In India, to kiss openly is considered a public disgrace that can mean jail time. This appeared to be the message conveyed on Oct. 23 by Jai Hind News, a popular local news channel in India’s southern state of Kerala, when it broadcast footage of a couple kissing in an upscale terrace cafe in Calicut. Less than a day later, the incident ignited a nationwide movement, city-hopping from Kochi to Hyderabad to Calcutta to Mumbai to Delhi. Known popularly as the “Kiss of Love” campaign, the movement’s message is straightforward: Let’s kiss in public.

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Nestled in a former cocoa-farming region in southwestern Ghana, the town of Prestea boasts more than 150 small-scale gold mines in the backyards of abandoned farms. The town, with a population of about 35,000, also sits covered in permanent smog—a red dust that stains white goats crimson. It is the result of lethal mercury, on which miners all over Ghana rely to refine their gold. In Prestea, where gravediggers are in greater supply than doctors, death from mercury poisoning is routine.

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Avenue Mohammed V, a wide street that runs directly through Rabat’s centre-ville and past Morocco’s parliamentary headquarters, is the site of nearly daily protests against the country’s government. Living in Morocco in late 2012, most days I saw the protesters tussle with the police, grow bored, and disperse, laughing over the chase like American children playing tag during recess. But last November, I witnessed something different: hundreds of unsmiling protesters blocking both sides of the street, demanding government jobs in an economy with massive unemployment.

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