We are the World and Black and White: Ideals that bring us together

by Jamie Rhein on

In my post yesterday on Michael Jackson’s death, I mentioned two songs that have stuck with me because of the feelings I’ve had from living in other countries where I’ve developed friendships and have called various addresses home. In a way, I see “Black and White” and We are the World as fitting tributes to the ideals of what can bring us together.

In recent year’s we’ve had Matt Harding’s dancing videos to bring us a sense of the best of humanity through the simple joy of a crazy dance. Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds has a similar feel. Then there’s the Playing for a Change project that has produced wonderful renditions of “Stand By Me” and “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” among others.

For me, Michael Jackson’s Black and White is a wonderful expression of individuality blending into community, and back to individuality in a pattern where we are each other, but remain unique.

“We are the World,” co-written by Jackson with Lionel Ritchie, as commercial as a venture as it was, did raise loads of money for Africa. And as sappy as it might be, still has powerful moments. If nothing else, seeing all those musical powerhouses singing together in harmony instead of taking center stage speaks volumes to the power of sticking together.

I’m wondering who will be creating the visions of togetherness in the future? Who will stick it out long enough to see their visions come to life? On his best days, Michael Jackson knew the way. Click here to see “Black and White.”

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Ibo

by Jon Bowermaster on

Ibo – officially Ilha Do Ibo, by the Portuguese who colonized it – is one of a string of 32 islands that make up the Quirimbas archipelago, separated from the Mozambique coast by just a shallow channel. Barely two miles long and two miles wide a fringe of reefs surrounds it; at low tide you can walk to the next island. On its main, slightly derelict beach fishermen hammer at boats turned on their sides and a pair of skinny boys walk the mangrove shallows with a net between them, trolling for baitfish. Just offshore cruise elegant-if-paint-flaked wooden dhows; their triangular white cloth sails making them look more windsurfer than sailboat. Ironically their masters can only fish when it’s windy, since most have no motors.

A grassy square of abandoned colonial houses in ice-cream pastels anchors the island’s main town (there are just three). Their grand size and wrought iron terraces and lampposts suggest prosperity. But the ironwork is rusted; the walls pitted with black mold and fig trees grow through the roofs. After the church, the grandest building on the square is the Customs House, pink-painted with ornate iron lattice along its roof. Inside, in a vague attempt at tourism, it has been turned into a tourist office. The unmanned display consists of an elephant skull, an old dining chair with a label reading “cadeira usada pelos portugueses” – chair used by the Portuguese – and a table laid out with a few coffee beans.

Ibo’s heyday was during the late 1800s, based on slaves and ivory. When slavery was abolished in the early 1900s and modern ships no longer needed to stop off so often for water and supplies, it faded. The island’s graves tell how, over the centuries, it attracted the Chinese, Arabs, British and Portuguese. Today it feels as if time has stopped since the Portuguese left abruptly in 1974, its population having fallen from 37,000 to fewer than 6,000. There are no cars, no banks, no postal service, no television or Internet and virtually no electricity … except at its lone and elegantly restored hotel, the Ibo Island Lodge (www.iboisland.com).

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One thing that sets Ibo apart from much of the rest of the Africa today – a continent on the verge of continent-wide drought – is an abundance of fresh water. For an hour I watch young boys come and go from a pair of wells in the center of town, pumping fresh, clear water into yellow plastic bottles with red screw tops. It comes from not far beneath the sand and according to locals seems bottomless. (For a good read on how the rest of Africa is dealing with serious drought, read my friend Andy Revkin’s recent. dotEarth report.)

“All day long it will come,” says my guide for the day, Ali, of the clear fresh water pouring from the rudimentary pump. “People even come from mainland Mozambique to get Ibo’s water. Maybe we can turn it into a business. What do you think?” I assure him that if he can figure out a way to export the island’s water, while preserving enough for local needs, he may have found his own path to riches, Ibo-style.

Read more from Jon at Bowermaster’s Adventures.

Bowermasters Adventures — Becoming a French state

by Jon Bowermaster on

Dozens of small tri-colored French flags hang from the awning of the bar 5/5 on Mamoudzou’s seafront. A Malagasy polka/country/blues/rock band plays to a mixed crowd of blacks and whites. Two weeks ago a historic vote turned the street out front into a riot of celebration when 95.5 percent of voters on this tiny island of 186,000 people voted to officially become French citizens.

