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Safer abroad? Black American travelers are glad to be outside the U.S.

“I hoped things had changed. [George Floyd’s murder] makes me feel like almost nothing has changed. It makes me feel like I wouldn’t mind never going back to America,” says Gene Ellis, a Black American web developer currently in Mexico.

The Black American travel market is a $63 billion industry. Yet, Black American travelers and travel influencers continue to be underrepresented, under-catered-to, and undervalued. The Black Travel Alliance recently launched a campaign, #PullUpforTravel, to hold the industry accountable — urging brands that posted black squares for #blackouttuesday to share their actual diversity scorecards and commitments to action and improvement.

As hate crimes and police violence continue, Black Americans fear for their lives. Back in 2017, one Black travel writer named the “Trump Factor” as the second reason Black Americans should get a passport: “given the current state of white supremacy, shootings of unarmed Black men, murders of Black women while in custody and sex trafficking of underage girls and women going on (all of which are perpetrated by our police) there may come a time when you need to dip.”

“Abroad, any racism I’ve faced has come from fear of the unknown. They have little information and it’s inaccurate; they’re generalizing because they don’t know.”

Gabby Beckford

Feeling unsafe in the U.S., many Black Americans are glad to be in other countries — or eager to go abroad. The concept is not new; the “Back to Africa” movement emerged in the 19th century. While the phrase “go back to Africa” has been used derogatorily, Black-owned companies like Black & Abroad have sought to reclaim it, and in 2019, Ghana led a campaign for the “Year of Return” to encourage descendants of those forcibly removed from the continent to return.

Butre - a village in the Ahanta West district in the Western Region of Ghana.
Butre – a village in the Ahanta district in western Ghana.

“Many Black people feel as though America is not made for us. We feel discriminated against in so many ways. And it’s not just the physical abuse necessarily… It’s the mental turmoil of having to prove yourself and overcome stereotypes about intelligence and ability to get the job done,” said Olumide Gbenro, a Nigerian man raised in America.

Safer Abroad?

Gabby Beckford, a full-time Black and multicultural travel entrepreneur and content creator — and founding member of the Black Travel Alliance — says she’s seen increased interest in traveling and moving abroad from Black Americans. 

“For those abroad right now, they’re happy they’re not in the U.S. right now. There’s been a huge push for Black Americans to move, especially to Africa where we have roots. America is not as it used to be and there are other countries with other opportunities. Those abroad seem happy their country is containing coronavirus better, especially because Black people have been affected disproportionately,” says Beckford.

Several of the Black nomads and travelers we spoke to said they felt safer, experienced less racism, or felt less threatened by racism abroad than in the United States.

“While I am at home I feel like I constantly have to police myself in order to not be the topic of discussion in a white setting. It goes from what I am wearing to what I say and how I speak. My tone, my hair, my attitude. While I am abroad and in the countries that I’ve been to, the very things that made me super self-conscious are the things that are praised here. I’ve been told that I am beautiful and that my hair and skin is beautiful. I get stares abroad as well as I do back at home, however, I feel like the staring is out of curiosity rather than ignorance,” says Latrice Coates, a digital nomad currently in Thailand.

A temple in the Chiang Mai province in Thailand.
A temple in the Chiang Mai province of Thailand.

Both Coates and Ellis said they hadn’t personally experienced any direct racism abroad. “I do know that it exists,” said Coates, “however, I also believe that my blue passport grants me more grace than anything. Once people know that I am an American the vibe typically switches — a different tone of voice and more willingness to help out.”

Ellis acknowledges that there are many types of racism around the world, such as Asians thinking white skin is more attractive. “But in terms of systemic racism, I’ve never felt that anywhere except America.” Growing up in the U.S., Ellis was called the N-word, told to break up with certain girlfriends because he is Black, pulled over for no reason, and surrounded by cops because he “fit the description,” to name just a few examples. A few years ago, a friend begged and pleaded with him to leave America. “I don’t know what I would do if you were killed just for being you,” she told him.

“I am always conscious of where I go as a Black American,” says Coates. “I am always aware of the spaces that I enter, what I say, where I work, whom I talk to, what hours of the night I stop for gas, how I speak to the police… It is second nature to always look into where I am headed to next… It’s embedded in myself and my brothers and sisters to always seek these things while moving abroad and domestically.”

“Abroad, any racism I’ve faced has come from fear of the unknown. They have little information and it’s inaccurate; they’re generalizing because they don’t know. I have definitely faced more racism in the U.S. Outside the U.S. it’s not as expected or accepted,” says Beckford.

“…While I am abroad and in the countries that I’ve been to, the very things that made me super self-conscious are the things that are praised here…”

Latrice Coates

For Gbenro, the month he arrived in Bali, a white foreigner aggressively called him the N-word. He says the racism he’s experienced abroad has been worse than the more subtle variety he experienced in the U.S.: for example, being followed around department stores and jokes about interracial dating.

Gbenro says the nomad community has a responsibility to speak out against discrimination. Just being a nomad doesn’t mean someone is not racist. “I think there’s a danger in thinking because you’ve traveled to 60 countries you get a pass. I believe travel is the ultimate equalizer because you really see the human condition and how it surpasses what you look like and what skin color you have. I urge the remote entrepreneurs who have the influence and impact to use their voice to shine light on this. Even if it’s not affecting you directly we need your voice.” 

