Byron's CURRENTS Blog

MAURITIUS

Well, we were supposed to go to Kenya, but they were worried about terrorists and pirates in the area so the ship's powers that be sent us to Mauritius instead... I'd never heard of Mauritius before - it's a little island northeast of Madagascar. This would end up being a rest stop for us, since we didn't have time to plan anything on the island. So - we spent a lot of time on the beach. Sometimes life can be very difficult. This was not one of those times. Here's where I spent the first & second of our three days on the island:

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Now most people in Mauritius are of Indian decent - about 70%, and over 20% are Creole, which is a mix of French and African backgrounds. There are also some Chinese and French communities. The official languages are French and English, but most people speak French. Here's a Hindu shrine that we found on the beach, it looks pretty cool:


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Check out the blue guy's severed head:

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Not somethin' ya see every day back home in Los Angeles, that's fer dang sure. The sunset turned out pretty nice that evening:

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Our last day we toured around the island. It's a very nice place and kind of reminded me of Hawaii with all of it's green mountains and palm trees.

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Lots of sugar cane fields too...


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We visited a national park devoted to showing off how the area had seven colors of dirt.

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I dunno - I could only see 3 or 4 colors at the most, so I felt kinda ripped off... They did have some giant tortoises though, so that kind of made up for the disappointing dirt.


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We also went to a Hindu temple that had a mountain we could climb up for a good view.

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At the top we hung out with some monkeys.


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Across the lake we could see them building a giant statue of a Hindu God.

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On our drive out, we got a closer look at the thing, and it proved to be a giant robot they're building to defeat Godzilla, whom they expect to attack the island in January.

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At our last stop, we got out of the cab and looked out at this nice vista, and I took a pic of my posse.

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That's Rico, the ship's AV guy, Amy, the ship's IT gal, and of course our beloved Global Nomad Jason Liquori. Then we were like - hey - let's see where this path goes - and it took us to the end of a waterfall, which was pretty sweet.

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So, Mauritius provided us with a most excellent time. Click on any image to see it full-size.

December 05, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

SOUTH AFRICA

All right - so it's been a long time with no posts - I'll try to make this one extra fat to make up for it.

After leaving Brazil, we had 8 days at sea. Since this ship goes so fast we probably coulda made it in half that time, but they had to make some room for all the classes. So, for the first leg of the trip we were haulin' ass, but then the captain slowed us way down after a couple of days, and we just putt-putted into Cape Town. I spent the time mostly editing webumentaries for GNG.

I'd just like to make a statement about time zones - during our Atlantic crossing we lost 5 hours in 8 days. That's five 23 hour days. 23 hour days suck - the day isn't long enough to begin with, and then you go and shorten it by an hour? Why the heck aren't we going the other way? Then we'd have 25 hour days, which would be so much nicer. I tried explaining this to the captain and the dean so that they'd turn the boat around, but it seemed like they weren't listening - they just stared at me and asked me what kind of medication I'm on.

The cool thing though was we had an archbishop on board with us, the Nobel Peace Prize winning Desmond Tutu. This guy is so cool - just a really happy guy. I didn't really talk to him, but he hung out in the staff lounge a lot checking his email, and sometimes he'd get up to go to the bathroom... I'd never seen an archbishop checkin' email before, or getting up to go to the bathroom for that matter, but rest assured, it was pretty cool.

I'm still singing in the choir, and we sang the South African national anthem for him the night before we arrived in Cape Town. This fired him up so much that he gave everyone in the choir a hug and a kiss. That's the first time I've been kissed by an archbishop, and I hope it won't be the last.

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This is the good archbishop encountering Scott's bagpipe playing the morning we arrived in Cape Town - he always plays when we come into port, much to the chagrin of many on the ship and off. Bishop Tutu seemed to dig it though.

This next shot was taken just after sunrise, as we approached Cape Town. It was a cold morning, with a very dramatic sky.

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The large mountain range you see there is called Table Mountain. Here we are a little closer:

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Here we're just about to enter the port, and you can see the city pretty clearly behind.

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Here we are in the harbor now, with a tug helping us into our slip.

