Dubai 17.May.2011. Perpetual Motion

Dubai 17-May-2011: Perpetual Motion

The bright fluorescent lights framing brighter display cases, emblazoned with the wares of the West, sparkling marble floors and enormous canopied windows; none of this has changed since my last visit to this Mecca of Consumption, this Medina of Capitalism, a brush stroke of Western corporate imperialism painted across the bleak desert sands of the Persian Gulf. The mini-constellation that is Dubai, this strange place that I seem to be passing through more and more as the years progress. And, entwined into the perpetual motion that has been my crazed life, this strange place has become a strange bedrock, a strange bedfellow on routes to and from the developing world; a final outpost of home, its familiarity bred through the slogans of our Starbucks and Costa Coffee bars, our Burger Kings and Givenchy and Christian Dior and Rolex; a weigh-station, transiting through this very terminal on my last birthday from Africa to Asia, a chance to binge for a few hours on the comforts of home without having to actually be home. Maybe this is why so many come here to live, work, and settle. For me, this harsh land with its cursory smattering of modernity, this brash bastion of the West, this temple of money would never faintly considered as a final resting point; however, right now, the warm cup of Starbucks sitting in front of me holds my hand as I journey back to Africa, back to the unknown, back to the unfamiliar, once again.

I have promised myself that I would keep better track of this trip I am embarking on; this efforts have trailed off in my travels to date, but I will be making a more honest effort this time, as a personal record, as a reflection that I realized has been missing after so many long journeys home. Gate number 121, Emirates Dubai to Cape Town will open in a few hours, just enough time to catch up on some correspondence and to wander the gilded hallways a few more times, to soak in this strange atmosphere that is most certainly ephemeral in these circumstances of my life. Now, the calling of gate numbers in Arabic, the language that practically nobody here speaks (as all of the workers are Asian in Dubai, almost 90%) continues and I sit and watch life pass by from over my glowing screen...

Next stop: Cape Town, South Africa, and the beginning of a grand new adventure.

Cancer and Capricorn

As I prepare to reenter the cacophonous  riot that is Africa, I find myself scouring the resources available, the words that have been written describing these indescribable lands, the words of Rimbaud, Greene, Naipaul, Meredith, and so many others who have had the courage to journey, to describe, to entreat all others to their inner madnesses. And one of the best of modern times is Paul Salopek, the Pullitzer Prize winning journalist for the Chicago Tribune, master of prose, dancer of words and worlds....

From writer and journalist Paul Salopek's collection, entitled The Twenty-third Parallel

The twenty-third parallels north and south—what map makers call the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn—girdle the Earth roughly three thousand miles apart, bracketing the warm belly of the planet. They hold between them some of the poorest, least stable and most culturally diverse nations in the world.

The bulk of humanity lives in or near this immense subtropical belt—about two-thirds of the world’s six billion people. It is a place of numberless villages and exploding mega-cities. It is the source of the greatest human migrations in history. Its face is younger. Its colors are brighter. Its sky is a paler blue. By sheer weight of numbers alone, it is where our common future is being scripted.

Africa 2011. The Plan

Ticket to Cape Town, May 15th, via Dubai, purchased. Its only been 3 weeks since I last passed through the United Arab Emirates on my way to the States from Nepal, and yet, it beckons once again. This time as a quick stopover for another 9 hour flight south, way south, to the southern tip of the African continent. I was in Africa last summer, when I visited Kenya and Tanzania; I remember the late night departure from Dar Es Salaam International Airport, eating a last African meal at the small roadside grill across the darkened road from the airport, drinking a final cold Tusker beer, assured that I would return. And return I will...for yet another "trip of a lifetime." How I've managed so many of these in my years I cannot understand, yet they continue to unfold, and I continue to unfold with them.
My goal: To be way more active updating this site during my travels, as I have always tended to trail off during my various adventures around the world. I want this site to be a true travel blog for the next 4 months of adventure.

