AnJ Travel Agency

AnJ Travel Agency A&J Travel Agency LLC is a global, African-centered platform proudly serving Africans on the continent and across the diaspora worldwide.

We operate four powerful pillars of service: Live Talk Show, Internet Radio, Project Management & Travel Advisory

07/21/2026

I read him the comments people left about his work. Watch his face.

07/21/2026

UDS co-founder, Heather, on how she and her team started the program for Liberian children: You're really missing out on the bigger, more beautiful world we have. And if we only classify people by, maybe, their name, what degrees they hold, what, um, what location they live in. Uh, we're really missing out on some talent.

07/21/2026

We asked our guests an uncomfortable question on Saturday. A great many Americans want to help Africa. Many of them do it badly. They arrive with the answer before they have heard the question. Heather Cannon told a story. A Liberian in Minnesota funded a latrine back home. The community turned it into a warehouse. Everyone needs sanitation, she said. But if you never ask people what sits at the top of their own list, you will not know whether you are solving the problem in front of them. They had goods stolen overnight. They needed somewhere to put them. Kelvin Fomba answered from the other side of the Atlantic. If you want to help, invest in organizations led by people who actually live in the community and understand its realities. And not charity. Sustainability. Then he said something to everyone who has tried to help before and been burned. Do not give up. Keep trying. Just find the right people to work with. Visit www.unitingdistantstars.com

07/21/2026

Because you have a coalition that is there because it's really the only option available to the parties. The DA has told its supporters, the Democratic Alliance has told its supporters repeatedly that if the EFF or the MK party are allowed into the government, the country will be ruined, which means that the DA can never leave the coalition because if it leaves the coalition, then it has to explain to its voters why it was prepared to ruin the country by allowing MK or the EFF into government

07/20/2026

This is the most difficult segment of Episode 9, and we are posting it because we promised this show would not flinch.
South Africa is gripped by the Madlanga Commission. A provincial police commissioner stood up in combat fatigues and alleged that criminal syndicates had captured parts of the police, the prosecution service, and even elements of the judiciary. The police minister was removed from his post. A senior deputy national commissioner was suspended. A whistleblower was murdered. The commission has now sat for well over a hundred days.
Professor Steven Friedman holds what he himself calls a minority position, and he stated it on our desk without hedging.
He begins with a principle. One of the greatest dangers to democracy anywhere in the world, ever, is unaccountable people in uniform. They are the only people in any society with an unqualified license to carry a gun. They are allowed to use force against us. We are not allowed to use force against them. So, we must be very careful that they are working for us, not that we are working for them.
From that principle comes his concern. The man who made the allegations should have been subjected to the same critical questioning as the men he accused. Friedman says that has not happened.
And he named the thing that troubles him most. Of all the people accused of taking part in a wide-ranging conspiracy, the only ones named were political opponents of one former president. That question, he says, has never been answered.
His fear is that when the dust settles, South Africans will discover their democracy was recruited into one side of a factional fight inside the police.
Agree or disagree. This is what independent scholarship sounds like when nobody is paying for the answer.
Episode 9. South Africa.

07/20/2026

Hour two of Episode 9 did not go to a capital city. It went from Minnesota to Monrovia.
Kelvin Fomba was raised by a single mother through more disruptions to his schooling than any child should carry. He told us what he did with that.
"Pain is not something that you can dodge. You cannot go under it, you cannot go on top of it, you have to go through it."
So he decided to transform his pain into empathy and purpose.
He went back to school and earned a degree in geology. Ministries called. Companies called. He turned them down. His reason was one sentence long. "I want to help my people." Heather Cannon is a lifelong Minnesotan who had never heard of Liberia until she was already an adult. Her first trip abroad was a drive to Monrovia because the airport could not accommodate large commercial flights. She found university students running a free school with a makeshift chalkboard, cement blocks, and bamboo slats for benches, and no supplies at all. A small boy stood up and recited the Emancipation Proclamation. She said she felt robbed. Not of anything she owned. Of an education that never told her this country existed, or why it existed, or what it had to do with her.
Since 2011, the two of them have built Uniting Distant Stars from two students into a vocational training center in Monrovia. Auto mechanics. Electrical. Welding. Tailoring. Catering. Cosmetology. Computers. This is what the second hour of this desk is for. Not politics. Builders. Full replay on our page. Find them at unitingdistantstars.com

07/20/2026

We asked Heather Cannon what she would say to a young person in Monrovia who is not sure whether school or a trade is worth the effort. Her answer was not a slogan. It was a record. Pursue the degree if you want it. The trade brings in the money. They have watched it happen over and over. One of their electrician graduates came straight out of high school with no idea what he wanted. He finished the program in 2020. He messaged her later to say he had not gone a week without money since he graduated. He paid his own way through a chemistry and biology degree, finished it in 2024, and this year enrolled himself in electrical engineering at Stella Maris Polytechnic. He is not a company. He is one man with a reputation, and the work keeps coming by word of mouth. Another student enrolled in cosmetology and electrical at the same time. Cosmetology was the fallback. Electrical was the plan. Uniting Distant Stars, Monrovia. unitingdistantstars.com

07/19/2026

One sentence from Episode 9 that we want every young African to hear.
Professor Steven Friedman: The problem is not that democracy does not work. The problem is that democracy is not being tried.
And the stronger your democracy is, the better off you are.
That is not a lecture delivered from outside. That is a scholar who has spent four decades inside one African democracy, watching it work and watching it fail, and refusing to hand the argument over to anyone who wants to declare the whole project dead.
Episode 9. South Africa. Watch it.

07/19/2026

Listen to Professor Friedman talk about this: The ANC is in decline, and that decline may well continue. But what he's ignoring is that the ANC is not in decline, since the DA's support is growing. When people don't vote for the ANC, they either stay home or spread their votes across a whole lot of other parties.

07/19/2026

Professor Steven Friedman needed a passport. His had expired, and he had been invited to a conference in the United States.
The process was frustrating. So he said so, publicly, on a media platform.
Within one hour, a call from the minister's office.
The next day, a senior official escorted him to the passport office.
The day after that, he had his passport. And while he was there, he heard a voice on the phone from the ministry saying, " The minister says this is going to be sorted out by the end of today."
Friedman is the first person to name what this is. A middle-class man with a platform. He knows.
But here is his point. Five years ago, that same post would have earned him an email in two weeks and maybe a passport in three.
Something changed. When politicians can actually lose their jobs, phones start ringing.
That is not a story about a passport. That is a story about what happens when power ceases to be permanent.
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