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Here's another shot from in the waterfront area:

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Cape Town is named for the Cape of Good Hope, which is the southernmost tip of Africa, and popularly regarded as where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet - although there is some debate about this. Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias was the first European to discover the cape in 1488. Nine years later, Vasco da Gama rounded the cape for the first time on his way to India. The Dutch set up shop in the area in 1647, and they were taken over by the British at the start of the 19th century - after Napoleon made quick work of the Netherlands in 1795, the British figured they were so weak they could take what they wanted of theirs, and so they did. The British ended the slave trade in 1808, and emancipated all the slaves in 1833, about 30 years before slavery ended in the United States. The bubonic plague gave the government the excuse to introduce racial segregation in 1901 - blacks were moved away from the city. Apartheid was introduced with the National Party coming to power in 1948. Apartheid means "separateness" in Afrikaans, the language spoken by the Dutch descendants (and one of the 11 official languages now recognized by South Africa).

Incidentally, "yeah" sounds really cool coming from someone who speaks Afrikaans - it's spoken low and drawn out, like yaaaaaaaaah.

Back to my history lesson - up until 1948, there had been a looser system of segregation, which a government commission recommended ending altogether. Said then Prime Minister Jan Smuts of the United Party, "The idea that natives must all be removed and confined in their kraals is in my opinion, the greatest nonsense I have ever heard."

Too bad for everybody that there were some hard-core racists represented by the National Party that made their own commission which recommended exactly the opposite - that segregation should be strengthened, not dismantled. The National Party ended up coming to power in coalition with the Afrikaner Party, even though they lost the popular vote (sound familiar?). They immediately instituted the policy of Apartheid, which classified all individuals by race, and set up a classification board to make official rulings on questionable cases.

The classifications were "Whites" (European descent), who of course were at the top, followed by Indian, then "Coloureds" (mixed race), and finally "Blacks" (African descent). All public areas were separated, including beaches, buses, hospitals, schools, restrooms, and even park benches. Blacks and Coloureds had to carry identity documents and were prevented from being in towns without permission. Interracial sex & marriage was outlawed, and existing mixed couples were forbidden from living together. Voting rights were severely curtailed for Blacks & Coloureds, who were given separate voter rolls. Racial discrimination was formally legislated in employment. Supposedly independent homelands were set up for black people, and the inhabitants of these homelands were stripped of their citizenship. Non-whites could not hold a position in the national government. In the 1970's, the government spent 1/10th of the money educating black children as it did whites, and a college education was basically impossible for a black person to attain. Cinemas, restaurants & hotels were prohibited from admitting blacks, except as employees. Opposition parties such as the African National Conference were made illegal. Entire black neighborhoods were forcibly relocated, their land bulldozed and rebuilt upon by new white owners.

On top of this, an extremely conservative regime ruled the country which, among other things didn't allow the introduction of television into the country until 1976, because of its perceived immorality. Yet the government had no moral problem with killing 69 protestors during 1961's Sharpeville massacre, or 566 peaceful students during 1976's Soweto uprising.

International pressure against the regime mounted in the form of sanctions, both military and economic. Massive campaigns were launched to pressure people not to invest in South Africa or companies that did business with South African companies. The South African regime reacted by becoming more and more of a garrison state, actually building nuclear weapons with help from Israel, and launching military destabilization campaigns into the countries that bordered it, which were viewed as a threat. These campaigns started civil wars in Angola & Mozambique that killed hundreds of thousands, not to mention the millions made homeless.

The atrocities reached their peak in the early 1980's under the leadership of P.W. Botha. Police & soldiers patrolled the streets in armored vehicles, destroying black squatter camps and detaining, abusing and killing thousands of blacks and coloureds. Media coverage was heavily censored by law to conceal the severity of the situation. Despite this though, cracks were forming in the walls, and the white leadership began to admit the need for change. In 1984, Botha told white South Africans to "adapt or die," some reforms were introduced, and many of the apartheid laws were repealed. Yet many considered these cosmetic changes, and the opposition group United Democratic Front, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Reverend Allan Boesak, called on the government to abandon its reforms and instead abolish apartheid all together.

