Check out the launch video for CATALYST.cm, a platform for social action and travel.
NAMIBIA: Colors of a Country
Namibia is a land of contrasts and extremes. Situated between the Namib and the Kalahari deserts, Namibia gets less rain than any other country in sub-Saharan Africa. Namibia’s coastal desert is one of the planet’s oldest, with powerful offshore winds sculpting the highest sand dunes in the world, in some places rising more than 1,000 feet.
Water — or more to the point, its absence — defines life in Namibia.
Hot and arid in the interior, Namibia’s coast is surprisingly cool and moist, the product of the cold Atlantic colliding with Africa’s warm and dry southern tip. Seals and sea birds come by the thousands to congregate in this narrow temperate zone.
In the rest of the country, only where there is water is there life. Here is my vision of this untouched and primal land, with its towering red sand dunes, vast deserts, and wild animals struggling to survive.
KOLMANSKOP
Kolmanskop is a deserted German mining settlement located in Namibia. The town was abandoned in the 1950s, and the desert has been reclaiming it ever since, creating an interesting mix of colorful painted walls and sweeping sand dunes engulfing entire rooms.
QUIVER TREE FOREST
The Quiver Tree Forest, near Keetmanshoop, contains a collection of the so-called “quiver trees” which aren’t really trees at all, but rather a species of aloe, a flowering succulent plant.
NAMIB-NAUKLUFT NATIONAL PARK
Namib-Naukluft National Park preserves part of the extensive Namib Desert. The most famous area of the park is called Sossusvlei, which contains the tallest sand dunes in the world, rising more than 1,000 feet above the desert floor. Oxidization of iron in the sand gives them a reddish-orange color, which becomes especially intense when bathed in the warm light of sunrise and sunset.
One of the most stunning places in Sossusvlei is known as Deadvlei (which means “dead marsh”). The area used to be wet and covered in trees, but 600 or 700 years ago the water dried and the trees died, their eerie skeletons preserved by the dry air.
ETOSHA NATIONAL PARK
Etosha National Park is a beautiful national park in northwestern Namibia, known for its abundance of large game animals, including elephant, lion, rhino, giraffe, cheetah, zebra, and many more. What amazes me most about Etosha is the clear, strong light at sunrise and sunset, bathing animals and landscapes in warm color.
IAN PLANT
World-renowned professional photographer, writer, and adventurer Ian Plant is a frequent contributor to and blogger for Outdoor Photographer Magazine, a Contributing Editor to Popular Photography Magazine, a monthly columnist for Landscape Photography Magazine, and a Tamron Image Master. Ian is also the author of numerous books and instructional videos. See more of his work at www.ianplant.com
ITALY: Rainbow Warriors
The idea to sleep in a hammock suspended hundreds of feet above the ground in such an incredible place was born back in 2012 at the very first Highline Meeting held on Monte Piana, a peak of 2.324 meters.
The event was founded by Alessandro d‘Emilia and Armin Holzer, two highliners who wanted to share the spectacular scenery of Monte Piana (Misurina) in the Dolomites, giving professionals and enthusiasts from all over the world the chance to slackline between mountain peaks, hang out in hammocks strung high in the sky, and meet like-minded people.
This year the place where d‘Emilia, Holzer and action coordinator Igor Scotland from Ticket to the Moon hammocks built their set up was memorable not only for its natural beauty but for its particular historical importance. One century ago, fierce battles broke out in the shadow of Monte Piana in the Italian Dolomites as WWI began, and today the area is an open air museum to honor the memory of the 18.000 young soldiers who lost their lives here. The seven kilometers of trenches are still visible.
“Just a hundred years ago, winters up here were characterized by bombs, grenades, and lots of pain,” d’Emilia and Holzer explain in the video from the event. “Our idea was to re-experience Monte Piana in friendship and peace with each other, accompanied by kindhearted feelings during the day, and lulled to sleep at night by magical silence.”
On September 10th 2015 this idea came to life and their unique project took place for the third time. 26 athletes came together to sing, laugh, and relax in 17 specially designed rainbow hammocks strung high in the sky between the peaks — a symbol of peace and a tribute to the past.
The stunt, named “Rainbow Warriors”, was performed and designed by a professional team of athletes and riggers, and the set up has a breaking strength of greater than 150 kN (15.000 kg) for the main line, along with a redundant back up. The maximum force at any one time on the line during the event was 32 kN (3.200 kg).
The values and principles of d’Emilia and Holzer — a non-competitive spirit and practicing respect for the mountain so that they can be in harmony with the location — are also shared by all of the participants.
Today Monte Piana has become a meeting point for young people from all over the world who want to share more than a passion for the sport of highlining, who come to share a philosophy and a way of life.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAPTIA
SEBASTIAN WAHLHUTTER
Sebastian Wahlhútter is a photographer and anthropologist from Vienna, Austria.
2016 Travel Guide for Global Citizens
Global Citizen
Travel is a beautiful thing. Journeys to unfamiliar places can inspire new customs, alter previously held perceptions, encourage big ideas, and evoke a newfound appreciation for things long underappreciated.
And the benefits of travel aren’t exclusive to the traveler. Tourism has become one of the main income sources for many developing countries, representing a key driver of socio-economic progress.
But too often tourism remains restricted to a small selection of hotspots. Too many Instagram accounts are displaying travel photos that differ only in their levels of brightness and saturation.
This type of trendy trip planning is having an unfortunate impact on these popular destinations. Constant crowds are eroding natural landscapes and overusing scarce resources. Tourists are being lured into areas where they are disturbing cultural customs and unintentionally exploiting local communities and wildlife.
In the age of mass tourism, travel has lost a bit of its beauty.
It’s time to give travel a makeover. This year, take the road less traveled. Challenge yourself to visit destinations undiscovered by your friends, and take the time to research how you can mitigate your negative impact on local landscapes and communities.
For a bit of inspiration, check out this list of destinations that could make great alternatives to those currently teeming with tourists (and their iPhones).
Instead of Thailand, go to the Philippines.
With beautiful islands, drool-worthy food, grand temples, Full Moon parties, and lush jungles, Thailand can seem like the perfect travel destination. It’s why Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Phuket make it on the itineraries of many first-time travelers.
These days, too many travelers are getting caught in Thailand’s tourist traps (e.g., monkey islands, zoos filled with mistreated elephants and sedated tigers) and are missing out on the real cultural experience.
Take a break from Thailand, and plan a trip to the equally enticing Philippines instead.
Instead of the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, go to the Pantanal swamp in Brazil.
It’s every science geek’s dream to see the species that inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution. It could also be argued that there’s no better place than the Galapagos to gaze at unique wildlife standing inches away from your face.
However, the region’s unique ecosystems may not be able to survive the pressure of mass tourism. And the annual influx of money from tourism isn't being fairly distributed among local residents who struggle with poverty.
If you want to see wildlife, visit the Pantanal swamp in Brazil, one of the world’s largest wetlands. If you’re lucky, you may even spot a jaguar!
Check out GLOBALCITIZEN.ORG for more tips!
CARYN CARVER
Caryn Carver is an Audio-Visual Content Creator for Global Citizen. Prior to working at Global Citizen, she worked for a nonprofit consulting firm where she learned a lot about what is and isn't working to help eradicate poverty. She then spent a year living and working in South America where she developed a deeper passion for global issues, especially human rights. Caryn also loves to sing about what she is doing, search for the best cheap eats, and daydream about the next place she will visit.
