Editor’s note: In 1987, as protests against the Chilean dictatorship intensified, the author, then a graduate student in Chile, compared her views on poverty with those of her boyfriend Victor, a member of the opposition.

Victor was very excited about the pope’s visit. He held high hopes for the Catholic Church, which had been a vocal critic of the Pinochet regime and had reached out to poor communities like his, El Guanaco. The only institution to do so, the Church in Chile publicly linked Pinochet’s repressive regime with the stark contrasts of poor and wealthy families.

Before Pope John Paul II arrived, he made similar conclusions and announced them to journalists while on his chartered Vatican plane flying him from Montevideo to Santiago. In a moment of candor, he called the Pinochet regime a dictatorship and framed the pastoral mission of the Church as one that should fight for human rights.

“Some would want to separate us from this mission,” he said. “These people would want to tell us, ‘Stay in the sacristy, do nothing else.’ They say it is politics, but it is not politics.”

For Victor, other poor Chileans, and the opposition, the pope’s mere presence on Chilean soil could be nothing less than political. For conservatives, like my friends the Donosos, the pope’s visit was purely a sacred one. The pope had a fine line to walk, holding fast to a call for human rights, while also keeping his message spiritual, pastoral.

Official news sources did not carry the pope’s pre-landing comments, only the opposition paper, La Epoca, did, so a large majority was unaware of how strident the pope’s impromptu remarks had been. Yet expectations ran high, including Victor’s. He saw the pope as a beacon of social justice who would reprimand Pinochet and hence trigger the dictator’s demise. Everyone held his breath, waiting to see which side of the line the pope would walk on.

An Electrifying Arrival

The first day of the pope’s visit, our small group –Victor, his sister Elena, Rodrigo and me — waited with the rest of Santiago. Thousands of people lined the streets, expecting his Eminence, and suddenly he appeared.

The pope came through in his Popemobile, a vehicle with a clear, bulletproof casing that allowed him to stand and wave. I had my camera at the ready.

The crowd went mad as if welcoming a rock star.

I wasn’t Catholic, but the electricity of the moment buoyed me as if I too had a stake in Chile. I saw anticipation rise in Victor, the sort that lives in the belly of a child waiting for Christmas morning. He smiled and waved as el papa cruised by. This fleeting glance of the beacon of justice was Victor’s hope.

The next day the pope addressed Chile’s poor. The city practically shut down, major thoroughfares blocked to all vehicle traffic. We started the journey in the cool pre-dawn hours, walking deserted streets that slowly awoke. Our group grew as we made one stop after another to pick up friends. First we were the four from the previous day. Then we were six, then 10. We walked south for a long time. My legs began to tire, but I wasn’t about to complain.

The closer we got to the site, the thicker the crowds became. We arrived at La Bandera, another poor campamento on the outskirts of the city. The sun rose higher into the sky and we began to feel the warmth of the day. The stage and podium were set for the pope, and the Andes mountain range - La Cordillera - stood resplendent and regal in the background. I could barely breathe.

Finally, the pope took the stage. Applause roared as red, white, and blue Chilean flags waved back and forth. Banners and yellow and white Vatican flags fluttered in the breeze as the people declared their love of the pope. The crowd went on for miles in every direction.

Before the pope spoke, a few of Chile’s poor testified to their circumstances: No health care, no work, poor schools for their children, political repression. As each speaker finished, the pope stood to embrace and kiss him or her.

Then he began his address. Turning to the speakers on the stage, he told them how their comments deeply moved him. He turned to the expansive crowd, raised his arms to the sky as if asking God for alms and began to speak.

He urged Chilean society to have more compassion and respect for the poor and their plight. He praised the Church’s work to organize and help sustain communities. He reminded the poor that material desires were not the answer to spiritual want. He deftly alluded to political repression, but never once directly called Chile a dictatorship nor did he call for Pinochet’s removal.

Yet, this was what Victor and his friends had been waiting for. Not once while on Chilean soil did the pope strike the bold notes intoned on the Vatican flight.

And Disappointment

For Victor, the rally at La Bandera fell short. He wanted, needed a direct denouncement of Pinochet — he expected political action. What he and his friends got instead was a speech full of spiritual encouragement.

I thought the pope’s words were moving, so much so that I considered a conversion from Presbyterianism to Catholicism. I couldn’t understand why Victor and his friends would expect the highest priest of the Catholic Church to take political action. He’s the pope, not the U.S. Secretary of State. While I had vague notions of the Chilean Catholic Church’s support of the poor, at that moment I did not know that the Catholic Church in Chile had taken an active opposition to the regime, calling for a return to democracy and publicly denouncing political repression and the regime’s neglect of the poor.

Because the Church had struck a political posture, it made sense for Victor and his crew to expect the same from the pope. But Juan Pablo II wanted to keep the Church’s message spiritual, and he tugged on the cassocks of Chile’s bishops and priests, who had veered too far into the political wetlands.

Not knowing what I didn’t know, I hinted at my good feelings about the speech, but knew I couldn’t say much. I wasn’t Catholic. I wasn’t Chilean. And I wasn’t poor, certainly not as poor as Victor and his friends.

Poverty as a Social Problem

“Poverty is a political problem,” Victor told me one day.

We were at St. Lucia [Park] one evening. I had finished with school for the day and he with work. The pope was long gone and the tingling thrill of his visit had dissipated. Victor and I often met in the park. It was the most central place for us to meet, more so than El Guanaco or La Reina, where I lived with the Donoso family. We walked holding hands then sat to continue talking.

I pulled knitting from my bag, a hobby I had resurrected while in Chile, to work on a sweater for Victor to keep him warm in his damp, cold lean-to. It was common and more proper for young lovers to meet in the park rather than someone’s home. In the park they could kiss without the watchful eyes of parents or teasing tongues of siblings. If they were unmarried, couples’ time in the park was precious. Pairs of lovers dotted various benches. Love was contagious. Even married couples with their families cooed at each other as their kids played.

Victor and I sat near a column that once supported an unknown structure.

?I think poverty is more of a social problem,” I responded. In my mind, people decided that one or two groups were less worthy and so stacked the deck against them — consciously or not– and kept them from opportunities that would allow them to rise out of poverty.

My conclusions were not based on tested economic or sociological theories, but I did feel like I had a handle on the reality of marginalization. As an African American, I saw both the visible and hidden hands of injustice wielding power and thwarting opportunities in the U.S. Sometimes that power was political, but often it was structurally embedded in society.

Growing up in the Chicago area, discrimination was not new to me. While my personal experiences with prejudice were limited, I knew intimately the stories of family members and family friends. Even when we lived in the suburbs, I saw class and racial inequality play out daily.

At my suburban high school just south of Chicago, most black kids were tracked in the lower level classes. Those few blacks who were in the upper-level classes tended to come from the right side of the tracks, in this case that track was a four-lane road called Western Avenue, cutting the middle-class suburb Park Forest off from the impoverished Chicago Heights neighborhood called Beacon Hill. I sat in my honors English and high-level math with one other African American, a brother who happened to come from Beacon Hill — that one exception to the rule.

I always wondered if I really belonged in those courses. I did well enough, but I knew I wasn’t any smarter than my black peers. But tracking made one believe they were better than those placed below them, better than the folks from Beacon Hill, that suburban ghetto across the border. Such segregation afforded the illusion of superiority and hid more structural reasons — poor education prior to high school, poorly-distributed resources — behind the poor performance of my black classmates.

When our family took outings to visit friends on the south side of the city, I was always struck by the dreariness and desolation of the streets. I would often feel like our family was somehow lucky to have escaped such fate. I knew these people well and knew that they worked as hard as any of us. But I also knew they were limited by their circumstances. Poor schools. Low wages. Illness. These were social problems, whose solution could be political, but rarely ever was.

In fact, politics seemed to make these problems worse, because poor and poor blacks particularly were used as wedge issues, and they carried little political leverage. Our family was never really political, and we held little faith that politics could do anything for us. My own political awakening happened when I left home to go to college. There, I witnessed the Carter years of conservation and compassion give way to Reagan-sparked debates of welfare queens and racial preferences. There my political compass made a hard left.

On a political level and many others I understood Victor and his disconsolation, his yearning for a solution to his personal circumstances and that of his family’s.

But for me, this fight was ideological, academic, less immediate. No matter how much I empathized and tried to place myself in his shoes, I did not have to go home to a dark shack with no windows or running water. I was a visitor, a mere guest to poverty, never having to eat, drink and sleep with the facts of being poor.

Venise Wagner is an associate professor of journalism at San Francisco State University. This is an excerpt from her new memoir, “Love in the Time of Pinochet.”

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But now there’s a growing sense among hip-hop heads that New York, and Brooklyn in particular, is passé.

Last year, Sha Stimuli, a 33-year-old Brooklyn rapper, packed up and moved to Atlanta. He wanted to widen his audience, and the South beckoned.

He’s not the only one moving on.

“In the last decade, New York has been left behind,” said Sha Stimuli. Although being a Brooklyn rapper may have helped his career 10 years ago, today he sees it more as a disadvantage.

“Me saying I’m from Brooklyn doesn’t actually help, because there is no novelty there,” he said. “People got bored of Brooklyn and New York.”

Hip-hop may have first emerged from the Bronx in the late 1970s, but for a generation, Brooklyn has been known as the genre’s incubator. Brooklyn withstood the arrival of a West Coast rival, and a bloody battle that led to the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.

Now Atlanta and New Orleans have muscled in, with a southern hip-hop sound more focused on the beat than on the political message that made the New Yorkers famous. The names linked with Brooklyn hip-hop are still the same — Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Busta Rythmes, M.O.P — bolstering the argument the scene has moved on.

Hip Hop Flies South

Wes Jackson, president of Brooklyn Bodega and executive director of The Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival, believes Brooklyn is still full of talent. But some people, he said, mistakenly thought being “made in Brooklyn” was enough.

“I think a lot of artists in Brooklyn are resting on their laurels a little too much,” he said. “Some New York artists forgot that you still have to put in work. Just ’cause you live off the A train, it don’t mean nothing.”

New York hip-hop never disappeared, he argued. Other places have just caught up.

“I think it’s still happening in Brooklyn as much as anywhere else, there is a ton of quality hip-hop artists here. The problem is now there are quality artists everywhere.”

Artists like Sha Stimuli who have moved away say it’s hard to start a career in New York now, because local media are less than supportive.

“The radio stars in New York aren’t from New York,” he said. “If you go to a club, the hottest records aren’t from New York.”

New York rapper Donny Goines left, too.

“Radios don’t play New York rappers,” he said, “and the bosses are going outside to get their talent.”

Sha Stimuli still believes radio DJs have the power to make a rapper’s career. “Radio DJs can change things,” he said. “They can decide to play New York artists and show that New York is still a relevant force.”

But blaming the lack of support and airtime, others say, is often used as an excuse.

“Mainstream radio, media and the major blogs have a tendency to look down or not support some of the artists from New York, that’s true,” said Manny Faces, founder and editor-in-chief of Birthplace Magazine, an online publication that focuses on New York hip-hop. “But let me also say that some of the artists use that as an escape, as a cop-out. If you’re not making it but you’re from New York, is it because radio and media doesn’t support you? That may be part of it, but maybe it’s also because it’s not that appealing for the rest of the country.”

What Makes You Hot is That You Are

Corey Smyth, who grew up in Harlem and is now a key figure in New York’s hip-hop world, believes location is playing a decreasing role in hip-hop success. Smyth, founder of Blacksmith Management, Blacksmith Music Corp. and Blacksmith Corp., among other companies, has has worked with De La Soul, Mos Def and Talib Kweli. He says being a New York rapper is no longer sufficient to attract record labels.

“An area doesn’t make you bankable,” he said. “Being from L.A, New York, Chicago, none of that makes you hot. What makes you hot is that you are. And the way you perceive your surroundings and the way you’re able to regurgitate that back into an art form. That’s what makes you hot. You could be from anywhere.”

One of the first southern hip-hop acts to attract attention was Outkast. “They were hot — for southern rappers,” said Sha Stimuli. “That was the way we were trained to think. When they came out, we didn’t dissect them as people who could take the crown.”

A decade later, southern hip-hop is topping the charts, with artists like Lil’ Wayne, Rick Ross and Young Jeezy.

“It’s been 10 years that southern rappers are spitting fire, it’s not a novelty anymore,” Sha Stimuli said. “But it has never penetrated New York the way it has now.”

The Atlanta Challenge

Rappers are not the only artists moving to Atlanta; the city has become a hotspot for black entertainment. And there is a wider migration movement that has occurred in the last 10 years. From 2000 to 2010, according to a study by the Brookings Institution based on the 2010 Census, three quarters of the nation’s black population gain occurred in the South, while the black population saw a drop in northern metropolitan areas. Where even 10 years ago blacks were migrating to the North, there are moving back down to the South. With them, the entertainment industry is flourishing in the big cities Dallas or Houston, and especially Atlanta.

Rapper Donny Goines didn’t rush into his decision of moving to Atlanta. He wanted to stay in New York.

“I tried to be my hometown hero,” he said, “but I felt limited because overall, a lot of other artists are bitter and jealous of each other, they’re not working together.” After trying to be a rapper in New York, he gave up.

“It became redundant and an exercise of futility,” he says, “I left to become strong and represent my city. I’m still rapping like a New Yorker.”

“This is the best career move I’ve made,” he said. Eventually, he plans to return to his hometown. He wants to make enough money to be able to donate half of his earnings to the charity he supports, as well as live in comfort, hopefully in a nice artist’s loft back in New York. He hopes to change the image he believes New Yorker rappers have, of not being profitable. “There is a negative connotation in being a New York hip-hop artist,” he said. “I want to prove people wrong.”

Even with the rise of southern hip-hop, New York is still a force, in good measure because of its history. In 2010, Joshua Atesh Litle directed the documentary The Furious Force of Rhymes, traveling to meet hip-hop artists around the world.

“New York City was the complete inspiration,” he said. “Some of the major artists who inspired these artists were Wu Tang Clan, Mob Deep, Jay-Z and Public Enemy. All from New York.

Hannah Olivennes is a journalist in New York. This story was adapted from The Brooklyn Ink, a project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

During World War II, my late father was a sailor stationed on Long Island near New York City.  Every weekend, he’d travel to the city and book a room at the New Yorker Hotel.

Once seated in one of the New Yorker’s four restaurants, he would have been handed a menu. Many had dazzling artist-created covers. These stunning works of dining art were unusual in their vivid use of color and artful designs. Whether depicting brightly-hued pavilions at the 1939 World’s Fair or stirring battle scenes, the menus evoked the glamour and excitement of New York in the ’30s and ’40s.

Almost certainly the brainchild of the New Yorker’s first president, Ralph Hitz, the beautiful menus were not an accident, Hitz’s granddaughter, Suzanne Creps, told me. “He was extraordinarily into detail.”

They made a “visual statement,” that the New Yorker was “beating with the pulse of the city,” said William Grimes, author of Appetite City, a history of New York’s restaurants.

Diners were treated to depictions of the three baseball teams New York had back then, and of the World’s Fair pavilions, dedicated to aviation, gas and other themes. After World War II broke out, menus depicting wartime themes appeared, like a series that paid homage to the rugged battlefield vehicle, the Jeep.

I stumbled upon the menus after meeting Joe Kinney, the New Yorker’s chief engineer and informal archivist. His basement office is stuffed with 1,500 hotel artifacts, some dating from the hotel’s opening in the 1930s.

Kinney told me that the Terrace Room nightclub was “by far the most famous” eatery at the hotel. Celebrities like Jean Harlow and Babe Ruth used to dine there, and to dance to the strains of the Benny Goodman or Tommy Dorsey bands. Guests also watched elaborate ice shows on a retractable 9-ton rink.

Meanwhile, in the enormous kitchen, over 100 chefs would prepare as many as 10,000 meals a year, sourcing local ingredients like cherry stone clams and Cornell University College of Agriculture-bred eggs.

In fact, the New Yorker menus illustrate a common hotel restaurant formula of the day: American standards with the barest whiff of French sophistication. A hotel brochure touts Alsatian goose liver, meant to render the cuisine, heavy on items like ham hash with poached eggs, “a teeny French,” as New York City food author Arthur Schwartz put it.

Today, the New Yorker is owned by the Unification Church. The kitchen’s handful of cooks caters strictly to business events.

“It’s a different world,” sighed Executive Chef Paul Valin.

Journalist Laura B. Weiss is the author of Ice Cream: A Global History. She blogs at Food and Things.

It?s 3 p.m. on a sunny and peaceful Sunday. A family sits at the table, enjoying a pleasant after-lunch conversation outdoors. A few yards away, the grill emanates its last puffs of smoke.

It?s a moment of intense and simple pleasure: sharing conversation, jokes and a meal with loved ones.

Suddenly, a ruckus revolutionizes the easy atmosphere. Why?  In Argentina, people are used to giving a big round of applause to the barbecuer, the asador.

It?s said that Argentines are so conceited, that when they see a lightning, they think God is photographing them. Is that why Argentine barbecue mavens are so vain that they need to be cheered like artists?

The Art of Asado

But few Argentine traditions are as deeply rooted as the ritual of meeting to eat good barbecue. Asado is a whole declaration of principles of our national being. Like other national passions — tango, good wines and soccer — barbecue is an exquisite ceremony, where collective legends and personal techniques intermingle.

An asado can be organized for practically any occasion. Nowadays, asado is also cool. Many young couples prefer to substitute lighthearted outdoor barbecues for solemn wedding menus. The smoke of the embers and the asado aroma seem to be an ideal backdrop for swearing eternal love.

Barbecue also reigns at the tables of power.

At the Quinta de Olivos, the presidential residence near Buenos Aires, we can find a generous grill, always ready to be fired up for a power lunch.

Many Argentine presidents have turned asado into the national menu, for discussing public policy with their ministers, solving differences with their political foes, or receiving foreign visitors. The late Argentine president Néstor Kirchner once presented U.S. president George W. Bush with a lamb from Patagonia (the Kirchner family comes from that region, where roast lamb is a delicacy).

The relationship between asado and Argentine cultural identity is also reflected our language.

If we?re fully committed to a project, we?ll say we?ve ?put all the meat on the grill.? Journalists call an article ready for publication parrillero — grilled and ready to eat.

Roberto Pettinato, a David Letterman-like local showman, hosted a TV talk show called ?A Round of Applause for the Asador.?  The whole thing revolved around a barbecue lunch.

Asado is not a product of planned or methodical application of fire, but of the unhurried and magical action of the embers. The great secret of asado is the slow, ceremonial way of cooking the food.

It requires patience. That?s why the cook’s skills are tantamount to those of a tribal sorcerer.

He zealously preserves his secrets. When he offers the first chunk of grilled meat to another man, we should not interpret this as an act of impoliteness toward the ladies present.

Rather, this is one sorcerer?s challenge to another. If the recipient celebrates the morsel, the asador wins.

A close friend of mine who is a sociologist often says that taming the fire to make barbecue offers the male a re-encounter with his mythic essence, when he had to risk his physical integrity to get food. Sylvia - his wife, and a sociologist too- replies that the fire for asado is the pillar of contemporary marriage. ?When we women learn how to make a good fire,? she jokes, ?we will no longer need any husbands.?

If You Are Invited

There are many reasons to come to Argentina. Perhaps you?ve already heard about our vast geography, our incredible ice landscapes, our endless Atlantic beaches, or our mysterious valleys and mountains. Gourmets will also find vast gastronomic choice on offer in the streets, including authentic Argentine barbecue.

But the real trip to the heart of this ritual is a visit to an Argentine home, to sit at the table with a local host.

Don’t think this is unlikely. Argentines adore inviting visitors to learn about the delicacies of their tables. A casual interlocutor you meet at a bar, or in tango class, might well invite you home to savor a barbecue.

If you are willing to embrace the adventure, remember the protocol: the guests are in charge of bringing the wine. And when it?s over, you, the guest, should be the one to call for the signal of appreciation: ?Un aplauso para el asador!?

An Asado of your Own

The authentic Argentine barbecue is characterized by the great variety of meats, each requiring a different cooking time. The largest cuts may take more than two hours to reach perfection.

An asador generally prefers to make the fire with quebracho, a South American hardwood tree, or carob wood.

You can try both typically Argentine meat cuts, or offal.  Since offal cooks fastest, it is served first.  The most typical parts are chinchulines (entrails), mollejas (sweetbread) and morcillas (blood sausage). But the most popular cut, and the one I especially recommend, is chorizo. This is a fresh sausage containing a blend of ground pork chunk of meat with spices. It’s derived from traditional Spanish and Italian cold cuts.

Chorizo should be rinsed in water for at least two hours.  Prick it before placing it on the grill, to allow the grease to drain. Brown it on the outside, over a strong fire, then allow it to cook slowly, over a very light fire, until it is dry.

Some prefer to cut the sausage in two, opening it in the middle, and cooking it inside, too. You can eat this as a sandwich, on bread also heated on the grill.

Entrails and sweetbread should also be carefully washed and soaked, then grilled until they are intensely browned.

Blood sausages should be neither soaked nor pricked. Simply heat them over a weak fire, as this sausage comes pre-cooked.

Cook entrails over a light fire. They?re delicious dressed with lemon.

Asado de Tira (Rib Strip)

The most classic cut is asado de tira, or rib strip, from the cow?s rib cage. It?s a voluminous, delicious meat that cooks quickly.

Placed the strips facing downward on a very hot grill, so the bones get roasted first. Turn after about 15 minutes. The wider the cut, the more juicy and tender after roasting.

A Fight About Salt

You?ve probably heard of Argentine soccer idol Diego Armando Maradona. And you probably know that soccer is our country?s greatest sport.

But you may not know about our other national sport: philosophical arguing. Any issue, insignificant or essential, can draw two Argentines into hours of passionate argument. They may argue, for example, about the role of salt in a barbecue.

Some of our best chefs point out that salting the meat before placing it on the grill is the best way to preserve the juice, since the salt forms a soft layer that keeps the meat slightly crunchy outside, and tender inside.

Others believe the salt absorbs the juice, and therefore turns the meat very dry.

May each reader hew to his own view.

Elizabeth Levy Sad is a writer based in Buenos Aires. Translated from the Spanish by Daniel Epstein.

What instantly captures the hearts of those brave enough to venture into the Venezuelan National Reserve in the Andes mountains is the untamed beauty of the vegetation, the crystal waters of the rivers and the sumptuous cascades. Yet scraping just below the surface of this idyllic scenario are the harrowing stories of the Wayúu, an indigenous community fighting to exist.

After a five hour journey from the oil city of Maracaibo, and a two-hour ride over a nonexistent road in a 1960’s Jeep with a broken radiator, we finally arrive at the village of Wayuuma’na. Professor Lusbi Portillo and I are met by Mama Rosario, the matriarch of the village, or El Padrino, as her sons Pedro and Diego call her. Though she has just two sons, everyone calls her mama, as she organizes daily life in the village, and in particular is responsible for feeding the community. The professor inquires after her sons.

“They are at the council, but they will be back shortly. They know that today there is an assembly,” she says.

After drinking a glass of chirriche, a traditional Wayúu drink made of mango and rice, Professor Portillo suggests we rest, as we have a long day ahead of us. Mama Rosario lends me a hammock, and helps me to hook it up in the shack where visitors stay. My nap doesn’t last long, as I am abruptly woken up by Domingo, a kid living nearby.

“Are you one of teachers of the new school?” he asks with excitement.

“No I am just visiting.”

“Well, whatever you have come to see, you have to see the Socuy!”

The Socuy River carries 60% of drinkable water to the region. For peasants and indigenous groups living here in the Sierra de Perija, it’s a synonym for life.

Domingo spots a black rock in the distance. He takes it and passes it on to me, revealing its crumbly consistency.

“What is it?” I ask.

“It’s coal!” he exclaims. “You see, it’s for this rock that the whites hate us. They want to take away our homes and everything we’ve built.”

He sighs. “I just wish there was no coal here.”

Despite his 11 years of age and rudimentary Spanish, Domingo already understands the destiny of those who live on the wrong side of the global tracks.

In 2007, President Hugo Chavez stood up in front of the nation and declared: “If there is no environmentally safe way of extracting coal from the Socuy, then the coal stays below the ground.”

Four years later, in June 2011, Francisco Arias Cardenas, the president of Chavez’s PSUV party and a candidate for governor of Zulia state, unveiled plans to open that very mine, plus two more.

The coal extracted from these three mines would fuel a new carboelectric plant, and help cope with the severe electricity crisis. Yet the opening of these mines, besides inflicting irreversible damage to the environment, as acknowledged by the president himself, would displace six indigenous communities, including the Wayúu. This situation, akin to many others in the Americas, is the result of the extractionist practices upon which the oil economy of Venezuela heavily depends.

Despite the introduction of a revolutionary constitution, with an entire chapter (the 7th) dedicated to indigenous rights, the inhabitants of Wayuuma’ana and surrounding communities find themselves once again at a crossroads. Sell out to the mining companies — agree to be displaced and impoverished, to sell the future of their kids — or be buried alive by the rubble, thick gasoline clout and general devastation that open-air coal mining brings.

Finding neither of these options appealing, the Wayúus have created their own third option: resist.

The agenda for the day of our arrival comprised two key topics: the opening of a new school, Yalayalanama, in Wayúu language “the strong, those who stayed,” and a museum of Wayúu history. Professor Portillo takes a seat on the stool below the peaceful shade of the sumptuous mango trees. Soon people from Wayuuma’ana and surrounding parcels begin to assemble.

After debating the practical issues of the development of these projects, the professor raises his voice to reiterate what at this stage was clear to all the attendees:

“This school is to stop the coal. This museum is to stop the coal.”

The strengthening of Wayúu culture has become a key tool in the community’s arsenal of resistance. The construction of cultural institutions on the lands where the mines are to be opened is a very practical way of slowing inspections and planned mining operations. And the regeneration of ancestral knowledge and of a Wayúu collective identity is the only way to ensure future generations will carry on the struggle for their lands. As professor Jose Quintero-Weir, cultural consultant of Maikiralasal, argues: “We need our communities to be strong as Wayúu and for this we need our children to strengthen their Wayúu hearts, this is the only path to bring forward our struggle.”

Of course, institutions like museums and schools aren’t the usual means of perpetuating indigenous culture. But storytelling and narrative are central for the Wayúu especially the narration of dreams.

The night before a meeting with representatives of CorpoZulia, the state mining company, Angela Gonzales had a dream, telling her to give bread and milk to those she was meeting. During the meetings, he explained:

“The milk is our word and bread you can find everywhere. So wherever we go, and whoever we meet, we’ll have to keep true to our word. The alijunas that want these lands loathe us. They speak to us with words that are not clear, which seek to deceive us. Our words come from our hearts and for that they are stronger.”

While the sharing of dreams is still a highly valued practice, the influence of mainstream Venezuelan culture has had mixed effects.

“We begin to lose our culture from the education of the child,”said Dario Gonzalies, one of the many Wayúus displaced from the Guasare area. “They no longer speak our language, they have another way of thinking. They become ashamed and antagonistic to their own culture and it is from there that culture begins to disappear.”

Their motives for resisting are also inscribed within their past: the Wayúu are among six communities that began settling in the high Socuy in the 1980s, after being displaced by the opening of the Mina Norte and Paso Diablo open air coal mines in Guasare.

“We are resisting because of what we have seen in the Guasare mines,” said Jose Diego Gonzalez, a Wayuuma’ana member.

The displacement of these communities was largely carried out through promises of new parcels, concessions for smallholdings and jobs. As Dario Gonzalez explained: “The mining companies came in, they spoke about a grand development, they told us that our lives were going to improve and that the company was going to provide for everything we needed.”

“But my family and I were sheep breeders, we have always lived off this, and don’t know anything else. What are we going to do with all this coal? Are we going to eat the coal?”

When his family came back to their parcel from the Guajira, where they had gone to follow the rains, the mine manger told them that the entire area was now the property of the state, and they had to find a new place to settle.

Shortly after settling in the High Socuy area, they discovered that new mining plans were underway for their new home.

“Caramba! I felt as if mines were persecuting us!”

National and transnational companies, such as the Irish Canoseco and CorpoZulia, initially installed themselves in the High Socuy area by offering free goods and services in exchange for people’s signatures.

Through the involvement of the grassroots NGO Homo et Natura, and in particular Professor Portillo, clans began to form a united resistance front around the notion that their signatures would not be bought.

In 2008 the six Wayúu communities formed the first indigenous autonomous organization of the region
Maikirlasal, which in Wayúu language means “not for sale.”

The significance of the Wayúu’s fight does not end at the margins of Venezuelan nationhood. It’s just one instance of the struggle between a homogenizing world, and those striving to be different.

Throughout Cambodia, marketplace stalls overflow with mounds of beautiful shimmering silk, meant for scarves, tailor-made shirts, dresses, jackets and chic purses. As an admirer often tempted by these lovely items, I was eager to learn more about the production process. So, we hopped on a tuktuk, to travel to the Artisans d’Angkor Silk Farm, 10 miles outside of Siem Reap.

Cambodia has a long history of silk production and weaving. Silk worm breeding and silk weaving are believed to have been introduced there in the 13th century. During WWII, Cambodian silk production was accelerated, so silk could be exported to Europe, where there were fabric shortages.

From 1975 to 1979, when the Khmer Rouge ruled, the industry suffered a great blow. Many silk artisans were killed, and those who survived were forced to produce rice on collective farms instead.

In recent years, the industry has witnessed a revival.

Women in rural areas customarily dabbled in silk production and weaving, when not working in the rice fields. Today, several NGOs are working to revitalize the industry, while helping to create jobs for Cambodians.

Our guide, Lis, introducing us to the silk-making caterpillar, known as bombyx mori. The grown caterpillar feeds on mulberry tree leaves for three weeks prior to spinning a golden cocoon. In a mere three days, the worm can spin about one mile of thread, so it’s completely wrapped up in the cocoon! Three to ten strands must be spun together to create a single thread of commercial-quality silk.

Traditionally the worms made their cocoons in bundles of branches, but today they’re placed in basket trays.  About 3,000 silkworms, fed by more than 200 pounds of mulberry leaves, are needed to make just two pounds of silk.

The woven cocoons are boiled — with the larva inside.

When I learned this, I started to feel guilty, as I calculated the number of silk worms sacrificed to make my new scarf. I was somewhat reassured when I learned that locals eat the boiled silkworms, so that at least neither cocoon nor insect is wasted. Lis offered us some boiled silkworm. Full from lunch, we declined. Supposedly, the worms taste buttery or nutty; Cambodians told us that they enjoy eating them as snacks, with beer.

After the cocoons are boiled, the silk is carefully extracted from the cocoon. It’s then washed, twirled on to bobbins and boil-dyed, either via a natural or artificial coloring technique. Natural dyes consist of coconut husks, various types of bark, insect nests, indigo (a tropical plant of the pea family) and other fruits.

To weave the thread into fabric or a scarf, the weavers use a complicated wooden loom they power with a foot pedal, while quickly manipulating the loom’s wooden slats with their hands. It can take several days to finish a scarf.

We visited a gallery that exhibited traditional silk costumes, and old-fashioned weaving equipment. Cambodian royalty and government officials once wore a different hue for a designated day of the week.

We left with an appreciation for all that goes into this craft. If only I’d had more room in my backpack for a few more silky souvenirs.

Teacher and writer Tricia Mitchell, winner of the 2009 MG Keith L. Ware Public Affairs Communications award, lives in Heidelberg, Germany.

“A latte please,” I said, grabbing a National Geographic and taking my usual bench by a sunny window in my university’s new student-run cafe. The cafe, opened in September, was the dream of Yang Yachun, its manager, an international business major. She saw a huge market in students seeking to experience Western culture through drinking coffee.

When my grandfather drank coffee for the first time 15 years ago, he said, “It tastes like something burnt. It’s good, though.”

He was an ordinary Chinese who’d spent his life doing carpentry in the northeast. He couldn’t have imagined our student cafe. Since China opened its gates to the world, a dazzling diversity has unfolded, with food our first fascination. When I was 10, in 2000, Pizza Hut arrived in my Beijing neighborhood, and you couldn’t get a seat. Starbucks arrived about then, and now China, home of tea, is Starbucks’ largest overseas market, with 400 outlets.

I’m not sure I enjoy coffee’s bitter flavor. Like most Chinese, I still prefer Chinese tea, especially Xihu Longjing, a roasted green tea grown in the eastern Zhejiang province, near Shanghai.

Every spring, a family friend there mails us fresh tea, since my father doesn’t think the Longjing sold elsewhere is authentic. I developed the habit of drinking tea every morning as a teenager. I enjoy tea’s fragrance and faint bitterness, and it is healthy. Coffee entered my life only last year, when I lived in New Zealand.

But it’s not just the drink. The rise of the cafe, its cultural atmosphere and reasonable prices, are attracting young people like me.

My latte came, served by a freshman boy in blue jeans and black shirt. I inhaled the fragrance and opened my laptop to write a paper. The manager, Yang, buys from the Italian brand Illy, so she decorated the cafe, called Danglu (youth), in Italian style. Yang’s entrepreneurial capitalist spirit is as fashionable here as her coffee; her establishment employs 14 students.

Observing Danglu, it’s easy to see why the Chinese government is escalating a war to beat back popular Western films, books, and TV shows. On Danglu’s shelf are donated Western books: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Great Gatsby, and a Chinese-American writer’s travelogue of America.

“China needs to strengthen its cultural production to defend against the West’s assault on the country’s culture and ideology,” an article in the Party magazine Seeking Truth argued recently. It’s also a priority announced by the People’s Congress.

That authorities want to win back our attention, and to position Chinese culture to gain global cultural influence. They’re establishing overseas government-sponsored language and culture schools called Confucius Institutes, and news bureaus worldwide.

But what about tea? Why not promote teahouses, if the goal is to boost our culture, here and abroad?

The Chinese teahouse, 1,600 years old, was for travelers to rest, and later was a gathering place for chatting and watching performances. A famous 1957 play, “Teahouse,” by Lao She, shows the changes that remade China in the 20th century — the collapse of a dynasty, Republican and Communist Revolutions — via conversations in a Beijing teahouse.

Fancy teahouses serving dessert can still be found in big cities’ central business districts. But prices are up to 10 times higher than Starbucks’. Patrons there are mostly wealthy business people or important government officials, not students like me.

It’s disturbing to see my generation getting lost as we pursue Western culture. This past November, when the first Starbucks opened in Zhengzhou, a large city in Central China’s Henan province, coffee mania turned into a blind cult. Young people waited outside for hours, and flooded social media with their uploaded pictures.

In my foreign studies university, we’re failing to keep alive what makes us Chinese. We’re focusing on foreign languages, but letting our Chinese writing skills decline. And we’re leaving home. In just one year (2010), Chinese student attendance in American colleges rose by 30%, according to the Institution of International Education. I’m guilty myself — I’m leaving this fall to study for a U.S. master’s degree.

Worldliness isn’t bad, but we need to find a balance in our search for identity. We can start with Chinese tea.

Jennifer Ning Xiaoning, a Beijing native, studies journalism at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

FOSSOMBRONE, Italy — Father Aurelio Gino Pela is a man of God, a Roman Catholic priest who tends a flock of the still devout in the central Italian province of Le Marche.

But a few times each month he sits down with Satan.

“The other day it happened that a person knocked me on the ground, and I was lucky that her husband and another lady held her because she would have jumped on me,” said Pela, 73, recalling a recent exorcism he conducted.

Pela isn’t a character from a Hollywood film, or a rogue priest straying into the bizarre. He’s a Vatican-appointed exorcist, one of hundreds in Italy. Commissioned by the Church in spiritual warfare, Pela and his colleagues extract demons from those plagued by unexplainable behavior.

Exorcism isn’t a hidden rite here, but an accepted part of spiritual life. The Vatican oversees an exorcism bureaucracy — a structured, organized system with official exorcists appointed by local bishops. And in a country where a study published by the Italian Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana and Jesus revealed that 34% of the residents believe in demonology, it’s not surprising exorcists like Aurelio stay busy.

Father Pela claims to perform an average of 15 exorcisms week, which would come to more than 2,000 during his three-year career.

It wasn’t a job he applied for; he was recruited by an old friend, the bishop of the nearby city of Fano, on the Adriatic Sea.

“I was appointed exorcist by the bishop of Fano because as a rule the exorcist of a diocese is the bishop, and then it’s the bishop that appoints someone to substitute him or aid him with this duty,” Pela explaine. “Initially I didn’t want to be an exorcist, because it’s a heavy sort of duty, it involves risks, even personal ones.”

But Pela accepted the responsibility, and today he goes about this most unusual calling with an almost business-like daily routine.

Driving a purple car, he arrives every morning at the gates of the Beato Benvenuto monastery, a castle-like brick structure resting on a daunting hilltop overlooking Fossombrone. His mornings are set aside for prayer, but his evenings are reserved for Satan.

Like a sought-after therapist, Pela limits his exorcism appointments to hourly sessions, and always has a clinical psychologist at his side. His clients, he said, fall into three general categories — the mentally ill, those who fear they have been cursed by members of the occult and those truly possessed by demons.

To the first two groups, he and the psychologist offer prayers and advice.

“After listening to the person I decide if a prayer of liberation or an exorcism is to be done,” he said. “It depends on the necessities of the person.”

Some are simply mentally ill, he said. “They need to be cured by a psychiatrist, because many of them have problems of this sort. So I tell them that a prayer of liberation is important, but maybe it’s at least as important for them to be followed by a psychiatrist.”

Major exorcisms are for cases of true demonic possessions. “Diabolic possessions — these cases are really rare,” said Pela.

Pela claims to observe approximately two major exorcisms each month. The afflicted often react violently to holy objects, prayers or just his presence — all symptomatic of demonic intrusion.

Pela, citing privacy issues, refused to allow media at one of his exorcisms. However, the church has published The Rite of Exorcism, which details exorcism rituals.

He encourages the patient’s family or friends to attend — not only for his subject’s sake, but for his own.

“In some cases it has been necessary to hold a person still with more than a man, in some cases even three,” he said.

He recently observed a patient collapse, and to slither about the room like a snake.

“He’s a good Catholic, a practitioner too, but he’s disturbed,” Pela said. “When I perform the exorcism on him, he shakes on the floor like a snake, and it’s impossible to hold him still. After the exorcism he’s exhausted; he lacks the strength even to get up.”

Pela has never seen a patient’s head do a 360, as in the iconic scene from the movie The Exorcist; nor has he seen anyone break spontaneously into a foreign tongue.

One of the discrepancies between Hollywood and Italian exorcism rituals lies in the use of water. Pela said he uses salt water rather than holy water during an exorcism. This way, his clients can bring the salt water home, and reuse it. Holy water can only be used for blessings within the church.

“Exorcised salt is used to make the Enemy flee from an environment, and the water does the same. I exorcise salt and water so that the people can use it around their homes in order to free them from this negative influence,” he explained.

Minor exorcisms comprise most of Pela’s work. These are less complex. In those cases, he’ll recite a series of brief prayers, known as prayers of liberation, to bring sufferers release.

Some of those he treats are under the influence of “tarot readers, magi, witches and black masses,” he maintained, a symptom of the active interest in the occult in many parts of Italy.

“Witches use things like puppets with needles, chicken heads with needles,” he said. “They use particular cushions for curses and many other things. Those cases are pretty frequent. So they need to be freed.”

In an occupation defined by the unusual, Pela is always prepared for surprises, such as the time a client was referred to him by a witch.

“He said the reason was that ‘the witch I used to go to told me she cannot do anything more for my problem, and she gave me your number,’ Pela recalled. “This is strange - really strange — but sometimes [witches, wizards and warlocks] might feel powerless, and this is what happens.”

“In fact, I do ask them: ‘Why is a tarot reader sending you to me?”‘

“Magic practitioners work for the enemy, so for someone who works for the enemy to send his customers to an exorcist is certainly weird.”

Dorian Geiger studies at the University of British Columbia. This story was adapted from Urbino Project 2011, the web magazine of an annual multimedia journalism program sponsored by The Institute for Education in International Media, Iowa State University and James Madison University.

Antonio Bisciari looks over this famous Renaissance city that has been his family’s home for 150 years and sees what the tourists see: a picture-perfect postcard town of unforgettable beauty. But he also sees something else.

“The people I grew up with are no longer here,” Bisciari said. “So, staying in Urbino, a beautiful city, a marvelous city, but alone and with no friends is not worth it.”"

“If you stay here for too long, Urbino becomes a jail; it’s not as good as one would think,” he said.

To the thousands of tourists who flock to this scenic city each year, Urbino seems as lively and prosperous as it must have looked when the Duke of Urbino made it the hub of the art world in the 14th century. But beneath the facade of robust health lurks a different story.

According to city authorities, 4,000 of the 5,000 people living inside the walls of this ancient town are students. Although the exact figure isn’t known, some local experts, including University of Urbino professor Eduardo Fichera, estimate that the number of families living full time within the walls of Urbino is less than two dozen.

The Bisciaris are one of these last families. Felice Bisciari is Antonio’s father, and also the grandfather of Anna and Paolo. Though their family’s existence in Urbino dates back more than 150 years, the lingering question is, how much longer will their ancestral name will be carried within this little city?

The Stacciolis are another remaining family. Lamberto Staccioli, a lifelong resident who raised his family here, is Giorgio Staccioli’s father, and two-year-old Eduardo Stacciolia’s grandfather.

“It is necessary to always remember where your family roots lie,” Lamberto Staccioli said. He wants to give his family the feeling and sense of belonging with which he was also raised.

Today all the Stacciolis live within the same fortress walls, but Eduardo is being raised very differently than his father. The atmosphere of the town has created a dramatic cultural shift.

Giorgio Staccioli grew up with nine of his closest friends. He left town to attend college, came back and opened his own bar, and built a family here. But upon his return, eight of those ten families had moved on, leaving Giorgio and only one of his childhood friends to continue their lives together in their hometown. This trend had become prevalent, as Urbino transformed from a small city with a university to a university with a small city.

Younger Urbinate are conflicted over whether to stay within the historical walls they love, or to leave in search of bigger opportunities. They say that the choice is between different hurts: The feeling of missing your hometown, or the feeling of being alone in your hometown.

“You have to stay in Urbino on the 24th of December, the day before Christmas, when there are no students around, to notice how small Urbino is and how alone you really are,” Antontello said.

Carmen Staccioli, Girogio’s wife, is also struck with the same feeling each July.

“Once the students have left, this town becomes so empty. It becomes really sad and difficult to come to work,” she said.

Antonio Bisciari believes Urbino is a beautiful and magical city, but that “it’s a town from fables, and when you’re 20 years old it’s perfect, it’s the right town, there are no dangers around and nothing bad ever happens. But when you are a grown-up man and you want to have a family it gets difficult.”

Those difficulties revolve around finding work, and places to live. The job market mostly has two options: working for the university, or running a shop. And real estate is expensive because student rents drive prices up.

So Bisciari deals with a 90-minute daily commute to work. He feels the commute is worth it, because he wants to raise his family here, close to their roots. However, the saddening feeling of seclusion still tears at him.

“Living within the walls of the city is expensive, and Urbino doesn’t offer a lot of work,” Carmen Staccioli said. “The opportunities are very limited.”

Though she only moved here seven years ago, she claims she has seen the city evolve.

“The way of living is really different now,” Felice Staccioli said. “Fate allowed the exterior part to remain as it was, luckily, but the relationships between people have really changed. Now everyone just ‘harvests their own fields,’ and there is more individualism; in the past there was much more solidarity and brotherhood.”

In Lamberto and Felice’s youth, the streets resonated with the laughter of children, and piazzas were places where families and friends gathered. But now, the sounds of partying students drinking from open beer and wine bottles echo down the narrow cobblestone streets, from early afternoon until three in the morning, making it hard for children and year-round residents to sleep.

But while the last residents of Urbino see the students changing the quality of the life they cherish, they also know that their livelihoods and futures are tied to these same students.

“The youth help boost the town’s economy because they are constantly buying drinks, shopping, and keeping the town alive,” Lamberto said.

Antonio’s brother’s family has already moved away, five hours north to Bolzano, leaving Anna and Paolo as the only future Bisciari descendants in Urbino.

“I belong to a generation that just wants to move away and look for something out of these walls,” said 17-year-old Anna.

She and her brother wrestle with the tough decision over whether to raise their own families here, or to search for better opportunities. Though it would make their family happy if they stay and continue the family legacy, they want their children to choose for themselves.

“I can only help them to choose, but it’s their call,” Antonio said. “I’d like them to stay here and have children here; I’d be happy. But it’s their happiness, not mine.”

Mojan Nourbakhsh is a student at James Madison University. This story was adapted from Urbino Project 2011, the web magazine of an annual multimedia journalism program sponsored by The Institute for Education in International Media, Iowa State University and James Madison University.

Under the lip of the hill, where it sits in semi-darkness as the sun blazes over the town, Villa Aldobrandini sinks into the decline behind it, confounding any attempt to hold it in focus and to clearly catch its shape.

It stares down from behind its shrouded windows over the town of Frascati, on the outskirts of Rome, and out onto the plain on which can be seen the distant dome of St Peter’s.

The dirty plaster of its facade, studded with the scabs of shutters, evokes decay. And they are too far apart, those shutters. There is too much space hidden from the light-giving windows: entire rooms could be sequestered in the dark gaps out of the sun, on the dark side of the hill. The triangular cap and shoulders of the main building hint at the shape of a star. The grounds are locked behind intimidating fences that warn of undesirable consequences for those entering.

I have never felt that a building was evil before, but this one was possessed with a hypnotizing malodor that left me feeling giddy, excited and inebriated — like the little girls and boys paraded in
their carnival costumes of princesses, animals and witches, waving their magic wands and scattering confetti under the town’s bare-armed trees.

The town itself seems marked by the same wrongness. The plants are too green and too angular. The angles of the stones used in the ancient steps and walls around the park are too sharp. The graffiti on them is of the sort you find in every town, but punctuated with unmistakably occult and satanic signs, for the town in the region of Castelli Romani is a well-spring of the occult and of satanic worship.

In the 1990s the police were called by panicking residents to the nearby ruins of the ancient city of Tusculum, destroyed by jealous Rome a thousand years ago after centuries of neighborly rivalry. A
black mass was being celebrated, and investigators discovered red wax, the habit of a nun, upturned crosses and other satanic paraphernalia, along with sheets of cellophane intended for the participants to lie on during the ceremony.

A Papal Nephew’s Display of Power

The villa got its name in the sixteenth century, when Pietro Cardinal Aldobrandini, the nephew of Pope Clement VIII, purchased and rebuilt the structures erected by Monsignor Alessandro Rufini. It was a display of power by one of the most influential families in Christian, Renaissance Rome, but it was made only a few miles from the grove of Nemi, well-known from the famous opening to J.G. Frazer’s “The Golden Bough” as the site where the priest of Isis would stay awake day and night to defend himself against anyone who would try to take his crown by murdering him.

It was Frazer’s scandalous implication that Christianity was a usurper of the pagan tradition of the sacrificed King. Perhaps modern-day occultists have been inspired by the classical heritage of
the area to a similar conclusion. Or perhaps it is a desperate rebellion against the dominating power of the church expressed by the massive villas and the vast city of St Peter, lying like an ocean
under the scattered little towns in the hills, like a reminder of the judgment of time that will eventually swallow us all.

The website of the local church bears witness to the reality of this peculiar pasttime. Numerous pages address questions like “Why is magic forbidden?” and “What is the difference between white and black magic?” Very little, seems to be the answer.

Santana, Santana

When I walked the road out of town that passes through the scrub covering the long steep incline leading into the hills, I came across a stone archway marked with the name of its builder, and the Roman
numerals of its 18th century date of construction. Behind the dirty iron gates that were locked with crude, brightly-sheathed padlocks was a tree that had been so weighted down with age and so twisted from its natural course that it had to be held up in two places by specially-laid piles of bricks. On the stone buttress of the gate was scrawled Satana, Satana, Satana.

Kids messing about, perhaps. But when we descended into the little restaurant down a side-street off the square, my companion wanted to leave. Red glass reflected the red and browns of the walls, decorated with crude smears like those made by fingers, with what appeared to be the figures of native American Indians, holding indecipherable instruments, passing through vales of trees. I was too hungry to be put off by the incongruous decor. As we sipped at our first glass of wine, I pointed with a little leap of laughter at something on the shelf opposite us. It was a dried gourd in the shape of a penis. The laughter was brief. It wasn’t a joke, we realized: it was a fertility token.

As we hurry down the hill past a little chapel with a death’s head painted on its wall, the sun retreats behind the hills. The flora of the countryside is dry and dead: wiry trees and discarded shrouds of muddy leaves. We descend a slick hill of cobblestones and pass the police headquarters in the old stables of the villa. As we pass through a narrow alley marked with black circles crossed with scrubbed-out marks that may have once been arrows, a wet-jowled giant of a dog hangs his face over the wall at us.

When we reach the bottom of the hill and looked back up, we notice the statue on top of the crooked, modern spire of the parish church. It is a robed Madonna, which we see from behind, holding aloft in its arms a child in a gesture of donation to the plain below, to the city of Rome, and to all mankind. But such is the oddity of Frascati, that one’s vivid impression is that the figure is poised to dash the child to the earth.

Journalist Thomas McMahon is based in London.

The girl behind the counter in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital, hands me a crumpled pile of notes and coins, all covered with horses. Such is the animal’s importance to the Mongolian people that their image graces the currency, along with that of the great Mongolian revolutionary, Sukhbaatar. I decide that this is a good sign for my horse trek in the northern province of Khovsgol.

I meet the rest of my group, five British women all keen to get as far away from civilization as possible. Each is an accomplished horsewoman.

Another day’s journeying by plane and jeep leads to a restful night in the basic but adequate Tsaatan Community and Visitors’ Centre in Tsagaan Nuur, one of Mongolia’s most remote towns.

Set on a vast plain, the two-storey building, with a pitched roof and a balcony, and surrounded by a pretty blue and white banister, looks straight out of a fairytale.

The only off note is the trail of blood left by the lamb carcass being dragged up through the house to “age” on the balcony. Luckily, the smiling butcher tidies the mess quickly. Well, most of it. The remnants remind me of why I’m a vegetarian. As the fat-laden smoke from dinner preparations infiltrates the house, I rest on my thin, dirty mattress in the basic, unpainted wooden bedroom, downing the cheap vodka we bought at the only shop around.

In the morning we set off to visit the Tsaatan (Reindeer) people. Known for their reverence to the official religion Shamanism, they live in such a remote location that the only way to get there is by horse. Our bags are tied firmly to the pack horses. I feel sorry making them carry such a heavy load.

We get used to our semi-wild ponies on the open Mongolian steppe, where they have plenty of potential fetlock-breaking marmot holes to dodge. This causes no problem for the sure-footed ponies, and we are soon relaxed, enjoying the expansive land and sky.

Some of us would love to name our ponies, and an eclectic mix of names are banded about, to much laughter. But Tomo, a Mongolian boy accompanying us, thinks we are half mad.

“We give no names to ponies,” he sternly instructs. He senses our confusion. “It’s not because we don’t love them,” he explains. “It’s because we respect them as their own beings. They are not our
children.” It seems I must drop my idea of calling my mare “Kylie.”

In no time we are faced with steep slopes lined with larch forests. For a moment I feel as though I’ve been dropped in Bavaria, but the sound of our guide, who loves to gently sing to his horses in the local dialect, reminds me that I most definitely am in Mongolia.

My saddle is too old, too small and too lopsided to be comfortable, as it slips around on my dun-colored mare, her belly stretched from having too many foals. But I soon forget about that, as the forest opens up to harsh but exhilarating scenery: mountainous terrain that seems to extend to eternity. My body relaxes, expanding in the extra space.

Though it’s midsummer, it’s cold, with the remnants of winter snow still packed up against the fast-flowing river. At an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet, the air is thin. This affects the ponies; their fast, choppy trot gives way to a walk as they negotiate deep bogs. We do our best to be as little a burden as possible, by sitting still and concentrating hard.

Nearly halfway through our seven-hour trek, Mongolia is failing to live up to its promo as the “land of the eternal blue sky.” It’s pouring. Draped in our wet-weather gear, we plod on. By now I’ve decided to help my sturdy mare out, by dismounting and walking, if only to give her moral support. She is so small that I can rest an arm over her neck, draped heavy with half a soaked mane, the upper half having been hogged off. It seems to be the fashion here, though no one can tell me why. I squelch through a bog, regaining energy. Maybe those shamanic spirits are working their magic!

It’s 9:30 at night when we enter the temporary nomadic village of teepees, erected around a small, muddy stream in a valley bordered by snowy peaks in the Eastern (zuun) taiga. Grubby children are waving; barking dogs and curious reindeer join the welcoming committee. With horses unsaddled and left to graze on the tough, native vegetation with the reindeer, we are ushered into the closest teepee by our shaman host, Ganbaa.

We leave our muddy shoes outside, so as not to dirty the odd pieces of lino that cover the earth floor, and warm up by the central fire. Comfortably propped up on old cushions, we enjoy a basic meal of salted, warm reindeer milk and bread. Who needs Michelin-starred restaurants?

As we eat, the women clean and store large cooking pots. The children prepare for bed. They clean their teeth, and return the toothbrushes to pouches made of old rice bags, hung above a
television that looks out of place here.

Tushig, our local guide, is a city-dweller who seems a little uncomfortable here. Through his translation help, we get to know our hosts, a community of 80 people and 200 reindeer. They are part of a larger group, the Tuva, who live in southern Siberia.

“Their reindeer are used for transport, milk, fur and antler products, but not for meat,” Ganbaa explains. We learn that there is a particular way of opening a teepee door to avoid offending the spirits. This is accompanied by a lengthy and animated demonstration by Ganbaa, who explains that spirits take payment for consultations in the currency of vodka and sweets.

The community take their beliefs very seriously, with the shaman warning of the places in this part of Siberia to avoid, as they are either sacred or inhabited by evil spirits.

The Tsataan rely on nature for everything, and so treat their environment with great respect. It is a message that makes me think reconsider my disposable, city life.

After the dogs have been kicked out, we collapse into bedding laid out for us in our own teepee. Maybe not the cleanest, it is warm and inviting after the long day, and we doze off to the sound of clacking reindeer feet.

Former London hedge fund trader Rebecca Ashton blogs at Hedge Funds to Hedgerows.

In Mexodus, a nine-month investigation by nearly 100 student journalists at the University of Texas El Paso, California State University Northridge, and Mexico’s Tecnológico de Monterrey, reporters discovered that the number of Mexicans applying for asylum in the United States had jumped 300 percent over five years.

Here, Mariel Torres interviews a Mexican teen who was kidnapped at age 14 during the robbery of her home in Chihuahua, Mexico. After her family was forced to pay an $8,000 ransom to secure her release, she and her family fled to the United States.

Mariel Torres studies at the University of Texas El Paso. This story is excerpted from the investigative project Mexodus.

And then there’s the real work.

Filling some of the city’s ubiquitous potholes.

Delivering wood for the construction of a new house.

Multitasking during a too-short break.

Selling every kind of oil.

A banana salesman rests in the shade.

Working together is sometimes the only way to get the job done.

Asking a co-worker to bring water.

Traveling.

After school fun.

Allison Heiliczer is a Hong Kong-based photographer.

The dance hall was dimly lit; the floor was packed. With weak strobes illuminating the stuffy room, the club must have looked like a typical European disco.

But rather than grinding their hips to pounding techno, the dancers marched evenly to the husky tones of fiddlers on stage. The strobes sporadically froze the twirling folk dancers mid-spin. Rich tones plucked from the upright bass resonated. Once the music started, the tiny dance floor quickly filled, drawing lingering people from the outdoor seating area and the bar.

I was trapped in the corner.

My friend leaned toward my ear. “Should we try?”

The steps looked simple enough, dictated from within the shallow space between the haphazardly matched couples; folk dance steps that everyone seemed to know. But it was my first time at a Budapest folk dance club, a tanchaz, and I was feeling shy.

A couple veered in front of my wallflower space, the man raising his partner’s hand in the air and rotating her around his body. Her long skirt billowed behind, mimicking her spin. As the fiddler beat time with his foot, his arm followed with accented jerks. Dozens of skirts swished on the dance floor, filling the gaps between the beats.

Patriotic Dancing

Tanchaz folk dance houses are a lively part of Budapest nightlife. A few times a month, cultural centers  hire a local group of folk musicians - usually fiddlers, bass and percussion - build a small stage, and clear space for a dance floor. With dances staggered through the week, it’s possible to go folk dancing, somewhere in Budapest, almost every night.

When I’d asked Atilla, my friend in Budapest, if he had any information about tanchaz houses, he’d quickly pulled up a schedule on his computer screen.

“Almost everyone knows at least a basic set of dance steps,” he said. “We learn them in school. Then just before graduation, there’s a big, formal school dance, and we all dance together. That’s why everyone who goes to tanchaz houses on the weekends knows the steps.”

He paused. “How did you hear about tanchaz houses?”

I explained that I’d had a long-time interest in the Hungarian folk revival, and that I was curious to see such old traditions morphed into modern form.

“That’s great,” he smiled. “Budapest is the best place to dance.”

Hungarian folk dances are not new; the steps and tunes are rooted in 19th and 20th century rural village customs, and often of mixed Hungarian, Romanian and Gypsy heritage. Young people would gather for formal evening events, to dance, relax, drink and flirt.

Though hugely popular in rural villages for centuries, folk dancing only gained popularity in Budapest and other cities during a revival of Hungarian folk traditions in the early 1970s.

***

The air in the dance room was hot and stagnant above the spinning dancers. Punctuating the final riff of the tune with his bow and a jerk of the wrist, the fiddler stepped off stage, and the room quieted. A dancer close to my corner shrugged, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. His shirt was damp.

I needed air. I stepped outside.

The outdoor concrete amphitheater surrounding the club was just as crowded — but at least the air was circulating there. Dull streetlamps sputtered hazy light on to another folk band, playing from the semi-darkness of the outdoor stage.

A dancer in the center shouted out the steps. Fifteen couples obeyed his voice. He clapped his hands above the fiddle; a few men answered by smacking their palms to their heels. This looked like my chance to learn a few steps — but fear that my Hungarian language skills weren’t sharp enough to follow his quick calls held me back.

I walked up the steps leading out of the amphitheater, which had been converted into a huge outdoor seating area. Each level was lined with tables, and every chair was full. Couples and groups lounged on the edges of the steps, reclining on blankets spread among wine bottles, bicycles and backpack cushions. I paused for a few minutes, wine glass in hand, taking in the laid-back atmosphere of the impromptu picnics. The fiddles echoed the clapping hands and stamping feet.

***

“We Hungarians have always been very conscious of who we are,” the guide on my Budapest walking tour had stressed earlier that day. She wasn’t shy about expressing her opinions about anything: her political views, her experiences, her nostalgia for her country, viewed through the lens of an immigrant who had lived in exile. “I’ve always been Hungarian.”

When I asked for her advice about how to visit the tanchaz houses, she confirmed the information Atilla had given me.  She recommended Thursday night folk dancing at the  Godor Cultural Club, near the Erzsebet Garden.

“It used to be the site of the National Hungarian Theater during the days of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, but it was torn down during the Communist era to make way for a public theater,” she explained. “[The theater] was never erected, and the empty space became a hangout for city youth, a place to experiment with freedom of expression.”

The first tanchaz houses in Budapest had political roots, too. The decision to begin holding tanchaz events in the city, modeled after the rural dance traditions, was a purposeful one.

During the 1970s, tight state Communist control in Hungary began to weaken. Tanchaz events in Budapest were part of a folklore revival that developed on the heels of this loosening political environment.

The first tanchaz houses drew inspiration both from the traditions of rural villages, and from the folk revival in the United States. Expressions of identity challenging an old repressive system, Budapest dance houses grew popular almost as soon as they began opening.

***

Stepping back into the tanchaz house, I was hit with a wall of heat. A third band was playing in another room in back. I was also confronted by a wall of people.

Dancers had choreographed themselves into two long facing lines. Shoulder to shoulder, their arms wrapped around one another’s backs in a giant braid of elbows, shoulders and hands. The music structured their steps into sets of eight.

Eight steps in: the lines moved toward each other.

Eight steps out: the lines moved apart.

Nobody seemed to be leading, or following. To me, it looked as though everyone moved serendipitously.

There was space at the end of the line; the last person’s outstretched arm ended the chain. I stepped in and linked my arm into the braid.

Step forward, step forward. Step back, step back.

Simple steps guided by collective movement, I picked it up intuitively. My back was sweating. My feet stumbled once or twice — fleeting moments of self-consciousness.

Those soon evaporated. I was having too much fun.

Dancing at a Tanchaz House

I danced at the Godor Cultural Club, where the national Hungarian theater once stood. The grandiose building was torn down during the Communist era. It was to be replaced with a state theater for “the people.” But that was never built, and the space became a hangout for Budapest youth. Tanchaz happened on biweekly Thursdays, but recently the club was ordered to shut down.

Neighborhood cultural centers hold tanchez events, both during the week, and on weekends. The Budapest Dance-House Guild maintains a good events list.

Washington, D.C.-based writer Jenna Makowski has a master’s degree in folklore and ethnomusicology.

The jobs are seasonal, rent is high, and services are limited. But my boss understands that I’ll work less on powder days.

The best part: after a long weekend, when visitors have to rush back to the city, I get to stay home in paradise.

In 2011, Jasper National Park was named a “dark sky preserve” — one meant to be kept free of artificial light, the better to promote astronomy and enjoyment of the heavens. The glow comes from the park’s only town, Jasper, population 4,051.

In October 2011, clear skies welcomed the first annual Dark Sky Festival, and looming winter. Luckily, winter 2012 hasn’t been too severe.

The Icefields Parkway, connecting Jasper with Banff National Park three hours to the south, has been rated one of the world’s top 10 scenic drives.

The iconic Pyramid Mountain is always in view. Walk out of any hotel or house, and look up: there it is again.

The golf resort Jasper Park Lodge is practically a town in its own right.

Nighttime by the Athabasca River, at the foot of a glacier. The Athabasca flows 765 miles, through gorges, over rapids and past many towns.

A mountain named after the British nurse and war hero Edith Cavell, who is celebrated for saving lives of soldiers on all sides during WW1. Executed for treason by a German firing squad, she is widely memorialized in Canada.

Jasper National Park’s next Dark Sky Festival will be on Oct. 12-14, 2012.

Adventure photographer Jeff Bartlett is based in Jasper, Canada.

Paul Nabor spent most of his life as a fisherman in Punta Gorda, a coastal village in Belize. As he waited for the fish to bite, he composed. He became known for writing songs about what he experienced: village life, love, religion, the ocean. Then, he became famous.

Nabor is Garifuna, an Afro-Caribbean people born of a shipwreck. In the 17th century, his ancestors, enroute to being sold as slaves in the West, were shipwrecked. The survivors settled in the Caribbean islands, where they intermarried with local Caliponan Indians. They named themselves Garifuna, and over the years developed their own music, dance, religion and language.

Famed warriors, the Garifuna were never conquered by their foreign enemies. The French tried to enslave and colonize them, but failed. The Garifuna were instead deported to various parts of Central America, including to Belize.

Nabor was born in 1930, and began practicing Garifuna Paranda music as a child. He had no formal lessons, only a guitar and talent. He believes God called him to be a spiritual medium and religious healer.

Nabor hooked up with two other Belizean musicians and formed The Three Kings, a culturally diverse group of a Mayan harp player and Creole accordionist, with Nabor on guitar. The band toured the world, bringing their emotionally raw music to some 40 countries. Once they gave a concert for the Queen of England.

Nabor has by now forgotten most of the songs he wrote. His world traveling has ended too, with old age, and the death of one of the Kings.

Now he spends his days around his wooden house by the Caribbean, lying in a hammock and drinking warm stout. He’s built a Garifuna temple, so he can pursue his calling as a religious leader.

But he still prizes his collection of backstage passes, from as far away as The Philippines and England. And he still picks up the guitar to play for festivals in Belize, where he’s a local hero.

In exchange for three warm Belikin beers, he agreed to play and sing for me. I didn’t understand his words, but was moved by his haunting voice, and impressed by the agility of his fingers. He played like a much younger man.

Megan L. Wood’s work has appeared on CNN Travel, Wisconsin Public Radio and in many other venues.

Local officials warned him that he wouldn’t be able to grow a thing. St. Martin is an import society, and many people believe farming in this stony earth is impossible.

But Ras Bushman ignored them. He managed to turn the steep rocky hills high above his land into a lush garden. In 1999, he opened his first vegan-style restaurant: a clearing under a tree. Now the part-time Rastafarian musician runs The Ital Shack: the only organic cafe in the Dutch quarter of the island, known as St. Maarten.

“People need to get more conscious that we are what we eat, and we must get more conscious of plant rights, like human rights,” said Bushman, who was born in Curacao, and whose real name is Roland Joe. “If you agree with culture, you have agriculture. If everyone could plant something — a herb tree, a plant — the whole world would be farming.”

Pumpkin, corn, cabbage, broccoli, eggplant, sweet peppers, lettuce, arugula, cucumber , cassava, lime, thyme, and sorrel grow along paths carefully hewn into the treacherous hillside overlooking St. Maarten Bay.

It is typical contour farming, traditional to the Pacific islands, where growing tree crops on hillsides is a very old and effective conservation practice.

This was a farming experiment to “prove it can be done,” said Bushman. He explains that the Rasta way of life is generally called “Ital,” a play on “vital,” meaning a healthy life, without chemicals or packaging.

We climb laboriously to the cafe at the top of the hill.

“Watch the food,” Ras Bushman keeps reminding me, as we traverse our way up the zigzagged stony pathways.

The climb is so steep that I have to watch every step, or risk tumbling down toward the bay.

In the cafe, Bushman’s wife, Ras Liza, cooks up the daily specials: rotis, patties, lentil pea stew and Ital soup, served with fried plantain.

When we’re done chatting, Bushman offers to drive me back to my hotel.

I tell him I could take a taxi.

He holds up a hand.

“Don’t make it into a problem,” he says.

He needed to stop for charcoal along the way. Cooking with natural charcoal enhances the flavors of the food. Assuming there’s a Home Depot equivalent nearby, I tag along.

As we talk in his jeep, I glance up to find we’ve driven onto an isolated, heavily-treed side road. I experience a fleeting moment of panic, feeling vaguely naive that I’d been caught alone here with a virtual stranger, with no idea of where I was.

The quasi-abandoned road leads to the derelict Belvedere plantation, sprinkled with ancient crumbling stone buildings. My panic evaporates once I realize I’m seeing a part of the island that tourists don’t get to see. We’re a world away from Philipsburg, with its tourists, casinos and parked cruise ships.

Jaime is sitting on a lopsided kitchen chair, eating ribs and rice out of a pot on the porch of his stone home. Chickens scurry around him. He’s lived on this property for over 50 years, he says, in one of the original stone plantation houses.

Bushman points to a spot where he says charcoal has been made for centuries. Branches and logs are piled high, as if in a sacred circle.

Jamie makes charcoal by covering the wood with fresh earth and leaves, then burning the wood for about three days, creating natural charcoal for local barbeque joints and restaurants like The Ital Cafe.

Bushman hoists a couple of huge bags of charcoal to his jeep,  then returns me to my hotel as he’s promised.

Bushman plays with his band, The Freedom Fighters, in some of St. Maarten’s many nightspots. But he’s equally devoted to his second career. “The richest man on earth is a farmer,” he said.

The Ital Shack is open daily except Saturdays, from 7 a.m.

Melody Wren writes about travel, food and green living.

The moondust-like sand had barely settled on my boots before I took my first fearful steps outside the jagged concertina wire. A year of anticipation, a month of training and days of traveling had led me to Zabul Province, a sprawling rural stretch of southern Afghanistan.

I landed at Forward Operating Base Smart a few days before my first mission was scheduled. This small patch of concrete and metal boxes was where I would learn that the fighting on the front lines doesn’t always mean firing a weapon.

The gritty glamour of deploying was something I used to crave, even though I had never really tasted it.

That attitude changed when I realized I was following in my older sister’s footsteps, by spending my first year of marriage separated from my husband by a war zone. I would also miss my other sister’s wedding, and a million other moments with my family.

With boots on the ground, I felt the weight of those future memories fall on my shoulders more heavily than my armored vest.

A Hidden School

I shifted uncomfortably under the shrapnel-protecting garment, my body unfamiliar with the extra plates hanging on my sides.  At training in the States, the vest had just the front and back plates, but in theater there were side and shoulder additions snapped and woven on for extra protection. It made me regret the days I skipped the gym.

The morning was bright as we loaded up with weapons and head scarves, and set course for a girls’ school in Zabul’s capital city, Qalat. My first mission outside the wire wasn’t to enhance security or work with the Afghan government. It was to decorate head scarves. That I’d flown halfway around the world to put jewels on cloth made me laugh.

The mine-resistant vehicle we traveled in roared through the bazaar and into the city, where we parked up on a lonely desert hill. I shouldered a green duffel bag full of at least a hundred new head scarves, and tried not to lean back, for fear of falling over. I hustled to join the five other women from my unit who had already started across the hill.

The outskirts of the city were nothing more than mud walls, where men and boys had gathered to watch us. A couple of our Army security personnel kept their eyes trained and weapons ready for anyone who came too close.

We started into the city down a rocky path barely ten feet wide. The locals trailed behind, and sometimes crept to our sides, eager for a view of the foreigners in digital camouflage. Their whispers rang loud and harsh. I didn’t know a word of the Pashto they spoke, so I caged my eyes forward and kept marching.

But the trash on the street stole my attention. Garbage was strewn about carelessly. Foul odors hung over the streets; there was even littler in the small well we passed. I couldn’t tell if it was desperation or laziness that made the place so dirty.

Turning another mud-walled corner, we arrived at the Babagok Girls’ School. Nothing gave its location away.  There was no marquee heralding the school mascot. There wasn’t even a sign.  We found just a rusty padlock and a creaking metal door that led into a dirt courtyard.

Foreigners would never have come into my elementary school like this…

Most of the school was outdoors. Mats and old rugs stretched over the dirt floor, while fabrics spread wide across wooden poles fought the sun’s rays overhead. Little girls knelt in the shade and stared at us, while we peeled off layers of armor and carefully draped head scarves where our helmets should have been.

I lay my rifle down cautiously in the dirt, anxious about leaving a loaded gun so close to children.  Foreigners would have never come into my elementary school like this, but I quickly realized these children are used to strangers — strangers carrying guns and candy.

I expected women to be teaching here. But the teachers were wiry old men with white beards. Maybe men were the only ones who to have been educated; maybe this generation would be the first in which girls would learning something other than traditional home making.

My only prior exposure to children of the Third World was through the news, or maybe a picture story on poverty. I’d never seen such pleading eyes. My eyes jumped from face to face; I didn’t know what to make of this new heartbreak.

I used to teach gymnastics to girls the same age as the ones sitting before me, and I pictured my former students kneeling among them. The haircuts here were more ragged, and their clothes were tattered, but these girls had the same vivaciousness. Unlike the harsh chatter I heard in the streets, the girls’ whispers were like fireflies buzzing on a summer night: bright, joyful, mysterious.

We opened the Army duffel bags and began handing out the shrink-wrapped scarves. Pumpkin orange and spring green spilled out of our hands and into their tiny palms. Their shyness quickly dissolved; order turned to mild mayhem as their little hands grabbed for the plastic-covered fabric, even if they had already received one scarf.

The teachers barked at the girls to be polite, to stay seated. But soon the chaos resumed. Once each girl was clutching a shiny new headdress, our team broke out the Bedazzlers.

A Bedazzle machine is something you would have forgotten years ago, unless you had a craving for attaching cheap gemstones to all your clothes. The black plastic contraptions looked like modified sewing machines without needles. A general’s wife had donated a dozen or so of the Bedazzlers - actually, they were a knock-off version call Gem Magic - and asked us to bring them to children who had probably never had a new headscarf, much less one with rhinestones on it.

The night before this mission I sat in our less-than-sterile health clinic, sorting out the different-sized gems, one by one. Six hundred glittering pieces later, the supplies were neatly organized into packets, so we could put as many gems as possible on scarves the next morning.

Performance Anxiety

Twelve girls inside sat with their legs folded under them, on drab rugs that had lost any measure of comfort. With a Bedazzler in each hand, I knelt in a similar fashion, trying to ignore the awkward handgun strapped to my right thigh.  I hated that my gun was loaded.

Murmurs floated through the small classroom, as I opened the first Bedazzler, and with wobbling hands fit a tiny gem on the teeth of the machine. I took my own scarf, placed it in the jaws and pressed hard. One click and several heartbeats later, the silver-rimmed jewel sat like a miniscule island on the golden sea of my scarf.

More whispers erupted as I held my scarf up for the girls to see, and motioned for them to let me decorate theirs.

With tentative hands, the first girl held out a frayed shawl. The grapefruit-colored fabric looped around her chocolate-colored hair and spilled onto the rug.  Taking it gently, I placed it in the machine and pressed again. This time a pink jewel landed on her gauzy headscarf, and she pulled it back to study this modern marvel. Our glances collided only for a brief moment, and I was still at a loss for words. I knew nothing of their native tongue, so I silently shifted to the next girl sitting beside her, and repeated the process.

Load gem, place scarf, press hard, repeat.

I did this a dozen times before my hands stopped sweating from performance anxiety. The girls pulled, twisted and examined the glittering jewels on their scarves, apparently satisfied with my decorating skills.

In the next stuffy room I saw more girls in colorful garments: lime green, deep red, twilight blue. Their faces were just a bit younger; they were maybe six or seven years old. I couldn’t ask their ages; the interpreter was outside with another group. Kneeling again, the girls formed a half circle around me. Having watched me in the first room, they were ready, holding out their head coverings for something shiny to adorn them.

I began again, the silent air hanging thick between us as their eyes followed my hands. By now I noticed an orange stain on most of the girls’ fingers. The remnants of henna dye clung to their cuticles.

The girls never took their scarves off; they just shuffled closer and handed me the edge of their fading fabric. One small girl with a sea foam green scarf hung back, unsure of how to approach the strange girl in camouflage before her. Her classmates urged her forward, pulling her scarf in my direction. Obeying, she knelt closer to me and waited for the click of the machine.

A single gold star was enough to turn her shy expression into a grin. I knew I had won a small battle, but it took her a long time to smile.

Virginia-based writer Georganne Hassell served for four years as a public affairs officer in the U.S. Air Force.

The story of Kurt Vonnegut, a youthful hunter, trapper, and amateur scientist, sleeping under the stars in West, involves a ghost — the narrator of Galapagos, Vonnegut’s fourteenth novel, published many years later in 1985.

The ghost is Leon Trotsky Trout, who tells us that over the course of a million years, descendants of cruise ship passengers stranded on Galapagos evolved into furry mammals resembling seals. A bacterial disease had destroyed the human race — except for the marooned vacationers: an Indiana schoolteacher, Mary Hepburn; another passenger, James Wait; a fur-covered mutant: Akiko Hiroguchi, whose mother survived the bombing of Hiroshima; and an old sea captain named von Kleist. A strange tale!

With deep affection, Vonnegut dedicated Galapagos in memory of Hillis L. Howie.

Who was Hillis Howie? Why would Vonnegut honor him by laying at his feet this piece of fiction with overtones of H.G. Wells’ fantasy  The Island of Dr. Moreau?

?He was a darling man,” Vonnegut told me. In the late 1930s, Howie led a group of young men, including Vonnegut, into the wilderness of the West on what became, for Kurt, an unforgettable adventure and inspiration.

* * *
When Vonnegut was in primary school in Indianapolis, he attended the Orchard School, a private school for upper-middle class children. Vonnegut loved it there. He had responsibilities and others depended on him. He joined with classmates in caring for Billy the goat; running the school library; operating the goodies store; even managing a student savings bank. At lunchtime, all the children, the youngest to the eldest, stood at their place and sang, “We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing…” Then a few hurried between the kitchen and tables as waiters.

Watching over the school was headmaster Hillis Howie, a benevolent man who fostered individual ability and respect for self and others. He was a Deweyite in the era of progressive education, believing as Aristotle wrote, ?For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” So the children built whirligigs while they were studying weather; model ships when the subject was exploration; and planted a garden, which they harvested in the fall, putting fresh vegetables out for lunch they had raised themselves.