Economic pressures from international sanctions caused the value of the Rand to collapse, and in 1985 the government declared a state of emergency, which was to last for five years. Thousands were incarcerated without trial, tortured or killed. Security in the country deteriorated and thousands of whites fled the country. Under pressure from the US and Britain, in 1989 Botha stepped down and was replaced by FW de Klerk. In 1990, de Klerk repealed discriminatory laws, lifted the ban on opposition parties, and released all political prisoners. Nelson Mandela was released that year after 27 years in jail. A new constitution was written explicitly forbidding almost all forms of discrimination, and in 1994 a new rainbow flag was raised over the country, with a new president, Nelson Mandela.

As you can see, South Africa has some crazy history to it. So I was most impressed with the students of Pinelands High School, the guys we did our teleconferences with. These people were really cool - very intelligent & very opinionated, and they spoke English way better than any of the American students we teleconferenced with. Plus, as you can see they were all different races and they seemed to be getting along splendidly.

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The teleconference on the first day went very well. The South African students commented on how lackadaisical the Americans seemed, like they were in detention or something, which I thought was interesting. They also seemed astounded by a Texan owning 3 guns, and were totally disturbed by the idea of "cow tipping."

One thing I will say about you Americans - some of you say the word "like" way too much. Like, you'll use it like 10 or 12 times in like one sentence, and it's like totally out of control and makes you sound, like, stupid. So like, get over it, please.

Next day we were supposed to have a teleconference at a youth HIV center called Love Life. It was in the middle of a black township area, a shantytown with a population of 1 million. Here's Jason on the roof, sprayin' down tha hood with our videocamera. This was our big plan for the conference - shoot the surroundings from the roof, and then cut to the conference.

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Here's what he was shooting:

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Being an AIDS center, it had medical rooms and free condoms and awareness literature & posters. Check it out:

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We somehow had a problem with our satelite hookup. I'm not privy to what the problem was, but this was the scene while Chris was trying to sort it all out. Note the satelite dishes right next to the basketball/soccer court, with Chris there on the phone with mission control.

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Could almost be an ad for EMS, no?

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I dunno. Maybe the fanta can was screwing things up? I got bored so i shot the soccer game instead of the teleconference that wasn't happening. This is how the game is played in a Cape Town township:

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Eventually it hit home that the teleconference wasn't gonna happen. But then Chris had a bright idea: we had a bunch of American girls from the ship checking out what we were doing - why not just have the Africans converse with THEM!! And so we did - here's some of the Africans, forming a segment of the in-tha-round discussion we had going:

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wish I had better pictures of this but running sound for the camera documenting it all was my main priority, so the picture taking kinda fell by the wayside. This little conference was cool, and the Americans from Semester at Sea, which came planning on being mere spectators, were thrust into a participatory role, being quizzed by the Africans on everything from HIV to pop culture. In for more than they bargained for, I gotta say the Americans pulled it off pretty well... Afterwards, everybody exchanged emails and talked about how much Bush sucks. Then we took silly pictures like these:

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Here's us sayin' goodbye to the semester at sea girls - from L to R that's Jason, Chris, Karen, Liz, Brianna, Molly, Dave (obscurred), and the back of Krista's head, who has some really great hair, doesn't she?

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Driving back home to the ship from the township, we passed this painted fence:

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Scarey, huh?? After this, I got sick from a bad cold, and I was pretty worthless for the rest of my time in Cape Town. I got some cool pics from the top of Table Mountain though, which I visited by riding a cable car on the last day in port. Here's a shot looking up the mountain at the bottom of the ride:

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And here are some views from the top, which is at an elevation of about 4500 ft.

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Here's downtown Capetown. At the top you can see our ship, the MV Explorer. She's got some back!

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When the clouds rolled in, it almost felt like a moonscape up there or something.

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Here's some black eagles floating into the sunset.

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Nice way to end a visit to South Africa.

Thanks to Wikipedia for all the historical information on South Africa and apartheid. Click any image to make it bigger. PEACE!

October 05, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)

VIVA BRAZIL

Well, we just left Brazil. What a great country !!