CUBA: Havana's Smile
Regardless of poverty, ubiquitous propaganda, scarcity or hypocrisy Havana continues to smile. Not a sly smirk or rueful grin but a broad, welcoming smile. One that welcomes you into its home, shares its simple meals and lures you to dance to its infectious rhythms.
Walking the streets is a cultural excursion, from the ornate buildings of a former prosperous nation passing the bullet-ridden walls of revolution to the rubble of a stalled Communist state. Yet it is impossible to not be struck by the beauty of this city suspended in time.
Creaking old cars held together by paint that sputter down pot-holed avenues. Images of Che invoked on countless walls; men playing dominos by the roadside. Almost clichés of a city that you hardly believe still exists.
The city raises endless questions, none of which, even if hotly debated, can be easily answered. People continually remind you of the failings of the revolution and the difficulties they endure under the regime. But it is precisely these factors that have preserved Havana, enveloped it in a hazy, tainted nostalgia.
Finally change is under way, I hope it brings prosperity but does not tarnish that smile.
PHOTO + TEXT: JULIEN CAPMEIL Julien Capmeil is an Australian born photographer living in New York. His work has appeared in many publications worldwide including Vogue, GQ and Conde Nast Traveler.
You can view more of his work online at: JulienCapmeil.com For print purchases Email: info@juliencapmeil.com
PHOTO ESSAY CURATED BY NELIDA MORTENSEN
THAILAND: Street Orphans Transform Into Art
I've been making street art since 2009 and have traveled to 13 countries to focus on children who are homeless and living on the street. I make cardboard cutouts that I mount to walls with high tack mounting tape or propped up as stand alone pieces. If no one removes them from the streets, the pieces will decay and be destroyed by the harsh environment. If someone does take it, then they can keep it in their home. If it survives, there is hope for them to continue on as pieces of art, just like there is hope for the actual homeless and street kids.
During my last trip to Asia I stayed in an orphanage in northern Thailand and got to know the kids there. I spent two months with them, listening to their stories, and then I represented these young people in this body of my recent work.
The most memorable stories were of two children named Chai and Lee, who were so malnourished that their little stomachs were swollen when they first came to the orphanage. To get food they would steal the offerings to Buddha in their tribal villages. With this money they would buy snacks, since the only thing they had to eat was white rice, which has hardly any nutritional value. The piece with the arrows (below) is about how Chai had a lot of things in life thrown at him, trying to destroy him, but instead, he focused on the beauty in life. The main thing I learned from this trip is that children find beauty and can reveal it to the rest of us.
MICHAEL AARON WILLIAMS : My art is a narrative, visual poetry, making a social statement to move the viewer to action or realization. An important part of my work focuses on the street, the place where people live their daily lives. This allows me to interact with an audience on their own turf and observe how they react to the art; it is a social experiment. These open-air installations focus on the ephemeral state of street people and enable the viewer to participate in the outcome of the pieces, whether the viewer leaves or saves them from the street. My goal in depicting street people is to show their beauty, fragility, and to bring their situation into the eyes of the viewer, refusing to let them be forgotten or ignored.
Learn about how to help the orphanage at Orphans Assistance and Rescue
ICELAND: Home of the Sun — My Stay in an Eco-Village
We stood in a circle, holding hands. The early morning dew clung to and soaked the bottoms of my shoes, and I shivered from the wind and the excitement at welcoming the day with the people of Sólheimar. My eyes followed the held hands around, taking in a couple of young twenty-year-olds embedded in between more sober looking adult leaders of the community and the elderly.
Earlier, as groups made their way over to the morning meeting, the warmth with which the young and old greeted each other warmed me up despite the cold and the constant overcast sky. Here in the middle of farmlands and sheep, Sólheimar is an eco-village, an intentional community where the abled live along the disabled in a sustainable manner.
Sólheimar owes its founding to Sesselja Hreindís Sigmundsdóttir in 1930. Ahead of her time, especially in pre-industrial Iceland, Sesselja created the first orphanage at Sólheimar for children who are mentally disabled. She believed strongly in encouraging artistic expression in the mentally disabled, a novel concept from Rudolf Steiner in Germany. Sesselja, regarded as crazy by some in the Icelandic government for her insistence on allowing interactions between normal and disabled children and her equally important work in biodynamic farming, experienced significant roadblocks in the establishment and expansion of Sólheimar, but she overcame the judgment of the skeptics and eventually secured funding and approval from the government for her work.
The village of a hundred inhabitants sits snuggly and unassumingly in the geothermal region of southwestern Iceland; its location keeps it far-removed from the bustle of the modern capital of Reykjavik. Instead, people at Sólheimar farm and make crafts to sustain their peaceful lifestyle. Today, the President of Iceland scheduled a visit. The occasion has sent all the residents of Sólheimar busy bustling in preparation. Compared to government opposition to the project during Sólheimar’s early history, this occasion reveals that much has changed in the way Iceland perceive ideas of sustainability and social equity.
Sólheimar has embraced the concept of reverse integration where abled people accommodate and structure their lives around the disabled. Every inhabitant of Sólheimar is employed in some way in the village, whether it is cooking, taking care of the greenhouse vegetables, or making candles in the craft workshops, so everyone has a stake in the wellbeing of the community.
The first thing that caught my eye when I walked into the guest rooms was the extensive recycling system, consisting of five or six multicolored buckets each labeled with a different type of material. Sólheimar strives to function with 100% sustainability on all three pillars — environmental, economic, and social. Nevertheless, waste remains, and Sólheimar depends on outside funding.
Socially, the society functions like a well-oiled machine. The residents are the friendliest people I’ve ever met. The four-day stay here is filled with smiles, offers to try the cucumbers in the greenhouse, sharing their artwork. In the corner of the village sits a troll garden, and the dim light makes you believe that maybe, just maybe, fairies live here.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE YALE GLOBALIST
JINCHEN ZOU
Jinchen is an undergraduate at Yale University from Houston, Texas. As a contributor to The Yale Globalist, she is an avid traveler. Jinchen also contributes to TheProspect.net, a culture/lifestyle magazine that includes helpful resources for college applicants.
The World From Space
As citizens of a global community, it is important to be reminded of what it means to be "home."
MEXICO: The Enormous Mural That Made This Neighborhood 'Magical'
In the center of a small neighborhood located in the city of Pachuca, Hidalgo, the largest graffiti mural in all of Mexico, painted onto a canvas of 200 homes, was inaugurated this July. But the “macro mural” has done much more than simply give some color to the hillside district of Las Palmitas, a predominantly rural neighborhood with a certain degree of poverty and crime.
Read MoreSOUTH KOREA: Surfing the Demilitarized Zone
38th Parallel Beach is located just 50 kilometres south of one of the most dangerous places on Earth — the line dividing North and South Korea.
Known as sahm-parl in Korean (the numbers 3 and 8), 38th Parallel Beach is a harbour, military base, beach and a highway rest stop. Weary travelers can stop for strong, sweet coffee, spicy food and tacky souvenirs. They can inspect the coastline and enjoy the rare beauty of the Gangwando coastline. Today it is also a rather unusual surfing spot.
While living in Seoul working as a university teacher, I spent three years photographing and surfing with the Korean and foreign surfers who were establishing the area as a legitimate surfing community.