Howie’s pied piper influence never left Vonnegut: ?The value system under which I try to operate relative to animals and plants and the earth and persons with cultures different from mine is one I learned from him.”

Then in 1929, Kurt’s parents lost their money in the Wall Street Crash and removed him from the Orchard School, enrolling him in a public elementary school instead. It broke his heart, and he never forgave them.

* * *

In the summer of 1938, however, when Vonnegut was about to begin his junior year at Shortridge High School, his parents gave him permission to join Howie’s nine-week prairie trek out West.

Howie had been leading his ?summer camps on wheels,” as he called them, for ten years. The first prairie trek enlisted a caravan of Model T’s with canvas water bags hanging off the back. Nine boys had accompanied him, traveling and camping across six thousand miles of country. Seeing how much they enjoyed observing and collecting specimens, on future trips Howie encouraged his band of junior explorers to choose a specialty: mammalogy, ethnology, geology, archaeology, ornithology, herpetology, photography — even journalism. By 1930, the treks had a purpose worthy of Lewis and Clark: the boys were gathering specimens to be placed in the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. One year, they brought back a cast of a dinosaur foot.

Howie’s description of the journey sounded like an advertisement for Pony Express riders:

?The plan is to leave civilization behind and spend the months of July and August in remote and generally unknown regions of the Southwest; to establish temporary camps in sagebrush, pinon, and big timber and at ruin sites, deserted mining towns, and alpine lakes; to investigate the fauna, flora, and geology of each territory; to set a standard of camping which will be a satisfaction to ourselves, and a model to others; to live a physically vigorous life, with a taste of the hardships which the early explorers expected. From this it will be understood that the expedition is not a sightseeing trip nor a deluxe dude ranch.”

Kurt got ready to go. He was about to turn sixteen: tall, very thin, and shy, and living painfully in the shadow of his brilliant elder brother, Bernard, a doctoral student in science at MIT. But now he would be joining five adults and 14 boys, including his best friend, Ben Hitz, whom he had known since Orchard School, on an expedition into the wild, desert country of the Southwest, guided by an almost legendary teacher. Vonnegut decided he would list himself as ?archeologist-mammalogist.” He purchased a wide-brim hat to keep the sun off, a pair of boots, packed some tools, camping gear, and took off.

Ten days later, after having stopped in the Dust Bowl regions of Kansas and Oklahoma, the prairie trek caravan arrived at base camp: Cotton-Wood Gulch, Thoreau, New Mexico.

Howie deliberately ?sought out the remote and generally unknown wilderness regions,” he said in an article for a nature magazine, the Regional Review in 1941. ?Sometimes we pretended that we were the first white men to penetrate these wilds. In many spots, the boys had an opportunity to compare the unspoiled land with country that had been ‘developed.’ We led a simple life, did our own cooking, gathered firewood, sagebrush or buffalo chips for fuel and slept under the stars almost every night. We were providing a pioneer experience for the boys in a frontier part of the nation.”

They traveled west to the Grand Canyon, and then wound north to Mesa Verde, up Pike’s Peak, and around the foothills of the Rockies, collecting and categorizing as they went.

Kurt, who enjoyed hunting back home, trapped a rare type of tawny mouse, then skinned and dried it. (Later, in the army, he mentioned his find to another soldier, who pronounced Kurt’s specimen, ?Meesus Vonnegeesus.”) Howie’s goal was to teach the boys, ?the value of our national parks, national monuments, national forests, Indian reservations and other interesting parts of our public domain.”

Away from the pall of his home life where his parents sometimes quarreled late into the night, and away from his brother’s talk about science that ?bored the shit” out of him, Kurt came into his own. He mounted an outcropping of rock and, pounding his skinny ribcage, let out a Tarzan yell that drew shouts of admiring laughter from the other boys. He was just like them — he belonged.

* * *

When Vonnegut was discharged from the army in 1945, considerably changed in body and spirit by his experiences at the Battle of the Bulge, and the destruction of Dresden where he had been a POW, he enrolled at the University of Chicago on the GI Bill. He had no idea which degree to seek. An adviser convinced him he would enjoy anthropology, a ?science that was mostly poetry,” as Kurt understood it.

He worked hard, writing long papers, and tried to recapture some of his adolescent excitement about primitive societies, Indians, and nature. But he felt excluded and condescended to. When the department rejected his proposal for a masters dissertation about similarities between Cubist and Native American art, he halfheartedly started another research project, but a few months later, he dropped out and never re-enrolled. His revenge, in a sense, when he published “Galapagos,” his fantasy about an evolutionary marriage of humans and animals, was to dedicate it to Hillis L. Howie, ?a good man.”

Did Vonnegut know how his father had found the money during the Great Depression to send his awkward boy on the life-changing prairie trek? Apparently not; he never mentioned it. Too in debt to afford the expense, Kurt Vonnegut Sr., an out of work architect, drew up plans for Howie for a cabin heated by a wood stove, and bartered them for his son’s fee.

The cabin is still there, above a spring fed valley in northern New Mexico where the Zuni, Hopi and later Navajo peoples have lived for hundreds of years. On clear mornings, you can see the sun rise over the purple and brown hills, just as Vonnegut did when he awoke, young and hopeful about the long summer day ahead.

Charles J. Shields is the author of And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life, the only complete life story of Kurt Vonnegut, one of the most influential, controversial, and popular novelists of the 20th century. The Christian Science Monitor called Shields’ bestselling Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee “one of the best biographies of 2006.”

The art, and the extravagant grilles and monstrances, continue to bewitch, long after the fantasies of written Edens, Immaculate Conception and resurrection have lost their luster.

Cathedrals litter Spain. Once envisioned as synagogues or raised as mosques, they were conquered by the Catholics and converted into sites of Christian worship.

At the Mezquita-Catedral in Córdoba, the three monotheistic faiths found peace, for a time, and worshiped together. Still intact, it’s a relic of that lost era of concord.

The head of security at the Mezquita could have been handsome, but there was something incongruous about his assembly. It was as if his face had fallen, perfect and complete, through the floor of one designer’s sluice box, and been stitched to a body that had sprouted from a more practical vision of humanity. The Italian chisel had met the German production line. Deo Design and Construction: under new management. Fuck aestheticism, we’re building human Volvos to get you through an age of terrorism.

And terrorism was indeed what this man was fighting. More specifically, he was fighting my mother the jihadist — all five foot two inches of her, clad in brown boots and corduroys, toting a hot pink beret. So moved had she been by the emotional tenor of the place that she had decided to perform a full Islamic prostration, kneeling to the ground and bowing her head to the stone floor in the direction of Mecca.

The head of security’s reaction to this display could have come from a dramatic reading of the “Da Vinci Code.” Crossing himself and rushing to mother’s side, he urgently whispered into his walkie-talkie. The word “Musulmán” was launched into the dusty, silent space, amid a rapid patter of Spanish.

“No hablo español,” my mother interjected.

“This forbidden in Spain. No Musulmán. This forbidden. You cannot do this!”

Mother’s expression changed from fear to indignation.

Ever the star of international diplomacy, I scanned my limited Spanish vocabulary for helpful phrases:

Cuanta cuesta? How much?
Poquito Little
Rápido Fast
Caliente Hot
Muchas gracias Many thanks

Listing them here makes me realize that I am ridiculously well prepared for a sexual encounter in a Spanish-tongued city. But for a run-in with an authority of the conservative Catholic Spanish church? Not so much.

“Musulmán, Musulmán!” the guard repeated, and we were soon surrounded by five other guards, large rifles slung conspicuously over their thickset shoulders. French, English and limited Spanish
melted awkwardly together as mother accepted her God-appointed duty to educate the guards in the singular root of monotheistic faith. She was back at St. Leos Catholic College, before her classroom of teenage boys. She would get through to them. She would singlehandedly herald a renewed world order of religious harmony!

After a long struggle with her increasingly impatient audience, she realize she was failing. In a desperate attempt to avoid being expelled from the cathedral, she pointed to her ring, rosary-beaded and purchased in Rome. It was a symbol, she argued, of her Christian devotion.

Security guard defensive mode evolved into deep confusion. Mother was begrudgingly restored to the status of odd tourist. We walked around for a time, then exited into the sun.

We Crash a Mass
The next morning brought a new resolve to the heart of my implacable parent. She would not depart from the land of the Mezquita without partaking of the Blessed Sacrament at the Bishop’s New Year’s Day mass. She wished to enter the center of worship, which had been cordoned off and secured for the midday
ceremony.

Sashaying up to our best friend, the head of security, she raised her voice an octave:

“Je suis proffessorio! I am proffessorio de religion!” She pointed to her rosary ring.

“I am the same as you. Same Christian.” By this stage he had realized, like most people who try to argue with my mother, that his only real option was to acquiesce. His team would maintain maximum readiness –alert, and most importantly, heavily armed.

“No bow,” he repeated. “Musulmán forbidden. It is wrong here.”

We quietly passed through the barrier, and mother dropped to her knees in solemn prayer. She prayed for the miraculous healing of his intellectual hebetude.

Symonne Torpy lives and writes in Sydney, Australia.

Bertsolaritza is the Basque art of competitive improvised rhyming, sung a capella or set to melody.  Think of a live poetry singing contest, where the performers must create their rhymes on the spot.

Only traceable to the beginning of the 19th century, these spoken verses were mainly sung by literary people, typically in informal settings (at dinners, or while drinking with friends).  Although there are no records of bertsos from long ago, the tradition likely stretches back much further. It’s still a rich custom in the Basque country where I live.

Bertso (pronounced “burr-cho”) competitions began in 1935, but were soon put to a stop, during the Spanish Civil War.  Even speaking Basque was dangerous, then — so those who celebrated the language through spoken verse took a big risk. Basques nonetheless kept singing bertsos at low-key events; they became a way to voice opinions about politics or the news.

The documentary Bertsolari explains bertso’s survival by noting that “Francoism didn’t speak Euskera (Basque).” Since bertso is all about the beauty of the Basque language, it was an uncrackable code. Not until the 1980s was the next national bertsolari championship held. Over 10,000 people turned out to hear their language celebrated in this special form.

At a bertsolari txapelketa, or bertso competition, contestants take the stage in regular street clothes, and perform siting in simple chairs, facing a vast audience of Basque speakers and fans. One by one, the contestants are called to the mike. Each is given a subject by the gai-jartzaile, or subject setter.  The task: to invent a verse according to a specified tempo and tune.

Typical assignments are to ad-lib a greeting; to compose a verse on a particular subject; or to incorporate certain words or rhymes. In “prison verse,” the bertsolari must compose verse related to a given topic; in “conversation verse,” two bertsolaris take turns discussing a given subject. “Farewell verse” is a way of saying goodbye.

A bertso could be about a serious theme, like hunger in Africa (prison verse); or a comic situation, like accidentally getting into your grandma’s bed (conversation verse, with one performer playing the guy, the other his grandma); or centered on a word, such as “fire.”

You could compare a bertso performer to a comedian who performs improv, or a rapper who makes up his beat on the spot, but without props or music - just words and their power.

Nowadays, people study hard to become good bertso singers. One of my husband Joseba’s bandmates is a popular bertso performer, and teaches bertso too.

The highly-regarded bertsolari artist Xabier Amuriza defines bertso this way:

Neurriz eta errimaz
kantatzea itza
orra or zer kirol mota
den bertsolaritza.

Through meter and rhyme
to sing the word
that is the kind of sport
bertsolarism is.

It was uplifting to see people so proud of their language, especially because it is a minority one.  I know that I probably will never speak Basque well enough to be able to compose these poetic verses on the fly, but just learning about people who could master their own language that well was astounding.

Since there are so many English-speakers in the world, I think we take our language for granted.  But with only about 650,000 speakers, Basque is cherished, relished and respected. Basques rarely get the chance to get excited about and celebrate their language;  bertso gives them that opportunity. I hope one day I’ll be able to appreciate it without subtitles.

Amanda Gonser writes and blogs from Spain’s Basque country.

The Basque ciderhouse has been overshadowed by the more famous Spanish tapas bar. That’s all the more reason to visit one.

The sargardotegia melds apple (sagar), wine (ardo) and “a place where something happens,” or tegi. So, sargardotegia roughly translates as “the place where apple wine happens.”

The Basque fondness for apples shows up in documents dating back to the 11th century, when the King of Navarre praised the Basques for their cider-making talents. Basque whalers seem to have preferred cider to water during their long seafaring expeditions.

Traditionally, vast apple orchards were picked by the whole community. Apples would brought to the top floor of a two-story farm house and pressed, and the juice caught on the ground floor. The cider was then poured into large barrels, and left to ferment. The alcohol content, at 5% to 6%, is less than that of traditional hard cider, and more on par with beer.

Nowadays, machines do the pressing. But the process after smashing is the same: the juice goes into huge oak or chestnut barrels of about 250 gallons each. Fermenting turns the natural sugar to alcohol, and rids the apples of any sour taste.

Apple-picking takes place September through November. Cider-drinking season traditionally opens in mid January, when many sargardotegias open their doors, and let the cider fans in. The imbibing lasts through spring, or until the cider is gone.

A typical sargardotegia has a large dining room, where patrons normally eat standing up, and a kupela, or barrel room.

Originally sargardotegias were just for tasting: you’d sample cider from various barrels, and leave with bottles from the barrels you liked most.

Nowadays, a trip to the sargardotegias means dinner, and social event. But one still draws the cider straight from the barrel.

A ciderhouse meal always starts off with little pieces of txorizo - a sausage - and bread. Next comes a juicy cod omelet. Then more cod, but this time served with tasty green peppers. The next course is always a txuleta - a huge steak practically still bleeding, but oh so good. You’ll end with a dessert of strong Idiazabal cheese with membrillo, a quince jelly you cut into pieces and place on top of the cheese slices. This is served with nuts you crack yourself, either with your hand or against the table.

This filling meal is punctuated by many trips to the kupela to refill your cider glass. The trick to staying power: you decant only two or three sips of cider into your cup on each trip, drink up in the kupela room, and then return to the dining room for more eating and talking. This is why eating standing up makes lots of sense: it’s easier to tack across the room for another drink.

Cider production was practically moribund during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, when most people abandoned their orchards. The cider-drinking tradition also lost some popularity after the nearby Navarre region increased its production of wine. But since the invention of Sargardo Egun (Cider Day) in 1981, cider has made a huge comeback. Most cider is produced in Gipuzkoa, the province surrounding San Sebastian. Gipuzkoa turns out some 2.5 million gallons annually. Only 10% of this output is drunk in sargardotegias; the rest is bottled and sold in stores.

The two most important words of any Basque cider night are txotx (pronounced “chocha”), the cidermaker’s altert that he is opening a barrel, and to come and fill up your glass; and topa (pronounced “toe-pa”), the Basque way of saying cheers! My favorite cider word is azkena, or “last one,” which comes into play late in the evening. The cider is so delicious that you just have to have one more.

Visiting Ciderhouses in Basque Country

The town of Astigarraga, about five miles inland from San Sebastian, is Basque ciderhouse stronghold, with as many as two dozen establishments scattered through hill and dale.

Lizeaga. At Lizeaga, one of the oldest ciderhouses in the region, you can enjoy a traditional menu of chorizo cooked in cider; cod omelet; grilled beef steak; and Idiazabal cheese with walnuts and quince preserve. Open year-round. Gartziategi Baserria, 20115, Astigarraga. Tel: 34-943-468-290.

Petritegi Sagardoa. Busy, big Petritegi is open year round. Petritegi Bidea 20115, Astigarraga. Tel: 34-943 457-188.

Sidreria Donostiarra If you can’t get to the countryide, Sidreria Donostiarra, in the heart of San Sebastian’s old town, is a convenient place to enjoy the cider-drinking tradition. Cider is only sold, not produced, here. Calle Embeltran, 5, San Sebastian. Tel. 34-943-42-04-2.

A comprehensive guide to ciderhouses in Basque country.

Amanda Gonser writes and blogs from Spain’s Basque country.

An avalanche and flood produced by a melting glacier destroyed the valley below in 1961, killing 15,000 people. Glacial meltwater often accumulates in lakes, held back only by rough rock dams. These can burst suddenly, with catastrophic results.

The Pastoruri glacier used to be a prominent tourist attraction. Now it’s a fraction of its former self. Glaciers supply 80 percent of the water for Peru’s arid coast.

Terraces like these are a traditional way of dealing with water shortages. Some date back to Inca times.

“The rain is not like is used to be,” said Valentin Antesana, 83, from the town of Andamarca. He said rains had been erratic and unpredictable in recent years.

A man from Andamarca leaves offerings by the shore of a lake.

A dancer in traditional costume during the annual irrigation festival in Andamarca. Customs and institutions hundreds of years old still govern decisions about water use in many rural areas.

Climate change is likely to bring both severe floods and prolonged droughts to Peru?s Amazon region ? threatening the rainforest and those who live there.

Already parched Lima receives just 9 millimeters of precipitation each year. That could shrink.

Emily Kirkland traveled to Peru with the help of an AT&T New Media Fellowship, to study the adaptation of communities to climate change. This story was adapted from Latin America News Dispatch.

When Dr. Paul Rhodes, a Washington, D.C. geriatrician, fell in love with “an exquisitely beautiful Jamaican woman I had been dreaming of,” he also fell hook, line and sinker for four acres of cliffside land on her native island.

The rugged parcel was bushy and craggy, but had breathtaking views of mountains, an azure bay and the Caribbean Sea. He was blown away — and so was his beloved.

“She said she wished to live and die on the land,” Rhodes recalled.

But soon his love ran off with a local chef.

Rhodes, an associate professor of medicine at George Washington University and Howard University, had already been smitten by Jamaica and its people. In the 1970s, as a fourth-year medical student, he worked on a University of the West Indies public health project in the rural Jamaican parish of Hanover. He later set up a small charity to help support the island’s old age homes, and co-founded a shelter for street people near his parcel, in the northeast coastal town of Port Antonio.

Jamaica became his second home.

For years he lived a bi-national existence, making housecalls to homebound elders in underserved areas of Washington, while overseeing the homeless shelter in Jamaica.

Then, nearly a decade ago, he decided to create “something fantastic” on his dream land.

“All right, I don’t have the woman,” he reasoned. “I have the land.”

He conjured a tranquil African village.

The result was Great Huts, a cluster of a dozen West African-inspired dwellings. The huts fit beautifully with the landscape, says Rhodes. “we proud to say we are the un-villa”

Rhodes, 62, a Brooklyn, New York-born Jew, wanted the land to fuse elements of Jewish and African culture.
There are lots of carved cedar lions around. The biblical Lion of Judah is both the symbol of the Israelite Tribe of Judah, and of the late Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, whom Rastafarians revere as a messiah (believing Selassie to be direct descendant of the Tribe of Judah, through the lineage of King David and Solomon).

A lion, made by a Rastafarian artist, stands on its hind legs atop Great Huts’ tallest structure, the three-story 34-foot-high stone, wood and thatch hut “African Sunrise.”

“It gives a feeling of being on the fly bridge of a ship,” Rhodes said.

A path leading from this dwelling to other buildings on the property is intended to evoke Middle Passage, the route across the Atlantic slaves ships traveled, from Africa to the West. Some 15 million enslaved Africans perished on those journeys.

A life-sized wood sculpture of slaves breaking free from their shackles stands in the Great Huts lobby.

There’s another Jewish-African connection in Queen of Sheba, a luxurious three-story dwelling of honeycomb coral and fossilized limestone boulders. The 30-foot-long bedroom features a hot tub, small fish pool with a waterfall, and large window in the shape of the Star of David (a Rastafarian as well as Jewish symbol). The Queen of Sheba traveled from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to test the legendary wisdom of King Solomon; some Rastafarians link Selassie to Menelik, son of Solomon and the queen. A painting portraying their meeting in Jerusalem adorns the wall of another hut.

Deep sand on the floor of one hut is meant to evoke a makeshift synagogue. During the Inquisition, when Jews had to worship in secret, they used sand as a carpet to muffle their footsteps. Rhodes sometimes sleeps here on the sand.

Another hut is called The Tabernacle, after the portable central place of worship of the Israelites after they left Egypt. Their priests would enter the Tabernacle to commune with God.

“Akan Tower,” is meant as a reminder of certain commonalities in African and Jewish beliefs. Some scholars believe Hebrew and the West African Akan cultures have in common aspects of language, religion and culture, and that there must have been an intermingling in the past. In both cultures, there’s an emphasis on Old Testament teachings, eating kosher and unshaven heads and faces.

In Lemba Hut, Rhodes features the Lemba, a South African ethnic group that many suggest has links to Judaism. The Lemba observe Shabbat, practice male circumcision, eschew pork and engrave the Star of David on their tombs. Genetic testing has suggested a relationship.

On Saturday nights, Rhodes conducts a Havdalah service, to close out the Sabbath. The lighting of a braided candle, the use of fragrant spices and a ritual pouring of wine usually precede a torch-lit cultural performance of African dancing and drumming. The dance floor is emblazoned with a mosaic of an elephant and a lion, symbols common to African and Jewish culture typically represented on the floors of Israeli synagogues.

Marking 350 years of continuous Jewish presence on the island, Rhodes also offers a faith tourism tour of Jamaica’s small Jewish community, of about 200 people. The tour includes a visit to the island’s sole synagogue, and its Jewish cemetery, with tombstones dating back to the 1600s.

Art is everywhere: fantasy masks and Afro-centric work by Jamaican carvers, painters, sculptors and ceramicists. Many grace a colorful second-floor, open-sided dining and lounge area with elegant wrap-around cushioned seating, carved chairs and tables. The long neck of a 15-foot papier-mache giraffe pierces the ceiling.

“I’m borderline obsessed with beauty and design,” said Rhodes, “and suffer a compulsion to acquire beautiful things.”

Volunteers who help out at Dr. Rhodes’ homeless shelter are put up for nominal prices. Visitors are picked up at the airport, and transported here via a 2 1/2 hour taxi ride.

The nearest community is Boston Beach, traditional home of Jamaican jerk-style cooking. From there it’s a short drive or walk, along a dirt path, to Great Huts’ guarded gates.

Rhodes’ dream for Great Huts is still evolving, but one aspect of it has come full circle. He’s married to an actress, Nikki, a beautiful Jamaican woman he calls his “correct” soul mate.

Merle English is a New York-based writer.

]]> http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/jamaica/feed/ http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/my-friday-with-kebab-allah/ http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/my-friday-with-kebab-allah/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:57:09 +0000 C. Noah Pelletier http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/?p=6695

SUZHOU, China — Every Friday I’d pay the equivalent of thirty cents and ride the bus to Shi Quan Jie. This was a street in the old district, where the walls were whitewashed, and the roofs had sweeping slopes, upturned eaves, and ceramic tiles. Few of the buildings reached over three stories high. Large birch trees lined the two-lane road, flanked on either side by bubble tea stands, black market DVD shops, and boutiques showcasing China’s puzzling take on high fashion.

On my way to find a wok, I stopped at a Chinese Muslim restaurant where everyone, including the child waiters, wore tight-knitted caps. The menu was in Chinese, with English translations beneath it.

Some dishes sounded peaceful: “The hashed meat meditates.

Some sounded dangerous: “The palace explodes the diced chicken rice.”

And others were downright spooky: “Digs up the beef red.”

The sun was shining. I walked to the takeout shack attached to the restaurant. The griller was just standing around with a blue filter cigarette in his lips when I arrived. In Mandarin, I told him how many curried lamb kebabs I wanted.

“Sanga.” I then held up three fingers.

He screwed up his face at me. Then he held up his hand, outstretched his fingers and said “Wooga.” Five.

Was this his way of telling me that I was too skinny? Perhaps, but something told me this offer was non-negotiable. I waited for my five kebabs at an outside table. The legs might have been rat-gnawed. It stood on an open area of hardened clay between the sidewalk and a canal.

For the first two minutes, the kebab griller tapped the skewered sticks of meat above the coals. Then he stepped away from the embers to catcall a girl clicking down the sidewalk in high heels. It wasn’t subtle, whatever he said, but she turned up her nose and kept walking. Real cool. He leered at her and then turned to me, thumbing in her direction as if to say, women, go figure.

The griller brought over my kebabs and a flatbread in a plastic sleeve that read “crusty pancake.” He went back to the grill station, picked up an old copper kettle and came back to sit across from me. I’d watched his assistant — the boy baking crusty pancakes — use that same kettle to brew a cup of tea just moments earlier. Steam was still rising from the spout.

I tore off a piece of crusty pancake, and when I looked up, the griller was sucking on the spout. He was really gulping it down, and, just when I thought steam might billow out his ears, he set down the kettle and belched.

After lunch, I pulled out my notebook to make a few notes, referring to him not as “the kebab griller” but as “Kebab Allah.”

Kebab Allah burned his sleeve on a coal.

Kebab Allah threatened his assistant with a bamboo skewer again.

“I’m not saying the man walked on water; however, in its own special way, watching him work did have a purifying effect on me. And he made a pretty mean kebab.

Grasshopper seller

Sorting a new crop of rice

Carrying greens to market

Watching her children play in the backyard

Lunch in the back of his tuk tuk, or rickshaw

A father waits outside a hospital with his daughter, hoping a doctor will see her soon.

Photographer Allison Heiliczer is based in Hong Kong.

]]> http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/the-news-from-laos/feed/ http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/ghanas-culinary-essence-and-global-dreams/ http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/ghanas-culinary-essence-and-global-dreams/#comments Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:51:23 +0000 Grace West http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/?p=6620

Bubbling hot oil spills over the side of a pan as chopped plantains are dropped in, while a large drum of chicken cooks in spiced sauce, next to a pot of simmering goat light soup. Smoke from the brick-grilled tilapia seeps in from outside, creating an infused aroma of the culinary essence of Ghana.

The busy kitchen of Maquis Tante Marie in the Ghanaian capital of Accra specializes in West African cuisine: Ghanaian staples like fufu — mashed cassava balls — and tomato paste jollof rice.

Restaurant owner Yvone Laryea, originally from the Ivory Coast, opened Tante Marie in 2000, to help make up for the lack of established West African restaurants in Accra. She hopes to attract not only Ghanaians, and francophones from neighboring countries, but also tourists, and expats drawn here by the promising prospects of the new oil industry.

Hospitality is one of Ghana’s fastest-growing industries, on the heels of the 2007 discovery of oil off the coast, and international interest being channeled into the new oil reserve. To date the upscale restaurant market has been dominated by foreign, especially French and Chinese, cuisine. Now, many in the food industry are trying to promote Ghanaian cuisine, sometimes by challenging the traditional ways of food preparation, to try to make it more appealing to foreigners.

“For years people have felt everything foreign, especially European and American, is better,” said George Ansere, principal quality assurance officer of the Ghana Tourist Board. “But the trend is changing; we are realizing that our food isn’t [as] backwards as we might think.”

But restaurant owners complain bitterly that job applicants, even graduates of hospitality programs, are often insufficiently prepared for the work.

“Culinary training in this county needs to be more serious,” said Jean Awad, 45, owner of French restaurant Le Magellan. “Graduates have this printed paper saying they passed, but they come here, and we have to teach them again.”

South Africa and Kenya, with their large international populations, are considered African culinary leaders in Africa. But new influx of foreigners into Ghana has introduced suggestions that this country improve the quality of its restaurant food.

“The understanding of the local cuisine is very high, but exposure to what makes for five-star standard cuisine is still a bit limited,” said Sanjay Narain, 42, the CEO of catering company Allterrain Services Group. “It’s possible to work to high international standards — it just takes training, education, and discipline.”

Cooks and caterers must first be better trained, industry professionals say.

“There’s a gap between what the industries are expecting and what the academic institutions are producing,” said Ansere.

For Charles Agbenuzah, 45, head chef of the five-star African Regent Hotel restaurant, the problem is what training schools teach.

“Things they learn from books and classrooms aren’t applicable to the practical field,” he said. “You see the vast difference when trainees come into the industry; they don’t know what actually pertains to the field.”

Often, they lack information about personal, kitchen and food hygiene.

“That’s insidious to the industry,” said Agbenuzah, “if the trainees don’t know the reason why they have to be hygienic.”

Some professionals are calling for the creation of a new culinary training institution. Believing a proper training institute could put Ghana on the map, Nutepe Kartey-Attipoe, general secretary of the Ghana Chef Association, has been reaching out for aid from NGOs and investors.

Others suggest improving existing institutes, or working to create a more unified sector.

“There a lot of separation in the industry, with no governing body,” said Efua Goode-Arthur, director of the EKGS Culinary Institute. “People are doing things anyway they like. If we come together as a group to share ideas and have a structure, that’ll really help.”

Approximately 250 students graduate from EKGS each year, and Goode-Arthur said that help create jobs. But some believe internships are not producing trainees with the desired skill levels so other techniques must be explored.

Currently, the domestic market is dominated by informal “chop bars,” local eateries that are usually unlicensed and unhygienic. The tourist board has made efforts to bring many of them into the formal economy, by adding a third category to the restaurant grading system, and changing the language use to describe them.

Ghana’s 1,549 licensed “traditional catering establishments” far outnumber the 363 formal restaurants and fast food eateries.

Chop bars hold special importance for Tante Marie’s Laryea, who learned about restaurants by watching her mother run one. She argues that chop bars are a must-have cultural experience for visitors.

“It’s the typical image of Africa. Anybody can walk in and have the local dish, eat with their hands, and chat like they’re at home,” said Laryea. “It’s interesting for foreigners to feel the atmosphere, so we must work on getting them hygienic.”

Still, she envisions a future that includes global African restaurant franchises.

“You have McDonald’s world-wide; an African restaurant should be able to export itself all over the world too,” she said” “But we need to have that high standard training ground to carry out this dream.”

Grace West was a student in the New York University journalism institute’s 2011 Reporting Africa program.

.

On a hot Sunday morning Pastor Didier Santana preaches to 200 members of his congregation. Waving his arms in the air, he implores them to join him in worship. Moments later, Santana solemnly bows his head in prayer as the churchgoers of Église Évangélique de Perpignan, or his “sheep” as Santana prefers to call them, bow with him.

“We must remember it’s not God that lit the fire, it’s man,” Santana tells the worshippers.

Perpignan, which is located in the southernmost region of France near the border of Spain, is a Catholic town. But evangelical churches hold a strong presence in the city.

Église Évangélique de Perpignan is one of 11 evangelical churches in the city. According to the Evangelical Federation of France, the number of evangelical churches in the country has risen from 800 in 1970 to more than 2,200 today.

Catholicism began to decline in France in 1905 when the government instituted the separation of church and state. Religious buildings were declared state property and all religious funding was abolished.

Even with the magnitude of evangelical religious growth in the region, some French are still skeptical of the evangelical movement, fearful that churches may provide a platform for dishonest pastors.

When Pastor Santana was first approached for an interview, he himself questioned whether the report would make fun of his church.

“Is she going to call us weird?” Santana questioned the interpreter about the journalist’s intentions.

In a recent Thursday evening sermon, Santana encouraged his congregation not to feel down about their religious beliefs.

“There are people who think we are crazy or part of a sect in the mountains, but we are not. We are followers of Christ,” Santana assured the churchgoers.

While the traditional Catholic Church service is usually a solemn affair steeped in tradition, the evangelical service tends to be lively and includes a more vocal outpouring of emotion. Église Évangélique de Perpignan’s M.O. is strikingly similar to that of evangelical churches in America.
The church is a plain white building, devoid of the elaborate ornamentation that marks most Catholic churches. Église Évangélique is written in bold letters on the side of the building.

Inside the sanctuary, there is little decoration, only the words “Dieu est amour” in gold lettering on the wall behind the stage. During worship, Pastor Santana shares the stage with a band and vocalists. A projection screen hangs from the ceiling, showcasing the words to the worship songs.

On a typical Sunday morning, the church is filled with people — old and young, mothers and children, couples and singles.

Since Santana became pastor of the church four years ago, the congregation has continued to grow. Every Thursday evening, the church holds a special service that caters to those who are contemplating coming to Christ.

Throughout France, the evangelical church is attempting to make itself known with national groups like “Objectif France.”

Objectif France exists to help mobilize evangelical Christianity in France. In an effort to attain a project advocate from the United States, Objectif France has teamed up with the Christian Community Foundation of France, for the distribution of a prayer and awareness guide to 25,000 American churches and missionary agencies.

France has about 430,000 evangelical Christians, about 0.7 percent of the population of 62 million, according to Objectif France.

With these numbers, Objectif France hopes to create movement by connecting the “American Christian community with evangelical French ministries” in order to spur growth in France.

At Église Évangélique, Pastor Santana diddles his thumbs on his desk piled with papers.

“We are definitely growing,” Santana said with assurance. He noted there are 11 other evangelical churches in Perpignan, including three registered evangelical churches and eight “brother gypsy churches” that serve the Roma community.

“Our goals for our churches are to preach the good word of Christ, do social work, help the sick and help the old,” Didier explained.

When asked the most difficult part of being an Evangelical pastor in Perpignan, his answer was one only a man who felt the grace of God could give.

“My job is not easy, I am the shepherd and they are my sheep. But there is always more joy than difficulty.”

Christina Cocca is a journalism student at California State University, Northridge. This story first appeared in The Perpignan Project, the web magazine of an annual summer foreign reporting program sponsored by ieiMedia and the San Francisco State University Journalism Department.

Simon Marill whacks on the red-hot piece of iron with his hammer, sending sparks flying. With a pair of pliers he plunges the metal into the fiery oven. He then removes the iron and thrusts it into a bucket of water, causing steam to rise. With a little polish, his most recent work of art, a small snail, will be ready for sale.

Marill is a blacksmith, a job North Americans associate with horseshoes and swords. Marill is not employed at a castle, but rather out of a workshop in modern-day France. Ironwork is his job, art his passion. Like many people in France’s Languedoc-Roussillon region, he has combined the two.

Despite years of decline, blacksmithing still thrives in modern-day France. For centuries, the population of the Pyrenees Mountains exploited the region’s rich iron deposits. This came to a halt in the 1980s, when the mines closed as a result of foreign competition.

However, iron remains part of the region’s culture in the form of private ironworkers called ferroniers or forgerons. Many blacksmiths such as Marill still use good-old fashioned hammers and anvils to fashion the iron. French citizens see it as a regular job. Schools have well-equipped workshops, where students can learn the skills needed to become ferroniers.

According to Robles Oscar, the treasurer of the preservation association of the Escaro iron mine, iron mining in the Languedoc-Roussillon region dates to ancient times. Back in antiquity people thought iron could ward off demons and heal illness. They admired blacksmiths for being to manipulate it.

By the 17th century there were over 60 sites in Roussillon exploiting the iron in the mountains. The iron was sent from the seaside town of Collioure to European cities such as Genoa, Venice and Barcelona.

On the eve of World War I, production reached record levels. During World War II the mining companies had to hire many immigrants to reinforce the mining teams.

But after the war, the region could no longer compete with foreign mines, such as those in Africa, where costs were lower. The last mine in this region shut down in 1986.

When the mine in Escaro closed in 1953, the city’s population dropped from 600 people to 83. Now, the mine is a museum where tourists can look at unused mining equipment.

“Ever since the mining operation closed there haven’t been any renovations,” said Oscar. “The village is falling apart.”

Catalan blacksmiths used to travel to Escaro for its iron, and the town once housed four forges that produced nails and tools. These sites went away with the mine. But, this did not mean the end of blacksmiths in Languedoc-Roussillon.

A listing of blacksmiths in France contains 4,579 names, with 66 in the Eastern Pyrenees.

Marill, of the mountain town of Arles-Sur-Tech, operates out of his own workshop, called Le Moulin. He makes most of his money from iron door hinges. However, his passion lies in art. Having taken courses in both blacksmith skills and visual arts, Marill can bend iron into art forms. He can make fireflies, snails and even a life-sized mermaid, which he sold for 500 euros. Marill is not the only smith whose trade is also art.

An hour’s drive from the mountains, you can find the warehouse of Sylvie Dabazach. Her warehouse, in Perpignan, is called Art et Tradition. Her creations, which include an iron palm tree, are all her own.

“I like creating things,” she said, “and the metal has allowed me to give shape to my ideas and my drawings. My father was a ferronier, and I have always liked this job.”

Despite the family heritage, her father did not want her to follow in his steps, because she is a woman. So instead she became an illustrator and a civil engineer. But eventually she became a ferronier and learned on the job.

Like Marill, she makes most of her money from traditional blacksmithing, which is to say iron objects like staircases and iron decorations. Also like Marill, she is not satisfied with that. Every ferronier has an artistic side, she says.

But she is happy to take on whatever jobs she can get. Dabazach has felt the same impact as everyone else has, during the global economic crisis of the past two years. “Before we just went to work, no questions asked. Today, we have work for a month, maybe two, but after that we don’t know what will happen.”

French students who wish to follow in the steps of Marill and Dabazach can do so at the Centre de Formation des Apprentis du Batiment des Travaux Publics ((Training Center for Apprentices of the Public Work Force) in Perpignan, a school with a program in metallurgy. Students, or apprentices as they are called in France, take general courses in math, French, technical illustrations, and practical metallurgy. The school is the largest of 103 blacksmith-training centers in France, with an average of 85 students every year.

“It’s a number that is relatively stable,” said director Michel Jean. “It doesn’t increase and it doesn’t diminish too much.”

In terms of employment, school officials are confident that apprentices will find jobs after graduation. Surveys show that almost 100 percent of their graduates manage to integrate in the job market.

“This reflects the general situation in France,” said Claude Blanc, a teacher in Ferronnerie d’Art. “There is a lack of qualified individuals in the ferronnerie sector, but here (in Languedoc-Rousillon) we are rather privileged.”

Not only is there a good job market, but the apprentices are paid 500 euros a month while they are studying. They are taught one week out of three, and the rest of the time they work.

Just like Dabazach, the educators acknowledge the effect of the economy on their industry: “In times of crisis expensive furniture is probably not a priority,” Jean said.

Despite the sexism Dabazach experienced with her father, the program has a high number of female applicants. Blanc and Jean believe it is the artistic side of the profession that attracts them.

In terms of the job sector, Blanc and Jean think there will always be a demand for blacksmiths in this region of France, due to the high number of centuries-old buildings. Modern cities like Paris may not need as many experts in the art of ferronnerie, but ancient towns like the medieval city of Carcassonne will always need restoration.

“America doesn’t have any 12th century churches,” said Jean. “But we have many of them.”‘

Simon Arseneau studies at The Sheridan Institute of Journalism in Ontario, Canada. This story first appeared in The Perpignan Project, the web magazine of an annual summer foreign reporting program sponsored by ieiMedia and the San Francisco State University Journalism Department.

But France has not always willingly embraced its Catalan roots.

Castellers of French Catalonia from Perpignan Videos on Vimeo.

Having lived in Perpignan his whole life, Vincent Dumas enthusiastically describes his hometown as an area that has a unique culture, in comparison to the rest of France. But when this young Catalan describes his family history, there is a sense of disdain in his voice as he acknowledges the treatment of his ancestors.

Not so long ago, Catalan children in France were punished for speaking their native language in schools. Many Catalans felt obligated to identify with French culture, and some were even tempted to relocate to Spain.

And while over the years Spanish Catalans have progressed toward having rights to self-governance and establishing themselves as an official nationality, Catalans living beyond Spain’s borders were constantly being reminded of their minority status.

“There was a certain self-hate that was taught to our grandparents in school,” Dumas explained. “There were severe punishments for speaking Catalan, so it’s very difficult now for the generation of my grandparents to go back to being Catalan.”

But today’s generation of Catalans do not face the same tribulations. In this region, the yellow- and-red-striped Catalan flag flies side-by-side with the flag of France on government building and private residences. Public festivals and national celebrations are often accompanied by activities rooted in Catalan customs. Many young Catalans are actively embracing their culture.

“One hundred percent, I am Catalan from the tips of my toes to the ends of my hair,” said Hermine Duran, 48, a member of a local troupe of human castle-builders known as Castellers, Angelets del Vallespir. The Casteller derives from a competitive form of dance performed in teams in both French and Spanish Catalonia.

Catalonia stretches from the Eastern Pyrénées at the southernmost tip of France to the area surrounding Barcelona in Spain. While South Catalonia has become an autonomous community in Spain, the French side of Catalonia, known as North Catalonia, remains a region without any political power of its own.

As a result, less than an hour away from Spain, cities like Perpignan located in North Catalonia have developed a distinct identity — not quite French, not quite Spanish, but Catalan — equipped with their own language, culture and social history.

Perpignan, the last major city before the Spanish border, has especially inherited this identity. According to a 2007 survey, of the 9 million Catalan speakers in Southern Europe, only 125,000 live in France.

“[The Catalan culture] certainly would have disappeared if it weren’t for South Catalonia in Barcelona,” said Dumas. Though his mother hails from the Spanish portion of Catalonia, where Catalan is a co-official language, Dumas has found himself searching for ways to maintain his culture, in a region accustomed to identifying as either French or European.

Since the start of the 17th century, Catalans in the south of France have been somewhat disregarded as a cultural group. Sparking oppression and resentment that would last for centuries, King Louis XIV declared that the use of the Catalan language was “repugnant and contrary to the honor of the French nation.”

Dumas offers the term francisme, which indirectly translates as “Frenchify,” to describe the French government’s efforts to stamp out the Catalan language in favor of French.

And despite their recent popularity within mainstream culture, even the sardane and the Castellers have had a tough time surviving.

“It’s like all histories, there are golden periods and downfalls,” said Joseph Bonet, coach and founder of the Angelets del Vallespir. “But then there came the francisme, and it almost disappeared.” Bonet, who was a Catalan teacher for 15 years before becoming a casteller, says that the 200-year-old tradition of building human towers didn’t resurface until the 1980s.

But, like Dumas and Bonet, many Catalans have taken on the challenge of keeping their culture from disappearing. This generation, Dumas says, has more freedom to be Catalan: it’s much easier for younger people who haven’t experienced the oppression of years past.

Today, Catalan culture is reviving. Dumas has even co-founded an online publication, La Clau, to aid in the recovery .

The magazine aims to defend the Catalan point of view on society, and to simultaneously change European perceptions of the Catalan community. Through La Clau, Dumas says he hopes to strengthen the relationship, divided by modern geography, between North and South Catalonia, to keep the community alive in France.

“You’d have to ask my psyche why this is so important,” he said. “It’s just a part of me. I am an inheritor of a thousand-year-old culture.”

This story was adapted from The Perpignan Project, the web magazine of an annual summer foreign reporting program sponsored by ieiMedia and the San Francisco State University Journalism Department.

One. 167 Concord Street, Brooklyn

White picket fence, white birch tree, red shutters, red car, and red “No Standing” sign. Perfection.

Two. Clothesline poles, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn

Few people use these poles — or clotheslines — anymore, but still they climb into the sky, rusty pulleys and scraps of rope still clinging to them.

Three. PUSH

Door handle on an art deco building on Fifth Avenue in the 40s.

Four. Defunct subway-line names

On the platform at the Dekalb Avenue station in Brooklyn there’s an illuminated (and still working) sign listing the names of defunct subway lines. Recite them out loud and they roll off your tongue: “Fourth Avenue Brighton Sea Beach West End.”

Five. “Brown”stones on St. Felix Street, in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, are colored like a box of macaroons.

Six. Arrow-theme wrought iron fencing, complete with fletching.

Seven. Construction workers’ breakfast orders

Scribbled on a two-by-four scrap: “Bagel Jelly Iced Cup French Vanilla Bagel Butter” for these hardworking men.

(c) 2011 Caitlin Van Dusen and City Lore

Caitlin Van Dusen is an editor and writer in Brooklyn, New York. Her articles have covered topics ranging from knitting in Nepal and bow hunting in Maine to a scent designer in Copenhagen and a lemon ice king in Corona, Queens. She is a copy editor at the Believer and McSweeney’s, and the art editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

It happened in the desert near the pyramids of Giza, Egypt. I could see the pyramids in silhouette not too far in the distance, and I remember hearing the grains of sand whisper to each other and the sound of hooves beating the ground. It was just my horse, the desert, and me, and it was the first and last time I lived in the moment.

I arrived that summer night with my sister Marwa and my Egyptian cousins in a Honda civic and a Volkswagen Beetle, which we later traded for horses — hesitantly at first because all the horses we had seen looked as if they could barely support themselves.

Our guide Abdu, a short, stocky man dressed in the traditional galebeya, whose mouth was decorated with only two teeth, promised us the ride of our lives with the strongest of horses.

He disappeared behind a shack down a dusty road, and reemerged followed by six of the most beautiful horses I had ever seen. These were unlike the horses pulling carts on the streets of Cairo. They were true Arabian horses, with tight char-black velvet skin, long thick hair and muscles protruding from every part of their bodies. Marwa and I, however, could only drool at the sight of them. We had promised our concerned mother that we would play it safe, so we chose to ride a camel instead.

We realized our mistake right away. The boys shot out into the desert with their horses, screaming and howling, leaving us behind with our sluggish camel and the two young boys who had to guide it through the darkness. They whispered to themselves about why anyone would chose to ride a camel, but it was obviously meant for us to hear. They were right. The journey was only worthwhile riding on the back of a speeding horse, not on a two-humped camel, which we learned, didn’t necessarily mean was made for two people.

Nevertheless, Marwa and I made the best of it. As we trotted along at about five miles an hour, we took the time to admire our surroundings. The sky was a magnificent dark blue and glowed with the white light of the stars that peppered it. Silence surrounded us, except for the distant thud of horse hooves against the sand, and the howls of the people riding them. The air was cool, a refreshing change from the daytime heat that had burned our skin only hours before.

We eventually caught up with the boys who had stopped on top of a small hill to admire the view. It was like having a dream you were afraid would end too quickly. The hill overlooked the city of Giza, and I felt like I was looking out into the ocean, and that the lights of the city were just a reflection of the stars in the sky. The boys were all panting as if they and not the horses had done the running. I wanted in and so did Marwa, so we begged our cousins to switch with us. The horses had tired them out anyway, so they agreed.

I had barely grasped the reins when my horse went flying. Everyone called after me, but my horse and I had a special connection. He understood that I wanted nothing more than to get away from the past, my insecurities, my tedious life; away from everything. He was taking me to that place where I could simply forget and just live for once. But we had to hurry, Abdu’s horse was catching up with us and he would try to hold us back. His horse pulled up beside mine, and for the first time I saw a serious expression plastered on Abdu’s normally cheery face.

“Pull the reins!” he yelled.

I smiled at the sight of him: his short stumpy legs in a horizontal line flapping up and down. I pressed my heels slightly more tightly to the ribs of my horse and we sped away. The cool air smacked me in the face; I felt it go through my eyes, nose and ears. I tasted the sand in my mouth as it kicked up all around me, and felt the goose bumps creeping up my arms and legs. I couldn’t tell whether I was hearing the sound of my heart thumping in my ears or the horse’s hooves beating against the desert sand. I was sure that soon the ground beneath us would crack open because of how hard his hoof touched upon it or that any moment I would be thrown off.

But my horse came to a gradual stop by himself; I didn’t even pull the reins. He began trotting in a circle, giving me a full 360-degree view of the desert. I understood what he was telling me. My entire life I had either dwelt in the past or wearily anticipated the future. My biggest fear was growing old, yet I had never learned to live in the present. But there in the desert that night, with the dark blue sky, the full moon, the stars and the incessant whispering of the sand, it was just my horse and me, with no regard for space or time. My mind was for once a blank. All I could do was listen in the darkness taking slow deep breaths. I was alive and aware of it. I saw the rest of the group coming towards me, and I shut my eyes tight and pierced my horse’s stomach with my heels, waiting to get away once more. But he did not move. The past was too far a distance for even my Arabian horse to reach. The moment had come and passed, and I understood it would seldom return.

* * *

Two years have passed since that experience in the desert, and back in Egypt on one particularly long summer night I sat with my cousins, lounging lazily in our youth, giggling and gossiping. Our parents later joined us to reminisce about their own youth, their talk filled with a nostalgia that made my heart swell and my breath short. My aunt brought out an old photo album congested with black and white photos of our parents in their prime. They bragged about how fashionable and “hip” they once were. My mother’s eyes fixed on one photo in particular. It was a picture taken with her cousin before the start of their first year in college. She is propped up against a fence wearing a fitted skirt reaching just below her knee, and a slimming blouse. Her face is beaming and her smile shows that she is aware of her beauty. Her cousin is leaning against her; she is also beautiful, but terrifyingly shy of it. Against the backdrop of my cousins’ chatter, I watched as my mother examined the photo. She bit her lip and squinted her eyes as she tried to recognize herself, and suddenly the tears began to drop slowly from her eyes, in the way that water drips from a faucet that’s not properly closed.

I tried not to get caught up in the moment. I closed my eyes and thought of that night in the desert. I began to taste the sand in my mouth, but the nostalgia was too much for me, so I ran outside shutting the door behind me, and waited anxiously for my Arabian horse to appear and take me away. He never came and I was left there, bent over, my hands on my knees trying to catch my breath at the life that’s not quite running past me.

Rania Moaz is a writer living in the United Arab Emirates.

Emilie Eaton studies journalism at Arizona State University.

This story first appeared in Istanbul Stories, the publishing project of an annual summer foreign reporting program sponsored by ieiMedia and the San Francisco State University Journalism Department.

Istanbul-based photographer Brian Underdown blogs at Istanbul blogger.

Monica had a list of things to do before she died. I found it strange, since she was in her 20s. I have a list of things to do before I turn 40, which will probably become the list of things to do before I turn 50. Nonetheless, I was willing to help her tackle a few important items.

She was finishing a two-year job in American Samoa (an item on her list). She was working as an assistant public defender there, helping the poor. She loved to help people, though she tried hard to hide it. She’d try to maintain this gruff don’t-care-about-anyone exterior, but it never worked.

One day in April, not long before her 30th birthday, we met in Sydney, Australia. She was impatient to leave the city; it seemed Sydney was not on her list. She was used to the no-frills atmosphere of Samoa, and found the big city far too urbanized.

We rented a small car and began the long trek north. We were taking the scenic route to Cairns, where we planned to spend a day scuba diving (or snorkeling for me) the Great Barrier Reef, and then would try to spot the elusive duck-billed platypus.

Cairns is about 1,600 miles north of Sydney along the east coast — a long journey for anyone but two women on a mission.

Monica drove most of the time, believing that her week-long jaunt to New Zealand the year before had made her an expert at driving on the opposite side of the road, and maneuvering around the circles at just about every intersection.

She forged ahead through the treacherous, winding, roads, shifting gears and smoking cigarettes, complaining, in between puffs, that she had no clue where she was going. Many times, from my view over her left shoulder, I believed we would plummet to our deaths off the steep cliff that appeared to have no bottom, while Monica struggled to take one last drag.

“You should take a picture of this. Me, shifting and driving on the wrong side of the road,” she’d say. “I need proof of this.”

She put the cigarette back in her mouth and posed for my camera. Monica was always worried that people didn’t take her seriously enough.

After the click of the camera, she jerked the steering wheel to the right to keep us on the road. We managed to get to the Gold Coast, a city of high rises on the beach, infinite waterways and countless tourists. We stepped out of our tiny tin can into a hot and sticky tropical climate, leaving behind the jackets we wore in Sydney.

Just up a steep mountain road, we entered the rain forest. Small caves littered the terrain. We parked and ventured inside one. It was pitch black, even in the middle of the day. As our eyes adjusted,
a glow from the ceiling of the cave seeped through the darkness. There were hundreds of glow worms dangling above us.

I ducked, thinking they would fall on my head. It was as if someone had taken a box of glow sticks and thrown them up in the air.

Something zoomed past my head.

“Whoosh.”

A puff of air hit my earlobe as the creature zipped by. I ducked again.

“Bats,” I heard someone say.

I skulked back toward the entrance. I reached the light just outside the cave and felt the rush of freedom come over me as I finally stood up straight.

The next day, we flew three hours to Cairns, scorching sunshine following us. Across the street from The Cairns Youth Hostel, we waded into a swimming lagoon, where a sign warned children against pretending to drown. The actual beach was a cluster of black muck that appeared to have washed in from an oil refinery.  The crystal clear lagoon provided a refuge for tourists who came to the shore for
a dip in the sea. Nearby, a pier full of bars, restaurants and shops stretched out past the soiled sand and into deep blue waters, where we watched boats returning from excursions to various parts of the
Great Barrier Reef. We were just a short ship ride away from marking an item off Monica’s list.

Our first morning in Cairns was Monica’s birthday. A local tour guide named Rick, whom Monica befriended on a smoke break, directed us to Haba Dive Adventures, an adventure company leading
daily excursions to the remarkable reef. A group of young handsome men greeted us at the boat.

“Don’t get too excited,” Monica warned me, “Rick said they’re all Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Saddened but somehow feeling safer, I boarded the boat. A basket at the entrance contained individual packets of Dramamine. The boat boys warned us to take a packet if we thought we would experience any motion sickness. “I won’t need any, I told them. “I never get seasick.”

Packed with bathing suit-clad voyageurs, the boat left the dock and headed for Opal Key. The strong winds left us confined to our seats with white knuckled grips on the railings. As the boat fought through the gusts, we were tossed about and thrown through the waves. My stomach began to churn. Where is that basket? Is it too late to take the medicine?

I lowered my head and prayed for the nausea to pass. It didn’t. I stood up and looked for one of the Witnesses. We found the Dramamine scattered on the floor, and he picked one up and handed it to me.

I staggered over to a long bench and curled up in a ball, waiting for relief. Thirty minutes later, Monica woke me with the news that we had made it to the reef. She was putting on her dive suit.

“Time to go,” she screamed, as though the boat was being invaded by pirates.

The scuba divers were partitioned off into a group for special instruction. They were waiting for Monica. She hopped over to join them, struggling to put on her flippers. I sat up and looked around. No land in sight. I felt my stomach flip flop, but the nausea was gone. And then so was Monica; with a loud splash, she’d leapt into the water flippers first.

Long fingers of red coral danced by a large rock on the bottom of the sea. I had read on Wikipedia that there are over four hundred species of corals found at the great reef. I felt like I was seeing them all
at once. One piece resembled the human brain. Just beyond that was a patch of long strands of blue, purple and yellow corals, swaying with the waves. Nearby, I spotted a coral that looked like several clam shells sewn together. A long thin green fish glided by, barely distinguishable from a piece of sea grass. I drifted along in awe.

Finally I peered up out of the water and realized I was alone, far from the boat and the other snorkelers. I began to swim frantically towards the boat, remembering the movie I had seen about the tourists who were inadvertently left by their boat captain to be eaten by sharks.

I made it back to the rest of the snorkel group near the boat. I had been in the water for an hour and a half. “Fifteen more minutes until we leave, the Jehovah’s Witness in charge told us.

I returned my mask to the water to search the reef for Monica. The divers were beginning to surface and climb aboard. Of course, we had to wait for Monica.

She smiled all the way back to the dock.

Next we headed for the mountains. We were searching for a cabin called “On the Wallaby,” where, according to Rick the tour guide, we could see a duck-billed platypus.

Monica couldn’t wait.

“I have to see a platypus. It may not make sense to anyone else, but it is a must for me. And no, I have no good reason why, so don’t even ask,” she headed me off.

We stopped at every body of water along the way, searching for signs of a platypus. We sneaked to the shore from every direction, hiding behind trees, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive creature.

Night fell. Back at the cabin, we were greeted by a tall young man with long blond curls. “I’m probably the only one who can still find a platypus,” he bragged. “They are getting harder and harder to find, and sometimes days go by without a sighting.” Monica’s face began to show worry. “There is one almost certain way,” he continued. “You have to go to this lake just before dawn, and sit and wait until one swims by.”

“I’m there,” Monica declared. He gave her directions to the lake and wished her luck. Spotting a duck-billed platypus had become a popular quest in this area, and Blondie led a group of people every
day on a canoe trip with the purpose of locating one. Monica took his directions and we went to our room, with its bunk beds, wood floors and vaulted ceilings.

I awoke at 10 the next morning, with a pounding headache, courtesy of our effort to try beers from every region in Australia at the local pub the night before. We were leaving Cairns that evening. Sadly, I realized Monica would not get to see the platypus.

Just then the door swung open, and in bounced Monica, her jacket zipped up to her chin, her backpack slung over her right shoulder. Her smile was unmistakable. She’d checked off another item on her list.

I didn’t know then how important it was for her to meet this goal, and neither did she. The image of Monica proudly bursting in that morning, in her zipped-up jacket, is seared into my memory. A year afterward, she suddenly passed away.

I hold on tightly to the memories of that trip. And I’ve developed an appreciation for checking items off the list.

The idea was to seduce slow-moving cars to stop by for a cone or cup of ice cream. Little more than hulking cement billboards, mid-century ice cream stands boasted shapes and signage brazenly trumpeting their wares. There were stands in the shape of upside-down ice cream cones. Others were conceived of as igloos and castles. Nearly all were bedecked with gaudy, flashing neon signs. If travelling motorists weren’t already sold on the idea that an ice cream cone would offer a fun-filled break from the tedium of the road, then the stands’ flamboyant architecture loudly broadcasted that message. (In Louisiana, scores of former ice cream stands have been converted in recent years to drive-through daiquiri shops, perhaps the ultimate expression of roadside dining exuberance.)

Soft Ice Cream Creates a Stir

The stands were just the right type of retail outlet for the post-war ice cream-loving times. Partly aided by these roadside outfits, ice cream cone sales went through the roof. By 1953, 6 billion of the treats were sold in the US, according to industry figures.

To meet the escalating demand, a hundred cone companies poured an estimated 50 million lb (22.7 million kg) of flour and 3.5 million lb of sugar into cone-making machines. And it wasn’t just kids who were lapping up cones. Adults loved them, too. In fact, in a bid to attract adult customers, a total of 65 per cent of the cones produced in the early 1950s were of the flat-bottomed variety - said to be more appealing to grown-ups than the more common waffle cone.

With a seemingly insatiable demand emanating from baby boomers and their parents, new ice cream vendors entered the market. In the UK Mr Softee and Mr Whippy peddled soft ice cream from vans in English villages and towns, beginning in the late 1950s. In the US the demand for soft-serve ice cream soon eclipsed that of the regular, hard-packed variety. By 1950, Americans were lapping up five times as much soft ice cream as they had three years earlier, while hard ice cream consumption had slipped 16 per cent from its 1947 levels. By 1957 more than 12,000 drive-in stores were dotting the US roadways. And fans were digging into 150 million gallons (568 million litres) of the swirled soft confection annually.

Dairy Queen

It wasn’t long before regional and national chains in the US - Tastee Freez, Carvel, Kohr’s and Dairy Queen, to name a few - pushed aside many of the original mom and pops. One of the most successful of these new purveyors was Dairy Queen, founded in 1938. From the opening of the first shop in Kankakee, Illinois, the fledgling company - launched by the father and son team of J. F. and H. A. McCulloughs of Green River, Illinois - flourished. In 1946, sales of their soft serve - unlike frozen custard, it was made without eggs - totalled $75,000 according to company figures. By 1950 the company was raking in $35 million from its 1,400 outlets. By the mid-1950s the company was claiming 2,600 shops located throughout the US.

Franchising was the key to Dairy Queen’s growth. Starting in the late 1940s, the company had instituted a system in which store owners were granted a specific geographic territory in exchange for paying an upfront fee and royalties Today, Dairy Queen operates more than 5,900 restaurants in the United States, Canada and twenty foreign countries. (Texas claims boasting rights to the most Dairy Queens, with 600 outlets.) International expansion began in 1953. Dairy Queen now runs stores outside the US, in places like Canada, Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong and India. Today, Dairy Queen is owned by multinational Berkshire Hathaway.

Howard Johnson and his 28 Flavours

In ‘The Oranging of America’, a 1976 short story by American writer Max Apple, a fictional Howard Johnson embarks on a road trip across America. Cruising US highways in a limousine fitted out with a back-seat ice cream freezer containing a selection of eighteen ice cream flavours, the restaurant magnate launches a quest to find new locales for his roadside eateries. ‘He raised his right arm and its shadow spread across the continent like a prophecy’, Apple wrote of his road-tripping restaurateur.

As it turned out, the aspirations of the imaginary Johnson didn’t differ substantially from those of the actual man. Howard Johnson introduced Americans to an expanded palette of ice cream flavours. But just as importantly, he cemented a trend that ice cream-stand owners had already begun to exploit - the marriage of ice cream-eating and automobile trips.

In 1925 Howard Dearing Johnson, then a young druggist with a soda fountain in Wollaston, Massachusetts, doubled the fat content in his ice cream; customers flocked to his store for the rich treat. Predicting that Americans were ready to expand beyond the traditional favourites of vanilla and chocolate, Johnson unveiled a line-up of 28 flavours - from maple walnut to banana. Soon he added lunch and snack foods, such as fried clams and hot dogs. An American roadside dining institution was born. Like the mom-and-pop ice cream-stand operators, Johnson figured out that Americans’ infatuation with the automobile, and the lifestyle it spawned, was the key to marketing his product.

So Johnson followed the Second World War veterans and their families to the suburbs that were springing up around the nation’s cities. There, amongst the split levels and ranch houses, the automobile was king. In fact, in the newly minted towns, residents were totally dependent on their cars for connecting with essential neighbourhood services - from grocery stores to dining establishments. So Johnson embarked on an expansion plan in which he situated his orange-roofed eateries in burgeoning suburban subdivisions. From Levittown, New York, to Kankakee, Illinois, Howard Johnson restaurants became familiar dining landmarks. Accommodating suburbanites’ automobiles was key to the business?s success. The Levittown restaurant was typical. It boasted 26,000 square feet (2,415 sq. m) of parking - an area that that dwarfed the size of the eatery itself.

By 1952 Johnson had served more than 200 million diners at his 355 stores. Investors - including Second World War general and US President Dwight D. Eisenhower who became a partner in a Washington, DC HoJos, as the chain was affectionately called - clamoured to buy into the business. By the beginning of the next decade, the number of HoJos in the US had nearly doubled. And when a major highway, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, opened to traffic in 1940, Johnson was given the nod to put the roadway?s eateries in place. By 1952 there were twenty-one HoJos on the Pennsylvania artery alone, eleven positioned on the New Jersey Turnpike, and one on the Maine highway. One hundred million Americans a year were taking to US roads by the early 1960s - and Johnson was feeding a good number of them.

Soon Johnson’s dining empire was equated in the minds of many Americans with the concept of roadside dining. ‘In most states east of the Mississippi River, the term “Howard Johnson” has become synonymous with roadside restaurant’, the New York Times wrote in a September 1952 story chronicling the chain?s success. ‘[A]s long a automobiles continue to pour out of Detroit, Howard Johnson won?t worry too much: every car that rolls off the production line has built-in customers’, wrote the Chicago Defender in 1961, estimating that America?s roadside restaurants were pulling in $6 billion of business annually. Ice cream was HoJo’s biggest seller, accounting in 1955 for a quarter of all sales. And it seemed as if the HoJos formula would be easy to export to Europe. But when the company opened its first store in Amsterdam in the 1970s, customers spurned its products.

And trouble was brewing at home as well. In the 1960s charges of racism dogged the chain. Several outlets operating in southern states refused to serve African-Americans. In fact, HoJos became embroiled in controversy when in 1961 President John F. Kennedy was forced to issue a personal apology to a Sierra Leone diplomat who had been refused service at a Hagerstown, Maryland store. Soon, nagging cleanliness and food quality issues surfaced - and in a blow to the ice cream’s brand, customers complained that some HoJos outlets were carrying fewer than the vaunted 28 flavours. Perhaps the fatal blow was struck when the New Jersey Turnpike authority decided to terminate Howard Johnson’s roadside concession contract in 1973.

Today, almost no original Howard Johnson buildings remain; in 2005 the Times Square restaurant in New York was shuttered forever. A year later, La Mancha Group, LLC  took control of the food and beverage rights, according to www.HoJoland.com, a Howard Johnson fan site. Meanwhile HoJo devotees keep the flame alive through various Internet sites, hoping for a resurrection of the iconic roadside dining spots.

As for the restaurant magnate himself, Johnson always considered himself an ice cream man at heart. He was said to down a dish a day and to have kept a freezer full in his New York penthouse apartment. Yet despite his epic accomplishments - including the rainbow of 28 flavours - Johnson?s attempts to convince Americans to become more adventurous ice cream eaters fell short. At mid-century, fully half of US ice cream fans still preferred vanilla. In fact, Johnson appeared to have died a disappointed man, reported a New York Times obituary in 1972. Try as he might, the restaurant chieftain believed that in one key respect, he had failed mightily. ‘I spent my whole life developing scores of flavors,’ he lamented, ‘and yet most people still say, “I?ll take vanilla.’”

Beyond the Border from Pavement Pieces on Vimeo.

And he’s seen firsthand the environmental degradation the 670-mile fence has inflicted on the surrounding area.

The $3.7 billion fence was intended to serve as a solid barrier between Arizona and Mexico to prevent illegal immigrants and drugs from passing over the border. What it has done instead is fragment an already stretched environment, and prevent animals from accessing large portions of their habitats, which is pushing some toward extinction. It has even caused flooding in border areas.

“it’s just so enraging to have this put up, and it’s only harmful,” Odle said.

Odle’s 50-acre plot is located along the border in Cochise County, Arizona. He moved to the area in 2000; the fence here went up in 2008.

“When this first went up, I’d drive along and deer would be ahead of you; and they’d go a ways and try and go south, and they couldn’t cross,” he said. “I followed them a mile or so, and they eventually just went north.”

While Odle is not a rancher, he is very much an outdoors man –  his eco-friendly straw-bale house and solar energy use can attest to that. A former Marine and Vietnam veteran, he wears a denim shirt, khaki shorts and a stained white hat. He drives a massive white truck with a National Rifle Association sticker affixed to the back window. Odle also cares deeply about the local wildlife.

“We’d see rabbits — rabbits can’t get through. Or roadrunners,” he said. “Well, who cares about rabbits and roadrunners? Well, I do. And it really pisses me off that this thing affects those critters the way it does. It’s really tragic.”

About a mile from Odle’s property, the wall abruptly ends over the San Padro River. There, the only barriers are sparse, steel beams low to the ground. If they can fly under the radar of the Border Patrol, who regularly patrols this area, it seems almost effortless for humans to cross here.

Animals don’t have it so easy.

They don’t have critical thinking and reasoning skills like people do, Odle said. “The animals aren’t like, ‘The word’s out; we can cross here.’ It doesn’t work like that.”

Odle isn’t the only one who sees the wall as a serious environmental hazard.

Environmentalists warn of habitat fragmentation, habitat destruction and hydrological issues.

“We’re talking about a solid barrier that’s chopping ecosystems in two,” said Dan Millis of the Sierra Club’s Rincon Group. “Migration corridors are being blocked, and that can have a huge impact, not only to (animals’ access to food and water, but to their genetic variability and basically the strength of the whole species.”

Randy Serraglio of the Center for Biological Diversity points out that habitat destruction is more extensive than most people realize.

“There’s a lot of other land that’s disturbed along with the border wall than this tiny little strip of land that everyone thinks is so innocuous,” he said. “(The Border Patrol) still has to drive will-nilly all over the desert to apprehend these people….The operation support activities do more damage than the wall itself.”

In 2005, The REAL ID Act allowed for the waiver of 36 environmental laws so the wall could be built, laws that conserved migration patterns, maintained clean air and water, and protected endangered species.

Now, species such as the mountain lion and the endangered ocelots and jaguarundi are feeling the effects of the fence, Millis said. Other environmentalists name the jaguar, the long-nosed bat, the masked bobwhite quail and the Sonoran pronghorn as species that have suffered.

Serraglio warns that some species will go extinct if the problem is not remedied.

“Any further construction of the wall, and we can pretty much say goodbye to jaguars in the United States,” he said.

Flooding is another issue. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, in the Sonoran Desert area, and the cities of Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Mexico, experienced flooding that some environmentalists attribute to the wall.

“You had six feet of water on the Mexican side of the wall, and only a foot or two on the U.S. side, so it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the wall is playing a part in the hydrological disaster,” Millis said.
The flooding in Nogales caused the death of two people in 2008. Today, in Nogales, Mexico, the ironic words, ‘Walls are scars on the earth,’ are scrawled across the metal wall in white spray paint.

It’s easy to see how the wall can cause flooding. Near Odle’s land, debris of grass, vegetation, clothing, shoes and discarded water bottles form somewhat of a dam on the Mexican side of the fence.

“The fact (is) that it affects the wildlife, the environment,” Odle said. “ou can see the flooding that occurs down here — that’s another aspect of it. But it doesn’t stop people.”

The Department of Homeland Security sees it differently.

“I think there’s a misconception that the border fence is supposed to be a solution to any and all border problems,” said Colleen Agle, public information officer for the Tucson Sector of DHS. “It’s not the solution by itself. We see that as part of a solution that consists of our infrastructure, agents and technology.”

Opponents have referred to the fence as a multibillion-dollar “speed bump” that doesn’t really keep illegal immigrants from crossing; they said it only slows them down.

“That’s not my terminology, but that might be fair to say,” Agle said. “It allows our agents time to respond to an area so we can make the proper law enforcement response to whatever type of border incursion it is.”

Agle maintains that the border fence does, in fact, deter potential illegal immigrants.

“When our agents go in to make an apprehension, a lot of people realize they are going to be apprehended, and (they) run back across (the border),” she said. “It they’re going to have a challenge to get into the United States, our agents can respond. Also, if they’re going to have a challenge getting back into Mexico, there’s basically a certainty of arrest. If an individual knows there’s going to be a certainty of arrest, there’s deterrent.”

DHS wouldn’t comment on the environmental effects of the wall.

Despite the Border Patrol’s arguments, local residents and environmentalists are not convinced the wall really does anything to deter illegal immigration and drug traffic.

“The nature of this wall is a knee-jerk political reaction to this anti-immigration hysteria that has swept the country since Sept. 11 and has intensified more recently,” Millis said. “What it is not is a solution to any of the problems it claims to address.”

Odle agrees.

“It doesn’t stop people,” he said. “So why was it put up? Well, it was put up because some lard butt up in Dubuque, Iowa, was sitting on his overstuffed chair, eating his supersaturated fats, watching his wide-screen TV and says, ‘Oh yeah, that’ll stop them.’ It would stop his fat ass, but it doesn’t stop some 20-year-old who wants to come up here, wants to work and is hungry.”

Even Odle’s dog Jake has wandered onto the Mexican side at various times. Once, he was gone for three months, until a woman in Mexico called him and let him know. So Odle had to get his dog’s registration papers, then go get him and bring him back.

Millis points out the hefty price tag of the wall in relation to its overall effectiveness.

“Now (DHS is) saying what it really is is a speed bump,” Millis said. “It slows people down for five minutes or so, and then we have more time to respond. And that’s just ridiculous. How many billions of dollars do we have to spend on a five-minute speed bump?”

The wall, which isn’t finished and spans only 670 miles across the nearly 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico, already has a price tag of $3.7 billion.

As far as a solution to the rash of environmental issues that have arisen, some say baseline data research and funds allocated to mitigate existing damage could be the answer.

An ongoing protocol developed by researchers from the University of Arizona and U.S. Geological Survey will monitor the environmental effects of the wall. The protocol will study its environmental effects, including effects on wildlife and vegetation, hydrology, erosion, species migration and movement, and the isolation of species on both sides of the border.

“The problem is, we don’t have the baseline data on a lot of these species and how they use the border region,” Serraglio said. “So it’s really hard to tell scientifically what exactly the border wall is doing to them.”

Ideally, protocol would remedy this issue, deciding what areas along the border fence should receive funds to counteract the environmental effects of the wall. It is currently under review by DHS, said Laura-Lopez Hoffman, one of the UA researchers working on the project.

Money allotted to mitigate the environmental degradation is another point of contention. Currently the DHS and the Department of the Interior are embroiled in a bitter struggle over $90 million appropriated to repair environmental damage inflicted by the wall.

“It’s a little complex, with Homeland Security refusing to hand the money over to Department of the Interior, because they are worried about an obscure provision of the 1930 Economy Act,” Millis said. “There was supposed to be about $50 million per year dedicated to this effort, but it has been held up for two years now, and the wall continues to be an unmitigated environmental disaster.”

This story was adapted from “Beyond the Border,” a reporting project of the Reporting the Nation concentration at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the University of Arizona School of Journalism. The story first appeared in the graduate web magazine Pavement Pieces.

In early July, a newspaper assigned me a story on the “Playboy Plotter,” the spoiled scion of “good” Beirut family who had contacted al-Qaeda linked groups over the Internet and expressed a desire to carry out bombings in New York City. When I called the plotter’s mother, she answered right away, as if she’d been waiting for my call. I asked her why she thought her son had become an Islamic militant.

“Shu yaani?” she cried out, bewildered.

I repeated the question in Arabic, although she supposedly spoke English, but she remained mystified.

Finally I figured out it wasn’t the Playboy Plotter’s mother at all, but an old auntie from Bint Jbeil who was already on the line, calling for Umm Hassane, when I dialed. Even our phones barely belonged to us anymore.

But food was the real battleground, and here the rhetorical question was Umm Hassane’s most powerful weapon. In response to our simplest questions, she would fire a rhetorical salvo that rendered us, her assailants, impotent.

“Umm Hassane, are you hungry?”

“How can I have any appetite?”

“Umm Hassane, what do you want to eat?”

“How can I eat with all this pain?”

“Umm Hassane” — realizing that we would have to resort to specific questions if we had any hopes of an answer — “Do you want salad and potatoes?”

“If you’re making some, maybe,” — then, flinging up her hands in deprecation. But not if you’re making it for me!”

If we asked her “Biddik shi?”’ — Do you want anything? she would answer back, despairingly, “”Shu biddi? Shu biddi akel?” What do I want? What can I eat?” Mohamad called this her “not-so-subtle attempts to tell us we don’t have anything to eat.”

Most of the time, she would just say “Shu baarifni?” Literally, it means, “what do I know?” But like a teenager’s whatever, or a wiseguy’s fuggeddaboudit, the phrase shu baarifni contained a multitude of shifting meanings. In her mouth, it meant: Leave me alone; Don’t leave me alone; I don’t know what I want; I want you to know what I want without me having to ask, or even knowing what I want myself.

Her other favorite expression was ma btifru maai, “it makes no difference to me.” This meant that deep, violent opinions were being suppressed through superhuman exertion on her part. All these expressions contained a depth of passive-aggressive mastery that impressed me greatly, no matter how frustrating, and I started to think Umm Hassane could make millions teaching corporate communication seminars.

In the end, most of her rhetorical tricks just meant yes. But not simply yes. They meant, Why aren’t you eating? Why aren’t you eating what I eat? Why aren’t we all eating together, the same thing, at the same time?

The food wars came to a head one Friday, when I asked her if she wanted a cucumber-and-labneh sandwich. Apparently it was one thing to serve an arous as a snack, and quite another to offer it for lunch.

“I’ve been eating nothing but labneh,” she wailed. “I ate it yesterday, I ate it this morning. Azit nafsi”– my soul, my appetite recoils.

“She was insulted that you offered her that,” Mohamad whispered to me in the kitchen. “It’s for babies.”

“So what the hell does she want?”

Mohamad went into the living room to investigate. After the usual “What, me eat?” formalities, she presented him with a list of grievances: we had no salad, no meat, no bread. Worst of all, we lacked the most essential oil of Lebanese kitchens: Mazola. She lamented the madness of cooking with nothing but olive oil — it was not for cooking, as everyone knew, and how could we live like this?

Mohamad trotted back and forth, a reluctant ambassador, while I waited in the kitchen to find out what she wanted. Finally, after some wheedling, she consented to a shish taouk sandwich.

I asked him to find out if she wanted garlic, hummus, and pickles, the traditional accoutrements of such a sandwich. He got an Umm Hassane answer: “What do I need with hummus?”

“She’s being insolent,” he muttered, back in the kitchen, where we were both hiding from her wrath. “They’re all pseudo-martyrs, my whole family.”

We loved having her. We would have bought her anything she asked for, but she refused to ask. Somehow this woman, the scourge of greengrocers and agriculture students, could not say what she wanted in the privacy of our home. She was trying so hard to stay out of our way, not to be a burden, that she ended up driving us half-insane.