Our ship pulled up at the city of Salvadore, in the state of Bahia, the most historic & most African area in all of South America.

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(click on pic to make full-sized)
The old part of the city actually has an upper & lower level which is connected by a big public elevator. Besides some round-about roads, this is the only way to get from one level to the other.

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Here's a shot of the lower city, by the elevator.

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And the upper city

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that's Dave & Jason strikin' a pose.

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Getting around the city, we took a lot of scrunched cab rides.

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All the cabs we took had natural gas tanks in the trunk.

The gas stations sold regular gas, natural gas, alcohol, and diesel fuels. Many of the cars could switch between 2 or 3 different types of fuel... Brazil is a huge producer of natural gas, and this seemed to be the preferred fuel for the cabs and busses. Consequently, the streets smelled like roses compared to those in Caracas.

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Kids flying small kites made from notebook paper were a common site in the streets.

We spent most of our time visiting at a youth center called Bagunçaço, the brainchild of Joselito Crsipims De Assis. Joselito's father died of AIDS when he was a teenager. He went on to found Bagunçaço, which comes from the word "bagunça" (bah-goon-sa) which means "mess." Children are taken off the streets here and taught to play drums made from found junk, such as tires, gas cans & oil barrels. Here's a webpage describing the center:

http://www.embaixada-americana.org.br/index.php?action=materia&id=3198&submenu=1&itemmenu=10

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Here's a shot of Chris, Joselito, and one of our two translators, Emilio, masterminding our week of teleconferencing and drumming. Emilio is the coolest - he's from Mozambique, which is known as "the land of smiles," and man, Emilio sure has great one.

Bagunçaço is truly an amazing and beautiful place. Smack dab in the middle of the ghetto, it is famous throughout Brazil, and its performers tour around the world regularly. Our first night in Brazil, we were treated to a jam session in the group's practice room.

This is the practice room from the outside.

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And the jam session on the inside:

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Afterwards we all ate spaghetti. That's Joselito looking at the camera, while dinner gets served up:

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For a special treat after dinner, a bottle of Coca-Cola appeared.

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Talk about a bum-rush - the guy pouring was totally mobbed, and some people went without. Coca-Cola has got to be one of the greatest things humans have ever invented. Did you know that the Mayans have stopped making their native shamanistic brews and just drink Coke now ?? That's how terribly great Coke is. Now Coke, send GNG some money.

The next day we had our very first teleconference of the trip, in a conference room at the Salvadore World Trade Center. This one didn't go so smoothly... Audio problems, picture problems. Chris was just chompin and chompin on his gum out of stress... I thought it was all pretty cool, being the first time I'd seen one of these teleconferences go down...

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Lots of chin stroking today:

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Even the Dean of Semester at Sea, John Tymitz got into the act:

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That guy standing there very seriously on the left is Sergio, our main translator. Man, that guy is awesome - he should be working for the United Nations or something... When he's not helping people like us, he teaches chemistry & english to adult students at night school... That night we went back to Bagunçaço and saw some more cool stuff - drumming & capoeira, with Sergio delivering on the rhythm guitar

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That's chris gettin' jiggy wit it. David's a bit more contemplative -

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Then there's this kid Rico - he can do it all - rap, drum & capoeira -

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Rico and another kid spared a bit:

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and then Rico showed David a little capoeira:

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What is Capoeira, you ask ?? Well, let me tell you... (and this is taken from a handout they gave us on the ship) Capoeira is a sport native to Brazil. Its creation is attributed to the African slaves who had been imported by the Portuguese since the early 1500's. More slaves were taken to Brazil than any other country in the world. Capoeira was the only form of release available to many Africans, and it involved physical, musical, mental and emotional expressions and applications. Even today, Capoeira is an expression of the African people in Brazil and is rich with African culture... Capoeira is a martial art that is disguised as a dance so that it could be practiced unbeknownst to the white slave masters.

Stay tuned - we'll have a webumentary about Capoeira up on the site soon.

The next day, our teleconference emmanated directly from Bagunçaço. Here's Chris supervising some of the boys settin' up a tent to keep all the gear cool:

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The kids were all facinated by the cameras:

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There's the next Brazillian Entertainment Tonight anchor.

