maryland

Angela Yarian holding a baby from the village (about year 2003)Throughout most of their childhood, the Yarian sisters’ lives were divided between Togo and the United States. From 1995 to 2004, Rebekah (starting at age eight), her sister Angela (starting at age seven), their younger brother, Daniel, and their parents spent half of each year in a little country town outside of Sykesville, Maryland, and the other half of the year in Dapaong, Togo—a tiny city in a tiny country on the northwest coast of Africa.

Created in 1912, the Czarevich Egg was created for Empress Alexandra Feodorovna as a tribute to her son, Alexei. Photography courtesy of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. On Easter morning, you are probably used to seeing a wicker basket filled with eggs—perhaps dyed chicken eggs, chocolate eggs, or colorful plastic eggs filled with a variety of candy treats. But what would you think if the eggs hadn’t been laid by a chicken or weren’t made of plastic or sugar?