I was confounded. I loved to feed people, but I couldn’t cook for Mohamad because most of the dishes I knew how to make relied on ingredients he wouldn’t eat. And I couldn’t cook for Umm Hassane because she refused to tell us what she wanted. I finally had the kitchen I’d been longing for, with a real stove and a real refrigerator and a real kitchen sink. But I had no idea what to cook.

“I have an idea,” I said to Mohamad one day, as we stood in the kitchen.

What she really wanted was to be fussed over, to be coaxed and taken care of. But Umm Hassane was from my grandmother’s generation: brought up to put others first, never to acknowledge their own desires, except in the context of being denied. They showed their love by cooking and complaining. For these women, the kitchen was one of the few places where they could be the undisputed queens.

I outlined a plan: I would ask Umm Hassane to teach me how to cook traditional Lebanese food, under the pretext that I needed to learn how to prepare food for Mohamad, like a dutiful wife. Instead of the fancy fusion stuff I made only for myself, she would teach me how to make Lebanese peasant food — mlukhieh, sayyadiyeh, burghul wa banadura, kebbeh nayeh. I would learn something new; she would have a mission, something to make her feel appreciated. And if it made me look like an obedient wife, that was a price I was willing to pay.

* * *

The day we planned to make mlukhieh, I stumbled into the kitchen late. Umm Hassane had been awake since seven a.m. rehearsing each bit of prep work. Next to the sink, a raw chicken lay spread-eagled on the counter, waiting for me with naked accusation.

“Wash her!” she commanded, hobbling into the kitchen and pointing to the chicken.

“Make coffee,” I muttered, heading for the kettle. I could barely communicate in English, let alone Arabic, until I’d had my coffee.

Clearly I hadn’t understood. Drawing herself to full height, Umm Hassane pointed toward the sink and repeated her orders: “The chicken! Wash her!?

We hadn’t even started cooking, and already we were hurtling toward one of those clash-of-civilization conversations where people kept shouting Arabic nouns over and over –”WATER! WATER!” — thinking I was deaf as well as simple-minded, but never explaining exactly what they wanted me to do with the goddamn water. Meanwhile, I would stand there, choking on basic verbs, and thinking, This is just a taste of how it must feel to be a taxi driver, a busboy, a chambermaid, any of the starter jobs immigrants get in America while they’re learning English. These encounters usually deteriorated into something like this:

“Make coffee!”
“Wash chicken!”
“Coffee!”
“Chicken!”
“COFFEE!”
“CHICKEN!”

Then I remembered an old habit of my grandmother’s. Whenever she was craving something — a hamburger, a cigarette, a beer –she would say: “You want a beer, don’t you? Don’t you want a hamburger? You want me to roll you a cigarette?”

At the time it drove me crazy.”No, Grandma, you want a hamburger,” I would say. Why couldn’t she just admit that she wanted a beer? She ran the kitchen; why couldn’t she just take what she wanted? That my grandmother’s life revolved around other people’s hungers –that she needed to justify her desires, even to herself –was something I didn’t figure out until after she was gone.

“Umm Hassane,” I said. “Don’t you want a cup of coffee? You like coffee, don’t you?”

Thus was born our morning ritual of cake and coffee. That morning, before making mlukhieh, Umm Hassane and I sat out on the balcony eating chocolate cake and drinking coffee. From then on we did it every morning. We would hold blunted conversations and watch the city perform its morning rituals: pigeons wheeling in the sky, traffic jamming on the Corniche, maids beating carpets on balconies. She would stretch her legs and luxuriate in the sun. Normally, she might disapprove of such idleness; a person should be off cleaning houses. But since it was part of my cooking classes, that made it okay. Really, she was doing it for my sake.

One morning, as we sat looking at our sliver of Mediterranean water, she swung her legs down and scooted her chair closer to mine. She leaned forward, fixed me with an intense expression, and commanded:

“Bring me a baby!”

“But we have a cat,” I said. “Who needs a baby?”

“A cat! What’s a cat?” she said, angrily brushing aside this evasion.”Bring me a baby!”

How could I explain to her that our lives were still too unsettled, too unstable? That war correspondents don’t just go gallivanting around the Middle East having babies; or that even now, as we began to tentatively settle down, we still didn’t know where we wanted to be? I definitely didn’t have the Arabic — or even the English, this hour of the morning –to express the array of emotions this demand evoked.

“I want a baby,” I told her, all innocent shrugs, “but Mohamad doesn’t.

This was another trick I had learned in Umm Hassane’s school of culinary and rhetorical arts: whenever she wanted something her way, she would claim, piously, that Mohamad Ali likes it this way or Mohamad Ali wants this. But I should have known better than to try to wield the master’s sword against her.

“Mohamad doesn’t want one?” she growled, flicking aside his opinion with a toss of her chin. “Who cares what he says? Bring me a baby!”

Annia Ciezadlo was a special correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor in Baghdad and The New Republic in Beirut. She has written about culture, politics, and the Middle East for The Nation, Saveur, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New York Observer, and Lebanon’s Daily Star. Her article about cooking with Iraqi refugees in Beirut was included in Best Food Writing 2009.

Salesman outside Burma's only synagogue, in the former capital Yangon

Traveling in style in Beijing

Cooling off

To participate in a Tamil festival, this girl prepares to climb 272 steps

Dancing at mosque after religious study, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Young monks praying at the Schwedagon Pagoda in Yangon

Making a pretend "mochi," a holiday rice cake, for Japanese New Year

New Year's in pajamas, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Working Sunday in Phnom Penh

Going to school in a floating Cambodian village

A sister and her brother, who live on the street in Phnom Penh

Visiting Beijing's "Forbidden City"

Riding with daddy in Phnom Penh

]]> http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/work-struggle-joy/feed/ http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/woodstock-russian-style/ http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/woodstock-russian-style/#comments Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:32:46 +0000 Lina Zeldovich http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/?p=5918

“Remember how we had to hide from the militia?,” Alex asks, as we weave through a constellation of multicolored tents, clustered around fire pits underneath pines so tall I have to throw my head back to see the pale blue sky. I hear someone playing a guitar. Another chimes in from a distance. Someone’s humming, someone’s whistling, and the air smells of burning twigs and kasha.

This is Russia’s answer to Woodstock. The natives called it The Festival of Bards. We’re in the middle of the Russian woods, at a camp-like sprawl about 400 miles northeast of Moscow, where the concepts of civilization, friendship and trust take on a different meaning.

“I remember,” I say. This was my juvenile alma mater, where everything happened for the first time: first time in the forest, first night by the fire and first love in a tent. I was 18, only a couple of years older than this event.

Now I am almost twice that age, an American tourist who speaks her native language with a slight accent, whose foreign-structured sentences sound funny and who doesn’t get the latest political jokes, because she’s unfamiliar with Kremlin gossip.

The Trek

We get here by coming to Kazan, a city halfway between Moscow and Siberia, at the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers. Kazan was founded by Tatars — the descendants of Genghis Khan — and later conquered by Ivan the Terrible.

Then we take a bus to Aisha village, famous, in its own way, for giving the world Alexander Poniatoff, the founder of America electronics company Ampex.

In the old days, a long path without signs would lead us from the bus stop to the hidden forest valley, intended to be found only by the word of mouth. It was part of the secrecy that only those who had the right directions could make it here.

Everything is different now, except that the festival is still nicknamed Aishinsky.

“These days everyone drives,” Alex says. “And we buy Cola and Fanta at kiosks, which were unheard of even 10 years ago.”

A Clandestine Affair

With an effort, I can recall the lyrics to the songs. I hope I still understand their subtleties. I breathe in the sweet scent of sap floating in the air, and follow Alex on our quest for the director’s tent, feeling almost as young and Russian as I once was.

Twenty years ago, this as small and clandestine affair, an outlet for the Soviet iconoclasts who retreated into the woods to speak their minds, scream out their frustration and sing their carols without being eavesdropped on, ratted out and arrested.

Back then, the big cities weren’t safe. One couldn’t have a politically incorrect conversation in cafe, because a nerdy guy at the next table could’ve been a KGB thug in plain clothes. One couldn’t criticize authorities in one’s own apartment, since the place could’ve been bugged.

People trusted only those they’d known for a long time — that’s why the Russian concept of friendship always had a deeper, stronger meaning. A friend was not a buddy you bowled with on Wednesdays or drank beers with on Sundays, but a confidante you trusted with your deepest thoughts. It was someone safe to take along to the woods to share a bottle of vodka, a pot of tea, a guitar and your latest rebellious rhymes.

“Remember how we used to truck everything in on our backs — tents, pots, canned food, drinking water? Alex keeps talking. “How we schlepped from the bus, getting lost and not asking for directions, unless it was another bunch of kindred spirits with guitars strapped onto their backpacks?

A construction crew would arrive the day before, to fell some trees and build the outhouses, or fix any that still stood from the previous year. It was typically an all-male team, but still The Damsel’s Hut was always the first to rise.

A Life I Miss

I almost stumble over a man in his early 30s sprawled across the path, next to a guitar and a nearly-empty vodka bottle. He’s snoring, and someone’s unattended and unwashed children jump over him like a log.

The sleeping guy looks familiar. I make a mental note to come by later; he may be someone I used to know. For now, we have to hurry if I want to be included in the program. The sun is sinking below the pine crowns. We’re cutting it close.

We finally find Stas’ tent. Short for Stanislav, Stas is the festival’s historical figure without whom things tend to fall apart. He’s got a mixed reputation as a good singer, a horrible womanizer, and somewhat of a dark horse who used to get away with cracking political jokes, even during the Soviet era. Some people love him, while others wince at his name. He’s another make of Russian - one you trust up to a point.

He recognizes me, though my once-raven black mop of hair is now blond.

“Look who’s here,” he says with a hug that makes my bones crack. I forgot how close Russians get with people they know.

He wants to know what possessed me to take two planes and an overnight train from Moscow to this middle of nowhere.

“I miss this,” I say, trying to explain life on the other side of the globe. I miss the tunes, the smoky midnight tea brewed over a fire, even the white frost that decorates the tents in the early morning.

I give Stas my new Russian poetry book. He asks me to sign it, and tells me to come by the stage shortly after midnight.

He asks if I am writing my next book, and I nod, even though I haven’t written a word in Russian for ages. The Slavic rhymes and English grammar don’t get along, at least not in my head. Luckily, a gang of slightly drunk youths bursts into his tent yelling about a broken mike, saving me from having to tell more lies. They also confide that tonight’s guest star got pulled over by the militiamen for sipping Stoli while driving.

“I’ll see you at the stage,” Stas tells me as he flips open his cell phone to do damage control. If he’s lucky enough to know the militiamen on duty, the celeb may still make it. We leave the tent as Stas orders his crew to find him a sober driver.

Alex and I walk back in the dusk through the suddenly bright spotlights of fires and twinkling “cyclops” flashlights worn on the forehead. Performers are getting ready, tuning up their guitars and drinking warm-up vodka shots.

Performance

By the time we reach our tent, the wooden stage is lit, and the nearby hill, which serves as theater seating, is seeded with spectators.

We pass a young woman who is prepping her man for tonight’s performance by force-feeding him.

“You’re on your second liter and you haven’t eaten a thing!” she yells, holding a bowl of soup to his mouth. “You won’t make out the strings!”

She resorts to the method Russians use for their young picky eaters. “One spoon for mommy, one spoon for daddy, three more spoons and you can have another shot.”

We find our clan — the same one I used to belong to, before we all got married, divorced, rich or disillusioned. Some are drinking vodka, others sipping tea — the two refreshments as inseparable from the Russian psyche as snow from winter.

Traditionally, every concert opens with a song written by Oleg Nechayev, “We All Got Together Tonight.” Everyone on the hill sings along. I’m happy to see that the gala has upheld its insubordination agenda.

The singers mock Putin’s insatiable desire to rule and the masses’ inherent inability to follow his laws. Men sing about the journeys ahead and women they have left behind. Women sing about choices: whether to follow their men into exile or marry their politically-successful best friends.

Russians worship nostalgia. In summer they miss snow, in winter they long for the sun. They believe feeling nostalgic is important — that you have to understand what’s missing in order to appreciate what is.

Yet, one shouldn’t be sad on such a great night, and that’s why everyone has glasses and flasks. I keep refusing the alcohol handed toward me from all directions, explaining that I needed to be able to walk up to the mike.

Finally, at quarter to midnight, I head down to the stage.

I have a sudden panic attack. I’m from another world, a foreign continent, a different universe altogether. Why would these people care about my poetry, even if it’s written in the language they understand? Why did I agree to make myself a laughingstock at Woodstock?

I search for Stas or his bearded emcee to tell them I’ve changed my mind. But they’ve already announced their guest from New York. So now the crowd is bellowing with excitement.

The stage is bright, and woods are darker than a black hole. The hill in front of me is painted with flashlight polka dots, like a quivering living blanket.

I open my book and abruptly change my mind about what I’m going to read. I start with the piece I wrote on the plane that, years ago, took me from Russia to the United States.

Back then I thought I would never be able to return. I peered out the window wondering if I was flying over Aisha, and over the pine that witnessed my first kiss.

As I read, I realize the entire hill is so silent I can hear the night birds chirping. And when I throw a quick furtive glance at the emcee, whose face looks strangely yellow under the stage light, I can tell he understands, even though he never moved away from his homeland. When I’m done with my three selections, he motions to me to read more.

I flip to the first page and read “Little Harlot,” which is based on Balzac’s “The Harlot High and Low,” and is my favorite. I read about love that happens and love that doesn’t, and about where we go after we die, which for Soviet atheists is a question of eternal debate.

Half an hour later my throat is sore, and I bid farewell to the crowd that suddenly roars and applauds. Now I can drink all I want.

The Aishinsky Festival takes place on the last weekend of May. Lufthansa Airlines flies to Kazan, with a stop in Frankfurt; you can also take an overnight train to Kazan from Moscow. From Kazan, hire a taxi ($15-$20) to Aisha Village. Then follow your intuition, and any backpackers on foot. There still are no signs, official parking lots or websites.

Lina Zeldovich writes in English and Russian, and is the recipient of three Writer’s Digest Fiction Awards. She blogs about her adventures at http://noveladventurers.blogspot.com/

Balloons

Bullets

Church

Shoes

Packing

Revival

Burning

“Bamboo bikes have been around since the 1800s, but never on any large scale,” says Huanea, fetching a frame from the ceiling with a lengthy bamboo pole. “This one’s mine.”

Bamboo Bike Studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, has offered customers the chance to make their own bicycles for the past two years. By fusing standard bike components with an all-bamboo frame, consumers create their own lean, green, cycling machines.

But the bikes aren’t designed just for New Yorkers. The studio’s volunteers are taking the project from Brooklyn to Africa.

A Factory in Ghana

As frames are mounted on to racks, ready to be worked on by the weekend’s clientele, the materials to build an entire bamboo-bike factory are sailing towards Ghana. They were packed into the shipping freight by the studio’s volunteers.

Backed by an unnamed Ghanaian investor, and by Columbia University’s Earth Institute, the studio’s staff consists of about eight volunteers. Building the bikes is more of a passion than a business. Serving Ghana is its main priority.

“It’s a way to get super-cheap transportation into the hands of people who need it,” says Huanea. While an American customer pays $632 to construct a bamboo bike in the Brooklyn studio, Ghanaians will be able to purchase one for $50 to $60.

Chinese-made steel bikes are available in Ghana for about $100. The average yearly income in a Ghanaian household is $2,200, according to a 2005 study by The Globalist.

Sean Murray, a former botany teacher, co-owns the Brooklyn studio. As the prospect of a bike factory in Ghana progresses to reality, he can hardly contain his excitement.

“I can’t wait, I cannot wait!” says Murray, talking about the prospect of workers in Ghana mass-producing the bikes. “I have made about 350 bikes in my life. They’re going to make three bikes a day. These guys are going to be fantastic!”

Recently the studio announced that it had opened “the world’s first bamboo bike factory,” in Kumasi, Ghana.

In preparation for the project, the studio in Brooklyn has used a strain of bamboo imported from Mexico, nicknamed “iron bamboo” in botanical circles, to build its bikes. This is more representative of the stiffer species of the plant found in Ghana.

How Bikes Stoke Development

According to Murray, some Ghanaians spend about five hours of their day walking from place to place. A bike could cut this down to a single hour.

“It’ll free enough time for school,” he says.

Though the weekend workshops at the Brooklyn site are starting to generate some revenue, it’s not enough to pay salaries.

Murray, a high school botany teacher, is not the only member of the workforce who has a second job. Huanea works in a restaurant. Other members, such as Greg Schroy, who only joined the project a few months ago, work unpaid. All volunteers are under the age of 30.

The project still needs money. Information published on the Earth Institute’s website appeals for a donation of $80,000 to help the factory meet its goal of producing 20,000 bikes a year. The group declined to discuss the specifics of how the project was being financed.

They see no problem with the product, though. Bamboo is vastly available in Ghana, and it grows quickly. Murray is adamant that the wood is more than suitable for the mass production of bicycles.

“The bicycle is probably the most useful thing next to the computer,” he says. “And this is the best way of making the best thing.”

This story was adapted from Narrative NYC, the newsroom publication of Dale Maharidge and Jessica Bruder’s reporting class at New York’s Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Schweidenback knew his landlord was not a particularly skilled carpenter, and never understood why he was more prosperous than the others.

“Then it really dawned on me why this guy was so successful,” Schweidenback said. “He had mankind’s greatest invention: the wheel.”

Whereas other tradesmen were limited by how far they could walk, Schweidenback’s landlord could bike 10 miles outside of the village for jobs.

Schweidenback came to view the lack of transportation as a leading cause of the villagers’ poverty.

“Absolutely everyone walked everywhere, and it was peaceful and tranquil, but they didn’t get a lot done,” Schweidenback said.

Mobility and Prosperity

Over the next dozen years, Schweidenback thought about this whenever he saw bicycles in the trash, or broken ones at yard sales, in his hometown of High Bridge, N.J.

One day in 1991, he “foolishly” decided to collect a dozen bikes and ship them to Sucua.

Things didn’t work out exactly as he planned.

Instead, after he had collected 140 bikes, he began to envision what this could do for other impoverished families in developing countries.

This was the start of Pedals for Progress, Schweidenback’s nonprofit organization that now boasts a nine-person staff and volunteers in High Bridge, and has sent 125,000 bikes to 32 countries.

“I started getting involved in this, and became so enthralled by the whole concept that we could change society for the better,” he said.

The idea, he said, was simple: to act as a bridge between people who have bikes they no longer want and the people who need a means of transportation in Latin America, Africa and Central Europe.

It costs $35 to get one bike to a user in a poor region. Pedals for Progress asks $10 from the bicycle donor, and receives an average of $10 from the sale of the bike abroad (bikes are sold at 10% of their estimated worth).

“My greatest challenge is coming up with that other $15,” Schweidenback said. “I can only ship as many bikes as I can raise $15 for.”

Schweidenback said that the other part of his job is very “blue collar,” working with a minimum of 6 to 8 people to pick up as many 30-pound bikes as possible at each collection. The bikes are then loaded on to an 18-wheeler and dropped off at a warehouse. From there, they are put on ocean freights.

Pedals is working mainly in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Moldova, Ghana, Uganda and Sierra Leone.

Two of its biggest partnerships are in El Salvador (more than 20,000 bikes shipped) where bikes are sent to a San Salvador training organization that teaches people to be bike mechanics; and to Rivas, Nicaragua, where donations of nearly 17,000 bikes have put more than 35 percent of the population of about 30,000 on wheels, the organization said.

Collections are primarily sponsored by groups — church groups, bike shops, bar and bat mitzvah projects — in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut.

Ryan Hermansky, 18, of Delran, N.J., took up a Pedals for Progress collection for his Boy Scouts of America project. The 66 bikes he collected were sent to Accra, Ghana.

“If I had built a swing set for someone, that’d be nice, but it isn’t the same impact as giving people bikes to use as transportation,” Hermansky said. “The people who get these bikes will be able to ride to school and work and it will really make their lives better.”

Schweidenback said he finds it amazing how many bikes Americans buy: 23 million new bicycles each year, 18 million of them adult bicycles, leaving their old ones unused in basements, garages, or landfills.

“We’re throwing the old ones in the landfills because they are the wrong color,” Schweidenback said.
Sending bikes to developing countries is not merely a short-term fix for poverty, Schweidenback pointed out. “The bicycle represents the cleanest form of transportation and it dramatically increases the movement of goods and services, which allows societies to grow in steps.”

Schweidenback had worked a middle school teacher, carpenter and contractor. But after collecting those first bikes, he knew this is what he wanted to do.

“I was afraid I would cut my fingers off because I’d be cutting wood but thinking about bikes,” Schweidenback said. So, he talked it over with his wife, a professor at Pace University, and “she gave me a year to try it out.”

Pedals for Progress receives hundreds of different brands of bicycles, including 28-speed mountain bikes, name brands such as Gary Fisher, and custom made Terry bikes.

“We get everything from bikes that were made in the 1920s to bikes that you could ride in the Tour de France,” Schweidenback said.

Real estate developer Jeremy Doppelt, of Boonton, N.J., began volunteering a year ago after seeing a pamphlet in his local bike store. An avid cyclist, Doppelt said was amazed to learn about how a bike can change a life. He recalled learning about children who slept outside of their schools at night because the walk home was too far.

“It’s crazy because, like the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and this really applies to Pedals for Progress,” he said.

Schweidenback, who was named a CNN Hero in 2008, and has received numerous other prestigious awards for his work, said that Pedals for Progress is only a “small drop in a big bucket,” considering that there are 3 billion poor people on the planet.

“Yet it gets me up in the morning and I know everyday there are families that have a brighter future because of the bikes we send them.”

I was on a Colombian “learning journey,” and would travel West from Bogota to the coffee-growing region of Armenia; to Medellin; and finally to the Pacific Coast, accompanied by three other people and our guide and host, 32-year-old Alan Wagenberg. And one of the greatest things I learned along the way was the Colombian way with food.

In Bogota, fruit was everywhere. At the market we tried orange-hued gooseberries, granadillas and pitaya, a species of cactus species that can cause gastro-intestinal difficulties. Ours was sweet. We’d countered all this sweetness with sour apple, lulu, and tart passion fruit, maracuya.

Now we were taking a cooking lesson at a vegetarian restaurant.

While the soup simmered, we made arepas, the basic side to every Colombian meal, and the only truly tasty ones I had. Many South Americans take the shortcut, and use premixed corn flour. We made ours the traditional, labor-intensive way, soaking the corn kernels, then simmering them until they resembled cooked pasta.

We kneaded the dough, then shaped it into smooth balls, and rolled them into saucer-like disks. We browned them lightly on both sides, in a heavy skillet.

For the empanadas, we made a filling of cooked quinoa, carrot, onion and parsley. We folded the disks in half, pinched and crimped them ornately to seal them and then deep-fried them until they were golden brown.

For dessert — blackberry dulce– the women picked wild blackberries. We cooked these with unprocessed cane sugar. A dollop of creme fraiche elevated the dish to gourmet status.

We ended our last day in Bogota in revelry at Andres Carne de Res. I know no restaurant like it. It seats about 2,000 people, but the layout is such that it feels intimate.

At Andres Carne de Res

The menu arrived in a gray metal box with a handle that was cranked to scroll through the hundreds of choices.

This restaurant was all about meat. In one preparation, a clean white cotton cloth was layered with a quarter inch of salt and sprinkled with fresh oregano.  Beef tenderloin was placed on top. The meat was then rolled into a tight cylindrical loaf, and placed directly on red-hot charcoal. It was cooked eight minutes on each side, until it resembled a fire-charred log. Then the char was cracked, to reveal the tender meat inside. I had fire-grilled beef: cooked to order, tender and range-fed scrumptious.

The ambiance was festive, the atmosphere electric, the music appealingly energizing. There were live marching bands. Transvestite orchestral quartets tossed sashes over the diners. Our downfall was the aguardiente, Colombia’s anise-flavored sugar cane liquor. We drank shot after shot.

Real Colombian Coffee

The next day we flew west to Armenia, the capital of one of three departments in the Colombian coffee-growing axis. We were met by Jayson, the manager of the coffee plantation El Algrado.

For the next few hours we were his students. We learned about plant cultivation, harvesting, processing, selection, roasting, blending, shipping and marketing. We saw lush coffee bushes laden with both ripe (red) and immature (green) coffee cherries.

The red cherry is sweet, with just a subtle hint of coffee flavor. We visited the selection, roasting and testing rooms, and tried assessing the quality of the final product based on scent and taste.

Red means ripe; green, not yet

Leaving the plantation, we drove along roads lined with groves of plantain, banana and papaya.

Later, a man on horseback arrived at our accommodation, La Residencia en la Tierra, a lodging and creative space, leading five horses. I hadn’t ridden a horse for about 40 years, so I was somewhat intimidated. I was given El Paloma, a white, gentle, pokey creature. She didn’t like being last, though, and gave me an adrenalin rush each time she picked up her pace to stay near the front.

About 40 minutes into the ride over the hilly, hummocked terrain of the 1000-hectare farm, it began to rain hard.

Our plan to ride to a pineapple field for a fresh sweet treat was shelved. Instead, we took shelter at the shack of one of the farm’s cooks. While we waited on the rickety, corrugated iron-roofed porch for the rain to abate, she made us warming hot chocolate with panela, Colombia’s brown cane sugar.

We took a cable car ride back down the mountain, to the Botanical Garden of Medellin, and lunch at its restaruant, In Situ. This open and airy restaurant overlooks a pond, and flower, herb and vegetable gardens. Since I raise orchids, I was particularly interested in those grown in the orquideorama. They did not disappoint.

We left for the Pacific Coast, where for the next three nights we’d stay in log cabins at Utria National Park, a accessible only by boat. At the cabins, we were met by Maria and Ides, who made me feel as though I’d arrived at the home of beloved aunties.

Meals at Utria were based mostly on the locals’ catch of the day. We arrived at camp famished, and so greatly appreciated our dinner of vegetable soup, fried fish, French fries, cabbage salad, arepas and freshly-squeezed orange juice.

Over the next few days, there wasn’t much dietary variety, but everything Maria and Ides prepared was fresh and delicious. For one dinner, Ides grated coconuts to make a flavorful rice dish. Another time, Maria conducted a cooking lesson. After forming and frying arepas, we slit each one and slipped a raw egg inside, then deep fried them.

The day we hiked to Cocalito Beach, Maria and Ides prepared fish empanadas for breakfast, which fueled us well for the challenging trek.  For two hours we inched our way over three miles of roots, rocks and boot-sucking slime and through swirling mountain streams to reach this pristine place.

Maria

Ides

For our breakfast empanadas

Wearing rubber boots, we took a boat across the inlet, then followed our guide Antonio up and down a slippery, root-filled, boulder-strewn, red clay mountain. Once we reached the crest, the remainder of the hike was mostly in the middle of shallow, fast-flowing mountain streams. Though it was hot and humid in the forest, the cool water flowing over our boots prevented any suffering.

Another day we traveled by boat to the village of El Valle, some of us completing the last six miles by hiking. The initial stretch paralleled that of the hike to Cocalito Beach: uphill and down over red clay, roots and rocks. Our guide, Sparrow, gathered some oranges, peeled and quartered them with his machete, and distributed the chunks among us.

Sparrow

After two hours, we arrived at the September Station, a refuge for sea turtle eggs. The manager showed us the compound where the eggs are secured from predators. He offered us fresh coconut milk for 5,000 pesos ($2.50). He cleaned up each coconut, then lopped off the top, and handed it over. Sparrow, in the meantime, had split a coconut open so we could eat the meat.

Coconut milk break

We completed the hike along the beach under a hot sun. Most of us took off our rubber boots, enjoying the freedom of walking on smooth, compact black sand. Along the way, I found six sand dollars, though only one survived intact all the way to El Valle.

On and on we trudged.

There wasn’t much to do in the tiny village of El Valle. However, that evening we were entertained by a group of high school students, under the direction of their teacher. They performed traditional Colombian dances, poured us shots of sugar cane liquor and got us up to dance.

High school students performing in the village of El Valle.

The next morning after breakfast, we set out on a paved road that ended abruptly, and gave way to a ribbon of cavernous ruts, flowing water, slop, muck and boulders.

No wonder Sparrow crossed himself before we headed out.

The author, with a new friend.

Sergey had been sitting across from me on the red velour train seats for over seven hours. I woke up to him looking out the window. He immediately reminded me of a mall Santa. I unsure if it was comforting to have his company, or disconcerting.

His graying beard supported his round cheeks, and the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes seemed like he spent a lot of his life crying or laughing. He was wearing ironed black trousers, and newly-polished black shoes, but his coat looked like he’d been working in mines, and duct tape was holding part of the collar in place.

I don’t remember why we started talking, although surely he made the first gesture of conversation when we were about an hour outside of Moscow. When he spoke I turned my head slightly to avoid the wave of his breath, which smelled like moldy library books and grape juice.

We skipped over the common questions you ask people you meet during your travels — the “where are you going,” “where do you live?” didn’t seem relevant for out inevitability short-term relationship.
Although he had a serious gaze and hadn’t smiled, his mannerism seemed grandfatherly and subdued. He was keen on asking questions, but seemed to be answering mine with more questions, in a philosophical way that you can only do when talking to strangers.

I told him I would just be in Moscow for half a day or so until my next train boarded. He insisted that I must have a cup of authentic Russian coffee before I leave.

I agreed, and decided to cautiously follow him on the metro towards Pushkin Square, a popular and tourist filled spot not far from Red Square and the Kremlin.

I was expecting to be led into a lavish cafe, my mind picturing all cafes in Russia to be like New York’s Russian Tea Room.

“Here we are!”

Sergey finally cracked a smile, and winked as he threw up his hands and pointed to the large Golden Arches of McDonald’s.

The wrinkles on the side of his eyes came even more sharply to life. It was unclear if his gestures were a mark of humor, at the idea of bringing an American tourist to the iconic sign of Americanism, or if he was genuinely excited to be getting me a cup of excellent Russian coffee.

Fried Food and Cigarette Butts

The smell of fried food against the cold air was startling, and there were as many cigarettes littered between the slabs of concrete as McDonald’s straw wrappers. Pigeons poked at dirty French fries.

“This is the first modern historical landmark in Moscow!” he declared.

Still, thinking I’d perhaps been unable to pick up on his wicked humor, I asked, “Huh?”

I actually was in front of a historical monument that represented a huge shift in the Soviet Union. It was only 18 months after this McDonald’s opened in 1990 that the Soviet Union ceased to exist, as Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as leader of the country, and various Soviet republics proclaimed their independence.
In January of 1990 there was line around the corner to step inside what must have only then existed as the idea of The United States (although McDonalds Canada actually handled the Moscow opening).

The manifestation of neatly-packaged food was a sure sign that capitalism was on its way, but more to the point, the enthusiastic reception of McDonald’s from the Russian people signaled a strong desire to leave economic hardship, and move on from political controversy.

Perhaps more than wanting to see the new McDonalds, joining the long lines was a political statement for change. Or maybe the long lines were still a commonplace Communist activity.

I gestured that I would wait outside as Sergey went in to get coffee. A few feet away a McDonald’s employee was having a cigarette break, with long exhales and deep coughs. Her short dirty blonde hair was tied behind a visor that made the circles under her eyes more menacing than her small frame suggested. Her arm was hugging her waist, until the pop song that was her ringtone played, and she yelled, “Hello!” into her phone.

I peered in the tinted glass to see about 20 more cashiers similar to the ageless smoker, attending to the crowds. Tourists? Young Russians? I couldn’t tell the difference, nor could I spot Sergey among the people fighting for seats.

After Sergey bought my coffee we stood outside, both looking onto the square now punctuated with new glass buildings and other imported Western chains.  In the silence I sensed neither of us felt a part of this place. I wanted to ask him if he was in this very place 20 years ago, but as he pulled a flask from his jacket and tapped the contents into his paper cup, I knew he would only answer my question with another question.

Guessing how he would have answered me, I silently asked myself whether I would have been here that day.

The last thing I said to Sergey as he clasped my hand with both of his to say goodbye, was, “Thanks again for the Russian coffee.”

Maggie Owsley writes and photographs from New York City. See more of her work at www.andthenphotos.com.

Photographer Allison Heiliczer is based in Hong Kong.

Just over three months before I met her in the dusty Kenyan town of Narok, Salula’s mother had told her it was her time to become a woman. Her short childhood was to come to an end. Salula knew vaguely what that meant. There was to be a ceremony, something was to be done to her. She was afraid.

“I didn’t want to become a woman,” she tells my translator in her native language, Maasai. She didn’t know she had a choice.

As we speak, she repeatedly scratches the capital letter “A” onto the dark, dry skin of her right leg. She is just now learning the alphabet. Never having been allowed to go to school she had learned neither of her country’s national languages, Swahili and English.

Nor had she learned of the dangers and complications of what is euphemistically called female circumcision, a rite commonly practiced for different reasons in different ways in 28 African and Arab countries.

A Nine-Year-Old’s Clitoridectomy

For Salula it began before dawn on the chosen day in her small village on the edge of the world-famous Maasai Mara Game Reserve, where thousands of tourists flock every year to marvel at lions, leopards, elephants and other wildlife in the beauty of the wide-open East African landscape.

She half sat, half lay on a cow skin shivering in the morning cold. A village woman supported Salula’s back and wrapped her arms tightly around the young girl’s frail chest. Two others held her legs open. Suddenly there was a searing pain “down there,” and there was a lot of blood. It took two months for her wound to heal and even now, she murmurs, it sometimes is still painful.

Once she was healed, it was time for her to be married. Her father would give her as a second wife to a man his own age in exchange for wine, beer, new blankets and a few cows. Salula was decked out in new clothes and shoes, her head smeared in a foul smelling red ochre paste made with cow dung. She did not want to be married, she tells me. She saw her husband to be for the first time on their wedding day. But again, she didn’t know she had a choice. This was the way it had always been done in her village.

A village official had secretly sent word to a local NGO about this child bride. Just as the bride and groom prepared to leave for his village, two policemen who had posed as impromptu wedding guests arrested the father and groom.

Salula was taken to a safe house, and from that day her life changed completely.

The Safehouse

Three concrete block buildings and a shed are an unlikely frontline in the revolution that is occurring in Kenyan Maasai culture. This is home to more than 30 girls ranging in age from 9 to 18 who have escaped circumcision and early childhood marriage. This is the Tasaru Girls Rescue Center, a bastion of the campaign to stop traditional genital cutting in this southern region of Kenya.

Dozens of girls sat quietly at desks doing schoolwork, even though they were on holiday from their boarding schools. They come here now when school is out instead of going home to their villages where they would face pressure to conform to tradition.

As I was shown around the center I saw one girl sitting alone in a large room that served alternately as a dining hall and schoolroom. Her overgrown, filthily matted hair adorned with a metal headband identified her as a new initiate, meaning she has recently been circumcised. She was wrapped in a once-colorful but now faded and threadbare shuka cloth traditionally worn by Maasai women. She, too, had come here escaping marriage.

I accompanied her to a barber shop in town where her head was unceremoniously shaved while others in the shop laughed about her sorry state. She did not understand what is being said since she spoke no Swahili, she had never been to school. She just sat silently in the chair watching in the mirror as tufts of her hair fall onto the blue and white checkered cloth, the electric razor buzzing under blaring music. She had the look of someone accustomed to having things done to her.

The Crusader

Agnes Pareyio, a stocky buddle of dynamic energy, is the heart and soul of this safe house, which has become the headquarters of her crusade to save as many girls as she can from the knife that she herself was subjected to at age 12.

Standing up to her mother, she had refused to be circumcised. But her determination was worn down by taunts and gossip in her village.

“It went all around the village that I was coward,” Agnes told me as we sipped sodas in a gaudy garden restaurant on the main road in Narok.

Sappy Dolly Parton songs blared over the loudspeakers. “So to prove I’m not a coward I agreed to be cut,”  she said still with bitterness in her voice. “I hated the whole thing.”

After being married off in the tradition of the Maasai, she began to get involved in grassroots women’s organizations promoting girls’ education. In a small study about girls’ dropout rates they discovered that after circumcision the girls were married off and never returned to school. So they decided to tackle the big taboo issue of female cutting head on.

I had been told of Agnes’ favorite teaching tool, so I thought I would be prepared to see it. But when it was brought out for me to see I had to hold back my nervous laughter. There sitting on Agnes’ desk at Tasaru was a beautifully carved wooden model of a woman’s pelvis, the truncated legs spread wide. In the middle is a modular space where she places wooden blocks depicting vaginas in various states of cutting.

One block shows a healthy, complete vagina, the clitoris and labia in tact. A second one depicts a vagina that has been subjected to excision, a type of circumcision in which the clitoris is removed completely and the inner labia are sliced off, as this is the type of cutting most common among the Maasai. A third block shows the most severe form of mutilation in which in addition to the excision, the outer lips of the vagina are sewn together, leaving only a small opening for the passing of urine and menstrual flow.

Eunice Kenana, a teacher at Tasaru, popped in the block that represents a normal, healthy vagina complete with clitoris and pink labia. She taps it with a pen. “Beautiful,” she declares with a broad white-toothed grin.

This shockingly graphic and highly effective teaching tool is what Agnes and other Tasaru volunteers take with them on their rounds of the villages for “sensitization” meetings where they gather the men and the women in separate groups and outline for them the problems and complications of genital cutting.

When Agnes first began her crusade in the mid 1990s, people thought she was crazy and she was accused of lying to the women about their bodies and trying to destroy Maasai culture. Often she would show up at a village only to find it temporarily abandoned, its residents gone into hiding from her, and her teachings. She grew a thick skin to deflect the criticisms and continued her struggle. With time and persistence Agnes gained the respect of many in her region and was even elected to a slot on the local county council.

In 2002, with funding from The V-Day Foundation, founded by Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler, she established Tasaru. Girls seeking to flee mutilation and marriage see it as a refuge. But many in the community think of it as “the place where they steal our children.”

Or Else Your Clitoris Will Grow Long and Green!

Many Maasai men have never seen an uncut woman, said Chris Oloishuroh Murray, the only man on Tasarua’s board of directors.

“When we talk to them about female cutting they seem surprised to learn that some of the problems they have seen their wives have are related to circumcision. They are especially surprised that their wives lack of interest in sex is directly related to this cutting.”

At meetings with Maasai men, Oloishuroh Murray said, he is often asked whether girls will become more promiscuous if they are not circumcised, and if they will become prostitutes. The men worry about not being able to satisfy their women.

The women villagers are more worried about carrying on their traditions and ask what will be left of their culture if female genital mutilation is stopped.

But the biggest question from both men and women is “Who will marry uncircumcised girls?”

Traditionally in Maasai culture a girl cannot be married unless she is circumcised because that act is what makes her a woman.

Ellen and Phyllis, both 15 years old, arrived at Tasaru when it first opened, escaping their respective circumcisions. Ellen says she had been told in her village that if a girl was not circumcised, her clitoris would grow long and turn green and fall off in pieces. At school, she had learned about the female anatomy and the dangers associated with female genital cutting.

But while they saved their clitorises, they have lost an important connection to their traditional culture.

Both Phyllis and Ellen know that being uncircumcised means they will never marry within the traditional community.

“Boys say they will not marry girls who are not circumcised, but we say we will find boys who will,” said Phyllis.

In any case, they both now have bigger plans: Ellen planned to become a journalist and Phyllis said she dreamed of becoming a doctor. There was little chance they will ever return to their villages to continue the traditional way of life.

They have both gone through an alternative rite of passage sponsored by Tasaru, to initiate into their culture without the brutality of the cutting. But few of the villages they have left recognize the alternative as a legitimate passage into adulthood.

Phyllis said that since she escaped her cutting, her father decided that her five-year-old sisters, who are twins, would not be sent to school.

“He says it’s just a waste of time educating girls.” But she had hope for her small sisters. “Hopefully the world will be changed by the time they reach circumcision age.”

But because of pressure from NGOs, Christian churches and the government, girls are being circumcised now younger than before, and circumcision ceremonies, which were once grand affairs and announced far and wide, are becoming secretive and more dangerous for the girls.

Circumcision at Dawn

The call of the muezzin from the oddly imposing mosque in town awoke me at 5 a.m., beckoning the small local Muslim community to prayer. I laid awake in the chill of the predawn hour thinking of a different ritual, one where girls are sentenced to a life with little sexual pleasure, complicated childbirth and the knowledge that their bodies are incomplete.

It is at that hour that most circumcision ceremonies are practiced, though each clan has its own customs. I imagined that somewhere out in the bush, in a remote village a girl, maybe 12 maybe 10 years old, was having her genitals sliced by a drunken old woman wielding a razor blade. Somewhere, at that early hour, a girl was being mutilated so that she could be come a woman. I could not go back to sleep.

A pair of scissors with blue plastic handles arrived with my morning coffee. They are meant to cut open the small packet of Nescafe that served as my caffeine fix for the day. But they seem aggressive, threatening, sitting there on the plate while I’m thinking about genital cutting.

I looked over the balcony of the restaurant at women in the town and tried to imagine their vaginas. Are they circumcised? Were they somehow, miraculously, spared the knife? When I saw the women in full Maasai regalia, I looked past the colorful shuka cloths draped across their bodies, their necks weighed down by tangles of beaded necklaces, their elongated earlobes heavy with even more beads. I looked past all that and try to imagine their clitoris-less, labia-less vaginas.

And I looked at small girls playing with plastic bottles strewn in the road. Things are changing here but would they change quickly enough to spare these girls?

Monday is market day in Narok, and many Maasai women come to town from the surrounding villages to sell charcoal. They huddle under the shade of scrawny trees on a putrid, garbage strewn plot of land that serves as a park. I squatted down next to them amid the trash and flies and asked them about emurata, circumcision.

Nekusa is in her late 20s and her closely shaved hair highlights the classic Maasai elongated earlobes decorated with a tube of beads.

“We are not ready to give up circumcision,” she told me in Maasai through another of the women who spoke English. “Even if we wanted to leave it, it is our husbands who rule,” she said. I ask her to imagine a world where men do not govern women’s lives. If it were up to her, I asked, would she do away with the practice? “But our husbands do rule,” he answered shrugging.

As we spoke, an elderly man with the typical red and blue checkered blanket of the Maasai warriors wrapped around his shoulders approached and interrupted the conversation.

“Look at these women, all these women were circumcised and there is no problem. We will change nothing of our culture,” he said, reaffirming Nekusa’s fatalism. Before I could ask him any questions he briskly walked away.

At one point, as I talked to the women, one of them wondered why I was asking so much about circumcision. Did I want to be circumcised? she asked. No way, I said, clamping my legs shut. I was just curious.

The Circumciser

Mama Sayianka doesn’t know her age, only that she was born during the Mau Mau rebellion, a defining period in Kenyan history in the 1950s when Kenyans rose up against the colonial power, Britain.

For nearly 20 years she wielded the circumcision blade, proud to uphold the traditions of her clan, having learned the “craft” from other circumcisers who preceded her. She performed her first cutting on her own daughter and had to lay down the tools of her trade when her hands became too shaky to perform an accurate operation.

I met Mama Sayianka in Pulunga village at her family’s circular enclosure called a boma that holds two tiny huts of sticks held together with cow dung. The roofs are just over 1.5 meters high and are clearly meant only for sleeping, since no one taller than a child could stand up in one.

She led me out of the enclosure, out of the earshot of the men where we could talk freely about her work.

In her clan, the circumcision ceremonies begin with the brewing of a special traditional beer, which the circumciser and her aides drink freely as in one of the huts they prepare a bed of the soft, furry leaves of the African wild sage tree, like the one that shaded us that day from the searing equatorial sun as we talked.

At about 4 a.m. on circumcision day, milk is poured on the initiate’s head to symbolize purity, and her head is shaved. She dons a specially made dress of cow hide decorated with beads and is made to stand outside in the pre-dawn chill “to freeze the body.” This is the only anesthetic she will have. Once the sun is high enough in the sky, Mama Sayianka would cut a hole in the dung roof of the hut to allow the sunlight to enter and help her perform her task.

She described precisely how she would set about it the actual cutting but finds it easier to demonstrate. Beside her was a village girl, about 18, with her two-year-old daughter on her lap. Mama Sayianka suddenly turned to the child, spread her legs wide and started showing me on this tender young vagina how she would spread the labia, find the clitoris, hold on to the small nub and with a new razor blade, lop it off in one swift cut. This needs no translation. I stared wide-eyed at the intrusive demonstration. The toddler squirmed at being poked and prodded until the mother protested.

Mama Sayianka leaned back and laughed at my visible shock. Just to make sure I understood she grabbed the plastic tip of the lace of one of her small white rubber sneakers, holding it as if it were a clitoris and swiped at it with a stick. I got it, I told her.

I asked her how she felt about the movement to stop female circumcisions and her face became grim.

“They are doing bad because they are spoiling our culture and we want to maintain our culture,” she said through a translator. The move to abolish the practice, she believes, is an outside imposition.

Mama Sayianka told me that schools are contaminating the girls.

“Girls like circumcision,” she assured me, “but then they go to school and suddenly they don’t like it.”

She looked me straight in the eye. “If Maasais came to your home and told you that not circumcising girls was bad, and ordered you now to circumcise your girls, how would you feel?”

I would feel angry, violated, I would fight it. But I did not answer her and just nodded my head to signal that I got her point.

She doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. Anti-female genital mutilation campaigners say it brings complications with childbirth but Mama Sayianka, who is now a midwife, says she’s never seen any such problems because the type of circumcision practiced in her clan is clitoridectomy which doesn’t affect “where the baby comes out.”

And they say that a circumcised woman doesn’t enjoy sex, which Mama Sayianka assured me is not true. My interpreter translated her words faithfully, but then added to me in English: “That is what she is saying, but I am saying that it is true, we feel almost nothing.”

Chris Murray, from Tasaru, has had sex with both circumcised and uncircumcised women. “With circumcised women it takes quite a long time for her to reach orgasm, if at all, and she’s not really interested in what you are doing.” With an uncircumcised woman, he says “you move all the way together.”

Widespread in Africa

No one knows when or why the practice of female genital cutting began. The different types of circumcision, at different ages and for different expressed reasons make it difficult to trace its roots. But the practice is surprisingly widespread. In 28 African and Arab countries, it is a time-honored tradition.

Some cultures, like the Maasai, use it as a rite of initiation into adulthood, as with male circumcision. But in Ethiopia most circumcisions are practiced on girls under five years of age. In Nigeria, most are cut before their first birthdays.

Many different reasons are cited for the practice, including hygiene, aesthetics, and disturbingly, as a way to control women’s sexuality.

Most of Kenya’s more than 40 ethnic tribes practice some form of circumcision but, according to a UNICEF survey, the prevalence is decreasing. While in 1998 38% of women 15 to 49 said they were circumcised, in 2003 the percentage had dropped to 32. But among the Maasai, an estimated 93% of women and girls have been victims of female genital cutting, which has been illegal for girls under 18 since 2001. Despite the law, few parents or circumcisers are fully prosecuted.

Emurata, as circumcision is known in the Maasai language, is practiced on boys as well as girls, in the same crude and often unhygienic manner. Sitting in a cafe in Nairobi, I read in the newspaper about two boys who had sustained severe injuries to their penises during a circumcision in the northern Samburu province.

Here there is no movement to stop that practice, though in the United States there is a small but growing campaign to have male circumcision, practiced on an estimated 60% of American men, declared a human rights violation.

It is of course not the same. Male circumcision cuts away skin. Female circumcision cuts organs. It is like having an eye or your tongue removed.

“Whoever thought of cutting organs was a crazy bugger,” Agnes pronounced.

Second Thoughts and Regrets

Jacqueline was a boldly beautiful girl of 16, her high rounded cheekbones sweep up to narrow eyes inherited from her nomadic ancestors of the Maasai. Thin braids peaked out of a yellow bandana that covered her head. We sat together in the yellowing grass of the yard at the Tasaru Rescue Center.

She escaped being married off when she was 13, and is clearly proud of having run away. But she did not escape circumcision, and she seems ashamed. When I asked her to talk about it, her confident voice turned shy. Her head bowed, she told her story to the grass.

It was during the December school holidays when Jacqueline was told she was to be circumcised, along with another girl from her village. For three days there were celebrations. Cows were slaughtered, traditional beer was brewed, friends and family came from nearby villages. Jacqueline was not able to participate because she was still, then, considered a child and not privileged to join the festivities to mark her mutilation. Only after her cutting would she be initiated in the world of adulthood.

Before dawn on the fourth day, she and her fellow “initiates” were taken by a small group of women into the corral where the cattle were usually kept, and told to lie on a freshly-stripped hide. Jacqueline was first. One woman held her shoulders down and the circumciser parted her legs. No one held her feet. It was sheer will that kept her legs open as the circumciser sliced off her clitoris in one clean cut. It was all she could do to keep from screaming.

“It’s a taboo to scream,” she told me, still looking at the grass. “People will look down on you and won’t eat the food your family prepares. “Even this,” she twitched her foot “is considered a scream.”

After the ceremony she was given milk and herbs to wash her wound. She bled for a full day. After a week of bed rest and being treated like queen because of her bravery, she began to heal, and felt proud of her newly-acquired womanhood.

Jacqueline went to her cutting willingly, and this is what shames her most.

“It is our custom, I did not know it was bad until I came here,” she says with her head bowed again. No one at the school she attended ever talked about the dangers of female circumcision. No one had ever hinted that there might be a problem. With longing in her voice, she finally lifted her head and looks me straight in the eyes and cried out, “Oh I wish I could go back and undo it.”

There is a saying in Maasai that translates roughly as “A sewing thread follows the awl,” which is said to mean that one has to follow the trodden path and not veer into unknown territory.

This reinforces the Maasai feeling that tradition must be followed, that female circumcision must continue. Without these traditions Maasai elders say, their already fragile culture will fall apart. They will be swallowed by the globalizing influences imported from the west.

But there is another Maasai saying, that “a ringing bell cannot be silenced.” The anti-female genital mutilation campaigners are that bell, and if it is rung loudly enough and long enough, perhaps what will be silenced are the choked early morning screams on the African savannah, of girls being cut.

Sibylla Brodzinsky is a Colombia-based journalist who writes for the Economist, the UK Guardian and the Christian Science Monitor. She’s at work on a book about displaced Colombians.

The Canadian-owned Peñasquito mine produced its first bar of gold in 2008, but was not officially inaugurated until March 2010, by Mexican President Felipe Calderon. It is one of the three largest mining operations in the world, and Latin America’s largest gold producer.

Unfortunately, the new neighbor has failed to deliver, and the locals’ hope for a brighter future has dimmed.

In fact Peñasquito, owned by the conglomerate Goldcorp, has turned out to be a very troublesome addition to the community, as its main contributions involve environmental contamination and guzzling of scarce water.

Contamination and Water Guzzling

Mazapil, one of the largest municipalities in Mexico, covers an area of 12,063 square kilometers and is located on a high plateau, roughly 2,000 meters above sea level. Its climate is classified as semi-desert.

Founded in 1568, Mazapil is is one of the poorest and most marginalized municipalities in Mexico.

Even though it has been a mining town by tradition, Mazapil has never been prosperous. Its population has managed to survive from agriculture and the raising of livestock.

The ejido system still prevails in this part of the country. It consists of community members, known as the ejidatarios, sharing a common landholding, both for agricultural and living purposes.

Though there’s little rain, the community draws water from massive aquifers that provide vital groundwater, used primarily for the irrigation of crops.

The main underground water reserves are located directly underneath the ejido of El Vergel.

“Our life support system depends on water, because we live off what we harvest!” said Irma Hernández Herrera, a resident of El Vergel. “Here we grow chili peppers, alfalfa, corn, beans, squash, and our lives depend on this, because this is what we eat.”

Nevertheless, since 2007, groundwater levels have been deemed as critical statewide, as the water tables have suffered an annual deficit of 220 million cubic meters. There is barely enough water for farming.

Project of Mass Destruction

Peñasquito, an open pit mine, will require thousands of liters of water per hour in order to operate during its estimated 22-year lifespan.

Before operations began, a contract between community members from the ejido of El Vergel and Goldcorp stipulated the perforation of only 10 water wells for industrial use. Nevertheless, by the end of 2009, Goldcorp was already operating 30 wells, residents say.

Joel Mancilla, Commissioner of El Vergel, accuses the mining company of using in one hour the amount of water a local family would use in 25 years.

What locals call Goldcorp’s disregard for agreements, and the mine’s inordinate use of an already-scarce groundwater supply, have caused widespread uneasiness locally.

“The mine’s wells reach 300 meters below the surface, while ours at El Vergel only reach 100 or 130 meters,” said Armando González Alvarado, a resident of El Vergel and a member of the committee that negotiated with the mining company.

Local residents also justifiably fear for the contamination of the aquifers, due to cyanide leaching processes used in Peñasquito. A cyanide solution is irrigated over mounds of soil in order to separate gold particles from the rock product.

The cyanide filters through the raw mineral, gathering gold and other metals and pushing them to the bottom of the mounds. From here, the concentrated particles flow towards a pool known as the tailings pond, where gold is recovered via the absorption of carbon.

Cyanide leaching is a risk, although the toxic pools are lined with layers of high density polyethylene.
Short-term exposure to high levels of cyanide, be it inhaled, consumed in food products, drunk, or absorbed through the skin, is extremely toxic, even lethal. Long-term exposure to low levels of cyanide can result in serious respiratory problems, affect the nervous system and damage the digestive tract.

Another Goldcorp mine, in Honduras’ Siria Valley, relied on the same cyanide leaching method. Ten years after it established operations, adjacent communities, particularly Palo Ralo and Pedernal, have reported hundreds of health issues involving intestinal and/or renal cancer and nervous system disorders, and research from a 2006 study found that 96 percent of the population suffers from rashes and other skin problems most likely caused by exposure to toxic materials from the mine.

Strange Odors and Dying Livestock

Residents of Cedros and El Vergel are already complaining about strange odors, water shortages, respiratory problems, and deaths of cattle and wildlife near the mine. They also report seeing new crop diseases.

The mine is expected to produce about 500,000 ounces of gold, 28 million ounces of silver, 450 million pounds of zinc and 200 million pounds of lead, for each of the 22 years of its projected useful life.

With gold valued at about $1,200 per ounce, Goldcorp can expect to earn some $600 million per year from this mine, from the gold alone.

The residents see little of this. For several days in May 2009, community members blocked the entrance to Peñasquito, demanding an increase in rent for the 6,000 hectares they’d leased out to Goldcorp. The company agreed to pay 30 million pesos, or about $2.5 million, over 30 years.

Lauro Herrera, community leader from Cedros, claims Goldcorp “took advantage of our ignorance and poverty.”

Local ejido leaders now state that they are owed at least 100 million pesos [about $8.3 million] per year, under the terms of Mexican mining law, retroactive to 2006. And they’ve called on the National Water Commission to reprimand Goldcorp for the likely contamination of the underground aquifers.

Protests and Disillusionment

In May 2010, another sit-in by the locals halted operations for about a week. This time, disgruntled community members demanded higher wages, as hundreds of workers ?earn 800 pesos ($65) a week for 12-hour workdays,” and hadn’t had a wage increase in three years, a spokesman said.

?Yes, we are very disillusioned with how things have worked out,” said one protester. “We expected differently. Our husbands who do work there earn very little.”

Mazapil Mayor Vicente Pérez Esquivel has stated that Goldcorp made all the previous arrangements with the federal government, and since 2007, when the first stage of operations began, the municipal government had not received any tax payments from the mining company, not even the construction license fees.

Just from property taxes, the municipal government should be receiving one million pesos annually from Peñasquito, under the law. Such revenues would come in very handy in a municipality where only 30% of the population has running water, 65% have electricity, 18% sewer service and 3% garbage pickup service, and just 7% of the roads are paved.

?We are not against employment,” Herrera Medez, of Cedros, said. “On the contrary! But the truth is that the company has not hired many locals.

“We want the governments to take action and be more proactive about the contamination, the environmental impact. But one thing I do tell you: we are not going to stop until we find a favorable solution for everyone here. We have seen elsewhere the destruction and well, death, that is left behind wherever an industrial mine like this one passes through.”

?In the future, I see a deserted image of what once was this town,” said El Vergel resident Hernández Herrera. “It makes me very sad, especially for the children who will live such a situation. We have had a very hard life and struggled enormously to upkeep this ejido. We have already suffered so much, and now, this monster comes to devastate our land.

“What will we do once the water runs out? And it is clear that it will run out! Because in every place where a mine establishes itself, the water eventually runs out.”

James Rodriguez, an award-winning photojournalist who has worked extensively in Mexico and Central America, is now based in Nairobi, Kenya.

And, at times one person here reminds me of one person there, as if they were parts of the same whole, particles waiting to be reunited.

One of these unlikely pairs came to my mind today as Ms. Maria pulled her cart full of vegetables to my gate. Possibly the last of her breed — the Portuguese peasant woman — Ms. Maria has been pulling this
cart through the streets of the small fishing village where I’ve lived (when I am in Portugal) for more than 30 years.

Ms. Maria makes the rounds twice a week, her thin, tiny body lunging forward in a perennial black skirt and shirt, and a black head scarf tied with two thick knots at the back of her neck. At 70 years old, or older (she is not quite sure), she still farms a small piece of land that yields the most delicious greens I have ever tasted — ever — anywhere.

“I’ve worn black since he’s gone,” she told me, years before I moved to the States, as she tied a bunch of turnips I had chosen from her cart. She has been widowed almost as long as she has been
doing these rounds.

“So, you’ve never worn any other color in 30 years?” I asked.

“Not once, but …” She looked me straight in the eyes, making sure I was paying attention “…the clothes I set aside for my funeral are lovely and colorful: white skirt and blue blouse, white shoes, and a blue and red scarf. I want to see him smile the moment he looks at me.”

I nodded and muttered something like, “I see.” I was interested but didn’t want to seem unduly curious. Then I gave in.

“He is waiting for you, then?”

I was glad I asked. She threw me a cunning smile.

“Oh yes, he misses me — and how! I miss him too. I won’t come to him dressed in black — no way! He loves me in colorful clothes. We’re going to be happy in the beyond, you know, as happy as we
were down here. I can’t wait.”

She pointed at the sea a few feet away from us and asked,”Don’t you miss this when you’re away?”

She had found my weak spot. “Yes, I do. I miss it very much.”

“So you understand, then; it’s like a hole inside; no peace; no peace till we’re together.”

This conversation marked the beginning of our summer talks. One day last July I asked her how it came to be that her turnips, carrots, kale, cauliflower, spinach, and whatever else she was selling on any
given day tasted so delicious.

“It’s the shit,” was her unhesitating answer. “Good shit from my sister’s cows.”

“Oh,” I uttered. “Great.”

And it was. No chemicals. All pure stuff.

“Why do you ask?” she said, straightening her back as if to look taller. “Is it the cucumbers? You should have tried them before. They were really good then. All the vegetables changed, but cucumbers
changed the most.”

“When?” I ventured.

“Before they went up there, of course.”

I was lost.

“Ms. Maria, who went where, when?”

“Ma’am!” She had never called me “Ma’am” before. “You’re an educated lady. You, of all people, should have heard of this. I’m an ignorant woman, but even I know what they did when they went up there. And you live in their country, too.” Her voice had climbed an octave or two.

“Do you mean, the Americans?”

“Like I should be telling you!” she protested. “They went up into space, right up to the stars, can you believe it, and turned the atmosphere upside down. That which was up, they brought down; what was down, they pushed up. Her hands went up and down as she spoke.

“That’s what they did. And my vegetables have never been the same since.”

The sea roared outside my window. Had she really said ‘atmosphere’?

“Who’d have thought that you didn’t know,” she sighed, sounding almost disappointed.

“I don’t know everything, Ms. Maria,” I said, apologetically. “I know nothing about cucumbers, for example.”

We both fell silent; then our thoughts seemed to fly in the same direction.

“Shall I come by next week?” she asked.

“I’m leaving this weekend. But I’ll be back by Christmas, ready for your vegetables.”

“We’ll see,” she replied, “I may be with my man by then.” She added softly, “Now that would be wonderful.”

But she isn’t, and I’m so glad.

Meeting Ms. Maria’s Twin

I am not sure why Ms. Maria came to my mind so clearly when I met her “twin” in South Carolina.

I guess it was her kindness and her age: her deeply wrinkled face, eyes hidden under folds of skin; the same look of someone who had led a hardworking life.

Our meeting was not carefree. I was wary and — why not say it? — afraid. I had left Rock Hill with a friend, headed to a place in the countryside I cannot find on the map, even now. Somewhere in The South, as people put it to me then. This sounded a little strange to my ears.

Weren’t we in the South already? Apparently not. As I would come to understand, the college town of Rock Hill is generally seen (mostly by its population, I imagine) as too campus-centered, too fond of “Earthfare” grocery stores to be The (real) South. It is also too close to Charlotte, a city so far from The South as to actually be situated in North Carolina.

I mean, Rock Hill is only 20 minutes away from something with the word “north” in it.

I was venturing into The South to take my dog to a summer camp where she would (I hoped) have a great time while I went home for a while, to a different South, this one in Europe (with, come to think of it, same north-south dynamics). My friend was coming with me to check out this place for her own dogs, ahead of her trip to California.

I was filled with a sense of excitement but also of apprehension, which increased rapidly as we drove farther and farther through a landscape bare of human presence. We saw no houses, barns, dogs, or cows — no cars, even — for miles and miles. I found myself wondering, Do I have my AAA card? Are our cell phones working?

On the radio, familiar sounds became less and less clear, and voices with hard-to-understand inflections took over. Then, everything began to slow down, as if life had gone into slow motion — only it wasn’t life, really, it was my car, slowing and rolling gently to a halt, so gently I was able to guide it almost off the road.

The Lonely Road

This was a very good thing, seeing as there were only two narrow lanes with neat white lines down the middle. And not a soul in sight. This could be very bad, of course; though, on the other hand, the sighting of a soul under these circumstances could be even worse.

My friend and I looked at my dog sleeping in the back seat. In American films, what happened to women stranded on a long, empty road? Not a single good thing came to mind.

We called roadside assistance and were relieved to talk to a human being, whose job it was to fix predicaments such as ours. She was matter-of-fact, in control, reassuring. We would be rescued without delay — or would we? “They’ll be there in three hours.”

Three hours? Did she just say “three hours?”

We looked around and again we saw fields and more fields. With less than two hours of daylight, dark versions of our imminent denouement filled our imagination, and it was then we spotted someone moving towards us, indistinct at first and then more clear, though for the longest time we could not tell whether man or woman, young or old.

Going back into the car was an option. But then, why do it? The car was not going anywhere; the windows were not bulletproof.

We continued to stare as if our lives depended on our ability to discern as much as possible about who was coming. Now we could see it was a woman, and that she was carrying something with both hands. What could it be?

A tray, we thought, and we were right. On the tray something sparkled in the evening light. A pitcher, it seemed. A little later the cups on the tray became visible, and then her voice traveled the remaining distance:

“Hi there! I fancied you could do with some homemade sweet iced tea.”

Minutes later she placed the tray on the car trunk and stirred the golden liquid with a large wooden spoon. We wanted to ask where she had come from, but were wary of the answer.

“Where do you come from, then?” she asked, wasting no time.

I began to explain but didn’t get far.

“You’re not from around here, right?” she said. “It wasn’t a question. “I bet you’re from fancy Rock Hill, hey?”

Fancy is not a word we associated with Rock Hill, but there was no time to think of a good answer, as she went straight to the next question, which was — guess what? “What do you do for a
living?”

Now, as easy as it should have been to say what we do for a living, it suddenly felt awkward to speak of research “and stuff like that,” as we put it, trying to sound unintellectual as possible. Part of me wondered why I was acting this way. It wasn’t long, though, before I felt the punch.

“I guess I made iced tea for two liberals, hey? A nest of liberals the place you work at is, I bet.”

There was no stopping her now.

“Colleges! I bet that’s where you work, right? I bet that’s why your car’s ready for the trash. Liberal and poor go together good, hey? Can’t afford the right kind of car.”

And with that she let out the biggest laugh, and we couldn’t help but laugh along with her. We laughed so hard I needed to visit nature’s rest room right there behind some bushes. When we could finally look at each other again, she said, wiping her eyes:

“That’s alright. You’re God’s creatures too. I bet you can do with some of this.”

She let the iced tea and cubes fall loudly into three large clear cups. She knew we’d be there a long time, and meant to keep us company.

We raised the cups to our lips and drank. This was The South, then: cool and sweet, strong, refreshing, with a sprinkle of humor. Just like Ms. Maria.

Maria Clara Paulino teaches contemporary art history and criticism at Winthrop University, and in 2010-2011 is a visiting professor at the University of Porto, Portugal. She speaks five languages, and has translated and interpreted for Salman Rushdie and Vito Acconci, as well as for the European Parliament and the U.S. Department of State.

A villager shoulders an old rifle as he walks along a remote road in the highlands of the Amhara region of northwestern Ethiopia. Many men in this area carry old weaponry. It’s unclear if the guns are status symbols and for show, or if they are used for protection from wildlife or bandits.

A villager paddles a handcrafted, papyrus reed canoe across northern Lake T’ana, the source of the Blue Nile River, in the Amhara Region.

A mountain village in an Amhara valley

A village family in the Sidamo region fills a bowl with grain from an old storage sack that had been saved in the village granary from a previous harvest. This area is home to more than 40 different Sidama sub-tribes, who rely mostly on cattle raising and subsistence farming in this harsh and barren land.

Villagers in the Sidamo region drive cattle to water and to grazing.

A girl in Sidamo tends to cattle along a creek.

Women in Sidamo carry battered cans filled with water back to their villages, after making the trek to the river - the only water source in the area.

A girl in Sidamo carries her little brother

A native craftswomen in Sidamo displays her hand-spun and hand-dyed yarns in her stall at a Saturday market.

Village boys in Sidamo show off sunglasses they picked up at the market.

Sunset in southwestern Ethiopia.

Mike Rynearson, an award-winning former staff photographer and deputy director of photography for the Arizona Republic, is a partner in the photojournalism company Quest Imagery.

]]> http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/surviving-famine/feed/ http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/sharper-image/ http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/sharper-image/#comments Thu, 23 Dec 2010 15:00:27 +0000 Renae Blum http://www.bigworldmagazine.com/?p=5213 Claudia Crocetti stands in a darkened room, beneath empty-looking white boxes in display cases on the walls. “We can’t do anything without light,” she mutters.

Then the lights in the ceiling snap on, and the ghostly boxes fill with warm yellow light, revealing hidden images in paper: the Virgin Mary, Mussolini, Botticelli’s Venus.

These are watermarks, some old and others new, the work of Italian filigranisti who create invisible designs on banknotes and official documents.

Fabriano, in Italy’s central Marche region, is the home of the watermark, an elaborate hidden design created by pressing a special screen to paper. Artisans here developed the technique in the 1200s, to protect their paper from imitators.

Fabriano artists also created the first waterproof paper, by developing and applying an animal gelatin. And they built the first hydraulic hammer mills to pulp paper, a relief to artists who before that were forced into the strenuous work of pulping with mortar and pestle.

Seven Years of Study

Downstairs, visitors watch master papermaker Micella Luigi and several students create this same watermarked paper using the methods of 13th century lavorente, or laborers. It’s a day like any other at the Museum of Paper and Watermarks (the Museo della Carta e della Filigrana) in Fabriano, a city known worldwide for its innovations in papermaking.

The traditional steps Luigi and his students follow look simple, but take apprentices six to seven years to master.

First, rags are placed in a series of hammer mills, noisy contraptions that pound the cloth into finer and finer pisto. The ground fiber goes into a vat of water. A lavorente stands above the vat, lifting a wire frame out of the dun-colored water. If one is creating watermarked paper, the frame will have a design sewn into it; the paper will form inside.

As the fiber settles, the papermaker swishes the frame back and forth, controlling the size and shape of the new paper. When he is finished, an assistant lays the wet sheet out on wool. The paper is about 80 percent to 99 percent water at this point, so a screw press is used to squeeze out excess water.

One begins to think of papermaking as gourmet cooking, or a bizarre science experiment. There are many ways to go wrong, many points in which timing, instinct and good judgment are crucial. You need the right temperature in the water. You need correct amounts of water, fiber and glue (and dye, if the paper is colored). You might smooth the paper incorrectly, or keep the hammer press going too long.

A true master, Luigi says, can create a set of paper in which every sheet is identical.

Followed by Heavy Work and Low Pay

The watermarks Crocetti is showing here are among the world’s best. The images in these rooms reflect not ridges of steel in a mesh frame, but human skin and hair, draped cloth, the sun gleaming on a metal helmet.

Some sheets are elaborate calendars, all 12 months on a single page, with perfectly symmetrical vines, flowers and heraldic symbols wrapping around each month.

Reaching this level of expertise exacts a price that not everyone is willing to pay. Sometimes it’s physical. The filigranisti who create these intricate designs often “have big glasses,” Crocetti, a tour guide for the museum, explained.

Staring at the wire mesh and tiny holes, they must sew steel thread through their damaged vision.

Some paper makers also have blackened fingertips from dipping paper into hot water all day.

“They shed skin like a snake,” Crocetti said.

The most common barriers to becoming a maestro of papermaking like Luigi are lack of time and lack of money. During the years of learning, students work as apprentices for little to no pay. A full-time papermaker can earn perhaps $1,500 a month.

“Young people don’t want to learn, because work requires a sacrifice,” Luigi said.

He picked up the trade himself “very gradually,” from an elderly maestro years ago.

He hopes his own son, currently attending a technical institute for papermaking, will continue his work. But papermaking is traditionally a very secretive art.

“He likes to teach to his son, but doesn’t like to teach to all,” Crocetti said, laughing. “They (the papermakers) are very jealous. It’s difficult for them to show tourists all the secrets.”

Indeed: if you lived within 50 miles of Fabriano in the 1430s, you faced a fine of 50 ducats - roughly the price of a very desirable slave - if you made paper without permission, or taught that skill to an unauthorized person. You could also be fined for not teaching the right person. Local mastro Piero di Stefano, for example, faced a 100 ducat fine if he failed to pass on his craft to a son or apprentice, or taught it to anyone else.

Then, Machines Take Your Job

Today, most paper is produced mechanically. Watermarks embedded in paper money are created by computers, not filigranisti meticulously hand-sewing the pattern on a wire mesh.

Luigi doesn’t mind the technological advances. It’s quicker, but can’t touch the quality of handmade paper, he says.

“Here, there is a niche for people who want personalized paper,” he says. He regularly fills orders for wedding invitations, personal stationary, even watermarked paper with designs the customer created. And he’ll knock down the price, for good friends.

The rewards of such work — physically taxing and unglamorous as it is — are small, but special.

“I like my work very much because after I pull the material out of the water, it feels like woven cloth,” Luigi said. “It feels like touching cotton.”

Where to Buy Fabriano Paper
Fabriano’s famous watermarked paper is widely available, at prices ranging from a few dollars to over $100. The Museum of Paper and Watermarks offers specialty products both in its gift shop and online, often at quite reasonable prices. Recently five sheets of handmade paper with envelopes, decorated with flower petals, were on sale for about $5; large sheets of 11″ x 18″ watermarked paper sold for $2.25 each. In the United States, the Illinois-based Blick Art Materials sells many Fabriano papers, as does the Milan-based Fabriano Boutique, which maintains shops in Europe, Japan and the United States.

This article was adapted from the 2010-2011 edition of Urbino Now, an annual magazine by ieiMedia journalism students that circulates in Italy’s Le Marche region.

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With its red rooftops, medieval castle and rocky beaches, the seaside village of Collioure, near Perpignan, has inspired artists for generations. But for the artist Marc-Andre Figueres, who calls himself MA2F, the primary source of creative motivation is the phallic tower rising over the bay.

It was this 15th century tower, along with the shape of the Collioure Bay, that inspired his work, “The Erotic Trilogy of the Bell Tower of Collioure” (La Trilogie Erotique du Clocher de Collioure).

The trilogy includes a book, and two complementary exhibitions.

Twelve empty gold frames, each attached to a viewing station made up of a pole and steps, are strategically placed around Collioure for “Point 2 Vue Erotique Autor.” Each frame captures a different angle of the bell tower and explores MA2F’s theory of eroticism and spirituality.

Frame 12 is positioned near the crumbling 19th century Fort Dugommier, which offers a breathtaking view of Collioure Bay and the Mediterranean Sea. It was this view, showing the rigid masculinity of the bell tower juxtaposed against the feminine shape of the Collioure Bay, that inspired MA2F’s theory of the erotic bell tower.

“I’m inspired by the light and the changing of the colors,” said MA2F, as he stood at the top of Fort Dugommier and pointed to the view of the Collioure Bay and vineyards behind him “Also, you can see a lot of bright colors here from the view, with the blues and greens from the Mediterranean Sea.”

“He loves to find connections and meanings between things,” said Florence Delseny-Sobra, who has known and worked with MA2F for five years. ?He likes to see that everything has a meaning, that everything around him was meant to be.”

Born in Perpignan in 1959, MA2F has continually embraced his connection to the Catalan towns close to him, even as he’s developed a national reputation. His paintings and sculptures have been displayed in galleries in Paris and abroad, and he is known for the ?sun paint” he invented in 1990. Sun paint uses a special pigment that reacts to solar energy and changes color with the varying types of ultraviolet rays.

“He really lives like an artist,” said Delseny-Sobra. ?When you start talking about his exhibitions and what he is doing in Collioure with “Point 2 Vue Erotique Autor” and all the frames that he did, he is really into it. You can really feel his creativity.”

MA2F’s passion for Collioure’s scenic beauty was a core inspiration for his purchase of Fort Dugommier more than 15 years ago. The artist is working to restore the dilapidated stone fort, built in the 1840s, and to turn it into an art center, and a research center for renewable energy.

“Here will be a prototype for all sustainable energies systems,” said MA2F. “We believe we are creating new systems to use energy now, and actually when we go through all the renovation works we can see that the water from the rain is collected, and we will use the geothermal energy to keep the fort at an average temperature.”

The construction work is done by groups of about a dozen 16-to 22-year old volunteers at a time, half of them male and half female, who work in two-week stints each summer under the direction of three professionals.

“The work here makes sense for this age range because, indeed, this kind of work is simple enough for all ages,” said MA2F. “Seventy percent are from France, and the rest are from all over the world.”

The volunteers, who start at 7 a.m. and finish by 1 p.m. every day, are rebuilding the fort without the help of machinery. They use wheelbarrows, picks and shovels, as well as their own brute strength, to excavate buried structures and reconstruct stone walls.

The restored fort will include gallery space, and a research center where artists can work and display their art. And for MA2F, there will be an apartment and studio that will feature a ideal view of the erotic bell tower, and the bay that first inspired him.

This article was adapted from InPerpignan, a multimedia project of ieiMedia and the San Francisco State University journalism department.

Growing up in Virginia with a Scottish mother and Egyptian father, I lived in a blend of accents, skin colors and tastes. My mother whipped up everything from cornbread and chili to Shepherd’s Pie to Peruvian stew. I knew the difference between coriander and cilantro by the time I was six, and I could name all the vegetables at the farmer’s market. But Egyptian food was mostly a mystery.

Culinary Disconnect

In the Arab world, culinary traditions are usually passed down from mother to daughter, and, far away from his mothers and sisters in Egypt, my father had no way to recreate the dishes he ate growing up.

In college, I took classes in Arabic language, politics and history. But I was missing something essential.

“I bet my mom’s gulash is better than yours,” one friend boasted.

“What’s gulash?” I whispered to another friend, Sara Elghobashy.

Her large Egyptian eyes widened.

I might have been well-versed in the rise of the Ottoman Empire, but I was stranger to daily Arab life.

So Sara, raised in New Jersey but born in Egypt, agreed to teach me how to cook like an Egyptian.

Food is a pivotal part of Arab culture.

“I would much rather offer someone a plate of hummus than lecture to them on the geopolitical history of Amman,” said the Jordanian-American author Diana Abu-Jaber, who writes about food in her novels. “I think in the end you probably learn more about Middle Eastern culture–its earthy, delicious, hearty nature– from eating the hummus.”