The Plan: Cape Town to Cairo, or as far north as I can feasibly get in three months of overland, local transport travel through East/Central Africa. South Africa>Mozambique>Tanzania>Rwanda>Uganda>Kenya>South Sudan>Sudan>Egypt.....visiting some great local Educational NGO's to do field work for my next masters degree starting in September at The London School of Economics. Anything NGO/Education Development will be written about and posted at my sister site, www.theschoolsproject.org.  This blog will be just for the nuts and bolts of travel, the hardships, the glories, and everything in between as I take on the mother of all overland adventures.....
Now: wrapping up loose ends, planning, scouring the internet for information, reading as many African books as I can get my hands on (which means re-reading many, as I've already devoured most of them over the years), buying some gear, mainly for camping along the way, and dropping in and visiting some friends here in my hometown of NYC.

leaving nepal.

isn't it all just as a dream?
nothing starts, nothing finishes, just a continual journey, a continual flow of experience, arising and passing, the screen of consciousness.
I have grown non-sentimental over these years; walking out of Boudha, my back to the giant stupa whose gaze has accompanied me for so many months, for so many nights, its eyes welcoming me home after so many journeys, a simple smile, a simple acknowledgment of time spent, of moving forward on this perpetual journey that life has been, the cumulative experience, the perspectives gained, the whole greater than the sum, lost, seized upon, abandoned.
as the plane lifted off the tarmac in Kathmandu, the haze parted with the recent unseasonable rains, and the ancient city shone below the tips of the white wings, its decrepit and ramshackle glory, the huge village sprawl, the dusty brown facades, life continuing apace from this downward gaze, i recognize this fascinating home now from space, and smile, the perpetual journey swallowing the moment, and pushing further forward, into the unknown, the future.

perspectives

"The cumulative experience of seeing the world from many vantage points has helped me to appreciate the real circumstances of our planet-the causes of poverty, the role of rich-country policies, and the possibilities for the future. Gaining a proper perspective on these issues has been my struggle and challenge for the decades. Nothing else in my intellectual life and political engagement has been as rewarding."

-Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty

Kinshasa Symphony

This looks to be a wonderful film coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a rare bright shining light in a place so often portrayed by darkness, both real and imagined, but the foreign press....

double standard

A great op-ed in Foreign Policy written by Yoweri Museveni of Uganda on the situation in Libya. The point that really struck me was this:

Western countries always use double standards. In Libya, they are very eager to impose a no-fly zone. In Bahrain and other areas where there are pro-Western regimes, they turn a blind eye to the very same or even worse conditions. We have been appealing to the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone over Somalia -- so as to impede the free movement of terrorists linked to al Qaeda, which killed Americans on September 11th, killed Ugandans last July, and have caused so much damage to the Somalis -- without success. Why? Are there no human beings in Somalia, as there are in Benghazi? Or is it because Somalia does not have oil that is not fully controlled by the Western oil companies, as in Libya on account of Qaddafi's nationalist posture?

The comparison to the inaction of the Western powers to use the same level of humanitarian intervention in Somalia, where there has been countless human suffering over the years (as well as in Ivory Coast, which has slipped back into civil war, and does not even come up on Google News anymore). I am not defending the actions of Gadaffi; killing innocent civilians is wrong, there is no defense to this; however, what has been wrong has been the action of the West, its hypocrisy and double standards becoming increasingly transparent when seen through the light of the current display of strength in the Mediterranean.

Bed Nets and Bombs

“Why is it that the choice to express our humanitarian benevolence through the use of missiles and jets gets on the table—to the top of the agenda, even—again and again, but the choice to express it less truculently so rarely does? If our humanitarian values really set the agenda, how likely is it that the prospect of urgent military intervention would come up so often?”

-A highly interesting and thought provoking statement from an Economist article entitled, “Foreign Aid: Anti-Malarial Bed Nets Vs. F-35's.”

This statement begs the question, what are our humanitarian values, both as a nation, and as a collective group of nations that has, through historical, colonial, economical, and military means, controlled the levers of power in the world for centuries? Are there a core set of beliefs that can truly be seen, through both words and actions, as supported by the international community? And with this, is the true test of a set of beliefs and values their even implementation across a blank canvas of internationalism? Some of these questions are obviously rhetorical, but yet, the hypocrisy seen in the actions of the powerful nations of the world is startling in its bluntness and brutality. The nation of France, who just 16 short years ago shielded and armed the perpetrators of one of most vicious and bloody genocides of the 20th century (yes, I'm talking of Rwanda), is now leading the charge for the protection of civilians in Libya? The British, still reeling from the loss of their own empire, aiding another failing power in its middle east conquests (yes, im talking of Iraq), and now blasting over the skies of the Mediterranean in its Hornet fighter jets in defense of a nascent rebel army whose aims, goals, and leadership are as ambiguous as the air strikes that have defended it. I am not defending the actions of a madman, or madmen, in any way; I am a staunch defender of human rights and humanitarian intervention, but also a humanist first, a believer in bednets, not F-35's, and ethical historical action playing a larger role in our historically collective humanitarian amnesia. Granted, civil wars, bloody uprisings, and rebel armies cannot be contained by wrapping them up in bednets; however, the smallest actors on the world stage, the peons whose lives are actually held in the balance by the actions of these globalist powers, deserve a voice, and if not, deserve at the very least to live lives free of Malaria and Dengue Fever due to the employment of a $3 bed net, even as the world powers fly overhead in $2 billion fighter jets dropping $20 million guided smart bombs on $10 million tanks.

