Travel With Reason

One of the joys of my travels - or perhaps anyone’s - is the serendipity of happening on the unusual, surprising, inspiring, or fun. All four combined when I was able to witness the weddings of five gay couples on the beach in Tel Aviv, part of the city’s month-long Pride festival.

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[Black Rock City, Nevada] I went on a trip. Or was it a dream? On this trip-dream, I pitched a small tent in the middle of a harsh desert. Suddenly, for one week only, 50,000 people appeared from nowhere, to join me. Some were in tents, others in RVs, and many more in elaborate, bedouin-style camps - strewn with couches, rugs, pillows, hammocks, a carpeted merry-go-round, trucked thousands of miles across the world for … what, exactly?

In huge circus tents, trapeze artists juggle flames. At midnight you stumble across a ballet stage where a troupe of 20 pirouettes around an open, arid Carnegie Hall. (Want some free ballet slippers? Try some on and take them home.) A pyrotechnic rock opera is staged on a Mayan pyramid. There’s a roller disco, a mini-golf course, costume shops - why not? You need a costume or two, right? Huge outdoor discos fill with revelers, seemingly round the clock; drinks are free to those who bring a cup, and they groove to world-class DJs, caring not that the floor might be just hard desert dust, or even the deck of a 3-story, animatronic, flame-throwing rubber ducky.

A Thunderdome appears, directly out of Mad Max. (Yes, fights take place at night, as  cheering crowds clamor atop the structure. I didn’t get the night shot I wanted but here’s a cool one I found on Flickr.) Like sets from the Mel Gibson trilogy, Black Rock City (the name of this place that appears only one week a year) is part ragtag kingdom, part psychedelic slum. You are momentarily on another planet. But it’s not just post-apocalypse Australia. Tattooine, maybe? Jabba’s sail barge or a landspeeder or a Jawa sand crawler could come gliding by at any moment and no one would bat an eye … a cantina band could strike up an alien tune. But this Star Wars is a galaxy far, far away, as guest-directed by Dr. Seuss, Felini, Cecil B DeMille, Deepak Chopra and Greenpeace. It’s Cirque du Soleil meets Outward Bound for a Macy’s parade at the Playboy mansion.

Thousands are on bikes, around the clock, but more exotic vehicles steal the show. Elaborate, colorful, customized scooters, cars, lawn mowers, buses, and semis are pimped out as fire-spouting dragons, ducks, sea anemones, spacecraft. Many of them double as party barges, some multi-level. A half-size replica of a 16th-century Spanish galleon comes cruising across the desert at night, floating, ghostly, illuminated, as does a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge. Want a further surprise? Open the door to one and a full-on jazz band is in full swing. They maneuver about the open desert outside the city proper,  Read more

[Black Rock City, Nevada] Among my favorite sights and sensations of Burning Man 2008 was one of the showpiece art installations, the Basura Sagrada temple. Each year at Burning Man, a temple is constructed as a work of art and architecture and memorial, where the festival participants (or “citizens,” now numbering about 50,000) leave inscriptions and mementos of loved ones lost. The temple, as with all of the art on display in this vast desert, comes and vanishes in a week. This spectacle, like the Burning Man itself, goes down in a blaze of glory and solemnity at week’s end.

Hard to imagine that this construction of recycled tin cans, bottle caps, wood and cardboard and wire can move one to tears (NOT attractive or comfortable while wearing swim goggles and face mask to ward off sandstorms!). But that’s exactly what this place did - much more moving, in its odd way, than the Taj Mahal that I visited exactly a year ago in Agra, India. Perhaps it’s the rawness, the immediacy, Read more

As someone who decided only 3 days before the event to attend Burning Man 2008, I feel wholly unqualified to offer advice to future first-timers. So, here you go:

1. So you’re an art groupie or fan of oddball vacations in desolate locations. Great. If you think you can handle the daytime heat, nighttime chill, and most of all, sandstorms, proceed … with caution.
2. Take care to read EVERY bit of advice on the first-timers guide available on the Burning Man site. The 2008 version, at least, is here.
3. Don’t overpack. I stressed about it too much in the several days preceding and in the end, didn’t use half the clothes or costumes I took with. Think one or two outfits for potential nighttime chill (though we had very mild evenings -never cold) and really, not much for daytime. Like, a sarong or two could last you most of the week - seriously. And at least four camps had costume shops Read more
   
   
   Author: Ron Reason

[Lagos, Nigeria] I’m typically fraught with anxiety when passing through any kind of passport control or security checkpoint in a third-world country. I’ve written earlier about the High Commission officer who eyed my temporary visa photo, taken just the night before, with great suspicion and said: “this looks terrible.” I seriously thought the photo was an improvement over my permanent passport shot which sports a 3-day beard and a general air of “keep an eye on this guy.”