As Sara and I shopped for ingredients for stuffed grape leaves and Egyptian rice pudding, greater ambitions took hold.

“Why stop with grape leaves?” I thought. “Why not eggplants and peppers and zucchini? Why not kebabs and falafel?”

But wise Sara knew to start slowly.

We began chopping onion, parsley, tomato, mint and dill. Add rice and ground meat, and you have the standard filling for all stuffed vegetables called mahshy. Sara’s roommates and I gathered around the table, and she showed us how to stuff each leaf and roll it into a perfect parcel. Her fingers worked quickly, tucking the green ends in as she rolled, locking all the delicious filling inside.

I gingerly picked up a delicate leaf and plopped a dollop of filling in the center, just as Sara had. But the filling squished out through the edges, leaving me with a messy blob.

“That Looks Great,” She Lied

“That looks great!” Sara lied, as I placed the blob into a pot lined with onions and peppers to infuse the leaves with even more flavor, a trick Sara got from her mother.

“Growing up, my mother was always in the kitchen, so if you wanted to talk to her, you had to go to the kitchen,” Sara said. “When I got to college, I realized that I could recreate most of the meals just from memory.”

After about five minutes, the pot began to sputter and spit broth. One of my leaves had exploded, spewing rice down the side of Sara’s stove.

For the rice pudding, Sara tossed rice and coconut into a baking dish filled with water and milk. She watched me with a perplexed look as I carefully measured two cups of sugar into a measuring cup.

“I never thought of using one of those” she said. “All my measurements are from my mother, and two cups for an Egyptian are totally negotiable.”

After about two hours, the grape leaves were tender and the rice inside fluffy. We piled them atop a platter, burying the exploded one at the bottom.

Traditionally, a full meal would begin with soup, followed by the mahshy, then either chicken or spiced meatballs called kofta.

The pleasant bitterness of the leaves contrasted nicely with the faintly sweet filling. After dinner, we pulled the pudding from the oven, where it had solidified more than Sara wanted.

“I swear my mother is keeping something from me,” she said, while I cut the rice into squares. “No matter how much milk I put in, it’s never as creamy as hers.

But the pudding was thick and delicious.

I Arrive

Back home, I found an e-mail from my father in my inbox. I hadn’t yet told him about my plan to cook my way into Egyptian culture. But maybe he could smell the rice pudding all the way from Virginia.

“Today I tried to cook rice pudding like my mother used to make,” he wrote. It didn’t turn out right, though. I called your aunt to ask for help but she didn’t pick up. It’s sitting in the fridge now uneaten.”

“You don’t need to call Aunt Nagwa,” I wrote back. I’ll teach you when I come home for Thanksgiving.”

And with one click of the send button, I finally felt like an Egyptian.

Aisha Gawad is a writer in New York.

Last week, I went hungry at a five-star hotel. It was at one of those fancy corporate parties. I’d been hired the day before as one of the foreign hostesses such parties require.

“Okay Grace, so you can please come there at Lower Parel at 11:30?” asked Sameer, the coordinator. “Aur late nahi karne ka hai na?” And don’t come late, he added in Bombaiyya Hindi.

“Mai yahan ki nahi hoon na?” I joked. “To mai late nahi ati hoon.” “I?m not from here, so I don’t come late.”

The next day, I tried my best to get there late. The coordinators and other girls are late as a rule, so there’s no point in arriving at the scheduled time. I struggled to sit at home a little longer, to walk more slowly in the train station. But even though I took the cab on the wrong side of the road outside Lower Parel station, I reached the ITC Grand Hotel at 11:50.

What can I say? I’m from Canada, and we always come early.

I was buzzed in by silk-clad Sikh doormen, and arrived in the grand lobby. There, other foreigners drank expensive coffee and chatted. They probably thought I was also a guest at the hotel.

So I sank into a sofa, surrounded by marble and heavy chandeliers and oriental lilies, until Sameer and the two other girls wandered in casually at 1 p.m.

Sameer saw me sitting there.

“See girls, how Grace is here? You all should also come like this, na.”

“Aray, baba, we came with you, how could we come earlier?” one of the Ukrainian girls pointed out, her Hindi thick with the accent of her mother tongue.

We changed and then waited around, as the event actually started at 4 p.m.

“Look at you girls, living like princesses in this hotel!” joked Sameer, waving a hand around.

We began to ask for something to eat. The other girls whined, limbs crossed, as they sat on chairs. The chairs wore tight white covers, like our tight black skirts. I reminded Sameer that I’d been there for hours already.

“Aap mujhe kyu itna jaldi bulate hain? Aap jante hain ki mai time per ati hoon,” I complained, knowing it was a lost cause. Why do you always call me so early? You know I come on time!

“Haan baba, don’t worry, I promise, you will eat. Just wait for some time.”

He disappeared for a while. And then returned with nothing.

“After, after only, then you will eat,” he promised. The other girls shrugged. It’s always like this, they said.

Hungry, I became grumpy.

We did the event. We stood and welcomed guests. We smiled.

Okay, you are finished, confirmed Sameer after an hour and a bit. It was after 5 p.m.

We sat down, and I asked again to eat. Later, Sameer said once again.

So we went to get changed, but then the client called us back to stand and welcome some more. Mid-change, we stopped short and came back out in our heels. At around 6 p.m., we were finished again.

So for a second time we changed in the sparkling, beautiful bathroom, the Ukrainian girls chatting and spritzing their collarbones with perfume. Outside, I found Sameer.

“Baba! Hello! We need to eat now! It’s been all day!” When I get tired, I’m not patient enough for Hindi.
“You will eat nice hotel food baba, just wait, I will arrange it.”

But it became obvious, finally, that there would be nothing for us to eat. So by 6:30 p.m., we were handed our few thousand rupees each and sent on our way.

Four thousand Indian rupees is about $90. I don’t live particularly extravagantly here, and can eat and travel on that for a couple of weeks. Being paid to do virtually nothing, while enjoying the air conditioning of a luxury hotel? I should have felt good.

But that day wasn’t nearly as good as one before, when I’d spent the whole afternoon volunteering at a kindergarten in Dharavi slum.

In Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia, I interview teachers at Muskan School, evaluating the progress of the program for a local NGO. The young women teachers at Muskan receive daily training and what i in their neighborhood s considered a good salary: 3,000 rupees per month.

I’m not paid. The building is not so fabulous, either - only unfinished cement and tin. There is definitely no air conditioning.

But in Dharavi, I have never, ever gone hungry. I’ve never had to ask for something to eat before it’s been given to me, in love. Whenever I go to Muskan school, I sit with the school teachers, and my empty plate is filled (more than once) with home-cooked food they share from their own tiffins.

Sameer joked about us being princesses in a beautiful hotel, but he was wrong. It’s in Dharavi where I’ve felt like a princess, because that’s where I’ve found the most generosity, respect and openness of heart.

Bronwyn McBride is a writer in Mumbai. She blogs at Bronwyn Grace.

Going to Ho Chi Minh City reminded me not only of the travesties of the war, but also the power of resiliency. The old and new Vietnam seem forever linked — as if one colors, but does not overshadow, the other.

In the main market in Ho Chi Minh City, I conversed with a Vietnamese woman who now lives in California.

She asked me where I came from.

“Me too! I’m also from the U.S.A.!” she told me.

How can she be, I wondered, with that thick, clearly Vietnamese accent?

“I am from Vietnam, and I am from the U.S.A.”

What could that mean?

“Vietnam birthed me; the U.S.A. nurtured me.”

Vietnam is not about past perceptions — it’s not the nightly news showing soldiers disappearing — and yet it finds truths in these images; it finds the truth of resiliency and moves with it.

In Hanoi, we also saw the remnants and memories of war, and evidence that French is still a strong cultural force.

And yet I still could not easily grasp this place, or its people.

A walk around the lake in Hanoi’s heart– which felt like a stroll in a faraway land–whispered some answers. Vietnam both exists and is being created. The difference now seems to be in who is creating, and the mystery surrounding the creation.

Whole hog is exactly what it sounds like. It involves slowly cooking an entire hog at the low temperature of about 175-220 degrees Fahrenheit. Whether cooked in an old-fashioned barbecue pit or in a modern smoker, the process takes about 24 hours.

In the nondescript town of Nolensville, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville, Patrick Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint greets drivers on the main drag. Pitmaster Martin and his crew do more than serve up incredibly delicious barbecued pork, though. Martin sees his work as part career, part mission to preserve the art of whole hog.

Martin picked up the craft of Tennessee-style whole hog barbecue when he was at college in the northwestern part of the state, in tiny town of Jack’s Creek. There, he learned to slow-cook an entire hog, in a pit of cinder blocks over coals.

The restaurant where he learned his craft, Siler’s Old Time BBQ, is still run by Chris Siler and his wife.

At Siler’s, just as at Martin’s establishment, the food takes so long to cook that they abide by the policy of cooking and then selling until the food runs out. Any customers who show up too late are simply out of luck. That’s a throwback, in a world where customers are used to getting what they want, when they want it. With whole hog barbecue, there are no shortcuts or substitutions. It reminded me of a time when the world was a slower place.

Martin and Siler are among a disappearing handful of expert whole hog pitmasters. Even in Jack’s Creek, rising operation costs have made it hard to get an entire hog from farmers.

I located Siler’s by following Martin’s handwritten directions. It was a nearly six-hour round trip drive through rolling Tennessee bluegrass and beautiful hills.

I reached the restaurant just as the last parts of the hog were being sold to discerning customers. Siler explained to me that folks in that part of Tennessee are so particular about barbecue that they order according to the part of the hog they want.

Siler and Martin’s restaurants are as Americana as it comes, and not because it’s trendy. They are simply people who keep to tradition.

For Martin, who has succeeded in expanding into various commercial ventures based on his success as a pitmaster, it goes beyond that. He wants to preserve what he calls the “dying art of whole hog barbecue.”

That’s what most tourists do. However, that is not really seeing the city, but playing into an artificial point of view created by locals stereotyping themselves to the notions expected by Westerners, hiding from them the real underbelly of what goes on in the port of Morocco.

So we were dropped off at the port under a brutally hot North African sun. The boat had left for Europe, and we had to kill at least four hours on this unknown continent until the next ferry.

In Tangier, the mafia has more power than the government. There is virtually no health care, and it has one of the highest HIV rates in northern Africa. The economy revolves around tourism, drug smuggling, illegal immigration, exports, the body trade and prostitution.

This kind of mayhem is what intrigued my family.

As soon as we got off the boat, our bags were sniffed by drug dogs. It was a ridiculous routine; an attempt to make it look like there was law and order. In a city of drug and weapons exports, honestly, what type contraband could we have had?

We got through the gate, and were firmly on African soil.

“Hey, hola, bonjour.”

Suddenly a stampede of fake tour guides in white robes hovered around us. They were greeting us in every language, to see which one we responded to. We continued to ignore them.

One decided to claim us. He followed us wherever we went, as is if we had set up his tour in advance.

¿Hola, de donde sois?
Speak English?
Francais?
We looked past him. Quickly, he stopped in front of us to cut off our path.

“Don’t be scared, don’t be scared, I can tell you are scared,  but don’t. I will show you around, I will take you to see the best, all the best, for you.”

He stared my father in the eyes to try to look sincere, but was really staring at his euros.

He smiled to expose his peg teeth. It was the smile of a gypsy, obvious and very uncomfortable.

My father was just as determined not to have a guided tour as this middle-aged Moroccan was to give us one. He was asking for four euros, but there was no price cheap enough for a guide who was probably just going to show us where the best restaurants were.

We wanted to see Tangier for ourselves. So we kept walking. So did the guide, following us at a dangerously close distance.

We walked faster and faster, and then found ourselves in the Medina, the old bazaar, with its monolithic Arabesque architecture.

We stopped. Still, the man tailed us.

We wanted to enjoy ourselves without the pestering guide.

“What can I do to have you get away from us?” my father asked him.

“You are in Africa, and in Africa there are a lot of mosquitoes,” the guide answered.

It could have been a mistranslated phrase from Arabic. Or was he implying that he would always annoy us, pester us and buzz around us, until we could find a away to repel him?

Eventually we agreed that he would only leave if he got paid. Then, he explained that this was how he made his money: not by giving tours, but by annoying people; following them, making them uncomfortable, and eventually sucking their blood … their euros.

My father took out a euro, and waited for the man to open his hand. Suddenly, the assertive guide became what he really was: a desperate beggar. The coin dropped into his palm. Receiving it almost made his knees buckle, like a drug addict shooting up heroin. When the euro dropped into his hand, he saw it in slow motion. It was the highlight of his day.

It’s sad, that we tourists have that much power.

We walked on. Our guide vanished into the crowd like a spirit, looking for the next group.

A Table Drama

Finally, we had fresh air. But the souk was a hot cauldron of sweat. People were shoulder to shoulder, buying vegetables, dripping their sweat into columns of olives. It was hard to differentiate your sweat from the sweat of others, because the sweat was communally distributed around the market by everyone brushing against everyone else.

Outside the market we found ourselves in an old square, with a cafe and a pension above it (pension, in this context, meaning whorehouse). Suddenly a loud Arabic wall of sound erupted from one of the tables. A man was yelling at the waiter.

Kids started coming into the square to watch what would happen. People looked out of their balcony windows, hoping to see a good fight.

Eventually we figured out that they were only arguing about the bill. At the climax of the bickering, however, the angry client took the pen that the waiter had left on the table, grabbed the waiter by the neck, and attempted to stab him. The people sitting next to him stopped him, but everyone else wanted to see it happen.

The kids found this funny. Probably because he the man was using a pen and not something more threatening.

The Man without Eyes

In the side streets around midday, there was nothing going on. People were inside, with the doors open. Cats were crawling around the winding alleys, looking for dropped food.

We gave in to our hunger and settled for a food stand on a corner. When we walked up to ask for a pita, my mother felt a tap on her shoulder. Already scared by that, she turned around to look a man straight in the face.

He had one of the most grotesque faces I’d ever seen. His eyes had been recently gouged out, and there were two holes where they’d been. Inside the holes were puss and red rings of scar tissue still healing. I saw into his head.

My mother walked away from the stand without ordering, panicking and frightened. We decide to give up, to find our way back to the port.

We walked through the labyrinth of streets, some deserted, and some moving like a streams. On a crowded street in a relatively slummy market where broken electronics were being sold, a Mercedes Benz drove rapidly, not caring to stop and wait for people to get out the way.

People ran from it and tried to find some space between the car and the wall, but there was very little room, because the car was obnoxiously wide for the narrow streets. Clearly the driver was showing who was boss. The car represented power; I was sure this was the mafia I had heard about.

At last we saw the port. We were pestered by child beggars asking for money and trying to sell us unbranded cigarettes. Other children were sitting in a shady corner, passing around a hand-rolled hashish joint.

Then a mother walked up the street holding her son’shand. The other kids looked at them, too stoned to be jealous.

The boy was elaborately dressed. His mother smiled at us. She seemed quite proud of her child, and the child looked happy. They were clearly wealthier than most of the other people we’d met today. But the son did not seem spoiled; he seemed grateful for his mother’s attention.

My father asked if he could take a picture of the boy. As he snapped it, the boy smiled.

We waited for the next boat. Tired, scared, shocked and still hungry, we stood without talking, looking at the Berbers in their traditional bells and wide feathery straw hats, who had come with all their belongings piled into a wooden wagon, all the way from the desert to where Africa falls in to the Atlantic.

They came to sell homemade banged copper bracelets to tourists waiting for the boat. But there was nothing special about the bracelets, those clunky objects. When a Berber came over to me to sell me one I refused it, because the bracelet was quite ugly, and I didn’t have the energy to dig deep into my pocket. By not buying it, I got his respect.

We looked at each other, and smiled a little. Finally, he and the others gave up asking, and like the rest of the people waiting, just stared across the strait, to look at and imagine Europe.

“My father was a choirmaster, so sometimes I’d go to rehearsals when I was very young. I think that started my interest in music.”

Fianko, a cellist in Ghana’s National Symphony Orchestra, is one of few classical musicians in West Africa. This orchestra is the only one of its kind in all of West Africa, a region where names like “Beethoven” and “Mozart” often draw a blank. But arts institutions like this orchestra, and the National Theatre are looking to change that.

Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president after independence from Britain, founded the orchestra in 1959; President Jerry Rawlings commissioned the 1,500-seat theater, which was 1992. Both institutions want to further arts education in a country already vibrant in musical tradition.

“Right from birth to death you have music,” said Othniel Osa, 58, the National Theatre’s deputy director of drama. “Music is very functional in our day to day life.”

Ghanaians mostly hear traditional music, and have their first brush with Western classical music through worship.

“In my childhood I played a lot in the church,” said musician Anthony Zonyrah, 35, as he packed away his cello, rosin and bow for the night. “That made me develop my interest in music.”

Western classical figures like Bach dominate religious music, exposing Ghanaians, nearly 70 percent of them Christian, to classical music.

The orchestra also performs works by Ghanaian composers that mix classical Western theory with traditional African instrumentation.

“In our part of the world music is participatory,” said Isaac Annoh, 45, the director and conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra. “I will go to a show and end up participating in it.  We don’t have that gap between performers and audience as it used to be in Europe.”

Ghanaian plays at The National Theatre sometimes mix multiple arts in a single performance.
“At first it was experimental, but it has now gained ground, and a lot of people are using that form,” said Osa. “They don’t write just straight drama, but incorporate music and dance.”

Unfamiliar Traditions
Ghana is rich in culture, but still young in its mastery of Western classical music.

“We are lacking a lot of technique,” said Zonyrah, who studied music at the University of Ghana, like many of the other performers, but didn’t start playing the cello until he joined the orchestra at age 25. It was the first time he had touched the instrument.

Fianko’s experience is similar: he learned cello in the youth orchestra just eight years ago.
Government funding is key. The orchestra originally rehearsed in the spacious and modern National Theatre, but due to budget cuts now practices in a run down building with just enough space for the musicians to crowd in.

“There are signs of neglect all around us,” said Annoh, who fears that without government help, classical music will never spread throughout the country.

Musicians in Search of An Audience
Then there’s the matter of audiences. Both the theatre and symphony face the difficult challenge of attracting them.

“It’s unfortunate in that our colonial masters, Britain, the way they trained us, we take theater as some special delicacy,” said Osa. “You must have attained a certain level to attend theater, unlike the Francophone countries around us.”

Though the symphony has managed to support itself, it relies heavily upon outside help, including donations of accessories, like chinrests and rosin.

The government covers two-thirds of the theater’s expenses, but internally-generated revenue must cover the rest. The theater’s own company sometimes performs, but most productions are produced by outside companies, like church groups and traveling acts.

“It is too expensive to do our own productions,” said theater spokesman Francis Aklie.
Annoh hopes that the symphony will be able to not only tour the country, but also to influence other nations, and to attract foreign musicians to teach and perform.

Both the theater and orchestra are eager to promote early music education. Annoh teaches music in private schools primary and secondary schools. The National Theatre runs programs like Kidafest, where children can spend a week producing plays. The cost is less than $1 per child.
But even these efforts are not enough to ensure future success, according to members of these organizations.

“I’d say the future of the orchestra is really bright, but the government needs to support the orchestra, meaning the young ones need to be recruited,” Zonyrah said.

Her phone rings frequently, conversation can turn awkward fast.

“A lot of people don’t know I’m female. Sometimes they call, and they say, ‘Can I please talk to Mr. Sitsofe Akoto?”‘ said Akoto, 30. “It’s like people think females cannot do it.”

Akoto is one of a handful of female filmmakers in Ghana’s fast-developing film and television industry determined to prove them wrong.  Although very few, film industry women are quite visible, and perhaps especially successful. Their struggles and achievements mirror the struggles and achievements of the Ghanaian film industry — an industry practically nonexistent 20 years ago.
Film production in Ghana has a long but inconsistent history.

Although President Kwame Nkrumah made state-sponsored film production a priority after Ghana gained independence from Great Britain in 1957, the political and economic instability of the 1970s thwarted the industry’s growth. Filmmakers like Kwah Ansah and King Ampaw produced a handful of acclaimed pictures in the 1980s, but the celluloid film stock required proved too expensive to allow the industry to thrive.  It was only with the rise of digital video in the early 1990s that film production began to develop more widely.

Still, the relative youth of Ghana’s modern film industry makes production difficult. There are no large studios to fund potential filmmakers. Ghanaian films are almost exclusively self-produced and financed, sometimes with the help of commercial sponsors.

Nanabanyin Dadson, the editor of Ghana’s largest entertainment newspaper Graphic Showbiz, stressed that economic pressures overshadow gender in this arena.

“A producer, whether a man or a woman, can go to a bank,” said Dadson, 56. “If the bank says “yes” or “no,” I don’t think it will relate to whether one is a woman or one is a man.”

“It’s hard for anyone,” agreed Akoto. “People really don’t understand why they should invest in the movie industry.  Whether you are a man or a woman, it is hard.”

Still, female directors face extra cultural pressures.

“The African woman is judged, and is not expected to have a voice,” said Eagle Productions founder and CEO Juliet Asante. “And what does film do? It gives you a voice. So it’s not something that I would say is welcomed, especially to be a market leader or to be a director.”

Asante, 34, has an imposing but gentle presence. An award-winning former actress, she shifted her focus to directing, and launched Eagle Productions in 1999. In person, she comes across as proud, eloquent and a little vain.

In her immaculately furnished office, a framed, mock issue of Fortune magazine, dated October 2018 reads: “Eagle Productions’ Juliet Asante, media mogul and philanthropist, talks about the potential of Africa and women at the forefront of the leadership chain.”

“I see my work as trying to be the best that I can be as a human being. I don’t define myself in terms of woman [or] man,” she said. “[But] I recognize that there are those limitations, and I get it thrown in my face a lot.”

Eagle Productions is raising financing for its first feature film, a decades-old goal of both Asante and Akoto.

“It’s not a matter of just doing movies. We can do movies,” Akoto said. “But we want to do a quality movie, and apart from the quality we want to hit the international market. We take our time to get it right.”

Akoto credits her commitment to quality to her years spent at the National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI), the only official film school in Ghana.

Anita Afonu, a documentary student in her final year at NAFTI, also spoke highly of her education.
“I’ve always been interested in filmmaking. I’m an artist,” said Afonu, 23. “NAFTI being the only film school in Ghana, I saw it as an opportunity.”

But Asante’s enthusiasm has been tempered by experience. She chooses her words deliberately and stoically, though with a kind of weary humor.

“I’ve taken no financier, and I have extended myself beyond the barriers. It took a while, it took a lot of effort, but I kind of raised myself above the fray. So people have no choice but to listen to me,” she said, with a satisfied laugh.

Three of my five companions, already suffering from mild altitude sickness, clung tightly to their oxygen bottles, hats pulled over their eyes. Our driver, a gangly Han Chinese man of about 35, maneuvered our beat up vehicle along the winding road, dodging the occasional stray donkey without expression.

Our guide, Cheng Dak, munched a rice cracker and carefully examined our itinerary. He let us sleep through the beautiful and abandoned terrain, letting us conserve our energy until we arrived at the next destination, the Tradruk Temple, a 7th century monastery in the Yarlung Valley.

Dak, an excitable man in his 40s, had been sitting quietly since our pre-dawn steamed dumpling breakfast. During his six seasons as a tour guide, he had developed an intimate knowledge of the landscape, and a knack for making Westerners laugh. Seven years earlier, he had failed his final exam to become a Buddhist monk. Exhaling smoke as he’d talked at the foot of the Dalai Lama’s palace a day earlier, he promised us he would one day return to fulfill his calling. Until then, he seemed content to drink Red Bull on the road.

Tess, Kristen, Nora, Jimmy, Courtney and I were on vacation from the school we were attending in Nanjing, China. We six had decided to spend our vacation here, as an exotic counterbalance to China’s crowded, westernized coast.

A few hours from the capital, the last physical signs of modernity had faded. Unlike in the United States, where in even the most rural places you find the occasional farmhouse, here we saw only gray-brown wilderness, and the road cutting through it. As we shook off our sleepiness, Nora snapped a few pictures of the nearby cloud-wreathed peaks that reached up like teeth into the sky.

Dak, spotting a small building up ahead, asked us if we needed to use the bathroom. It was the first building we had seen in over 50 miles. But as we pulled onto the shoulder, three small children scrambled up to our van, as if expecting our arrival.

Even before we’d stopped, a small boy with rosy cheeks opened the door. He climbed over Courtney in the front seat, squeezed his way past our bags and looked at me.

“Hello!” he bellowed into my face.

I offered him a high-five.

A girl, in black sweater and bright red track pants, stood on the rail, head ducked, trying her English with us. Her older companion stood beside her, smiling. The driver tried unsuccessfully to shoo them away, but ended up laughing.

Then, at a word from the girl in red, the kids exchanged glances, and belted out:

“Weeee will, weeee will, ROCK YOU!”

Cheering after the refrain.

Later the girls performed a duet that lasted long enough for Nora to snap more pictures.
An older woman, evidently their mother, stood silently off to the side, as if she had grown from the rocky soil. She didn’t approach us, and only smiled starkly when I said hello.

I walked to the edge of the road, where the ground dropped steeply into the riverbed. My friends followed, and we took pictures together in the mid-morning light, posing separately and together.
As we pulled away, the kids waved to us, but the mother looked in the direction from which we had come. A year later, Tess told me that Dak had given them a little money.

These children performers were only the first of many we saw while driving through the countryside, and this was far from the most remote place.

* * *

As we neared Mount Everest, we encountered many groups of people on prominent hilltops overlooking lakes and scenic villages. We always stopped, and I always participated in the festivities.

I sat on a cloth-covered yak, and held a giant dog, and got my picture taken with more than one stranger. On the mountain where we found the yak and the dog, a few teenage girls were peddling small plastic bracelets made to imitate wood. Jewelry held out, they insisted we examine it. But once we had the trinket in our hands they would back away and demand money.

The roadside people are only a sideshow to the strange cultural carnival that happens in Tibet. Natives try to play up to images they have of themselves, or that they perceive others to have. And so a metaculture is born — the fusion of both the tourist and toured, the real way of life deliberately half-hidden behind song and dance, easily-recognized platitudes borrowed from both cultures. Trying to get a roadside person in Tibet to be honest with you is like trying to get a mime to speak to you. It won’t, happen because that would violate the rules of showmanship.

The Chinese government has a long history of destroying the past, from smashing temples to burning ancient documents. But when the Dalai Lama fled China, in 1959, the Chinese decided not raze his famous Putala Palace, converting it into a museum instead. It was a genius move: the site’s holiness was destroyed by its very preservation, by making it into a show.

A few snow flurries had begun to fall when Dak told us it was time to leave the overlook where we were posing with the yak.

Tess was trying to give the bracelets back to the girl, and finally laid them on the side of the road. The girl picked them up again and followed her to the car, hands stretched out, but we were already closing the door. She waved at us in dismissal as we pulled away.

* * *

We’d dropped below the tree line. Barren valleys gradually grew greener. Rocks were replaced by bushes and grass, until trees abruptly began. These hospitable “low-lands” are the truly beautiful parts of Tibet. We traveled along the raging Yarlung River. Our altitude headaches began disappearing, and large travel buses of Han Chinese began clogging the narrow valley roadways.

Our final stop was at a monastery on a tiny island in a holy lake. The lowest point of elevation on our trip, the island was ringed with bushy pine trees, but granite spires still peeked over the surrounding hills. Han Chinese tourists swarmed about. They crowded every corner of the shore; they choked the inside of the monastery. More than five full-size tour buses lined the small road leading up to it.

Courtney and I bummed cigarettes from Dak, who had just cracked open a Red Bull, and looked for a more secluded spot. Near the back of the island, we found a chair-like rock. Tired of monasteries, we kicked back for a smoke.

We’d signed up for a Chinese-style travel tour without knowing what we were getting into. In this style of travel, the bus will typically go for five to seven hours through the countryside, stop at a location or landmark for less than 45 minutes, and then depart again for the next location, five to seven hours in a different direction.

That’s how Dak had been conducting our tour, and we were all getting tired of it. So now, when he came to fetch us, after the requisite half hour, we demanded to stay longer. He reluctantly acquiesced.
I suggested a dip. We rolled up our pant legs and started to wade out into the lake. The water was cold and crisp. A troop of Han Chinese sat on the shore, watching us and pointing. But just as the water reached our knees, Dak came running down the hillside faster than I thought he could manage.
He yelled for us to get out. Swimming in the holy lake was unthinkable.

Crestfallen, Courtney and I waded out and sat down again on the rocks amid the array of garbage thrown there by the Chinese: bags of chips, cans of Red Bull, and what appeared to be an ancient shoe rotted under the log I had my feet on. As I sat there, an older man put a cigarette butt out in the water, and a group of pontoon boats took off for the monastery on the other side, belching smoke into the air.
Dak took us to a small courtyard, where statues of a male and female figure faced each other. Both were nude from the waist down. I squatted next to the female statue, and struck a satisfied smile for Tess’ camera. Then, following my lead, Dak ushered all the girls around the penis statue and, laughing, took a picture of the group.

As he’d promised, on our last night in Tibet, Dak took us to a Lhasa nightclub. We took a table near the middle of the crowded second-floor bar. A group of young men in leather jackets sat to our right, and several older, slightly overweight women to our left. The wall behind the stage was a massive, somewhat blurry printout of the Putala Palace. Two waitresses approached us with Budweisers.

After a few minutes, the house lights dimmed and the stage lit up. Five male dancers entered wearing colorful shirts, furry hats and big furry boots. Tibetan-sounding techno music began, and in unison the dancers skipped forward, executed a turn, then joined hands in pairs and skipped in circles. A young woman similarly dressed joined them. She sang over the music as the men danced around her, waving their hands over the length of her body. The beat stopped, and the dancers froze, then bowed and skipped offstage.

The emcee praised the dancers, then beckoned the audience to approach the stage. I gave in to my drunk friends’ request that I take Dak up for a slow dance.

He went with it. Hand in hand, and hand on hip, we danced. Old women and young men twirled around us. My friends laughed and strained over the crowd to snap pictures of us. Looking into Dak’s face, with his slightly smoke-yellowed teeth and bed-head hair, I realized that he would probably never return to the monkhood.

The music changed to a local folk song. Most of the remaining bar-goers rushed the stage. The crowd divided into lines, and a complex dance began. We tipped forward on one foot, then back on the other, switched and danced in a circle in a Tibetan Cotton-Eyed Joe. I couldn’t keep up. At one point I failed to turn with the crowd, and a woman of about 40 laughed in a friendly way, and grabbed my shoulders, showing me what to do next.

We began staggering back home through a light rain. The street had entirely emptied of cars, and foot traffic and lights were intermittent. Every two or three blocks, we came upon Chinese military police stationed at corners. Their faces were hard to see in the shadows and rain, but their riot shields and machine guns gleamed uncomfortably in the dim night. They were like phantoms.

Unable to sleep, I made my way next door to a 24-hour Internet cafe. Almost all of the patrons were young Chinese playing Internet video games. I checked my mail and the weather back home, and then sat there, not knowing what to do, but not wanting to go to bed. Nobody came and talked to me, or tried to sing me songs or sell me bracelets. People merely sat at their computers doing what people in front of computers everywhere do: they surfed the Internet. Behind me someone listened to “Beat it” through headphones. I paid the few cents I owed and headed to sleep.

Dak saw us off at the train station the next morning. In 10 days, he was the only Tibetan I’d really met. We were now looking at a 48-hour train ride back to Nanjing. In the station, I bought as much beer as I could carry.

In my room in the sleeper car were two quiet, shy girls, and a clean-cut Han Chinese man returning from a business trip. He asked me if I thought Tibet should be its own nation. At first I said no, because they desperately need the money that flows in from the Chinese government (Beijing funds 90 percent of Tibet’s public spending).

He replied that Tibet had always been and will always be part of China.

Then I reconsidered. I realized I had no idea what any Tibetans thought about that. Not even Dak.

Later in the dining car, as we laughed together about some of the things we had seen and done, we saw a group of six raucous Tibetan twenty-somethings a few tables ahead of us. By 9 p.m., their table was already covered with more than 40 empty beer bottles. I waved hello, and they beckoned us over.

They handed us Budweisers, and toasted us. Then they toasted Tess’s beauty, which made her blush. They were also traveling to Nanjing, where they would attend a police academy. I asked them how they felt about home, and the Chinese government. After looking at each other for a few seconds, one jokingly said he was studying to become a policeman because he didn’t know how to dance. But really, he clarified, it paid well.

Then one of the men silenced us, and the group exchanged smiling glances. The tallest, who sat in the middle our booth with his arms around his friends, closed his eyes and began to sing:

“Ain’t nothing but a heartache…”

His friends joined in, and then so did we.

“Ain’t nothing but a mistake, I never wanna hear you say, I want it that way!”

But as soon as the championship trophy was awarded, Modi received word that he’d been suspended.

Cricket arrived in India along with railroads, the ossification of the caste system, and the impoverishment of the countryside — all consequences of the British imperial project. And while the latter two phenomena are far from historical curiosities (given an upsurge of Maoist violence in India’s hinterlands), they’re less and less visible from India’s surging cities.

But in all parts of India, cricket is unavoidable. It’s long been the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NHL all rolled into one.

There are key differences, though: fans historically channel their fervor towards the national squad rather than a local team; the important matches last for either eight hours or five days; and they don’t serve beer.

Since India’s economy began liberalizing in 1991, India’s private sector has boomed. Growth rates have topped 7% for the last decade, foreign investment has flooded in, and the urban middle class has ballooned.

The list of India Premier League franchises could double as a guide to the nodes of India’s boom: they’ve arisen in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore, and even Kolkata, in Communist-governed West Bengal.

These are the locales most transformed by the rising consumer class, eager to shell out up to 5,000 rupees (over $100) for a ticket to a cricket match.

And Modi — part prophet, part charlatan, part convicted kidnapper (as a cocaine-dealing undergrad at Duke University in the 1980s) — was the first to figure out how to manipulate the powerful but inert bureaucracy behind Indian cricket, to seize opportunities.

On a humid March evening, shortly before Modi’s fall, I joined a crowd of fans wearing blue Mumbai Indians jerseys outside Mumbai’s Brabourne Stadium. The home team was competing against the Royal Challengers of Bangalore, named after a whiskey brand owned by Vijay Mallaya, one of India’s most prominent plutocrats. The Indians didn’t lack for powerful financial backing, either. When rights to franchises for the league were awarded in 2008, Mukesh Ambani — deemed by Forbes in 2010 to be the fourth wealthiest man in the world — shelled out a league-high $111.9 million dollars for the Mumbai side, narrowly topping the price paid by Mallaya.

A capacity crowd of over 20,000 fans inside the stadium was evidence of the league’s strength. It didn’t hurt that the Mumbai Indians were led by Sachin Tendulkar, possibly the greatest batsman of cricket’s modern era. Worshiped by hundreds of millions, hess one of the world’s most popular athletes. At only five feet and five inches tall, Tendulkar is proof that in cricket-batting, finesse trumps brawn. When the Mumbai native started warming up in front of the East Stands where I was seated, the fans around me began roaring: “Sa-chin, Sa-chin.”

But the reception for cheerleaders was equally enthusiastic. A mix of blondes and brunettes, in short skirts and calf-high boots, and with exposed midriffs, they came out together and jogged along the perimeter of the field. During the warm-ups and game breaks, they waved their white pompoms and danced with coordinated zeal. When they spun around, one could see the backs of their tops emblazoned with the logo for White Mischief, a vodka brand belonging to the Bangalore team’s owner.

Glamour now needed to match, even trump, the action on the field. Two Bollywood stars own teams, and serve as “celebrity brand ambassadors.” Post-match parties are fodder for local society pages.

The debt to the NFL is obvious. In the IPL’s inaugural season in 2008, the Royal Challengers imported over a dozen cheerleaders from the Washington Redskins,  to sport red and gold hot pants and halter tops, and wave pom-poms. The controversy-seeking media loved it, as did sexually repressed young men from around the country. Cricket purists and tradition-defending elders, not so much.

For the third season, the league’s 40 regular cheerleaders, all recruited from South Africa, were trained by professional choreographers to dance to Bollywood hits. Ten “backups” hailed from Ukraine. (No concession is paid to South Africa’s fraught racial history or to its substantial Indian population: all 50 women were non-Indian and white.)

Modi also opened his checkbook to lure top cricketers — turning the 45-day event into a global all-star tournament.

Shortly after the cheerleaders arrived, but not before the PA system played the global pregame anthem of the moment — “I Got a Feeling,” from the Black Eyed Peas — the match began. I stood up with the rest of the fans in section 14, focused on the action, and hoped that tonight would indeed be a good, good night.

But the Indians were soon struggling. The Royal Challengers were rapidly picking up wickets (the equivalent of outs), eliminating the Indians’ best batsmen. After a middling performance that was still greeted with shouts of adoration every time he struck the ball, Tendulkar too went down, sending a hush over the crowd, and not just those wearing his replica jerseys or waving signs that equated him to a god.

At the break in action, Mumbai’s low target was discouraging.

“Iâ??m not saying we will win,” said my neighbor, who’d come to the match, his first, at the urging of his 12-year-old son. “But we can win.”

Even this guarded optimism was soon revealed as misplaced. The Challengers were scoring runs at a rate that would easily eclipse the target. A graceful catch (barehanded, of course — no leather mitts allowed) of a looping shot brought the crowd back to life and momentarily halted the assault. But the Royal Challengers soon regrouped, and worked steadily towards a comfortable victory.

My familiarity with the basic rules ensured that I could keep abreast of the general action on the pitch. But presumably, the subtleties that keep real cricket enthusiasts enraptured were lost on me.

And as I sat, struggling to retain my enthusiasm, I was beginning to see through Lalit Modi’s hubris. The game may have been revolutionized in India, but talk of introducing professional cricket to the United States, and turning the IPL into an international force as lucrative as soccer’s English Premier League, now seemed a little far-fetched.

It seemed easy to believe at first, as interviewers fawned and members of Indian cricket’s governing body sat on their hands, content to watch the money pour in. But none of us dreamed that Modi would bring himself down.

Modern man that he is, he was done in by a Tweet. Dissatisfied with the outcome of an auction for the rights to two expansion franchises, he broke the league’s confidentiality clause by revealing the names of the stakeholders behind a winning bid.

The first casualty was junior Minister of External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, who resigned after being accused of influencing the bid. But soon Modi was also on unsteady ground.

Shaken from complacency, both the Indian media and the supervising board members began to dig for further improprieties. They didn’t have to go very deep.

Tales of tax evasion, sweetheart deals, and usurped authority competed for column inches with coverage of the semi-finals and finals. Embarrassed into action, Modi’s overseers moved quickly. After he refused to resign, they suspended him.

And that abruptly halted the madcap dalliance between cricket and capital. Stodgy administrators are now shaking their heads over the hit of razzamatazz. The future of cheerleaders, parties and celebrity representatives is suddenly up in the air. The moment for illusory visions of global domination has passed.

The IPL won’t just crumble. But don’t expect to see many blue “Tendulkar” Mumbai Indians jerseys, emblazoned with MasterCard logos, on the streets of New York any time soon.

Dan Packel is a writer based in Mumbai, India, and the former “Think Local” columnist for the Philadelphia Weekly.

Only as the final screws moved into place did we hear the harmonic melodies his music box could play.

“Bravo!” my grandfather would exclaim, as the sound escaped the accordion we’d built.

For many years, I studied my grandfather, Umberto Carocci, as he delicately built each accordion and organetto for clients around the Midwest. He was a one-man company, painstakingly constructing these complex instruments with grace and ease.

Sometimes I would help him fit and test the parts. It was during our “work hours” that I learned about the culture, history and artisan tradition behind Italy’s accordion industry, and came to better understand my Italian heritage.

After my grandfather passed away, on October 24, 2008, I began to think more about this. In the summer of 2010, I decided to delve deeper into his craft, and to revisit Castelfidardo, the central Italian town where he was born, and helped shaped the craft of accordion-making.

A Trip to Castelfidardo

The story of the making of the first accordion follows an oral tradition that seems to change with each generation.

The original tale tells of an Austrian pilgrim who lodged at the Soprani home in Castelfidardo, and introduced a bellowed box-like instrument as he and his hosts relaxed by the fire one night.

Interested in the mechanisms that allowed this music box to work, young Paolo Soprani built his own version. That led to the establishment of the accordion, concertina, and organetti industry in Castelfidardo, in 1864.

My grandfather founded the accordion house Armoni in 1946, after World War II. Then in 1969, he brought his craft to America, by purchasing Star Concertina, in Chicago.
As he distributed his concertinas throughout the Midwest, my grandfather’s work soon became well known. Star also absorbed the Imperial brand of electronic accordions and organs/pianos.

In 1986, he sold his company and retired. No other family member took up the trade, and the company eventually folded.
My grandfather’s story is similar that of many Italian accordion manufacturers. As the industry began to boom in the late 1950s, many manufacturers appeared, only to shut down within an average of five years, due to increasing competition and shrinking demand.

“The boom years were pre-Beatles,” said Fausto Fabi, the operations manager at Soprani/Scandalli in Castelfidardo, when I visited in the summer of 2010. “The accordion was not typical to rock and roll, and stayed outside of that musical circle for the most part.”

But although the accordion wasn’t a feature of the rock and roll band, John Lennon used it while composing most of his songs. Only later, during recording, would he replace the melody with the guitar, drums and bass.

Fewer Accordions Built By Hand
Today, a branch of my family continues both the Soprani and Scandalli accordion lines in Castelfidardo.

In their factory on the outskirts of Castelfidardo, a group of about 20 artisans builds an average of 1,200 accordions each year. An average of 14 people work on each accordion, which has more than 15,000 parts.

Only two major Italian accordion companies, Pigini and Soprani/Scandalli, are left here. Much of the mass production has been shifted to China, making it harder for the local producers to compete. A professional-grade accordion sells for more than $20,000 today.

The intensive artisan construction and the multitude of vendors contributing to its creation have driven up costs.

“More than a 100 different businesses go into the production of a single accordion,” Fabi explained. “All [of these businesses] are locally based, and require specialists, thus making it more expensive.”

In the past, the trade was passed down through the family, typically from grandfather to son to grandson. But in recent years, the trade has lost its strong family connection, as younger generations choose to go into different fields, and machinery replaces human handwork.

Yet the craft is still a staple of the the hill town region around Castelfidardo. And it will forever play a role in my family heritage.

In 2010, Castelfidardo’s International Accordion Festival takes place from Oct. 5-Oct. 10

Stephanie Todaro is a writer in Los Angeles. She wrote this story for the forthcoming “Urbino Now,” a magazine produced by students in IEI Media’s journalism study program in Urbino, Italy.

“How is your baby?” the girl at the liquor store asked intently, as I tried to buy a beer to wash down the day.

“She is a little sick,” I answered.

“Is it because of the red bites that are on her arms?” she asked.

‘No, it is because of the amoebas inside her stomach.”

But the girl was correct. Petra did have a mild allergic reaction to some insect bites, though I do not know how the liquor store girl could have known this.

Wait, yes I do: the people here talk to each other.

In the U.S., it is almost work to talk to your neighbors. I know that the people who live a couple of houses down from my parents could internally combust all over the place one day and we would never know. We like things this way out in the U.S. countryside. We value privacy; we don’t want people talking about us; we like our secrets.

My father even put up a fence of trees around our property when we first moved in, to prevent the neighbors from looking in at us.

It worked: these trees have now grown to full height, and we live in a community of us alone.

But here in El Salvador everybody knows what you do. As we walked out of the hospital with Petra, there was a man waiting by the gate:

“What did the doctor say?” he asked bluntly.

We did not know this man. We’d never even noticed him before. But we gave him the news that would become the talk of the town: the white baby has amoebas.

There are no secrets in Central America. If you bed down with the cute boy down the street, you will soon have every other boy knocking on your door, wondering if it’ll be his turn next. It is also somewhat challenging to lasso a lady here — as she is well aware of the stir it will cause if she’s seen out alone with you.

There are eyes and ears everywhere, and they are all connected to a united network of mouths.

The people here seem to understand that they are being watched, that people talk, that what they do will be deposited verbatim into the verbal record of their town.

In Central America, you do not need to go far for your news — the front door of your home will do.

It is my impression that this is a sign of a community that is organized, equipped and prepared. The term “close-knit community” may be just a euphemism for nosy neighbors, but this is perhaps the foundation of any strong society.

A community in Central America can be mobilized at a moment’s notice. Verbal news can travel faster than radio. Perhaps gossip is a cultural tool that has been instilled into us from our primitive origins? It feels good to spread news, to “gossip” — and an informed, united community is one ready to defend itself.

Communities in many sectors of the U.S. tend to be weak in comparison with those in Central America. I do not know the name of the people who live next door to my parents. I do not care enough to know their names. Just so they stay off my land, they are all right by me.

“The best neighbor is the one you never have to talk to,” my father would say.

The neighbors could be buggering each other for all I care — and I don’t care. My family does not care. And we can only hope that our neighbors don’t care about what we do.

And this is what it all comes down to: in Central America people do care. They will talk to you, pass on the word about you, find out what you are doing, and make you a part of their community — whether you like it or not.

A lady who lives in an apartment downstairs from us tries to look up into our apartment all day long. I don’t yet know what she is looking for, but I do know that she mostly just finds me typing quietly on my computer, in nothing but a pair of skimpy underwear.

But I know that I live in a safe place. It is safe because I live in an apartment complex with about 10 other people, vigilant guards watching my room. Nothing short of an outright invasion of pistoleros could break through this defense. I am safe, because I am a part of a community that cares.

Wade Shepard has been perpetually traveling the world for the past 11 years, through more than 50 countries on five continents. He writes about the people he meets, the places he visits and his impressions of how the world comes together on Vagabond Journey Geographic and Vagabond Journey Travelogue.

A quinces, as Cubans call the momentous fifteenth birthday, is the most extravagant and important party of a girl’s life. When it came time to celebrate my rite of passage, my mom and I agreed that a simple ballroom would not be enough - so we opted for a boat. Quince cruises are extremely popular in Miami. The lavish party through the Caribbean usually lasts a week, and includes a full schedule of dinners, rehearsals, photo shoots, dances, and programmed parties.

While it is true that you only turn 15 once, a quinces is never a one-day event — it takes almost a year to unfold.

Months before the actual cruise, my mom started to buy me what she called “vacation clothes.” With each new shopping bag of jewel-toned halter-tops and bedazzled shorts, I begged her to let me go with her to pick some things out. But she replied with a cold, No te vas a poner Abecrumy — “You’re not going to wear Abercrombie” — and that was the final word. To me, that sounded more like abandon all hope to look cool — you’re destined to dress like you just got off the boat from Cuba, fabulously self-important and glittery. At least I get to pick out my own ball gown, I thought naively.

Reality Bites

Somewhere in Little Havana, I sat in the tiny, receptionless living room of a Cuban seamstress who a cousin of a co-worker of my mom’s referred us to. The smell of sandalwood - a preferred scent of all Cuban women over age 40 - and pork lingered in the air. My grandpa, Pipo, walked around, staring into each photograph on the wall, turning every so often to look at me and roll his eyes. This helped me pass the time as my grandma and the seamstress consulted endlessly about the appropriate length of tulle that should be cut underneath the dress.

As I stared at the garment the two women were manhandling, I realized it wasn’t exactly what I had wanted. But it had been late the night we picked it out, and I’d had homework to do. It fit, my mom liked the pearl and lace design, and most importantly it was on sale. So I’d surrendered. I just hoped my pictures would turn out pretty, and that I would manage to look somewhat older than the rest of my friends.

The reality of my quinceanera didn’t hit me until my entire family - Mom, Abuela, Pipo, Tia Sara, Tia Ani, Tio Henry, Tio Migue, my cousin Stephanie, and my other cousin Mike - were standing in front of the ship, talking loudly about their plans to relax onboard. I tried to hide behind the gigantic white dress I was carrying, but my uncle noticed me fidgeting and took it from me, in an unwelcome act of thoughtfulness, exposing me and my “vacation clothes” to the judging eyes of what seemed like a million girls waiting in line holding white dresses. As we started boarding, they sent the quinceaneras to a separate party room to receive itineraries and meet one other.

I turned to my mom and translated where we had to go, but the man handing out maps overheard me and said, No, eres tu sola. “No, just you.”

I stared him down, angry that he had foiled my plan to be antisocial under the pretense of an overly-protective mom, and reluctantly left my family behind.

The Gulf between 14 and 15

Let me clear up a few unspoken rules of quince cruises. Because of their summery nature, girls born in the fall, like me, must choose between going the summer before they turn 15 — meaning you are still an insecure 14-year-old who just finished middle school — or the next summer, only a couple of months before turning 16. Because I didn’t want my actual birthday to pass without any proof of womanhood, I decided to go on my cruise the summer before. I chose wrong.

Thirty girls were celebrating their quinces on that cruise. Most of them were in high school, and had already turned 15. They had already had their photo shoots at the swanky Biltmore Hotel or the rustic Villa Vizcaya. They had already gone through the polishing associated with becoming a Hispanic teenage girl : eyebrow waxes, teeth whitening, spray tans, acrylic nails, and makeup.

Those things were still a mystery to me. I had only potential. But the ship had, literally, already left the dock. So I decided to act as confident and cocky as possible, pretending to be proud of my braces, bushy eyebrows, and pasty white-girl skin.

The battle of the best-dressed began at the Captain’s welcome dinner, exclusively for the quinceaneras and their families. Everyone congregated on the promenade of the ship, and the girls were lined up in height order on an indoor bridge, to be filmed walking down the stairs. As my lanky self walked to my place near the end of the line, I smirked at the stouter girls in the front who enviously eyed my BCBG dress, and I thought for the first time onboard, Thank you, Mom. Hours of forced practice walking in my heels before the cruise helped me glide down those stairs flawlessly, but a couple of girls tripped in front of the camera.

When it came time to take pictures with the captain, the photographer rearranged our group and put me in the middle. I still remember that as my most triumphant moment.

Some awkward limbo dancing and pinata-breaking happened the next day as we docked in Mexico, and my lack of coordination brought me back down the totem pole. On our “day-at-sea,” we had a painfully long photo shoot on the ship.

The tourists who were not involved with the quinces looked perplexed, as 30 teenaged girls in shiny jewelry and hair-sprayed curls lined up against railings and on chaise lounges to pose for pictures. By that time we were somewhere near round five of the best-dressed battle, and my stubborn pleading with my family to stop buying bikinis had backfired. Every girl wore two different bathing suits each day, while I was stuck with two conservative outfits for the entire vacation.

Dancing with Pipo

Then came our dress rehearsal for the big night, Each girl would be formally presented at the hand of her mother and father, and then dance a waltz with her dad. I had decided to dance with my grandpa, a lovable but hard-headed man. While other dads listened attentively to the choreographer’s instructions, Pipo commented on his accent, wondering what province of Cuba he was from. I had hoped that his age would prove in our favor, and that sometime in his life he had danced the waltz.

A couple of minutes later, my feet were throbbing, and everyone’s eyes were on the man holding me, who insisted on turning clockwise while the entire group turned counter-clockwise. We were asked to come in for private lessons.

I had finally started to get used to the dynamics of the quinceaneras. I knew when to hang out in the Jacuzzi, what to order at dinner, and how much time to sunbathe so that I would get darker, but not peel. Then I got sick.

The day of the big dance, a small tropical storm on the Gulf of Mexico turned into a small hurricane. Our ship was tugged back and forth.  Curtains swayed violently, and people stumbled in the narrow corridors like drunks.

My worries about the dance turned into full-blown anxiety as I practiced one more time with Pipo, and he was still turning the wrong way, the corset underneath my dress was not loving the extra ice cream cones I had treated myself to all week and was taking its anger out on my ribcage, and my nerves about looking grown-up gave way to sea sickness. My enormous and heavy dress would not let me go into the tiny bathroom to throw up, so I forced myself to calm down.

My aunts hovered around me, ready to hold my hair and save my dress if I decided to vomit. But I kept busy, by judging the way-too-tight, overly-jeweled dresses around me, wrapped around peeling shoulders and sunburnt skin.

I could not stop feeling little and ugly next to some of the older girls, but after I walked across the stage and heard my name, I didn’t even care that my grandpa was still turning the wrong way. I danced exceptionally through the salsa and the conga line, and when I walked into the dining room filled with thunderous clapping and flashing cameras, I confidently placed myself next to the cake meant for all the quinceaneras

Even though this newfound confidence sprang from a tired-of-worrying-what-other-people-are-thinking emotion, I realize now that it was probably the first sign of becoming a grown-up.

When I was a girl, I loved the thought of cruises — but that was five years ago.

Sara Claro is a writer and multimedia journalist in New York.

Portuguese immigrants to the Hawaiian islands brought with them the old-world style of baking in a wood-fired stone oven, a forno. In an effort to preserve this tradition, the Kona Historical Society of Hawaii created a replica of a traditional forno in Kealakekua. Volunteers light a fire inside in the wee hours of every Thursday morning. By 10 a.m., the action is in full swing, with volunteers preparing the dough for pao doce, a traditional Portuguese sweet bread.

Then the baker weighs out the dough.

Now everyone is invited to participate. The measured dough must be further divided into seven equal portions, and rolled into smooth balls.

The loaves are set in pie tins, to benefit from one last rise.

The air fills with the aroma of fresh bread baking.

After the loaves cool, they're packaged for sale.

As you can imagine, this bread sells out fast! It costs $5 a loaf. The funds go to support the Kona Historical Society. If you want to be sure to get some, show up early!

The Kona Historical Society, dedicated to preserving the stories of Hawaiian islanders, organizes the baking, on the west coast of the Island of Hawaii, below the H.N. Greenwell Store Museum. Bread is baked every Thursday, starting at 6 a.m., and is ready for sale by about 10 a.m.

Author and freelance writer Kris Bordessa is based in Hawaii. She covers life, culture, and fun in Hawaii for less at Big Island On The Cheap and Honolulu On The Cheap.

I worked at OppenheimerFunds in the South Tower, on the 32nd floor. I was on the phone with my Deutsche Bank salesperson Ricardo, discussing the latest on Argentina’s economic debacle, when I suddenly heard explosions.

I looked out the window and saw something different. My regular view was a gorgeous glimpse of the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty, who greeted me every morning with her gaze of hope and encouragement. At that very moment, I swear I saw a tear in her eye.

My vision was quickly obscured by falling debris. I thought that a bomb had exploded upstairs. This was not a regular fire, which starts slowly and gradually. This was premeditated.

I hung up the phone: “Ricardo, I gotta go” and heard my boss yelling, “Let’s get out.”

Art was a smart, quick thinker. He had survived the 1993 WTC bombing, in the same office. He knew, just as I did, that something serious had happened. I sensed the urgency in his deep blue eyes. I had a split second to decide what belongings to take and what to do. I grabbed my purse and left.

Our stairway descent was engulfed in an eerie silence. There was no panic and no smoke, as our tower was the second to get hit. Few words were spoken. The tension was palpable, and we were proceeding down as quickly as we could. I worried about whether the exit doors downstairs were open, and if we were ever really going to reach the ground floor.

But open they were, and I left the building through its center courtyard. I lost sight of my colleagues.

I looked up to the burning North Tower, and immediately realized that they’d never extinguish that fire. That building was going to keep burning, and I knew I should walk as far away from it as I could. I ran out of the courtyard and hoped that I wasn’t going to be killed by falling debris.

The whole descent must have taken less than 15 minutes, as I never saw my tower be hit by the second plane, 18 minutes later.

I walked toward South Street Seaport and stopped at the first free pay phone I saw. I worried that my grandma in Brazil would have a heart attack if she saw this on TV and was not aware I’d escaped. I managed to speak to her for a few minutes and calmly told her not to worry — that “there was a small fire” in my building, but that I was already out, on my way home, and that I loved her very much. She was leaving for the dentist and was very calm, as I was surprisingly calm myself.

My mother, who was planning to travel from Brazil to New York that very evening, was was out, making last minute preparations for the trip. When she told someone in the travel agency that she would be flying that night, he politely corrected her.

Madam, You’re Not Traveling Today

“Madam, you’re not traveling today, all flights are canceled, look at the TV and see what’s happening.”

She panicked, and in a catatonic state, returned home and tried to dial me. But by then all the phone lines were jammed. My grandmother hadn’t left any note, as she didn’t think the incident was serious. So for a few hours, so my mom had no idea whether or not I was alive.

I ran into a few colleagues near the Seaport, who had also managed to call their families before the lines jammed. It was great to see them alive.

Suddenly, a wave of white dust approached us. We started fleeing north, away from it. I didn’t know at the time, but that was the dust from our own tower collapsing.

I walked with our trader Eamon for a while. At one point, he looked back and remarked that there was only one tower in the horizon. Depending on the viewing angle, on a normal day, one tower could block the sight of the other. So I wasn’t sure if he was seeing things.

“Eamon,” I said, “we need to get home to talk to our loved ones, let’s just keep walking and look ahead, not back.”

I was living in the New York’s Upper East Side at the time; it was going to be a six-mile, two-hour walk. By then, fighter jets were flying overhead. We had no idea what else might be coming.

It never occurred to me to check whether the subways or buses were running. At that point, I only trusted one thing, and that was my two little feet still attached to me.

I got blisters, as I forgot to switch into my Birkenstock sandals, and was walking in high heels instead. I bought a pair of cheap rubber shoes in mismatched colors and different sizes, as that was all that was left in the store. The walk became a little less painful.

Miraculously, two cell phone calls came through as I walked, one from my friend Jose, the other from my cousin from Chico in Brazil. I asked Chico to call my family in Porto Alegre again, and to tell them I was OK.

I walked a few blocks past the UN, and hoped that it didn’t get blown up too. Because I’d stopped only once, to buy the shoes and water, I ironically knew little of what was going on. It was my cousin who told me about the Pentagon and Pennsylvania flights. The shopkeepers told me about the planes, and the towers that were gone by then.

People around me were walking stunned, like zombies. I had never seen New York so quiet. We tried to help each other. New Yorkers have always rallied in times of distress, and this was no exception. I saw a blind man covered in white ashes being guided by another person.

I arrived home around noon and tried calling Brazil and my friends in New York, but the phone lines were still jammed.

I watched the images of destruction on TV for an hour and then turned it off. I wanted to forget it all and start healing.

I put some music on and proceeded to clean the apartment. I was symbolically trying to wash away what happened, as I had to stay home waiting for phone calls that I hoped would eventually start. My apartment was a one-room studio and my Internet connection was old-fashioned DSL line, so I had to choose between trying to send emails and keeping the phone line unobstructed.

Several hours later I finally reached Brazil, and spoke to my mother and grandmother. By then, all the neighbors had converged into in my grandmother’s apartment, as if for a funeral. It almost felt like a funeral, except, by a miracle, it was not mine.

The Outpouring

This is where the love comes in. I spent the next 14 hours on phone calls and emails. Relatives, friends, ex-boyfriends and co-workers were all calling. I heard from people I hadn’t spoken with in years, people with whom I ended up reconnecting, and am still in touch with now. Some people called the universities I graduated from in Pennsylvania and Japan, inquiring how to reach me; others called Oppenheimer’s emergency line in Denver, or mutual friends.

Calls poured in from the around the U.S., South America, Europe and Japan. I didn’t get to sleep until almost 2 am. The acrid smell of burnt material had invaded my apartment, but from the outpouring of love that I had received, the scent was sweet.

I learned later that all of my Oppenheimer colleagues, and my friend Teresa, who worked in the North Tower, were safe.

That was not the case for a few former colleagues at Fuji Bank (in the South Tower, on the 79th floor, exactly where the second plane hit). I learned about the head of HR, who must have been trying to account for the safety of all employees. And a colleague who, after making it to the ground floor, decided to return upstairs, because she had forgotten her building ID, and thought she’d have a difficult time returning to the office without it. Or a few Japanese employees who faithfully followed orders to return to their offices, after being told that the fire was in the other tower, and that they were safe. May their families and friends have found peace by now.

I consider myself very fortunate, and will be forever thankful that I am here writing this. If there’s something to be learned is that one should enjoy the present, as the future is uncertain and may never come.

Nine Years Later

At this time of year I inevitably recall these events, and mark our collective progress since.

We gathered at Art’s apartment three days later, exchanging hugs and survival stories. We ended up working in an emergency barrack in New Jersey, and also from home, for the next three months. Our International Bond Fund maintained its number one performance rank through yearend, and our story made The New York Times.

But Wall Street is ruthless, and several colleagues whose funds had experienced severe losses were fired at the end of the year.

When my group returned to the World Financial Center two years later, my new office faced Ground Zero.

I was actually happy to be back, as I loved downtown Manhattan, and this was part of my own rebuilding and moving on.

Our team stayed together until 2004, when a few colleagues left for JP Morgan proprietary trading. Art was promoted to co-CIO of OppenheimerFunds.

My closest Fuji Bank colleagues had a reunion a few days after 9/11. All of them later either moved on to other jobs, or back to Japan.

Eamon is now our sales rep at the investment company Libertas, and we remain in touch. He received a phone call months after 9/11 telling him that his briefcase had been found. Under the scratches and dust, all of its contents were intact.

Ricardo moved to Goldman Sachs and is rising up the ranks.

Teresa still works for Port Authority. She survived the 1993 bombing too.

Jose bought a house in 2003, and is still renovating it. His garden looks spectacular.

My former roommate Linda and I, who reconnected on 9/11 after not having spoken for 15 years, are still in touch.

My cousin Chico is the father of two beautiful daughters, and working in IT in Rio.

My mother managed to take the first flight to New York, after the airports reopened. But a year later she was denied entry to the U.S., and had her tourist visa revoked, on the back of stricter post-9/11 immigration controls. She became a U.S. citizen in 2008.

My grandmother passed away in 2010, six weeks before her 92nd birthday. I honored her life and recited Kaddish at Kehilat Gesher in Paris.

In 2004 I left OppenheimerFunds for Invesco, a step up in my career. I built up a team from scratch, and have been entrusted by our clients with over $1 billion to look after.

I became a U.S. citizen one year after 9/11, and am very proud of it, as it represents everything we were attacked for. Challenges and setbacks in have not been lacking in my life - this being one of them - but I’ve so far managed to learn from them and move ahead. To this day, I continue exploring this wonderful path of ours, called life.

“Auto!”

I shouted, as I stepped into the road and raised my arm, at the three-wheeler auto rickshaw careening down the dark avenue. I was in central New Delhi and it was 9:30 at night; late enough and dark enough for Delhi to turn into the nocturnal monster I had read so much about in the newspapers. Robbery and rape were rife, I understood.

And yet here I was, a lone girl in this Delhi night, flagging down an auto rickshaw.

It swerved and came to a momentary halt in front of me, its engine still put-putting like a lawn mower.

I looked at the autowallah to see if I could discern any signs of evil. I saw neatly-combed hair parted along the side, beardless, moustache-less face; tired, almost shy, eyes and a khaki-colored shirt that was probably half of a uniform. He looked like a schoolboy, only older.

Harmless, I thought. (Then again, isn’t it the harmless-looking ones that turn out to be the most dangerous?)

I looked down at his thin frame and mentally calculated that I could easily land a few blows and tackle him.

“South Ex?” I asked, to see if my destination was agreeable to him.

Delhi autowallahs are notorious for being extremely picky about where they go. Some even choose to stand around and earn nothing all day, rather than go in the wrong directions. Their logic, if there is one, escapes me. I prayed this autowallah would agree. Four before him had already rejected my destination and me. In exasperation, I had even sarcastically asked the last one to take me wherever he fancied, since my original destination was clearly not convenient for him. He had laughed in my face and driven away.

“150 rupees,” this fifth autowallah proposed.

Great! Now that I finally had an autowallah who was okay with my destination, he was turning out to be an extortionist. Despite having functioning meters, most auto rickshaws in Delhi don’t use them, relying instead on some vague idea of agreeable rates between locations. So it’s important to have an idea of the correct fares and bargain before a trip.

I had developed some expertise in the matter. I put on my sternest face and retorted: “80 rupees and no more. I travel this route every day.” I was ready to fight.

He shrugged and motioned with a nod towards the back seat. “Sit.”

I was surprised. He had given in very easily. Me: 1, autowallah: 0. I slid triumphantly into the back of the auto and the low putt-putt turned into a constant whirr, as the tiny vehicle moved on towards Pandara Road.

An auto rickshaw is a glorified metal cabin on three wheels with a two-stroke engine, a handlebar like a motorbike’s and no doors, no seat belts and no airbags. And a ride in it is a bit like riding a roller coaster, except you stay firmly on the ground with no definite track. Though only for the bravest-hearted or the most immune, it’s one of the most convenient ways to get around Delhi.

And did I say cheap? Eighty rupees translated into about $2, for a 30-minute ride. In an auto, almost anywhere in Delhi is only Rs.100 away.

But that is once you’ve bargained.

Once behind the handlebars, the autowallahs zigzag and weave through traffic, unafraid of bigger vehicles or pedestrians, quite like a bumper car at a carnival. And if the gap between two cars or buses in front is seemingly impossible to fit into, fear not! (Or better still, do). For autowallahs will surprise you by daringly maneuvering their rickshaws into the tightest imaginable spaces in traffic. You can literally touch the vehicle beside you by sticking out a finger.

But that also means that an auto is one of the most  “real” ways to see Delhi. You get unfeigned views of the local people, roadside foods and the occasional cow or dog. And since it is open on either side, you get it all: sight, sound and smell. From roadside beggars and fake-book sellers to incessant honking and clouds of smoke.

On this particular night, the platter seemed especially full. With a scorching dry summer added to the mix, I prayed for zero traffic and no stops. If the auto kept moving, then the wind would keep blowing, making this hot-summer night just a little bit more bearable.

My hair lashed my face in the hot wind. Despite the hustle-bustle on the roads, the tree-shaded sidewalks looked sleepy and lethargic. The streetlights were feebly trying to light up dark corners, but were succeeding only in attracting a cloud of insects. What really lit up the roads instead was the constant succession of blinding headlights from on-coming cars. We passed a stray dog on the side, stretching, in what looked like a yoga pose.

Maybe if I closed my eyes and blocked out the sounds, I could pretend that I was getting a massage.

I reached into my bag for a cigarette. Why passive smoke what the cars around me spewed, when I could active smoke and enjoy it? I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in through the just-lit stick, and let the first clouds of tobacco smoke fill up my lungs. Satisfaction.

I opened my eyes and looked out at the night once more, wiping off a thin salty layer of sweat that had formed on my upper lip. It had been the most brutal kind of summer, one that should be survived only in the comfort of air conditioning. And yet there are many have-nots in Delhi and I was getting a good taste of what the summer had been like for them.

“You shouldn’t smoke, you know. It’s not good for you.”

It took me a moment to figure out that the autowallah was speaking to me. “They kill you  faster. ” l looked at the round rear view mirrors on the side, to get a view of his face. He was looking back at me in the mirror, with a slightly challenging look. Great! So now he was a champion for the no-smoking campaign.

I surprised myself by letting out a chuckle and a smile. “Achcha?” Is that so? I hadn’t been reminded of the cigarette-death connection in a long time.

I felt vaguely amused by the autowallah’s intrusion. It had been a long day and I must have been in a conversational mood, for I continued, “What?s your name?”

He looked back at me, through the rear-view mirror, trying to gauge my question, and me.

“Husain Mohammed,” he said quietly.

I understood his hesitation. His name was Muslim. And in supposedly secular and religiously-conscious India, it wasn’t always the best thing to have your religion known.

“And where do you live, Husain bhai?” I continued, suffixing the Hindi word for brother to his name. Like any other girl travelling alone in Delhi, I had learnt early on that it was safest to make a brother or uncle of every unknown man.

“Old Delhi,” he answered, “very close to Jama Masjid and Chandni Chowk.”

I had been to that part of the city. That’s the heart of Delhi, the key to its history. Crowded, dirty, quaint and mostly dilapidated, it had looked every bit like it belonged in the pages of Arabian Nights. I told him so. And he laughed, a hearty unbridled laugh. “Well, for me that is home, no matter how it is,” he appended. I caught the fondness and the helplessness in his tone, and chose to only smile back in return.

“And what about you?” he asked. And in a rare and potentially quixotic abandon of caution, I found myself telling him my story: How I was in Delhi only for a few months for an internship, and how in that short time I had managed to fall in love with the place, despite the heat, the lack of security and the absence of convenience. I told him about how I was worried I had put on weight gorging on chaat and jalebis, and how I had found friends for life in this city.

This last comment struck a chord.

“I have a best friend too. Shankar. We grew up together. He?s my neighbor. My mother doesn’t like him. He?s a Hindu, you know. Brahmin.”

I understood the intended message in that last word. India had supposedly left its caste system behind. But it hadn’t been erased from most minds. And so it was very common to find Brahmins, the top rung, proudly staking their claim to mistaken superiority. But Husainbhai had told me that detail only to convey that his friend was a devout Hindu, and to impress upon me the unlikelihood of their friendship.

“Some years back, people threatened me. Told me to find friends in my own qaum.” He used the Urdu word, to refer to his own community.  Shankar also faced problems with his people.

“But I don?t care. Friendship is friendship and religion is personal. It is nobody?s business. No?”

I nodded my head vigorously, surprised and pleased.

“I agree. Nobody else?s business.”

I wondered why more people in the world didn’t think like Husainbhai. He could be the poster child for Indian secularity. Perhaps the daily grind had made him aware of what was truly consequential, and what was not.

“Are you married?”

The question caught me off guard, as it seemed a very personal thing to ask. But then, in Delhi, in India, there are no questions that can’t be asked, even of strangers.

“No,” I responded, “not yet,” bracing for a lecture on marriage and the right young age for it. I had gotten used to that here. Every older married person in Delhi thought it their divine duty to advise the unmarried female folk to tie the knot quickly.

I looked outside to check how far I was from my destination. Khan Market, almost there.

“Good! Take your time. There is no hurry,” he responded with surety. Had I heard correctly?

“I don?t understand,” he continued, “why everyone thinks it?s so important for a girl to get married by the time she is 25. You should enjoy your 20s. Live your life and do everything you want before you get married, ok?”

I smiled, a genuine big smile.

I liked this guy. Maybe this was the changing face of the city. If so, there was still hope. “Yes, ok!” I told him with a laugh, ” I won?t marry in haste and repent at leisure.”

Almost at my destination, I sheepishly took out another cigarette.

“Another cigarette?”

I decided to take my chances and, while I was at it, to be a little cheeky. “Yeah, you want one?” He glanced at me in the rear view mirror, his face grim and incomprehensible.

And then I caught a trace of a naughty grin. “Yes!” he replied, lowering his eyes and breaking into a smile.

I passed him a cigarette with a chuckle, and we continued on into the night. Just two people, smoking and bantering about the city and its difficult life.

Nidhi Chaudhry is a writer based in Singapore.

Fires are burning all over the city. I cannot glimpse an intersection that is not ablaze.

Bombaderos, firefighters dressed in black, stand by with tanker trucks and portable pumps. I inhale the acrid smoke with gusto, awakening the latent pyromaniac within.

My heart races as I head down Calle De Trafalgar. An elaborate archway of carnival lights, designed like the onion tops of a Russian Orthodox church, frames the narrow entrance to Falla Parotet.  The ninot at the end is smaller than most, but has not yet been lit. I push my way assertively through the crowd.

I want a front row seat. I want to feel the burn.

I am at La Nit del Foc, the night of fire, in Valencia. Called Las Fallas, it’s the culmination of a five-day festival in honor of St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, and celebrated here each March 15th. Huge wood, plastic and papier mache effigies called ninots are “sacrificed” at the end of the week, in a blaze called crema.

The tradition may have started as early as the Middle Ages, when carpenters habitually burned the poles they used to support their lamps each spring. At some point the poles were jokingly decked out as funny figurines. Now neighborhoods compete to see who can build the biggest, gaudiest, weirdest ninot.

Burnt in Effigy

An unseen hand tosses a burning carton at a 20-foot high purple-clad mermaid. The pack cheers and jostles forward. In minutes, the statue is in flames.

My face feels sunburnt, as I stare into the fluorescent orange serpent. It engulfs the mermaid’s blonde hair, and soon we see her timber skeleton. She bends forward, then crashes to the ground. The nearest spectators flinch from the sparking embers. The collapse sends a foehn wind rushing past me down the alleyways.

The crowd stays late, watching as the fire withers into embers. The dark of the night sneaks in and covers what was a roaring inferno.

I’d arrived in Valencia the day before, hoping to get to the Plaza del Ayuntamiento by 2 p.m., when the daily mascletas, the big firecrackers, are lit. At the Plaza de Toros de Valencia, the bullring, I join the mob. It carries me along, shoulder-to-shoulder, like a molecule in the ocean. I hear the pops, then the echo and rumble of the mascletas. I am still six blocks away.

Hundreds detonate at once. Then, silence.

I am too late.

As I dive further off the plaza, I discover the casals faller, the neighborhoods. Each quarter creates its own paper mache effigy. Some figures are traditional, some irreverent, and others politically satirical.

In one, a mutt mounts a coiffed poodle from behind, in a strict interpretation of screw-the-pooch. His eyes are crossed and his tongue hangs out, in an obvious grimace of pleasure.

Nearby, a slight bearded fellow with parsnip pointed nose and goatee is marrying a chubby older fellow with rouged cheeks.

Grids of twine crisscross the streets, and I realize that each neighborhood is hosting its own mascleta celebration. The secret to penetrating Las Fallas is leaving the main plaza, and probing these enclaves.

I return here early the next day. The Caballeros FX (the pyrotechnicians) deftly handle little explosive sausages, scissors in their hands and brown paper fuses in their mouth. They secure the colorfully-wrapped mascletas to the grid. These clotheslines drape across the streets, with barely enough room for cars and pedestrians to glide comfortably beneath.

Boys no older than eight kneel purposefully next to a car’s bumper, arranging fireworks of their own. They nervously use a piece of smoldering rope to spark the fuse. Then they take a few steps back; cover their ears.

On another corner, a lit cone erupts in a shower of sparks, while a teenaged girl stands nearby, nonchalantly sending a text message. A toddler in pink plays not six feet away.

The steeple bell strikes 2, and in seconds the ritual begins.

Loud as cannons, these are no ordinary firecrackers. Hundreds explode at once. I feel the percussion in my chest. The throng backs away - but I move closer. The pungent smoke fills the constricted streets and alleyways. The pyrotechnicians are just silhouettes against their ignition flares, as they walk from fuse to fuse.  I can no longer see the next intersection.

I’m inside an erupting volcano.

The skyline lights up in crimson bursts for over an hour, as the day yields to dust. The smoke eventually muddles everything to a pastel glow.

The city parties long after the echo of the last titanium report fades.

The next day I amble to the beach. The smoke has cleared, but in the air there lingers the sulphurous scent of gunpowder.

Visiting Valencia During the Night of Fire

Visiting Valencia Anytime

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They started an escargot farm in Estoher, in France’s Languedoc- Roussillon region, as a means of living and working together.

At the foot of lush, green mountains and surrounded by peach orchards, La Ferme aux Escargots provides a tranquil backdrop for what Stéphane, 45, and Nathalie, 39, describe as a busy but beautiful life.

“We appreciate the way of life we have,” Nathalie said. “It’s a pleasure. It’s a quiet life. There is no noise [but] it’s a job that’s very hard, because we do 17 hours of work in a day.”

The couple struggled to spend time together after meeting in the north of France more than a decade ago. At the time, Stéphane worked for the French military, and Nathalie was a secretary.

“[For a] long time I never see Nathalie. She works with her boss and I work for [mine], so we never lived together, [but we] want to live and work together,” Stéphane explained. A lean, energetic man, he talks steadily.

After they married in 1999, Nathalie brought Stéphane to this region so he could meet her parents. Stéphane fell in love with the land, and so they decided to use farming as a way to work together.

The couple didn’t see themselves as traditional farmers.

“Agriculture,” Stéphane said, “It’s possible, but I am not sure I’ve got a green thumb. So no trees, no vegetables.”

He also had reservations about traditional farm animals. “I’m afraid of cows. I think they’re very dangerous.”