Here's the crew during the teleconference in the Bagunçaço yard.

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There was some bad glare on the TV screen, which required some technical modifications:

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We had an audience of curious onlookers from the next-door elementary school. Kids just don't come any cuter than these guys:

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Here's a shot from our last teleconference, which was back at the World Trade Center:

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Everybody was very impressed with how evolved and enlightened Brazil's AIDS/HIV policy is. Free drugs for anybody with HIV, free condom distribution at health clinics all over the country, and good education in the schools. The Brazillians fired the Americans up by telling them not to wait for their government to do something, but to get off their butts, join together, and make something happen themselves. Pretty inspiring meetings, I gotta say.

After the teleconference, we had some delicious local food - basically some stir-fried dishes they bring out to you on a sizzling slab of iron. Here's Jason & Sergio chowin' down, along with close-ups of the best food we had in Brazil:

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Then Jason knocked off some shots of the beach (which was right next door) while David looked on. Nice speedo, eh?

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On the last day in Brazil, we just took it easy - did some shopping at the local market, and hung out at the beach.

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Brazil is a fantastic country - what most impressed me is how un-Americanized it is - unlike Venezuela, it's hard to find a sign for an American corporation here. Brazilians are very independent and self-sufficient. I look forward to one day being able to return to this great country, and spend more time. Many thanks to all the great people who helped make our visit a great one, particularly Emilio, Sergio, Joselito, and everyone at Bagunçaço.

September 19, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

4 days in Venezuela

Well kids – I’ve been pretty lax on the ole blog here – not out of laziness but out of busyness – there’s been a lot goin’ on here down South America way. Let me try to catch ya’ll up…

Since my last post we had 3 days at sea before arriving in Venezuela. During that time I started to learn Final Cut Pro and cut my first webumentary for GNG – a piece on the students arriving at the ship, saying goodbye to their parents, and then departing from Nassau. Final Cut seems real easy to learn and use for the most part, and sure beats cutting on a moviola, which is what I used the last time I edited picture 12 years ago at USC. For not having edited in so long, I think the piece turned out fairly well – hopefully we’ll be able to figure out how to post it soon so that people can actually watch it.

I’ve been going to some music classes – choir, gamelon choir, and African music. What’s gamelon choir you ask ?? Well, it’s something that originated in Bali that has gongs and xylophone-like instruments. They’re based on a different scale than the western one we’re used too, so it sounds a bit dissonant to the ear. Anyways, it’s pretty fun to beat on stuff with mallets and make some music – very weird sounding music ta boot.

Download gamelon_movie.mp4

In regular choir we’ve been singing traditional songs from the countries we’re visiting – last week we sang songs from Venezuela, this week we’re working on songs from Brazil. Pronounciation is a bit tricky – Venezuelan Spanish is a bit different than normal Spanish – they tend to leave off the s’s at the end of words – gracias would be pronounced gracia, por exemplo. Brazilians speak Portuguese, and that’s really weird – it looks a lot like Spanish, but m’s sound like n’s , x’s sound like sh’s, etc… Luckily we have some native speakers in the class to help us with the pronunciation. We’ve also been working on a native hand-clapping song from Kenya – you sing in the native Kenyan tongue, and do a syncopated hand clapping with a partner at the same time. That takes some real coordination, which some people in the class just don’t have – but it’s pretty funny watching them spaz out trying.

We arrived in Venezuela at the port city of Guaira in the early morning hours of Saturday, September 3. A mountain covered with sketchy but colorful houses loomed over the main drag through town.
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Apparently there had been a large mudslide here a few years ago causing enormous loss of life, and some scars of this catastrophe were still visible.

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We took a very cramped cab ride to Caracas through more mountains and long tunnels – and stopped at Acción Solidaria, an HIV/AIDS clinic. Here is their web site, which is in Spanish:

http://www.acsol.org/spa/acsol10.html

Here is a biography of the clinic’s founder and president, Feliciano Reyna, and what he is doing in English:

http://www.ashoka.org/fellows/viewprofile3.cfm?reid=97611

We were all most impressed with Feliciano’s kindness, compassion, vision, and humility. Truly an inspiring person, Feliciano spent the afternoon with us discussing the AIDS crisis in Venezuela, and showing us around his clinic. The clinic is a full-service facility, with psychological counseling, blood testing, and even surgery rooms for various medical procedures. They also operate a summer camp for children with HIV, which is attended by non-HIV-infected children as well.