I was drawn in by bar tales spun by roughish Australians who said they had surfed with local Koreans in blizzards, but pre-Facebook and iPhones, proof was murky. Poor photos of clean waves in deep snow and a complex myriad of forecasting and unreliable local bus info made it even more confusing. Eventually these rumours led me down a three-hour stretch of highway from Seoul to the 38th Parallel on Korea’s east coast.
As I left, my Korean co-workers giggled at me for coming to the country with a surfboard, but a peninsula must have wind I thought — and where there is wind and water, well, there must be waves.
Arriving at a protected harbour I could immediately see some small but nicely shaped waves, peeling intermittently down a well-defined bank. I was impressed and could see its potential, so we jumped in.
It was a fun spot. Surprisingly, when we came in a film camera was shooting us as we came up the beach together. Turns out they were filming a commercial for nuclear waste storage and our water exit appealed to them. I posed for a photo with the bespectacled producer and later learned that we had made it into the commercial.
38th Parallel beach felt special from day one and this slightly surreal first experience would set the tone for my future visits.
In the months to come, I discovered some of the best waves I had seen in the country, and to my surprise there were a lot of surfers, too. Koreans, Kiwi surf rats, and even some wobbly Nova Scotians, all hunting for peaks to break the grind of Korean ex-pat life. The good surf days remain particularly vivid in my mind because my lowered expectations only amplified my ‘stoke’. The surf and culture on the east coast of Korea surprised me and my experiences were in a word, unique.
Surfing in Korea is tinged with madness and magic. Koreans tend to go full throttle with everything they do, and surfing is no different.
On a weekend, the line-up resembles a chaotic Korean market place with people and boards going every direction. Korea is small country with an enormous amount of people, so fighting for your position is a way of life and the surfing line-up is no different. Luckily, over 3ft Mother Nature takes control of the space politics and the line-up clears out significantly.
South Korea has gotten the surf bug badly, and 38th Parallel Beach has fast become a hub for Seoul’s young jet-setting surfer class, traveling down through scenic Gangwando to reach this barbed wired bay.
On any given day, and in any of Korea’s four distinct and extreme seasons, you will see trendies, gangsters, Hongdae hipsters, Gangnam DJs, and foreign English teachers all jostling for a wave.
The car park overflows on every swell with Seoul surfers chain-smoking in the latest gear and waxing up only the hippest of shapes. Koreans love to do things together, be it banquet-style eating, all night drinking, or raucous socialising. Surfing has become another activity to share and the entire culture is geared up for it with various surf stores and camps along the coast catering to the dedicated Seoul surfing clique.
With some of the most consistent and powerful waves in the country and with ever improving forecasting technology, modern social media and South Korean connectivity, the short lived swells that originate in the East Sea are no longer left un-surfed, even in the deepest of winter.
Koreans adore trends, and the newest trend, surfing is red hot. The surf community at 38th Parallel Beach has grown rapidly, enjoying a strange co-existence with the local fishing community and the ever-present ROK (Republic of Korea) defence force, who have been protecting South Korea from the distant threat of a North Korean attack or DPRK defectors since the 1950s.
Being a lifelong surfer, the mixture of this semi-remote location, the exotic culture, and these three dramatically different groups all occupying the same space is incredible to me. Over the next few years I tried to spend as much time as I could out at 38th Parallel Beach, getting my surf fix and capturing the amazing and strange things I saw.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAPTIA
Shannon Aston
www.shannonaston.com
Shannon Aston is a world traveler, surfer, and photographer from New Zealand.
Travel Where You Live
What if we live the same way we travel?
The Fairuz Mural in Gemmayzeh, Beirut. On Fairuz, Yazan said: “Fairuz is a national symbol of unity: she might be the only person the Lebanese agree that they love. She is a positive cultural figure. She was also one of my first portraits, I used her mural to cover some political posters that were still hanging from a number of years back. It is extremely interesting how much people identify with her. Photo by Yazan Halwani.”
LEBANON: Spotlight on Yazan Halwani, Beirut's Street Artist
“To Beirut,
From my heart, I send peace to Beirut,
And kisses to the sea and homes,
To the Rock that is as the face of an old sailor.
She comes from the soul of the people, from wine,
She comes from their sweat, from jasmine.
Then how did her taste change to smoke and fire?”
So reads the translated lyrics of Fairuz's most famous song, “Li Beirut” (To Beirut). Today, the song is often cited as a symbol of Lebanon's history, full of sadness and suffering. But Fairuz also sings of Beirut and its people as being one -“You are mine, you are mine. Ah, hug me”- both in suffering and in hope.
In that spirit, Yazan Halwani is taking back the streets to make them more ‘Beiruti’. His weapon? Art. We sat down with this young Lebanese graffiti artist to see what makes him tick.
Yazan Halwani in front of the yet-unfinished Fairuz mural in Gemmayze. Source: Facebook.
Can you please introduce yourself?
My name is Yazan Halwani and I am a street artist and calligrapher from Beirut, Lebanon. I have been street painting for around seven years now, mainly in Beirut, the city that inspired it all, but also in Tunisia, Singapore, Dubai, France.
Can you describe your work?
My current work is a style I have developed myself over the past years. It combines Arabic calligraphy, oriental geometry and patterning and portraiture. I think that my work is also not only about mural painting but more about the relation of the wall to the people and the city it surrounds. For example the Feyrouz mural has become somewhat of a landmark for the people living around it. The owner of the several buildings around it called it:”The most photographed wall in the city”. One time when someone scribbled on the Fairuz mural, someone living next to the mural called me, without knowing who he is, and asked me if I could fix the mural.
Yazan's image of what the Lebanese 100,000 LL bill would look like with Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese-American poet and author of “The Prophet”. “Apparently someone suggested this currency design to the head of the Central Lebanese Bank, from what I heard it was as quickly dismissed because of complications that might arise from adding Gibran to the note,” Yazan said. Photo by Yazan Halwani.
What inspired you to do what you do?
I have developed over the years. I have started my work as a graffiti artist being inspired by the graffiti scene in Europe and the US, where graffiti artists write their name in flashy and colorful ways. After a few years of doing that, I started questioning the relationship the relation of my work within a city in the Middle-East: at the time, it was somewhat alien from its surroundings, I realized that writing my name was not really different than what political parties have been doing around the city. I needed to change direction.
One day, I stumbled across a book of the five main calligraphy scripts (Diwani, Koufi, Thuluth, Naqsh, etc.) and decided to change my style: instead of doing my “alias”, I would paint words, letters, images that fit much better within the city, the culture and the context. At this stage I thought that a good mural is one that talks to the citizens surrounding it: it becomes part of the city and it becomes theirs, not the artist's.
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in Hamra, Beirut. This mural was vandalized and Yazan decided to repaint it in Tunisia, where Darwish spent a part of his life. On Darwish, he said: “I personally love Darwish for his stance on the conflict in Palestine as well as his poetry. The first time I painted him was near the Hamra street, in a street he probably walked in back when he was in Beirut. Unfortunately someone chose to throw paint on his face. Instead of repainting it in the same spot, I choose to repaint it away from any vandal. I took Darwish to the streets of Tunisia, a country that has also welcomed him. I used a poem from Darwish that says “How can we be cured from the love for Tunisia” for my calligraphy.”