“Horses are dangerous in the back, dangerous in the front and very uncomfortable (to sit) on.”

Goats, he added, are destructive. “You keep something if you have got a goat.”

Eventually, he found the right animal: safe, quiet, clean and unable to escape easily.

Building by Hand

The French word escargot refers to any edible snail. Stéphane and Nathalie farm two types of snails popular in this region: helix aspersa minima and helix aspersa maxima, which they affectionately call “petit gris” (little gray) and “gros gris” (big gray).

In 2003, while Nathalie attended agricultural school in Savoie, Stéphane began building their farm. He hauled in dirt to create a foundation and stones to build a wall around the farm. For the snails, he built “parks” — long rectangular sections of land enclosed by a mesh electric fence, to keep the snails from crawling away.

Stéphane’s ingenuity is evident all around the farm; in the small house and office he built, in the gypsy caravan he designed and hand-carved; even in the furniture, which he made himself. Although untrained in construction, he managed to wire the farm for electricity, and diverted a local natural water source to create irrigation and a small pond.

Nathalie handles publicity and administration, while Stephane does most of the physical labor and artistic work. He drew the farm’s logo, after envisioning the shape of a boy and a snail in some spilt sugar.

The Catastrophe

Their first year of raising snails almost became their last, when nearly half of the snails escaped after their electric fence failed during a rainstorm. Returning home from the nearby city of Perpignan, they found many of their first crop of 300,000 snails squished on the road outside the farm.

“The first years for Nathalie and me [were] a catastrophe,” Stéphane said. They lost money.

To be considered a professional snail farmer in France, one must be raising at least 300,000 snails; fewer than that, and the agricultural administration classifies you as a hobbyist.

After seven years in business, La Ferme aux Escargot is raising 500,000 snails on two square acres of land. Soon the couple hopes to begin harvesting snail eggs for caviar.

By producing high-quality snails and continually expanding their product line, they hope to ride out the national economic crisis and challenge the stereotypes many people hold about snails.

“Everybody thinks snails are very expensive, but they’re not more expensive than beef,” Stéphane said. “It’s in the brain of everybody that snail is a product of luxury. It’s a real problem.”

Although their snails are organic, the Ferrats are reluctant to call them that.

“We don’t want to have this label, because it is used by everybody and by lobbyists,” Nathalie said, explaining that many businesses adopt the “organic” label as a reason to raise their prices, even if their products are not fully organic.

Unable to afford employees, and reluctant to use machines and chemicals, the Ferrats use animals to help them in their work.

“We don’t use chemicals against the pests, the grass or the predators,” Nathalie said. “It’s is not dangerous for the snails if they eat the chemicals — but if we eat snails after they have eaten chemicals, it is dangerous for us.”

Two goats, a handful of rabbits and a sheep keep the grass around the snail parks trimmed. Two ferrets and three cats hunt the rats that eat the snails, while bats, two turtles and frogs keep down the mosquitoes that damage snail eggs.

“Our philosophy is, we want to use the ecosystem to have good results,” Nathalie said.

While many people in this region pick up snails from the street after it rains, the Ferrats say snails from the wild contain pollution that can affect the taste and nutrients of snail flesh.

Sitting down for lunch in the shade outside their home, they watch their five-year-old son Marckam play in the grass. Stephane checks the snails sizzling on the grill in traditional Catalan cargolade style, while Nathalie spreads on a piece of bread terrine d’escargots, a snail pate of her own recipe.

Across the way, a neighbor’s peach orchard stretches out along the foot of the Canigou Mountain like a vivid green carpet. A bird whistles in the distance, its song rising above the soothing sound of the sprinklers watering the snail parks.

“Snail or no snail, I don’t care,” Stéphane said. “It’s tranquil. I stay here not for snails, but because the area is for me.”

This article was adapted from InPerpignan,  a multimedia project of the Institute for Education in International Media and the San Francisco State University journalism department.

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After enduring two world wars and more than 100 years of neglect, the bells of Perpignan have emerged as France’s only fully intact carillon.

Morning, noon and night, they toll the Angelus over the city.

You can also hear them during cultural events, such as the Festival International Carillon de Perpignan, which in 2010 runs through August 19th.

The carillon sits high in the dusty bell tower of the Cathedral St. Jean-Baptiste. From the outside, the tower looks ancient and unused.

But Laurent Pie of Perpignan and Elizabeth Vitu, an American originally from Virginia, journey up the 122 stairs every Saturday morning to play.

“We come to play just like this, for free,” said Pie, the Cathedral’s carillonneur. “We love music, and so we do it.”

Pie and Vitu have worked together to publicize the bells since they were restored in 1996.

Now the carillon is part of life in Perpignan, thanks largely to their efforts.

“If the bells aren’t played, people will lodge, not formal complaints, but they come to the church to see why the bells aren’t being played,” said Vitu, the assistant carillonneur.

Though Pie and Vitu play for free, their international colleagues who perform during the festivals do not. Pie and Vitu are in charge of applying for grant money to pay for the festivals, as well as for the upkeep of the carillon. Pie accepts this as part of his job, joking that for each bit of money coming in, he fills out 75 government forms.

“The part [of the job] everybody sees is the playing part, but also under it there is a whole part of the job which is quite [a bit] larger, which is getting the money for the concerts and festivals,” he said.

A spirit of camaraderie flows between the two.

Pie worked as an organist and high school music teacher in the Perpignan area before being tapped as carillonneur during the instrument’s restoration in 1996. Vitu graduated from Hollins College in Virginia with a degree in carillon music. She worked with many famous American carillonneurs before moving to France to further her studies.

Pie works on the public relations side of the team, asking for money and introducing the festivals to the public, while Vitu uses her connections and musical knowledge to bring new players to the area, and to create new arrangements of popular songs.

“We are really very complementary to each other,” Pie said. “You can ask her to make the adaptation, and she loves it, and you can ask me to do the administrative part of the job and I love it.”

Saving the Carillon

The bells, commissioned in 1872 Jean-Francois Metge and exhibited at the 1878 World’s Fair in Paris, were installed in the cathedral in 1880.

Though the carillon enjoyed a few short years of popularity, no one in the area knew how to play the massive instrument, so it faded from view.

During the first and second world wars, when soldiers melted down carillon bells to create bullets and cannons, they spared the carillon of Perpignan. The Germans didn’t realize the bells existed, according to Vitu.

“That’s the only carillon in France that’s completely intact. There’s nothing that’s been taken down or missing,” she said.

The government attempted to restore the carillon in 1956, but failed. The instrument deteriorated further.

“This place was totally destroyed,” Pie said of the bell tower. “It was filled with pigeons and pigeon shit and it was in the open air, so it was not until ‘96 that it was put in use again.”

Now, Pie and Vitu want to pass down their knowledge to future generations by establishing carillon classes at the Perpignan Mediterranee Conservatory, in hopes that the bells will never fall silent again.

If that doesn’t work out, “I’ll teach with the practice carillon in my home or in the tower,” Vitu said. “We just want to make sure there is someone here.”

This article was adapted from InPerpignan,  a multimedia project of the Institute for Education in International Media and the San Francisco State University journalism department.

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The world was a different place when my father was born. Literally, it was a different place. It is sobering to think that over half of the sovereign countries on the planet today are under 50 years old. When my father was born, they didn’t exist. A hundred countries have come into being since then.

The cartographers of the second half of the 20th century must have been busy creatures — the politicians, the soldiers and the revolutionaries, too. The birth of a country seldom comes without bloodshed.

The political world has just gone through a period of separatism — it is still separating. Ethnic groups in Spain fight for a little piece of the countryside where the people speak their own dialect; a decade ago, Quebec remained a part of Canada by a single vote; the Uighurs don’t want to be a part of China; the Tibetans want their country back; the Soviet Union fractured into pieces; and those pieces fractured into more pieces.

There are now two Koreas, two Samoas, three Guianas, a Papua New Guinea, a Congo, a Democratic Republic of Congo, and a Central African Republic. There is no way that Okinawa is culturally or geographically a part of Japan. Arunachal Pradesh is claimed by both China and India. Arunachal Pradesh claims itself. Even little Belgium is about to split up into even littler countries.

Lost in Time

What year is my map from? is a question the world traveler must ask. Where the hell did Equatorial Guinea come from? Is Western Sahara a real country? Does a country need a certain amount of surface area to be called as such? Are there any rules to becoming a country?

My 1980s Student’s World Atlas that I studied as a boy led me astray. I look at it today, and see lines and a kaleidoscope of colors partitioning the once good-looking and large mono-color regions. The sums of a country’s parts are no longer satisfied with the value of the whole. They want to be their own whole. And the parts within these parts want to be their own whole as well. And on and on.

The political world map now looks like an old Roman fresco. With each year new cracks are formed in the stucco and divides the painting further. The political map is being divided to death.

Today’s Splinterings

Conquest works in waves. The world was once divided into thousands of little kingdoms, fiefdoms, tribes, communities. Separated, these groups were always easy to conquer. One group would grow strong and decimate its neighbors; some spread their conquests over entire continents. A period of empire would then ensue. But soon enough, groups would again divide into smaller units; tribes would realize their differences from other tribes; and demand a fight for independence. The empire would then crumble like a Roman fresco of antiquity.

The political dispersion of the world would then break up again into little kingdoms, fiefdoms, tribes, communities. Separated, these little groups would be easy to conquer. One group would prove itself the strongest . . .

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

THE MONGOLIAN EMPIRE

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

On and on.

At what point in this cycle are we in today? New countries are still creating themselves, even after the fall of rampant colonialism, separatist movements are afire all over the globe.

The closer various tribes get to each other, the more different they often think they are.

But in the middle of this tribal minimalist movement, huge blankets of political regionalism are evolving. Geographically-mandated trade and political agreements are combining the small tribes of the planet into conglomerated chunks.

The European Union is roping in all of Europe, and dropping its internal borders, using a common currency, and standing behind a similar international mask. The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas has swept Spanish America into one big free trade zone. Colonel Muammar Qaddafi talked of a single African country, where he would rule as a “king of kings;” ASEAN has brought Southeast Asia to a singular geopolitical point; while the Shanghai Cooperation Organization ties together Russia and China.

There is now an African Union, the Andean Community of Nations, the Arab League, the Association of Caribbean States, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Francophonie, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, the Pacific Islands Forum, the CARICOM, OECS, OSCE, SAARC, and even an Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.

As the political world fractures, it bonds anew, just to fracture and bond again.

I think of the ceramic shards that I sometimes find while doing archaeology fieldwork. Their material was once clay in the ground, uniform strats of soil that clearly lay on top of other strats formed from years of soil molecules conglomerating together and dividing apart.

Then someone scooped up a little of this clay and fashioned it into an independent unit, a clay pot. This clay pot was transported away from its primordial base, and used under new and changing circumstances. Later, inevitably, it was dropped and shattered into pieces.

Years go by, and the pieces fracture even more. Then an archaeologist finds them, collects them and takes them back to the lab. There, the ceramic shards are laid out upon a large table, and slowly pieced back together.

Soon enough the pot takes form again. You can still see the cracks in it, as the individual pieces are assembled back together with an adhesive, but the parts come together again as one whole clay pot. It is then placed on display with other similarly pieced together pots.

But I know sometime, someday, this pot will be dropped and broken into pieces once again. And I also know that someday, way in the future, the clay from this pot will disintegrate back into the nameless, unclaimed stratigraphy of the earth.

As with countries.

In Joseph Conrad’s 19th century novella “Heart of Darkness,” Africa-bound protagonist Charlie Marlow famously comments on this, in a way I think about too:

“Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps,” he recalls. “I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, ‘When I grow up I will go there.…” I have been in some of them, and, well, we won’t talk about that. But there was one yet the biggest, the most blank, so to speak, that I had a hankering after.”

Today those blank spaces a full of lines. For now.

Wade Shepard has been perpetually traveling the world for the past 11 years, through more than 50 countries on five continents. He writes about the people he meets, the places he visits and his impressions of how the world comes together on Vagabond Journey Geographic and Vagabond Journey Travelogue.

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On a corner stands a tourist hotel, not yet open. The main street [in the coastal town of Niquero] is bustling with horses, bicycles and foot traffic. In the center is an expansive square of cracked bitumen that looks like it has been waiting an eternity for a fountain or a basketball hoop or a parking lot to materialize. At the far side are three 15-centavo pizza carts and a couple of juice-in-a-bag vendors vying for the passing peso.

I toss a mental coin and go for the cart with the necklace-laden senora, and I get lucky. The far eclipses that last “best Cuban pizza” I ate in Santiago. The crust is crisp and light like a good focaccia, with a density that suggests flour of some substance. The sauce tastes of real tomatoes, patiently reduced on a stove with homegrown herbs. The cheese is just right, not too thick or greasy.

I eat another. Then another. I decide to try the competition, but I am disappointed. Now completely queasy with pizza, I wash it down with a bag of juice, not really considering where the water might have come from, and then seek refuge from the heat in an air-conditioned dollar store.

I am standing at the back of the store, contemplating the two choices of vanilla cookie on display, namely square or round, when a plump, well-dressed woman to my right turns and smiles at me.

“Eres Italiana?” she asks. Are you Italian?

She chats with the ease of someone who is comfortable with foreigners. Her name is Julia, and she speaks of her wealthy Swiss-Italian esposo who jets across the Atlantic to make merengue with his Cuban wife and their eight-year-old daughter every two or three months. She invites me back to her house, where she and her mother, brother and daughter live in comparative affluence thanks to her esposo: Goldstar television set in the living room, brand-new frost-free fridge in the kitchen, Escada jacket in her wardrobe and duty-free perfumes, shampoos, soaps and creams that she displays on her dressing table.

We talk about their lives, the same theme of waiting, waiting…waiting for her husband to come, waiting for things to change. This, from a household blessed with more good fortune than the neighbors on either side of the fence. It is clear that a Goldstar television set is no substitute for unfettered capitalistic opportunity, freedom to cast a vote, and a choice of shampoo.

The family shows me a yellowing issues of a magazine commemorating Fidel’s historic first landing in their town, when he is supposed to have stepped onto the beach and uttered the words “I have come to liberate Cuba.”

A gusty wind has reared up and is rattling the frail windows. Julian and her brother entreat me to stay the night, insisting that the wind will make it difficult and dangerous for me to ride to Cabo Cruz. Something inside me decides to believe this pair of noncyclists, so I let them take me on a walk to look for ingredients for dinner.

First, we visit a government farm selling lettuce out of the ground for 1 peso per head. Then we make our way through decrepit back streets to a secret fish supplier in a very poor neighborhood. Everyone in town seems to know that Julia is married to rich foreigner, so everyone purchase begins with a haggle. We emerge from that neighborhood with an enormous pargo (snapper) for the equivalent of $3.50, “a bit high,” sighs Julia. She refuses to let me pay for the fish.

I sit on the porch in a chair and watch a friend of Julia’s sort stones out of a dish of rice, just like panning for gold nuggets, but throwing the gold away and keeping the silt. Inside, the aroma of friend fish with onion fills the little house. Julia piles my plate high.

That night Julia brings out a pile of photos of herself and Euro-hubby Christian living life in the fast lane in Italy, Paris and the Swiss Alps. There she is, outside hotels, in the pool and draped over a shiny red car. She looks happy and content. Julia is in bed by 10 p.m. I climb into my side of the bed and lie in the place where his esposo will rest his worldly head not long from now. I drift off, resting my eyes on the dark shock of her hair and breathing in the odd fragrance of French perfume on my pillow.

Of Hope and Marriage

The next morning the family surrounds me as I start loading up the bike. They seem even more intensely interested in me than the night before. One by one they do their best to convince me that Julia’s marriage to her extranjero (foreigner) is wonderful, that Julia’s brother would make a fine husband, and do I not think he is guapo?

I glance at this timid, studious boy who does not reek of picaflor [womanizing]. He is indeed handsome. They look at me hopefully. He looks at me hopefully. I continue to pack.

Julia gives me a photo of herself in Italy, leaning on top of a sports car, beaming and sun-swept, every bit the calendar girl. She gives me the photo and asks if I will find her a boyfriend in Australia. I stop packing.

I ask rather naively about her Swiss-Italian sugar hubby. Oh, no, she shakes her head emphatically. “I am free, completely free.” She assures me that he has a wife in Switzerland, but shhhhhh, the Swiss wife does not know about his Cuban chica and chicleta. They are esconidas, or hidden, which is the same way Cubans describe a large, illicit lobster.

I feel sad. Sad for the wife in Switzerland who bakes her man sugar cookies and rack of lamb,unaware of her sister in the other hemisphere cooking him rice and beans and fried pargo.

I give Julia $5 and leave them all waving at the front doorstep, waiting for Mr. Eurodaddy to walk up those steps in two weeks’ time.

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Dusk has enveloped Cathedral Road in Armagh, and the warm ginger skyline lures the eye towards the twin silhouettes of St. Patrick’s cathedrals at twilight. The seat of ecclesiastic authority for both the Catholic and Protestant churches of Ireland, this city prominently displays symbols that draw the eye and remind visitors that the land of Eire has a troubled past.

Before we arrived, in the summer of 2009, I often dismissed the Troubles conflict as a provincial, a vicious campaign of fear and discrimination waged by one small group against another.

I was sorely mistaken on all counts, except perhaps for the brutality of the violence: between 1969 and 2001, nearly 3,000 Irish citizens and 600 British soldiers perished in the Troubles, mostly in the small cities and towns of the north, according to information compiled by Sutton’s Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland. An additional 2,000 citizens were interred without evidence or trial, according to Gillespie’s Chronology of the Troubles.

?Anybody between 16 and 50 that had any sort of republican background at all, they would have been arrested and thrown in jail,” warned Cathy Rafferty, a former IRA prisoner and current councilwoman of Armagh. ?People spent seven or eight years in cages without being charged or accused of anything.”

It is important for Americans to see the Troubles from the perspective of those who lived it. The most valuable thing I learned during my time studying in Armagh was how passionate the people of Ireland are about a conflict I will never truly understand.

Despite ongoing investigations into the events of 1969 conducted by organizations like the Conflict Archive and the Belfast Police, many in Armagh disagree about how the Troubles began. The city is home to political and religious leaders who have experienced both sides of the conflict.

“The Troubles started here because of discrimination against the Catholic community,” said Armagh councilwoman Mary Doyle, a member of the Sinn Fein party. “People think it was about politics or religion, but really it was about basic human rights.”

As an American journalism student, I had been taught to neatly compartmentalize Ireland’s long history of conflict into a political struggle between citizens who wished Ireland to remain independent and those who wanted to join with Britain and the United Kingdom.

Before I arrived in the city of St. Patrick, the role of religion was an afterthought. But after speaking to local administrators, I saw how powerfully the divide between some Catholics and Protestants still affected the city.

?Religion was critical; if it had been a purely political issue, I doubt you’s have had the same degree of violence,” recalled Gareth Wilson, the deputy mayor of Armagh and a councilman with the Protestant Church-linked Democratic Unionist Party. “Once you split a political dispute on religious lines, real hate is fostered in these communities.”

But local religious leaders still ministering to the needs of residents who lost friends and family in the violence often suggest that newcomers consider Ireland’s history of religious segregation before coming to a conclusion.

?[The Troubles] started because the Catholic community felt they were being discriminated against, and they wanted basic civil rights,” contended Dean Rooke, chief administrator of the Church of Ireland in Armagh. ?What started as peaceful demonstrations became violent demonstrations, which ultimately led to out-and-out terrorism.”

To this day, the verdant hills of Northern Ireland are awash in stripes of white and gold or blue and crimson, the cheerful flapping of a Union Jack or Irish tricolor marking the boundaries between republicans and unionists, Catholics and Protestants, friends and neighbors.

Understanding the truth behind the Troubles in Northern Ireland will never be simple, but after a month in Armagh, I came to feel it was important for students of the world to discover the history of a place from the people who lived it. - Alex Wawro

This article was adapted from InArmagh,  a multimedia project of the Institute for Education in International Media, the University of Kansas School of Journalism and the journalism department of San Francisco State University.

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The air-conditioning has never worked properly, but I often turn it on in a vain hope that it will cool me down a little.

Unable to take the heat any longer, I step into the shower — a broken ceramic tray with a metal bucket next to it — holding the brown, but cool, water that I collected the night before. After a brief drenching I feel a little refreshed, only for the heat to hit me again within seconds.

I share the house with Colin, who also teaches at El Neilin University. I can hear snoring in the room next to mine, so as I leave I prop the door open, to let in some of the breeze.

The house has its own enclosed terrace, which allows us to relax without offending the cultural sensitivities. In the evening we can sit outside in shorts, with our tops off, and the western teachers we know from other universities can also visit without causing gossip among our Sudanese colleagues. However, the bustling street that runs next to the house constantly reminds us that we should not dwell on how we used to live.

I walk out of the courtyard, locking the gate as I do so to keep out the goats that wander the streets, eating the local trash.

Breakfast Fish

The smell of freshly-cooked fish fills the air as I walk past the small restaurant just behind the house. Fish, straight from the Nile that morning, quickly turns a crisp golden brown as they are placed in pans of boiling oil. There are only a few tables, under a decaying tin roof which is supported by a few wooden poles, so most diners simply squat on the floor wherever these is space.

A samak breakfast is one of my favorite meals, and the hot fish, served with fresh bread, would often entice me out of bed early. I still do not understand if I have a choice of what I can order but on recognizing me the young boy, who always serves me, gives me a cheery “good morning” as he places a few fish in front of me. I pick off bits of fish from the newspaper it has been served in and put then into the bread in a kind of makeshift sandwich.

After I’ve picked the last flesh from the bones I give the boy a 100-dinar note (about 40 cents) and move on.

Walking up the dusty street, I see many familiar faces: the lady who begs with her daughter outside the bank; the boy with a pair of ancient weighing scales (who can surely make no more than a few cents a day, taking money from people whose last concern is whether they’ve lost or gained a few pounds); the man in a dirty jellabeah, who covers a blanket with ancient, second hand electronics in the hope of making a few dinars. There is an old man, his legs so bent and deformed by rickets that he walks with flip flops strapped to his knees. There’s also Isa, the shopkeeper, who I always buy my bread and cheese from. I wave to him from across the street, but he appears busy stacking up the loaves of the thin bread eaten with almost every meal.

Making Street Friends

The center of Khartoum is a busy place. One of the many markets in the city borders a large bus station, yet with no discernible boundary, people weave in and out of the traffic carrying wares and food as buses and passengers noisily make their way through the crowds. Several restaurants surround the square, mixed in with the shops, food stores, butchers and other stalls that work in the same streets. The waste from all these places runs though the open drains at the side of the road. The stench is particularly pungent this morning, and I wonder how the people sitting down to breakfast can have any kind of appetite.

People often approach me while I walk through the city, inviting me to join them for a bite to eat or something to drink. At first I was weary of being greeted so warmly, but after just a few days I saw this was not a ploy, simply a way to welcome, and get to know, one of the few foreigners in the city. The Sudanese are famed for their hospitality and rightly so.

This morning, however, no one approaches me, and I see no one to talk to. I am simply another face in the crowd, trying to make my way thorough one of the busiest parts of the city.

A Nubian woman, with deep, ritual scars on her coal-black face, sits by the wall that leads down to the Nile. An old car spits smoke into the street as she feeds small pieces of tinder into the fire in front of her.

“Qahwah min fadlak?” I ask, as a place a few dinars into her hand.

She smiles with the few brown teeth she has remaining and starts to prepare the sweet Turkish-style coffee that I enjoy so much: A spoon full of fresh grounds is placed in a small copper pot.

“Bisoon sukre,” without sugar, I specify, as she begins to spoon heaps of it into the pot, then fills it to the brim with water. As soon as the pot boils, its contents is poured into a small glass and handed to me. I sit down on the curb next to her.

My Sudanese friends have often told me that drinking coffee would help cool me down during the day, but I have long since abandoned that theory as I sweat profusely, enjoying the strong concoction.

A young woman walking past with a group of girls approaches me, a tissue in her hand; she gestures to her forehead as I look up.

“Shokran” — thank you– I say as I smile and wipe the sweat from my forehead.

I often forget how closely many people watch me. There is rarely an occasion when, should I have difficulty with the language, or anything else, that someone, or even a few people, do not offer assistance. “We are just interested in what you are doing, don’t be hurt,” replied one man, after I had asked him once why a group of people were surrounding me as I ate my lunch by the side of the road.

“Qahwah? Coffee?” I ask the girl, gesturing for her friends to join us. “La shokran,” she says, giggling, and returns to her group.

It’s time to get to work, so I finish the last of the coffee, leaving just the muddy dregs at the bottom of the cup. I head back into the crowds.

At the entrance to the university are five pictures of former students. All are dressed in Army uniform, and in the corner of each picture, in small Arabic numerals, are written their dates of birth, and death. Another picture will soon join this display: I was told just last week that another student, who’d gone to fight in the South, has been killed.

Our Students

I walk into the building, through the courtyard garden and cafe where Colin is already enjoying his breakfast of fuul and bread, and up the stairs to the English department and into the small lecture room. I’m at least 10 minutes early, but already the room is full; the women take the first six rows and the men sit behind them. A few dozen students sit on the windowsills or learn through the open shutters from the corridor, chatting to those are lucky enough to have found a seat. The room seats about 100 people, but I have almost 180 students. As a student wipes down the board another comes in and places a coffee on my desk, I thank him and pass him some money but he refuses, as always. A final few students come into the room and sit on the steps as I turn to face the class:

“Good morning,” I say, and as the students fall silent I begin work.

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Il Buco claims to be one of the few restaurants in the city to thriftily use each part of the animal.

“We’re the only place that I know of that’s using an entire side of a pig,” said one chef. “We use the ribs, we use the bones, we use the fat, we make sausages out of the heads - so there’s just no waste.”

See how it’s done:

Michael Yessi, the co-owner of Flying Pigs Farm in upstate New York, delivers a pig to Il Buco every Friday morning. A pig costs $800 to $1,000, depending on how much it weighs.

Led by head chef Ignacio Mattos, the staff serves up such dishes such as copa, an Italian cold cut made from the head and feet; and lardo carpaccio, made from the back fat. The results are all over the menu, in the pork sausage, salsiccia; the pasta and pork strozzapretti; and the porchetta with white bean puree.

Finding ways to make all parts of the pig appetizing to diners is both a challenge and a way to keep meal prices in check.

“We try to relocate all these parts, that for some people might not be so appealing, into the table,” said Mattos.

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This is my first visit to my parents’ homeland in over a decade. It is also the first day of school. I look at the students in white shirts and black pants, lingering in corridors. I think about how they are here for an education, and will be tested later. It’s vital that they don’t forget.

Malgosia and I pass the churches and plaques commemorating the war dead. Under Communism, talking about war heroes was verboten; now there is a tendency to fetishize them, with an explosion of books and movies celebrating their heroism and defiance.

Religious and historical veneration have a way of mixing when old glories are recounted, with the church acting as Poland’s keeper of memory and tradition. During one of his first visits back to his native country after ascending to the Papacy, John Paul II advised the Poles, “Don’t forget your roots.” Now many churches bear plaques celebrating the valor of young soldiers sent by priests into battle.

I struggle to keep pace with Malgosia as she unfolds the past, like a quilt long stored in an attic. I’m out of the habit of speaking Polish. Struggling to force my tongue to make dulcet sounds, I pronounce words awkwardly; my grammar is even worse.

Under Communism, Malgosia tells me, priests were thrown into jail, and served as teachers and inspirational figures for ordinary people people. She gets angry talking about Communism, history turning into a harangue. I try to separate opinion from fact, emotion from memory.

During this trip, I have been trying to make sense of my own history. I have been shedding relatives in the decade since my last visit, and losing the language I once spoke fluently.

My parents don’t like talking about their past, so I’ve been visiting relatives and piecing together their story, tale by tale, the way residents of Old Town sifted through the rubble after their war, to rebuild their city. Using blueprints and memory, they rebuilt a city that had existed since the 1300s, finishing in 1984. It’s a reasonable facsimile.

From various relatives, I learn about shocking pregnancies, holy uncles, escapes from Nazis, hidden Communist gold. My hand cramps from taking notes, as I try to capture the outpouring of words, facts and opinions.

My grandmother, I am told, watched her sister die. Her sister worked in the Polish underground, hiding Jews and helping them escape to the West. A fellow villager leaked that news to the Nazis, who then came to her house and killed every living thing. Nothing survived, not even the dogs.

My grandmother rode on horseback to her sister’s house, arriving half an hour after everyone had been killed. She stepped through the blood and found the bodies of her sister, her sister’s husband, their children.

Or she arrived at the same time the Nazis did, hiding in the underbrush as the first shots rang out, and watched her family fall.

Or she arrived the next day, flies massing on the humans and livestock, dust and blood clinging to her boots.

The stories vary with the teller. Memory fades, and sentiment creeps in. Fact takes second place to feeling.

As we walk, Malgosia and I are followed by the strains of “Billie Jean.” Michael Jackson died more than a month ago, and evidently Poland has taken his passing hard. Every hour another song by the King of Pop comes over the airwaves. Be careful what you do, ’cause the lie becomes the truth. We’re chased by more nonsensical death, already changed by nostalgia and misinterpretation.
Catherine Nicotera is a writer in California.

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“Don’t talk to me when we’re on the square,” the woman instructed, as we got off the subway at Tiananmen East.

I didn’t know who she was; I just knew she was different. Unlike most elderly Chinese in Beijing, who move around like old tugboats and avoid the subway in favor of the bus, she was sharp.

Pointing at the red glowing subway map, she repeated Tiananmen changuang, until a man who looked to be in his early 30s quietly told her which stop would leave her closest Square.

Everyone else on the train gaped, as if she had asked for directions to Golgotha.

They pressed against the walls of the car to try to disassociate themselves from her. Yet they couldn’t take their eyes off of her.

“I want to take pictures,” she said to me in perfect English — yet another characteristic that distinguished her from the average Beijing septuagenarian. “And see. I haven’t been here since a month after it happened.”

She was talking about the massive pro-democracy protests of 1989, of course, and that June day when the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army rolled into the square and the military fired on the crowds, killing hundreds of people.

The subway station near Tiananmen was deserted. But, aware of the surrounding fleet of undercover police, we decided to walk apart. Soon we approached the first security check. I went ahead.

“Police security check,” said the officer, blocking my path. “Are you a reporter?”I said no, but he asked to see my passport. He checked the visa and my residence permit, then looked through my bag and removed a large notebook.

“Just my notebook,” I said, shrugging casually, but certain I was done for. Without opening it, he put it back in my bag.

At the second checkpoint my visa and residence permit were examined again.

“What’s your job?” the policeman asked.

“I’m an editor,” I responded, and he let me pass.

By the time I’d made it past all three checkpoints, I’d lost sight of my new friend. I meandered through the square, confused by its vast nothingness and amused by the odd gait of the Chinese military marching across it. Trained in a special way of marching, with their butts tucked under their hips, the soldiers are immediately recognizable, whether or not they’re in uniform.

I imagined the myriad plainclothes officers around here would be easy to pick out. Indeed, some were dressed in their Saturday night discotheque best, while others wore sleeveless basketball tees, evidently in an effort to casually blend in (paired with black lace-up military heels, the basketball tees were especially unconvincing).

I scanned the square, trying to seem inconspicuous, even though I was wearing a firetruck-red cotton dress. The woman’s hair, a bright and creamy white with hints of yellow, almost like sugar cane, made her easy to find. She wore large brown glasses and a loose white button-down shirt full of pockets — those big pockets you see on nurse’s uniforms. I could see her nimbly snapping photos and making great use of her pockets to hide her camera. She moved briskly around the square; at one point I even saw her rush toward a clan of marching soldiers to get their picture.

She coughed just a bit — a forced dry cough — when she wanted to take my picture. I would turn toward her, but never look directly at her, trying to mask our connection.

We walked back from the square to the subway together, still in secret tandem.

“We’re safe now,” she said, once we were both on the escalator headed underground. She looked at me with the relief of a little girl who had just made it back into her tree house without getting tagged.

“The police asked me if I knew you,” she said. “I just told them no.”

Having taken every measure to disguise our acquaintance, I was stunned that they had discovered us.

“They are very practiced at this type of observation,” she said. “They see everything.”

“People are scared to come today, because they know there will be much security,” she said. “But I had to come. Today is special.”

She said she’d been a journalist once. “The first time I came here was one month after it happened. I came alone, and there was hardly anyone on the square. But I could see that there were so many new bricks. I counted, over 100. They must not have been able to get rid of the blood.”

As we both boarded the subway, she asked for my mailing address so she could send me the pictures she’d taken of me. As I wrote it down, the entire car stared at us. A laowai, a foreigner, was speaking to a Chinese woman who looked like she could be the mother or grandmother of a Tiananmen victim. They knew that we were exchanging ideas and contact information. I was nervous until, in a subtle act of solidarity, a woman sitting in front of us offered her pen, after mine had stopped working.

The Chinese watch, but they don’t tattle.

“Are you going home now?” I asked as the woman, as we approached her stop. “Because I would like to talk more with you, maybe have tea?”

“I don’t think my daughter will like it,” she said. “I am staying with her, and she lives in a military compound.”

I didn’t insist.

“Nice to meet you,” she said, looking away from me as she exited the train. It was her undercover promise that we’d meet again.

Beijing-based Roseann Lake has reported from four continents in three languages.

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Nonetheless, the Little Mermaid patiently remained in her designated spot in Copenhagen harbor for 97 years. The contemplative, somewhat sad-looking mermaid is considered a national heirloom in Denmark, so naturally when the Bjarke Ingels Group, a young Danish architecture firm, proposed letting her take a six-month trip to China, a heated debate ensued.

The architects wanted to make the Little Mermaid the centerpiece of the Danish pavilion in the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, which runs from May to October. They intended to make use of Hans Christian Andersen?s fairytale to tell a story about a nation wanting to reach out to the rest of the world.

In the story, a mermaid falls in love with a human prince, and makes a Faustian bargain: she agrees to exchange her tongue for legs, becoming a mute so she can walk on earth and meet him.

?The purpose of moving The Little Mermaid is to show that open-mindedness doesn?t necessarily cause you to lose origin or culture,? BIG founder Bjarke Ingels said in a statement at the time. ?Typically, national symbols are static ? a fortress or a tower, which is unshakable. The perception of a nation with a national symbol so dynamic that it can be moved to China for six months is a great way of showing that Denmark is open-minded and liberal towards the rest of the world.?

Yet this new Danish fairytale ended up telling more than one story about Denmark. While the ideas behind the pavilion show Denmark as progressive, the reaction exposed the nationalist and conservative tendencies that are also a significant part of contemporary Danish culture.

?It?s a grotesque idea to send our national pride and joy to Asia?. No one would come up with the idea of lending out New York?s Lady Liberty,? said Karin Noedgaard, spokeswoman for the right-wing populist (and popular) Danish People?s Party.

Her comments mirror an attitude shared by many Danes, who consider it inappropriate to ship a cultural treasure halfway across the globe as a PR tool.

So in 2008 the conservative Danish People?s Party proposed a new law to prohibit the removal of the Little Mermaid.

In the months leading up to this legislative showdown, the question of whether to allow the (mer)maiden voyage was discussed in various public forums, but most vehemently on the Internet.

?No, no, no, it has to stay in Denmark! What kind of sick idea is it to give it out on a loan?!? wrote one commenter on the website of the public TV station TV2?.?If the Chinese want to see it, they can come here!!!?

?To remove her from the city is like amputating an arm from a healthy human being,? wrote another.

The idea also had its defenders: ?Of course it is OK to send the original mermaid, even though she belongs to Denmark,? wrote one. ?After all, it is only a loan. I mean, if that isn?t OK, then let us empty the Danish museums of objects originating in Egypt and Greece. I think many Danes enjoy these objects, so why shouldn?t it be all right to share a bit of Danish culture? After all, she is a symbol of our world-known H.C. Andersen.?

And another writer expressed the opinion that would ultimately prevail: ?Finally a progressive idea showing that Denmark is not buttoned up, but a nation willing to interact with the surrounding world. Finally the Mermaid?s physical smallness becomes an advantage; how many other countries have a removable national symbol??

Official political debate focused on whether to send the original statue, or a copy.

?The Little Mermaid must remain in Copenhagen, because it is her place, and thousands of tourists will be terribly disappointed not to find her during her six-month long absence,? said Pia Allerslev, Copenhagen?s deputy mayor, summing up one opposition argument.

Others evaluated the effect on tourism differently, emphasizing the unparalleled marketing value of sending the original abroad: ?I do believe it is the first time ever that a country has dared to send its most famous tourist attraction away to invite guests to come visit,? Dorte Kiilerich, managing director of VisitDenmark, said in a statement.

Proponents also argued that sending ?the real thing? was a gesture of cultural generosity, and an invitation to initiate cultural dialogue between Denmark and China.

?Regarding the copy, it makes me think of Snoopy,? politician Pernille Fram said during a parliamentary discussion. ?It is like giving a starving dog a rubber bone. No, we won?t [send a copy], because it is not the same thing.?

Sending the original was part of BIG?s bid to counter the inauthenticity that, according to Ingels, has come to characterize World Expos.

?When we visited the World Expo in Zaragoza [Spain], we were stunned by the artificial content. State propaganda in papier mâché,? Ingels said in a statement. ?The Danish Expo pavilion 2010 is the real deal, and not just endless talking.?

After debating for more than a year, Copenhagen?s city council in March 2009 took a final vote. Oddly, the Red-Green Alliance, a radical left-wing party, supported the Danish People?s Party in favoring a ban on the statue?s departure. But the Red-Greens cited a different reason: to spare the Chinese from what they considered a conservative, dated, national icon. Instead, they recommended sending a more modern product of Danish culture: a windmill.

The Red-Greens agreed with the Social Democrats (who favored sending the Mermaid to Shanghai) that the Danish People?s Party had taken the Little Mermaid ?hostage? to promote a narrow nationalism. Yet the Red-Greens complimented the Danish People?s Party for this move; with a laconic reference to their controversial immigration policies, the Red-Green Alliance?s spokesman Frank Aaen explained that ?in reality the Danish People?s Party has taken hostage something as innocent as a statue instead of doing what they normally do? taking human beings as hostages.?

Despite this unexpected ?support? from the left, the Little Mermaid?s visit to Shanghai was approved.

While the Little Mermaid is away?she began her journey in March 2010 and has a return ticket in October 2010 ?a video installation by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is on display in her usual spot. His piece includes a live broadcast from the pavilion in Shanghai.

With a distilled Copenhagen experience of water, Danish city bikes and the Little Mermaid, the Danish pavilion in Shanghai lets its visitors immerse themselves in a little fairy tale of sustainable living.

Yet the pavilion has also exposed something rarely found at World Expos: a window into the political reality of a nation.

Elisabeth Ginsberg is a Danish Fulbright student in The Draper Master?s Program in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University.
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When Borfecciha was a child, the father-son trek for crescia was a special treat. “Now crescia reminds me of summer, because that is when I usually eat it,” says Borfecchia.

Today found in most Urbino restaurants, crescia originally was considered the poor man’s bread, because farmers were able to take it out to the fields with them. The food is rich and easy to preserve, making it the perfect meal for laborers.

The bread consists of flour, water, lard, eggs and pepper. The lard gives the bread its flaky and crunchy exterior, while keeping it soft and chewy on the inside. Traditionally it’s eaten unaccompanied, but now it is often served with prosciutto and cheese, or other ingredients to create more bountiful meal.

For Antonio Fabi, crescia brings back memories of high school. After a festival it would be sold at half price. Fabi and his high school friends would run over after school and enjoy the afternoon snack. ?I just love the ingredients!” Fabi said.

One of the first restaurants in Urbino to sell crescia was Il Ragno d’Oro, established just after the end of WWII. Here, crescia is made fresh before your eyes. Tender care makes it special: each disc of dough is rolled by experienced hands, cognizant of a 100-year tradition. Oil added to the dough deepens the flavor.

Fresh crescia filled with cheese and prosciutto sells for 4 euro.

?My grandmother would make it when I was a child,” recalled Barbara Serafini, who works behind the counter at Il Ragno d’Oro. “She would give me small amounts of dough so I could make mini crescia.”

No one mass-produced crescia until the 21st century. Paolo Gerardi and his then-fiance met a man working in the supermarket business. They teamed up, and in 2001 established Il Panaro, the first factory to mass-produce crescia. Today Il Panaro produces 4,000 to 6,000 pieces of crescia daily.

Although the factory distributes crescia all over Italy, especially in the north, crescia is still considered a hallmark of Urbino cuisine.

?We have 15 employees here at the factory,” Gerardi said. ?Only the women make crescia, because they are more skilled with their hands and have less hair on their arms. However, we do have a boy that delivers the crescia.”

This article was adapted from Urbino View, the English-language magazine of Italy’s Le Marche region, produced annually by journalism interns of IEI Media.

A Crescia Recipe
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We were a little nervous about the trip — the country is run by an isolationist military junta, and is best known in the West for its longtime detention of pro-democracy activist Daw Aung San Suu Kyi — but I’m glad we overcame our fears.

We spent two days in Yangon, visiting markets, Buddhist temples and the Musmeah Yeshua. I reveled in intoxicating smells and smiles. One of the most memorable places was the Shwedagon Pagoda. We went at sunset, and in the tranquility of being there, amid a sea of devout Burmese, I connected.

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This festival, each May 15th, marks the eve of the feast of St. Ubaldo. Though St. Ubaldo’s day is observed with a solemn mass and meditation, the day of the ceri is is filled with medieval pageantry and religious fervor.

My informant brought me to a taverna filled to capacity and throbbing with exuberant dancing and singing. Food and local wine was on the house. Even the wine cellar was cleared for the dancers, children among them.

After hours of merriment, my newfound friends escorted me to a hillside ranch whose owners supplemented their income by operating it as a private trattoria. Pachito, the young owner, prided himself on his “cowboy” lifestyle, and questioned me enthusiastically about the American Indians.

Pachito offered me the only remaining space in his house: a hayloft. With straw for a bed and his young wife’s fantastic open-fire cooking, I was delightfully accommodated for the rest of my stay. I took pictures of their son, Ubaldo, floating like an angelic figurine, and his younger brother, as he watched his mom cook foccacia over the fire.

My hosts offered only vague information about the origin of the festival, and of the ceri. They referred to a pagan goddess named Ceres, and of symbolic gestures toward their protector St. Ubaldo. It was suggested that the figures of the ceri were derived from the war chariot of a fabled Milanese leader. Cero translates into English as candle, but that was hardly a hint of what to expect. I retired with anticipation to my straw bed, as the rain beat down on the barn roof.
At dawn I was awakened by a loud drum reveille. I hurried down the path into town. As I turned through the town gates, I ran right into the first procession of the morning. I instinctively began taking pictures. Brief intermittent spells of rainfall left spectacular glints of moisture on the plastic rain caps of the marching musicians. A group of men were carrying three figurines. These represented St. Ubaldo, protector of the masons; St. Giorgio, patron of the merchants; and St. Antonio, protector of agriculture.

I joined the procession and we marched through every street in town, encouraging the people we met to join us. We passed a convent with its doors open, where the nuns stood throwing blessed flowers to the happy crowd. People surged forward to try to catch a flower, and receive a holy blessing.

By midday we were gathered in Piazza Grande, bounded on the north by the 14th century Palazzo dei Consuli, and in the south by the municipal building (where one can find the original Eugubine Tables describing this curious custom, written in an ancient Umbrian language and discovered here in 1444.)

An ecclesiastical procession was forming, headed by the “attendants of the dead,” who walked in pairs and were dressed in white robes with black capes. Next came members of the Society of Santa Croce in blue capes, then more men in black, followed by scholars of the seminary and several men in brown capes carrying the image of St. Ubaldo. Finally came the canons of the cathedral, with the bishop and his attendants. The procession paused and the bishop blessed the palazzo and its people.

Suddenly the great doors of the Palazzo dei Consoli swung open and the three prone Ceri were rushed into the center of the piazza. Mystery solved! I could clearly see the Ceri: three colossal wooden pedestals about 12 to 15 feet long, in the form of eight sided prisms, pointed at both ends.

Video from the Corsa dei Ceri 2007

They suggested the shape of two stacked lanterns. The bearers, the ceraioli, were 10 men clad in white trousers, blue shirts and bright sashes.

The foreman was called the capo dieci, or the leader of the ten. The three saintly figurines from the morning procession were fastened to the top of each cero. As water was spilled from jugs, which were then tossed into the air, the ceraioli raised the ceri, and then quickly and vigorously carried them south along the Via dei Consoli.

As a trumpeter on horseback separated the crowd up front, the tiny 2 1/2-foot figure of St. Ubaldo was mounted atop the strange obelisk, his garments fluttering, and raced through the streets.

At the public gardens, another figure on horseback, the first captain of the people, took command, leading the procession on several obstacle-defying, breathtakingly-paced circuits of the streets. They stopped just once, for rest and wine.

Once more the pedestals were hoisted high for the final phase of the journey through the town gates, then up to the destination, the Franciscan monastery at the top of Monte Ingino. The ceraioli were forced to slow to a walk as the slope became steeper. The townspeople helped, holding guide ropes attached to the swaying pedestals.

The procession reached the monastery in late afternoon, and the gates were closed. The ceri were carried one by one in three circular runs around the courtyard. For this year, their journey had ended.

The figurines were removed from their thrones and placed on benches inside the basilica, where the ceraioli and the townsfolk came to humbly pay their respects, bowing before the figures and kissing them. The figurines would later be returned to their churches, until the next festival, while the ceri were left at the monastery.

As night fell the crowds slowly descended to town. The narrow path glowed with flickering candles, as church bells chimed.

This celebration has earned Gubbio the reputation of being “a town of madmen.” I disagree. It is more obviously a celebration of sincere love and enthusiasm toward their religion, God, and the anniversary of the death of their beloved St. Ubaldo.

You can participate in the Corsa dei Ceri in Gubbio, Umbria, each May 15th.

Bologna, Italy-born Marino Colmano is a producer, cinematographer and writer, and owner of the production company Lucid Media.

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When we drove through this sleepy little settlement on the Omaruru River in the 1990s, it was mainly a pleasant place to stop for gas on the way to somewhere else. Used as a base by big game hunters in the mid 1800s, by the end of the 19th century German colonists had settled beside the Herero and Damara peoples in what was then called Sud West Afrika. A Rhenish Mission was built, then a brewery, and by beginning of the 20th century Roman Catholic and Anglican churches joined the Lutherans. A few artists found their way here, among them a man called “Lone Oak,” who lived under a camelthorn tree with his dog and goat, and painted religious murals on the walls of St. Boniface church.

By 2009, Omaruru was a different story. Almost 20 years after Namibian independence, this town of about 6,000 has become a kind of Ojai, California, drawing artists looking for a creative environment and a laid back lifestyle. Many of the original German buildings have been preserved, and turned into arts co-ops, restaurants, boutiques and studios. (Omaruru was also called Okozondje, the place of scorpions; fortunately, the only scorpions we saw were handcrafted from wrought iron.)

The artists here are both native and adoptive Namibians: Bushmen, Germans, South Africans, OvaHerero, Americans, French, NamaDamara, and Ovambo. They know a bit about mysticism beyond the traditions of their own tribes — the cover of the local arts guide, The Om Eye, features in its masthead the ancient Egyptian Eye of Horus, symbol of power and protection, while the free newspaper, The Om, celebrates the Hindu symbol for the absolute.

We had already decided that meditating on the shaded banks of the Omaruru river might be an inspiring thing to do, but were sidetracked by a visit to the Kristall Kellerei winery, where we concentrated on the Nappa — Namibian grappa — instead. Though we didn’t reach nirvana, we were pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the wines.

Then we followed the art. We started at Wronsky House, built in 1907 as a shop, and still a souvenir and bookstore today. In fact, the coffee shop still serves a sachertorte passed down by a family member who married into the notable Viennese family that invented it in the 19th century.  We picked up the latest edition of The Om Eye, as well as the Omaruru Arts and Crafts Guide, which lists almost four dozen local artists who specialize in photography, embroidery, quilting, paintings and weavings; items made from recycled car parts; sculpture carved from ancient tree roots; intricate traditional woven baskets; and jewelry created from handmade ostrich shell beads. Plus bread baking, wine making and handmade chocolates.

We dropped in and out of shops and studios at Lalabaai, where we met owner and artist Lizanne Kruger, and bought her handmade angel, Mina Afrika. After lunch at the colorful and funky Sand Dragon, where they have a real espresso machine, we moved on to the Kashana Center. Hanne Marott Alpers’ Nawa Nawa Art Gallery specializes in work made of both recycled and natural materials - unusual sculptures made from discarded Land Rover parts, and paintings, Bushman baskets, photography, handmade jewelry. The Desert Rose in the Kashana center sells homemade cheeses, oryx ham, and the luscious Dorgeloh Chocolates, all of which went into our 4×4’s fridge for a picnic down the road. Everywhere we turned there were huge wooden sculptures fashioned from tree roots, and metal wall sculptures made by Michael van de Merwe.

With such a well-developed arts community, it follows that Omaruru has a popular annual Artists’ Trail event. Every year, over the third weekend of May, open studios and outdoor exhibits draw visitors from around southern Africa and beyond.

Editors’ note: In 2010, the Artists Trail is scheduled for May 14 and 15. Read more about life in Omaruru in the local newsletter, The Om Times.

Umbria, Italy-based writer Sharri Whiting lived for four years in Namibia. She now blogs about life in central italy, at Umbria Bella, and runs a summer communications course for Boston graduate students.

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This isn’t a fight club: it’s Royal Palace baths, a Russian bath house,  or banya, on the edge of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, where Russians and intrepid foreigners pay $40 to roast inside wooden rooms heated to as much as 200 degrees F. They also thump themselves with veniki, oak branches. It’s all to improve circulation and health.

The spa is one part paradise to two parts kitsch nightmare, decorated in the faux lux style so beloved by Mafia kingpins and chain Italian restaurants: the main room, replete with large aqua pool and plastic patio furniture, is done in fake marble, its vaulted ceilings held up by fat Roman columns.

“Welcome to Royal Palace!” two beautiful women - skinny jeans fitted snugly into boots, gloss-slicked lips, eyelashes like the sharp points of a star - greet visitors in Russian at the entrance. The Betty and Veronica of Brighton Beach, with mismatched personalities: the blonde is cool, taken with some secret text exchange on her phone; the brunette chatty, making jokes with customers and reminding them to tip.

The name, Royal Palace, is fitting: “We like everything royal,” my Russian friend Masha says. No matter that the Russians killed their own royal family. “Yes,” Masha demurs, “but we like what they like.”

The banya itself is a kind of torture, but there’s pleasure in it, too. Here is the Russian national psyche: suffering is edifying, and the banya’s cleansing fire makes you pure again. Through pain, pleasure — the two are never far apart.

You Have Back Pain?

On a Saturday afternoon, aging men built like kegs, their great stomachs protruding beneath towels slung around their necks, lounge around the pool in the main room. They drink beers and snack on vobla, salt-dried fish. Their younger counterparts scour the room for girls, who smirk on the sidelines, crossing and uncrossing their legs. The room smells, not unpleasantly, of chlorine, fish, and freshly laundered towels.

Three men circle the room, masseuses competing for clients. They are insistent: “slushai, slushai,” they say. Listen, listen. They promise a discount if you pay them directly, cash, no need for the front desk to know. You have back pain? They’ll work the spongy discs between your vertebrae to get the blood flowing again. Headaches? They?ll find your pressure points and release the tension. There’s no problem they can’t fix.

Children run in occasionally, complaining of hunger, thirst. A tow-headed boy, skinny as a wild dog, pleads with his father: “papa, papa, papa,” but the man is too busy walloping his wife to hear; the leaves of the venik falling to the ground in clumps. “Khorosho?” he asks her, good? Da, da, she says.

It’s my first time, and so I go where everyone goes: the Russian steam room. There are also Finnish, Turkish, and Roman saunas, each heated to a different temperatures with dry (Finnish) or wet (Turkish) heat, but no one seems to go in them much.

After a few minutes in the sauna, I’m so hot I can barely speak. Masha implores me to wrap a towel around my head; the Russians are all already wearing shapky - felt hats - to protect their heads from the heat. I can barely understand what she’s saying; the blood is thudding in my skull.

A group of men in their 30s catch sight of me, this WASPy American girl suffering their Slavic inferno, and laugh, “It’s nothing yet!” one of them says. He decides I’m an amusing specimen. “We?ll get undressed,” he smiles, “then it’ll really be like Russia!”

I put my head down and listen to feet squish across the floor in sandals and flip-flops as people come and go, wishing each other legkim parom - a good steam. After a spell in the heat, Russians go out into the snow to roll around or, as here, dunk themselves in frigid baths. The ritual lasts hours, whole days: steam room, snow-roll or ice cold bath, maybe to the pool for a swim and a snack, then back into the steam room again. In between, the women rub honey and salt over their faces, and some slick on a mint green paste. When they leave, their skin is as smooth as the flesh of a peach.

Failed Escape

I sneak out of the steam room, hoping to find some relief in a tepid shower. But one of the men from the group catches me, and shakes his head. “You have to go in,” he says, gesturing toward the glowering green square of ice water in the corner. I demur, but it?s no good: things must be done the proper way. I jump; the pain is as if I’d hurled myself against a glass table. I claw my way out and collapse on a stone bench.

Back in the steam room, a young man enters: the executioner. With a ladle and a few deft flicks of the wrist, he flings water, scooped from a bucket, on the hot stones inside the small oven. The stones hiss and growl as they release steam into the air, producing heat. Then the man ? from Tajikistan, he tells me later - waves a towel around in great lazy circles, jostling the angry atoms of air.

Surely this is some circle of hell. But the men assure me: “The heat is half what it would be in Russia!” They soften at the look on my face. “You’re doing well! The American we brought only came in here once. When we told him to go in the cold water, he said, ‘you guys are f__ing nuts.’”

Plenty of visitors to Russia have thought as much. In the first written account of the banya, recorded in the Russian Primary Chronicle of 1113, the Apostle Andrew visits the area that was later to become Russia. Observing the bathhouse ritual, he remarks: “They [the Russians] lash themselves so violently that they barely escape alive. They think nothing of doing this every day, and actually inflict such voluntary torture on themselves.”

After five hours of torture, I?m exhausted, banya-drunk. It’s only 8 p.m., but I fall asleep upright at the table while waiting for my “salad in a glass,” a Moscow-priced ($10) juice made from red peppers, lettuce, tomatoes and carrots. “Ah,” Masha says, looking at me, “and that’s how you know you’re done with banya.”

Tania Barnes is a master’s candidate at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
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But the effort to get here is worth it. We?ve come to watch Dani women make salt from sections of a banana plant soaked in a briny pool some 4,000 feet above sea level, and to see Dani men and women create fire, then catch, kill and roast a pig in an underground oven.

These are customs of a once-isolated people first encountered by Westerners in the 1930s, who still maintain Stone Age-era traditions. Dani men go naked, except for a long, narrow gourd, called a koteka, covering their penis. Women are bare-breasted and wear grass or woven string skirts, with string bags tied to their foreheads.

To visit the Dani in the Baliem Valley, and the sub-tribes known as Yani and Yali, visitors must have police permits.  They?ll walk about five miles from the main town, Wamena, or travel in four-wheel drive vehicles to the base of the Mili mountain in the village of Jiwiki.

Then comes about two hours of rigorous trudging through sticky mud, and clambering over slippery stones on a narrow path up the mountain, through a rainforest marked by waterfalls and rugged scenery. Dani men give us sturdy sticks to help us keep our footing.

As we make our way to the upper reaches of the mountain, we suddenly come upon an area of boulders framing a small spring.

Standing in the salty water, Dani women are soaking strips ripped from the heart of a banana plant. The salty strips ? which are quite tasty ? are taken home, dried, burnt and beaten into ashes. The ashes are used as salt. It?s an occupation solely for women, but a few men stand around at the salt pool, perhaps to guard them.

Anemoigi, another Dani village nearby, hosts the pig feast, a ceremony put on for special occasions such as weddings. At the entrance to a family compound where the feast is held, we receive an unexpected and exciting welcome.

Ferocious-looking men in feathered headdress, their legs and thighs daubed with paint, and carrying bows, arrows and long, pointed staves, suddenly swarm onto an open field where an armed male sentry stands guard atop a high, bamboo lookout tower. Older men with grease-blackened foreheads and with a semi-circular boar?s tusks in their nostrils look especially fearsome.

Circling the clearing, and hooting and hollering, the assemblage point their weapons at the visitors and let off a few arrows in their direction, but far enough away to fall short of their mark.

It?s all in fun, a mock battle re-enacting traditional war games. The performance goes on for about 10  minutes, and then we?re ushered into the compound, with the ?warriors? shaking our hands, and shouting ?Wah! Wah! meaning ?Welcome.? Women waiting inside ? some with white polka-dot body paint ? keep up a chant.

Round huts with overhanging thick thatched roofs partially encircle the compound, set under banana trees and pandanus palms. Some of the huts ? containing an upper level for sleeping and a lower level for cooking — are for the women. Others house the men and boys. There are also long huts for storing sweet potatoes, and for keeping pigs, a Dani symbol of wealth.

Colorful string bags, seed necklaces and other handicrafts made by the women are displayed on the ground for sale. Some of the older women have stumps where one or more joints are missing from their fingers, signifying the number of their dead relatives.

The ?warriors? gather in the center of the compound, then run back and forth, singing in a call-and-response fashion. We can easily pick out the chief. His face is blackened, and his headdress has the tallest feather. He greets us with warm handshakes.

As the main feature of the day?s festivities gets underway, men gather at one end of the compound. One rapidly pulls a grass strip across a piece of bamboo anchored by his foot. The swift motion produces smoke and flames. Placed on kindling and wood, the fire grows to heat stones red hot for the earth oven. This is a round pit about four feet wide and four feet deep, lined with wet straw and banana leaves.

Men pick up the hot stones with long, homemade wooden tongs and drop them into the pit. Women place leaves of the potato plant around the edge, and alternate layers of sweet potatoes and vegetables are put inside, and covered with the heated stones.

Now a suckling pig is let out of a pen, and run down by several men. It is cornered by a dog as it dashes into a hut, squealing. Men whoop and holler as the pig is captured; the women and children dance and chant. One man shoots an arrow into the pig?s heart. It squeals for the last time and dies.

Men singe its hairs, then scrape and gut it with bamboo knives, in preparation for cooking. Teenaged boys carry it to the pit, spread-eagled on banana leaves. It is lowered  on top of the potatoes and covered with banana and potato leaves, then with hot stones, more potatoes and vegetables.

The wet straw around the pit is now pushed over it as a cover, and tied with rattan vines. The earth oven is closed with a final heaping of hot stones.

Children roast strips of entrails over glowing embers and eat them, apparently a treat they?re allowed.

While the food is cooking, a figure we?re told is a 250-year-old, charcoal-blackened mummified man is carefully removed from a hut for us to see and photograph.

After about three hours, the barbecue is ready. The women leave off selling their handicrafts, move over to the pit and start removing and passing out the potatoes, vegetables and steamed greens (edible potato leaves and stems).

Young boys carry the cooked pork to the older men, who cut it up and share some among themselves, feeding the elders first. Then the boys serve the women, before returning to join the men.

The meat divided among the Dani is just enough for them. For whatever reason, none is offered to us. But we visitors get to sample the potatoes — bright yellow inside and delicious.

Merle English was a staff writer for Newsday for more than 20 years. She was born on the island of Jamaica and is a graduate of Hunter College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She travels widely, often with a group that meets and interacts with people of African descent in remote corners of the globe. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Midway between Australia and Antarctica, this is one of the most remote places on the planet. Only a few tourists are allowed to visit each year.

Our expedition begins as we leave the comfort of our 5-star expedition cruise ship, Orion, and climb into a 12-person rubber zodiac raft. Orion felt stable — but now our raft rises and falls unsettlingly on the waves.

There are two main landing sites on “Macca,” as it is affectionately known by the 60 or so scientists and rangers working at Australia’s research station here. Our landing is  “wet,” meaning that the zodiac pulls up close to the shore, and we hop off into the water. The landing crew are waiting to help us ashore.

We visit the research base at the island’s isthmus. Curious King penguins and lazing Elephant seals watch us from arm’s length.

King, Royal, Rockhopper and Gentoo penguins all live here, along with the seals and several species of sea bird. These native inhabitants have the right of way, even at the research station.

Our ranger and guide recalls that it took him a few weeks to get used to sleeping on the island, as the Elephant seals would scape their moulting bodies next to his quarters. The rasping sound of their scraping, coupled with their blubbery snorts, kept him awake many nights.

Our second landing point is at Sandy Bay. Again the rangers accompany us. The rangers escort all visitors, to ensure compliance with the island?s protection treaties.

In Sandy Bay there’s zero evidence of mankind — only the incredible sight of tens of thousands of penguins hopping up the steep 100 to 160-foot hillside to their breeding ground. Pods of Elephant seals lay tightly together, the better to keep warm and shed their skin more quickly.

The air stays wet and damp all day, but in the afternoon, it begins to drizzle.

Underfoot we see the little white bones of penguins, beside the larger bones of long-gone Elephant seals. The Brown Skuas act as the island’s cleaners, and we see them at work on the carcass of a huge seal.

On the beach are thousands of King and Royal penguins. We’re assaulted by the din of the constant calling between chicks, and the adults who have returned from hunting in the sea. The smell of the beach is like any beach with rotting seaweed on it, and we take the ranger’s word for it that the smell at the rookery higher up the hill is “quite strong and takes some getting used to.”

We aren’t allowed to approach or touch the animals. But the penguins are inquisitive, and as long as they come to you, you can get extremely close. You can encourage them by squatting down and waddling your backside from left to right!

Birds and animals were not always treated so respectfully here. This island has a brutal past, as a magnet for sealers who, after slaughtering all the seals, turned on the penguins. But today the seals and penguins have regenerated. In 1979, the Tasmanian government declared Macquarie a restricted area, and in 1997 it was named a World Heritage Area.

One generally visits Macquarie during the summer months of December and January. The daytime temperature is about 46 degrees F; no one is allowed to stay overnight. Expedition cruises are the best way to get here — but, since there are so few visitor’s permits, only a very few operators come. Of course, it’s worth seeking out those that do.
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Then he musters his energy into a vertical impulse. Upward he drags his skateboard, which seems glued to the soles of his feet. He is suspended in the air for an instant. Then his body, board and feet come tumbling down.

The grinding resumes as the wheels again find their place on the pavement.

It swings. It stops. It swings again. Enclosed in a metal cage, the wheels of the metronome spin ever faster, creating enough momentum for its red rod to lurch forward. A mechanical drone echoes in the park as the metronome turns right, then stops. Turns left, then stops, in a patient back and forth.

The metronome was built for an exhibition in Prague’s Letna Park in 1991, atop the shattered remains of a gigantic monument of Joseph Stalin. The statue, built two years after the Russian leade’s death in 1953, had depicted Stalin, followed by a farmer, a laborer and a soldier. At 50 feet high, it was, until it was destroyed in 1962, the largest group statue in Europe.

It was also a constant reminder of the Czechs’ lack of freedom, an assertion of the limitations on their ability to assemble, publish and express themselves. The monument symbolized the “Stalinization” of what was then Czechoslovakia, and the victory of Soviet rule.

The statue overlooked the Old Town from a commanding position: the heights of Letna Park.

Now only its stone graffiti-covered base remains. A bright red 75-foot metronome designed by Vratislav Noovak has replaced it. Chipped stone steps and metal stair railings litter the stone plaza below - a consequence of the emerging skateboarding culture.

From the heights of the metronome one can see the tops of Prague’s baroque and medieval-inspired architecture. Sitting on a ledge that overlooks the city and the Vltava river is 19-year-old Adam Marcan, who visits the metronome often.

It’s a little piece of quiet, he says, “where not a lot of screaming or cars can be heard.” He listens to the whirring of the metronome in tandem with the scraping wheels. “It sounds good,” he sighs. The sound of the metronome adds a peaceful hum to Letna Park. Marcan squints in the bright sunlight as he takes in the view. “It’s something more free, very natural,” he remarked, “to go to relax and forget problems.”

Problems seem to be the least concern for those skateboarding here. A place that once symbolized fear and oppression has become a haven for a new generation.

Sixteen-year-old Jorge Vondra and his friends call this place “The Stalin.” Young teens come out after school and on weekends to socialize, and to practice new skateboarding tricks.

It’s not only a center for young people to gather, but a place to reminisce while basking in the beauty of the city. The metronome, a symbol of new times and liberation is, in Adam Marcan’s opinion, “the last of the best places in Prague.”

It also marks time, freedom and a new sub-culture. “Excuse me,” Vondra said, “but I have to skateboard now.”
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He’s tried many times to escape — and because of that, a police presence is a constant in his life. Michael possesses a letter the police gave his parents when he was in the 5th grade, explaining his first arrest, for a fight. Recently, he was prosecuted for another fight, with a man in an area canteen. It took two years for that case to be tried, but after it was, he was sentenced to 10 months in jail.

Michael shares a bedroom with several others, including his girlfriend, his brother and his brother’s girlfriend. The police often prevent Michael from accompanying his girlfriend beyond their neighborhood.

Making the best of a claustrophobic existence, Michael and his friends often dance and drink while listening to music videos (illegal copies), played on an illegal TV and DVD player.

Unemployed, and with the police almost always watching, Michael and his family leave the house only to buy food, and occasionally on weekends, to visit friends and relatives. Their relationships, with help from some Cuban rum, keep them sane.

The family also trades in Cuba’s very prominent black market, trying to save up money to buy a seat on another Miami-bound vessel — willing to risk everything again for a chance at a better life in the United States.

Benjamin Norman is a New York City-based photographer and filmmaker. See more of his work here.

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We were walking down the main drag in Kata Beach in Phuket when a triumph of fish and lobsters and clams lured us in. Well, perhaps lure is too strong a word, but Takayo and I were hungry and this restaurant was close to our hotel.  The dining room was this open-air deal with white pillars, tea candles, and tablecloths starched stiffer than a wedding drink.  It almost seemed forbidding. All that week we’d eaten at the mom n’ pop joints. There’s just something about lawn furniture and the smell of sizzling meat that reminds me of the carnival.

But now, standing before that dripping sea-life display, Takayo had the look of a woman entranced. A little maitre d’ showed us to our table.

As a rule, we typically don’t eat out at touristy restaurants, especially not on the main drag. The food is rarely, if ever, on par with those back-alley joints. Plus, it’s hard to lose yourself in a place that regards ABBA as dining music. That said, as much as I wanted to hate this restaurant, I just couldn’t.  It was vaguely foreign and familiar at the same time, like an old sitcom dubbed into Thai. The waitress brought my entre: fried rice in a hollowed-out pineapple with a side of mummified baby prawns. Takayo pulled out the camera and took a picture.  Blinded by the flash, now we could eat.

Kata Beach is one of those hippie-era hideouts that matured into a popular, yet not-quite-overcommercialized tourist destination. The white palm tree-lined beach is an island hotspot for surfing.  A lot of middle-aged farang women feel compelled to go topless there as well.  Thank goodness there’s no correlation between the two.

I went back to the pineapple restaurant one day for lunch when Takayo was at scuba class.  They had a sign on the sidewalk that advertised a lunch special: burger, fries, and a Coke for 100 baht.  Main drag or not, the price — about three bucks — was right.  The waitress seated me. I flipped through the menu, read the sign on the sidewalk again, and closed the menu.

“Let me get the burger deal and a Singha,” I said, and thanked her. “Kap khun krap.”

The burger was decent. I didn’t even tell her that she forgot my Coke.  A breeze was kicking around the dining area and I was content just to watch the tourists and the mopeds buzzing past.

My troubles began when the waitress dropped off the check.  She had overcharged me.  For a pale white guy with a couple of beers in him, this is not uncommon.  It’s something I’ve come to terms with — Show it to the server, state my case, and move on.  I considered my wording, wondering if I had been unclear. A burger deal.  Maybe she punched it in wrong. When she came back, I mentioned the oversight.

“Sorry, I ordered the burger meal, the lunch special you have advertised.”  I pointed to the neon-lettered sign on the sidewalk.

“No,” she said flatly. “You order burger from menu. “You pay.”

“I don’t know if you remember, but I asked for the burger meal. The menu was closed when you took my order”

“You order menu burger, I bring you menu burger.”

“What’s the difference? The sign’s right there on the sidewalk.”

The conscientious traveler in me said to pay it.   Had it been a mom n’ pop joint, I would have done just that. But another voice said: this is about the principle, not the money.  In spite of feeling like a complete jackass, I politely asked to speak with a manager.

A young man came to the table with my waitress and another one in tow.  It was the little maitre d’. He had short, gelled hair and serious dark eyes. Though he weighed about a hundred and ten pounds, his face showed no sign of apprehension.

“Yes, she tells me you have problem?”  God, he had a high voice, like Mickey Mouse. I explained.  He brought over a menu, opened it to the burger and pointed. ” This. This is what you order.”  He set the menu down before me.

I could have just paid him. Most of the time I do. But once in awhile, like some crackpot vigilante, I get a sick thrill from avenging apathy.  All I want to hear is: ‘I see what you’re saying, but I’ve got a job to do.”‘ Then I’ll gracefully step aside.

“No,” said. “I ordered the lunch burger. It’s lunch. Why would you advertise it if you aren’t going to sell it?”

“That’s the small burger. He pointed to the sign. You order the big burger. You ate the big one.”

“How could I possibly know the difference?”

If the common dictum in the restaurant business is that the customer is always right, in this establishment, customers were not only wrong, but were taught a lesson. When I tried to close the menu, the maitre d’ slapped his hand down on top of it. I don’t know why, but at that point, I really wanted that menu closed. His arm quivered from pressing down. My fingertips turned white.

“I’m not weak!” the maitre d’ finally shouted.  “He reached back and slapped me across the shoulder.”  The two waitresses were dumbfounded.

“Hey, what the hell, man?”

“Yout pay!”

“All right, I’ll tell you what. I’m gonna pay for one lunch special and a beer. Then I’m gonna leave.”

The money was in my sweaty hand. I placed it on the table as if we were playing poker. I wasn’t exactly sure what he would do: Hit again, raise, or fold.

“Get out!”  It was shrill, and loud.  He snatched the money off the table and stormed off. The two girls followed. Of course, everyone in the dining room was staring. I had to hand it to him; the kid really had a pair.

Maybe it was the beer or the heat, but I headed toward the back to find a manager. She was sitting at a desk in a back office. Before I could walk in, the maitre d’ stepped out with a plate in his hand.

“Get out!”  It stopped me in my tracks. I was just outside the office, and then the manager’s phone rang. We locked eyes for an instant, and then she reached over and answered the phone. I had no idea what I was going to say to her.  Was it still about the principle, or was it damage control for my guilty conscience? And what was the principle now, anyway?

I slunk out, replaying the fiasco in my head.  Was I wrong?

An answer came to me in the sound of footfalls.  Every so often I looked over my shoulder, just to make sure no one was following me.
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Hardesty looks into the reasons for Native Alaskans’ high rates of suicide, alcoholism and physical abuse, partly through the meditations of Napoleon, a community leader who killed his four-year-old son in a drunken rage.

While serving nine years in prison for that crime, Napoleon began an essay exploring phenomena like cultural depression and low self-esteem, which he considers closely linked to social problems in Alaska’s indigenous communities.

See Lighting Up the Dark

19:43 minutes

Napoleon’s essay later developed into a book: “Yuuyarag: The Way of the Human Being.” The full book has been made available here.
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The Danielli is one of the most beautiful hotels in the world, with its pink marble walls, stained glass windows, gold leaf columns and Murano glass chandeliers. Staying there was way beyond our budget.

If our hostess didn’t show up, we would be paying for this Venetian vacation for a long time.

We had been invited to Venice as guests of Jacqueline*, a French lawyer we had befriended when she rented an apartment from us in New York for her younger sister, Martine.

A Life-Changing Friendship

Meeting Jacqueline had changed our lives. Jacqueline, 35, and her two sisters, Scherazade, 25, and Martine, 24, were three of the most beautiful and urbane women I had ever met. They were tall and slender, and could walk for miles in Manolo Blahnik stilettos. Jacqueline, shapely in her couturier dresses (she favored plunging necklines) looked strikingly like Catherine Zeta Jones.

When Jacqueline periodically visited Martine and Martine’s boyfriend Christian in New York, she would take us to the city’s most expensive restaurants. She introduced us to caviar at Alain Ducasse, and to escargot at La Cirque. At Jacqueline’s dinners, the best French wines flowed. Evenings were always capped at the club of the moment, where we sat in the VIP room drinking bottles of Kristal.

Rick was smitten. To be surrounded by these sophisticated French women was a testosterone dream. Yet Jacqueline’s largesse made me uncomfortable. We had no way to reciprocate. She showered us with gifts, and always refused to let us pay.

Rick and I guessed that Jacqueline’s lavish lifestyle flowed from her family’s shipping business.

During our New York evenings, Jacqueline told us many stories about Carnivale in Venice. She loved the pageantry and spectacle. But I suspected that something else drew her. Carnivale, its roots in 13th century Europe, involves two weeks of processions, music and festivities, but is centered around the masquerade. The winding streets are the right setting for a festival centered around intrigue and concealed identity.

Musicians, acrobats, theatre troupes and revelers from all over the world participate in the dozens of masked balls and gala dinners. Dressing as royals from the Middle Ages is popular. Many of these events are very expensive, since they take place in museums and palaces, but Jacqueline had managed to secure admission for her 11 guests, all friends and family.

In Jacqueline’s Venice

Of course she showed up; why had I worried she wouldn’t? She also attended to every detail of our six-day visit. Within hours of her arrival, she was shepherding us along Venice’s twisting lanes to a costume shop.  There, among racks of 16th and 17th century costumes, she selected the personalities we were to assume for the week. For Rick, who loves naval history, she picked out an admiral’s uniform, with gold epaulets on the shoulders, six large gold buttons, and ballooning pantalets. With his tri-cornered hat and cloak, he looked like Lord Nelson.

I stepped into the shop as a middle-aged Manhattan mother, and stepped out navigating a hoop skirt nearly three feet wide. It was harder to maneuver than a truck, especially with a powdered wig on my head. A corset bound my chest so tightly that it was difficult to exhale, but it cinched my waist and lifted my breasts to heights they had not seen since I was 16. Around my waist, Jacqueline had tied a stiff, gauzy skeleton that sculpted a bell shape below my wide skirts. Above that were my layers of petticoats. My gown was the color of marigolds, and had a plunging neckline. With the addition of masks and cloaks, Rick and I became members of Jacqueline’s royal court.

On the way back to the hotel, Jacqueline and Christian pointed out the sights of Venice: the Piazza del Marco, already filled with hundreds of costumed revelers; the Grand Canal, where gondoliers in their black and white striped sweaters and ribboned hats waited for tourists.

At the Bridge of Sighs, Jacqueline stopped.

“This is my favorite spot in Venice,” she said dramatically, pointing to the stone bridge spanning the canal. “See those windows at the top? It’s where prisoners saw their last sight of freedom.  The bridge connects the palace to the prison.  Lord Byron said you could hear the sighs of the condemned as they walked stooped toward their fates.”

The rest of the week was a blur of masked balls, dinners and brunches, which we attended in period costume. I spent the week in a photographic frenzy, clicking at the 18th-century masquerade dresses crafted from shimmering fabrics of every hue. Costumers borrowed from the high fashion of the 1700s, and from the theatrical “Commedia dell’Arte style. Of course, no one was more elegant and beautiful than Jacqueline, who now reminded me of Olivia de Havilland, who played the sweet southern belle with backbone in “Gone With the Wind.”

Several months later, Martine and Christian moved back to Paris, promising they would return to spend Christmas as our guests in New York. On December 20th, the phone rang. I heard Christian’s voice, gasping through sobs.

“Jacqueline, that bitch,” he said. “She has destroyed my family.”

Slowly, he explained that Jacqueline had been accused by a major European bank of working with one of its officers to steal over $30 million euro over 10 years. The courts of Monte Carlo had ordered the incarceration of the whole family — except, he said, for Jacqueline, who had managed to escape.

*Some of the names in this story have been changed, to protect the privacy of the family.