Representation in the Travel Industry

“It feels like something supernatural is happening and we’re being forced to reckon with the decisions we’ve made as a society,” says Beckford, speaking about both the coronavirus pandemic and the movement for racial justice. “We are reckoning with ourselves as an individualistic and selfish society. That same selfishness and individualism is what lets racism be perpetuated. That’s why there’s a Black travel movement/exodus.”

Gbenro organized a Digital Nomad Summit with several hundred attendees that was held the first week of June — just after Floyd’s murder. After his death, Gbenro thought, “‘Not again’ — they keep killing us like animals on television screens. I felt disrespected by the nation that I spent much of my life in. But after I calmed down emotionally I also realized the tremendous responsibility I had as a successful Black entrepreneur to still execute the task at hand. I’m sure a few people wondered why I didn’t bring [Floyd’s death] up, but I saw it as a chance to use my success and influence to contribute to inspiring people that look like me.”

Coates helps businesses grow their brands, and says that since Floyd’s murder, several white-owned brands have reached out to her on Instagram for collaborations to diversify their feed. She turned most of them down, because they didn’t seem genuine and weren’t even offering her payment. She did accept an opportunity to do an Instagram takeover — where she could control the narrative.

For Beckford, a big reason she co-founded the Black Travel Alliance was to advocate for representation and share the narratives of Black travelers. Beckford often gets questions about why representation in travel — a leisure activity — matters. “It affects systemic racism and mindset in the travel industry and beyond,” she says. “It’s really important to see Black people not just in the context of war, poverty, and civil rights actions. We enjoy and deserve luxury. Seeing Black people as humans is just as important as seeing Black people in trauma porn. Black people deserve to relax and enjoy our lives.”

We couldn’t agree more. Follow BeckfordGbenroCoates, and here are 20 more Black travel influencers from Essence.

  • Black couple dancing in woods
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Africa Inspiration International Travel Peace and Diplomacy Uncategorized

Peace in Burundi

“Look, there’s a bullet hole here.” My husband points out a circular indentation in the wall of his childhood home at the Kigobe Mission Station in Bujumbura, Burundi. I run my hand over the warm stone wall of the house, then let my eyes wander around the peaceful yard. Sunlight filters through the leaves of a mango tree and flecks the lawn with bright spots. It’s hard to imagine this place as the middle of a war zone. Yet the traumatic decade of tribal warfare still sits heavily in the minds of locals who were affected. 

In the 1990s, Burundi was a frightening place to be. Along with neighboring Rwanda and Congo, the small East African country was embroiled in a bitter racial conflict that had plagued the people for decades. Militants from the majority Hutu tribe, tired of centuries of subjugation from the minority Tutsi tribe, instigated violence against the Tutsis after Tutsi guerrillas were suspected to have assassinated the democratically-elected Hutu president. Thousands of people from both tribes fled their homes, searching for safety. Ten thousand of the internally displaced persons sought shelter at Kigobe. 

Map of Burundi created by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.
Map of Burundi created by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

The ethnic conflict ended in Burundi in 2005, but the effects of the violence are still evident. Hundreds of thousands of people died during the war, and many of those who lived are heavily maimed. The scars on their bodies and faces are a constant reminder of what happens when hatred is allowed to overcome a nation. These marks represent the scars borne inwardly by those who lived through those terrible days. Even after so many years, families who lost homes still struggle to maintain stability, and many never returned home at all. The infrastructure of the country as a whole was also stunted. This has taken a toll on the economy of the nation and affects the financial state of its citizens. For twelve years, the country was unable to develop. Today, Burundi is still working to make up for the years it could not progress, even as it fights issues unrelated to the civil conflict, including the instability that plagues the political landscape of East Africa. 

I leave the bullet-riddled stone house and walk the dusty path through the missions compound toward Ephphatha School for the Deaf, where I’m filling in for a teacher on maternity leave for two weeks. A toddler sitting in a front yard calls out, “Amahoro, Umuzungu!” Hello, white person! I return the Kirundi greeting and the child opens his eyes wide in surprise, then shrieks with laughter. I arrive at the school, where I enter the classroom and greet the class in sign language, smiling at the small children seated at wooden desks. There are both Hutu and Tutsi faces in the classroom, and the children share benches, smiles, and signed communication indiscriminately. This is a generation that has never known the hatred that once existed between the two tribes, a generation that will grow up in a Burundi where both tribes enjoy opportunity and goodwill. 

I hear the sound of rhythmic drumming from the other side of the compound and glance outside. Two or three children with minimal hearing loss run to the window to locate the source of the sound. Curiosity draws the rest of the students. Soon everyone in the classroom is soaking up the quintessentially Burundian drum performance, featuring energetic drummers in traditional garb as they pound out the rhythmic heartbeat of the country. This represents Burundi. Burundi is defined by joy, color, and echoes of the ancient. It is not defined by the ghosts of its past mistakes. Burundi is in the smiles of these dancing drummers. It’s also in the rolling sapphire hills of its interior, the clasped hands of friends, the rich flavor of its coffee. 

If you visit Bujumbura (Burundi’s most populous city) today, you will see Hutus and Tutsis living side by side. Burundians don’t pretend that their tribal differences are nonexistent. They don’t ignore the history of hatred. But they do exemplify a lesson learned in the dark days of war. No matter how we look, what we believe, or what our social status is, we all share at least one thing in common: our humanity. When the value of human life is affirmed and each person treated with respect, there is no room for violence. If only this concept could be carried to ends of the earth, perhaps the world could enjoy peace, as well. 