But bag inspections at X-ray stations always give me a special kind of nerves. What did I pack and forget about that will embarrass us all when they paw through it? What item innocuous to me will arouse an interrogation?

Take tonight in Lagos. I thought I was home free since my friend and I were being personally whisked through almost all of the airport’s chaotic check-in and boarding procedure. (He’s one of the top 15 fliers in the world on this airline, and one of only 6 on an elite advisory board whom they treat like royalty.) But no. One of my carry-ons was a relatively ratty shopping bag from two countries ago, in which I had wrapped a piece of “art” in a hooded sweatshirt. It raised flags in the X-ray scanner. Read more

[Lagos, Nigeria] OK people, my off-time in Africa isn’t all spent on safari or touring the slums. Last night, at an elegant cocktail party with jazz pianists and singers, fabulous food and champagne, I chatted up Mo Abudu, the “Oprah of West Africa” (in yellow, at right, photo below). She’s for real - visit this site after you leave this post!

Sort of wound up in “work” mode and perhaps after one too many glasses of champagne, I offered this fabulous talk-show diva advice (initially unsolicited, then embraced, with gusto) on marketing, branding, and “taking it to the next level.” (I had spent the day helping the team here invent, name, brand a new newspaper.) If I’ve learned nothing else after two months in Africa, “moving up” is what everyone seems to be trying to do these days, on one level or another. Maybe it’s all anyone has ever aspired to, now that I think about it.

Her show, “Moments with Mo,” has been on national cable for three years, and has just gone regional. The first two years, she says, were stage-fright city. I said fear not, I grew up watching “A.M. Chicago” and Oprah wasn’t always the smooth operator she appears today. She too had to start somewhere on the road to becoming a global megabrand!

Mo - stylish, articulate and energetic - was eager to hear my thoughts on where to go next. Continental expansion of her show! Clothing lines! I told her to go for the gold. My Chicago connection was not lost on her in any way, so she assumed I was the pipeline to Oprahtivity. Here’s some of my advice I shared with la Mo:

• OK, so you too are all about inspiration and empowerment. Forget “Moments with Mo,” I said. Sunset that title, reinvent yourself and the show, and go with “Mo!mentum” (or “Momentum!”) for your new platform.
• Spice up the brand, get a new logo, start that blog! (True, difficult in Nigeria, with the internet working about 5% of the time, but people, we are dreaming the big dreams here.)
• Africa still loves newspapers, so start an advice column. Be the Nigerian of Nigerians and get up in everyone’s face! (In a nice way, of course.)
• So you want to get Oprah’s attention. Don’t think small, woman! Open a girl’s school. In Lincoln Park. In Chicago.
• Further, take your lead from Oprah, and title your production studio your name spelled backward. Forget Harpo Studios - what could be more inspirational, more balanced and centered, than Om Inc.©
• But don’t stop there - demand must exist for “mO - The Magazine©.”
• If you really want to go for it, change your name. Hello, Moprah!

I can’t wait to see what comes next for Nigeria’s Oprah, and look forward to connecting with her on my return travels there later this year. (Warning to my friends Todd and Kristyn at CBS Channel 2 in Chicago - and my Poynter broadcast friends Jill and Al - and probably Kelly, too - you will be asked to review Mo’s programs if I can get them on DVD at some point. Stay tuned!)

Fun links: check out her website here!

[Lagos, Nigeria] Random observations and thoughts from the first two days in Nigeria:

Sofitel hotel … fluffy bed (maybe a little too much - bad back in the morning) … concrete wall shuts out the outside world … impossible wi-fi (how on earth do these people blog?) … amazingly weak orange juice … large in-room safe … power goes out (unbelievably inadequate power grid, thanks to corruption of previous regime - everyone’s on generators) … Read more

Update  from 10 months later … we’ve done it! The Hope Library is up and running.  Click here to read more, and read below to learn the origins of the project.

[Kibera slum, Nairobi, Kenya] My second visit to Kibera, May 4 (posting this entry after mulling it over for a week). Being taken in a little deeper this time. I had been to a “drinking den” on my first visit, but my shepherd this time, Osir, takes me to another one (despite my stated focus on reconnecting with some artists I met earlier).