When not traveling, Harriet Brand and her husband Rick run Brand Bed and Breakfast in New York City.
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That was more than 50 years ago. Quezada spent 16 more years learning, by trial and error, to produce his first good pot.

He might have remained an unknown and impoverished potter, and Mata Ortiz just another dusty northern Mexico village, had it not been for Spencer MacCallum.

MacCallum, who has a degree in art history from Princeton, was living in San Pedro, California in the early 1970s when he bought, at a yard sale, a 14th century Paquimé pot.

?I put it on my piano at home,? he recalled, ?and I would pass it every day.?

A few years later, in Bob?s Swap Shop in Deming, NM, he found three lovely, small pots that looked familiar.

?I immediately recognized them as being made by someone who knew about Paquimé pots,? he said. He wanted to know who had made them, but the owner had no idea. Armed with photos, MacCallum set out for Mexico to find the person who had made the Paquimé pots, 500 years after that civilization had been destroyed.

Amazingly, it only took MacCallum two days to find Quezada.

It was a double surprise.

?I was surprised it was Juan, a man,? said MacCallum, ?since most potters in traditional Native American cultures are women, and Juan couldn?t believe anyone would ever come looking for him.?

Reviving a Lost Art

By the time MacCallum arrived in this remote village about 100 miles south of the U.S. border, Quezada had already been selling his pots for a few dollars in U.S. stores, and was teaching family members how to make them. MacCallum bought what he considered Quezada?s best pots. Soon he was promoting them in the United States. Quezada?s pots began to improve dramatically, and as they began to command higher prices in the United States, more villagers grew interested in making them. Knowledge about how to make them spread through the village, but not in a way most North Americans would expect.

?One day, I was trying to explain to people how the pots are made,? said MacCallum, ?and Juan took me aside and said, ?Those that are going to get it, will get it by observing, and then they will have made a discovery and it?ll be their own. Don?t tell them so much.? I?d have to say that there?s really no teaching, but there is a lot of learning.?

Today, pots made by Mata Ortiz?s master potters fetch as much as $15,000, and are featured in galleries and museums around the world, including the Smithsonian. But local pots run from a few dollars to about $50.

See a clip from a documentary about the development of Mata Ortiz pottery, by the Holden Brothers:


From Unemployment to Tourism

Before Quezada revived the ancient pottery techniques, and MacCallum marketed them, Mata Ortiz?s economic prospects were bleak. A lumber mill that had once provided employment for the village was abandoned in the early 1900s, after being partially destroyed in the 1910 Mexican Revolution. Until the early 1960s, there was a railroad yard, but that was relocated to Nuevo Casas Grandes, a modern city about 25 miles away. The last of the formal jobs in Mata Ortiz disappeared along with it. Many people worked in orchards owned by Mormons who had arrived in the area beginning in 1854, but there were few other jobs.

Now, in a village of about 3,000, there are between 500 and 600 potters, and at least a half dozen galleries, including one in the former railroad station. Quezada?s way of transmitting information about pottery making has clearly worked. Even today, though, the village has no paved roads, and houses are mostly simple, unpainted adobe brick.

Although all the pottery made here is referred to as Mata Ortiz pottery, and certain characteristics identify it as such, there is no single way to make it. A number of variations have evolved. All, like Pilo Mora, considered one of the best potters in the village, begin by flattening out a piece of clay into a ?tortilla,? which is then pressed into a bowl. Mora uses the single-coil method, rolling out a piece of clay he then connects to the top of the tortilla. Concentrating intently, he carefully pinches the coil while turning the bowl, drawing up the clay to make the walls of the pot. Many potters still use this single-coil method, which is was one of Quezada?s innovations, while others?especially in the Mata Ortiz neighborhood known as Porvenir (?Future?) ?have begun using multiple coils. After the walls of the pot are made, the outside is smoothed with a hacksaw blade. Like all Mata Ortiz potters, Mora uses no potter?s wheel — yet he is able to make very large, surprisingly light pots.

This pottery may be black, white or red, the color determined by the clay and the firing method. Designs range from intricate, Escher-like patterns to butterflies and other animals. The elegance of Mata Ortiz pots and the detail found in the paintings that adorn them might suggest the artist had been sequestered for hours in a quiet, private studio. Mora does have a studio attached to his house, but his work is frequently interrupted by people stopping by for a visit ? and most potters lack even separate workspaces.

Ana Trillo and her husband Monico Corona make red-clay and black pots in a variety of styles. A visitor to their house, an unassuming adobe that stretches on erratically, will often find Ana at her kitchen table, painting a pot, while Monico sands another pot by the window. There?s no special lighting or separate space, and when Ana announces it?s time to eat, she clears a spot on the table, tosses another piece of wood in the stove and begins warming the tortillas. She is often joined by her friend Elva Mendoza who, besides working as a potter, owns one of the only restaurants in the village — known for its extremely good food and exasperatingly erratic hours.

Ana, atypically for a Mata Ortiz potter, Trillo isn?t a local. She grew up in Juarez, on the U.S. border, and met Monico during a visit to Mata Ortiz, when she was 15.

?Monico wasn?t interested in making pots,? she recalled. ?He was a rancher. I learned first and then I taught him. A friend taught me how to make the pots. It took me two or three years to make pots that were good enough to sell.?

After the pots are formed, they?re set aside for about three days to dry. ?After that, I sand them,? said Monico, ?and then we polish them with a small stone.?

Painting is done freehand, with brushes often made from human hair — sometimes Ana?s own, sometimes a nephew?s. ?He has finer hair,? said Ana, adding, ?Some people prefer cat hair.? There?s a wide range of designs. ?Many designs are from Paquimé,? she said. ?Others, we invented; some are ones we copied and sometimes they just come as inspiration.?

Work is broken up by conversation, jokes and meals. If a woman has young children, they gather around her as she paints, watching intently. Quezada?s way of teaching still obtains.

After the paint dries, the pots are usually placed in an ordinary kitchen oven? one still used for cooking ? and pre-heated, then fired over an open fire. Luis Lopez Corona, Monico?s nephew, prefers using bark from the Alamo tree as a covering, rather than the traditional cow chips. ?The bark burns very hot,? he said. He places the pots on a small grill, covers them with a metal tub and piles on the bark. Then he liberally applies lighter fluid while his young son, David, encourages him to put on even more. Luis is right: the heat is intense, and the bark gives off a sweet smell and plenty of smoke. He uses a mirror to shine some light through a small hole in it to check on the firing.

The pots are removed, allowed to cool and, if there?s a tourist group at Hotel Posada, Luis will sell his pots soon after they?re fired. One evening, he sold all the pots he and his wife, Lupita, had made that day. ?It is a good night,? he said, smiling.

Not all is perfect. Drug violence has reached this region, MacCallum, who now lives nearby in Casas Grandes, acknowledged. ?But it’s between Mexicans, and you wouldn’t know about it unless you saw it in the paper or someone told you,” he wrote in a recent note. “The media reports, while containing some truth, have been overplayed to the point of irresponsibility. Few or none here believe there is any danger to visitors.? In the fall of 2009, a store was held up. There was also the murder of a gallery owner, a very rare occurrence in Mata Ortiz. Neither crime has been solved.

Newcomers are likelier to be besieged by pottery sellers, as cars pull up alongside them as they?re walking. Once people know who you are, though, they?ll leave you alone. You?ll notice that every street has several houses with hand-painted signs announcing that a potter lives there. Visitors are always welcome. After you admire the pottery for a few minutes, some coffee or dessert will probably be offered. For all their fame, people in Mata Ortiz have kept the simple pleasures of Mexican hospitality alive.
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My grandparents live in Rosario, Argentina?s third-largest city, a five-hour drive from Buenos Aires. On our sporadic visits, we?d go to the stadium of Rosario Central. At our first game, Rosario Central played Banfield. It was an ordinary night ? no championship trophy, no major rivalry ? yet the stadium filled with loyal fans, their voices ricocheting off the thick concrete walls. I can?t believe we?re here, shouted my little brother, who was nine. At these games, the Argentine culture that surged through us was realized, and my father?s stories became palpable. We came closer to understanding the fanaticism, as the energy thudded within us.

Thousands of arms pumped the air in unison. Scraps of paper littered the sky and fell like confetti. Blue and yellow streamers fluttered as they sailed through the porous air. Smoke of the same colors billowed, dense within the thick walls of the stadium, which seats 45,000 but fills with 55,000. Rosario?s rivals, Newell?s Old Boys, wear red and black; their fans are known as lepers. Even before I understood the passionate relationship my father has with soccer, I learned to hate the pairing of red and black. This rivalry is not as well known as that of Boca Juniors and River Plate of Buenos Aires, but that doesn?t lessen the violence that occurs ? the children beaten for wearing the wrong colors, the men insulted for being born on the wrong block.

Cheap Seat Passion
Just behind the goals are the popular sections, for holders of the cheapest tickets: one side for the home team fans, the other for the visitors, the separation meant to keep fighting to a minimum. There are no blue plastic seats to stand on, no armrests to break. Standing room gives the young men who preside there freedom to move. Tall fences separate the hungry crowd from the field. Though there is also a mucky thirty-foot moat, to prevent fans from charging the players, the occasional fan still tests his abilities, and falls within its murkiness.

My younger brothers and I were never allowed to venture to these spots. Muy peligroso, my father would mutter. Too dangerous. He feared that we were not savvy enough, had not been born with the ravenous hunger for victory necessary to last. So we watched from the seats for families and children, choking down our sausage sandwiches.

Yet the energy emanating from the popular sustained us. That?s where the chants started, and filled the stadium. These were the songs we learned as children, before we knew their meaning. We jumped too, and sang words that finally made sense to us.

The players passed the ball back and forth with Argentine finesse. With each pass, the crowd shouted ole! When Central?s DaSilva scored a goal in the second half, the crowd went crazy. The drums got louder, pierced by the sounds of whistles. Then the flags were released, draping lengthwise over two entire sections of the stadium. The blue and yellow striped fabric was passed from one row to the next, until we were all beneath it, jumping and punching the taut cloth, which from the popular must have looked like thousands of beating hearts.

In those moments I realized why people fought, and on rare occasion died, for this sport.

Poor Man’s Sport
The most brutal soccer riot took place in Lima, Peru, on May 24, 1964, in an Olympic qualifying game between Peru and Argentina. In the final two minutes of the game, the referee disallowed a Peruvian goal, a call that resulted in 318 deaths, 1,000 injuries, and the declaration of martial law in the capital. Such incidents are of course not peculiar to South America: soccer riots have killed 20 in Libya, 73 in Nepal, 95 in England.
Argentina may have an unstable economy, and the occasional government corruption scandal that strips the people of work. Yet soccer, a poor man?s sport accessible to everyone, endures.

?Unlike in America, soccer ties into Argentina?s political past,? Deana Becker wrote in the international studies magazine Abroad View.  During Argentina?s military dictatorship, from 1977 to 1983, Argentina hosted and won the 1978 World Cup, she noted. ?As the government was kidnapping and torturing its own people, Argentines rallied around their soccer team. Victory made the state seem united, even while the generals pursued a war against the people.? I agree that it?s a way of life that unites more than it destroys.

A few years ago, Argentina?s economy faltered again, and the people suffered. But my father reminded us: ?At least we have soccer.?
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This little town of 4,800 supports two bike stores that shuttle riders to the beginning of the Lehigh Gorge trail, as well as quaint stores, B&Bs, and several restaurants. The weekends buzz with activity.

Jim Thorpe has come a long way from its days as a depressed mining town to the biking center it is today.

The first time we came through Jim Thorpe, it was to raft. But we’ve been back three times since to mountain bike: staying in hotels, eating at restaurants, and shopping on Main Street.

We spent plenty of money there, so I was surprised to hear about the anti-bike sentiment. Bike tourism seems to have lifted this town from its depression. Why would a town bite the hand that feeds it?

We Love Your Money, But You, Not So Much

“It’s animosity between the locals and the visitors,” said Tom Loughery, corresponding secretary of the Jim Thorpe Area Council. “Existing residents had no idea that the town had something special to offer. They complain that it now takes 10 minutes to get across town, and the restaurants are crowded.”

They don’t seem to link the visitors to the newly-renovated homes and buildings, and full tax coffers.

No irony was lost when this town changed its name from Mauch Chunk to Jim Thorpe. Thorpe was a versatile athlete of American Indian descent who won two gold medals in the 1912 Olympics, but these were rescinded when it was learned he’d earned a minimal amount of money during college playing basketball. Although he played professional football and baseball, his later life was marked by poverty and alcoholism.

Mauch Chunk had once been a thriving coal and railroad town. In an attempt to replace those dying industries with tourism, town leaders agreed to let the widow of the disgraced athlete bury his body there, in 1953, and changed the name of the town. The tourists never came, until the 1990s. But it wasn’t to see Jim: it was to go biking.

Copious studies support the idea that biking can boost an economy. Mountain biking has become the fourth most popular adventure activity among U.S. adventure travelers, according to a 1997 study by the Travel Industry Association of America. Sixty million adult Americans bicycle each year. Bicyclists spend money on this recreation, which creates jobs and brings revenue to communities. The Outdoor Industry Foundation reports that bicycling contributes $133 billion to the U.S. economy each year.

Declining towns can capitalize on their natural gifts. Not every mountain biking center needs spectacular rolling rock trails like Moab, Utah, or the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains that Durango, Colorado, offers. Woodlands and flatlands can be developed into biking arenas. Plus, the trails can be cleared with volunteer efforts, and a few inexpensive tools. In Jim Thorpe, timber roads and coal mining roads had already been cut through the woods.

Looking for new sources of income, West Virginia aggressively pursued bike dollars in the early 1980s. It sponsored races, and reaped the benefits by establishing itself as a biking mecca. The Hatfield-McCoy trails that were opened in 2000 have proven very successful. After a decade of work to build community support, and agreements with 20 different landowners, the shared-use trails have added $51 million to the economy, drawn 303,000 visitors, and created 1,572 new jobs.

Yet some still oppose biking there.

“The nature Nazis think they are saving the world from mountain bikes,” complained Matt Marcus, owner of Blackwater Bikes and the president of the West Virginia Mountain Bike Association, describing his experience with officials from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
“Anti-bike groups claim that bikes cause erosion and trail widening,” said Drew Vankat, policy adviser for the International Mountain Biking Association, “when in fact research has shown bikes cause no more impact than horses.”

Vankat has been at the forefront of a battle with the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado. The Forest Service director in Denver proposed eliminating bikes on the Monarch Crest Trail, based on research done before mountain bikes were even invented.

“They don’t want to lose pristine nature, and feel if you allow bikes, it will open up the floodgates,” Vankat said.

Jim Thorpe felt the backlash too.

“The state of Pennsylvania outlawed biking on state game lands, and while only four trails were affected, the perception was that there was no more biking in Pennsylvania. That was in 2004, and it really hurt the economy,” Loughery said. “We’re working hard to gain them back.”

Of Course, Not All Bikers Are Angels

To be fair, not every cyclist is courteous. Some refuse to ride single-file or ride around a puddle while off road, widening the trail. But the benefits far outweigh a few examples of bad behavior.

The Forest Service argues that allowing bikes into the woods would open the door to allowing in four-wheeler all terrain vehicles. So it takes the position of no wheels at all. That’s easier: the Forest Service is under siege from powerful companies like Kawasaki Motors. Bike manufacturers lack the deep pockets to fight for inclusion. Without doubt, ATVs are noisy, and pollute with their fossil-fueled engines. But equating human-powered bikes with a trail-eating ATV makes no sense.

Depressed regions have an opportunity to recreate their image and character. While not as powerful as coal or steel barons, if they can overcome the naysayers, bike riders can help towns overcome flagging economic fortunes.
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“The relationship between bees and man hasn’t changed,” he said. “It’s man and nature. It will never change.”

Apicoltura, or beekeeping, has been the Gabannini family business for four generations, making Apicoltura Gabannini the the oldest beekeeping operation in the Marche region of central Italy. Over the years, the family has upheld a tradition of producing quality products, while still respecting the natural environment of their work.

Their business has survived turbulent times, from Nazi occupation to the current hive die-off.

Although not as common today, bee farms were customary in every rural household in this region in the early 20th century. It was not until 1913 that Marino Gabannini decided to barter his product. That’s when Apicoltura Gabannini was born.

Now, the family harvests honey on 25 bee farms in and around Urbino, a town of 15,000, and tends 600 families of bees. Family members produce 10 different varieties of honey, and sell their goods at local markets, fairs, shows, and their own shop.

The shop is sandwiched between the beehives and the family house in the Urbino hills, just outside of town. The dark wood shelves and tables display a wide array of products: jars of orange-flavored honey, beeswax candles, soap. All these items are produced on the Gabanninis’ farm, and in their laboratory behind the house.

On one wall of the shop hangs a framed black and white photograph of four men and three young boys among the beehives. One of those boys is Gualtiero Gabannini at age four. The picture was taken in 1931.

As a child, Gualtiero Gabannini spent his summers in the Urbino hills. When it was hot, he slept near the hives.

“Grandparents would tell their grandchildren to be careful around bees, so the children were always afraid,” he said. “But I never was.”

He was in his early teens during World War II, when German soldiers were stationed near Urbino. During this time, honey was a precious commodity, and many Germans killed bee colonies to steal the goods. However, things played out differently for his family, Gabannini said.

“The Germans were so close to us and we began to know each other,” he said. “It became a forced good relationship.” Gabannini remembered hiding the honey not from the Germans, but from their Italian neighbors.

Despite the tough history, Gabannini still loves everything about being a beekeeper. Even at 82, with a head of crisp white hair and a thin physique, he’ll walk among the sheets of honeycomb, puffing white smoke at the hives with a bee smoker (a device that looks like a watering can).

Honeybees have a long history in Italy. Three honeybees adorn the crest of one of the oldest and noblest families in Italy, the Barberinis. The honeybee symbol rose even further in status when Maffeo Cardinal Barberini became Pope Urban VIII, in 1623, and added the papal symbol to the honeybee crest.

The honeybee soon became a reminder of authority and influence that few could avoid. Scientist Francesco Stelluti, best known for his work with microscopes, published two works on the anatomy of the honeybee, to please Urban VIII. With his microscope, he was able to gaze upon the bees’ most unobserved features, including the tongue and the stinger.

Instead of worrying about the bee stingers, the Gabanninis focus on bees’ natural and healing powers. Gualtiero Gabannini’s wife, Iti Gina, makes honey hand cream and propolis, an old healing remedy.

The ancient Greeks used propolis to treat abscesses; Egyptians used it in mummification, and Assyrians used it to treat tumors and sores. Iti Gina began making propolis when she married Gualtiero in the mid-1950s. She dries the propolis in the sun, and then mixes the brittle leaves with alcohol. The result: a natural cure for sore throats and cuts.

There are a few problems, like rainy days, an age-old problem for beekeepers. These slow their work and can damage their stored products.

However, worldwide beehive die-off is a new issue.

“Beekeeping is a loved tradition in Italy,” said Floriana Ferri, a secretary and technical supervisor for Provincial Consortium Apistica, a regional association of beekeepers. “But it is getting harder for beekeepers. Now it is like a real job, not a hobby.”

The consortium helps train and inform beekeepers in the Marche region. The cause of hive death is still mysterious: theories range from parasites and disease to pesticides.

In 2008, Apicoltura Gabannini lost 40 percent of its production to die-off, Fabrizio Gabannini said.

Despite the drawbacks, Gabannini loves his profession, and hopes that his children will carry it on.

“I love being in close contact with nature,” he said. “I love the bees. They are beautiful and complicated, just like humans.”

This article was adapted from InUrbino.net, an annual multimedia project of IEI Media and San Francisco State University.
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Their film won a Grand Prize at the International Children’s Film Festival in Athens, grabbed the attention of the Australian press, and was even featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

“I Am,” about growing up from the childrens’ point of view, starred only other children.

It was an unlikely turn in the filmmakers’ difficult lives.

Sahiful had been put into indentured slave labor at age 4, after his father died of tuberculosis. With their mother suffering from a mental illness, this tiny boy and his siblings had to figure out how to survive.

Sahiful’s first job was in agricultural work, crushing hard earth with a brick; this backbreaking task earned him the equivalent of 20 cents a day. The job was seasonal, so in the off-season he was put to work tending goats. For this he earned two portions of rice a day. Once, when he lost a goat under his watch, his employer beat him, and refused to feed him for two days.

At age 6 he was rescued, and brought to the orphanage Muktaneer (the word means “Open Sky” in Hindi). He began receiving four good meals a day, was given his own bed, and was allowed to play for the first time in his life. He began attending school. His family was also provided with assistance.

?Before I lived here, I didn’t study, I didn’t go to school, Sahiful told me when I visited Muktaneer in March 2007.

?Since I came here, I can go to school. I learned about photo and film. “[Muktaneer director] Swapan gave me a camera, and I took one photo, and from there I learned all about filmmaking. It was my dream to make a movie.”

The fame of the film brought new attention to the plight of children in bonded labor in India, a few years before the making of “Slumdog Millionaire.”

But it’s hardly made a dent in the problem.

Millions of Child Labor Slaves

Swapan Mukherjee is the secretary of the organization that runs Muktaneer, India’s Centre for Communication and Development (CCD). The CCD was founded in 1978 to assist vulnerable children.

It initially focused on education, but in 1995, after an explosion at a Calcutta fireworks factory killed 23 children working there illegally, it shifted its focus. The factory had employed only children –1,500 of them, who worked from dawn to dusk for an average weekly wage of Rs 65 or about $1.50. The explosion rocked the entire area; trees were uprooted and concrete pillars were tossed into the air, along with children’s bodies.

The factory owners were not fined for employing children illegally. Nor were they charged in the children’s deaths, or for maintaining unsafe working conditions.

Mukherjee was outraged.

?The factory refused all responsibility for the tragedy,” he told me, disbelief still in his voice 12 years after the accident.

Ultimately, Mukherjee himself took the factory owners to court, and won a judgment for compensation for all the victims’ families.

?From there we moved to a focus on child protection and safety,” he said.

Mukherjee contacted Amnesty International, Equality Now and other human rights organizations for assistance, and the Muktaneer Children’s Home opened in 2000. CCD has since helped bring dozens of child traffickers before the courts for prosecution, and has rescued about 2,000 children from a horrific array of abusive situations, including begging networks that mutilated them to make them more effective at soliciting alms.

As Mukherjee investigated these incidents, he also photographed and filmed the children’s working conditions and their lives.

?The children were fascinated by the camera,” he said. ?They wanted to document their own lives, tell their own stories.”

Prostitution and Servitude

Children are forced into servitude and prostitution for one simple reason: they are cheap. A cow or buffalo costs aRs 20,000 (about $430) but a child can be bought and traded for less than a tenth of that sum. They can be paid least, and exploited most; they are basically invisible, and virtually powerless.

While factories in China and Central America that exploit children are often in the news, there are more children labor in India than anywhere else in the world. Official estimates of their number vary greatly, often by definition of who these children are.

Unicef, citing the 2001 census, has said 12.6 million Indian children are engaged in hazardous occupations. But because more than half of all children born in India are never registered, and no records are kept on child workers, it may safely be assumed that this figure is extremely low. The official Indian government figure, based on a 1984 Labor Ministry survey, is 44 million.

At the other end of the spectrum, Human Rights Watch puts the figure at between 60 and 115 million, and Global March Against Child Labour contends that as many as 100 million children work ?under conditions akin to slavery.”

In bonded labor, children are indentured to pay off debts. Few sources of traditional credit or bank loans exist for poor people, and since the earnings of bonded children are less than the interest on informal loans, typically these debts are never paid off. They thereby become de facto slaves to their “employers.”

Often families themselves place children in such conditions, when they feel they have no choice. Many unsophisticated parents fall prey to promises by recruiters that their children will be given light work to do, go to school, be exposed to more opportunities in the city, and send money back home.

One Save The Children study found that most child domestic workers toil for up to 15 hours a day, for less than $12 a month. Half are given no leave at all, and 37% never see their families again. The group’s researh found that 68% of child domestic workers suffered physical abuse, and that nearly 90% had been victims of sexual abuse.

In 2006, there was the highly publicized case of a 10-year-old domestic worker in Mumbai who was murdered by her affluent employers. The death of the girl, Sonu, was reported as a suicide to the police, who arrived at the suburban home to find her body hanging from a ceiling fan. Further investigation revealed that Sonu had been beaten and then left to bleed to death by her mistress. Her crime? She had been caught by the employer’s daughter trying on lipstick at the dressing table.

When the truth emerged, it caused an uproar in the media. Sonu became a sort of poster child against domestic child labor, and helped spur legislation that extended the official child labor ban to domestic, hotel and restaurant work.

A Child Who Helped Others

One young man, after being saved from a life of bonded labor, later led the eradication of the practice in his home village. Om Prakash Gurjar, once a bonded laborer working in the fields to repay his grandfather’s debt, was removed by activists and taken to live at Bal Ashram, a rehabilitation center for working children. As a teenager, he quickly rose to the top of his class, and got involved in cricket and theater.

He then returned to his village, where he helped end child bonded labor. In 2006, he was honored with the International Children’s Peace Prize, the world’s most prestigious award for children. He has since campaigned for a network of “child-friendly villages,” where child labor is prohibited.

?I will work to support the families of child laborers,” he said then, “so that children can go to school and enjoy their childhood.”

See an excerpt from “I Am“

Shelley Seale, a writer based in Austin, Texas, is the author of The Weight of Silence: Invisible Children of India.
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Nearly 22,000 Native Americans have served in the U.S. military, or are now serving in our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. An estimated 30 percent suffer from PTSD.

But conditions at home are hardly adequate to help them through the psychological and physical damages inflicted in war.

There’s no veterans’ hospital in the Navajo Nation, the country’s largest reservation. So veterans desperate for psychological help must drive hours, to Albuquerque or Salt Lake City, for treatment.

But some face racial discrimination or unsympathetic psychologists in the cities.

To deal with anxiety disorders, nightmares or suicidal thoughts, some try traditional healing methods. But many also resort to alcohol or drugs, as they try to keep their lives together in a land as harsh as it is beautiful.

Nicole Tung is a photographer based in Asia and New York. This essay won a 2008-2009 Hearst Photojournalism Award. See more of Nicole’s work at http://www.nicoletung.com.
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Once on the subway, I edit them. I see myself as something between a kid playing Nintendo and an adult reading a good book.

What I like most about shooting while commuting is the variety. People have different flavors. You can always tell the difference between a morning face and an evening face.

At first I was afraid that, by concentrating on shooting, I was detaching myself too much from reality. But then I realized that, on the contrary, I see more this way, because I unleash my imagination, and let my eye be captivated by these unexpected details I would have overlooked otherwise.

I’m drawn to the details.

The iPhone allows you to penetrate someone’s personal space without them knowing. You walk opposite them. You are looking into your phone. They don’t know you’re shooting.

The iPhone doesn’t have a flash. In low light conditions on the subway, the trick is to take pictures at the stops, or to be very still.

This way of working allows creativity, room to breathe. Editing, you also feel much closer to the picture, because you are editing with your finger.

Now I have a collection of nearly 700 pictures, and I’m considering doing what the monks do with their mandalas — posting them all for 24 hours, and then deleting them. It would be a lesson in non-attachment. Each time I see that commercial that asks: “What?s your carbon footprint?” I wonder: “What?s my digital footprint?”

See more of Adrian Mihai’s iPhone photos in his Facebook account.
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I was in Berlin during the week of Dec. 22 through Dec. 27, 1989, documenting ?The Fall of the Wall.?  I was an upstart photojournalist, and had quit my job in the States and traveled to Europe to witness and record the historic events in Berlin.

About five days into my stay, events in Czechoslovakia caught my attention. The situation there was lower key, but certainly no less significant.  Over six weeks, a groundswell of anti-Communist sentiment burst into the open, morphing into a peaceful overthrow of Communism that later became known as The Velvet Revolution.

I had to go. I arrived in Prague on the morning of Dec. 28, just in time to witness the change of power and the hysteria of celebration.

Over the following six weeks, using neutral Vienna as a base, I made two more trips to Berlin, four to Prague and Bratislava (in Czechoslovakia) and one to Budapest, Hungary. My goal was to record as much of the rise of democracy in Communist Eastern Europe before maxing out my credit card and being forced to return to the U.S.

On one of my trips back to Prague in February 1990, I was surprised to find Old Town Square shoulder-to-shoulder with an estimated 500,000 anti-Soviet protestors. Though it had been more than three months since the Soviets were forced out of power,  they still hadn?t withdrawn their troops from Czechoslovakia.

The residents were restless and impatient. They rallied most of the day, demanding the Soviets leave.

On my initial trip to Prague, I crossed into Czechoslovakia at a border town called Hate (I swear!). The scenery was beautiful, with snow-frosted trees on rolling hills. This was in stark contrast to the flat grayness of East Germany.

But the horrible stench of air pollution was the same. Communist states were definitely not green.

In Prague, Old Town Square was sea of triumphant humanity. Shoulder-to-shoulder crowds filled the huge plaza as the people ushered in democracy. Folk dancers from all areas of the country performed. One dancer stomped his feet so hard he fell though the stage. Czechoslovakia?s newly elected president Vaclav Havel, a distinguished playwright and leader of the dissidents, spoke briefly and eloquently. His famous battle cry during his five-week faceoff with the Soviet Empire:  ?Truth and love will prevail over lies and hate, ? echoed throughout the plaza. There was much laughter, much joy and many tears. At the end, he thanked everyone.

The roar seemed as if it could be heard in throughout Eastern Europe. It was certainly heard in Mikhail Gorbachev?s Moscow. He did not send in the tanks as his predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev, had in 1969. Many walls were falling, and the seeds of democracy had already taken root.

The Prague celebration officially ended at 11 p.m., but the jubilant crowd partied through the night.  People were singing songs and chanting ?Viva Havel.? Younger groups were holding hands, kicking up their feet and running in circles as fast as they could. I was thrilled to be in their company, recording their faces and movements. Everybody seemed ecstatic. After the celebration across from the clock tower in the Old Town Square ended, a large crowd began singing and chanting in front of the nearby District Communist Party Headquarters.

Hundreds of empty beer and champagne bottles stood edge to edge, like soldiers in formation, in front of the entrance. They were symbols of triumph and the guardians of future freedoms. Somebody tried to burn the communist sign above the doorway, but was forcibly removed by revelers who insisted on a ?peaceful celebration.?

An older gentleman with tears in his eyes was so happy to see a member of the Western media that he ran up and kissed me on the cheek, uttering in broken English, ?Thank you. Thank you for being here.?

I saw him sit on a dimly lit bench. As I drew closer, I could see that he was weeping uncontrollably. He was a proud man. He chose this spot away from the crowd so nobody would notice his tears. They were a long time coming.

This was an historic event for me also. In more than 20 years as a photojournalist, it’s only time I’ve ever been ?thanked? for ?being here.?

Revisiting

Fast-forward 20 years.

In 2009, I decided it was time to return. Naturally, I wanted to take part in any anniversary celebrations, but I was also very curious to see what changes had occurred as a result of two decades of democracy and Westernization.

It was difficult to pre-plan anything, because as wonderful as the Internet is, it was difficult to find information on any planned events the country that was now the Czech Republic, after peaceful separation from Slovakia. I assumed there would be something, but that it would either be low key, or that I wasn?t searching the right way. I downloaded a Czech keyboard, pasted in translated keywords on Czech websites and searched through local Prague newspapers, in English and in translated Czech. Nothing.

Undeterred, I packed my bags went to Prague. I had booked a hotel several months earlier right on the Old Town Square, the scene of much of the hysteria I?d experienced two decades earlier. I figured the worst that could happen would be I?d have a nice five-day vacation in what I remembered to be a very beautiful city.

Arriving on Nov. 14, via train from Berlin, I was amazed how little Prague had changed. If anything it was even more beautiful than I remembered. Somehow, with the exception of graffiti everywhere (a liberty provided by the freedom of speech that democracy had brought), they had managed to stave off the ugly side of capitalization and Westernization. The only signs of it were the occasional KFC and Starbucks. I saw one of the latter on the square, next to the 600-year-old Town Hall clock tower — a polar opposite and cultural erosion of the Old World charm that permeates the historic core of the city.

Across the square, in a storefront in a former Communist headquarters, was a Cartier?s. Not nearly as offensive, but a scar just the same. At least an attempt has been made to blend it in somewhat.

On the morning of Nov. 17th, I walked down to Wenceslas Square, convinced there would be some kind of celebration.  This square also looked exactly as I remembered it.  But now I saw a display of photos about the Velvet Revolution. In front of the Saint Wenceslas statue, where thousands had gathered 20 years earlier and held vigils, was a permanent memorial to Jan Palach and Jan Zajic, two students who had burned themselves alive in early 1969, in protest of the Russian overthrow of Czechoslovakia following the Prague Spring of 1968.

Fifty yards south of the memorial was a man standing on a taxi yelling in Czech to approximately 100 people.  I thought it had something to do with the anniversary, but he turned out to be a taxi driver, wired on Red Bull. He was shouting that his democracy now gave him the right to price-gouge tourists. He was protesting impending laws regulating city cabs.

In the afternoon I wandered about the Old Town Square, where 20 years earlier more than 500,000 people had celebrated the coming of democracy.  It was full now, too, but with beer gardens and food stalls, and revelers celebrating ?communist prices.? Bananas, considered a delicacy back due to the fresh fruit and vegetable shortages, were handed around.  Bratwurst, ham, breads, cheeses, chicken dishes, and cured sausages of every variety, complimented free flowing Pilsner. Twenty years ago, I couldn?t find a decent meal.  A restaurant I?d found back then had only two items on the menu; one of them, a meat dish of sorts, sold out. Everything was written in Czech and to this day I have no idea what I ate there, except I know it was disgusting.

I came across a barricaded street with a stage set up, and various events taking place nearby. Those standing around were given a four-roll package of high-quality toilet paper. In Communist times, toilet paper was prized, and its quality very poor. Some in the crowd thrust the toilet paper in the air in jubilation, as if it were trophy they had just won.

At last I learned that marchers would be re-traversing the route the students took 20 years earlier, when they were violently confronted by police.  That event was the catalyst that had triggered the Revolution.

Within hours the crowds swelled to over 100,000; traffic was frozen.  Chanting marchers, waving Czech flags and banners and flashing peace signs, clogged the road. As a light show that ended the festivities showered the crowd, and its sparks faded away,  I thought of how it might symbolize the Iron Curtain and Communism fizzling out. Then came a concert, with bands playing until the wee hours.

I realized that this event was as poorly planned and publicized as the one at the end of the Communist Era ? only this time, there was no paranoia. No one was looking around for the secret police, or worried about being thrown in jail for expressing anti-government sentiment.  It was just a good old-fashioned celebration of freedom.

The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe: A Timeline

1989

June 4 Pro-labor Solidarity candidates led by Lech Walesa almost swept the Polish elections, stunning the world by ousting the Communist rulers at almost every level of government.

Early July ? The secret police, the Stasi, stand by as anti-Communism protests unfold in the East German cities of Leipzig and Dresden. They feared a repeat of the bloody student protest in Beijing?s Tiananmen Square the previous month.

August 19 ? European unity activists stage a ?picnic? at a Hungary/Austria border crossing. The barrier at the border was opened, allowing East and West to join in celebration. More than 600 people who drove from East Germany and Czechoslovakia used the opportunity to slip across the unguarded border to freedom in the West.

October 18 ? Rising protests in East Germany force Erich Honecker to resign as Head of State and the Party leader.

November 4 ? A huge rally in East Berlin draws 500,000 people, who demand a relaxation of travel restrictions. Demonstrations erupt in 40 other cities, and the  world takes notice.

November 9 ? Yielding to pressure, the Politburo rewrites the travel laws allowing East Germans to apply for visits to West Berlin and West Germany. Thousands of East Germans storm the border crossings. Overwhelmed, the crossing guards put down their weapons and open the gates. Within minutes, people are dancing on the Berlin Wall in celebration.

November 17 ? Students in Prague demanding reform clash with police during demonstrations that last for several days.

November 22 ? Some 500,000 people gather in Prague to listen to Vaclav Havel?s speech calling for peaceful demonstrations and worker strikes, demanding the resignations of Communist government leaders. Over the next six weeks, strikes and demonstrations bring the government to its knees. These events became known as the Velvet Revolution, as the goal was achieved without violence.

November 27 ? Following a two-hour general strike, the Communist party announces it will relinquish control in Czechoslovakia, and dismantle the single-party system. Within days, border obstructions are removed between Austria and West Germany, and the East. Communist Czech President Gustav Husak resigned on December 10, paving the way for free elections.

December 16 -19 - Demonstrations over several days in Timisoara, Romania turn bloody as the military fires upon the crowd of almost 750,000, trying to disperse them. 162 people are killed. Rioting spreads around the country, forcing President Nicolae Ceausescu to flee on Dec. 22. He was arrested in hiding, tried the next day and executed on Dec. 25.

December 22 ? A portion of the ?The Berlin Wall? is torn down at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, bringing together the two divided cities for the first time in 28 years. More than 40,000 people from both sides showed up to witness the historic event that took place in the middle of the night.

December 29 ? The Federal Assembly in Czechoslovakia unanimously votes in Vaclav Havel as the new president.

1990

February ? Czechs demonstrate to demand the departure of Soviet troops

1994

July 4 Havel is awarded the Philadelphia Liberty Medal for his leadership role in the peaceful overthrow of Communism in Czechoslovakia. In his acceptance speech, he said: “The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world.?

We had been given vague directions by community organizers; supposedly trucks took people from here, the center of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second city and a onetime Mayan capital, to remote mountain communities like the one we wanted to visit, Santa Anita la Union.

The dirt road made for a bumpy ride, but the freshness of the air, dense with fog, and the lush, green vegetation, instantly calmed me. We paid five quetzales each, (about 60 cents in the summer of 2009), and after about three hours, the truck dropped us off in front of an open gate with a sign.

Life in Santa Anita

Children were playing basketball in an open court, the mountains as their backdrop. Some stared; others just said “buenas tardes.” We asked a girl where we could find the community leader Don Sergio, and she brought us to his famil’s small cement house.

Santa Anita was developed after Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, by former leftist guerrilla fighters of the Organizacion del Pueblo en Armas. Now many of the ex-fighters have families, and are trying to support the next generation by developing the coffee-growing cooperative they’ve created here.

We learned that many adults went by two names: their birth name and their nom de guerre. Sergio’s birth name is Rigoberto Augustin.

Building a Community from Bare Land

After the peace accords were signed in 1996, and the guerrilla force to which the members of this community had belonged also signed, turning over their weapons, the ex-fighters were given an opportunity to buy this land.

Many of them had spent years in the jungle, separated from their former lives.

They named their community Santa Anita. They were only 32 families (they are 36 now), but over the past 13 years, they’ve taught themselves to cultivate, harvest and sell coffee.

To earn extra money, they encourage volunteers to bring in foreign visitors like us. Now there’s a community center to host us, with beds and two bathrooms.

Soaking in the comfort of plush couches and the warm richness of their fresh coffee, we sat with Sergio, 55, and the tourism coordinator, Gloria “Teresa” Elena Gomez, 34, and talked about life here, and recent events nearby.

The coup in Honduras was on everyone’s mind, and Sergio said he and others were watching closely, because they were afraid it could set a precedent for other Central American countries.

Sergio gave us a tour of the farm, so we could see the coffee production process, and become acquainted with what he considers his “schoolhouse”: the hum of Guatemala’s breathtaking mountains, where he lived for 17 years while fighting.

“When I walk the mountains, its always like a re-encounter with my house of many years, of much of my life,” he said. He pointed out that, as one of the founders, he had lived in Santa Anita, for 11 years, and that it would be another six before he’d match his 17 years of fighting.

“I think that the greatest memory of the mountain is that it was the bastion for the revolutionary war in Guatemala,” he said, surrounded by the call of tropical birds and the rush of a nearby waterfall.

“That, for me, is what the mountains mean –as a stage of struggle, a stage of liberty, to be able to establish for us in this country a system of peace and democracy, that we Guatemalans struggle now to construct so that this becomes a reality over time.”

People in Santa Anita are still trying to reconstruct their lives, after a war that left an estimated 150,000 people dead, saw hundreds of Mayan villages destroyed and, by the count of a human rights group led by an activist Roman Catholic bishop who was subsequently murdered, displaced as many as one million people. It is considered one of Latin America’s most brutal wars.

Growing Coffee: Another Kind of Struggle

In terms of self-sustainability and autonomy, a coffee plantation is by no means a sure bet.

Ever-changing weather patterns can delay the planting season, and the people of Santa Anita had a lot to learn before they could produce a quality batch of coffee beans, or even a good cup of coffee.

Money is scarce. The group has tried a couple of different models of income distribution, but families still can barely sustain themselves on the coffee harvest. Teresa’s husband must travel to Quetzaltenango for work. When he comes home, he pays other people to help him around the farm.

Coffee prices are volatile, too. In 2002, they fell to a 30-year low, inspiring Oxfam America to publish a report on the coffee crisis.

“Small-scale coffee farmers and farm workers remain extremely vulnerable,” that report, The Coffee Crisis Continues, concluded in 2005.

Santa Anita is still working hard to pay off the high-interest government loans it took out to buy this land. The group borrowed $300,000, at a 12% interest rate; since they’re paying it back very slowly, they still owe the same amount today!

Entire families work together on randomly-assigned plots. Some were lucky enough to draw good areas with lots of shade, while others needed to put more effort into clearing and preparing the land.

Smaller farmers lack the expertise, and equipment, of larger operations.

Here, for example, coffee growing has been based on trial and error. Before the war, some of the adults worked with their families on large farms, as day laborers, and knew how to use machetes to harvest. They have divided the process into stages, assigning each a leader. We met the man who plants and cares for the seedlings, which are first planted in the shade in individual bags and then moved to soil, to grow with direct sunlight.

The village makes its own fertilizer with special vitamins and minerals, which they carry to the vast, mountainous terrain where the coffee plants grow to maturity. During the fall harvest, families carry the heavy baskets of beans back up to the center of town, to be further prepared for packaging and consumption.

Santa Anita works with Cafe Conciencia, an non-governmental organization in Quetzaltenango that specializes in helping worker-owned coffee cooperatives develop their businesses. The Guatemalan country director, Omar Mejia, said the group also wants to broaden the definition of what makes coffee “fair trade.” Labels alone, he said, do not always guarantee fair or equal labor standards.

Cafe Conciencia sells coffee from Santa Anita and a couple of other communities through its website. Mejia, who is finishing a degree in agronomy, also offers scientific expertise about how to grow the coffee, so this community can produce more, higher-quality coffee with every harvest.

The community’s hospitality, and the constant crow of its roosters, were hypnotizing. A people that had lived through so much violence was trying to make life better for its children. But there is no guarantee that the next generation will stick around to maintain the cooperative. Sergio said that the children were like the coffee plants; some grow strong and bear fruit, while others do not receive the proper nourishment, and don’t give back in the end.

Santa Anita has created a supplementary school, with a modest library and a computer lab. The curriculum includes a kind of civil war history locals say is rarely, if ever, taught in state-mandated classes.

Machismo, Eternal Machismo

Sergio’s wife, Aurora Vicente “Juana” Jives, 51, leads a group of indigenous women in the surrounding communities who meet for discussions, and encourage one another to become more independent and self-confident.

Juana said domestic violence is a big problem in this region.

“We give help. If the companera doesn’t want it, she doesnt’ want it, or she is really afraid. If we can’t convince her, maybe we can convince some people who talk with her,” she said.

Juana later added,”The problem that we have had the most with the participation of women is dependence…because here the women depend economically on their husbands, economically on the home, economically on the living situation. So they don’t have this autonomy, this liberty to decide. For anything they have to consult their husbands — and if he says no, then she can’t.

During the war, Juana and Teresa said, they were treated equally with the men, unlike today. Teresa said that she and her husband still split household chores evenly, according to the ethics they followed as guerrilleros.

The war also gave Juana, Sergio and Teresa at chance to “study.” They learned to read and write in the jungle, guns by their sides.

But after the war, women mostly lost status; they began to revert to traditional roles.

Slipping Away Before a Protest

We debated staying an extra day, but were told that a single day could turn into three: area residents were organizing a demonstration against a nearby mine, one of those that had buying up area land. Such purchases force the residents to move, and also make them fear environmental dangers, such as acid rain. The march would block the main roads to Quetzaltenango, so we had to leave before it started.

Our insider information from Santa Anita’s leaders forced us into Sergio’s car at 4 a.m. We waited for a half hour in the cold Jeep, half asleep and speaking softly about the village, the protest and life.

We boarded the bus that Monday morning, clutching our bulky travel bags, to join the people heading to work for the week to compensate for the lack of economic opportunities in the countryside.

“The fighting ended when we turned in our arms,” Juana had said, “but our ideas continued because there wasn’t a change. That is to say that, with the dialogue and the signing of the peace agreement, there wasn’t lot of change. The same system continued. The same injustice continued.”

Learn More

Guatemala's civil war ends at last

Santa Anita de la Union info

Cafe Conciencia

Mining in Central America - an Oxfam report

Tsunahiki, the Great Tug of War, is an annual harvest ritual in the islands of Okinawa. It was said to first symbolize a 17th-century struggle between two kings, and later held to petition the gods for a successful harvest.

Legend has it that the first tsunahiki was held after a wise old man advised a village chief that a tug of war between two rice paddy crews would rid the crop of bugs and disease. It worked.

Separate ropes are woven, one representing male and the other female. Each has a loop at the fighting end. Teams from the east and west sections of the town line up behind their respective ropes. The looped ends are  joined with a large wooden pole, and men playing the ancient kings stand atop the ropes, taunting the opposing team.

Smaller ropes stream from the sides, so the contestants can tug — the main rope is actually impossible to grasp.

An gold-colored ball held aloft by a crane signals the start. Balloons and colored streamers float down over the crowds, who begin to chant and pull. Drums are beaten, whistles blow, muscles strain and the rope disappears into crowd.

In 30 minutes it’s over, with the team able to pull the rope 10 feet toward its side declared the winner. This year (2009) it’s a tie. I hope that still means an abundant harvest!

“It just so happened to be an old 1960s gold Cadillac, with a wonderful cream and velour interior…. I don’t realize it’s a gangbangers’ car.”

He tears down the freeway late at night, eager to get home, and accidentally exits into some dicey neighborhood.

“It’s completely dark everywhere; I can just about see movement in the shadows.”

Relieved to spot an LAPD car, he leans on his horn.

The cops jump out and run over to him, waving big guns.

“Is this your vehicle?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Whose is it?”

He explains.

“See those guys over there?”

And I see like a patch of black guys, hard core gang members.

“Those guys are about ready to kill you for your car. This is a carjacking, gangbanging car. That is the prize car. And you will die in this vehicle if you carry on driving in this area.”

See Normski’s video: 4.18 minutes

See more of Normski Anderson’s work

“The whole idea behind my site is to show that Iran is not a dangerous country,” he explained. “To show that for the most part it’s a beautiful country, with kind, loving and hospitable people.”

The anxious reactions of his L.A. friends to his move inspired him to start the blog, as a way of commuicating with them, of telling them he’d be safe.  “Life Goes on in Tehran,” he called it.

“Their fears and lack of knowledge about Iran [are] justified, and a result of the negative portrayal of this country in Western media - as well as sound bites from a certain controversial president,” he wrote [George W. Bush was president then].

But soon “Life” developed a cult following. Expat Iranians were vicariously connecting to the country through his posts. He started a Facebook page, which attracted more than 2,000 fans.

He fumes about the traffic, the crazy drivers, the cinder block architecture. Tehran is “so ugly it’s beautiful,” he complains. He mourns the loss of a beloved aunt. A new baby is born; month by month, we watch her grow up.

Although he exalts in a visit to L.A., and an extended film-editing assignment in Europe, his connection to the city deepens. We watch him rent an apartment and hire movers, feeling guilty over how little they’re paid.

Sometimes he removes a picture, perhaps to keep people he knows from being identified.

That’s one reason he’s chosen to remain anonymous. Another, of course, is to keep from attracting the attention of the Iranian authorities. We respect his choice here.

Then, after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is declared relected in June 2009, and demonstrators take to the streets to protest that the elections had been fraudulent, he abruptly stops posting.

He says he’s lost the will to shoot.

What is daily life if not with the most basic of human rights? he wonders, in October.

Partly, he says, three years in Tehran have changed him.

I was always an outsider looking in or an insider looking out, and could have the perspective of an “other” to spice up my comments and present a more complete picture of life in Tehran. But right now I feel like an insider looking in, without the ability to rise above the socio-political landscape that surrounds me.

I am hoping that time will provide me with that perspective, he writes, in November. Maybe next month….

See the blog Life Goes on in Tehran

In 1920, he figured the best investment was real estate. He constructed an apartment building in Heliopolis, a flourishing, quiet neighborhood in Cairo. He designed the building with the help of an architect and built the structure from the ground up. “A self-made man,” my mother calls him.

The structure is two small apartment buildings, side by side. The walls of one fuse into the walls of the other. Whenever I visited this building as a child, I was always amazed at the secret doors that passed from the pantry of one apartment to the hallway of the adjoining building. I suppose that’s what happens when families settle in Siamese-twin homes.

One of my great-grandfather’s first tenants was an Armenian named Kevork Hagopian, who arrived in Cairo in the 1930s. At the time, and for many years after, real estate “contracts” in Cairo were based on good faith and a firm handshake. That’s all my great grandfather required when Hagopian took up residence n the 2690 square foot, three-bedroom first-floor apartment — a New York Dream. Just one small gesture of trust: a handshake. In return, Hagopian promised to pay about seven Egyptian pounds a month in rent. That comes out to about one American dollar.

This was more than 70 years ago.

Hagopian was faithful to the handshake, even after he started going a little crazy. Hagopian wasn’t always crazy, though no one in my family can recall when Hagopian started to get a bit loopy. Maybe when he hit 60, around 1980. It’s hard to pinpoint a moment, but he was still paying his own rent in the ’60s, so that was a good sign. He aged with the building. As the walls yellowed with time, he got older. He lived unmarried and alone. His social etiquette dried up like the sickly plants that lined his dying first- floor garden. It was always dark in Hagopian’s apartment. No one visited, no one came. He talked to no one except himself. As he got older, his nephew started to pay his rent.

Over the years, the outer walls of that building in Heliopolis have seen a lot: independence, three presidents, one massive nationalization plan, the assassination of one of those presidents, and a couple of wars, to name just a few. No wonder the walls have aged.

Charles, my great-grandfather, died in 1960. After his death, the Heliopolis property was split up and the various apartments passed down to his five children. He had four girls, and one boy. His only son, now the man of the family, dealt with the tenants and rents. One of the girls, Hilda, was my grandmother.

Inevitably, all five offspring had children of their own. Hilda, my grandmother, met my grandfather, a young lawyer of Armenian descent who worked in her father’s office. They got married and had two daughters, one of whom is my mother.

More offspring came. Bits and pieces of the building were passed down further. Ownership of the apartments was scattered across the globe, as the descendents moved to various places. Some stayed in Egypt and lived in the building. Others left. My mother married my father and moved away. Her sister, my aunt, ended up in France with her two sons. A few descendents remained to take care of the aging building.

Which brings us to the present.

Recently, my father’s foreign service job, which led to 23 years of country-hopping, led my parents back to a post in Cairo again, where they originally met. Suddenly we were re-immersed in the world of the Heliopolis building again. The many complications of its many tenants had exploded since its simple beginning in the 1920s. The storeowners on the first floor didn’t have contracts. The fifth floor tenant left her faucet on, causing an impromptu flood of water that poured down on the apartment below. The list of grievances grew longer and longer.

In the meantime, old Kevork Hagopian, the original Armenian tenant, was still unassumingly wasting away in the darkness of his first-floor apartment. He rarely went out, rarely bought food, rarely ate, it seemed. He was small, pale and perpetually wore a pointy hat on his head. He occasionally could be seen peering out through the slats of his window shades. He took to spitting on passers-by when he could get a decent shot as they entered the building. Once in a while, my aunt got him to talk to her, but she was the only one. I was terrified of him.

When he died in 2007, his death had the gnawing heaviness of any death that almost goes unnoticed. The only one who came to Hagopian’s side after his death was his nephew — who happened to share the exact same name as his uncle; Kevork Hagopian.

No one is sure where he swooped in from to clear his uncle’s belongings, but we presume he lived in Cairo his entire life. It was one of the gray, unknown areas of the nephew’s life that remain obscure. He spoke with my relatives. He insisted that he needed some time to gather all of his uncle’s things, receive grieving visitors, and then he would be off. My relatives agreed that he could stay 40 days, to mourn and collect the leftovers of his uncle’s existence.

He stayed a week. Then two. Then three weeks, which turned into a month, then two months, then several months. Before we knew it, the 40 days had passed without a peep from him.

He refused to return the apartment keys. My relatives, frustrated with attempts to negotiate and get him out, finally filed a lawsuit against him. In response, the nephew took refuge in what everyone knew was an ingenious lie.

He stood up in court, in front of the judge and everyone, and exclaimed, “What are you talking about? I’m not dead. No one has died. I’m Kevork Hagopian. I defy you to find any piece of paperwork that proves that this man, whom they claim to be dead, is dead.”

Since that moment more attention has been paid to Kevork Hagopian than in his entire life. What was his middle name? Where was he born? Where was he buried? Was he buried in an unmarked grave or an Orthodox Armenian cemetery? In December 2008, while visiting my parents in Egypt, I witnessed a macabre chase to salvage any information about Hagopian’s life. My relatives were completely flummoxed, totally frustrated with the lack of viable paperwork, and everyone was running out of ideas.

The entire affair spun even further out of control when the apparent imposter turned the tables. He decided to sue the family for perjury. He claimed that we lied in court about him being “dead.”

The only way my family could retaliate was by finding any documentation of his uncle’s death to prove to the court we werenâ??t lying. Oddly enough, the certificate of death was nowhere to be found.

I should explain here something about Egyptian rent laws. The law is traditionally on the side of the renter and not the landlord, probably because of the socialist strain in Egyptian law that started when President Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power in 1952.

Because so many “contracts” were made with a handshake, it’s practically impossible to kick out a tenant if they are not paying rent, because there is no paper contract. To add to that, rent control is considered hereditary. Hagopian’s rent had risen from seven Egyptian pounds to 15, but due to President Nasser’s rent control changes the 1960s, it has remained 15 pounds — about two and a half U.S. dollars per month — till this day.

Recently, the law was changed to apply only to the first generation of children, and to children who had lived in the residence with their parents. But until recently, you could pass down an obscenely low rent from generation to generation. My mother’s cousin, who had lived in that apartment building practically all her life, one floor up from my grandparents’ apartment, had noticed some changes. From below, from that first floor apartment, she could hear the hollow thud and crash of breaking concrete. It was coming from Hagopian’s. The nephew, a photographer, was knocking down the walls of the place, attempting to build what we presumed was his very own photo studio.

None of us could approach him about this business of breaking down walls. That would be “acknowledging his presence,” the lawyer said.

On my last day in Egypt, my parents took a trip to the Armenian Orthodox cemetery, a bouquet of roses in hand, to find out where the mysterious uncle had been buried. After an afternoon of trying to decipher gravestones covered in Armenian script, and interrogating the graveyard guard, they returned home, defeated and empty handed. No corpse. No grave.

“The guard said he could have been buried in a mass grave,” my mother said. I shuddered at the idea of a faceless, lifeless mass of people pressed against each other, robbed of their place in collective memory.

And that’s where we stand.

This evident imposter had swept in, picked up the neglected pieces of his uncle’s life, and erased any trace of his uncle’s existence. He’d stolen almost seventy years of someone’s life for a rent-controlled apartment.

It kind of begs the question–what won’t people do for a three-bedroom apartment with kitchen and washer/dryer?

This story first appeared in Street Level, the annual magazine of top undergraduate reporting of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

In August of 2008, I took a trip with my friend Natalie to visit them for the first time. Though I didn’t necessarily find the Hawaii I’d always imagined, the clear blue skies or pristine ivory beaches, I found other things.

Nude Beach

“Hi, I’m Little John. What are your names?” asked a middle-aged man with stringy yellow hair and red skin that hung from his tall frame in loose folds. We tried to concentrate on his sun-chapped lips instead of looking down. Little John was not so little.

“Are ya’ll from out of town? he asked, after we took turns shaking his clammy hand. I resisted the urge to cover myself with my towel. “You look like you need some sun,” he said. I felt my pale skin redden.

This was Little Beach, a secret nook hidden between two walls of volcanic rock in Makena. Our hosts had mischievously directed us here without mentioning the main attraction. Fascinated and embarrassed, we found a spot for our towels a safe distance from the all the nudes and stretched out on our stomachs.

Most of our fellow sunbathers were middle-aged and Caucasian, sitting in groups or pairs, chatting, joking, passing joints.  Some had butts as flat as cardboard or as hairy as heads. Their breasts hung low to the middle or low to the sides, with nipples like saucers, or chocolate dimes. To our right, a copper-skinned Hawaiian woman practiced yoga on her towel, every inch of her strong, compact body the same luxurious shade of golden brown. People really do come in all shapes and sizes, I thought.

“Should we?” wondered Natalie.

“Why not?” I said.

Trying to seem nonchalant, we slipped off our suits and turned on our backs. The soft ocean breeze felt different now; more intimate. The sky turned a sharper blue, like the iris of some clear, all-seeing eye. I was just beginning to feel at home in my new skin, when Little John approached, hand outstretched, fuzzy blonde legs planted firmly and confidently apart.

The Fire Dancer

Just upland of Kula is a zip-lining course. Janet and Kelena drove us there one drizzly day for a discounted private tour. Our guides’ names were Sean and Ailani: lean, smart-mouthed daredevils in khakis and Aviators. Through the misty leaf-green light, we zipped from one platform to the next. Sean went first, twisting midair like a dancer, while Ailani clipped carabiners to our diaper-like harnesses and sent us careening through the trees.

“Perfect,” said Sean each time we reached his end of the line, struggling to control our feet as they pattered up the platform. Like graceful little woodland creatures. We liked him. He had strawberry blonde hair and a square, dimpled chin, and was charming and fearless. Probably in his mid-20s, we guessed.

Sean’s passion, he told us later, was fire dancing. He invited us over to his house, a sparsely furnished two-bedroom, whose most notable features were a pink gecko named Alex and a tiny red snake named Zeke. His roommates weren’t interested in meeting us. I had a feeling we were not the first young tourists to pass through Sean’s life, freshly-tanned and curious, collecting adventure stories to tell their friends at home.

Sean took us out to his backyard, which had a perfect view of the coast and the light-speckled towns below. We passed around a joint for awhile, and then Sean pulled out his flaming batons. He twirled them through his fingers, tossed them into the air, juggled them between his legs. Once he even missed, and a flaming baton went swirling into the bushes.

He was 31, we learned, born and raised in Chesterton, Indiana with five brothers and sisters and the dream of becoming a professional fire dancer.  When we left that night, I watched him fade away in my rearview mirror by the light of his batons.

The Redwoods of Polipoli

On our last day in Maui, we hiked through the Polipoli redwoods. At 6,200 feet above sea level, the highest point in Maui, Polipoli is one of the few places outside of California where redwoods grow. But not many tourists come. Through a mist so thick it blocked our view of the sky, and even the tops of the giant russet trees around us, Natalie and I hiked in silence, bending every now and then to collect a brilliant red or orange or yellow leaf.  No sound but our breaths and the crunch of our shoes on the trail.

For a moment, a mile down a winding path obscured in myth, I thought: how nice it would be just to stay here. Instead of going back to Ohio to wrestle through my second year of college, through the highs and the lows, the piles of paperwork, the inevitable toughening. Why not just stay? Where small-town boys from Indiana make a living flying from tree to tree and juggling flaming batons. Where you come to escape your past, to spread free love, to share your naked body with the sun. Where growing up is someone else’s problem.

Other things were different. The city seemed richer and more developed, but not in a good way. Trabzon had sprawled 15 miles west to Akcaabat, which had been an outlying town before, and east to Yomra and Arakli. To the south, they?d cut down the hazelnut fields, and built apartment houses on that land. This was probably all done with the money people earned working in factories in Germany (there were still daily flights).

And they?d widened the highway that runs along the Black Sea. You used to see hundreds of people strolling by the water there, every day; now the traffic cut them off. I missed the feeling of walking quietly along the water.

One day we visited Uzungol, a village in the mountains nearby that?s become a major tourist attraction. Almost everyone seemed to be running a little hotel or restaurant, though we saw lots of women still working in the fields. Even in June, it was misty and cool. That?s Black Sea climate — good for growing hazelnuts and tea, and for making everything green.

We were in Alappuzha, on the shores of Vembanad Lake in Kerala state. This is a backwater world, with labyrinthine canals, lagoons, lakes and rivers that drain into the Arabian Sea. In the local Malayalam language, Alappuzha (pronounced Allapura) means “a broad river,” or “the land between the sea and a network of rivers flowing into it.”

I was relieved to be on the water. Kerala, a landscape of coconut trees, paddy fields and banana plantations, had invaded my waking hours, and had blundered through my dreams like Shreks with arms of green fronds. I needed a breather from the lushness.

We entered a portal of shimmer globules that rocked on the waters, flashed through the trees and shone on paddy fields and the tips of plants.

How Parasurama Created Kerala

This region rose from the water due to geological seismic shifts in the sea thousands of years ago. For natives, though, the ancient mythological story of Parasurama, the sixth avatar of Lord Vishnu, is closer to the heart. It is said that this warrior sage vanquished all the male members of the Kshatriya clan, the ruling warrior caste of ancient times, and filled five lakes with their blood. To atone for his sin, Parasurama meditated for a long time. He was then blessed by Varuna, the god of the Oceans, and Bhumidevi, the goddess of Earth, and  traveled to the southern tip of India. From there he flung his bloodied battleaxe across the sea. The waters immediately receded from the spot where the ax fell, creating an eight-mile wide shore. And so Kerala was born.

They say that in Alappuzha children learn to swim before they can walk. We see vignettes of daily life on the embankments as we pass. A woman in a blue sari blouse, bare midriff and bright mustard lungi (a cloth wrap around the waist) scrubbed clothes on a stone slab; a group of school children sprinted along a dusty path, their satchels slapping behind them. At a jetty station, clusters of villagers wait for the boat-bus or for catamarans to ferry them to their destinations, while nearby boatmen offload goods wrapped in gunnysacks or Styrofoam.

Dugouts, canoes and paddleboats carry loads of cooking gas cylinders, rocks and sand-filled sacks; cashews and bags of rice; coconuts with their husks gleaming orange gold in the sun. The middle portions of the long country boats are just inches above the water, somehow avoiding being swamped. Fishermen, their boats stationed in the middle of the lagoons, are intent on their catch, while nearby the black cormorant birds stood rock still in Samadhi meditation before zinging into the water for their aquatic meal.

Not many people looked our way. Maybe they were tired of tourists, and just veered around them as they would a shoal of ducks gliding across their path.

And so we moved on this shimmer highway - a phantom water vehicle along with other boats.

Barges Retooled As Houseboats

We began to see the huge exotic domed-roofed houseboats known as kettuvalloms, or “boats with knots.” The planks are held together with coconut fiber, and caustic black resin extracted from boiled cashew kernels holds the ropes in place. It’s an ancient construction technique that uses no nails. Though rustic looking, these behemoths can carry about 30 tons - and if well-maintained, last for generations.

In the mid-18th century, kettuvalloms were commercial barges, shipping rice, cashews, spices and paddy harvest some 40 miles through these canals and lagoons to the port at Cochin. It could take boatmen five days to a week to carry a load to port, and they lived on the waters for most of the year. It was easy to catch the abundant fish, which they marinated with spices and ate with rice.? And when the moon sailed through the night they hung their lanterns in the kettuvallams and perhaps sang native songs before slipping into deep slumber on the thin mattresses on the floor of the hull, no doubt unaware that road and rail construction on the land nearby would one day put them out of business.

And yes, it was only a matter of time. In the 20th century, the lumbering kettuvalloms were sidelined by roads and rails, then air travel.  Then in the early 1970s, a few enterprising local entrepreneurs began to revive them as houseboats.  By the 1990s they were cast as luxury barges for tourists, where visitors could travel for one or several days, accompanied by oarsmen and a cook. Typical onboard dishes are pearl spot fish, rice and prawn curry, with the lentil flatbread pappadam and Kerala payasam, a rice pudding-like dessert.

“Madam, lench?”

Our boatman’s question cut through my reverie. He steered toward an eatery on the banks, where we were offered a simple menu of kappa (steamed and mashed tapioca) with meen (fish curry) and plump rice. The cooks doubled as waiters and cashiers, racing in and out of the kitchen to serve as many people as fast as they could.

Next we headed for Kumarakom, a cluster of islands. The somnambulistic drift of our boat, the slosh of oars, and the water spray erupting with each stroke; the women either working in the paddy fields, hustling after household chores, or drying coconut husks for twisting into strong coir ropes; were all woven into the silver-edged rhythm.

We would later continue another 150 miles by road to Kanyakumari, at the southernmost tip of India, where the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea merge; from where Parasurama had thrown his ax northward; where, amid the crash of frothing waves, Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes were placed before being scattered into the Arabian Sea.

But for now I was cradled in Alappuzha’s luminescent bubble, with life reflecting on itself from above and below on a softly heaving shimmering surface.

Learn more about Alappuzha

Hiring a kettuvallom

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Sometimes I stood in the market or at the Wailing Wall shooting the same challah, woman, or rabbi 18 times; at other times I would see the photo before I took it, and know I could not shoot it again.

I’d visited 15 years before, to celebrate a bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah with four generations of my extended family. This time, I was meeting the family of my boyfriend (who would, soon afterward, become my fiance).

The Israelis I met were friendly, yet tough; the land was warm, but rugged. This mingling of opposing characteristics inspired most of these photographs.

The attitudes of the people - their postures, expressions, laughter or sadness - suggested that their way of life was bound to this particular land.

I carried their energy home. Even though it could not be cultivated anywhere else, it was still deliciously contagious and electrifying.

I was working as an upstart photojournalist for one of the Vegas newspapers. Even though this was just at the dawn of my career, I immediately recognized the historic significance of the events unfolding in the Soviet Bloc countries. Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Germany were revolting against Soviet dominance, and Communism itself.

What was happening pulled at me to the point of obsession. Nightly newscasts and updates only made it worse. I felt a hunger to be there. After six weeks of inner turmoil, my boss made it easy for me to quit my job.

I didn’t have any money, but my pockets were filled with desire. I only hoped it wasn’t too late. I moved all my belongings into storage, and with nothing more than a credit card, my cameras and a small suitcase, I flew to Vienna, where my older sister was living at the time. The plan was to use her flat as a staging point to travel overland to East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungry and Romania to document the world-changing events, and be a firsthand witness to unfolding history.

Even though I had schooled in Europe and had traveled extensively through Germany and the rest of Europe, I didn’t know much about Berlin, except for what I had read about the “Wall.”

The plane touched down in Vienna around 10 a.m. on Christmas Eve. My sister and I rented a car, drove to her apartment, showered, packed, and an hour later, began the 10-hour drive to Berlin. We had no idea what was in store for us. My sister’s Austrian friends thought we were crazy to drive through East Germany.

Six hours later, as we approached the East German border, we saw barbed wire fencing and a couple of watchtowers with guards holding machine guns. We entered the country through a small border town called Hirschberg. I felt like I was driving into a maximum security prison.

Were They Following Us?

The guards stamped our passports without saying a word, and waved us through. It was around 7 p.m., and Hirschberg looked like a ghost town, except for a gas station and restaurant. The roads were filled with potholes, and the air pollution was awful. There was an ominous feeling of uncertainty and paranoia. All we kept thinking was that we were being followed by the secret police and could be thrown into an underground prison to be tortured and never seen again, or placed on a train to Siberia. We were young.

The trip from Hirschberg to Berlin took three hours. To find our way, all we had was a road map — this was pre-cell phones, GPS and Internet. We decided to keep going into the unknown. The countryside was flat and empty, without houses, but the stinking air quality was the same.

When we arrived in Berlin, it was near midnight of Christmas Eve. The Brandenburg Gate had opened two days earlier, for the first time in 28 years. Thousands of partiers filled the streets, drinking and singing. We saw a young man of around 18 run to the Wall from the East side, jump up and throw his fists in the air. Hundreds, including us, disobeyed bullhorned orders from the East German police, telling us to stay away from the Wall, as the structure was not safe.

But no shots were fired. It was an amazing experience to see guards smiling and waving from the watchtowers in the “death strip,” or no man’s land, separating the two Berlins. Two months earlier, they would have killed people trying to escape to the West.

Tears and Souvenirs

All around us, older people were crying, while the younger ones were busy chiseling pieces of the hated Wall for souvenirs, or to sell.

The most memorable moment for me was when a man in his 60s, with disgust on his face, yanked a sledgehammer out of a young man’s hands, without saying a word, smashed the wall a few times with a vengeance, then threw the sledgehammer to the ground and walked away.

Long ago. The day before yesterday.

Bata, my roommate Jacob and I were crammed into a small Peugeot, clambering along tortuous mountain roads in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The unusual warning, the first tidbit that our gregarious 37-year-old tour guide Bata imparted to us, was a fitting comment on our remarkable trip to Mostar, a city where the scars of the Bosnian war in the early 1990s have yet to heal.

A tall, bearded and big-bellied ex-soldier, Bata had the size and demeanor of a playful grizzly bear. During the war his family’s home was occupied, and they were forced to scatter. Bata told us that he fled to Sweden, where he replaced his upper-class lifestyle with shifts as a taxi driver and a kebab cook. He and his family are now back in their old home, which they’ve converted into a hostel.

Bata’s ability to entertain made him immediately endeared him to us. If our faces betrayed any hint of emotion, he would jokingly yell “SNAG,” his acronym for Sensitive New Age Guy.

He would make us giggle with jokes about Bosnian inefficiency. He would roar, sing, pose, shout –? anything to keep us marching along with him.

But it was his moments of contemplation, when he revealed his thoughts as a survivor of the Bosnian war, that made him unforgettable.

Bata showed us how war still ravages life in Mostar, nearly 15 year after war had ended.

Tour with a View

I had signed us up for an eight-hour tour of Mostar and the surrounding areas, in hopes of making sense of the dilapidation we had seen while wandering around town. Jacob and I had arrived there on a whim, by taking an $8 bus ride from Split, the Croatian beach town where we were vacationing. So we were unprepared for what we would see.

The remains of punctured and burned structures, perhaps someone’s home in the past, now functioned as deposits for disposed beer bottles and used condoms. Broken panes still dangled from the windows of shelled buildings. Bullet holes patterned walls like polka dots. Occasionally a new building with a gleaming coat of paint would emerge, in painfully conspicuous contrast with the landscape. But, strolling passively through around these structures, or through thehe touristy “old city,” or at the famous humpbacked Stari Most Bridge,? destroyed in the war and rebuilt a few years ago, taught us nothing about Mostar, and especially nothing about the war.

We needed a local guide.

Bata pointed at a massive white cross on the summit of Hum Hill. I had seen the Jubilee Cross the night before. Its illuminated form shone brightly, seeming to float in the night sky. Its haunting glow spread for miles across this mainly Muslim city.

I saw now that the cross was perched atop a concrete bunker, from where Croatian forces had shelled the city and destroyed the Stari Most bridge. The summit was strategically perfect — the entire city of Mostar sprawled below;? you could throw a baseball and shatter a window two miles away.

Bata told us that the Catholic Croats had built the 100-foot high cross after lifting their siege on the city. To him, it was a hideous insult, a perpetual reminder of who had really won the war.

He also pointed out the front line, a highway that divided the city like a fault line. Fifteen years after the war, the split was still obvious. The Bosnian side, dotted with small clay-roofed houses, looked like a village; whereas the Croatian half had skyscrapers. Tall minarets pierce the sky on one side, while equally grand church spires abound on the other. They were two separate cities welded into one by the force of the mountains around us.

Bata explained the divides in even the most trivial aspects of life. Mostar had two soccer teams, one supported by Croats and one by Bosnians. Sarejvsko Pivo, the national beer of Bosnia, is apparently not sold in cafes on the Croatian side of Mostar. We (unscientifically) investigated this later, and found even Pabst Blue Ribbon, but no Pivo.

Guide Therapy

“Giving tours is like psychotherapy. I need to tell the world what they didn?t see on CNN,”? Bata confessed. He stepped to the edge of the overlook and shouted, “The truth will set you free!”

Not everybody was as expressive. Bata’s cheerful, pigtailed sister Majda, who ran our hostel, kept urging us to relax. Her persistence made us feel that the worst might be yet come. Unlike her brother, Majda preferred to discuss how well Mostar was doing today, and how modern it was in contrast to the city of her childhood. Whenever I asked her about the war, her smile faded, and she would look away before mumbling an answer. She was one of those who preferred to look hopefully towards the future.

To travel to Mostar means to not just see the damaged buildings and the rebuilt bridge but also to decipher a twisted and tangled history. When you set foot in a place where something terrible has occurred, you can think only: what happened?

Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia were all historically separate regions but were unified as Yugoslavia under the Communist leader Josip Broz Tito. Tito was able to stifle ethnic tensions for most of the 20th century, but after he died and his Ccommunist regime collapsed, tensions resurfaced. In 1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina’s declaration of independence prompted an invasion from the Yugoslav army, which turned into attacks from Serbian and Croation forces.

In Mostar, the largest city in Herzegovina and the most heavily bombed during the war, the Serbian invasion was rebuffed with the help of the Croatian Defense Council. But the Croats wanted the city for themselves, so in a Hollywood-esque twist, the Council attacked the very Bosnians they had helped defend a few days earlier. The Bosnians could not organize an effective resistance, and soon huge swaths of their city were turned to rubble.

It was a confusing war of identity, of choosing between your land and your people in a country with a confusing mix of identities and people, in a city where you didn?t know who your neighbors were. Even for a passing visitor, confusion consumed everything.

The war officially ended with the signing of the General Framework for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina? in December 1995. But it was clear that, 14 years later, a different kind of war was continuing.

Bata took us to Our Lady of Medjugorje, where in 1981 a group of children had claimed to see an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Now this spot is a magnet for Catholic tourism. As we approached the church, the streets became clogged with charter buses and crowded with hotels, gift shops and expensive restaurants. Suddenly I was counting more expensive cars than on Park Avenue. Occasionally a gargantuan villa would emerge. Construction was everywhere. This was gentrification in the developing world, funded by droves of wealthy Christian pilgrims who lavishly doled out their money along with their devotion. According to Bata, few Bosnians gained from this lucrative industry, and the ones who lived in the village were driven out. Judging from the Croatian flags hung ubiquitously like Christmas wreaths, we thought his words must be true.

Because Bosnians were constantly victimized in Bata’s version of things, I couldn?t believe everything he said. But obviously they weren?t embracing one another.

“You can?t expect us to start loving each other just because the UN told us to,” he said over a lunch of burek, a meat-filled pastry. (We had stopped at a place that promised ?best burek in all Balkans.” I encountered seven such establishments during my two-day stay).

A perpetual feeling of underlying unease made the most striking landscapes feel tragic. We saw Kravica falls, where the roaring blue water found its origins in a series of small brooks, and Pocitelj, a hillside Ottoman settlement that overlooks sweeping vistas of the Nerevta river valley. The stark contrast between the natural beauty and the continuing tensions only emphasized the tension.

At the end of our tour, a large wedding procession swallowed the street and delayed our trek back to the hostel. A three-block long caravan of big, expensive cars brandished Croatian flags and blared victorious music, rolling past the pockmarked buildings and over the bomb craters in the streets. We watched the loud festivities in silence. For a moment, we could almost hear gunfire.

I’d ended up there because I’d written about Mexican farm workers who told me stories about the grinding poverty they’d left behind. Many farm workers in western New York State, where I live, come from the rural areas of Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guererro. They’ve traveled over 3,000 miles to get here, sometimes paying as much as $2,500 to be smuggled in. They work on farms doing some of the most strenuous, lowest paying jobs in the United States. I decided I wanted to see conditions in their villages first hand.