The school day ends, and I return to the stone house, now bathed in afternoon light. School children kick up dust as they run past the house on their way home. Beyond the wall of the compound, the streets echo with the noise of foot traffic, bikes, and taxis. In the distance, the hills rise above the horizon line, concealing rural villages and rolling fields. Bullet holes may remain as reminders of the past, but Burundi accepts today with gusto and looks forward to tomorrow. For this beautiful little country, there is peace and hope. 

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Adventure and Outdoor Travel Africa Culture and Heritage Travel Tips Uncategorized

On Freedom’s Trail in South Africa: A Personal Journey to Places Shaping the Rainbow Nation

From the new Morgan Freeman film, Invictus, to the 2010 FIFA World Cup Games, South Africa has become a lead actor on the world’s stage.  What is most striking about this beautiful nation is that the South African natural landscape is as compelling as the journey through the places shaping the country’s transformation from apartheid to a multicultural democracy.

Tonya and Ian on Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town and Robben Island.

Whether retracing the footsteps of Nelson Mandela and other freedom fighters imprisoned on Cape Town’s Robben Island, to touching the people and the places that defined Soweto as a center of hope and liberation, to seeing apartheid relegated to the footnotes of history in the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, the Rainbow Nation’s spirit and soul came alive along on our recent journey on freedom’s trail through South Africa.

First Leg–Cape Town and Robben Island

With great attractions such as Table Mountain, the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, the vineyards of Stellenbosch, and the Cape Peninsula, the Cape Town region’s primacy as South Africa’s top tourist destination is unquestioned.  The first stop on freedom’s trail took us to Robben Island–a United Nations World Heritage Site, where former South African President Nelson Mandela lived as a political prisoner for 27 years.

The Robben Island tour began with a short ferry ride from the Nelson Mandela Gatweway at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront to the island, where the guides–once prisoners themselves–recount the struggles of the island’s most famous political prisoners and their strategies for transforming the apartheid state as one experiences the infamy and oppression of the prison up close and personal.  From the limestone quarry where Mandela and others toiled and educated other political prisoners, bound by a credo that “Each One Teach One,” the tenets of a democratic South Africa were literally carved from stone.

Last Leg–Johannesburg, Soweto, Apartheid Museum, and Nelson Mandela Square

Johannesburg–the largest metropolis in sub-Saharan Africa and the continent’s only global city–better know as the “city of gold” was the focus of several key destinations on our last leg on freedom’s trail through South Africa.  Sprawling, Johannesburg and the country’s administrative capital to the north, Tshwane (formerly Pretoria) form a dynamic megalopolis of eight million people.  Culture, music, entertainment, and great dining are abundant in the Newton, Melrose Arch, and Sandton districts of Johannesburg.

Regina Mundi Church Museum. Photo: Tonya Fitzpatrick
Photo in the Regina Mundi Church Museum. Photo: Tonya Fitzpatrick

This stop on freedom’s trail took us to the “good people” of Soweto–the heart and soul of black urban South Africa–and one of the most powerful places on freedom’s trail.  In Soweto, the iconic Regina Mundi Church, where children fled to safety on that fateful June 16, 1976 day as South African police opened fired during the Soweto student protests, stands as monument of hope, peace, and freedom.  We shared a tearful hug with our guide at Regina Mundi, who shared his heart-rending story of his brother’s death, one of 566 children to die that day protesting the imposition of Afrikaans instruction by the apartheid state.  A moving and powerful photographic exhibit of the events of that day and the painful apartheid legacy can be found upstairs at Regina Mundi, the largest Catholic Church in Soweto.

In nearby Orlando West, the Hector Pieterson Museum and Memorial provides a physical focus and repository to the people, places, and events that defined the Soweto student protests.  While Sam Nzima’s photograph of a dying Hector Pieterson came to represent the brutality of apartheid to the world, this moving edifice dedicated to the memory of Hector Pieterson and the other children who perished that day contains a memorial garden where each name is inscribed in a brick-like stone that you can hold in your hands.   Also in Orlando West, is the Mandela Museum, housed in his former home.  This modest structure contains many artifacts, honorariums, and other items from the life of the country’s greatest statesman and Nobel Peace Prize recipient.  Only in Soweto can one find the homes of two Nobel Peace Prize winners on the same street, as Bishop Desmond Tutu’s home is nearby.

The Apartheid Museum, part of Johannesburg’s popular Gold Reef City entertainment and casino complex, retraces apartheid’s painful legacy through an array of multimedia and sensory exhibits.  From the building’s stark architecture to the pictures, films, and artifacts on display, the Apartheid Museum captures South’s Africa’s darkest chapter while documenting the social, political, economic and legal oppression of apartheid and the struggle to overcome it.

Ian and Tonya by the Nelson Mandela statue in Nelson Mandela Square.

We ended our journey on freedom’s trail through South Africa that concluded in a place seemingly a world apart from Soweto and the brutality on display of the Apartheid Museum in the upscale suburb of Sandtown at Nelson Mandela Square.  At the center of this grand retail edifice, the largest the Southern Hemisphere, stands a 20 foot tall bronze statute of Mandela.  Gazing upon this statute, it its clear how far South Africa has come in such a short time on freedom’s trail.

Travel tip:  Travel to South Africa has never been easier thanks to expanded air service from the United States.  South African Airways offers daily flights to Johannesburg with connecting service to Cape Town from New York and Washington, while Delta offers daily non-stop service from Atlanta to Johannesburg.  For more information on South Africa, visit www.southafrica.net.

