Travel With Reason

[NAIROBI, Kenya] With a little bit of trepidation I made my fifth visit or so to this city’s Kibera slum – a “city within a city” of an estimated 600,000 to 1 million residents living in very challenging conditions – to check up on the state of The Hope Library. The project was started as an audacious dream after my first visit here, a casual daylong tour by a resident (Reuters photographer Noor Khamis) who introduced me to many facets of life here, including some folks who made it know how great was their desire for books, and how dire was their need. (Read original blog post of that encounter here.)

Sure, I’d returned six months ago and seen a church classroom full of kids enjoying our first shipment of books (about 1,200 at that time), but they were mostly picture books and it was a bit of a photo op. The books were kept in a small corner of a temporary space in the St. George Orthodox Church, but the gratitude of the adults and the enthusiasm of the kids pushed me on, to months of cajoling books out of my friends, as well as donations for shipping and other needs.

So began Phase II. In all, I estimate my social network (mainly via Facebook) accounted for about 2,000 more books (carefully selected to feature categories of most value to this community), as well as donations of about $2,750, to help defray shipping and other costs. (Almost all the books were donated, but it’s extremely expensive to ship them. I lucked out by connecting with American Friends of Kenya, and for a much reduced cost, piggybacked many boxes on a shipping container they successfully sent from the States to Kenya last month.)

I couldn’t thank my Facebook crowd enough when I visited today and saw that the enthusiasm for, and commitment toward, The Hope Library had multiplied by 100 in the past six months. Read more

[TEL AVIV, 12 June 09] 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. An extra bonus was having my photos published in the magazine, Time Out Tel Aviv. (See published spread here, in Hebrew!)

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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

[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!

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[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