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That's us with Feliciano. According to him, the problem of HIV/AIDS is mostly buried and ignored by both the press and the government in Venezuela. In fact, the leftist government of Hugo Chavez (whom some call a dictator) views Acción Solidaria as an enemy, at odds with their cultural revolution. Nor will the media run any of the 10-second public service announcements Acción Solidaria created to raise awareness about HIV. That said, it doesn’t seem like it’s all bad; condoms are well distributed, and sex workers are regularly tested for STD’s. Also, it was surprising to hear that the Catholic Church is actually a proponent of condom distribution in Venezuela, splitting from the Vatican’s official line regarding birth control.

After a late lunch, we got on an “executive” (that means really nice) bus to Maracay, with the hopes of traveling on to Choroni to hear some indigenous drum playing. Venezuela has many novel drums, developed over the years out of the confluence of its indigenous peoples and slaves brought over from Africa.
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Unfortunately, we didn’t arrive in Maracay until 9pm, and we could find no car to take us on that night to our final destination, so we stayed the night in Maracay, and feasted on fried chicken, steak, blood sausage & fried yucca, which tasted a lot like french fries. Yummm.

The next day we woke up early and took a cab ride over the mountain pass to Choroni. It quickly became clear why no car would take us the night before – this road was the definition of gnarly. Very narrow, it was often one lane wide yet somehow accommodated two directions of traffic. There were switchbacks and crazy drop-offs, not to mention several near misses with busses coming from the other direction. We made good time though and arrived in Choroni in time for a delicious breakfast of eggs and arepas, a local pastry that you can stuff like an empanada, but it’s more like a biscuit in texture.

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Download cheroni_beach_time_lapse_movie.mp4
We took a walk down to the beach, which was incredibly crowded on this Sunday morning. In fact, I’ve never seen so many people on a beach in my life – and I’ve been on a lot of different beaches. Thousands of humans dotted this half-mile stretch like ants. Many camped there in tents, and more came in cars from neighboring areas for the day.

We then took a boat ride up the coast a ways, just to check out the coastline. None of us spoke Spanish very well though, so we couldn’t communicate to the driver to slow down so we could take some decent video footage. It was frustrating not being able to speak Spanish. Made me wish I’d stayed awake in class during those 5 years of Spanish classes I took. It surprised me though how certain necessary words would bubble up from my unconscious.

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We climbed a hill around sunset to get a good view of Choroni and the neighboring Puerto Columbia.

That evening we spent in the town’s gathering area, which overlooked the ocean. Here we hoped to hear some indigenous drumming, but that never panned out. Instead, we heard some locals singing revolutionary songs, ranting about Hugo Chavez, and “viva la revolution.” It was incredible to see the mass of people that surrounded us the moment we started filming. People love their Chavez in this town - he seems to be an iconic figure that people follow with an almost religious fervor.

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We interviewed a few people about the music and their feelings about Chavez, then capped the night off with a hamburguesa, or Venezuelan hamburger. Best hamburger ever, in a pita-like pocket with ham, grated cheese, and these crunchy little potato crisps – they’ve got hamburgers dialed in Venezuela, let me tell you - it was truly a sublime culinary experience.

We returned to Caracas on Monday. The first leg of this trip, back to Maracay, was by public bus. This kinda sucked. The public busses are school buses with custom paint jobs and high-end sound systems.

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Unfortunately they don’t upgrade the seats, which they cram to overflow capacity. Somehow I lucked out and got the seat with the wheel-well, so my knees were totally crammed against the next seat, and with 2 other children sharing my seat, I was pretty much unable to move for 2 hours of gnarly mountain road. It was the salsa and reggaetone pounding into my skull at ear-damaging levels that really made the trip for me though.