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Africa Business Travel Responsible and Sustainable Travel Uncategorized

Corporate Global Citizenship – Aligning Business with Social Impact

As multinational companies continue to explore growth opportunities in an economic downturn, emerging economies are dominating the strategic agenda and boardroom discussions. 

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Adventure and Outdoor Travel Africa Conservation Environment and Nature Uncategorized

A day out amongst the white lions of Johannesburg

 

Photo:  Richard Gillin

I have lived in Johannesburg for the last 5 years. I have stayed in the northern part of the city and I always passed the intersection where a large wooden lion sculpture stands commandingly above the traffic. But this is Africa. Lions and elephants are nothing fantastic. They are part of the DNA of the land and they are not page turners. There is an animal park on every road leading out of Johannesburg.

To meet one in the flesh would be astounding for sure. But the chance of that happening is remote. The animals have been corralled into game parks and fences. And so the idea of a lion existing somewhere is of itself a non-event.

And so it was pure boredom that pushed me one weekend in March 2014 to look up at that lion sculpture. I had seen it many times, at the back of my mind as I zoomed past the intersection on some errand. But this time I saw it, because I was looking for something different. To see. To do. I was bored. I looked up and saw a different image from the one I had always seen. I noticed how large it was. How regal the lion stood over the intersection on Malibongwe Drive.

So I decided out of my desperation of having nothing to do, to turn off the main road and drive up to the gate of the Lion Park. Not with the excited trance of a tourist. But with an expectation that I would see nothing new. A couple of lions, lounging around in captivity. Bored and probably depressed out of their minds. Day in, day out. People passing them. And endless stream of tourists.

Photo:  Cello8 via Flickr

I paid my entry fee and headed straight to the lion enclosure as directed by the signs. I took a few wrong turns but in a little time I found myself entering the first enclosure behind a typical open-top safari Land-Rover manned by suitably excited tourists. We circled twice before we spotted the lions, lying behind some thick bushes in the late afternoon sunset.

The fact that nothing could coax them out of their slumber convinced me further that I had wasted my time entering the lion park. And no matter how loud the tourists in the next vehicle spoke or shouted, they continued lying in the long grass. Royal in their displeasure at being disturbed. So powerful is the serenity that every picture of a resting lion silently transmits. Uneventful however.

After 20 minutes of no drama, I reversed my vehicle with a “told-u-so” smirk on my face, maneuvering myself an exit out of the enclosure and out of the park. Back to the sanity of the city that I suddenly missed as I engaged the gears. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the lions suddenly rush out at explosive speed towards a target that I did not see in the swift and silent commotion. A gasp came up from the tourist vehicle, everyone filled with awe and an honest and sincere unmistakable fear. They too seemed surprised by the sudden explosion of movement that warned of danger.

White lioness feeding.  Photo:  Allan Watt

Instinctively both our vehicles followed the group of lions, half out of curiosity and half as an automatic escape velocity, as that was also the direction of the only exit out of that predatory space. As we turned past a clump of trees, we saw the reason for the commotion. Huge chucks of meat, roughly hewn, had been randomly deposited near the entrance by the enclosure assistants. Time stood still. We were suddenly standing in a scene from an Africa gone by. An era, before the white ships came to our shores, an ancient time gone by, taken away from us by the pace of technology and progress.

You have not seen a lion until you see them feed together as a pride. The violence. The noise that their vocal cords emit in the inborn struggle for their share. The deep decibels shake your soul in a way that you will not forget. The reckless courage and the confrontation. The competition. The fight for rank. The signature is Africa. Dominance is asserted and re-asserted. In the space of minutes.

The cubs stayed away. The dominant lion brooked no variation. He was first. Mercilessly. He chased the lionesses away from the food. With claw and fang and roar. As if they were mortal enemies. In that pride, the
hierarchy remained intact. Lion to lion. The male to male conversation was a vicious retribution. The other male had to limp away after only a few seconds of a fierce scuffle over a smaller bone of little consequence. The message was stark. And the meek and humbled male had to keep quite a distance away until the king was done. And when the king was done, he let the world know that he was done. That he was king. The huge white male roared. And some of the females growled as if in defiance. But that was it. He was king. And we stood silent. There is no human sound that can counteract that roar.

Male white lion with wildebeest leg.  Photo:  Graham Holtshausen

The busiest part of the feed probably lasted thirty minutes. But those thirty minutes, I did not feel them go by. I was lost in an African trance. I was back in an Africa that we will never know again. They say the flora and fauna is disappearing. The lions might be extinct in 50 years from now. We are some of last generations that are viewing them in this close-to- natural state. A time is coming soon when the roar of the lion in Africa will be silenced forever.

I looked at my time. It was 19.02 on a Sunday night. I had lost an hour, in that orgasmic passion in which I had met that special African place that we lost, right in the middle of a city like Johannesburg. Unintended. But in the end, much appreciated. I had harboured the trepidation on entering the lion park that I would not like to see caged animals. I don’t like it. But even in that caged state, the lion had still communicated his supremacy as the king of the beasts. I had been taken back to a time gone by, unexpectedly so yet ecstatically so. As I drove home, I shuddered to imagine how my ancestors had ever survived a sudden meeting with the king of beasts, without fences, without guns, sometimes without preparation.