The half-dozen gatherees are socializing, and drinking changaa, the traditional homemade liquor of the Luo people, in a shack with a dirt floor, cardboard wall. A child who might be 2 years old sleeps nearby. (She’s at the far right in the photo below- maybe that’s her pink backpack on the wall above her?) Another boy, about 8, refills the liquor jug when needed, if mom (the proprietress) is otherwise busy.

It’s a funny dance, having the rare mzungu (white guy) in their midst. Do they want to have their photo taken, or not? Do they want to chat, or not? Sometimes it’s both at once.

One guy (in the hat, on the right, in photo above) strikes up a chat. “I love a good book. Do you like to read?” Nonchalantly, he tosses at me his current read - or rather, the ripped-out middle third. The front portion of The Parcifal Mosaic has been passed on to its lucky next reader; the final third, well, he’ll have to get to that when he can find out who has it. It’s all about sharing when it comes to books in Kibera, if it comes to that at all.

“Ludlum does the best stories, but only if you can deal with extremely complex characters. Man, he does characters like nobody can.” The others chime in enthusiastically; maybe they are reading the first third, or the last. I tell them I read 3 or 4 Ludlum stories in high school, not so much since. (Can’t focus on all those characters.)

These guys are readers. Osir, too. Read more

Nearing the end of an amazing two months in Kenya (and off to another African nation tomorrow), I’ve been thinking about others I know who have had extended tours of duty in Africa, and who are quite passionate about what many people would consider a difficult, undesirable place. I decided to interview them via email and ask, what brought you to consider an extended stay in Africa? And what brings you back, either physically or spiritually? Here are their responses, which individually I find quite fascinating, and collectively, sort of remarkable:

Lara Weber, Chicago (Lara was a Community Health Volunteer, Peace Corps / Zambia, 2000. We were briefly neighbors in Lakeview and acquainted via Chicago journalism circles. She now works at the Tribune.) “I’d always just assumed that I’d spend some time living overseas, doing study abroad or taking a job outside of the U.S. So when I hit my 30s and realized I hadn’t done it yet, I knew it was time. The AIDS crisis was just starting to get more attention, and since I was joining the Peace Corps, I really wanted to be as close to that issue as possible. It just felt like the thing I was supposed to be doing right then and there in my life. (Plus, I’d spent a decade as a journalist and felt wrong working on world issues from the point of view of a tower on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.)

“So when a Peace Corps assignment in public health in Zambia was offered, I was thrilled. For two years, I lived in a mud hut in a very remote part of northeastern Zambia, in a place that was just beginning to confront its own HIV/AIDS situation. I met and worked with incredible local health officials and I did see change happen while I was there. And, naturally, I changed quite a bit as well. In the midst of extreme poverty and disease, I got to know people who love life and aren’t burdened by the pressures we put upon ourselves in the ‘developed’ world. Read more

[Nairobi, Kenya] I’ve got a lot more to say on the topic of my latest expedition through Kibera slum, this time a bit deeper into it all including time spent with a family, and yes, photos to post, but one thing that always strikes me, and humbles me, is the contrast between the worries of an American abroad and those of say, my new friend Osir, who I met a few weeks ago in a “drinking house” in Kibera (bootleg liquor, another story really) and who invited me into his tiny home on Sunday to meet his wife and six kids. Aiming for no judgment in his or mine, just trying to lay some of our issues side by side:

My concerns (randomly): Has someone watered the plants back home? Will I owe any fines for late fees from bills stacking up? Am I getting fat from too much time at the breakfast buffet? How much of an ordeal will getting my Nigerian visa be? Do I have the time/energy to work up and submit that weeks-overdue invoice? Where’s the number for the florist in LaPorte? My laptop mouse is dying. My driver’s late - again. Can I possibly continue to wear the six same shirts and four pairs of pants for another 12 days? I just realized, I’ve hardly drank any milk (normally a staple for me) for six weeks.

Osir’s concerns (observed/overheard): How to pay the 800 shillings rent per month ($12 U.S.) How to send the oldest kids to their first year of private school (1000 shillings per month). Sunday dinner: a pot of boiled navy beans, leftover from a February donation by the Red Cross following the post-election violence. (The cost of meat was prohibitive even before the current runaway inflation on food prices.) Pre-paid credit on the cheap mobile Safaricom phone is getting low. Health care for six young kids, including the one who caught malaria a short time back. The “front door” lock is actually a latch, which is actually missing. Damn that glass of moonshine tasted nasty.

Just some food - and moonshine and technology and politics and room & board - for thought. Watch this space for more on Kibera after I wrap my brain around it a little more.

Links: Previous photo album of Kibera scenics. Previous album of Kibera’s kids.