When we finally got back to Caracas, we returned to Acción Solidaria to interview one of the children involved with the summer camp. A very enlightened 11-year-old girl, she seemed intent on helping others in any way she could.

That evening then we met up with a friend of a friend of David’s, a native Venezuelan named Carlos, who took us out for some native cuisine and on to a bar for a taste of the local rum. We got into a great discussion about Hugo Chavez over dinner. People in Venezuela either seem to love Chavez or hate him… The more impoverished people, such as those we met in Puerto Columbia, regard him as a hero and icon, while the more well to do capitalists such as Carlos tend to see him as a destroyer of the country. They’ll tell you that crime has gone up, not down as he promised, and the vast fortune that the government is making selling oil is not trickling down to the poor, as it should. Further, communist indoctrinators from Cuba are staffing the education system, and dissent in the media is handled with armed soldiers pulling the plug on television stations.

Crime has increased massively since Chavez came into power. The streets of Caracas are no longer safe, except in certain exclusive areas. We were warned repeatedly before leaving the ship to use great discretion in pulling out cameras, as stealing them is the number one crime in Caracas. Caracas also happens to be the murder capital of the world, or so we were told. All of this crime might have something to do with Chavez’s ideas of property – which are anti-capitalist. Everything belongs to everybody.

Although everyone we met in Venezuela was incredibly nice and I personally did not feel in any danger 99.9% of the time, on Tuesday there was one incident when we were out shooting footage of the city – a car with impenetrable tinted windows followed us for a while and kinda freaked us out until our driver was able to lose it. They must have been after our cameras, and the fact that they had the cajones to approach us when we were 4 people strong made us think they were probably packin’ some heat. Thankfully, Chris was very aware and spotted whoever this was and got us all in the car before any unfortunate incident could transpire.

That said though, Venezuela was great, and I would love to return here. Gas is incredibly cheap – it costs 70 bolivars per liter, which is about 12 cents per gallon. It’s crazy - I mean that’s practically giving the stuff away. Did I mention it’s incredibly hot & humid here though? Being just a few degrees from the equator, that sun beats down on you somethin’ fierce, and it’s all tropical rainforest so it’s sticky and buggy as well.

Now we’re back at sea & heading for Brazil. Tomorrow, 9/9/05, we cross the equator. Apparently it’s tradition to shave one’s head when crossing the equator, so I’ll have to do that, and take out Jason’s mop too. I also intend to find out if water really goes down the drain in the opposite direction south of the equator. We shall see – stay tuned…


September 09, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

8/31/05

8/31/05

Well, there’s a whole mess of students on this ship now – almost seven hundred of em – so what two days ago were empty corridors are now halls crowded with people – 64% of them female, I’m quite happy to add.

We left Nassau yesterday around 5 pm, and I’ll tell you what – the way a ship feels under your feet while at sea is quite a trip. At one point you feel almost weightless like you’re floating, then the next it’s like you’ve just gained 30 pounds. This can be really weird when climbing stairs. I’m sure once I’ve gotten my “sea legs” as they call them, this effect will become less pronounced, and I’m kinda of sad about that – I’m finding the head rushes that this experience provides to be quite enjoyable.

This ship really moves. I mean, you look out the window and the waves are just tearin’ by. The captain talked to the ship yesterday at a big ship wide assembly, and he said this ship is actually the fastest in its class on the ocean. It’s got 50,000 horsepower and does 29 knots. I think that’s about 33 mph, which of course doesn’t seem that fast unless you’re on such a massive thing moving through the water, and then it seems like you’re really moving.

We had an orientation this morning, after which one could walk around and talk to all the teachers and decide on the classes one wanted to take. I talked to a couple of profs about sitting in on some classes – the music prof (Mitch) and the religion prof (Tanya). We’ll see if I’ll have time with everything else I’ll have goin’ on with global nomads to go to classes but I hope I can. The music prof mentioned some kind of gamelon group he wants to get goin – bangin on weird xylophones or something – that should be cool.