 

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Africa Art and Architectural Travel Culinary Travel Culture and Heritage Historical Travel Uncategorized

The Glory of Marrakesh

From breathtaking palaces to ancient tombs, a visit to Marrakesh is a Moroccan dream vacation for any traveler.

Marrakesh marketLocated at the crossroads of what were once North African caravan routes in the High Atlas Mountains foothills, this is a city of glorious beauty and significance. As it is a major Moroccan commercial center, the 1.5 million citizens seamlessly bring the modern world to their ancient surroundings, and are known to be tourist-friendly and helpful.

Discover Moroccan traditional markets known as souks, which showcase specific crafts—pottery, jewelry, textiles—and how they are created.  Marrakesh has the largest souk in the country, and you can also stay a while and join the auction for produced items in the late afternoon.

Medina is the old side of Marrakesh and travel there must include visits to Dar Si Said—museum featuring Moroccan arts and folk crafts, Dar Tiskiwin, a museum and townhouse showcasing  Dutch expatriate  Bert Flint’s collection of Moroccan wonders, and of course the Koutoubia mosque, a novel place surrounded by rose gardens.

Bahia Palace.
Bahia Palace.

Though being in Marrakesh is a wonder in itself, prepare to be awed by the incredible El Badi Palace, and Bahia Palace. Of all Marrakesh’s palaces these two are the most famous, and are truly architectural triumphs.

Marrakesh’s relaxed atmosphere draws visitors in, and you may never want to leave. With historical attractions including the Saadian Tombs which date back to the 16th century and the time of the renowned sultan Ahmad I al-Mansur, the city is a breath of fresh air for all history, museum, and culture buffs.

As it is close to the Sahara, adventurers can take the long way to Marrakesh, where you trek through the desert before arriving at your amazing destination, viewing other interesting historical sites along the way. This is just one of the many ways travel there is possible.

So, while Marrakesh became more prominent on the world stage following Casablanca, the classic movie is not its only claim to fame. Don’t miss out on all this unique city has to offer, visit Marrakesh and be blown away.

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Adventure and Outdoor Travel Africa Uncategorized

When Travel Goes Bad: Death in Africa

While scouting for the first descent of the Baro River in Ethiopia, a tributary of the White Nile, I heard about a Peace Corps volunteer, Bill Olsen, 25, a recent graduate of Cornell, who decided to take a dip in the river at Gambella, a village near the South Sudan border. The locals warned to stay away from the river, which they claimed was busy with monsters. Bill ignored the cautions, and swam to a sandbar on the far side of the muddy river, and sat there, his feet on a submerged rock. He was leaning into the current to keep his balance, a rippled vee of water trailing behind him, his arms folded across his chest as he was staring ahead lost in thought. A few minutes later friends on shore saw that Bill had vanished without trace or sound. A few more minutes on a big croc surfaced with a large, white, partially submerged object in its jaws. The next morning a hunter on safari, a Colonel Dow, sneaked up on the croc, shot it, and then dragged the carcass to the beach. He cut it open, and inside found Bill Olsen’s legs, intact from the knees down, still joined together at the pelvis. His head, crushed into small chunks, was a barely recognizable mass of hair and flesh.  A black and white photo of Bill’s twisted, bloody legs dumped in a torn cardboard box drilled into my paraconsciousness, and for days I would shut my eyes and shiver at the image.

Nonetheless, I went forward with my plans to make the first descent of the Baro River.

Above, the jungle was a brawl of flora and vines and roots.  Colobus monkeys sailed between treetops, issuing washboard cries.

Below, three specially designed inflatable white-water rafts bobbed in a back eddy, looking, from the ridge, like restless water bugs.  There were 11 of us, all white-water veterans, save Angus.  He was in the raft with me, Karen Greenwald, and John Yost, my high-school friend and partner. As the leader and the most experienced river-runner, I was at the oars.

Our raft would go first.  At the correct moment we cast off – Angus coiled the painter and gripped for the ride.  I adjusted the oars and pulled a deep stroke.  For a prolonged instant the boat hung in a current between the eddy and the fast water.  Then it snapped into motion with a list that knocked me off my seat.

“This water’s faster than I thought,” I yelled. Regaining the seat, I straightened the raft, its bow downstream. The banks were a blur of green; water shot into the boat from all sides.

Just minutes after the start of the ride, we approached the rapid.  Though we’d been unable to scout it earlier…its convex edge was clad in thick vegetation preventing a full view of the river…I had a hunch it would be best to enter the rapid on its right side.  But the river had different notions.  Despite frantic pulls on the oars, we were falling over the lip on the far left.

“Oh my God!” someone screamed.  The boat was almost vertical, falling free.  This wasn’t a rapid – this was a waterfall.  I dropped the oars and braced against the frame.  The raft crashed into a spout, folded in half, and spun.  Then, as though reprieved, we straightened and flumped onward.  I almost gasped with relief when a lateral wave pealed into an explosion on my left, picking up the raft, slamming it against the nearby cliff wall like a toy, then dumping it and us upside down into the millrace. Everything turned to bubbles.

I tumbled, like falling down an underwater staircase.  Seconds later, I surfaced in the quick water below the rapid, a few feet from the overturned raft.  My glasses were gone, but through the billows I could make out another rapid 200 yards downstream, closing in fast. I clutched at a rope and tried to tow the raft toward shore.  Behind I heard Karen: “Angus.  Go help Angus.  He’s caught in a rope!”