I’ve worked with homeless and poor people in a variety of ways. I’ve documented homelessness and poverty across Pennsylvania and Delaware, have worked in shelters and soup kitchens and have visited many migrant worker camps. One winter, I even spent six weeks living on the streets of Washington, DC. None of that prepared me for the poverty I would experience in the mountains of Oaxaca and Puebla.

It’s impossible to get into the mountain villages without connections and a guide. I also needed luck and persistence. A combination of all of these landed me in the offices of Coordinadora Estalal Productores Cafe Organico (CEPCO), a Oaxaca coffee cooperative.

Surprisingly, my interest was met with suspicion and a little hostility. After three days of being the only person to show up for meetings, I met with Pedro Pablo Garcia-Hernandez, CEPCO’s secretary, who put me in contact with coffee growers near San Jose Tenango. The initial suspicion was not unwarranted, given the political climate there. Paramilitary groups are active in Oaxaca, and there are weekly reports of killings of rural workers.

“In Mexico, life is cheap,” said a Oaxaca friend. “And a campesino’s life is very cheap.”

Leaving CEPCO one day, I saw a memorial notice on the coop bulletin board, commemorating a member’s murder by paramilitary forces a week earlier.

Into the Mountains

Candido would be my guide to Tenango. The first leg of the trip is a seven-hour bus ride over roads that are little more than narrow hairpin curves carved out of the mountainsides. We pulled into Huautla at 3 a.m. and sat, in the cold and damp, in the back of a truck for two hours. Camionetas are pickups that have been modified to carry passengers, which means metal benches have been welded inside the truck bed. A ride isn’t pleasant. Eight people can fit inside snugly, but there’s usually twice as many, with more people riding outside.

The roads, just wide enough for one vehicle, are layered with large rocks. People drive as fast as possible, ensuring a jarring ride. There are no guardrails, and although accidents are rare, I did see two overturned vehicles on the slopes.

Arriving in Tenango, you don’t find a quaint Mexican village with a pretty zocalo, colorful market or distinctive old church. Instead, you’re greeted by a small, poor, colorless village, of decaying buildings and a few cement streets usually awash in mud. This, I thought when I arrived, is third world poverty.

I was wrong: much worse lay ahead.

I left for San Martin the next day with another guide, Maximiano. (These “guides” aren’t paid; they’re just people who happen to be going to the same village as you.) San Martin is reached by another camioneta ride, followed by a strenuous 3 1/2 hour hike. Maximiano spoke mostly Mazateco. He knew a few words of Spanish but, unfortunately, I didn’t know the words he knew. About an hour into the hike, Maximiano stopped to eat two tortillas and a small piece of meat. He filled a Coke bottle with water from a small, muddy puddle and took a few sips. I was glad I’d brought a bottle of water.

I arrived in San Martin cold, wet and exhausted. I was taken to Abelardo and Hortencia’s house, and they quickly agreed to let me stay. Hortencia brought soup when I started shaking. Maximiano continued on to his house. I was more than a little embarrassed at my exhaustion when I learned that he was 72 years old. I was shocked at how little he ate during the hike: just those tortillas and meat. (I would be even more surprised four days later, when Abelardo and I hiked out of San Martin, after breakfasting on just a cup of coffee).

San Martin was much poorer than Tenango.

The village is a drab collection of shacks of wood, tin and palm fronds scattered along a path. The floors are packed dirt and bathrooms are outhouses that are sometimes only a hole in the ground. There is no running water or heat, and nights are cold in the mountains. Children are often barefoot and animals roam freely. The place smells of mud and manure. There are a few decaying cement buildings in what’s referred to as “el centro,” an area that includes a clinic that’s rarely staffed.

One evening I asked Abelardo what happened when someone got sick.

“When there’s no doctor and no money to leave for the city,” said, “then you die.” Candido’s wife had died 15 years ago. “She had diarrhea and vomiting for several days,” he’d said. “I don’t know what it was.”

Abelardo and Hortencia’s four children died soon after they were born. “But I am young,” Abelardo said. “There is still time to have children.”

When “Traditional” Means Impoverished

San Martin and other remote villages in these mountains have always been poor. People here live what is often called “a traditional way of life.” That means they’ve eked out a subsistence-level existence for hundreds of years, surviving on beans, tortillas and whatever they could pick or dig up from the land. Campesinos here have grown coffee for generations, and it’s pretty much the only cash crop that grows.

“The temperature and the land are good,” said Jose Garcia Lopez, who works at a Puebla coffee cooperative, “but it is too hilly. It is too difficult to cultivate and harvest anything else.”

Leonor Fernandez Allende, a regional director for CEPCO, tells me that the majority of campesinos have one to three hectares of land, or about two to eight acres, for growing.

Fifteen years ago, that coffee earned about $1.50 a pound, which Candido said was a good price. “I could live well,” he said. “At this price I could buy rice, bread, clothes, shoes.”

But when I arrived in Tenango, in 2003, coffee was selling for a little under 60 cents a pound. Candido pulled up a pant leg and continued, “Right now I cannot afford socks and do not have any. The clothes I have now were a gift. The shoes were a gift, too.”

Felipe Martinez Figueroa estimates that he grows about 1,000 pounds of coffee a year. He’ll earn about 600 pesos (about $60) a month, he said.

That’s only about a fifth of what a local peasant needs for basic sustenance, according to Fernandez Allende. “A campesino needs about 30,000 pesos ($3,000) a year to live,” she said. “To live without hunger, about 80,000 pesos ($8,000).”

Very few campesinos live without hunger. The Instituto Maya, an organization that studies rural issues, estimates that 81 percent of rural dwellers are “extremely poor,” defined as earning less than $2 a day. “People cannot afford meat, medicine or milk,” Garcia-Lopez said.

Virtually all campesinos grow the basic staples of corn and beans for home use, but often can’t produce enough to last an entire year. In previous years, when their supplies ran out, they would buy more food. It’s different now. “We can’t feed our families, our children,” said one, Francisco Martin Julian.

In spite of the poverty and the food shortage, every family I stayed with or visited insisted I eat with them. They have two meals a day, usually beans and tortillas made fresh daily (the best tortillas I’ve ever had). Breakfast was whatever was left over from dinner the night before.

While I didn’t see any large-scale starvation in the villages, I did see several elderly people who were, I’m certain, starving. They had the hollow cheeks, thin limbs and vacant eyes that until this trip I’d only seen in photographs. The children were all small for their ages, and most people I met seemed malnourished. “I have only enough to eat so I do not die,” said Candido. At one point I jokingly asked Candido if he had a car. “I do not have a car,” he replied. “I am a campesino. I have a machete.”

Most of the coffee in these villages is organic and shade-grown. Weeds are cut with a machete. The coffee ripens between November and March, and the beans are collected in small baskets that hang around a picker’s neck. During the harvest, the weather is unrelentingly hot and humid. Sweat poured down my face as I photographed, and I had to stop after every couple of shots to wipe my glasses.

Campesinos also face a number of diseases. I was feeling cocky as mosquitoes buzzed around me, because I had anti-malaria pills. My cockiness quickly faded when I saw warning posters for dengue fever (also carried by mosquitoes and sometimes fatal), cholera and tuberculosis. There were also snakes. I learned about them when one was killed under a woodpile in a woman’s house.

“Is it poisonous?” I asked apprehensively.

“Yes,” she replied. “Very.”

The room I was sleeping in had a large pile of dried corn. I made sure to keep my distance.

Once dried, coffee beans must be hauled to Tenango. Abelardo is fortunate to own a mule, worth about $300. He loads his coffee on the mule and walks with it to Tenango. Felipe isn’t so fortunate. “I do not have a mule,” he said, “I cannot afford one, so I have to carry the coffee. It is a difficult trip. It takes me six or seven hours with a load of 30 to 35 kilos (about 70 pounds). I return the same day and bring more coffee the next day.”

To supplement their income, people sell whatever else they can. “We grow some beans and corn,” said Felipe, “but mostly to eat. When there is enough, we sell it.”

Beans sell for about $1 a kilo; corn for the equivalent of 20 cents. That means that Felipe carries a 70-pound sack of corn six hours to Tenango to make about $6. Candido also sells tangerines. Once I saw him on market day and he was particularly happy.”I have sold all my tangerines,” he said. He’d carried a 40-pound sack of tangerines for 3 1/2 hours, and earned slightly less than $2.

Abandoning the Countryside

Most people work part of the year away from their homes. Felipe works two or three months a year in Puebla. “I work in grocery stores, fruit stores, selling clothes, anything,” he said. “I can earn 1,000 pesos a month there. Here, I am lucky to earn 600 pesos when there is work.”

Candido’s two sons work in Mexico City most of the year now. “We did not have enough to eat,” he said. “They sell tacos and tortas on the street, 10 hours a day, and make 40 or 50 pesos a day. In one month they will return to help with the harvest.”

Facing a combination of brutal work, extreme poverty and hunger, it’s no wonder more and more people leave. “It is difficult to survive in the countryside,” said one campesino. “This is why people are leaving for Mexico (City) and the U.S. Many young men are leaving. Some return, but if they have found work elsewhere, they do not return.”

I was told that I would find very few young men in the villages. It’s not something I’m sure I would’ve picked up on right away if I hadn’t been looking for it. There are children, women and the elderly, but very few men between 15 and 35 years old.

Most of the young men I did see were disabled or drunk. Instituto Maya says the mass outmigration from the countryside has created “an indigenous diaspora.” It contends that, since the late 1980s, Mexico has lost almost 2 million agricultural jobs, and 15 percent of its rural population.

Fair trade organizations like CEPCO try to stave off disaster. Fair trade, which pays a higher rate for rural products, can double campesino incomes. These groups also offer programs designed to lift local workers out of poverty. But campesinos still lack sufficient markets, and often face severe opposition in Mexico.

When I was interviewing Mexican farm workers in and around my home in Rochester, I saw them living under difficult conditions. The work they do–planting, weeding, picking fruits and vegetables–is virtually all done by hand, in all kinds of weather. They live in overcrowded apartments, rundown houses and sometimes in cars or under trees. By U.S. standards, they earn very little money. If they’re here illegally, they live in almost constant fear that the immigration authorities will find them. But they almost never complained.

After my three weeks in their mountain villages, I better understood why. One local farmer told me: “Their lives are so much better here. They’re glad for the work.”

Yes, their lives are so much better in the United States — but only because life back home in their villages is so much worse.

Every year my family tries to find the time to take a vacation, just kick back and get away from the stress of school or, in my Dad’s case, work. Usually we go to Isabela, a beachside town on the other side of the island. Isabela is two hours from our home in Humacao, a small town on the east coast, about 45 minutes southeast of San Juan. This vacation was our first real time together since my sister went away to college, and my last opportunity to be with Mom and Dad before going to college in the U.S.

We pulled into the parador Villas del Mar Hau, where we were staying, the gravel crackling under the tires of my Dad’s Sequoia. A line of colorful cabins that decorated the shore of Montones beach immediately came into view, finishing off on the west end of the beach with a seaside restaurant. The car doors swung open and we hopped out taking in the sounds of the oceans. “Finally,” Dad said, more to himself than us.

This was me and my sister’s first time staying at Villas del Mar Hau. My parents had been there before, and the way Mom tells it, Dad fell in love with the parador the first time he laid eyes on it. It’s been his getaway ever since.

Mom checked us in and we made our way to our cabin. Along the way were tennis courts, a mini gym, a pool and a basketball and volleyball court. The cabins faced the sea and behind them was a large green field that eventually grew into a hillside forest. The soft chatter of families and couples in their cabins and on the beach could be heard drifting through the area, giving the place a familial, calm atmosphere.

Our cabin was blue. It sat four cabins away from the restaurant, Olas y Arena, and had two bedrooms, a living room with a television set, a kitchen and a front porch.

My sister, Lourdes, collapsed onto the hammock on the porch and said: “I’m ready to work on my tan.”

“I want to check out the waves,” I said plopping down on a beach chair. Mom walked over to Dad and took hold of his hand. “And we are ready to take a walk and do some snorkeling?” she asked.

As my sister wanted, we hit the beach first. We decided on Jobos, Isabela’s most popular beach and our favorite, just beyond Montones. I ran and jumped down the beach, splashing and often falling, while my dad stopped every five seconds to pick up and examine a shell he would then stuff into his pocket. Mom took pictures and Lourdes sang along with her iPod, her voice drowned out by the crashing of the waves.

Fifteen minutes into our walk, we reached a big rock that separates Jobos from Montones. It was massive with crevices and small pools of water left there by monstrous waves long gone.

“Hey guys, come here, look at this!” Lourdes yelled out from ahead. She was looking at a gaping hole that led down into the water. It was like a blowhole, the walls of which were jagged and sharp.

“Step back, you’re too close!” my dad said from behind us. “Take a picture, dad,” Lourdes said, offering up the camera. “Step back first,” Dad responded. Lourdes rolled her eyes and took a step away. The wind was strong and the currents rough, causing the waves to explode with a boom in the well. Every time a wave crashed, a spray of salty seawater bathed our faces.

Dad was right: it was best not to mess with this particular hole. It could be a death trap.

The hole, our dad told us, is called El Pozo de Jacinto. Legend says that a young farmer named Jacinto used to tend to other people’s cows on the greens near the beaches here. One day Jacinto was walking with one of the cows, which he had tied to his arm, when the cow was startled, and began to run uncontrollably. Frenzied, it fell into the well, taking Jacinto with her and costing them both their lives.

The next day the owner of the cow went in search of Jacinto and the missing cow, yelling,”Jacinto bring me the cow!” Every time he called out, the water in the well stirred, and crashed furiously against the rocks. It is said that, today, if you stand near the well and call out: “Jacinto, bring me the cow!” the waters below will still stir and crash menacingly.

“Jacinto, bring me the cow!” I screamed into the well. The water thrashed in the hole, making me jump back a bit. “Cool,” thought, even though the water had been thrashing all along.

The beach was packed with families and friends. Coolers, towels and umbrellas of various bright colors decorated the sand. The shrieks and laughter of children mixed with the music coming from the bar, not far from the rock we were standing on. I smiled and walked on, leading my family. The smell of traditional Puerto Rican fried foods from the kiosks made my mouth water as we skipped awkwardly across the burning sand.

We picked a spot near an American family emitting a very strong Coppertone smell, and laid out our towels.
“Put sunscreen on,” Mom ordered, taking a bottle out of her bag. Lourdes and I whined, but gave in and let Mom cover us in the white gunk.”Do have any white anywhere?” Lourdes asked worriedly.

“No, you’re clear. Me?”

You’re good,” she said stretching out on her towel.
The sun was beating down mercilessly, blanketing everyone with its scorching rays. Thankfully, the breeze provided a slight relief from the humidity and heat. Swiping a droplet of sweat from my brow, I noticed the waves were not half bad: a good five to eight feet, big enough for fun but not big enough to terrify me.

There hadn’t been enough space in the car to allow me to bring my trusted board along on our trip, so my dad walked with me to a surf shop, where I was able to rent a nice 6′10 board for the day.

“Thanks Dad,” I said carrying the board out of the shop.

“No problem, my pleasure. Just be careful out there. Watch the current and the other surfers.”

“I will, Dad. You think Mom will watch me this time?”

Dad put an arm around my shoulder and laughed.”Mom gets nervous when you’re out there. Afraid something is going to happen to you.”

My head dropped. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to stress you guys out. I’m fine out there though - swimmer, remember?”

“Liz you could be a lifeguard, marine, sailor, whatever, and your Mom would still worry.”

I looked up and smiled at my Dad.

Mom was already reapplying sunblock when we got back. “Be careful please, don’t go out too far,” she said offering up the sunscreen.

“Are you going to watch me?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“I’m going to go snorkeling with Dad. “I’ll keep an eye out though,” she said, then stood up and gave me a hug.

After I waxed my board and stretched a bit, I strapped myself to the board and paddled out. New beaches are slightly terrifying for me to surf because, not being local, I am always a likely candidate for hazing. I shook the horrifying thoughts of defensive locals out of my head and paddled on. Once in the line-up (where surfers wait for waves), a young local of about 18 paddled over to me and struck up a conversation. His name was Asriel and, luckily for my 17-year-old self, a very attractive young man, with emerald green eyes, tanned skin and a killer smile.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

Was it that obvious that I wasn’t a local?

“Humacao,” I answered, trying not to look intimidated. Humacao is’t the most exciting town in Puerto Rico.
“That’s a long way to travel for a decent set of waves,” he said chuckling, causing his abs to tighten and my eyes to widen. Asriel stayed with me the rest of the time I was in the water. He advised me on what waves to take, and sometimes even cleared them of other surfers. I’d definitely lucked out as far as locals go.

After two hours in the water, my mouth raw from the taste of salt, I was thirsty, and my tummy was beginning to rumble. Mom and Dad, who had been snorkeling, were also ready to get their grub on. We went home and got the car so we could more efficiently scout the town for eating establishments. Available for everyone’s eating pleasure were a number of restaurants and shacks, all of which served traditional Puerto Rican food: fried codfish, fried plantains, rice and beans, pork, seafood salads and seafood turnovers. Dad’s eye, however, was caught by a cheerful sign that read Happy Belly’s Sports Bar and Grill, a casual seaside restaurant overlooking the Jobos coastline. True to its name, the service was friendly and efficient, and the menu boasted a variety of delicious meals that, to my father’s satisfaction, didn’t break the bank. They served everything from ethnic dishes to the more common burgers and fries. I decided on mofongo relleno, or mashed plantains with seafood.

“I sure am going to miss this when I go to college,” I said taking in the sight and smell of the food in front of me. “We’ll have a buffet ready for you when come back on break,” Mom said forcing a smile.

I knew it was going to be harder for Mom to deal with my leaving than it would be for me.

I savored every single bite of that mofongo, each one bringing my departure closer.

“Are you ok?” Lourdes asked, putting down her fork.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied.

My slow eating gave me away; usually I’m done ten minutes before everyone else.

“Comon, I’m almost done, and you’re barely halfway,” she said pointing at my mofongo.

“College,” I mouthed attempting to look untroubled. She winked and dropped the conversation.

“What’s going on? Dad asked. “She’s just tired from the surf, Lourdes responded casually. I smiled at Dad, confirming the response.

We left completely satisfied, and stuffed beyond belief. Wiped from a day of surfing, Lourdes from a rigorous tanning session and Mom and Dad from snorkeling, we decided to stay in for the night.

Our evening entertainment consisted of watching the day darken into night. Our front porch proved the perfect viewing area. Mom and Dad sat side by side in each other’s arms, while Lourdes and I popped a squat on the beach chairs. The sky was a dazzling canvas smeared with a combination of pinks and purples, changing tones and shade every few minutes, as the sun descended into the sea.

“I see a bunny,” Lourdes said pointing at the sky. I love that game. I hadn ‘t played it in a very long time.

“Fish with a top hat,” I said, pointing in a different direction.

“I think I actually see that too,” Lourdes said laughing.

“Flower,” Mom said, followed by Dad’s “Evil cow.”

We all laughed and played until the color was drained from the sky.

Once our full tummies from lunch deflated, we were ready for dinner. Most of the same restaurants were open for dinner, but since we were all tired, we decided to give Olas y Arena, the parador’s restaurant, a try. A variety of wine made Mom and Dad’s evening complete, while their selection of cocktails put Lourdes and me at ease. My sister ordered her favorite cocktail, a Mojito, and I ordered mine, a Cuba Libre (Bacardi Rum and Coke with a lime slice). Lourdes argued that Mojitos are the better choice, perhaps with a salad and grilled mahi-mahi, but I begged to differ. I said a Cuba Libre and some fried calamari were always the way to go.

“Do you want some of my fried deliciousness?” I asked Lourdes, waving some calamari in her face.

“That is so fattening,” she said, following it with her eyes. “But what the hell,” she said, grabbing my wrist and snatching the squid of my fork.

“We are on vacation, we are allowed to splurge,” I said forking some more calamari.

“You guys are still young, enjoy it while you are,” Mom said. “Just always remember to exercise so you stay healthy,” she added, lifting an instructive finger.

“Remember to eat well while you’re gone,” Dad said seriously. “Kids forget to eat well, with studying and all,” he continued, focusing on his food.

“I won’t, I love food too much,” I said, trying to lighten my Dad’s sudden seriousness.

“So how are everyone’s drinks? Mom said, catching my hint.

“Delicious!” Lourdes said raising her glass.

Our meal again left us pregnant with a food baby. We walked back to our cabin and sat around talking about everything and anything before turning in. Mom and Dad were the first to go, leaving me and Lourdes to enjoy the night.

“Were you excited to go to Texas?” I asked, swaying in the hammock. “Oh yeah, finally on my own,” she said, lying back in a beach chair.

“You don’t miss Mom and Dad?”

“Yeah, I do, but it’s nice to get out, you know.”

“I feel bad that I’m so excited.”

“Don’t feel bad, it’s normal. I mean, you’re going to college! Lourdes leaned over and punched my shoulder.

“Yeah, they’re going to be all alone, though.”
“Make sure you call all the time, don’t waste your time out there, and they’ll be happy.”

“I guess,” I said, pushing off the wall.
We sat in silence for a while until the coming and going of the waves lulled us slowly to the point where dreams and reality are inseparable.

The next morning I awoke very early, at about 6. Lourdes was still asleep. I tip-toed out of the room. After making a pit stop in the bathroom and seeing my disheveled hair, I stumbled out to the living room. The door was open; only the screen door stood between me and the outside world. I assumed Mom and Dad, always the early birds, were out walking on the beach. The sun, just having come out of a late night’s sleep itself, was lightly covering the beach in a soft golden light. I pushed open the screen door and plopped down on the hammock. The gentle breeze slowly helped me out of my drowsiness while I took in the view.

Just as I was about to scan the kitchen for breakfast, Mom and Dad arrived.

“You hungry?” Mom asked, grabbing my chin and kissing my forehead. Dad stood on the last step of the porch, taking in the other side of the island not many people care to explore. He took a deep breath, turned to face me and smiled.

“Yeah, lets eat,” I said, walking over to my Dad and putting my arms around him.

It seemed as if Little Lhasa, as Indians call this seat of the Tibetan government in exile, was lost, drowned out by dreadlocks and the stench of infrequent showering. For the transient/resident population of hippies, Israelis, and Israeli hippies, the fact of the Dalai Lama’s residence here in McLeod Ganj was a sideshow to the arts of holistic healing and yoga.

As we began our two and a half journey into the mountains, on snake-like, lightless roads, our driver, Mr. Joshi, pulled over for a steaming cup of spiced chai.

“People, who, you know!” He raised his eyebrows and imitated the motion of puffing a joint, then broke down laughing.

But I was glad to be there. I rolled down the windows, breathing clean, crisp air for probably the first time in the seven months I’d been working in India. In the night, the moon shone and reflected light off the snow-capped peak of Hanuman Ka Tibba, the highest in the Dhauladhar Range.

Travelers come here to Dharamsala visit Buddha Hall, the holistic healing center and hostel where we stayed. Buddha Hall was owned by a transplanted Indian woman named Usha, a friend of a friend. Most of the summer the hostel is booked with travelers who wake at sunrise for yoga on the roof, and learn hypnotherapy and crystal healing. Some stay for months on end. The hot water runs out at 10 a.m., and in the evening the sounds of casual guitar strumming prick the hallways.

My travel companions Bryan and Brian and I have come to see the Buddhist temples. Like everyone else, we also hope to sneak a peek at the Dalai Lama (every once in a while, a lucky visitor is granted an audience).

In March 1959, when Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled over the Himalayas and into India after the failed Tibetan uprising against the Chinese, the Indian government offered him refuge in this region. A year later, he established the Tibetan government-in-exile on these snowy slopes. He still lives a few minutes walk down the mountain.

McLeod Ganj is cold for much of the year, the air noticeably thinner, allowing the relocated Tibetan population to continue many traditional practices. In May the temperature was often a scant 55 degrees F (compared to an average of 110 degrees in New Delhi). The snowline is just a two-day hike away.

India is home to a diaspora of some 100,000 Tibetans, with more fleeing by foot across the treacherous peaks of the Himalayas every year. But I had lived in New Delhi for nearly five months before I met any Tibetan. In the city, many live in Majnu Ka Tila, near the decrepit Yamuna River. There are few reasons for Delhiites to visit the area, unless they’re studying at the leftist Delhi University nearby, or living in Delhi’s Tibetan refugee camp.

Unfathomly, Majnu Ka Tila is free from the noise, dirt and smells that even the nicest Indian establishments fail to keep out, and it became my sanctuary from the insanity of daily Delhi. It was easier to breathe, and none of the infamous Indian beggars harassed me for change.

Maybe that’s why I came to like Tibetan culture best, of all the ethnic Indian cultures I learned about. Seeking a better understanding (and momos, the amazing Tibetan dumplings), Bryan, Brian and I ascended into the Himalayas to experience the epicenter of Tibetan culture.

I was disappointed. I had expected a certain amount of dreadlocks and Free Tibet movement T-shirts that became so popular in the 1990s. But Western ’70s culture seemed to dominate the town: outside the confines of the understated Buddhist monastery complex, housing the Dalai Lama’s temple and most of the important Tibetan government offices, it was as if the ’70s had never died.

Sitting in on the stoop of the Tibetan Museum, a Tibetan institution plastered with photographs of a young, bespectacled Dalai Lama making his way over the Himalayas and plastic-encased, blood-soaked garments of Tibetan protestors injured in riots, I wondered how it was possible that a few alleyways in the bustling general chaos of Delhi seemed more authentically Tibetan than the neighborhood where the Dalai Lama himself lived and worked.

Inside the serene monastery were quite a few Nikon-wielding tourists, to be sure, but the fluorescent flyers for yoga classes and film screenings kept a fair distance from the Free Tibet stickers around the monastery. All signs of the Tibetan resistance: the brightly-colored Buddhist prayer flags, the monks in draped in burgundy robes — were confined to the monastery area.

On one side of town, every afternoon, monks engaged in lively debates about the texts and teachings of Buddhism, energetically clapping each time an opponent made a point.

On the other, twenty-somethings learned tarot reading and smoked out, or picnicked along the mountain trails, above the streams where monks came to clear their heads and take a dip.

As we walked along the steep, trinket-cluttered roads of Bhagsu, a tatty tourist enclave a quarter mile down the road from McLeod Ganj, a young man in cutoffs and a fraying wife beater addressed me in Hebrew and handed me a flier.

I stared at the flier, and then at him. Puzzled, he tried again in English: “Jam session tonight at Cafe Haifa. Come?”

This sort of thing was happening every day.

The man was one of hundreds of young Israelis, fresh from military service, staying here in the warmer months of the Himalayan summer.

After four days in the Himalayas I’d eaten the best falafel since my travels in the Middle East. The Indian populations of the area all speak, read, and write Hebrew, and local establishments have names like Hotel Zion and Cafe Haifa. We’d long before given up looking for momos or thukpa, a Tibetan spicy noodle soup.

Eclectic backpacker culture peppers many of the Himalayas’ hill stations. Backpackers go Manali to hike, or Rishakesh, where the Beatles first met their guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yog. They infuse the local communities with hemp and granola.

The Tibetans have surely added to the colorful, rich cultural life in Dharamasala, expanding the calendar of Indian festivals with events like Losar (Tibetan New Year), and the Dalai Lama’s birthday, celebrated on July 6 with much pomp. But here, tourist culture overshadowed what we’d come to experience.

On our last evening, as an Indian cafe waiter explained the Israeli dish shakshouka to me (apparently, eggs in tomato sauce), Bryan struggled to play chess with a silent bearded Israeli and speakers pulsed ambiguous-sounding rock music. The notes drifted out into the night, assaulting the serene quiet of the imposing white ridges above.

Learn more

Regional music
Tibetan throat singing
Tibetan language
The Tibet Railway
Dharamsala info

Bannister, a Calgary, Canada, industrial and travel photographer, spent several weeks in Villa in the winter of 2007, teaching photography to local children as part of a volunteer service for an NGO, and shooting his own work as well.

The neighborhood was born in 1971, when some 200 impoverished families “invaded” a tract of empty land on the edge of Lima. Cecilia Blondet chronicled those events in a chapter in The Peru Reader. Word of the invasion spread, and within two days, another 9,000 families had rushed to join them. A standoff between the military government of Gen. Juan Velasco and the settlers ensued.

Upper class Lima residents “with terror watched the fulfillment of their own prophesy: the poor, the mountain hicks, the resentful and angry cholos were taking their city, and were at the point of invading their very homes,” Blondet wrote.

But Velasco happened to be presiding, right then, over a development meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank in Lima. After several failed military attempts to evict the squatters, the government bowed to international pressure, and deeded the settlers a piece of desert-like scrub land nearby.

The settlers built the city themselves. Nearly 400,000 people live there today. About a third of Lima’s people - some 2 million residents - live in such informal settlements.

Bannister traversed the streets carrying $20,000 of camera equipment, but was never threatened or accosted. He was invited into houses, and to dinner. He met the mayor.

Most observers refer to Villa as a slum. It’s the largest and best-known of the shantytowns ringing Lima, collectively referred to as pueblos jovenes, or young villages. But to Bannister, Villa didn’t function in any unusual way.

“There are bakers and shoemakers and people selling coal,” he said. “Cabdrivers and babysitters. “It’s just like everywhere else.”

The foreign volunteers he worked with seemed to feel sorry for the impoverished residents. But Bannister detected other traits, such as a spirit of neighborly cooperation.

“I’d show up [at a schoolyard] and see kids playing foozball at the table at 7:30 a.m. Kids would volunteer their spot at table to other kids. A kid would cede his place! Fascinating.” – Mary D’Ambrosio

Find out more about Villa El Salvador

Villa El Salvador municipal website

Friends of Villa

Microlending efforts

A Villa Story

My family comes from Bryson City, about 10 miles from the Cherokee Reservation. Every year, I go back for our Decoration, on the second Sunday in June. It’s the family event that I look forward to more than any other.

If you’re looking for a mountain vacation spot, this is it. Bryson City is near Smoky Mountain National Park, Fontana Lake and the Blue Ridge Parkway, and has great fishing, biking and hiking. The town web site calls it “one of the best whitewater paddling towns.”

But I don’t know about that, because we never did any paddling. We tubed down Deep Creek, and went home with bruised butts.

Above town are roads that take you into the mountains. These roads are not for the faint of heart. Veer a little to the left, and you run into the mountainside. Veer a little to the right, and you plunge down the mountain. So go slowly; you’ll live longer. And unless you’re the driver, close your eyes.

Family in the Holler

Driving up, you’ll see lots of branch roads heading up small valleys or sunken areas. These are the hollers. (I know the word is spelled “hollow” but nobody I ever met in the state of North Carolina pronounces it like that. “Hollow” sounds like a place in New England).

My grandparents, Will and Edna Jane, lived in one of these hollers.
The next holler over belonged to Will’s brother. I think of their
addresses as “Will Howard Holler” and “Tooge Howard Holler.”

I remember days of sitting on the steps, listening to them jaw on about one thing or another. They never tried to be funny; in fact I think they were trying for “crotchety” (they achieved that too). But they never failed to amuse me. Those two old men could spin stories that would leave us in tears.

Once I spent an afternoon with Will at Christmas. He made me help slop the hogs. If you’re wondering … I don’t ever need to repeat that experience. I just marked it off my “gotta do before I die” list. He also made fun of my city ways, and my weak stomach. But my aunt told me later that he’d said about me that “she’s got some sense to her.”

The man didn’t give out too many compliments, so I wrote that down.

For Decoration weekend, my family members come from far and wide. We hang out in the holler for dinner on Saturday night and catch up. And we tell each other stories, each embellished to be funnier than the last time we told it.

We spend the night in one of the little motels along the river between Cherokee and Bryson, not in the nice B&Bs in town the tourists use. Then on Sunday morning, we head up to the cemetery.

Flowers Shaped Like Elvis’ Head

Church is generally suspended for the day, as the preacher and much of
the flock is down at the graveyard. Folks bring trunkloads of fake
flowers and wreaths. A few might bring live plants and flowers, but
the fake ones last longer. Most of these flowers are stuck straight into the ground.

My favorites are wreaths in unusual shapes. You just can’t beat a wreath of plastic flowers shaped like a guitar, or the head of Elvis.

My sister and I wander around meeting folks we almost remember.

As I age, I’m amazed at how alike we all look. And yet, people still pick me out as someone who “belongs” to my dad or grandmother.

During the wandering and socializing, we are all sticking the flowers into the dirt around the graves.

Feeling the Connection

The preaching starts at 10 a.m., under the big oak tree in the
middle of the graveyard.

I could call it a sermon, but that word doesn’t feel right. Catholics have masses; Lutherans and Methodists have sermons; we Baptists have preaching.? There is always a small group there to sing some hymns, accompanied by guitar.

Our graveyard was started in the late 1800s by my great great great grandfather Abraham Wiggins. His wife in died mid-winter, and he
could not get her body down the mountain for a burial. So he buried
her by the Laurel Branch Baptist Church, where he was the preacher.

That was the beginning of the Laurel Branch Cemetery.

Even when I was a little girl, my dad dragged me from grave to grave, telling me something about each resident.

Sometimes, it was the person’s history or lineage. Sometimes
it was a story that had been passed down about him. But he always
made sure we realized this was person once, not just a name
on a tombstone.

Now at least seven generations are buried at Laurel Branch.

Will and Edna Jane are here. Will chose their spot at the top edge of the graveyard. He told me once that being at the top put him closer to heaven, and let him look down on everyone else.

He could have been kidding but, knowing his personality, I wouldn’t bet on it.

As a child, I would get very bored about an hour in to Decoration.? As
an adult, I want it to last all week.

Two things always strike me. One, I feel connected. There’s just something about spending time with a few hundred people (living and dead) who share your DNA.

Two, there’s the beauty of the place. Trees that are hundreds of years old shoot straight up into the sky. There are lakes and rivers and streams that haven’t met pollution yet, and views that in other places would cost millions.

Not a bad place to spend eternity.

Demmae Wiggins is a writer who lives in Dunedin, Florida.

I am teaching English at Sichuan University for the summer. It’s my first trip to China, and what I’m feeling is sensory overload.

Young Chengdu women step daintily over the ubiquitous spit scattered across the ground as they clutch parasols to protect their milky complexions from tanning. In East Asia, whiteness is next to godliness, at least for the ladies. Not one native eye widens as bare-bottomed children pee in the middle of the busiest downtown street. A tour guide on a later trip explained that Chinese parents dress their children in these crotchless pants for easy relief.

The lack of personal space is daunting at first, as is the dearth of Western-style toilets. In the English teachers’ dormitories where I stay, the toilets are squat-style holes in the ground, and the showers are directly above the toilets. After losing few bars of soap down the toilet, I soon get over my awkwardness, then am humbled by visits to some of my students’ homes. In one apartment, the toilet is in the kitchen, right next the stove.

Sichuan is famous for its giant pandas and for its spicy food. One of better-known dishes of the region is Sichuan hot-pot. To welcome the summer English teachers, two of the program coordinators, both Chengdu residents, generously treat us to dinner at a hot-pot restaurant. Each table holds two inset bowls full of scalding, pepper-red soup brought to a boil with the twist of a knob. The fiery broth is not replaced for each new customer, but sits in the bowl all day to be repeatedly reheated.

Long tables heavy with raw tripe, tendons and unidentifiable meats and vegetables flank the restaurant?s walls, waiting to be cooked in the bowls at the table. At one end of a table, dozens of people line up to pile their plates with little burgundy-colored hunks of meat. Moving closer, I see they are sauce-covered rabbit heads, with eyeballs and spiky teeth still intact. The program coordinators say that the rabbit heads are a delicacy, and they both dig in. None of us English teachers are adventurous enough to try them. The hum of eating and conversation is periodically punctuated with the sound of people hocking spit onto the floor.

After about a week of ultra-spicy meals, blisters form inside and around my mouth, and my stomach is a mess. It hurts to smile, speak or eat. I am taken to Sichuan University’s hospital. The place seems eerily empty, quiet and in desperate need of a good scrub. Drops of what look like dried blood are speckled across the floor on the way to the doctor’s office. The doctor is a plump, middle-aged woman. After a brief examination, she says that because of the spicy food, my foreign constitution and the humid weather, my body has shang huo. Literally translated, that means “on fire.” She prescribes a few mysterious medications that work immediately.

Many of our Chinese students have misconceptions about the United States. One young boy insists that every American home has a swimming pool. Another adult student cannot believe that the bicycle is not the main mode of transportation.

Later in the summer, during a trip to Chengdu Panda Research Center, one of the English teachers is excited to learn that for about $10, foreigners can buy the photo op of a lifetime. Squirming baby pandas are placed beside delighted visitors; then the camera flashes go off.

When it?s my turn, severe-looking handlers bring a panda out of an open-air pen and roughly slam him down on the bench. I reach over to lightly touch his wiggling body. For a moment, he is still.

On our last trip of the summer, we go to visit the temples and monasteries of Emei Mountain. The name Emei refers to eyebrows and, from afar, the two gentle peaks do resemble the lines of elegantly arched brows. We need to take a long, early-morning bus ride. As the bus climbs through the amethyst dawn, the stinging breeze rubs my face. Passengers bounce hard against cracked and fading vinyl seats.

Along the roadside lie broken bowls, perhaps remnants of hurried meals eaten while waiting to be driven up or carried on the bent back of a stranger. With each turn, I am afraid the bus will fly off the mountain. A light rain comes through an open window, and begins to powder my arm.

The bus winds further up the road, like a tiny figurine of metal and flesh. Almost there.

“But I really gravitate towards people first,” she said. (Her master’s is in cultural studies.)

Here Grossman captures the emotions of rural Mexicans as they go about their daily lives: butchering meat, selling flowers, weaving, competing with neighbors, waiting for the bus. - The Editors

Picture this: 225 human beings from 20 countries, wrapped from head to toe in anything that would cover them, looking more like mummies than runners, impatiently pacing in the 120 degree heat.

The organization is all very Spartan; things are run almost like a Foreign Legion campaign.

What?

At the starting line in the small town of Ouarzazate, in southern Morocco, hellishly hot sand blows in my face, but I take it with a shrug. It’s about 110 degrees.

Is it normal to subject one’s body to such extremes? That’s one thing I’m here to find out. We’re going to run 151 miles, over six days.

After 20 years of playing a weekly tennis game together, my partner, a coworker who was a runner, suggested I try running in a marathon. So at age 47, I ran my first marathon in Long Beach, California. Without any training, I finished in 4:05 hours.

I was hooked. Over the past 20 years I have run about 125 ultra marathons — long, multi-day runs, often under severe conditions — on all seven continents, and most of the world’s highest, lowest, northern and southern-most foot races. I’ve run the Mt. Everest Marathon in Nepal, the Mt. Kinabalu Climathon on Borneo, the inaugural Antarctica Marathon, the Comrades 87 k in South Africa, the Inca Trail run in Peru, and the Havana Marathon in Cuba.

Ultra running isn’t cutthroat competitive, and the top performers don’t hold themselves snobbishly apart. That’s likely because there’s rarely any prize money at stake. There is a camaraderie among competitors.
As we wait at the starting line, I hear the French version of the race rules taking about 15 minutes, the English only five. I wonder what they are not telling us.

Then there’s dead silence, as race director Patrick Bauer steps up with a pistol in his hand and, on the count of three, fires a shot, signaling the start of an adventure race most people would say is crazy to even attempt.

Rocky Desert Turf

To have any chance of winning this six-day adventure race, the faster runners and favorites take off like rabbits, while slower, and really slow, runners (like me) trot along in the soft sand, backpacks bouncing.

The first day is supposed to be a little easier — it’s only nine miles — but gives us a taste of what lies ahead.

Most people believe that the desert is mostly sand, which is a misnomer, as many deserts have large areas of ERG, an area of rock-hard underground with stones and rocks of all shapes and sizes. Walking up a dune, no matter how small, is a challenge. It’s like walking in quicksand, taking two steps up and sliding one back down, not to mention the powder-like fine sand that gets into your shoes and socks, rubbing against your skin. Once reaching the top of the first dune I just drop to the ground, trying to catch my breath.

About eight months before this race I severed my hamstring, which relegated me to walking the entire distance. But I am confident I can make the daily cutoffs because I am a strong walker.

Oops

The first night at the camp looked more like an open-air first aid field unit, as many runners showed first signs of rashes, blisters and other ailments. Bandages of all sizes, and ointments and creams were applied. Believing in preemptive treatment, I draped several bands of a large bandage over both shoulders to avoid any shaving from my backpack. I also had modified my backpack with extra cushioning, and wider and padded shoulder and waist straps.

Our quarters were open-sided Berber tents with a couple of layers of carpets laid over the hard and rocky underground. Trying to save weight, instead of a sleeping bag I brought a bivy bag, which had one major flaw; it behaved like plastic, making a racket every time I moved, driving my seven tent-mates crazy. And it retained all moisture, causing me to awake soaked in sweat the first couple of mornings.

This was a self-sufficient event, meaning we had to live with whatever we brought. As a way of training, I’d spent three weeks, four times a week, running and walking on the beach with a 25-pound backpack with snowshoes.

Did I look stupid? Several people who saw me said so, but it gave me an idea of what I was in for. Running for an hour on the beach is one thing; walking (or running, like most every other participant did) for days over sand dunes and rocky terrain with a 25 to 30-pound pack is another.

Follow suggestions in the race instructions, I brought a ton of dehydrated food, but after seeing the other runners’ packs, I left about half of it behind with the staff. Some runners wanted to travel as lightly as possible, and tried to survive on Power Bars and such. But such drastic measures were not for me.

In the morning, the Bedouins were rushing us to get our stuff off of their carpets, wanting to break down the tents. It was like being on a campground without a tent, with the whole world seeing what you are doing.

One morning as I was heating water for coffee and porridge, my small burner burned a hole into one of the Berber carpets. That really pissed the caretakers off, but no one finked on me — camaraderie, you know.

Each day got progressively more challenging, as the distances increased. The ground got harder, and the blisters started to form. The pack got more difficult to carry, making my shoulders sag. Fine sand crept inside my socks, rubbing against the skin, and the rock-strewn hard surface we walked or ran on add more blisters.

At night, the camp looked like an ER unit. People took off their shoes, exposing black & blue toes, shoulders that were rubbed raw, and blisters filled with blood.

But I did okay. My shoulders covered with tape held up, except they were sore from the weight, forcing me to invent new ways to carry a backpack, frontal, over the shoulder and even on my head. I pricked my blisters open with a needle (a sterilized needle — are you kidding?), drained it and covered it with moleskin and a good adhesive bandage. As time went on, the pain became more acute, and I added another layer of cushioning over the old one, not wanting to tear away any skin that remained.

One evening a surprise awaited us. As each runner trotted into camp, most of them hot, exhausted, weary and in pain, we were handed an ice-cold Coca Cola, compliments of the Moroccan military, who had flown in the drinks by helicopter. I am not religious, but someone was looking out for us indeed.

Body in the Sand

One day I was trotting along when the sky became dark, announcing an imminent sandstorm. All you can do is wrap yourself into a space blanket or whatever you brought, lay low and hope it stops before you are totally covered with powder fine sand. Eventually it became eerily quiet, and I peeled myself out of my blanket and cloth, as sand had gotten literally into every crevice of my body.

I saw none of the yellow plastic course markers and was totally lost, but kept walking along.

Soon I saw a form in the sand, which upon closer inspection turned out to be the body of another runner. I heard an animal-like grunt and saw a blistery burned face as he tried to turn over. He was totally exhausted, had no water and seemed near death — he could not talk. I gave him some water to drink and covered him with my space blanket, letting him know that I would summon help (yeah, right).

After walking for 20 minutes more I saw two young Bedouin boys. Not speaking any French, I just grabbed their hands and pulled them toward the fallen runner. Once they saw the battered body, they left, presumably for help.

An hour later I saw the eeriest sight of my life. First came a galloping camel on the crest of a sand dune, one of the two boys riding it. We tried to drape the runner over the camel’s saddle, but he kept falling off. Just then a jeep appeared on the horizon with the other boy, and two race officials. They shoved the runner into the jeep and took off.

Two hours later I arrived at the aid station, exhausted. The runner had an IV in each arm, and had recovered. He thanked me for saving his life.

Hero’s Welcome

After reaching the next aid station three hours later, I wanted to quit, but every excuse I came up with was answered with a solution. A race official walked with me to keep me company, and I was told that I could take all the time I needed to make up for the time I’d lost. When I arrived at the camp at 10 p.m., about 20 runners were lined up to give me a hero’s welcome. I thanked those who would not let me quit the night before. I was glad to still be in the race.

Each morning it got tougher. It was not a question of whether your feet will hurt, but more a matter of minimizing the pain. Walking with blisters the size of walnuts over terrain that is hard as cement is agony. You can feel the rocks pushing against your sore feet and blisters. But having come that far and with only two days to go, I wasn’t about to quit.

The toughest day — a 50-mile trek — was ahead. Walking on a dry lakebed, every step made crunching sounds, but with a full moon overhead it was an eerie but yet gratifying sense to be one with nature. Alone for miles with only a plastic flag every few miles in the wide-open Sahara is about as far away from civilization one can get. It leaves time for reflection.

The next night a German camera crew came into the tent asking if I was up for an impromptu interview. Naturally I was.

Finish Line

On the last morning, the camp looked like a Mash unit after a planeload of wounded soldiers had arrived. I saw bandages and beat-up body parts, but everyone was in high spirits for being so close to the finish. After a quick breakfast I was ready to hobble the last few miles past date palm trees, fields and back into Ouarzazate. With a couple of miles to go, I hooked up with three Moroccan runners who were singing and laughing. Four abreast we linked arms and kind of hopscotched for a few hundred yards.

The last mile I actually ran, not feeling any pain, while locals lined the street and cheered us on as if we were heroes. It was an emotional moment for me. Patrick Bauer greeted each of us at the finish line with a bear hug and a few friendly words, and hung medals around our necks.

Walking practically the entire race, I came in 175th, dead last. But I was happy, since 25 others had not finished at all.

Would I do it again? No. I have nothing to prove. I know what I am capable of. And this experience reinforced my image of the desert: that it isn’t a dead or desolate place, but can be full of life, if one takes the time to explore it on its own terms.

Jurgen Ankenbrand is a writer and photographer who lives in Southern California.

Although South Korea is anxious about its proximity to the North, it’s also used to it. For instance, it circulates an emergency number for reporting North Korean spies. (Some years ago, a South Korean fisherman noticed a North Korean submarine floating calmly down a river, dialed the number, and was given a $250,000 reward.)

The DMZ, a 150-mile long, 4-mile wide strip of disputed land between the two countries, is riddled with landmines and checkpoints. But the authorities have tried to make it appealing. So there’s an amusement park, and other tourist attractions.

I book a tour with a group of fellow English teachers; the drive from Seoul takes about an hour. We stop at Paju City, just south of the DMZ, where besides an amusement park, there are many Korean War-related sites. We find several monuments to the dead, including Freedom Bridge, where 13,000 POWs were released after armistice in 1953. The bridge is covered with mementos left by people touched by war, including from families separated by the border.

On Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving, part of the day is devoted to cleaning the graves of ancestors. For those unfortunate people whose ancestral graves are in North Korea and therefore inaccessible, Paju has erected an enormous urn as a substitute grave to tend.

The Paju Peace Bell is part monument for peace, part ghastly art installation. Tourists must pay to ring the enormous bell (signifying their desire for a unified Korea — it takes a least six people to ring it). A garish six-foot teardrop hangs from the back. A nearby is wall studded with rocks, drawn from battlefieds spanning human history. Rocks from Spanish-American War battlegrounds are embedded beside rocks from the site of the Peloponnesian war.

Life has a way of overtaking sites of death. It’s disconcerting to walk among monuments to the fallen and hear the happy screams and laughs of children on a carousel.

Panmunjeom, where the armistice that halted the Korean War was signed, has become a Korean Mayberry. If a book disappears from the local library, everyone knows who took it. There are few residents, each receiving a stipend from the Korean government for living there, and for acting as ambassadors for peace.

We roll past security checkpoints, showing our passports to South Korean soldiers, then over rivers and around hills. We aren’t allowed out of the bus, except in well-trodden areas, since the woods just off the road are studded with landmines. Despite the danger, we see families with children taking photos along the road. Perhaps they find the beauty of this area attractive; while the DMZ has been in dispute for more than 50 years, most stretches haven’t been disturbed in all that time. So the DMZ seems a throwback, from modernized Korea. It’s full of trees, animals and birds; there is talk of one day, after reunification, turning the place into a nature preserve.

We get our passports stamped at Dorasan Station, the last train station in South Korea before the North Korean border. This gleaming railway station, still under construction, is meant to one day link the two Koreas with the rest of the world. It will eventually be possible to take a train from Korea to Portugal. To Portugal, through Siberia and Paris! My stamp entitles me to free ride to North Korea once the station opens.

Crossing into North Korea, we stop in Kijong-dong village, where a North Korean soldier briefs us on what we may be able to see of the North, through binoculars. This included the world’s largest flagpole, bearing a North Korean flag. The South claims no one actually lives in Kijong-dong, beyond the 20 or so people caring for it, turning lights on and off at set times.

Stepping up to the binoculars, I see an impossibly large statue of Kim Il-Sung, father of current leader Kim Jong-Il - as well as small figures on motorbikes, kicking up dust. I am peering into North Korea, staring at North Koreans, but have no idea if I am looking at army personnel paid to make the village look inhabited, or at real denizens of a village. I take in the sweeping vistas of the mountains - the village is in a valley - then step back to allow others a glance at life in the North.

We’re taken to some narrow, dank North Korean tunnels the southerners have unearthed, and told they could allow some 20,000 North Korean troops to enter Seoul within hours. The South estimates that the North has dug over 20 such tunnels, only about a quarter of them discovered.

And we’re shown unconvincing propaganda films about the future of the DMZ, in which a laughing girl chases a butterfly over the former war zone, ignoring the reality of the landmines that will undoubtedly linger underfoot long after any peace is achieved.

Getting to Korea’s DMZ
Many Seoul-based companies offer DMZ tours, most making the same stops: at Paju City, Panmunjeom, an Army base, and the North Korean tunnels. We used the Panmunjeom Travel Center http://koreadmztour.com/english/main.html Seoul City, Chung-Gu, Sogong-dong, Lotte Hotel 6nd floor (Main Bldg) Tel: 02-771-5593 x5; Fax: 02-771-5596.

We were in the mountain village of Paramin, north of Trinadad’s capital, Port of Spain. Paramin’s 4,000 or so inhabitants have Spanish roots, and speak a patois dialect based on French.

The waiting crowd gathered on the slope and the village square parted to make way for the Paramin Blue Devils, who swirled, leapt and shrieked, jabbing the air with pitchforks, machetes, long sticks and other farm tools. They opened their mouths wide, exposing their crimson red tongues.

Four young boys and a plump adult, swishing a kind of long-grass contraption, swarmed toward us, with rhythmic shrieks that kept beat with the biscuit tin-drums, or pans, as they were called, and the plastic whistles of their strange orchestra.

Humoring them by shaking my hips to the music, and waving
my hands gleefully, did not help. The shrieks became louder, and
the young ones sprang against the fence like spider-gremlins and
slithered up, jabbing their fingers at us. Another scampered from the
side and danced before us, a frenzied zombie. He too jabbed his finger. Now what were we being accused of? It struck me then that this jabbing in the air meant they wanted Trinidadian dollars from us.

I cursed myself for leaving behind my wallet of foreign currency.

I lowered my camera, and gazed with unfazed sphinx-like steadiness at the gyrating beings in front of me. It worked. They retreated, leaving fragments of a blue-rimmed surreal behind. For they were not really in pantomime — but in true character that resonated through the ages and the drumbeats of the past.

There is in each of us a mystic fascination for the raw, primal carnal energy and its mesmeric tribal rhythm and dance. It takes us in its flood, and swells your soul with an ancient call. The whole expression of the parade is rooted in a culture based primarily on oral history and tradition. The blue devils are a form of “jab-jab” as they are called, and are part of the pre-Lenten rituals and festivity.

That very morning, close to sunrise, I had experienced the j’ouvert, or opening day, of the pre-Lenten Carnival, in Port of Spain. Participants caked with mud, ash, black grease paint or ghostly white colors had paraded down the main streets, dancing or wining (a very suggestive dance in which two people or more gyrate together back-to-back, or front-to-back, swiveling and grinding their hips). Their attires were a mishmash of flaming colored wigs, strange headgear and the masks of devils or beasts.

The widely-held belief here is that the jab dance dates back to the days of slavery. In the 1770s, the French overlords celebrated Carnival with flamboyant masks and costumes, as a last fling before the penitence and abstinence of Lent. The slaves held separate dances in their yards and barracks.

With the abolition of slavery in 1838, there was an unleashing of the pagan Carnival celebrations, with wild dances, grease paint and grotesque masks out on the streets, accompanied by loud drumbeats that sent the alarmed gentry fleeing behind closed doors.  Attempts to abolish by force behavior that, in those times, was considered outrageous and obnoxious, only led to rioting: opposition burst the floodgates of its turbulent expression.

Heady over their freedom, the natives of Paramin reputedly mimicked their former masters by painting themselves exaggerated shades of blue, made from laundry bluing tablets ground and mixed with water.

In Paramin, it is customary for the blue devils to dance on Carnival
Monday, a February or March evening. On my night there, we flowed with the stream of people.

I was mesmerized by one of the main figures, a king devil who opened and closed his gigantic white-and-blue splotched dragon wings. His assistant restrained him with a rope, as he swirled and yawed at the crowd, the pupils of his eyes glinting. On the rim, a very young masked devil poked a puppy with his trident, sending it yelping to safety.

The children watched this drama with unperturbed interest. One toddler jabbed his finger right back at a devil who wore a scary beast mask, with horns and a mane. Amazingly, the beast slithered away like a wounded repentant snake.

One devil especially caught my attention, because he was so different from the rest. His tragicomic mask topped was decorated with a bulbous red rubber nose and drooping mouth. He beseeched onlookers for dollars, his sad, entreating visage with its silent plea hard to resist. When he was honored with the booty, he turned up the corners of his mouth with his fingers into a winsome smile. He was by far the tamer version of the retinue from the netherworld.

Most of the others were either bald, or wearing wispy silver-white or multicolored woolly wigs. These strange and gruesome creatures either dribbled foaming beer down their throats, necks and chests, confronted the crowd with mock savagery or swiveled on the wet ground, while the rest danced in short steps legs wide apart.

All of a sudden a lithe young devil with red wings pranced into view and jabbed a finger at me. I indicated I had no money. To my blushing embarrassment he bent backwards in slow motion with the beat and began to suggestively move his fingers in circles on his bare body while flicking his tongue. I turned towards a local girl and asked her to “please send him away. I have no money to give. ” She smiled right back and said, “He will go away if you don’t have any…he won’t stay.”

But the creature before me spread his legs wide, bent further
backward and placed his hand flirtatiously behind his head. “He
wants you to photograph,” the girl said helpfully. I readily

flooded him with a torrent of flashes from my camera as the grotesque model proffered several poses and best angles. He finally and thankfully oozed away towards another victim, tilting his head — a precursor of another brazen drama of foreplay.

I realized that what I thought was a long stick one of the blue devils was swinging was actually a phallus symbol. A pretty teenaged girl ran away giggling, as he brandished and prodded it playfully towards her.

Noroom for prudishness here. I was awed by the raw sexuality displayed - in front of the very young, the pubescent and the very old. Yet, after my initial shock, I realized that the show wasn’t downright sexual. An unwritten code of conduct kept the participants from crossing the boundaries.

I surged through the crowd towards the spot where the spectators were being entertained by the gremlins from hell, who were raking the money with their pitchforks. By now some of them were rolling on the ground in contortions to the hypnotic beat of the tin drums.

Though the whole performance seemed raucous, raw-edged and ribald, it had embedded in it hours of firing the tin drums to tune the beats, hours spent on creating the characters they represented, practicing the dance that had to keep in step with the pan drums, grinding the tablets of bluing agent to make the paint, rubbing baby oil before the color is applied so that it stays on the skin. As one of the persons in the documentary film “Jab-The Blue Devils of Paramin” states, “”My father used to tell me …as long as you put that blue on your skin and you hear a pan, you just totally different…”

Some of the blue had smeared on my arm and elbow … and with it I carried the beat of the pan, the infectious dance of the Paramin devils. And I realized that I had been more than a spectator.

Indo-Canadian writer and photographer Shobha Gupta Gallagher is based in Ottawa.

Knowing this, boys make pincers of their hands, tuck them into the corners of their mouths and blow until their eyes bulge. Usually they can emit no more than a disappointing “ffft,” like air sneaking from a tire. But they persist until one day, out comes a whistle so shrill it rings their ears. They keep blowing until the entire block knows that another man has been born.

They soon realize that the most important whistle is one they knew all along: the wolf-whistle. They’d heard men use it — that sharp rise in pitch followed by a fading descent — but until puberty, they didn’t know why.

It’s a game of courtship played throughout Latin America, but perhaps nowhere with more regularity than on the streets of Piura, Trujillo and other cities on Peru’s northern coast. It’s a game so predictable that it feels scripted, as if the men and women are actors in a lazy street troupe.

I was heading down the coast by bus from Ecuador to southern Peru, along northern Peru’s so-called Gringo Trail. Nowadays it’s more like an international highway, full of tourists with luggage and printed itineraries, not hippies with backpacks and mangled guidebooks.

It was in Piura where I had the privilege of experiencing something usually reserved for women: Locals of the opposite sex frequently whistled at me. Flattered rather than offended — they were almost always young, attractive women — I would smile back and they would giggle. And that would be that.

One evening when I was attending a soccer tournament, thousands of men in my section erupted into a cacophony of wolf-whistling. This usually indicated the crowd’s objection to a call on the field. But the Peruvian crowd was showing little interest in the match, which featured the Mexican and Ecuadorian national teams.

Instead, the object of the crowd’s attention was a young blond-haired woman walking between the first row and the field. From men in suits to men in soiled T-shirts, they were all watching on her. To her credit, she didn’t falter, but she blushed, dropped her head and smiled like someone who had just tripped on the street.

I felt no temptation to wolf-whistle — then or ever. But encouraged by one too many swigs of rum, I stood up, turned to the crowd and raised my hands. “Amigos, amigos, por favor,” I pleaded with a smirk, as if nudging them collectively in the side and winking. The crowd erupted into laughter. Whistlers or not — Peruvian or not — men are men.

Nothing on the northern coast compares to southern sites like Machu Picchu, the magical ruins of the famous Incan city, or Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon on Earth. But Trujillo, the northern coast’s largest and most attractive city, is worth a visit.

I liked the place for its bright colonial architecture, spring-like climate, and its history. Trujillo is home to pre-Columbian sites like the pre-Inca Chim?? capital Chan Chan, one of the largest adobe cities in the world, and to temples attributed to the still-earlier Moche culture. Huanchaco, a nearby beach town, is popular with sunbathers and surfers. And the seafood is fantastic. Perhaps the best ceviche in the world is served here.

As in Piura, though, I was most attracted to the people. The Trujillo women were strikingly beautiful. A recent Miss USA was Trujillo native. This, of course, only goads on the whistlers. Sometimes it’s no more than a sign of friendliness.

Trujillians, as well as folks in Piura and the “capital of friendship,” Chiclayo, are more amiable than southern Peruvians, who are accustomed to (and perhaps tired of) tourists.

Every weekday after lunch, Trujillo shuts down for a three-hour siesta. Businesses, even the chain supermarkets, lock their doors between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m., and the swarms of cabs dissipate. Men of all ages and classes step outside and stand in groups, idly talking.

Inevitably, an attractive woman approaches. She may be alone or with a friend, or even with her parents or boyfriend. Or she could be a tourist. It makes no difference: The men will turn and stare at her shamelessly and then break into whistles.

The woman always keeps walking, eyes straight ahead, as though she hasn’t heard a thing. The men, smiling, turn back toward one another after she passes. They discuss the merits of her body and suggest what they would do if, someday, they happen to find themselves in bed with her.

Peruvian women tell me they hate being whistled at, but then add, “It’s a macho culture,” as if to say, “That’s just the way it is.” Foreign women tend to be less forgiving. I wouldn?t be surprised if the blond woman at the stadium later asked a friend, “Do they really think they?re going to pick up a woman that way?”

But that’s missing the point. The wolf-whistle seems less a mating call than a shallow display of masculinity, like grabbing your crotch or spitting. The whistles, I mean, are not really meant for the women. They are for the men.

“Shark fin,” said Shoko. “It’s a very special dish.”

This was the first course of a banquet at a fancy Chinese restaurant, where my Japanese host family had taken me to celebrate my arrival.

Spoons poised, they waited for me, the guest, to take the first bite. As an unworldly suburbanite, I’d been expecting the Chinese food I knew and loved at home. But if everyday Japanese food was appalling to my Irish meat-and-potatoes palate, this meal was over the top.

I pulled up a mucousy yellow broth that had what distinctly looked like hair in it. I swallowed the sour soup, and the short, bristly potential hairs, and flashed a big smile.

“Oishii!” I said, trying desperately to remember if sharks even had hair. “Delicious!”

I managed to eat everything set before me on that day. The family looked thrilled. The nausea I felt all the next day was worth it.

We were 11 American students on a sister cities friendship visit between my town of Salem, Mass., and the Tokyo suburb of Ota. My host family, the Abes, lived in a nine-room, three-story townhouse in Ota’s Kamiikedai district. A home of that size is practically unheard of in Tokyo. I slept on a futon on the tutami mats in the ceremonial tea room downstairs, separated from the Western-style living room (with its giant karaoke system) by shoji, or sliding rice-paper doors.

My host father, Ken, a CEO of a sound system company, spoke only a few words of English and would change into a comfy white tracksuit whenever he returned home.

Michiko, my tiny, smiling host mother, spoke only a little more English than Ken and was never without her dark hair perfectly curled and her lips carefully painted red. Their three children, 16-year-old Toru, who wanted to be a DJ; 25-year-old Shoko, who was always smiling but posed stony-faced in photos; and 28-year-old architect Junko; all spoke English beautifully. But I knew only 10 words and phrases in Japanese.

On my first night in their home, Michiko carefully prepared a traditional Japanese dinner with steamed vegetables, rice and raw beef and fish. I filled up on the delicious vegetables and rice and, so as not to offend the family, ate what I though was an acceptable amount of the beef and sashimi. I followed my rule of eating half of everything put in front of me for the remainder of my stay.

I thought I’d pleased the family until one day Michiko pulled me aside.

“You have anorexia?” she asked me in careful English. “You eat little.”

Toru later explained that his mother thought all American girls had eating disorders, a point the local media insisted on. My eating half of my portions was proof of the U.S. anorexia epidemic. I hoped my performance at the restaurant had redeemed me.

I saw both modern and traditional life during my weeks in Tokyo. Some days, I would visit arcades, stand high atop the city in Tokyo Tower or race Toru through the obstacle courses in the fitness parks. Other days, I watched kabuki theater, attended ceremonial teas and toured museums, like the Folk Museum in Ota-ku.

Often, I was homesick, and there existed the constant reminders that I did not fit in.

In one museum, while walking through exhibits of traditional dress and the ancient tools of seaweed farming, I noticed an elderly man, not more than 5 feet 3 inches tall, peering at me through thick, gold-rimmed glasses. The man, a noted Japanese historian and one of the country’s official national treasures, adjusted his tie, clasped his arms thoughtfully behind his back and approached me.

“You are very interesting to me anthropologically,” he said in amazement, as he looked up at all 6-foot-1-inch of me. He asked if he could take a picture with me. Afterward, he strolled out of the room.

My height also made me a minor attraction in the streets, especially among young schoolgirls in plaid jumpers. They would stop me with the request, “May I?” and then stand beside me, fingers making a peace sign as their friend snapped a picture. Then they would run away, giggling nervously into their hands.

On our last night, the mayor of Ota invited us to participate in the Peace Day, an annual August jazz celebration to promote world peace. We were taught two songs in Japanese and told we’d also be singing “I’m On Top of the World.”

“The Carpenters are wonderful!” gushed our translator.

It was assumed that we, as Americans, would naturally know the words to all of the Carpenters’ songs.

On the day of the festival, the women of Tokyo were dressed in stately silk kimonos, their tiny waists wrapped in thick satin obis, and their hair twisted into chopsticked chignons.

The smaller American girls were dressed in dainty wooden sandals and brightly patterned kimonos. Those of us too tall for the floral robes, namely me and the males, were given extra-large T-shirts with the phrase “Ota-Salem Exchange” printed in English and Japanese across the front.

Just before the elaborate display of 5,000 fireworks, Mayor Yoshio Nishino invited us onstage before hundreds of thousands of people. Like a sea the crowd stretched east, west and north, until the eye could see no further into the darkness. The spotlights flicked on, and the music cued up to the first Japanese song we’d learned.

“Oh my God,” said my friend Marina, in her blue and white kimono and yellow crepe obi beside me. “Are we supposed to sing all by ourselves?”

As the crowd began to clap and sway, we exchanged confused glances, shrugged and began to belt out the lyrics we’d been taught.

“Ue o muite aruko, namida ga kobore nai yoni Omoidasu haru no hi, hitori bochi no yoru.”

Our host families joined us on stage, hugging us tearfully as our voices limped through the final song. The hundreds of thousands of voices in the crowd then joined in:

“I’m on the top of the world, looking down on creation/ And the only explanation I can find/ Is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around/ Your love’s put me at the top of the world.”

Sunbursts lit up the sky like the Fourth of July as the fireworks sizzled over the last notes. The crowd oohed and aahed. And suddenly, I was home.

We live in voluntary media celibacy, where the only important news is the weather forecast. The author Sven Barthel said: “A sailing boat is an instrument of freedom.” The time and the unpredictability free us from schedules. Sea captain John Wilhelm Frostedt, my grandfather’s grandfather and the master of Brig Siri of Stockholm in the 19th century, signed his letters: “God willing, weather permitting.”

In Thyboroen, Denmark, you wear plain blue workman’s trousers, not designer jeans. Beer is in a bottle, and tattoos are large, to cover the arm and shoulder. This seaport is macho and smells of fish. Huge anchors and propellers decorate the gravel gardens. There are very few flower beds around the houses.

Lisa and I waited three days for the gale to blow over. Now the wind is calmer but the sea is still very heavy. Big North Sea trawlers depart, and waves break over them as they sail offshore. All the yachts stay in harbor. Germans with big bellies wait for big game fishing. They kill time with beer, story-swapping and loud laughter.

We needed diesel and Lisa finds the harbor office and the lady in charge of the pump; no marina with smart young men in white shorts here. The pump station is situated in the bottom of a narrow basin used by the fishermen for unloading their catch. At first they are irritated, but when they understand that we were trying to reach the pump, they become very friendly and supportive. They give us a bucket full of mussels and we trade beer for flounder.

Lisa fries the flounder for lunch, and serves them with capers and pickled beets and new potatoes. She saves the mussels for a few days, as they need to be rinsed of sand in several changes of water, then steam cooked. Then we will use the shells as forks and dip the mussels in “Siri sauce,” made from oil, French mustard, and honey and dill. Fresh baguettes baked on board together with Danish cheese and butter make it a wonderful meal.

Poets and sailors have for centuries sung about their fear and awe of the North Sea. On board Siri we have great respect for it, and prepare meticulously for our crossing to Norway.

We follow this checklist:

-Charts, pilot books, plotter.

-Engine, oil, sweet water, drive belts

-Running lights

-Reef lines in the main sail

-Goosenecks in Dorade ventilators closed

-Chain pipe closed

-Dinner casserole prepared

-Weather forecast from Denmark and Norway

We are tense; no point in denying that. So these activities reduce our anxiety. I walk around in the harbor and listen to the other skippers. Are they leaving or staying? At night I climb up on deck to look and listen to the weather. It is calm in the basin. We are protected from the southwesterly winds predicted in the forecasts.

We have breakfast and dress in long underwear; the water is still cold in June. Up on deck I see that our neighbors are busy too. We are all anxious to get going.

The swell from the gale meets us outside the piers, and Siri dips her bowsprit in the waves. Reed’s almanac warns against entering Thyboroen in Beaufort 5 or stronger. The waves can break dangerously in the sandy, shallow entrance. The professional fishermen do not obey Reed’s, but we who sail for pleasure follow its advice. We use the engine to get out on deep water before we set sail. The wind is around Beaufort 4, and mizzen and genoa give us a comfortable speed of five knots.

I take the first watch and Lisa goes below to rest. The sun breaks through the clouds and the color of the sea shifts from light grey to deep blue, reflecting the sky. Haze still hangs over land. The coast of Jutland is low and sandy, and I soon see only church towers and windmills astern. Regina Arctica, a boat from Spitsbergen, Norway, leaves harbor at the same time as us, but returns. The boys seem to have had some problems in the rig.

I am alone with the sea, and in contact with eternity. We sail literally in the same water as the Irish monk St. Brendan, and the Vikings. Water evaporates into clouds and returns to the Earth as rain, which turns into sea again in the cycle of nature. The sea is the last wilderness; passing ships leave no trace. Life pulsates here. Ninety percent of the biosphere — that is, where life exists — is water, and 75% of the Earth’s surface is sea. We live on planet Ocean, not the Earth. And Siri is the center of a circle with a radius of six nautical miles. That is the distance to the horizon. Upwards I look into heaven, and at night I seem reach to the outer stars in the universe.

Lisa prepares asparagus soup and sandwiches for lunch before taking her turn at watch. At sea we meet and eat. When one of us is on deck sailing, the other can rest or navigate below. We sail for pleasure, not for performance or endurance, but we know we can stay at sea several nights in this way.

The fulmars keep the helmsman company. Small and tubby, they live in the open sea and sail with stiff wings close over the waves. Their aerodynamics are masterful. The fulmar rests high on the water surface with a slightly bent neck. The people of the Faroe Islands call them seahorses; the Swedes call them storm birds.

Lisa takes the watch and it’s my turn to rest. We sleep on the sofa in the main cabin so that the helmsman can get help in seconds if necessary. The sofa is secured with bunk-boards, so we lie safely independent of the boat’s heeling.

When I’m back on deck Regina Arctica overtakes us, and my competitive spirit is aroused. We hoist the main sail, and though our sails only total 100 square meters, sail almost as fast as the Norwegians. But Regina is five tons lighter and 20 years younger, and slowly disappears ahead of us. I see an occasional steamer but no yachts, for they are rare out here.

We normally reduce the sail area at night but the winds are light and we’re traveling at a comfortable six knots, so I let them stay. Lisa does not like to sail when it is dark and I take longer watches then. Lisa supports me with tea and sandwiches and small talk. Now in June the nights are not really dark; there’s a brief twilight between dusk and dawn, and the northern horizon is reddish all the time.

In darkness it is difficult to judge the distance to a source of light, for we tend to believe that a strong light is closer than a weak one. We meet a ship whose course is crossing ours, and I see first the weak red light and a stronger white masthead light, then the contour of the ship’s bridge and finally the green light too. Now the ship is heading directly towards us, and I am all attention. Slowly the red light disappears and I understand that the ship will pass well by our stern. My eyes follow the ship steaming westwards, probably towards the oilfields. After midnight I see the light of the lighthouse on Lista, mainland Norway. Our GPS confirms our position: we are 12 nautical miles from the coast.

The wind dies, and in the east I see that dawn is close. The surface of the sea looks like fluid pewter - it seems to have the same density as the tin I used to make tin soldiers as a boy. The sails flutter and the sheets tap against the deck. The noise wakes Lisa and she brings coffee and breakfast to the cockpit. We wait to see if the wind will return, but we don’t have enough patience. We lower the sails and start the engine. It’s 35 nautical miles to Sirevag, Norway, our next port of call. The current is northerly and gives us two welcome extra knots. (Language is strange; a northerly current runs toward the north, a northerly wind comes from the north.)

We see the high mountains of the Norwegian coast, and the sunlight overpowers the flashes from the lighthouse. Lisa takes the wheel, so I turn in, ready to be awakened an hour before we enter Sirevag. A huge North Sea trawler overtakes us and leads the way into the harbor. Regina Arctica is berthed there already, and the boys are fast asleep. When we have our arrival breakfast of eggs and bacon, they wake up, and tell us that they have arrived four hours ahead of us.

Per Holmlov is a writer who sails with his wife, Lisa, for several months of the year. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book, “Tales from a Summer Ship,” to be published in Swedish by Norstedts in August 2009.

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Daecheon mud supposedly contains minerals good for your skin. About a decade ago, after city leaders realized they could make more money selling that mud as a tourist attraction than they could by using it in farming, the Boryeong Mud Festival was born (Boryeong being another name for the Daecheon area).

The annual festival attracts about a million visitors each year. Most are Korean, but there are plenty are foreigners, too.

It’s an odd clash between two views on mud: clean and dirty.

Korean families view it as a day at the beach, were you have fun covering each other in mud to get beautiful skin. Most foreigners — chiefly English teachers from Anglo countries, and U.S. military personnel stationed around the region — view it as a chance to drink and listen to concerts, and to rub down pretty ladies.

To foreigners like me, teaching in rural Korean towns where the social structure seems reminiscent of 1950s America, stepping off the bus can feel surreal, like when Dorothy landed in Oz. There’s overwhelming color and vibrancy. You see throngs of tourists, bouncy castles and barbecues — and giant vats of watery mud. You can wade in lukewarm waist-high mud in the pool; cover fellow “prisoners” with the stuff in a rope-barred mud prison; and slip down a hundred-foot high plastic mudslide that drops gently into the sea.

Boryeong doubles as a cultural festival, so people in traditional costumes parade past the tourists, playing drums. Invited to join, the occasional sweaty, mud-covered tourist in flip flops will grab a drum or a pair of cymbals, and dance along.

But the big attraction is the beach. Buckets of mud, and brushes, are set up upon row after row of tables along the shore. The idea is to paint yourself, or your neighbor, in a lavish coat of mud, then dry in the sun and wash off in the ocean.

The town I taught in was relatively small, the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else’s business. It was also far away. I considered myself on a hedonistic holiday from stultifying village life.

As I started removing my watch, I noticed out of the corner of my eye someone who looked familiar.

As I prepared to strip down to a bathing suit and be coated in mud by a stranger, I realized that a student of mine was standing about five feet to my right.? She was grinning broadly, and accompanied by her entire family.

I decided to cover myself in mud.

MORE INFO

Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) Headquarters TIC
40, Cheongyecheonno, Jung-gu, Seoul 100-180
9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Tel: 082-2-7299-497 ext. 499
24-hour travel info line: 082-2-1330

At 5:45 a.m., I stumble out of bed. As advised, I am still remotely buzzed, having left a bar only four hours before. By 7 a.m., our group has joined an already-impressive line of Gen-Nexters (and a few lost Baby Boomers), waiting for the Pimlico racetrack gates to open at 8 a.m.

We’re a couple of years older than most of the people we see — and at least a couple of years out of synch.

The actual race, the second part of the Triple Crown series, won?t start until 5. And it only lasts a few minutes, since the course is just over a mile.? While Baltimore?s Preakness follows the Kentucky Derby in chronology, it gallops very much to its own beat.

About A Cooler Per Couple

I?m told that Preakness is known as racing?s blue-collar edition.? It also delineates from the Kentucky Derby and Belmont because it?s the only race that allows spectators to BYOB.

The early birds relish in this — it looks like there?s about one cooler for every two people. Sipping OJ? heavily laced with champagne, I observe my compatriots here in the Infield, the equivalent of the cheapest seats.

I was forewarned not to expect the Lily sundresses, generously-sized hats, and Mint Juleps synonymous with media-endorsed images of horse races, but I am still amused that most of the spectators seemed dressed for a kickball tournament. Most groups of friends are distinguishable because they wear matching T-shirts with not-so-clever silkscreen slogans, such as ?Team Drink,? and ?Ride a Cowboy–Not a Horse.?? These T-shirts seem to reinforce the already-obvious fact, demonstrated by beers in hand, slurred speech, and tottering stance, that THIS is a drinking event.? One group even holds coordinated beer cozies, hand-crafted with felt horses.

Several girls have donned rain boots, which alarms me, since there?s not a cloud in the sky.? I’m not wearing a sundress — but wonder fleetingly if my casual outfit will protect me from the elements.