Though Mayotte is closer to Mombassa than Paris, its traditional dish is manioc eaten with boiled fish, is 98 percent Muslim and known for cultivating the sweet-smelling essence ylang ylang (which made the perfumery Guerlain famous) it is now the 101st department – or state — of France.

A celebratory hangover lingers. I talk with a pair of women sitting in the back of the bar, taking advantage of a cool breeze blowing off the nighttime sea. They are all for the changes French citizenship will bring once the deal is formally signed in 2011: Social security benefits (though not for 25 years!), a new educational system, Islamic judges traded in for French ones and even the income taxes they will eventually have to pay. But they tell me they are also for a couple things the vote will outlaw: Polygamy and child marriages. “Those are from another time,” says one, her face masked by a traditional beige-colored paste of ground coral and sandalwood meant to keep the sun away, skin younger.

That its overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim population is set to become full-fledged French citizens seems a bit odd to me. Having lived in France for nearly a decade I have seen how the French in France often treat Muslims living there, rewarding them with a high rate of joblessness, apartments in the poorest banlieues and even traditional headscarves banned from schools.

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Not everyone is happy about the outcome of the vote. According to the U.K’s Guardian, in an in-depth pre-election report, the African Union and the Comoros administration – which sees Mayotte as an “occupied” territory” – denounced the referendum. There are economic disparities too: About a third of Mayotte’s residents are undocumented workers who arrived illegally from the three other Comoros islands; while Mayotte’s GNP is only a third of that of another French Indian Ocean island Reunion, it is nine times that of the neighboring Comoros.

During a walk through the streets of the capital city and talks with some of its savvier business people it becomes clear the vote was a power play masked by populist vote: Mayotte is a strategic asset in a much broader international power play as France tries to counter Iran’s growing influence on the Muslim islands off Africa’s east coast.

France is already struggling to deal with a wave of illegal immigrants from the other three impoverished Comoros islands, which risk their lives to reach Mayotte by boat despite the growing number of shipwrecks and drownings. Expectant mothers hope to give birth here and young people hope for jobs or a chance to get to mainland France and Europe. The European commission has criticized the dire conditions in Mayotte’s French-run immigrant detention centers.

But France is concerned with the strategic importance of bringing Mayetta into its fold. Last month’s visit to the Comoros by Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad highlighted the Islamic republic’s growing presence on the three islands, building schools and mosques and tightening ties with the current Comoros president, Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi, who studied in Iran.

Standing at the 5/5 bar I ask the bartender if he’s worried about the influence of Ahmadinejad and his Iranian bosses. He laughs. “I would love for them to come here and live for a few months, to try an island life. Maybe that would make them see the world in a different light.”

Read more from Jon at Bowermaster’s Adventures.

Adventure destination: Okavango Delta, Botswana

by Kraig Becker on

For many adventurous travelers, an African safari is at the top of the list when it comes to mixing beautiful scenery with the best wildlife encounters on the planet. Most visitors go to Kenya, Tanzania, or even South Africa to get the classic safari experience, but there are other, lesser traveled places, that can deliver that same experience, in a more remote location, far from the typical safari crowds.

One such location is the Okavango Delta, located in the interior of Botswana. Years ago, the region was dominated by a large body of water known as Lake Makgadikgadi, which the Okavango River once emptied into. But the large inland lake has mostly dried up, and due to tectonic shifting, the river now empties out into the Kalahari Desert, forming the Delta, and giving life to an entire ecosystem of plants and animals that couldn’t exist there otherwise.

The well irrigated portions of the Kalahari turn into a grassland, not unlike the Serengeti, and it attracts a similar level of wildlife as well. Elephants, giraffes, zebras, and hippos all call the Delta home, as do an array of big cats, including lions, leopards, and the elusive cheetah. More than 400 species of birds inhabit the region as well, and it is also home to a substantial population of wild dogs, which are now found in very few places on Earth.

One of the unique aspects of visiting this region of Botswana is that it allows visitors to go on safari not just by land but also water. Traditional 4×4 safaris are popular of course, but the waters of the Delta allow travelers to see the wildlife from an entirely different perspective, namely from a dugout canoe that is poled along by a native guide. Drifting through the serene waters, the canoes pass over hippo pools, while antelope drink from the shore, and Nile crocs float past like logs with eyes.