This is why each mural tries to have a story that relates to the people living around it: Ali Abdallah‘s mural is a reminder of a homeless man who died from the cold and it tries to make people help or remember their social responsibilities.
Mural of Ali Abdallah, a homeless man who lived in the Hamra neighborhood. He died from the cold. Photo by Yazan Halwani.
Indeed, Yazan doesn't just paint famous people. The story of Ali Abdallah is a particularly striking one. In Yazan's words:
Some people told me that I “paint famous people”, this is not true. I paint faces that tell stories, and are part of our culture. One of my favorite murals is the one of “Ali Abdallah”, a homeless man living on Bliss street.
Ali's existence was surrounded by urban legends about how he became homeless. Some of them say he was a physics teacher that had a scaring experience during the Civil War. The one thing everyone agreed on was their love for Ali.
Despite that, on one of the coldest winter nights, Ali passed away. This tragedy triggered several short-lived initiatives to try to help the homeless in Beirut. After a few months everybody seemed to have forgotten about Ali's story. This is why I painted the mural to remind people of his friendly face, and also to remind people on an everyday basis of these short-lived initiatives.
Mural of Asmahan, the popular Syrian-Egyptian singer, actress and popular icon. Seen in Achrafieh, Beirut. Photo by Yazan Halwani.
Joey Ayoub
Joey is a Lebanese blogger, wanderluster and writer. You can check out his blog here.
Why Working Your Bag Off Is Spiritual
In my favorite book of all time, “Autobiography of a Yogi,” there is a story about a typical 33-year-old man in India who is approached by an enlightened guru who helps him to remember his past lifetimes when he too was an enlightened master. The guru, wanting this man to become enlightened again, materializes all the wealth that the man could ever want, right before his eyes. The guru does this so all of the last earthly desire the man had, which was being wealthy, could be satisfied so he can move past it and onto enlightenment. The guru says that desire is what chains us to the reincarnation wheel.
While some self-identifying spiritual people speak of wanting less, desiring nothing, and frown upon striving for money or material success, I believe satisfying earthly desires can be one the most spiritual things you can do. I don’t mean just trying to have the biggest boat for the sake of being able to say you have the biggest boat. I mean acknowledging your inner desires and looking them right in the eye. And when you feel like attaining them is part of your growth and purpose, GO FOR IT, regardless of whether it is focused on material gain.
While many people cite their darkest hours, such as being on their deathbed or losing everything, as the times they learned what is truly important in life, I had a number of different (you could say opposite) experiences. When I was 25, I busted my ass for 365 days straight selling real estate to reach a highly coveted award level and recieve the big plaque that came with it. After I reached that goal and became the highest grossing new Realtor in North America, I relaxed for the first time in a year and enjoyed it. Well, I enjoyed it until I realized that if I wanted to keep my success going, I would need to go out and bust my hump for another year to win another big award. It was when I reached the top of my game that I realized that the great feeling success brings is temporary, fleeting, not real, illusory. It is not anything close to true happiness.
This scenario played out over and over again in my 20s and I reached higher and higher goals in business, physical fitness, romantic relationships, and finances. However, each success became less and less fulfilling to the point where I said “screw it!”, sold everything, and took up social entrepreneurship full time.
It was largely because of fulfilling huge goals that I abandoned the notion of “more” equaling happiness. It was because of reaching my goals goals that my entire life is now dedicated to service. It’s not that I made a boatload of cash and became a wealthy philanthropist. Heck no. I sold everything I owned to fund my current venture that has now funded 60 schools and libraries in 9 developing countries for 60,000 kids, and I am flat broke because of it.
But, you would not believe how great I sleep at night, with a big, stupid smile on my face.
Why? Because a number in a bank account doesn’t define me. And it doesn’t define you either.
Like the man from the story, I had desires that needed to be fulfilled. Thanks to going after those desires 100%, I can now say with personal experience that money, success, and reaching goals don’t mean squat to me. What matters to me is loving yourself, serving others, and taking pleasure in simplicity.
Striving after material success in my 20s ended up being the most spiritual thing I could have done. It was my way of materializing my desires so I could see the illusion they actually are. I am nowhere closer to enlightenment than anyone reading this, but I do know what makes me happy, and that feels really good.
Taylor Conroy
Taylor is the founder of Change Heroes and Destroy Normal Consulting, which focus on innovative philanthropy and building projects like schools, wells, and libraries all over the developing world. His most recent efforts have seen schools funded in India, Nepal, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania, impacting over 30,000 children. He has set foot on every continent, dozens of countries, and has worked as a professional fire fighter, real estate broker, and currently as an avid social entrepreneur.
Am I Making a Difference?
Mingling in hostels you tend to meet many adventurous spirits finding their way in the world. Among those I met a young girl with similar interests in the social work/humanitarian field in Chennai, India. She was nearing the end of her yearlong journey and as we talked we reminisced about the hardships and victories we found along the way. She told me of her 1st day working at an HIV positive orphanage in Bangalore where a child fell and cut herself. My new found friend's immediate reaction was to clean the wound, which she instinctively did, as everyone watched open mouthed, too afraid to say a word. After numerous blood tests she found out she had not contracted HIV, but it was a wake up call. She had forgotten she was in a different place, without the luxury of basic necessities. Finally we got to the point I asked what she felt her biggest accomplishment was during this trip? She looked me straight in the eye's and said, "I feel like I have accomplished absolutely nothing, I have made no difference in this place." Here was a girl who had been devoting her life for the past year to HIV positive orphans, trafficked girls, and battered women yet she felt like she had accomplished nothing. I was floored and thought if she hasn't made a difference have I? I proceeded to make a list of how I felt when I was impacted by volunteers when I was younger, and what difference they made in my life today. As I thought, I realized we need to look at our small victories. Realize we can't change a country overnight, but we can provide a motherless child with love. We can let these children see what else there is in the world. We can give them the confidence to succeed. We can open their minds. Whether it be for 2 days or 2 years, that child is going to remember the love they felt from you. This is why we started Humanitarian Travel Tips doing medical screenings and vocational training. We can't change a country overnight, but by providing glasses to a child who can't see a chalk board we are changing their opportunities and their life forever.
Without glasses these children can't learn. They are put into the lowest classes of children deemed unfit for learning, given little to no teacher supervision, and leftover books (if there are any). With glasses they are able to move up in school, they won't fall through the cracks, they have the opportunities to reach their full potential. The girls who got the glasses go on to be educated women who as a whole have fewer children and take better care of those children. On the same token teaching women a vocation like sewing gives her the ability to provide for her family, send her children to school, and give the children the nutrition they need to concentrate during school. They raise educated children, thus changing a generation. Too often we underestimate the power of the good we are doing and we shouldn't. Every smile, every friendship, every amount of love you give to a person makes a difference to that person. I have been at orphanages long term and you don't realize how long after you leave those children still talk about you, or the pictures you give them they will hold onto forever. Don't underestimate the power of good in this world you can do.
CHAMBREY WILLIS
Chambrey is the founder of Humanitarian Travel Tips an organization that raises the standard of living to people in developing countries through health screenings and vocational training. We are excited to announce that we are now welcoming volunteers to join with us on these initiatives this summer. Chambrey is an avid yogi, got her undergrad in Finance and is working on a guidebook outlining step by step how to best fundraise for your next big adventure. You can find her on facebook or follow her blog.
Why You Should Ski in Afghanistan
Afghanistan.
