the mid-to-late 20th century, English was required in the schools,” he adds. “French was not well perceived, and bilingualism became simply English,” he says. But he’s encouraged by the possibility that Old Mines French could be known to a new generation of French speakers. “Dennis is the new representative for that,” he says.

The vibrancy of the annual La Fête d’Automne spurs that hope. A sign near the cider stand announces in Missouri French, “On est toujours icitte” – “We’re still here.” And as long as Mr. Stroughmatt is lifting his fiddle to his chin, folks here are reassured that they will dance, sing, and laugh in the autumn air for some time to come.

“Music itself ... can transcend verbal language,” says Mr. Stroughmatt. “And I hope it shows one thing: that French is not a foreign language. It’s part of this land.”

AP

A resident in the village of Zarichne, Donetsk region, Ukraine, receives food at a mobile humanitarian aid point, Dec. 2.

Day by day, after nine months of war, Ukraine has been liberating its land from Russian invaders. Yet its people, along with generous foreign donors, have shown another kind of liberation, one the world will need in coming years. Its struggle has let loose creative ideas on how the world can best assist those suffering from conflict or disaster.

Some ideas are quite practical. Need emergency food in a war zone? Don’t wait for a truck caravan; deliver food aid by drone. Need to keep the internet running after a communication tower is bombed? Bring in satellite-linked devices for Wi-Fi. Need to fix destroyed power lines? Bring in donated firetrucks and use the ladders to lift utility workers for repairs.

Other ideas reflect a higher-quality approach to traditional foreign assistance. Instead of waiting for material aid, millions of Ukrainians in need have been given money, creating the largest humanitarian cash assistance program in history. Unlike in many conflict zones, foreign donors who have given billions in aid to Ukraine have been forced to listen to local volunteers for guidance. Much of the relief has been driven by hundreds of newly formed local charities or private industry. The Ukrainian grocery chain Silpo, for example, set up a depot in Poland to deliver food through its logistics network.

The war in Ukraine has created an unprecedented level of private sector engagement for a major world crisis, says Kareem Elbayar, head of the United Nations’ Connecting Business Initiative. He told The New Humanitarian news site that the international aid community – a large field of some 5,000 organizations – can use lessons learned in Ukraine and apply them to other crises, such as flood disasters and civil wars.

Those lessons are needed more than ever. Last week, the U.N. reported that 1 in 23 people worldwide will require humanitarian relief next year – more than double the percentage just four years ago. Much of the increase has been caused by the effects of climate shocks, COVID-19, inflation, and armed conflicts, as well as a grain shortage from the Ukraine war. The U.N. has launched a record $51.5 billion humanitarian appeal for 2023.  

Meeting that target will take a similar level of generosity – and liberating reform in the aid community – as the world has seen in Ukraine. That country’s liberation could be the world’s.