He was trailing ten feet behind the raft, a snarl of bowline tight across his shoulder, tangled and being pulled through the turbulence.  Like the rest of us, he was wearing a sheathed knife on his belt for this very moment – to cut loose from entangling ropes.  His arms looked free, yet he didn’t reach for his knife.  He was paralyzed with fear.

I swam back to Angus, and with my left hand seized the rope at his sternum; with my right I groped for my own Buck knife. In the roiling water it was a task to slip the blade between Angus’s chest and the taut rope.  Then, with a jerk, he was free.

“Swim to shore,” I yelled.

“Swim to shore, Angus,” Karen cried from the edge of the river.

He seemed to respond.   He turned and took a stroke toward Karen.  I swam back to the runaway raft with the hope of once again trying to pull it in.  It was futile: The instant I hooked my hand to the raft it fell into the pit of the next rapid, with me in tow. My heart, already shaking at the cage of my chest, seemed to explode.

I was buffeted and beaten by the underwater currents, then spat to the surface.  For the first time, I was really scared. Even though I was swashed in water, my mouth was dry as a thorn tree.  I stretched my arms to swim to shore, but my strength was sapped.  This time I was shot into an abyss.  I was in a whirlpool, and looking up I could see the surface light fade as I was sucked deeper.  At first I struggled wildly, but it had no effect, except to further drain my small reserves.  My throat began to burn.  I became disassociated from the river and all physical environments. Then I became aware of a strange thing. The part of me that wanted to panic began to draw apart, and then flew away. There no longer seemed any but the flimsiest connection between life and death. I went limp and resigned myself to fate. I seemed to witness it all as an onlooker.

In the last hazy seconds I felt a blow from beneath, and my body was propelled upward.  I was swept into a spouting current, and at the last possible instant I broke the surface and gasped.  I tried to lift my arms; they felt like barbells.  My vision was fuzzy, but I could make out another rapid approaching, and I knew I could never survive it.  But neither could I swim a stroke.  The fear of death was no longer an issue, for that seemed already decided. But I kept moving my arms automatically, for no better reason than that there was nothing else to do. It felt like an age passed like this, my mind stuck in the realization of my fate.

Then, somehow, a current pitched me by the right bank.  Suddenly branches and leaves were swatting my face as I was borne around a bend.  I reached up, caught a thin branch, and held tight.  I crawled to a rock slab and sprawled out.  My gut seized, and I retched.  A wave of darkness washed through my head, and I passed out.

When my eyes finally focused, I saw figures foraging through the gluey vegetation on the opposite bank. John Yost was one; Lew Greenwald, another.  He had been in the third boat, and seeing him reminded me that there were two boats and seven people behind me.  How had they fared?

John paced the bank until he found the calmest stretch of river, then dived in; the water was so swift that he reached my shore 50 yards below his mark.  He brought the news: The second raft, piloted by Robbie Paul, had somehow made it through the falls upright.  In fact, Robbie was thrown from his seat into the bilge during the first seconds of the plunge, and the raft had continued through captainless.  The third boat, handled by Bart Henderson, had flipped.  Bart was almost swept under a fallen log, but was snatched from the water by the crew of Robbie’s boat.

All were accounted for – except Angus Macleod.

————–

I felt I understood the reasons for everyone’s involvement in the expedition, except Angus’s.  He was the odd man out.  I met him in Clifton, New Jersey, a few weeks before our departure.  We were introduced by a neighbor of his, Joel Fogel.  Joel liked to tell people that he was a “professional adventurer.”  He’d had a brochure printed up describing himself as “Writer, Scientist, Adventurer, Ecologist.”  Something about him seemed less than genuine, a legend in his own lunchtime, but he had hinted that he might invest in our Baro expedition, and we desperately needed money.  I agreed to hear him out.  In August Joel flew me from Arizona  to New Jersey.  I decided Joel was suffering from affluenza…coming from a wealthy family, he apparently never really worked in his life, and spent his time trying to make himself famous. In exchange for what seemed like a sizable contribution to our cause, Joel had two requests: that he be allowed to join the expedition, and that I consider letting his friend, Angus Macleod, come along as well.

I was leery of bringing along anyone outside my tight-knit, experienced coterie on an exploratory, but the lure of capital was too strong.  Joel, however, would never make it out onto the Baro.  He traveled with us to the put-in, took one look at the angry, heaving river, and caught the next bus back to Addis Ababa. He may have been the smartest of the lot.

Angus was altogether different.  While Joel smacked of presentation and flamboyance, Angus was taciturn and modest.  He confessed immediately to having never run a rapid, yet he exuded an almost irresistible eagerness and carried himself with the fluid bounce of a natural athlete.

He was ruggedly handsome and had played professional soccer, and though he had never been on a river, he had spent time sea kayaking the Jersey shore.  After spending a short time with him I could see his quiet intensity, and I believed that – despite his lack of experience – he could handle the trip, even though there would be no chance for training or special conditioning before the actual expedition.

Once in Ethiopia, Angus worked in the preparations for the expedition with a lightheartedness that masked his determination.  On the eve of our trip to Illubabor Province – a 17-hour bus ride on slippery, corrugated mountain roads – I told Angus to make sure he was at the bus station at 7 a.m. for the 11 a.m. departure.  That way we would all be sure of getting seats in the front of the bus, where the ride wasn’t as bumpy or unbearable stuffy.  But, come the next morning, Angus didn’t show until 10:45.  He got the last seat on the bus and endured.