Just the mention of the word sends images into the mind. Military units driving through deserts, windswept mud brick villages and broken arid urban landscapes. When I mention the possibility of going skiing in Afghanistan it can get some strange responses. Forget about the risk, the first question is, “Is there any snow?”
Whilst it is true that much of Afghanistan is desert or semi-desert and that it hardly ever rains, it does snow. In the mountains it snows a lot. The snow is the lifeblood of Afghanistan. As it melts, it flows through the rivers that fill the canals that irrigate the fields. A good snowfall ensures that the people of small rural communities will have a good harvest and can feed their families and livestock. A poor snowfall often leads to a drought and a famine. However, the snow in Afghanistan is both a blessing and a curse. Heavy snow cuts off villages in the mountain and every winter people freeze to death or are crushed by avalanches.
Families wait for the snow to melt hoping to survive the winter until they can reap the reward that the snow will bring in the summer. For thousands of years there has been nothing for the people to do in the winter except wait for the spring... until now.
This winter young men from the villages of Kushkak, Jawzari, Ali Baig, and of the valleys of Qazan and Dukani and Foladi will pull on home made skis, crafted from wooden planks, with edges made from flattened tin cans and with poles snapped from a nearby tree. Some will be selected for training to represent their valley in a competition to see which valley can produce the best skier. They will be given modern ski gear to use. They’ll be taught how to ski, and they’ll receive basic training in first aid and avalanche awareness — skills they can take back to their village and potentially use to save lives.
A handful of young men from Bamian, in Central Afghanistan have already begun guiding foreign skiers—both ex-pats from Kabul and visitors from around the world who are trickling into the region to try out Afghan skiing first hand.
So how did this happen?
At the beginning of the winter of 2010 almost no one had skied in the province of Bamian. The valley's chief claim to fame had been the giant Buddha statues carved into the cliffs overlooking the town of Bamian. Tragically the two statues—which were about 1400 years old—were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 robbing the world of two of its most important ancient Buddhist relics, and robbing the people of Bamian of one of their key sources of tourist income. For Afghans, Bamian province was also well known for the lakes of Band e Amir —a series of five lakes formed by natural travertine dams, that appear like a mirage in this high, arid landscape. In the summer Kabuli families come here to picnic and to escape the dust and heat.
Bamian is also home to the Hazara people. The Hazaras are recognisable by their Mongoloid features. They’re Shia Muslims, unlike most Afghans, who are Sunni. In popular tradition they are reputed to be the remnants of the Mongol armies who came to the region with Genghis Khan. Historically they have been looked down upon by the ethnic Pushtuns and Tajiks who make up most of Afghanistan’s population. Some radical Sunnis—such as the Taliban—have seen them as heretics because of their Shia faith. Modern Afghanistan has always been ruled by Pushtun kings or Pushtun dominated governments who have tended to overlook the Hazaras. However, there have been important changes in Bamian since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. It is no Shangri-La—there is little electricity, the province is one of the poorest in the country and by any standard it ranks as one of the least developed places on the planet. However, for the first time in decades there are signs of progress and positive change.
Ten years ago, Bamian province had never had a hospital, a paved road, or a university. Now these all exist. There are still many problems, of course, but the Bamian valley is relatively secure and there is none of the anti-government fighting that plagues large parts of the rest of Afghanistan.
An international development agency, the Aga Khan Foundation, saw the potential of promoting tourism in Bamian as a way of giving the people of the province an additional source of income. The Foundation has helped to develop guest houses, organise cultural festivals and provide information about the places of interest in and around Bamian.
That’s fine in the summer when tourists come to the valley, but what about the winter, when guest houses lie empty? Well, the people of Bamian fall back on their timeless winter pastime of just surviving and waiting until the Spring.
But taking their cue from other mountainous developing countries it was clear that any winter income was better than none so the Aga Khan Foundation began the Ski Bamian programme. With no infrastructure or lifts, the idea was to make the Koh-e-Baba mountains a new destination for ski-touring.
In 2010 two American skiers were employed for the winter to map out potential routes. They brought only their own equipment so the Afghans had to get creative if they too wanted to ski along with them. Anyone with a small knowledge of Afghan military history will tell you that not having state of the art equipment never stopped the Afghans with competing with foreign powers. Skiing with no ski equipment was not an insurmountable problem. Strips of wood with battered oil tins for edges were formed—so, the bazaar ski was born.
It quickly became clear that the mountains of Bamian were perfect for skiing and in 2011 a foreign ski trainer arrived to train the first batch of Afghan ski guides. It was early in 2011 that Ali Shah met Nando the Italian ski trainer at his village of Khushkak. Ali Shah was fit, young and spoke good English. Nando asked him what he wanted to be?
“An engineer” said Ali Shah.
“Why you wanna be an engineer? In Kabul there are a thousand engineers. You shoulda be a mountain guide. It's the best job in the world. You spend your whole life in the mountains with beautiful women.”
It may not have been a textbook interview but Ali Shah is now Afghanistan’s best ski guide and Nando's singular teaching style set the basis for the success of the project.
During 2011 and 2012 the annual Afghan Ski Challenge race (Rule number one — no weapons) was organised by a Swiss journalist and has became a focal point for the ski season (www.afghanskichallenge.com). With most Afghan Challengers having only one month’s ski training the Swiss organisers thought it an unfair challenge. They divided the race into Afghan and non-Afghan categories. The challenge is a classic ski touring route which includes skinning up as well as skiing down. They were right to divide the competition as most of the Afghans had finished before the foreigners had even got to the top.
With donations from western organisations like gear4guides (www.gear4guides.com) there is now a well equipped ski rental shop in Bamian serving the local community and the ex-pat and international skiers that trickle in.
My connection with skiing in Afghanistan began in 2009 when I bumped into a Scottish lad who worked for an Afghan aid agency. Ken was hiking with his girlfriend in the Wakhan region of Afghanistan in the far North East and I was leading a group of trekkers. The Wakhan region is the only other part of Afghanistan safe enough to consider these types of outdoor trips.
He told me of a group of British and French skiers working in Afghanistan who regularly skied near Kabul in the winter and if I was serious about being an Afghan tour operator then I should be offering ski trips to Afghanistan. I said I'd join him on a trip that winter.
On the first trip I made we took one of our regular drivers, Ali. For someone who has never skied it is quite hard to explain what we planned to do. Once we loaded up the poles and skis he had a rough idea of what we were up to and wanted to help. At the bottom of the Salang Pass, which crosses the spine of the Hindu Kush, Ali stopped at a small teahouse and ordered food for all of us. As any Afghan will tell you the best thing for breakfast if you are going to spend all day in the snow is Cow’s Foot. Boiled for hours, this gelatinous lump of bone, fat and gristle is never appealing to non-Afghans and the French skiers particularly do not like it. We made a quick note that for the commercial trips, we wouldn’t let the drivers choose the dining options.
But it was then that I saw how skiing was something that really appealed to all the Afghans who saw it. Standing next to Ali as we watched Ken fly down the slopes, he was awestruck. “He is a Djinn,” was Ali's response. Hazaras believe there are mountain spirits and clearly Ken was one.
In the tea house where we stopped on the way back, Ali regaled the owners with the tale of Ken's exploits. Ken was described as a Djinn and I as a Boz (a goat). I hoped it was a way to describe my sure footedness in the mountains but I think it was more to do with my erratic skiing style.