The author continues, strikingly, that, “...the 2011 budget submitted by the House slashes the State Department's budget for aid to fight malaria (and AIDS, and tuberculosis) in the developing world by billions of dollars, while leaving the budget for bombing Libya (and everything else the Defence Department does) untouched.” I won't touch this statement, its words are menacing enough on their own.

lumbini journal

3.22.11 Lumbini, Nepal

Back in Lumbini. Back in the shadow of the towering gray pagoda, the setting plains sun casting off its cool, unfinished cement facade, the dusty paths where the Buddha walked, over 2600 years ago. Yet the dust, the trees, the grass, these are all the same; evolution does not work so fast as the human mind; the solidity of the natural world, its radiance, comforts the tumbling consciousness.
Back with the birdsong, the gray clad Korean monks riding bright red Chinese bicycles, the golden Tibetan stupa, with its Buddha eyes and their knowing stare, poking through the horizon. A landscape literally littered with the Dharma. The end of a long day on the road, of 8 hours of hard bus travel, of crammed legs in tiny metal framed seats, overheated engines and frantic bus conductors pouring litre after litre of spring water in a vain attempt to cool; they should know, only time will do this, the futility of their actions blinded by repetition on the side of the dusty mountain road. I sit in the sun and watch the scene unfold, watch the passing trucks and buses, careening down the same mountain road, no guardrails and horrific drops, the unimaginable a constant companion, the mind learns to accept the inevitable over the hours of travel. Dusty bus transfers in dusty intersections where dust is the only reality; how people can spend time, can spend their lives in these spots I cannot imagine; my 15 minutes spent waiting for the new bus to depart begins to drive me mad, as I sit and choke in the afternoon heat. The Indian ladies, laden with children, golden bangles, golden earrings and nose rings, sit down on the half seat in front of me, literally dripping with colors, with hardship, with dreams I will never know. I offer their young children some dusty peanuts which they eat with the shell intact, staring at this strange white man with long legs crammed into the tiny tattered seat. I looked into the dark eyes of the young mother, holding her child casually, who was busily dismantling the peanut with its tiny brown hands; her ornamental nose ring dangling past her nostril, sari bright with color and kitsch, so young, so obviously young and burdened, despite all the beautiful ornament, I cannot stop wondering of her life in this harsh agrarian land. And then the bus stopped, as it did ever 20 feet or so, a slowly moving Nepali Thanksgiving Day Parade Float, and she, along with her young sister with her own children dangling, was simply gone, another memory, another story unknown, dreams, shadows. I am ecstatic for the simplicity and wonder of this place.

March 11, Jomsom, Nepal

Drinking a few cups of warm, milky chayng, the local millet brew, at a table filled with red cheeked, robe-clad young Mustangi monks, who have just piled out of a tractor outside the ramshackle old building and join me for their evening meal of Dhal Bhat (rice and lentils). They are returning from the winter spent in Kathmandu, away from the bone-searing artic winds that blast the Mustang region all winter and drive most of its hardy inhabitants to warmer climes. I wonder if I have passed some of these young monks before, walking the cobbled alleyways of my adopted home of Boudha, Kathmandu. The local men, huddled around the old wood fed iron stove, seeking warmth from the high-altitude cold, smile as the strange foreigner walks in, surveys the ancient room, old hand-beaten pots and pans lined up on the soot-covered walls, a low ceiling causing me to crouch and deliver my "namaste" greetings. Its just a simple day in March, the 11th, to be precise. I sit at the table, the monks simple english exhausted as they dig into their meals, and wonder, how many of these experiences, these unique, memory-piercing moments, have been crossed in my years...I ponder the moments of this life, a strange path indeed, a wonderful series of moments, stacked into the deck of life; how many are still yet to be uncovered, I ask. The wonderful mystery brings a grin to my windblown face.
It has been a wonderful 10 days back in the Himalaya, a short trip, but with enduring images; the harsh landscapes masking the cradle of such intricate culture; the ochres and reds superimposed against the barren high altitude desert peaks; the howling winds, the dusty trails, the brilliant blue skies carved against pillow white peaks, truly the abode of the snows. Without the distraction of the world, the mind is free to open, plans unfold out of the crisp mountain air, propelling my onwards. Six months in this strange land; a warm comfort in my soul.