Staking Out Our Turf

When the gates open, our designated runner, a college track star, takes off with a speed and agility the jockeys can only hope their horses will mimic, to secure a place for our group. A runner, I am told, is part of the experience. The runner, packing caution tape and stakes, ropes off a section for his or her group of friends. Ours has been extremely successful; our plot of land could support a mansion. It?s a good thing, though, because we need space to inflate our kiddy pool, the incubator for our beer.

We philosophically debate our claim on this land.? As a Preakness virgin, I equate our act to land appropriations of the Wild West. But my compatriots tell me we deserve it, because we arrived first. For awhile, boundaries hold, and our group mingles along our frontier, while other (less timely or agile) groups huddle in the remaining triangles created by subdivision. As the absurdity of claiming land materializes, and the friendliness of inebriation develops, all groups forgo defending their land. By day?s end, 90,000 people will be packed into this space.

As a virgin to horse racing, I am hoping to place bets, observe the classy (in comparison to our digs) grandstands, and to see an actual horse, if not a horse race. I plan to imbibe, for culture?s sake, a Black-Eyed Susan, said to be the Preakness equivalent of the Mint Julep: bourbon, vodka, orange juice and sweet-and-sour mix.

I try to channel the last threads of my college party girl psyche.? A friend had confided that many friends? rites of passage occurred here at Preakness. At first, I doubted these tales. But by 11 am, I see security guards traveling in packs, for safety.? Before noon, I see a girl being treated for alcohol poisoning; then I see my first pair of breasts.? I wonder if I dare try to use the port-o-potty.

By 1 o?clock, I give in to the chaos of the experience. One of my friends and I try? to numb the we-are?way-too-old-for-this feeling with a pitcher of overpriced Margaritas. No one offers us Black-Eyed Susans.

I feel like an old football quarterback trying to impress a bunch of high schoolers with his spiral. As the sugar and tequila settle nicely into my bloodstream, I begin to time-travel back to a younger, cooler self.

Then the beer cans start flying.

It?s the beer-can bombardment: one of the traditions of the Infield.? I don?t like it; it reminds me too much of actual bombings. Beer cans bounce off my friends? shoulders, arms, and? heads. People use Tupperware tops to shield themselves. Luckily, no around me gets hit by a full can ? which, according to Preakness myth, really does happen.

My father,? excited by the prospect of his daughter attending a horse race, texts me and asks me to place some bets. Apparently, NBC coverage doesn?t disclose the level of mission this will entail. Navigating through the cesspool of people, I manage to arrive at the betting tents, tucked away in a corner like a second thought to the frathouse/Infield revelry.

Enroute, I debate the many glowing offers of the Preakness carnival: free beer, chicken fingers and ?a date for the day.?? Undeterred by these gems, I place my dad?s bets.? While I never thought gambling would making me feel ethically sound, my two-dollar ?1-and-8 to win? and ?place of show? bets make me feel slightly more legitimate. I can only equate it to bringing a gift to a wedding that you crash.

Back with my group, we debate the merits of a Preakness edition of “Girls Gone Wild.” I object; these scenes would probably be too risqu?, even for home-video.

All around us, girls ride boys? shoulders and flash the adoring crowd. Franzia, the bag wine of choice, is funneled into eager mouths. The port-o-potties even become venues of entertainment, as people Spiderman-scale them and run across the tops.

We’re witnessing the spectacle of an unbridled species, and not the equine kind.

My eyes wander to eight adults (actual adults — not children masquerading as adults, or adults masquerading as children). They sit petrified on folding chairs, sipping soda and trying to read the race program, while keeping their eyes focused anywhere but on their surroundings. I romantically cast them as a church group bent on saving ten dollars on the? admission price. I didn?t need to imagine their horror; they wore it clearly in their eyes.

Caving

We flee two hours before the race starts. In our taxis, we critique this younger generation. Were we ever like that?

We continue our Preakness experience with ESPN, and are treated to a clear view of? Curlin trotting to victory, aided by the detail provided by flat-screen HDTV TV. The only shots of the Infield are aerial; from high up, the debauchery just melts into a tiny speck.? I am sure the attendees, their parents and the FCC are happy enough to see the activities of the Infield marginalized.

Bar-hopping that night, we?re the only dust-bedraggled, sunburnt group on the circuit. A guy approaches me and says, ?You were at Preakness? And you?re still out? You must be really hard-core.? I didn?t have the guts to explain.

The Preakness Stakes takes place the third Saturday of each May, in 2009 on May 16. The Baltimore Sun reports that the BYOB tradition has ended http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/bal-sp.pimlico17apr17,0,5176171.story : instead, alcohol will be sold. For info about attending, see: http://www.preakness.com/

Ocracoke is the last inhabited island of North Carolina?s Outer Banks and can be reached only by boat (including public ferries) or private plane.? The island is about as long as Manhattan, 17 miles, but barely wide enough in some places to hold its patched and ravaged two-lane stretch of asphalt.? There are roughly 650 locals, O?cockers, whose families stretch back to the first British pilots sent over to lead ships through the treacherous shoals and harbor.

A place with 650 people means, after a year or two, that you will not only know everyone, but also everyone?s family, cousins, grandparents and in-laws.? There are just a handful of names.? A friend of mine was a Gaskill who married a Garrish.? Her mother had been a Garrish who married a Gaskill.? There are hundreds of O?Neals.? I?ve never met two married first cousins, but most people agree without self-consciousness that they are connected ?somewhere down the line.?

I?ve read that the Ocracoke ?brogue? is left over from Elizabethan English.? I?ve also read that it is not.? Either way, it is a strange accent, coming from somewhere across the Atlantic from a long time ago.? To some outsiders the O?cockers sound Australian.? Others simply can?t understand them.? Fire is pronounced far and if the water is especially high one day you will hear there is a hoi toide.

Ocracoke is inundated with tourists during the summer, and then the accent recedes some.? You?ll hear it best in February, at the height of boredom, after everyone has been drunk for many days, when even the plainest words sound a little like there are marbles in the mouth.

Still in the summer, driving around with a fisherman, you?ll hear a lot of the accent.? If old women are known for relentless gossip, it is only because they do it on the front porch without cover.? Grown men lining and repairing their nets, cleaning fish and fixing boats, are likely spreading as much rumor as anyone else.? A drive around the village is more a series of stops.? People you saw just hours ago, people who have been off the island.

?How much fish did you have this morning??

?Can I borrow your power washer later to clean my porch??

?Did you hear who they saw coming out of so and so?s house today??

You will likely stop at a construction site and have a beer.? You may be put to work helping somebody move something somewhere.? You?ll probably stop at the gas station for a six pack.

There is no reason not to enjoy Ocracoke without drinking. Its beaches are some of the most beautiful in the world, and you?ll always be able to find some kind of just-caught fish or seafood to eat.? More likely, though, you?ll drink.? A lot.

In a village with no stoplights, no movie theaters, no grocery stores, one bar and a handful of restaurants, there?s not much else to do. The boat ride to the mainland is two and a half hours, and it?s easily two hours to the nearest island, where there is a Food Lion and small movie theater.? People drink the way New Yorkers hurry; it is in the texture of each day.? I heard a friend of mine had a little too much one night and ended up having an accident in the bed with his new off-island girlfriend.? She decided that kind of life wasn?t for her, and left him.? I called him to give fair harassment.? ?They?ve got it all wrong,? he said.? ?I was having a dream she was on fire and just wanted to put it out.?

The best part about the ride in the pickup will be putting it into four-wheel drive and going out to the beach.? In season, a five-mile stretch opens to the southern point of the island.? In the winter, you may drive the whole beach.? All of Ocracoke is protected by the U.S. National Park Service.? There is nothing to interrupt your view of the dunes and the sea oats and the ocean but an occasional low ramp, and boardwalks built every six miles or so.? The rest is open sand.? Even when the island is inundated with tourists, in August, you can find a quiet place to pull off the road, then lug your things across the dunes and have the place all to yourself.

The beach there is as every beach should be: wide, and beaten down by wind and tide.? You will almost always see dolphins swimming by.? As you doze off in your chair, ghost crabs will begin to come from their tunnels and stare at you, looking for something to eat.? Toss them a small piece of shell and see them pounce, disappointed with their prey.? After a good storm you can find any kind of shell or sand dollar.? The Outer Banks are known as the graveyard of the Atlantic, and I have two large pieces of shipwrecks in my apartment found there.

South of Ocracoke is an abandoned island, Portsmouth, with a ghost village and just three or four permanent Park Service residents.? On Portsmouth you can find the big and unusual shells, helmets and spiral conchs, huge pieces of coral, tulip shells and starfish.? I have only ever seen one seahorse on Ocracoke; a friend of mine found it in his fishing nets and brought it around for people to see.

Another friend of mine, gone now, but a lifelong resident who was in his seventies when I knew him, would tell stories about other things that washed up.? He said shoes used to be shipped in two loads, the rights on one ship and lefts on another, to prevent theft.? A ship of lefts wrecked offshore when he was young, and hundreds of boxes washed up.? It was a very poor time for the Ocracokers; brothers may have shared just one pair of shoes between them.? So everyone collected two lefts, larger than the normal size, to make up for the bad symmetry.? For a long time in church and school, he said, you would see many people in two large left shoes.

Another time a banana boat wrecked, and there were enough that everyone could hang many bunches in their attics, and eat them all summer.

More famously, in the 1500s, a Spanish ship wrecked not too far offshore, and the horses aboard managed to swim to shore.? They have survived to this day: the Ocracoke ponies.? They are kept safe and well-fed in a huge stretch of marsh on the sound side of the middle of the island.

Some years ago, one of my vacations to Ocracoke was interrupted by Hurricane Isabelle.? Hurricanes can be very dangerous, but they can also be tremendously fun (or tremendously boring).? I was worried about where to put my rental car in case the flood was as bad as expected.? An old timer, Dan, took me to a small hill on the sound side of the village.? Having ridden my bike around that road since I was very young, I knew there was a hill. But I did not know what Dan told me then: ?This is the highest place in the world.? There?ll never be a tide in this yard.?

Visit Ocracoke, and stay for a while.? Understand that the mosquitoes can be fierce, the power comes and goes, and water is all by reverse osmosis, making it salty and soft.? Still, make a long visit.? Hopefully you?ll be there in February when they catch oysters and scallops that are so fresh and fat you?ll probably never want an oyster or scallop from anywhere else.? Stay for Christmas, when all the pickups have wreathes wired to their front grates, and locals sneak into the pines to cut down Christmas trees, risking huge Park Service fines.? Stay for July, when you?ll meet Germans following their tourist guides, people from Japan buying fish, Marines from Fayetteville hoping to catch a fish.? Stay long enough that you hear the brogue.? Let a drunk front blow in and erase all of your real-world worries.

Shea Heard is a business executive and writer.

Confined for safety reasons to Camp Victory, the U.S. military headquarters built atop Saddam Hussein’s ruined suburban vacation retreat, life could get a little, well, dull.

So Cynthia, who studied art for a few years at Penn State before earning a law degree and joining the Army in part to have a career that tandemned with her Air Force officer husband’s, picked up her camera.

“There is only so much to see, and even less to do, when confined to an area of only a few square miles,” she wrote. “Week after week, I haunted the same places and palaces, carrying my camera and a sense of obligation to chronicle my experience and reveal all that I saw.”

She took more than 4,000 photographs during her September 2005 to September 2006 tour.

Many of the images featured here are from the grounds of Camp Victory, also the former headquarters of Saddam’s Ba’ath Party.

Bombed by Allied forces, the eight palaces on the grounds lay in ruins. Cynthia concluded that much of what Saddam had constructed, though sumptuous-looking from afar, was “merely a facade.”

“Saddam’s crystal chandeliers, up close, were really made of plastic; the ceilings were plaster of Paris,”? she said.

She left wondering if she’d seen enough.

“Although my subjects were neither soldiers nor insurgents, neither Americans nor Iraqis,” she wrote, “the devastation tells its own story in the context of two disconnected cultures, and their place in time and history.” — The Editors

Cynthia Roelle is a Honolulu, Hawaii-based attorney and photojournalist.

They call this mountain Cerro Rico - rich hill. In the centuries after the Spanish conquerors discovered it in the 1500s, 137 million pounds of silver were mined here, turning Potosi into one of the biggest, richest cities in the world.? By the 17th century, the population had swelled to nearly 200,000.

Then in the early 1800s, silver production began to decline. Potosi’s wealth, and its wealthy rulers, started drifting away.

The people of Potosi still believed in the wealth of Cerro Rico, and the much-depleted mountain is still worked today. But most foreigners now come for sightseeing, not conquest or silver.

Nor have the primitive, unpleasant working conditions changed much, since the Spanish first made their fortunes here.

Into the Mine

Our group of seven gathers at a small stall in the Miner’s Market, a few streets at the outskirts of town. We?re encouraged to buy a few items to distribute to workers we meet: treats like coca leaves and orangeade, and more practical items, like dynamite and fertilizer. I have mixed feelings about this, because in some places giving by tourists seems to discourage industriousness, and encourage begging.

When the Spanish first discovered silver here, forced labor ensured high productivity.? While every worker now enters the mines freely, working conditions are still arduous.

We are kitted out in overalls, hardhats and headlamps and driven up the steep sides of Cerro Rico, with its stunning views down to the city and over the surrounding mountains.

A few adobe huts - storage for the miners’ work gear - are dotted around the entrance. Two rail tracks lead into a small hole in the side of the mountain.

A steady wind blows from the city, yet none of us are keen to seek protection inside the mine. The small dark entrance seems to summarize all the stories we have heard about this place.

I want to see for myself, but I don?t want to go in first.

Our guide Eusabio worked in the mines for several years. A large man, he is among the few miners who found other work before contracting silicosis of the lungs, known here as mal de mina.

The average Potosi miner works for just 10 years before ill health drives him from the mine. A miner’s life expectancy is only 40 years, we were told; if lucky enough to escape accidents, constant exposure to poisonous gases takes a toll. Once debilitated by silicosis, the miners receive pensions. But it’s already too late for them to enjoy the short life left to them.

Eusabio leads the way into the darkness. We flick on our headlamps and follow. There is an immediate stillness as the wind disappears, and we follow a narrow passage, about three feet wide and five feet high. The only sounds come from the plod of our boots on the dirt, and the hiss of leaking air pipes that supply compressed air to the miners? tools.

Since I’m over 6 feet tall, I am crouching. And cautious.

Narrow rail tracks, installed to run the heavy ore carts to the stores outside, run through the tunnel. They must be pushed by hand.

The tunnel widens, and dozens of miners pass us. The tunnel is an arch of carefully-placed blocks, created when this mine was dug some 200 years ago.

The entrance (or more vitally, the exit) is the most important part of the mine, and extra care is taken to shore it up. We saw far less attention to detail inside.

Most miners wear no special safety clothing beyond hardhat. Some carry just small flashlights, others have gas-powered torches. As antiquated as these look (and they are old; many passed down through generations), they are surprisingly effective. A flickering flame can also alert a miner to an oxygen shortage.

Close to each entrance, there is a shrine. In one small opening we see a figure that seems appropriate for such a hellish place.? It’s nonetheless a surprising sight, in a place so devoid of anything other practical accoutrement.

Praying to El Diablo

Adorned in streamers and a confetti of coca leaves, gently illuminated by the numerous torchlights, is life-sized papier mache statue of the devil. He has huge red horns, a wide, smoking mouth–from the several cigarettes placed there-and a large erect penis, symbolic of fertility. Virtually all the miners are Catholic, and know that God is in the heavens and the devil is below. So here, in a strange twist on traditional religion, they pray to el diablo for their success and safety.

Once a week the miners gather here to pray for safe and productive seams, as one?s work area is known. Our guide prayed for us, too: “Please no cave ins, no dangers, keep these people safe.”

“And send me more Japanese tourists,” he added as an afterthought. “Good tips,” he said, by way of explanation.

We crouch, then crawl on our bellies over rocks and dirt, as the tunnel narrows. We emerge into another mine, just one route in the maze that links the 300 or so mines that snake their way within Cerro Rico.

“They meet up by mistake sometimes,” Eusabio said. “Usually there is no one here when they drill through.”

“What happens if there is?” I asked. He gives me a sad smile and a shrug - a ‘that?s life’ gesture he used almost every time the question of safety or accidents was brought up.

Since the Spanish first started exploiting this mine in the 1500s, an estimated eight million people have died from working here: from accidents, lung disease or poisoning, but mainly from mercury, used in silver production. It seems no one denies the danger of working here. But no one speaks of it openly, either.

We catch our first sight of miners at work, unloading a derailed cart. They tell us the cart narrowly missed falling on their legs. We see that familiar shrug again. We gather ’round the cart in an attempt to lift it back on to the tracks, but it’s hopeless. The ore weighs too much for seven men to move it even an inch — and we leave the three miners to shovel out the ore, right the cart, and then refill it.

Easy to Get Lost

Though unsettling, these dark tunnels are fascinating. They vary from solid stone to loose dirt and earth, and are scarred by the marks of drills and picks, shining with the speckled deposits of silver or other metals that lay within.

Guided only by the light of our torches, it is easy to lose sight of those in front of me; I struggle to keep up. Were I to get lost in this labyrinth, my only chance of survival would be finding a worker to guide me out. But with huge areas of this mine unworked, I fear it could be a long time before I met anyone.

Most holes in the floor are large enough to swallow a foot, but others could easily consume a man. In the dark their depth is impossible to guess.

Only as we progress deeper into the mine do we get a true feeling for what a hellish place this is. The air gets hotter, and breathing becomes difficult, in some places because of the heavy dust but more often from the noxious gases. A dull ache that began in my throat shortly after we entered has turned into a sharp pain; with every breath, hot needles poke my throat and lungs.

After about an hour we come to the working face of the mine. Piles of dirt and ore lie on the ground, while three men shovel the minerals into rubber baskets. These flimsy baskets, once full, are hoisted to the level above with a basic pulley system; the only evidence of which we could see was a wire hook that slowly lowered, was attached to the buckets, and lifted again.

The bags of ore were hosted directly above our heads. I wondered how often the bags or cable broke, or the hook slipped. But the miners continued to work, apparently unconcerned about the huge weight dangling precariously above. I found myself trying to back into the solid wall behind me, every time a bag rose, and swayed above.

The air gets hotter. Some workers wear dirty cloths over their noses and? mouths. With temperatures topping 100 degrees F, covering one?s face makes it feel even hotter, so only a few wear proper masks.

“They also make it difficult to smoke,” Eusabio jokes. But hand-rolled cigarettes droop from the mouths of several workers.

Each miner has a wad of coca leaves wadded into one cheek. The leaves help them withstand the harsh conditions, made no easier by the high altitude, and ease them through a day without food (the miners believe abstaining from eating keeps them alert). The extended cheek from constant coca leaf chewing is a physical characteristic of the high-altitude miner.

All around us men shovel ore, while others, forced into narrow shafts, hack at the walls with small manual tools. Others push carts down the various tracks, disappearing into the darkness of constant noise and vibration of drilling.

As we walk deeper in to the mine and pass more people at work, I feel increasingly uncomfortable. We often have to stand aside as an ore cart runs down the tracks - with just inches of room between the heavy cart and the tunnel walls. In other places, our passage interrupts shoveling and digging.

I realize our gifts are little compensation for the inconvenience we are causing.

A young man offers me his hand and smiles warmly, welcoming me to “my life.” At 19, Jose has been working in the mine for almost three years. His jovial attitude seems at odds with the terrible conditions here.

“He has just joined the cooperative and hopes to find a good seam,” Eusabio explains, before quietly adding, in English, “many think this. Then, after awhile they realize few are that lucky.”

Poverty, Hunger and Luck

Many miners are members of a cooperative, set up after the Bolivian government introduced incentives for mining in 1987, a time when this mind had all but closed, due to low productivity. There are now about 50 cooperatives here, the members sharing in the profits from the silver they find.

Each miner is assigned a “face,” to work, and luck plays a major part in its productivity.

The average working day is around eight hours long - modest hours by South American standards - but these can stretch into double shifts, or more.

“If a miner has a poor face, then he can work all day, all night, and make no money,” Eusabio told us. “However, the next day, he might get lucky - he may even employ others to help him work a good face.”? Most coop members earn $4 to $6 per day. The ore is typically sold to local processing plants.

Members often work alone, bringing in outside help if they need assistance with a rich dig; casual laborers make up about 70% of the work force.

We offer Jos? the dynamite we?ve brought.? He examines it carefully, measuring the length of fuse against his arm.? ?One meter. Good, thank you,? he says, and again he shakes our hands warmly as we leave.

As he disappears into the darkness, I?m struck by the thought that, by the time Jose reaches my age, his working life will probably be over; if he is lucky, he may work into his 30s. He is a cheerful and bright young man, and I hope he’ll find a job outside the mine.

Cerro Rico is Potosi’s largest employer, and attracts people from all over Bolivia. They?re not seeking fortunes; they?re just after a small wage. Their work keeps this mine alive.

It’s a terrible place that Potesi can’t afford to lose, no matter how high the human cost.

It was our last night in Penang, and I wanted wind chimes like those hanging above our table in the bar with the computer you could put ringgits into, where we saw the Indian man in the billowing pirate shirt, billowing though there was only a slight breeze from the fan.

The wind chimes in the bar were the same ones I saw for sale on the street, an hour before, by a vendor whose name I couldn’t pronounce and can no longer remember. At first I thought they might be a bit too touristy, and too big to pack. But sitting in a bustling beach town tourist bar boasting a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. happy hour, the bamboo wind chimes, and the hollow thunking noise they made, seemed like the most authentic Malaysian thing I could find in Penang that night.

“I’ll back in fifteen minutes, I told my two traveling mates, who were about to order dollar rum and colas. “I want to go back for those wind chimes.”

“So, that’s what, thirty minutes to an hour Anna time?”

“Fifteen minutes at most,” I said as I picked up my bag that held my camera and wallet, and headed for the door.

As I walked past the stands selling pirated CDs, and the Internet and photo developing spots for Western and other wealthy travelers, a guy in front of me stopped suddenly and turned around. Had I not been walking so slowly, I would have run right into him. My head had been swinging from side to side taking in the sights, and I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. When he saw me, he acted less startled than stunned.

“I cannot believe you are behind me, I need to talk to you,” he said in British-accented English.

“Ahh,” I said in response.? I was a little overwhelmed, since I saw it was the man in the billowy pirate shirt from the bar. I hadn’t noticed him leave. I took my lack of observation as a sign to proceed with caution.

“I’m sorry because I’m a little drunk, and I do not drink that much, so I’m more than a little drunk. But I saw you in the bar. You were with your two friends.”

“Ahh,” I said. He seemed only tipsy. I, on the other hand was perfectly sober. My only bar indulgence had been the use of the vending machine-like computer, which I used to email my friends back home.

“Your skirt is from Delhi. It was made in India. I noticed it as soon as you walked into the bar.”

“Ahh,” I said again, and we began to walk together.

I didn’t mention that from my point of view my skirt was not from India but from a notorious American big-box store, and that I hated the long, maroon skirt with the little mirrors sewn into the hem, since it drew attention to my exposed ankles and sandaled feet, the only parts of my body below my waist that could tan. I had looked everywhere in America for one of these skirts, specifically to wear in Malaysia. Had I known I did not need to wear one here in Penang, I would have been wearing pants.

“It’s beautiful. I used to embroider those skirts.”

“Ahh,” I could not help but repeat. I felt as though I could not say more. But then I managed: “I like your shirt, it’s kind of like a pirate shirt.”

“Then I’ll have to give you one. I embroidered this in Delhi, too.? Do you know who you are? What is your name?”

“I’m Anna,” I said, with a harsh American south emphasis on the An.

“You mean, Ahhna. “I’m Jagdish, he said, shaking my hand in agreement that we were friends. “But do you know who you are and where we are going?”

Where We Went

The street was murky with humidity and the vendors were beginning to pack up. The darkness of 11 p.m. was setting in, and the halogen lamps used to illuminate tourist goods clicked off as we walked. A few last-minute shoppers were mid-route between the bars and their hotel beds, and were quickly buying what they could still see. But otherwise the place was free of tourists– and potential witnesses.

Jagdish, acting as my guide, told me of another place that sold wind chimes. He knew the wind chime guy on the tourist strip, and said he was always the first to close in the evenings. ? If only I were willing to walk with him some more we could find the same wind chimes for a cheaper price. I decided to go along, despite suspecting that most sellers of wind chimes were home asleep.

We quickly turned off the tourist strip and walked a few disorienting blocks that left me unsure how to get back to the bar if I needed to make an escape. But for whatever reason I felt completely safe.

“My heart has been beating very fast, ever since I saw you.? But you are too young.”

When he said this, I didn’t panic. In fact, the only thought that went through my head was: how old is he, if I look so young? His face was as smooth as the edge of the moon.

“Ahh,” I said, as aloofly as possible.

“You are my number twenty,” he continued. He explained how he was a spiritual guru of sorts, and how every now and then he meets someone he is meant to enlighten.? He doesn’t know who they are until he sees them, but when he saw me he knew I was one. He had met 19 other tourists and locals before me, and needed to meet 50 in all before he could ascend to higher level of spiritual gurudom.

All of his talk and the diagrams he drew for me in the little notebook I pulled from my bag was dizzying. I didn’t know if I understood.

“Most of the others are older. You are really young. On the way over here, you couldn’t even stop saying Ahhh. I knew I wasn’t wrong when you kept saying Ahh.” Ahh, he told me, is the universal sound of spirituality.

Allahh, Gahhd Budahh. The list went ahhn and ahhn.

What Does it Mean to Arrive?

When we got to what looked like an abandoned storefront he said we had arrived. I couldn’t tell if he meant physically, emotionally or spiritually.

He pressed a buzzer and waited. When no one answered, he looked at me apologetically.

“I guess you are not getting it tonight,” Jagdish said.

I just shrugged. “I need to get back to the bar. I am late to meet my friends. I told them I’d be back an hour ago.”

I was confused and amused, and excited by the spiritual diagrams. I didn’t kow what it meant. I didn’t know if I was number 20 and whether I was Ahhna or still just Anna. Maybe I was just too young.

“Ahh, yes, let’s move you back in that direction. I will have to give you the shirt another time.”

Four blocks further on I see the bar, and Jagdish tells me to go on ahead without him. I hadn’t gone as far as I’d thought. In fact, as easy as it was to feel lost and mixed up with this drunken stranger, he had somehow pointed me in just the right direction.

“Anna, perfect Anna timing,” said my friend, happy to see me back. She’d had a few rum and colas. “You know you cannot go anywhere for just 15 minutes. “That was totally an hour. Come on, it’s time to go.”

All I could think about were those wind chimes and how maybe they really were a bit too touristy and how I was happy to have gotten away.

New York writer Anna Thysell specializes in travel and environmental issues.

As in my last clear memory of him from the night before, Wee had an enormous spliff dangling from his lip, and a bottle of Jack Daniels in each hand. ?Perhaps I would be better off not being 80 feet above the ground with him.

Nowhere to Go But Up

Until I’d landed in Tonsai, Thailand, I didn’t realize it was an international climbing center. I came on a friend’s recommendation. I’d planned to stop there for a couple of days, then move on, possibly to train for my diving certification.

The next day I took a top-roping course with an instructor named Sol, and a few other climbing hopefuls. Inwardly I was bitterly cursing my flip-flop, which had broken the day before as we hiked over the razor-sharp rocks.

We arrived at a tiny jewel of a beach, which we crossed to enter dense jungle. The crag itself was easily accessible from here, with the aid of a rope, thoughtfully placed, though of dubious reliability.

We had two climbs. I remember that one was graded a 5, and that to its right was a long and beautiful 6A, called Spiderman. My feet were clad in borrowed and uncomfortably restrictive footwear.

But most of what I remember about that day was the first contact with mesmerizing limestone.

There’s that first injection of adrenaline-releasing high, where you are clinging to a rock face high above the ground, without a map to trace your tentative steps.

You are trusting your body weight on a foothold the size of a non-genetically modified peanut, and you are willing the moisture forming on your palms to evaporate (you’ve forgotten the little drawstring bag of chalk hanging at your waist, meant to treat this problem). Your muscles are strained to capacity, and a little rivulet of blood is making its way down your left shin.

There is no other place to go but up. In the words of the Flaming Lips: suddenly everything has changed.

Adventure Highs

Before I came here, I’d been on a bit of a wander.

I had left the United States in November 2006, to live on the small and absurdly picturesque Greek island of Mykonos, based on the sort of wispy reasoning that can, if lassoed and combined with the proper timing, catalyze change. I feared I’d miss out on something, whiling away my not-unpleasant days in the lovely beachfront community of Narragansett, Rhode Island.

And I had an intense desire for adventure, to open some mysterious box containing sparkling newness.

But after eight months on Mykonos, the novelty had eroded, and had given way to the sometimes-empty, alcohol-saturated reality.

I returned to the United States to reevaluate, and recharge my finances.

Three months in Narragansett, shaking martinis and batting my eyelashes for the 20% tips so crucial to my travel funds, left me as perplexed as ever. I had some money (thank you, eyelashes) and I knew precisely where I did not want to be — but not where I did want to be, or what I wanted to do once there.

The idea of spending another bitter white winter in New England slipping into one of the existential crises into which I tend to submerge after too much idle time in America was unappealing. So was the prospect of another soul-crushing, red wine-drenched winter in Greece.

I found myself online for hours, my hands almost of their own avail typing in cheap-flight search engines. Eventually all the accumulated daydreams and ticket prices solidified into a perfect puzzle piece configuration: I had in my possession a ticket that would take me back to Greece for two months, Spain for two weeks, New Zealand for two weeks, Australia for one month, three months in southeast Asia, and back to Greece that spring.

Some entrance of credit card details, an exhilarating click on the “submit” button, and my next 10 months or so were lain out before me, just waiting to be lived.

A Shift

By the time I arrived in Thailand, I had been to some pretty spectacular places. In four months I’d accumulated what felt like four years of experience.

Spain was my time of rampant indulgence, filled with endless pitchers of sangria and tapas in Valencia (though I left with a slightly sour taste after being robbed in Barcelona). I had the time of my life hitchhiking through the jaw-dropping austerity of the south island of New Zealand, and then about half the east coast of Australia, in a rapid-fire montage of pale rainbowed waterfalls, aquamarine lakes and snow-peaked scenery. I slept under the stars in Castle Hill in New Zealand bundled like a mummy in my sleeping bag, catching a 13-hour lift from Byron Bay to Nararra with a truck driver named Shane and then bodysurfing on Terregal Beach in Australia on Christmas Day.

I was utterly untethered, and floating somewhere new and joyous every day. What had I lost but monotony? What had I gained but the world?

It was in that same spirit of enchantment that I climbed my first rock in Tonsai.

Again there were many choices in the crevices and intricate indentations of the limestone I gripped — only this time the destination was a set point, a tangible ring-shaped goal that begged to be tapped in triumph.

Here was a turning point, a solid threshold. It demanded not only my attention, but physical and psychological determination.

Sports cliches gained relevance: wanting something so desperately you could taste it; adrenaline junkie; the word “addiction” assuming new and oddly positive associations.

At breakfast during the interminable wait for a bowl of porridge, my mind would go over a climb I’d done. Was there a handhold further to the right I had overlooked, in the crux of my route? ?I would wake in the middle of the night to find my fists sweatily clenched, my feet pressing soft craters in the sheets.

I was struggling, even in my dream state, to reach that elusive pinnacle.

Six weeks passed that way.

At last, with a few new muscles, a close-knit and varied group of friends, and a road atlas of multicolored bruises and scrapes scrawled across my body, I reluctantly departed.

The local climbers presented me with a goodbye cake. What with the lack of ovens and the absence of cake in Thai cuisine, it was actually a large, American-style pancake with “good luck” painted on it in chocolate frosting, garnished with a rose carved out of a tomato, lettuce forming its leaves.

Ah, Thailand, how I miss you and your quirky menu items, aimed at comforting homesick farangs.

Hitting a Wall

Back in Mykonos, I hit another impasse. I was in an island paradise, but with nothing to climb, nowhere to go, and no one in whom to confide my seemingly self-indulgent melancholy. And I was nearly broke.

I found a decent job at a taverna on the beach and proceeded to work every day for the next three months, without a break to climb, write, or even think, functioning on the automatic pilot level that allows us to accomplish what we need but don’t necessarily want to do. In the end I was fired, following an incident in which I’d informed a male associate that wiping glasses was not, in fact, women’s work. When the initial flood of upset and self-righteous indignation subsided, I weighed my options yet again.

What kept coming back was the idea of being somewhere where I would be treated as a human being, where I had contacts with good people, and where I could, once again, dig my fingers into an unyielding, strength-affirming rock surface — not to vent my frustrations, but, in the pure balance of mind and body this created — to render them obsolete.

I stuffed my backpack, and bought another ticket. The climbing shoes and chalk bag were still clipped to the outside of my rucksack, though my carabiner had grown sticky with moisture and the sad dust of disuse.

Since arriving in England three weeks ago, I’ve formulated and discarded several plans.

But here in the pretty rolling hillsides of the English Midlands, I’m learning the delicate art of trad climbing.

I feel that old sense of renewal, and a startling ripple of inspiration. I have finally picked up my long-discarded notebook and pen.

Both climbing and writing seem to open a release valve. Both challenge me, and both occasionally cause my hands to cramp. Even as I continue my gypsy-tinged vagrancy, I have grasped something even more solid than the intriguing English gritstone, and that something is self. It is what keeps us grounded, however high we may ascend.

Writer Julia Reynolds travels the world, waitressing, bartending, and painting houses to refuel her bank account as necessary.

Possibly befitting a structure built to celebrate the hundred-year anniversary of the French Revolution, plenty of people have challenged the Eiffel Tower since it was finished in 1889.

An Austrian tailor, experimenting with a new kind of parachute, fell 180 feet to his death in 1912. Others climbed to demand independence (Basques, Tibetans) or to promote causes (cleaner environment, better government).

British climber and photojournalist Mike Robertson ascended to help publicize a campaign to force French energy giant Total to exit Burma (Myanmar), shortly after a fall 2007 anti-democracy crackdown by one of the repressive military regimes that has controlled the isolationist country for nearly 50 years.

Robertson wore only a TOTAL LEAVE BURMA T-shirt. He climbed without ropes or gear — a practice known as soloing.

“All I could see were loads and loads of people staring out,” Robertson told The Guardian, about his experience of scaling the side.

“They were speechless. Quite a lot of them pointed their phones at me, but nobody said anything. Having said that, I was going really fast.” –The editors

In this video, Paris-based documentarian Nicoletta Fagiolo, a former United Nations human rights official, tells the story of Robertson’s feat.

Continuing on, as he is wont to do, because people these days don’t know these things and after 25 years teaching history in a public middle school, he more than others, understands this: “Well - it was - the first city in the country to have hydroelectric power - hooked it right up to Niagara Falls — lights in every home — marvel of its time.” But that was a long time ago, and the lights were out in Buffalo today on account of an unusually early snowfall.

Between two and three feet in less than 24 hours, the Weather Channel said. Deep into snow season, when the city salt trucks were loaded up, with the snow-blowers oiled and gassed, the city of Buffalo would have handled the storm with practiced grace.

This snow came early, though; in mid-October, before the trees had shed their leaves. Weighed down by ice and snow, branches snapped and older, weaker trees split and fell to the ground. Streets were blocked and lawns were covered. Wet and heavy, trees tore through power lines and punctured rooftops. The beautiful Dutch elm trees, the city’s most magnificent residents, were the most sorrowful victims.

The elms were planted at the turn of the century as the city prepared to host the Pan American Exposition in 1901. The air had been filled with promise and invention. Frederick Law Olmstead, the father of our national parks system, wished that they would canopy the parkways and the parks of the city of Buffalo for a hundred years. The man must have had an acute sense of timing, because a hundred years proved about right. Few survived the storm.

A driving ban had been instated for non-essential personnel. My mother, a registered nurse at Buffalo General Hospital, was able to drive as necessary with her employee ID, but there weren’t many places to go as most of the city was shut down.

When we reached Williamsville, the town where I grew up and my parents presently live, many of the traffic lights were out. Although it was the middle of the day, the whole town was dim and still.

The bare essentials were open: the hospital, Wegman’s grocery, a lone Sunoco station.

I looked over my right shoulder through the condensation and drip of the passenger-side window to see the red glow of the “open” sign in front of Tim Horton’s. Tim Horton’s appeared to be running on an emergency backup generator; the traffic light at the near corner of Hopkins and Sheridan did not.

“Timmy’s” is synonymous with coffee in this part of the world, and thought worthy of its own compartment in the food pyramid. Tim Horton’s coffee shop, started by and named after a local hockey legend, is actually a Canadian chain that found a second home in Buffalo. They have one blend, no Sumatra roast, French roast, Columbian fair trade variety. It’s just coffee, always hot and fresh and exactly the same for $1.15 a cup. Dunkin Donuts barely competes in this market, and at last count there were only a few Starbucks in the area.

A true Rust Belt city, people here worked hard for their money, and a $4 cup of coffee was perceived by most to be laughable, unnecessary and an intrusion. We drove away from Timmy’s with a tray of three large coffees, mixed “double-double,” as the order goes if you’d like twice the standard amount of cream and sugar added for you.

Once home, I could see that our house had no power, and immediately upon entering could feel that there was no heat either. Con Ed anticipated it could be about a week before the power was back on, so our neighborhood had to make do. Blackouts occur nearly every winter in the City of Lights, so many residents have backup generators in their basements or backyards. Last January our furnace broke, and my parents went without heat for days; unconvinced that they needed a generator too. This storm changed their thinking on the subject, and they had been talking to the neighbors all afternoon about finding one.

Unfortunately and expectedly, every Home Depot and appliance center within 400 miles of Buffalo was already sold out. Mrs. Rotecki, our next-door neighbor, was ordering one through her Sears Catalogue, figuring somehow that despite the driving ban, it would be delivered in a jiffy.? My brother wanted to drive the five hours to Albany that afternoon to get one he had reserved over the phone. Dad thought we should try to connect our house to another neighbor’s backyard generator, since they were in Delhi for the month.

We ventured out later that afternoon to find rations for the coming days: extra batteries, candles, bottled water and warm food, if possible. La Nova’a Pizzeria, also a local favorite, was open for service, with a one-hour wait for a pizza. La Nova employs local high school students to work behind the counter and as has been the case since I was in high school, most of them look like they were straight out of juvie. As with Timmy’s, variety isn’t in their sales pitch; one type of pizza is available, and many toppings are not. Locals agree it’s the perfect pizza and needs no improvement or modification. They offer a choice of square or round pies to make you feel as though you have options.

After an hour of waiting in the car in La Nova’s parking lot, we drove our hot, square pizza home to have dinner over candlelight.

Weeks earlier, we’d purchased tickets to the Sabres game. Given that Buffalo was in an official state of emergency, we called to inquire about whether that night’s game was still on.

“Of course it is,” the customer service representative replied, incredulously.

In Buffalo, a hometown favorite, whether it’s the local hockey team, pizza plant or coffee shop, has a devoted and loyal fan base.

So, once again, we took our chances with the driving ban and headed downtown for the match.

At the entrance to Route 33, we reached a checkpoint lighted by emergency flares.? An officer trudged toward our car for questioning, and we prepared to be turned back.

“Where you headed?”

None of us looked like we were in urgent need of medical attention, so I was honest.

“Downtown, HSBC Arena.”

“Going to the game?”

“Yes sir, we’ve got Sabres tickets”

“Can I see them, please?”

Reluctantly, I hand them over for inspection.

“Playing the Rangers tonight, eh? I hear Ryan Miller’s out with a sprain…”

Fifteen minutes later we met the rest of the city in the gray cement monstrosity that is the parking garage of the HSBC Arena.

Apparently, attending the game was reason enough to clear through checkpoints all over the city.

American-made cars filled the lot, snow shovels and flashlights cluttering many backseats. A mass of smiling faces in white, blue and yellow jerseys herded toward the entrance, hungry for a showdown and a Salen’s hotdog. The lights were on and it was warm.? The stadium was packed.

It was hard to tell if this turnout was because of fan devotion, or because it was one of the only well lit and heated places in the city that night. On any other night, I would have known it was the former, but tonight, because of the exceptional circumstances, I believed it might have been a little of both.

Misha Wagner is a writer and aspiring documentarian who, seven years ago, left Buffalo for New York City.

This independent region of the southern Caucasus is officially part of Azerbaijan, but populated mostly by Armenians who fought to secede, and have managed to establish an autonomous if devastated enclave.

A strategically important area, this region has long been flashpoint for empires — the Ottoman sultans and Russian czars fought over it. It also has the misfortune of lying along an oil transit route. And since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought over who should rule it.

From 1991 to 1994, Armenian and Azeri neighbors turned their backs on one another and waged war. The regional capital city of Stepanakert, and other residential areas like Shushi, saw massive air and artillery bombardment. Over 150 villages and towns were destroyed, 60 percent of all homes were ruined and the entire health care and education system collapsed.

Nearly 20 years later, this region is still in limbo, lacking internationally-recognized status.

By Western standards, people here have nothing.

Yet their spirit of giving is boundless.

We met a man who said he’d waited 15 years for his son to return home from war; a woman who couldn’t wait to share pears from her fruit trees; and young students glad to finally be able to attend school again.

We drove to the remote Norashen village of Karabakh in an old minibus, a journey along war-ravaged roads that was not easy, or necessarily safe. Luckily for us, the HALO Trust of the United Kingdom had recently deactivated many of the land mines that had been left on the ground for a decade.

After mud puddles, bumps, off-road detours and several stops to allow herds of sheep to pass, we arrived.

People had scattered during the war. The Armenian General Benevolent Union, the largest international Armenian NGO, headquartered in New York City, had built a school and a hospital nearby, in hopes that such essential institutions in one area would bring Karabakh’s people back to this land.

To an American, the school and hospital seemed to belong to colonial times.

But to the people of Norashen, these buildings represented their dreams for a new life.

As university students, we had to wonder: did our peers here even know what the Internet was? Cell phones? iPods? Facebook? Text messaging?

We looked at these people as if they were museum exhibits, or movie characters. We took pictures, and asked questions of dirty-clothed children playing on the streets, and tired mothers who stared into the distance as they held their babies.

We tried to grasp the reality that the people of Norashen might not know anything about the luxuries of modern technology, but were still satisfied with the life essentials they had.

And as we walked further into the village and met more and more people, these feelings grew clearer. Looking into their tired eyes, we saw that the wounds of war remained.

Yet some expressed hope.

One man, still dressed in camouflage, had been waiting for 15 years for his son to come home from war. His eyes, his clothes, and his dirty, unshaven face showed he was tired, and rapidly aging. Yet, he spoke energetically about the impending arrival of his son.

Neighborhood men were pitching in to try to cobble together a home for their anxious friend, so his boy would have a roof over his head.

This roof, held down by rocks, was made with metal scraps leftover from wartime explosions. But it was a roof.

And that was an improvement. The man was eager to share not only his story with us, but also the fruit he had grown with friends on the trees in his backyard. After his wife pressed pomegranates, nuts, peaches and pears into our hands, we learned that maybe the simple things in life meant the most. The spirit of generosity, no matter how big or small, can always put a smile on someone’s face.

Karabakh’s president, Bako Sahakyan, says rebuilding postwar family life is a huge priority for his government.

Artak Herikian, a young man from Norashen who now lives in Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan, recently told the New Jersey-based Armenian Reporter:

“It’s not because living conditions are good in Norashen that people return. It’s because people love their village, their home, just like I love and miss my home back there. Love for home keeps them there.”

Alexis Halejian is a writer and publicist in New York City. She visited the Nagorno-Karabakh region after studying journalism at Syracuse University?s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Everybody was hangin’ out, and the musical scene was like never before, and never would be again, with musicians like “Radio Futura,” “Alaska y los Pegamoides,” “Golpes Bajos,” and “Loquillo y los Trogloditas.”

Nowadays, Madrid has become the financial capital of Spain, with a more “usual” kind of nightlife. Let’s say more European.

But life and socializing is still very intergenerational: everybody hangs out with everybody, regardless of age or sex. A 16-year-old will drink a bottle of wine with a 70-year-old. This is typical all over Spain. Every town or village has its party week, usually devoted to the local saint or virgin. During those days, the whole population lives in the streets.

Madrid is an old world place; it?s also a city of the future. Being the capital city, it’s where the economic, political and media businesses are located. All the big decisions for the future of the country are made here. At the same time, it has an old spirit, made of old habits and old memories.

This city is all about timing. Lunch is at 3 p.m., dinner at 10. If you go to hang out in a bar at 11, you won’t find that many people. But if you go around 1 a.m., you’ll find it crowded.

One of the places I like to hang out most is La Cava Baja especially on Sunday mornings. If you go there for the aperitivo, at around 1 p.m., you’ll find families, couples and all the survivors of a Saturday night.

It’s hard to say what?s next for Madrid, because of its strange economic situation.

For 20 years, Spain had the fastest growth in Europe. But over the last two years it has stopped, since growth was pushed, apart from tourism, by the overexploited construction/real estate business.

One thing?s for sure, Spaniards, like Italians, always find a way out of the mess.

Escapista is the pseudonym of a Trieste, Italy-based photographer of Italian-Spanish heritage, who believes every Italian could live well in Spain ? and vice versa.

Walking in Madrid

La Cava Baja is a gastronomic heaven on a historic Madrid street. Visitors eat tapas either standing up, or sitting side-by-side, in tiny tiled restaurants. Some of the tapas bars have sublime wine lists, the Madrid wine tour company Cellar Tastings reports. The company finds “Tempranillo,” where wine bottles are stacked to the15-foot ceiling, the best, and also recommends Casa Lucio, Casa Victor, La Cava de Yllan and La Chata.

?A bee. I think it?s a bee,? offered Lucia.

?No. Not a bee!? I responded.

I showed her the finger because it came with a red sting and a dramatic drop of blood. The pain was so severe, I felt I was getting stung again and again. In the smoky hut, Lucia roamed around like a chicken to uncover ?what had done that.? She used a stick to inspect the kitchen rag and we soon distinguished a moving coffee-grind stain that was shaped like a scorpion.

?Ahh,? Lucia said.

?See. It wasn?t a bee.?

?I?m calling the emergency.?

By this, Lucia meant that she?d go looking for the promodor de salud (the health promoter) who was working on the milpa, the cornfield.

Where I was, in the Zona de Resistencia Zapatista, a 60-family community six hours away from the small town of Ocosingo on a good dirt-road day, my prospects for? making it to a town clinic were thin. In the phrase of Lorenzo, a community leader who came to check on Lucia and me at night, a car headed to the city came by every day, a veces. Sometimes. Luckily, I did not have to worry about such things. A scorpion bite –when the scorpion is the color of leftover coffee grinds– is a lot like getting partial lobotomy.

Thinking was out of the question. I had become the effort I made to breathe in and out and the motion of the poison, slowly but surely traveling up my arm. I no longer wondered why the big rooster just would not give up chasing after the slim hen that sat at the end of a branch. He?d fall and try again. I, myself, walked in circle for no particular reason. But unlike the rooster and the hen, I was moaning.

Scorpion bites can be lethal. For every person killed by a poisonous snake, 10 are killed by scorpion bites. It mostly happens in poor places like this, miles from any kind of clinic.

An old man whom I think I had not met before walked up to me.

?Scorpio?? I showed him my finger.

He had lines in his face that were kind. Those read that he didn?t understand what I?d said, or that I didn?t understand what he?d replied.

Before I had come to stay in the autonomous community as a human-rights observer, I had been briefed by activists in San Cristobal. They?d talked about the danger of the military, as well of the ticks. But they?d said nothing about scorpions.

?Me mordi un escorpio? scorpia? escorpi…? I tried again.

The old man answered in a low and monotonous voice particular to indigenous peasants south of Mexico City. I could tell that he spoke to me in Spanish, and not in the Mayan dialect Tzeltal. But still I couldn?t make sense of it. I led him to the kitchen and showed him the dark scorpion I had killed earlier with the stick.
?Alacran,? he said.

?Alacran. Alacran.? I repeated.

The pain was reaching my elbow. What would happen when it reached my brain? I don?t remember thinking this, but the words came out instead.

?Am I gonna die?? I blurted out.

The old man looked like any grandpa sitting under the shade on a bench. He did not answer right away.
I explained what I could in my bad Spanish, all high on pain that I was. I had cooked beans on the fire, and had been looking for a cover.? The cover was on the stained rag, but I couldn?t tell because the scorpion was the color of the wet coffee grinds.

?No vas a morir,? he said. ?Tienes un cigarillo??

I handed the old man a Gratos cigarette, made in Chiapas. He opened up the non-filter menthol cigarette and chewed the tobacco. Then he spit it out in his hand. I let him apply that mixture on my finger and hold it in place. He could have sliced off my hand for all I cared.

The pain traveled back to my middle finger. Once there, the pain receded and I became hungry for the black beans and tortillas we ate daily. When Lucia and the health worker arrived, I was eating my third plate of beans. The can of? La Morena jalape?o peppers ? the sole green vegetable available at the wood shack tienda –was nearly empty.
?You ate all of those peppers,? Lucia said.
The health worker wanted to give me a shot. He couldn?t understand how I was not in more pain. When he concluded that it must have been a small scorpion that stung me, I protested.

?No. It wasn?t small!? I showed him the dead scorpion, and explained the visit of the old man.

He?d left without my noticing. I didn?t know his name. The promodor seemed to be taking mental notes about the tobacco ointment. Maybe that?s something that he would try next time.

Later that night, in my green hammock by the candle light of ?Nuestra Virgen de Guadalupe,? I watched the oversize shadows of bugs and moths playing on the tin ceiling. The night was rich with voices and sounds. I remembered a story about the spirits I?d been told weeks earlier. A man had shot a lynx in the forest. When he arrived home, his brother was dying, because his nagua, his animal spirit, had been the lynx.

I thought about the old man?s strange words.

?What did you do to the scorpion?? he had asked. How I regretted then having killed the scorpion.

New York-based Melanie Griot writes about indigenous culture and ecotourism.

Protected by the mountains from the monsoon, yet irrigated by glacial melt waters, the arid Himalayan valley of Zanskar lies over 13,000 feet above sea level.? You can only reach it on foot, either by walking for four days over the 17,000-foot Shingo La pass, from Himachal Pradesh state from the south, or three days from Padum and Kargil, the only towns in the region, from the northwest. Anything not produced in Zanskar has to be hauled in by donkey.? This is one of the most remote regions of India ? indeed, in the world.

I lean back against the rough-hewn wall of the rocky path to let a heavily-laden train of pack-donkeys edge past.? Stones dislodged by the mules? hooves rattle down the steep sides of the gorge, splashing into the waters of the Kargyak River, perhaps a thousand feet below. As his animals sway under their huge loads of rice, grain and building materials, the mule-herder seems unconcerned about the perilous drop. His confidence is understandable; he and his ancestors have been making this journey for many generations.? Five hundred, or even 2,500, years ago, life was about the same.

Or was it? I look more closely at the mule-herder, and see he?s not wearing the traditional jacket and trousers of thick woolen cloth common in the Central Asian plains. He?s instead dressed in a knockoff North Face jacket, Mountain Hardware trousers, and Etnies skateboarding shoes.? Globalization has arrived.? Because the truth is, Zanskar, however remote, is no stranger to travelers ? and never has been.? It lies in the path of an ancient trade route between Tibet and Afghanistan, linking the Ladakhi towns of Leh and Kargil to the market towns of Manali and Kullu in the foothills. So these rough paths carved from the rock have seen steady summer traffic for millennia.

It?s different in the long winter: from October to May, the mountain passes are blocked by snow. Until recently, the only route out was a footpath along the frozen Zanskar river to the Indus valley. Few, though, brave the subzero temperatures: winter finds the Ladakhis huddled in their stone houses with their animals, their roofs piled high with fodder and dried yak dung harvested in September.

I?m visiting during harvest time. Everything is done either by hand or with the aid of donkeys and yaks.? Old Ladakhi men haul massive bundles of dried grass, two or three times as tall as themselves, to their houses for use as roofing, animal fodder, and fuel.? Women gather potatoes and barley, while others turn the soil with hand-carved plows.? In the high pastures young girls herd yaks, making cheese and curd from their milk.? This is a fully-functioning pastoral economy: beyond subsistence, here in this high and wild landscape, the Zanskari are thriving.

While material wealth is rare, there is almost no evidence of the abject poverty so visible in much of India. Tibetan Buddhism remains an important part of daily life: the landscape is dotted with stupas ? domed monuments that commemorate Buddha, or significant events; and mani walls carved with religious mantras. Portraits of the Dalai Lama are displayed in most buildings, and the monasteries, called gompas, are still socially important.

A 17-year-old monk I met near the village of Photoskar spoke of the tradition of sending second sons to the monastery at the age of five.? He crouched outside my tent as I heated some tea, and snuggled further into the North Face down jacket he wore over his purple monk?s robes. Coming from a family of seven children, he felt very privileged to have been chosen for the monastery; because of this his family?s prestige had also risen.

A visit to Phuktal Gompa, a spectacular monastery hanging from a cliff over the Tsarap River, further clarified why the monastaries are so important here. In a region of slim educational resources, where learning priorities tend to emphasize the manual needs of subsistence farming, the monks were teaching a syllabus of mathematics, Buddhism, spiritual philosophy, English and Hindi. Sending a child to the gompa meant that at least one family member would be educated.

Among the prayer flags, mani inscriptions and chortens, a small plaque catches my attention: an inscription commemorating Alexander Csoma de Koros, a Hungarian linguist who stayed in the monastery in 1825. It?s another reminder of Zanskar?s history as a temperate summer highway, a safe path for travellers crossing the Himalayas.

Nowadays, the ancient path seems to be widening into a tourism trail. Foreign tour operators have been organzing large trekking expeditions here in recent years, with predictable, and profound, effects on local life. Though the 12,000 people of Zanskar have been surprising resilient, retaining their culture, religion, and basic economy despite the annual summer influx, one can see change. Campgrounds, tea tents and concrete hotels have popped up, to cater to tourists, and their ponies, cooks, and guides.

Rubbish has become a major problem.? There was never much before: buildings were made from stone and mud, roofs thatched with grass and dung, and clothes woven from yak wool. Much was reused and recycled out of necessity.? The tourists bring plastic food containers, water bottles and bags; every camping spot we saw was littered with broken whisky bottles, condensed milk tins, and discarded coffee packets, and the paths are decorated with pink trails of used toilet paper.

Recently cleanup efforts have been made: trekking agencies in nearby Padum and Leh have posted signs beseeching travelers to ?keep Zanskar green.? But the signs are often hidden behind piles of rubbish.

Nana Ziesche, who runs the Germany-based Ladakh Travel, has taken more active approach.? In September 2007 she ran a cleanup trek, collecting rubbish along the popular 75-mile trekking route from Lamayuru to Padum. Her idea was a partial success: the large team collected 35 bags of plastic rubbish, and burned much more. But they discovered upon reaching Padum that there was no system for rubbish disposal.? In such an isolated area, in a land with very thin topsoil, waste disposal is very difficult.

Aside from the spread of designer trekking wear and the rubbish problem, a more insidious effect of the summer tourist traffic is revealed by the occasional health warnings daubed on the sides of buildings.

?Life is precious: save our life from dangerous AID diseases,? reads one.

In such a tranquil, remote area, the idea that sexually transmitted disease is spreading comes as a shock. But with so many outsiders arriving, particularly from the busy tourist- and market-towns in Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir and Nepal, maybe the spread of HIV and AIDS is not particularly surprising.

Health clinics and prevention programs have sprung up in Zanskar in recent years, but they?ll have a greater task on their hands in the future. The valley?s isolation is threatened by two roads now under construction.? One creeps from Darcha and the Lahoul valley in the south, with the aim of climbing over the Shingo La into the Kargyak plain.? The other, already 15 miles long, comes from Padum in the west, forcing its way into the steep walls of the Lungnak gorge.

When these two roads meet ? it?s not clear where — Manali will be connected to Kargil and Srinagar, and the might of the Indian Armed Forces will have a much quicker route to the senstive Kashmir border. (The current route, the unreliable Leh-Manali highroad, is impassable between? October and May).? This ambitious project will take many years to complete.? The terrain is treacherous, and most of the trail-breaking work is being done by hand, by a mix of locals and drafted-in residents of Bihar, India?s poorest state.

The road will no doubt improve health care, education, and communications for the 12,000 inhabitants of Zanskar.? But it remains to be seen whether this isolated pocket of the Himalayas can survive the combined onslaught of tourism and the Indian Army, and whether the resilient Zanskari people with their millennia-old ways, economy, and culture, can persevere.? The tourist blurb is still true — just.? I?m not sure if it will remain accurate for many more years.

London journalist Ben Spencer specializes in writing about mountaineering and travel.

?Today is now. Yesterday was the day before. Tomorrow is the next.??Ghanaian school song

A dusty ride west from Accra brings us to Feteh, a town of 700 people, where the only attraction is the Village of Hope, an orphanage of 160 children.

Some of these children are former slaves, sold into bondage by their parents and forced to work in the fishing industry on Lake Volta, the world?s largest man-made lake.
Seven escaped with the help of George Achibra, a local teacher who purchased their freedom, and later brought them to this Christian-run orphanage.

The children range in age, but all are under 12. And their story of neglect is the same.

There is 9-year-old Helga, who remembers the spur-like scales slicing her hands while dressing fish over and over. And 6-year-old Mark, his arms too small to paddle under the gray, moist sky of the lake, was reduced to scooping water out of the fishing canoe with a bucket. Of his experience he could only say with lowered eyes, ?I never want to go back.?

They are just a few of the voiceless 39% of children aged five to 14 believed to be working illegally in Ghana under hazardous conditions, according to figures kept by the Ghana Statistical Service. As many as 1.3 million Ghanaian children labor under these conditions, despite a 1998 law that prohibits the use of children in dangerous labor.

Severely abused, malnourished and unable to speak any English, the children Achibra brought here were absorbed into an already-overcrowded home stay facility, after Achibra consulted their parents and discovered that none could afford to keep their children at home.

While the penetrating afternoon sun beat down on a small concrete slab outside a Village of Hope building, the former fishing industry slaves, hunched in a circle, played with one another and showed their scars, left from years of canings and ritual abuse by their former masters.

In those days, the boys dived and rowed. The girls spent hours preparing fish. 
Helga, scrawny with pooling ebony eyes, exposed her legs to show the knotted scars from her three-year servitude in Ghana’s northeast. She did not remember the home or village she came from, only the creed of surviving the bleak 17-hour workdays her parents sold her into for $10 a year.

“You can’t tell your slave mother and father that you are afraid. If you say you are afraid, they will beat you. If you are afraid
you will not survive,” she said. Helga remembered the pain of her life on the lake but looked to John, the eldest of the rescued clan, to tell their story.

Among the white and blue buildings that make up the school and housing arrangements in this sun-baked compound, 12-year-old
 John is known as the boy found with the blood.

The Bloody Boy

John is young and intelligent, with a soft, whispering voice. At 11 a.m., he told us, he would rise to peddle slices of sweet coconut cake in a glass container along the roadside. Until 6 p.m., he sold the moist pieces of cake he wished to one day taste himself, then returned to the vast waters to fish until 6 a.m.

Here John watched several boys die while diving to untangle the fishing nets stuck on trees underneath the water.

“There was a boy called ?Old Man? who dived down one day and never came up. After waiting a long time for him to surface, our master took a hook and fished his body out of the water. They buried his body in the sand near the water. After seeing that I never thought I would survive,” he said. “I didn’t think I would see my 12th birthday or ever leave Lake Volta.”

While the fishing was the most dangerous part of his past life, it was a day?s worth of coconut cake that nearly killed and eventually saved him.

The air that day had been thick with a swallowing, engulfing heat. John remembered he had sold nearly $2 of cake and then lay down to sleep in the shade, only to wake to find that his master’s belongings and money had been stolen. 
”I was so scared. I cried and cried. I prayed that my slave mother would understand. I feared for my life because I lost everything,” John said.

After returning home, John was severely beaten. 
”They told me I was a liar, that I lost the money on purpose. Then they told another boy younger than me to beat me. He said no, so they beat him in front of me.? John was then thrown headfirst through a glass window, stripped of his clothing, tied naked to a tree and beaten. After being untied, he was covered in blood. Still fearing for his life, ran to the nearby town of Kete Krachi.

Achibra, a native of Krachi, found John there, crying. He decided to shelter John. He notified the police, and together they contacted his parents.

“I didn’t have any clothing. I didn’t have a cloth to sleep with.? George is a good man. He gave these to me. He saved me,” John remembered.

John, who had long, scratching white scars across his head from his final beating, had not yet been saved.

A Good (But Beleaguered) Samaritan

“I rescued him, thinking I was doing a good thing. His masters abused him. They tied him to a tree and beat him,” recalled Achibra, a noble fiftyish man with a sturdy, youthful build and mature eyes that command attention. “But, after the police gave him to his parents, he was once again sold by his parents, this time to fishermen working on the Bay of Guinea near the Ivory Coast.”

Achibra traveled to the coast and rescued John. With funding from U.S. donors, he then paid for the rescue of six other children in Kete Krachi. Now he runs a small NGO called PACODEP, devoted to helping other exploited children.

Despite Ghanaian legislation that has made the trafficking and exploitation of children in dangerous labor illegal, the corruption of a generation still breeds in Lake Volta’s placid waters. That fact is apparent to Achibra and his NGO workers every day.

“The children that have been rescued by George Achibra are just one in five. That means there are still literally hundreds out on the lake that we have seen but can do nothing about,” said Steve Allen, a
 28-year-old American independent labor researcher who was working in the Volta region. “You need funding, education programs, and you need the police to arrest fishermen. So far they haven’t arrested one fisherman here. The fishermen here have been operating with complete impunity.”

?The police never go to the lake to arrest the fisherman. We want the police to assist us,? Achibra said.

The Ghanaian Ministry of Women and Children Affairs and the International Organization of Migration have undertaken public educational programs, and were instrumental in Ghana?s passage of the Human Trafficking Act of 2005. But the exploitation of children in the dangerous and strenuous fishing industry is still commonplace.

Marlene Annan, who heads the human trafficking unit of the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, which works with the IOM to rescue and rehabilitate the children, recognizes the labor situation and points to progress. ?It?s not just a question, this is happening. The social initiatives have been put in place and they are living up to their expectations.?

The IOM, with the help of a donation from the U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, says it has rescued more than 576 children in Ghana since 2002.

Wilbert Tengey, the founder of the African Center for Human Development, believes more progress needs to be made. ?The help is here. But to say that we have solved the problem is untrue. Maybe 1 or 2 percent have been rescued from the industry — that?s it.?

After witnessing John?s story of abuse, Achibra decided to start buying children from local fishermen, to house and educate them. He plans to build an orphanage with private U.S. funding. His NGO, PACODEP, is run by members of his family and community.

By the summer of 2007 PACODEP had rescued 39 children, 25 of whom Achibra turned over to a government social welfare program in Accra.

With the assistance of his family, local missionaries and European and Canadian volunteers, Achibra continues to patrol the lake, but is hampered by lack of funding, and under stress from local conflicts over payment.

He?s taken up the cudgels against child slavery in Kete Krachi, but his mission is both draining him financially and making him a controversial figure in his community. Local fisherman, who say the IOM promised to compensate them for the children they gave up ? with, say, cows or nets ? protest that Achibra hasn?t kept his promises.

Walking along the narrow broken streets of this lake town on evening, the
only light on Achibra is from the scattered stars and orange moon in the
sky. Evening Muslim prayer begins to rattle off a few hundred feet away.
The rhythmic whine of devotion vibrates and lingers while the shadows of bodies flowing through prayer positions is illuminated by a
burning lantern onto a parallel wall.

Two men home in and abruptly approach Achibra out of the darkness. Their arms, rowing arms, are thick and
strong. Tension rises in Achibra’s voice
as he rapidly sputters in conciliatory tones in his native Krachi language to the two
fishermen demanding their promised money. The men depart, but Achibra, usually confident in demeanor, looks uneasy.

“These two men are fishermen,” he says. “They are hungry and want the
money we have promised them for giving up their children.”
Achibra said that Eric Peasah, a director at the IOM in Accra, privately promised Achibra and the fishermen money or goods.

Peasah acknowledges that the IOM funds private NGO groups to carry out rescues of children, but claims he only offered what he called ?incentives.?

“We don’t give money to fishermen,? Peasah said. ?We will give them incentives like a
goat or a sheep.?
Samuel Acquah, a prosperous fisherman with several trafficked children of his own, believes in Achibra’s
mission, but is angry that he has not received any compensation for other children he gave up.
“We are really worried about the IOM, since we give them away and don’t
get anything in return. We would take anything. Why should we do this
 when we [fishermen] use these children for our work?” Acquah said. “There is one
 child in George’s book now that he wants, but we will not give him now.”

Achibra perseveres in his mission to rescue, educate and feed children forgotten by his Lake Volta community. He sees it as his personal mission, something he cannot give up on.

“I see PACODEP in five years raising good children and changing the 
attitude of the community. In 10 years, I will be able to say I have
 graduated these children from college,” Achibra said.

Researcher Allen thinks PACODEP has made progress in the community, but that it?s hampered by the IOM?s refusal to compensate PACODEP for the rescues it has carried out.

?The IOM has not only lost a resource, but also fanned distrust in an area that needs the promised help,” he said.

In the summer of 2007 three more children ran away, and sought refuge at Achibra?s home. After fleeing for miles from their masters, the 8-year-old boys were bone-thin with ringworm patches on their skulls. Like John, these boys were in need of clothing and a meal — and Achibra was ready for the task.

Sarah Conway is a teacher for the Peace Corps in Madagascar. She wrote this story while studying in New York University?s summer journalism program in Accra, Ghana.

My uncle Nicolino, my mother?s half-brother whom she never met, returned to Rome after two years? imprisonment on the Russian Front in 1945. He couldn?t find his fidanzata naturale, his lover, and never did. She was presumably lost in the American bombing of San Lorenzo, the working class quartiere that the bombers targeted.

You can easily see that if some civil war broke out anew in Italy, this neighborhood and the quartieri beyond it would host the action. Its grand, grimy 19th century arcades would provide cover for snipers and bombers; its dense stew of peoples, from older Filipino and East African immigrants to newer Balkan, Near Eastern and African ones, alongside a persistent Roman marginal class, already provides the necessary ethnic tension.

Nearly every year, a public debate erupts over how to fix the Esquilino, an argument ancient Rome?s Senate broached as far back as the 3rd century B.C. Esquilino makes the cronaca nera, the ?black pages? of Roman newspapers, frequently: a sweatshop with indentured workers busted, a teenage runaway lured into the wasteland south of Termini station and gang raped in a boxcar. Locals tell stories of clandestine sweatshops and prostitution dens walled into grimy buildings. In September 2003, Mayor Walter Veltroni?s administration pledged a 13-item ?recipe? for turning the Esquiline into the perfect harmonious blend of traditional Italian and contemporary immigrant cultures, the 13th being to create yet another task force on the Esquiline?s problems.

I pushed farther down Via Merulana and into its side arteries around Piazza Dante, seeking the Historical Museum of the Liberation, housed in the former local headquarter of the SS, where Italian resistance members were imprisoned and interrogated. You can see the exact border of the Esquiline and Caelian hills, a deep fold in the street grid, looking south from the corner of Via Ariosto and Via Galilei. The corner had a big graffiti on one wall: non piu servi degli americani — no more servants of the Americans.? At Piazza Dante I munched a sandwich and battled biting ants; I found one clinging to the inside of my T-shirt.

Suddenly two cops appeared in the scrubby park at the bench across from mine, checking two Near Eastern men?s documents. I waited till the police left because I didn?t want to seem suspicious, and then left myself.

“Wonderful Kid”

At a caff? back on Via Merulana I noticed a sign marking the home of one Carlo Foschi, killed by the Gestapo in 1943. A fat, grizzled old-timer sat at a rickety table parked haphazardly on the street itself, between cars. His T-shirt was stained. Beside him sat a young North African who eyed me unpleasantly as I approached and asked for directions to the museum. An equally unpleasant young Italian stood by him.

The old man?s mouth, its lost teeth so clearly the luckier ones, was his nastiest part.

?You mean the museum of Via Tasso? Where the Gestapo headquarters was?? He pointed and I thanked him and started away, but he called me back.

?Why are you interested in that museum??
?I?m an American, but my family is tied up in that history.? How far from tourist Rome I was, though just nine blocks from the train station!
?See that sign there?? He pointed up to the Foschi marker. ?He was a wonderful kid, just 19. Killed by that son of a whore Captain Kappler.? He spit figlio di puttana when naming notorious Nazi war criminal Herbert Kappler, who massacred Italians with gusto.

?You knew him??
?I was just nine, but I knew him.?

The old man?s name was Armando Toschi. He warmed upon learning my father was from Lake Como.

?They made a beautiful resistance there,? he said. As for him, he?d lost his whole family between 1943 and 1945.
?To the Gestapo??
?No, to the Americans!? He almost wailed the answer. ?They bombed and bombed, without caring who they killed! We Italians were caught in the middle.?

He was exaggerating. Actually, the American precision bombing of Rome, targeting only a few neighborhoods with German barracks and headquarters, like this one, was a uniquely merciful thing for World War II.

?I?m sorry.?

?Where are you from??

?Near New York.?
?When the Towers were attacked, I?m sorry, but I said, ?Now you know what it?s like to be bombed ? but you only know just a little.??

Luckily just then a shabbily dressed Albanian approached, and brazenly offered to sell my new friend a gold bracelet for 30 euros. All three waved him off, more embarrassed at his timing than shocked.

?Do you hate the Germans?? I asked.

?No,? he said, shaking his head emphatically. He and what remained of his family ? so he didn?t lose them all, I consoled myself guiltily ? had fled east to the Abruzzi , to escape Rome. There he befriended a young German soldier, young like the murdered Carlo Foschi. The soldier started an affair with a local girl. ?She just wanted bread, and he needed to, you know.?

He made the famous Italian fucking gesture with his arm. ?You know a young man explodes if he doesn?t do it?? Here his fat old toothless face looked up quizzically into mine. ?They were innocents,? he said, looking away and back. ?One night in the winter, three guys got him. They went up to him and stabbed him like this, in the back, three times.? He pantomimed the stabbing to the scarier looking of his two attendants, who studied Signor Toschi?s jabs with a professional sort of interest.

?I was there,? he continued. He was a little boy. ?When I saw what was happening I ran and hid behind a bush. I came out when they left. There was snow on the ground, and he lay there, still alive. He had the bluest eyes, and blond hair. He looked right into my eyes as he died, like I?m looking at you? ??and here he fixed his old gaze on mine for the longest time ? ?and a tear ran down his cheek.? He was silent in the noisy street. ?The young people today have forgotten everything,? he said suddenly.

?Maybe it?s better to forget.?
He got angry. ?No, it?s not better. It?s worse. We have to remember.? Then he smiled. ?You found more than you were looking for, no??
?Yes,? I said, promising to return.

?I?m here every day, the same spot, at two. I was a bit of a journalist myself, you know.?

Shadows of My Uncle

The Historical Museum of the Liberation stands halfway up a long uphill climb, which made it more annoying but no more surprising to arrive and find it closed for lunch, to leave, to return at four, and to have its doorman bar me because now just an hour remained till closing.

I persisted, however, returning next morning. He tried to bar me again, arguing that no guide was available just then. I told him I didn?t need one, that I spoke Italian fluently and that I was there to see if I could find out more about my lost uncle?s world.

Nicolino had returned from his harsh POW experience with tuberculosis and shattered nerves to the awful discovery of his lover?s death. What was it like to be a hero of the discredited Fascist cause,? a ?war invalid,? as those like him were officially declared with attendant little privileges like free tram rides, to begin again, working as a newspaper typographer through the Italian economic miracle of the 1950s, to marry someone new?? Mom and the half-brother she?d never met stopped writing to each other around 1953, my birth year, so we knew nothing about him, not even whether he was still alive.

Ah, but the library is closed, the guard told me, seemingly pleased. That?s okay, I said, just the exhibits will be fine. Luckily his superior appeared and overruled him, and I got in.

Few Romans were eager to enter this building when the SS was in charge.? The left hand doors at No. 155 Via Tasso were not so bad, leading only to SS offices, barracks, and storage. At the right hand doors, No. 145, you were given a mess tin, a wooden spoon, and a thin blanket before being led to your cell, unless you were important enough to be taken right to interrogation.

The building, built by Prince Francesco Ruspoli and rented to the German embassy in the late 1930s, had originally housed the German Cultural Office, but in 1943 there was time for only one kind of German culture. The windows were walled up except for grated 27 by 20 inch openings; in spring 1944, as the prison filled, the doorways got another 16 by 10 inch opening to relieve stench. Doors were removed from toilets to humiliate prisoners, to soften them for interrogation. Prisoners slept on two-meter long hard tables, until those ran out as the place crowded. They could receive nothing from their families except a change of underwear weekly. When even Germans started feeling the food shortage, in spring 1944, they began letting prisoners receive one boiled egg weekly from outside, too.

Awakened at 7, the prisoners had to clean their cells for inspection and then went in groups for two minutes to the bathroom. Those not scheduled for interrogation went to maintenance duties until the day?s single meal, a thin broth with potatoes and cabbage and about 7 ounces of bread. If you were being interrogated during dinner, you missed it. Between 5 and 8 p.m. you could go to the bathroom, during which time you could fill your tin with water for the night. Then at 8 it was lights out, absolute silence, and absolutely no more bathroom trips. What did middle-aged men like me do? Night was a favorite interrogation time, because the Gestapo felt it made a good impression to return a tortured prisoner to his cellmates then.

The museum, however, focused not so much on prison conditions as on the resistance. One hero was Ettore Rosso, a young officer given the hopeless order to secure the city?s northern entrance. He set mined trucks along his roadblock. When the Germans arrived, he answered their order to move by opening fire with his small detachment. As they swarmed in, he blew himself up, along with his men, and many Germans.

On the southern end of town at Porta San Paolo, a wounded Lt. Raffaele Persichetti led a group who discarded their uniforms and wore civilian clothes to confuse the Germans.

?A hero among heroes,? the display said, ?with words and example he invited his fellow fighters to the ultimate resistance unto death, sacrificing his young manhood for the vision of a fatherland reborn in freedom.?

Rome Gentrifies, But Esquilino Just Gets Grittier

More footsore than I?ve ever been in Rome, I danced to discs spun by Felix Da Housecat outside the trendy Go Card Club Musica adjoining Termini station, with Eric Bassanesi and Denise McNee. They are expatriate English cofounders of a comic theatrical group called The Miracle Players.
We complained about how expensive Rome was getting, as always.

?Did you notice how 25,000 lire became 25 euros after the change?? Denise asked.

They live in the heart of Esquilino, which seems to be getting grittier as the rest of the city gentrifies. ?The prostitutes used to stop two or three blocks south of where we live,? she said. ?Now they?re spread way up past Piazza Vittorio.?

On my way to meet the Bassanesis, a fat Congolese hooker had blocked my way for a second on a back sidewalk near the train station.

?Andiamo,? she?d whispered hoarsely. ?Let?s go.? Another, a hard looking girl from somewhere east of Romania, had solicited me more professionally in Piazza del Cinquecento, slyly, while her three male handlers stood menacingly curbside.

After the Bassanis left, I lingered around Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele II. La Repubblica?s youth correspondent had breezily urged readers to mimic the young and to go with the flow at Rome?s annual urban culture festival, Enzimi. Tonight the gritty piazza was packed with young roamers. They pushed and pulled me when I got in the way of their relentless search for action.

Still, the strong euro was knocking me for a loop and I needed a budget night. Wow: free music, free Internet access, a falafel sandwich and a beer for 7.5 euros, and more beautiful young romane than I could count. They stuffed down third world food with no apparent effect on their tight bare midriffs. Below the midriffs came long print skirts or baggy harem pants and sandals, though they all still shaved their legs at least, an improvement over my ?70s salad days. I stayed for a French film about tensions and bonds among French and Arabic schoolkids.