In keeping with Afghan tradition, the story was heavily exaggerated but it started a long discussion about skiing, mountains, snow conditions, avalanches and Afghanistan’s future.
It was not only Ali who became a convert. I realised that, Cow’s Foot aside, this was an awesome way to experience Afghanistan in the winter. Skiing was something that was very foreign but the snow and the mountains was a common factor that could bring people together as it had done in that tea house. I also thought Bamian could be the perfect place for skiing.
It has not always been smooth. A few elders in one or two villages are suspicious about the skiing fuss. They worry the young men will hurt themselves—preventing them from doing the hard farming work—or that skiing will be the thin end of the wedge and they'll get caught up in other foreign un-Islamic ways. This generally does not stop the young boys from hiking up the hills and skiing. “The only say it is bad because they don't know how to ski,” said one boy from Jawzari village.
All the trailheads start from the villages and we have a code of conduct to help ensure that skiers behave properly. The Aga Khan programme representatives have discussed the skiing idea with all the local villages. We pay our respects to the village leaders and maybe take a cup of tea. There are many ways in which thoughtless skiers can cause offence, generally to do with women. In a country where the majority of people are illiterate and there is very limited access to the media, in these isolated rural communities, rumour is often taken as fact. If someone tells a man that the foreigners took a photo of his wife and put it on display in Kabul he will probably believe it. So Rule Number One is—Don’t take pictures of the women. Ever.
Cultural sensitivity is key to the future of skiing in Afghanistan.
When guiding a group of snowboarders last winter we spent a good hour discussing with the headman of one village what we wanted to do in their valley. The snowboarders were professional and were heading to a steep area that had not been ridden, so the villagers were suspicious. It took a great deal of persuasion until he agreed and let us pass around his village.
As we walked around the village we were watched closely by the men on the rooftops, with no smiles or handshakes. We travelled far up the valley and soon the snowboarders were making jumps from the top of large cliffs. On the second attempt one of them failed to make his landing and crashed in a huge cloud of snow. Suddenly huge cheers rang out from the village below. All the village stood watching on the house rooftops. They liked all the action, but they liked the crashes best of all.
On the way back down there was still staring and silence but we knew the ice had been broken.
We went back to that area for three days and by the end we were inside drinking tea and joking with the local people.
The key to a successful trip is that the Afghan villagers have a positive experience as well as the visiting skiers.
Afghanistan has always presented a contrast of lifestyles. An abiding memory of my first visit back after years away was of an old man and a young boy herding sheep down an unmade road. With his turban and billowing shalwar-kameez—a long, loose shirt and trousers, the man looked almost Biblical. A closer inspection revealed that his son was wearing a Megadeath t-shirt (presumably a charitable donation). The road they were walking along had a traffic calming feature—a half buried tank caterpillar track to stop cars speeding through the village. Introducing skiing to a small valley in the Hindu Kush seems to build on such contrasts.
A typical night is spent in rooms heated by wood fire stoves called Bukharis. These are very efficient heaters. You fill them to the maximum before bedtime. It might be -25C outside but we would be sitting in our rooms in shorts and a t-shirt. As the night passes and the fire burns out the temperature plummets in the room and at dawn we'll be inside sleeping bags and the glass of water by the bed will have a layer of ice.
Breakfast could be eggs or pancakes. Where we stay, the cook was trained at a US agency guesthouse. He knows exactly what hungry Westerners like to eat. Recently married, he returned to Bamian from working in Helmand province. The wages are much lower in Bamian but it is safer. In Helmand he always had to carry his ID card to get into the compound. However, if the Taliban stopped him and found this ID card he would be killed.
On a very cold night the diesel will freeze in the vehicles used to take us to the mountains. We'll drink tea whilst a fire is built under the engine to defrost it, and perhaps watch the daily UN helicopter coming in to land at the Bamian military base, managed by the New Zealand army.
Once in the villages at the top of the valleys, when we start to skin up we'll be invited in for tea by the village elders. Depending on the weather we'll either accept or continue uphill to make the most of the snow. I'll remind people that they should always remove their shoes when entering a house, never speak directly to the women—and above all, no matter how serious their latest case of Kabul Belly, NEVER to fart in a room with their Afghan hosts. This is perhaps the greatest social faux pas of all.
Often we'll be joined for all or part of the day by the local youths on their home-made skis. Making light work of skinning up and paying little or no attention to our avalanche warnings. they just laugh – “Inshallah” – if God wills it
There is not much to do in the evenings. Alcohol is forbidden, but there is plenty of hearty traditional Afghan food and drink—kebabs, rice and hot drinks. With alcohol forbidden, we like to call this the Apres-Tea scene.
Skiing will not solve all the problems in Afghanistan. It won't solve the problems of Bamian but in a few small valleys in the Hindu Kush they are making a small positive impact to a handful of people and that is something worthwhile.
ORIGINALLY PUBISHED ON TETON GRAVITY RESEARCH
KAUSAR HUSSAIN
Kausar has travelled every inch of Pakistan and Afghanistan and has friends almost everywhere from the bustling bazaars of Kabul to sleepy, poppy growing villages in the Tribal Areas. When not leading tours and running Untamed Borders. Hussain works as a photographer and journalist. He is the chief reporter for "World Problems" magazine and also works freelance. For ten years he has worked with foreign correspondents allowing them access to restricted areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He also works with Prince as part of the "World Welfare Organisation", a Peshawar based NGO. He speaks 9 languages and for the last 5 years spends time teaching English to Afghan refugees based in the camps that surround Peshawar. He arranges ski trips to Bamian every year through http://www.untamedborders.com
Finding Myself in Morocco’s Hammam Rituals
Complete submersion in a world far different from your own can be overwhelming. But when met with a cup of mint tea, it can be a life-changing adventure.
Read More
More Freedom in Panama? Sure Feels That Way.
Disclaimer: The opinions in this article are not based upon the legal system of either the U.S or Panama, but rather my lifestyle experiences. So don’t get yourself arrested and blame it on me, chief.
“Are you ever coming back to the U.S?”
It’s a question I’ve been hearing for nearly two years.
At first, my answer had a built-in pause. “I don’t know…” I would mutter. “Maybe.”
These days, it’s shifted to a steady: “Why would I do that?”
The sentiment is further rooted during my annual visits to the U.S. It seems that Panama has spoiled me. With its advantageous atmosphere and empowering sense of freedom, I feel suffocated when I return “home.”
It’s the little things, as well as a few major shifts in mindset and lifestyle. There are things I do in Panama that I just can’t do in the states. At least- not without fighting an uphill battle.
The Little Things
The little things are the hardest to explain. When we fall in love, whether with a person or a country, it’s often thanks to the “little things” that we can barely pinpoint yet refuse to live without.
So, what are Panama’s little things? I’ll do my best to describe.
It’s the freedom to drive onto the beach to reach that faraway surf break, with no one to yell at you and (barely) any people to hit.
It’s the freedom to build a bonfire, pitch a tent, let your dog off the leash, or bring a flask to that same beach (or other public space) with no one to tell you off for it. The police drive by and wave- why would they care?“Hope you’ve got 4×4,” they say, “call us if you get stuck.”
It’s being able to walk into a store and have your smartphone unlocked, because you don’t want a 2-year contract, thank you very much. $15 a month, pay-as-you-go, sure beats that monthly $89 bill.