While the Okavango Delta is less traveled than the more well known safari locations in Africa, it still attracts thousands of visitors each year. That means that there are a wide array of accommodations available, ranging from simple campsites, with travelers staying in tents, to lavish lodges with all the amenities. But make no mistake, this is a remote and rugged place, unlike any other on Earth, and is definitely a must see for all adventure travelers.

Bowermaster’s Adventures — LaDigue

by Jon Bowermaster on

I often ask audiences to define paradise. While responses vary, a high percentage involves some combination of white sand beach, coconut palm and blue-blue sea scenario. It’s so pervasive I’ve long been curious where the notion first originated. Honeymoon brochure? 1940s movie? Similarly, as I travel and explore I keep running into places touted as “paradise on earth.”

A couple islands in the Seychelles make that list, dating back to the mid-1700s when one of the first visitors to Praslin, Charles (Chinese) Gordon, went away convinced he had seen the site of the original Garden of Eden. Having spent yesterday – a gray, humid day – exploring it and nearby La Digue, it’s clear how legends get started.

When Asia split off and drifted away from Africa, breaking up what 160 million years or so ago was the single continent of Gondwanaland, it left in its trail a couple hundred granite “droppings” scattered across what we now know as the Indian Ocean. This makes the Seychelles different from most island groups around the world, which are volcanic. The Seychelles are remnants of continental drift. Characterized by boulder-covered hills and hard mountains as high as 2,700 feet above sea level they are surrounded by narrow coastal plains and extensive coral reefs.

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Out of the 115 islands in the group, 42 are granite; the rest are made up of coral and washed-up rubble. While they are chock full of endemic wildlife, the people here are all immigrants; there were no indigenous Seychellois, everyone came from someplace else beginning with pirates in the 15th century. From a wildlife perspective, they are among the most protected on the planet thanks to a 1993 law guaranteeing its people the right to a clean environment. As a result the country holds a record for the highest percentage of land under natural conservation, nearly fifty percent.

Of the 75 endemic plants here, the most famed is the coco de mer. The trees grow for 200 to 400 years. The male fruits are long and slender, while the female fruits often weigh upwards of forty pounds, are the world’s largest seed and are nicknamed the “love nut” due to their suggestive shape. They got their name from Maldivians, a thousand miles away. When the nuts washed up onshore those faraway locals were convinced they must have come from underneath the water, thus “coco from the sea.” I asked my guide Marianne if anyone ever gets hit by falling, forty-five pound coconuts, which would definitely addle you, and she smiles. “The only time people get hit is at night. Because the male coconut and female coconut are love making then and sometimes they fall.”

I spent the morning in the beautiful Vallee de Mai, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1972, packed with the tall trees. Dark and humid under its canopy, the forest has a primeval feel and is a natural greenhouse fostering tall palms of a half-dozen varieties, as well as jackfruit, kapisen, ferns, vanilla and philodendron. The wet and dark also nurtures endemic black parrots and blue pigeons, kestrel and swiftlets, fruit bats, geckos, tree frogs, skinks and rare chameleons, sizable snails, slugs and freshwater crabs. Standing next to twenty-foot tall palm leaves with lizards scampering over my feet it all feels very … prehistoric.

Twenty minutes away by local ferry is La Digue. The fourth largest island in the Seychelles means it is not very big, just three miles by two, home to 2,500 people. From a coastal plateau it culminates in the Nid Aigle (Eagle’s Nest) a thousand feet above the sea. But few come to La Digue for its heights but rather for its meandering boulder-strewn beach – Anse Source D’Argent – which is invariably included on every “best beach” list ever published.

I bike to the end of the island and then pick my way along the beach as the sun sets, scrambling around gigantic granite boulders curved by time and weather tumbling into the sea, sloshing from small crescent beach to small crescent beach of talcum powder pink sand, barely cooled off by plunging into the thirty degree Celsius waters. I keep my eyes open for a sign directing me to the Garden of Eden, but instead discover only a corral of thirty giant, one-hundred-year-old tortoises. By day’s end rather than Eden, I’m beginning to wonder if the place didn’t share roots with “Jurassic Park.”

Read more from Jon at Bowermaster’s Adventures.