Later, after the accident, standing on the bank of the river with John Yost, I wondered if I’d made the right decision about Angus.  We searched the side of the river where I’d washed ashore; across the rumble of the rapids we could hear the others searching.  “Angus! Are you all right? Where are you?”  There was no answer.  Just downriver from where I’d last seen him, John found an eight-foot length of rope – the piece I’d cut away from Angus’s shoulders.

After an hour John and I gave up and swam back across the river.  We gathered the group at the one remaining raft, just below the falls.

“He could be downstream, lying with a broken leg,” someone said.

“He could be hanging onto a log in the river.”

“He could be wondering in a daze through the jungle.”

(photo)

 

Nobody suggested he could be dead, though we all knew it a possibility.  All of us had a very basic, and very difficult, decision to make, the kind of decision you never want to have to make on an expedition: Should we stay and look for Angus, or should we get out while there was still light?  Robbie, Bart, and George and Diane Fuller didn’t hesitate – they wanted out.  Karen Greenwald wanted to continue searching, but she seemed hysterical.  Against her protests, we sent her out with the others.

That left five of us – Lew Greenwald, Gary Mercado, Jim Slade, John Yost and me.  We decided to continue rafting downstream in search of Angus on the one remaining raft.  I had mixed feelings — suddenly I was scared to death of the river; it had almost killed me.  The ambient sentiment was that we could very well die. Yet I felt obligated to look for a man missing from a boat I had capsized, on an expedition I had organized.  And there was more: I felt I had to prove to myself that I had the right stuff, that I could honor the code, and do the right thing.

Raft flipping in water
Photo:  Sanjoy Ghosh

But the river wasn’t through with us.  When we were ready to go, I climbed into the seat of the raft and yelled for Jim to push off.  Immediately we were cascading down the course I’d swum earlier.  In the rapid that had nearly drowned me, the raft jolted and reeled, kicking Gary and me into the brawling water.

“Shit – not again,” was my only thought as I spilled out of the raft into another whirlpool.  But this time I had the bowline in hand, and I managed to pull myself quickly to the surface.  I emerged beside the raft, and Lew grabbed the back of my life jacket and pulled me in.  My right forearm was lacerated and bleeding.  Jim jumped to the oars and rowed us to shore.

My injury wasn’t bad – a shallow cut.  But Gary had dislocated his shoulder; he’d flipped backward over the gunwale while still holding onto the raft.  He was in a load of pain, and it was clear he couldn’t go on.  Lew – thankful for the opportunity – volunteered to hike him out.

John, Jim and I re-launched and cautiously rowed down a calmer stretch of the river, periodically calling out for Angus.  It was almost 6:00 PM, and we were just three degrees north of the equator, so the sun was about to set. We had to stop and make camp.  It was a bad, uncomfortable night.  Between us, we had a two-man A-frame tent, one sleeping bag, and a lunch bag of food.  Everything else had been washed into the Baro.

————–

The rude bark of a baboon shook us awake the next morning.  The inside of the tent was dripping from condensation, and we lay in a kind of human puddle.  I crawled outside and looked to the eastern sky, which was beginning to blush.  My body ached from the previous day’s ordeal.  I wanted to be back in the U.S., warm, dry and eating a fine breakfast.  Instead, we huddled around a wisp of fire, sipping weak tea and chewing wet bread.

That morning we eased downriver, stopping every few minutes to scout, hugging the banks, avoiding rapids we wouldn’t have hesitated to run were they back in the States.  At intervals we called into the rain forest for Angus, but now we didn’t expect an answer.

Late in the afternoon we came to another intimidating rapid, one that galloped around a bend and sunk from sight.  We took out the one duffel bag containing the tent and sleeping bag and began lining, using ropes to lower the boat along the edge of the rapid.  Fifty yards into the rapid, the raft broached perpendicular to the current, and water swarmed in.   Slade and I, on the stern line, pulled hard, the rope searing our palms, but the boat ignored us.  With the snap of its D-ring (the bowline attachment), it dismissed us to a crumple on the bank and sailed around the corner and out of sight.

There was no way to continue the search.  The terrain made impossible demands, and we were out of food, the last scraps having been lost with the raft.  We struck up into the jungle, thrashing through wet, waist-high foliage at a slug’s pace.  My wound was becoming infected.  Finally, at sunset the light folded up on itself and we had to stop. We cleared a near-level spot, set up the tent, squeezed in, and collapsed.  Twice I awoke to the sounds of trucks grumbling past, but dismissed it as jungle fever, or Jim’s snoring.

In the morning, however, we soon stumbled onto a road.  There we sat, as mist coiled up the tree trunks, waiting.  In the distance we could hear the thunder roll of a rapid, but inexplicably the sound became louder and louder.  Then we saw what it was: 200 machete-wielding natives marched into sight over the hill.  General Goitom, the police commissioner of nearby Motu, hearing of the accident, had organized a search for Angus.  Their effort consisted of tramping up and down the highway – the locals, it turned out, were more fearful of the jungle canyon than we were.