It’s affording a weekly manicure, because for $8, why the hell not? You’ll use that time to practice your Spanish, anyway- two services for the price of one.
It’s bringing your non-service dog on a public ferry, it’s riding a horse wherever the hell you want, because who are you to tell me I can’t?
Sure, buy a freshly-killed chicken from the farmer two houses down. Sell kabobs by the side of the road. Permit? Bah. The FDA won’t bother you.
The U.S is suffocating, with its pussyfooting philosophy. No dogs allowed. No beers on the beach. No sneaking snacks in the theater, and absolutely no monkey bars on the playground. Don’t you dare start that bonfire. And you! You’re trespassing. Get out of this…uh….forest. You’re up to no good.
Land of the free. Home of the brave.
Except everyone is terrified of lawsuits to the point that the country is idiot-padded and accident-proof.
Nevermind the fact that the 9 out of 10 casualty-free scenarios are stripped away from us. Nevermind the concept of, oh, I don’t know, doing what you want so long as you’re not hurting anybody else.
Life Changers
Little freedoms are nice. It’s only when combined with life-changers that a fun place to visit becomes a better place to live.
Living in Panama has enabled me to have a conscious control over my career, the direction it goes, and the rate at which it progresses. I’m not hungrily grabbing at whatever opportunity comes my way. With so many opportunities, I get to pick and choose.
I needn’t operate at the mercy of the economy, the market, and all its fluctuations. I operate according to me.
At 23, I’m in the initial stretch of my freelance career- but you wouldn’t know it by my portfolio. I spearhead projects that most people can’t touch before years of climbing the corporate ladder. The U.S is saturated with bureaucratic bullshit. Bide your time, pay your dues, wait for that promotion, your moment will come.
In Panama, you opt for the grab-what-you-want-by-the-cajones path instead.
The economy has grown dizzyingly fast. Businesses are racing to keep up, to expand, to offer more, make more, and maximize on this historical period. They don’t care how many notches are on your belt. They care that you’re able to grab the reins, bring something new to the table, and produce results.
I’m sure some would say the same about the States- and I don’t doubt them. But I also don’t envy freelancers or job seekers in the U.S- particularly those who are still earning their stripes, or competing against more people for less openings. Fighting to burst their head through a sea of contenders, just to grab the attention of some company who’s probably not hiring, anyway.
My life in Panama has afforded me a level of autonomy, both personally and professionally, that I’ve never had in the States. My no-handcuff, high-profit lifestyle has become my definition of freedom- and it’s given me little reason to ever look back.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON PERMANENTLY PANAMA
Alice Beth
Alice Beth arrived in Panama in 2012 with a few hundred dollars and a backpack stuffed with books and red lipstick. She gradually turned into an adult against her will and is now a freelance marketing strategist and founder of the ever-cheeky PermanentlyPanama.com. She's obsessed with dogs, productivity, and surfing- even though she's not very good at it.
My Unconventional Cambodian Christmas
Megan participated in the 2013 PEPY Ride by PEPY Tours. She and her group biked through Cambodia, from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, and this her story.
The route
Christmas for me normally consists of the following things: flying home to good old England, walking through the door, receiving a suffocating hug from my parents (suffocating is, of course, meant in the most affectionate way possible) and then eating. The eating generally doesn’t ever stop, just ebbs and flows like the tide. So when Christmas 2013 rolled around and I found myself facing a 1000km bike ride across Cambodia — and a whole lot of rice — needless to say I was ever so slightly nervous.
Maybe you’re wondering what on earth drove me to forego the usual food-based festivities in favor of risking a month of inevitable, interminable muscle pain. The honest answer is adventure. I wanted to see something new. To smell something new. To taste something new. But when I signed up for the PEPY Ride XI, I never imagined that, above all of the things I just mentioned, I would feel something new. And that something, whatever it was, has more or less changed the way I look at the world and all of the funny, strange, sad, glorious, confusing and downright brilliant things in it.
Megan's group in action
A 1000km bike ride is in itself one such downright brilliant thing; getting up before the crack of dawn, hopping on the bike and watching the world wake up is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s like looking at hundreds of different photos for less than a second at a time-the split second you whizz past someone, you get this teeny, tiny snapshot of their life and it’s pretty amazing. Sometimes it’d be a gaggle of kids messing around on the way to school, sometimes an older chap watching us with great bemusement as we blitzed past him, waving and grinning like lunatics, or maybe a group of men herding ducks into a roadside stream (yes, you read that right, duck herding).
Whoever it was, one thing is for sure: Cambodians like to say hello to people on bikes. Every day, and I really mean every day, as we were cycling merrily along, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and a couple of kids would suddenly come racing out of thin air and ambush us, screaming 'hellohellohellohellohellohello.' This would start a kind of chain reaction and the next half hour would pass in a frenzy of shouting and waving, which is quite dangerous on a road full of potholes.
But potholes aside, traveling through a country by bike is a very unique experience. Of course, there were times when I debated whether or not it was possible for just my rear end to die, independently from the rest of my body, such was the level of numbness, but there is really no comparison to the feeling of freedom you get from cycling. We saw corners of Cambodia that are more than a world away from our normal lives, corners where the tourist buses or the hoards of backpackers that come with them can’t get to.. Nothing against backpackers, but sometimes it’s nice to escape the masses.
Megan's group
Ok, a three week bike ride is indeed a rather incredible feat, but was it really a life-changing experience? I can almost smell your scepticism! The truth is, it really was. Not in the “I’m going to sell all my worldly possessions and wander the world, touching the lives of everyone I meet” kind of way, it was quieter than that. It wasn’t so aggressively do-goody. It just kind of made me want to smile more. I don’t know about other people, but I am definitely guilty of letting the little things stress me out too much in my so-called normal life.
Sunrise in Angkor
Spending three weeks in one of the poorest nations in South East Asia, with its unfathomably devastating recent history, certainly shook me up and made me realise that I have it pretty good. All the daft little problems which I worry about suddenly weren’t problems anymore. What’s the use in using all that energy on something that, in all likeliness, won’t change, no matter how much you kick and scream and tear your hair out? Cambodia is a country on the mend, or at least that’s the impression I had, and sometimes it was all too easy to forget that behind the smiles, many people have seen more ugliness and pain than you or I could ever imagine. Yet, despite the horrors this country has lived through, it seems to radiate an energy and spirit like no other place I’ve ever visited.
I think it’s easy to become disillusioned with the world: You watch the news and you feel a bit hopeless because really, how on earth can you help? To be honest, I don’t know the answer to that question. But Cambodia gave me hope for, well, hope. I know that sounds horrendously schmaltzy, but I can’t describe it in any other way. After seeing all these incredibly cool and inspiring projects, only someone with a heart of stone could refuse to be touched by the optimism. There’s always going to be good and bad in the world, for sure, but now my eyes and heart are more open to the good stuff.
Find out more about how you can participate in a PEPY Ride here!
RELATED CONTENT:
PODCAST: Combatting Orphanage Tourism in Vietnam and Cambodia with Leigh Matthews
Megan Skinner
Meg is earning her keep as a freelance English teacher, translator and interpreter in the tropical climes of Northern Germany. As exciting as the world of patent translations is, her mind often wanders to adventures in more exotic locations. Or food. Or both.