Then we had lunch (taco day – YAYEE-YAYEEEEE) which was great – the food here is great, thank god – and then it was on to everybody’s first class, which was global studies. Everybody has to take this one. The class was really boring at first as I usually find 1st day classes to be – but then it got interesting when Proffessor Murphy started talking about what he called, “American civic religion.” American civic religion consists of qualities that have drivin the creation and continuing existence of the United states, which are mainly equality and economic opportunity. He didn’t get into it much today – but I think he plans to deconstruct & debunk these concepts in his class.

Prof Murphy then went on to describe how we can look at the new cultures & people that we are about to encounter. We can dismiss other cultures as a curiosity to be temporarily appreciated but not explored – photos of strange people for our album at home, so to speak. We can pat strange peoples on the head and think, “gee, if only they were as civilized as us” – they have only perceived part of what matters wheras we have perceived the most. We can take a hands-off approach saying, “yeah, I went to East Africa and saw some messed-up stuff, but what can I do about it – it’s not for me to interfere with another culture.” Or, we can take another approach, which he seemed to recommend – one of taking responsibility which then causes us to sympathetically modify our thinking – coming to terms with the unfamiliar and reconciling the complexity. I think his main point was just to get us to think, but I’m not sure I agree with him. Maybe I’ve just watched too many Star Trek episodes talking about “the prime directive” and non-interference, but I don’t know that it’s our place to meddle in other cultures, even if they do seem brutal, when we have so much wrong with our own. Take guatanamo bay for example, where we’re openly torturing people, and sending others abroad to be tortured even worse. I think we ought to set ourselves straight, primarily as individuals but also as our own nation, before we go worrying about others.


September 08, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Monday, 8/29/05


It’s really great to be on this ship. I got in Saturday night, and the ship is pretty empty now – only staff & faculty (staffulty we call it). It’s a beautiful ship - only a couple of years old, and much nicer than I would have expected a floating school to be. They’ve got us in the staff area of the ship – it’s been dubbed “the pit” probably because there’s no natural light. There aren’t any portholes in the rooms because we’re so close to the bow, and the force of the wash striking any windows would surely break them..

The rooms are small, but I have no roommate, so there’s two empty bunks I can stow my belongings on or use as a workspace. The accommodations are actually quite comfortable except for the shower, which is a bit too small for my liking. The ship has seven publicly accessible decks, and there’s quotes etched in glass in all of the stairwells – both in English and in Greek. I’m not sure where they’re from – Homer perhaps?? (and no, I don’t mean Bart’s Dad) The Greek makes me think this ship used to serve in the Grecian isles before being acquired by Semester at Sea (SAS).

It’s a bit strange for me being in an academic environment again. Although an excellent student (if & when I wanted to be), I was never a fan of school. It’s pretty cool to be on the other end of things now – hangin’ out with teachers and not having to be on my best behavior or worry about them assigning me work. I think that’s what I disliked the most – all the dang homework. Luckily there will be none of that for me on this trip, and I’ll only have to go to the classes I want to go to – except for a global studies class that everyone on the ship must attend, as it provides essential information about each of the countries we visit.

I’m so grateful to Global Nomads and the universe for sending me on this trip. I firmly believe that the universe will send you whatever you ask for, so be careful what you ask for. I’ve been asking for a long time to be able to get involved with a project or organization that helps people and makes the world a better place. My regular job is as a sound mixer for reality television shows – I worked on a lot of big shows such as The Osbourne’s and Newlyweds, and while we get to travel to cool places, have a lot of fun and make great money, some days I’d come home and feel like I was helping to dumb down America, contributing to anorexia, or on my worst days, hastening the apocalypse. So I’m so grateful that this project came my way, and I can actually do something for the powers of good for a change… Also, 10 years ago I remember wishing I could go on a cruise around the world after looking at a brochure for the Queen Elizabeth II’s world tour and thinking, “man, if I ever get filthy rich, I’m gonna do that.” Well, now I’m traveling around the world on a ship - and with people that are far cooler than would be riding on that other snobby boat. Remember that kids – you DO get what you wish for, but sometimes it takes a little while (or many years) for the universe to hook you up, so BE PATIENT and DON’T GIVE UP. EVER. Just remember to wish for things that don’t suck.

August 31, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)

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