TRIP REVIEW: Surfing South Africa to Help Out
The downfall of many volunteer organizations is cost. All too often there will be a $1000+ price tag on a trip that lasts only a week or two, not included airfare. This isn’t news, so it should come as no surprise that there are people out there who are working to fix this. One of these people is Daniel Radcliffe (no, not the actor). After collecting a Masters of Business, Daniel decided that it was time to give back to the world. He began to research volunteer trips. He too ran into this roadblock, but unlike someone like me who will simple notice the problem and then write about it, Daniel decided to do something. International Volunteer HQ was founded upon his return to New Zealand in 2007. “IVHQ was born with the goal of providing safe, affordable and high quality placements in areas where there is a real need for volunteers.” One of these places is South Africa.
It’s easy to read a statistic or to watch a documentary and think that we understand. Sure, we have problems here in the United States, there’s inequality and poverty everywhere, but, honestly, we cannot imagine what some citizens of the world live through. In South Africa the average life expectancy of a white South African is 71 years. The average life expectancy for the black population is 48 years. In 2005 it was estimated that 31% of the female population was infected with HIV, most of them black. There are 1,200,000 orphans. These are numbers and statistics, I could throw them onto a graph and you would see the vast differences, but you still wouldn’t know, you would still be using your imagination. Over there, it’s a reality. South Africa needs help and, if you feel so inclined, you can give it.
IVHQ sends volunteers to South Africa on the first and third Monday of each month. They normally arrive in groups of twenty to fifty people and the assist the community in an astounding variety of ways. Participants can involve themselves in a teaching project, in childcare, computer training, sports development and, an organization after my own heart, a surf outreach program.
Maybe you’re wondering what good a surf outreach program would do for children when they could be receiving extra medical attention or extra food and shelter. In the words of Ellen Varoy, Marketing and Media Coordinator for IVHQ, “The Surf Outreach program is designed to provide these children with an after school activity, keeping them off the streets of Cape Town and placing them in a safe and encouraging environment. Through the program, these children have the opportunity to learn new skills, take up new challenges, gain confidence and interact with our international volunteers, who the children look up to as role models.” It’s not about whether or not these kids learn to surf. It’s about showing them that there are people who care. It’s about being a ray of light on an otherwise bleak horizon. As a surfer would say, it’s about sharing the stoke. Would these children benefit more from help that focused on their health and nourishment? On the spreadsheet, probably, but where would they go after that? I say give them role models, give them hope and teach them that they can overcome. That, in my opinion, will last much longer than a loaf of bread.
The cost of IVHQ trips is one of the things that makes this organization so great. Prospective volunteers for the surf outreach program only have to pay $320 for one week. Longer periods of time require more money, being capped off at six months for $4580. This does not included airfare or visas or spending money. Also, if you want to participate in the surf outreach program you must know how to swim. I just thought I would point that out. If you are interested in any of the other programs offered for South Africa, you can find more information here.
IVHQ is a fantastic option for people who want to volunteer for an affordable price. A full range of trips can be found at their website, http://www.volunteerhq.org/. As usual, if you were interested in the trip, but don’t think it’s for you, check back with Mission.tv next week for the next article in our series of trip reviews.
For testimonials by volunteers who completed the surf outreach program, check out: Testimonials
To check out a video from the trip click here.
LEARN MORE ABOUT IVHQ
KINO CROOKE spent the last three years juggling school and travel. He most recently spent the last two months traveling across Spain before moving to New York to work with CATALYST.
Who Is Anonymous Street Artist and Parisian, JR?
Not much is known about the semi-anonymous artist who calls himself "JR." We know that he is young — flirting with age 30 — French, and presumably has a name involving the letters "JR."
28 Millimètres, Face 2 Face, Separation wall, security fence, Israeli side, Abu Dis, Jerusalem, 2007
However, little else is known about the enigmatic past of the artist who has emerged on the world stage as the most lauded street artist since Banksy. Who Is Anonymous Street Artist and Parisian, JR?
When people hear the words "street art," they immediately picture graffiti: spray-painted images, slogans, or "tags," illegally marked onto the side of derelict urban buildings. This idea of street art must be abandoned when examining the oeuvre of JR. While it is true that JR began as a traditional street artist, using aerosol spray cans to paint on buildings around his native Paris, his artwork and his vision drastically changed when he discovered a camera that had been lost on the Paris metro. He began to document his artistic escapades and those of his friends, and he eventually abandoned traditional graffiti for something more easily duplicable: photocopies of the pictures themselves. Thus began the principle act of JR's craft, the pasting of large copies of his photographs on the sides of buildings. As with most street art, this started out as an illegal act, and one that mainly took place on the sides of run-down urban structures.
28 Millimeters, Portrait of a Generation, Hold-up, Ladj Ly by JR, Les Bosquets, Montfermeil, 2004
But then something happened: JR's art started to capture things that were extremely relevant to the general public, and capture them in extraordinary ways. His exhibit, Portraits of a Generation spanned the 2006 youth protests and riots, a turbulent period in recent French history. It would've been easy for JR to capture scenes of burning cars, looted stores, or angry teenagers holding weapons — the essential stock photographs of a small-scale revolution, material that would surely gain him some acclaim and media attention. But JR did the opposite: in a time where there was rhetoric about the pervasive lines drawn by race and class in modern French society, JR chose to challenge the paradigms and media representations of the rioting youth. He visited friends in housing projects and captured them in a way the media had not. He captured, perhaps, what the media chose not to: black French youth making funny faces, teenagers of Middle Eastern origin crossing their eyes at the camera, images that were unexpected, light-hearted, honest and above all else, human.
28 Millimeters, Portrait of a Generation, Pasting of Ladj Ly by JR, Montfermeil, Les Bosquets, 2004
JR blew up the photos to huge formats, and pasted them on the walls of the most bourgeois areas of Paris. It was all very illegal… at first. But there was something unmistakably powerful about JR's art: these were giant images of individuals previously viewed to be dangerous thugs, but here they were as kids, fooling around, unthreatening. JR's images worked to diminish the tension inherent in interactions between Parisians in the mainstream and in the margins. And then something happened: His images were wrapped around the buildings of the Paris City Hall. This made JR's street art "official," although he would have continued even if it hadn't.
28 Millimètres, Women Are Heroes, Action in Favela Morro da Providencia, Favela by day, Rio de Janeiro, 2008
From Paris, JR began to work on the largest canvas on earth: the world itself. His work has taken him all around the globe, from his famous Face 2 Face exhibition where he posted pictures of Palestinians and Israelis face to face in a number of Palestinian and Israeli cities and on the Wall itself, to the most dangerous favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, or the space above the High Line in New York City. His work captures the faces of the world's marginalized groups and populations: women, the extremely poor, the indigenous. He takes those who are often off the radar and makes them a large and profound part of the everyday experience of cities. His art does more than turns heads, it changes perceptions.
JR’s work has won wide international acclaim, even winning him the 2011 TED Prize. At first, he was put off at the notion that he was supposed to save the world, JR sighed when the mandate was clarified: change the world, not save the world. “Oh, alright,” he said. “That’s cool.” In a TED Talk later in 2011, he continued by saying, “Art is not supposed to change the world, to change practical things, but to change perceptions. Art can change the way we see the world.” And his art really has.
Calah Singleton
Calah recently graduated from Yale, where she majored in Political Science. Her interests include urban studies, international development, and learning new languages.