I remember very little of the next week.  We discovered that Angus held a United Kingdom passport, and I spent a fair amount of time at the British embassy in Addis Ababa filling out reports, accounting for personal effects, and communicating with his relatives.  John and Jim stayed in Motu with General Goitom and led a series of searches back into the jungle along the river.  We posted a cash reward – more than double what the villagers earned in a year – for information on Angus’s whereabouts.  With financial assistance from Angus’s parents, I secured a Canadian helicopter a few days after the accident and took several passes over the river.  Even with the pilot skimming the treetops, it was difficult to see into the river corridor.   The canopy seemed like a moldy, moth-eaten army tarpaulin.  On one flight, however, I glimpsed a smudge of orange just beneath the surface of the river.  We made several passes, but it was impossible to make out what it was.  Perhaps, I thought, it was Angus, snagged underwater. We picked as many landmarks as possible, flew in a direct line to the road, landed, cut a marker on a tatty dohm palm, and headed to Motu.

A day later John, Jim and I cut a path back into the tangle and found the smudge – a collection of leaves trapped by a submerged branch.  We abandoned the search.

In November I got a call from a friend, a tour operator.  A trek he’d organized to the Sahara had been canceled by the Algerian government, and his clients wanted an alternative.  Would I be interested in taking them to Ethiopia for a trek?  Two weeks later I arrived in Addis Ababa, where I met up with John Yost, Jim Slade, and a trainee-guide, Gary Bolton, fresh from a SOBEK raft tour of the Omo River.  They were surprised to see me, here where nobody expected I would return.

By late December, after escorting a commercial trek through the Bale Mountains of southern Ethiopia, John, Jim, and I were wondering what to do next, and the subject of the unfinished Baro came up. The mystery of Angus still gnawed at all of us. I confessed that over the months, sometimes in the middle of a mundane chore — taking out the trash, doing the laundry — I’d stop and see Angus’s frozen features as I cut him loose.  In weak moments I would wonder if there just might be a chance that he was still alive.  And I’d be pressed with a feeling of guilt, that I hadn’t done enough, that I had waded in waist deep, then turned back. And I wondered how Angus had felt in those last few minutes — about himself, about me. Jim and John admitted to similar feelings, and we collectively decided to try the Baro once again. We needed a fourth, and Gary Bolton agreed to join as well.

This time we put-in where I had taken out almost two years before, at the terminus of a long jungle path. Again, we had a single raft, with the minimum of gear to make portaging easier. The river pummeled us, as it had before, randomly tossing portages and major rapids in our path. But during the next few days, the trip gradually, almost imperceptibly, became easier.  On Christmas morning I decorated a bush with my socks and passed out presents of party favors and sweets.  Under an ebony sapling I placed a package of confections for Angus.  It was a curiously satisfying holiday, being surrounded by primeval beauty and accompanied by three other men with a common quest.  No one expected to find Angus alive, but I thought that the journey — at least for me — might expunge some doubt, exorcise guilt.  I wanted to think that I had done all humanly possible to explore a death I was partly responsible for.  And somehow I wanted him to know this.

As we tumbled off the Abyssinian massif into the Great Rift Valley of Africa, taking on tributaries every few miles, the river and its rapids grew.  At times we even allowed ourselves to enjoy the experience, to shriek with delight, to throw heads back in laughter as we bounced through Colorado-style white water and soaked in the scenery.  Again, we found remnants of the first trip – a broken oar here, a smashed pan there.  Never, though, a hint of Angus.

After one long day of portaging, I went to gather my wetbag, holding my clothes, sleeping bag and toilet kit, and it was nowhere to be found. Apparently, it had been tossed out during one of the grueling portages. I trekked back upstream for a couple miles, but could find nothing, and it was getting dark, so I picked my way back to the raft and the plain pasta dinner John was cooking. At that moment, I had no worldly possessions, save the torn shorts I was wearing, my socks and tennis shoes, and the Buck Knife that hung from my pants. I slept in a small cave that night, rolled up like a hedgehog, with no sleeping bag, no pad, but I slept well. With the morning, I awoke fresh and energized, ready for the day, and though I had practically nothing to call my own, I felt a richness for the moment…I was with friends, on a mission, and was touching something primal. In an odd way, this all seemed liberating…no accoutrements to weigh down the soul…just a clear, present reason for going forward, for being. And I allowed something that would be called joy to wash over me.

Photo:  Victoria Reay

On New Year’s Eve we camped at the confluence of the Baro and the Bir-Bir rivers, pulling in as dusk was thickening to darkness.  A lorry track crossed the Baro opposite our camp.  It was there that Conrad Hirsh, the professor from the second Baro attempt, had said he would try to meet us with supplies.  We couldn’t see him, but Jim thought there might be a message waiting for us across the river.  “I think I’ll go check it out,” he said.

“Don’t be a fool,” John warned. “We’re in croc country now.  You don’t want to swim across this river.” We weren’t far from where Bill Olsen, the Peace Corps volunteer, was chomped in half while swimming.

An hour later, just after dark, Jim had not returned. We shouted his name, first individually, then as a chorus.  No answer.  Jim had become a close friend in the two years since we shared a tent on the upper Baro; he had been a partner in ordeal and elation, in failure and success.  Now John and I swept our weak flashlight beams along the dark river.  We gave up.  We were tired, and we sat around the low licks of our campfire, ready to accept another loss, mapping out the ramifications in our minds.  Suddenly Jim walked in from the shadows and thrust a note at us.

“Conrad arrived three day ago, waited two, and left this morning,” he said, his body still dripping from the swim.

“You fool! I knew you couldn’t disappear now — you owe me $3.30 in backgammon debts.”  I clucked with all the punitive tone I could muster.

The following day we spun from the vortex of the last rapid into the wide, Mississippi-like reaches of the lower Baro.  Where rocks and whirlpools were once the enemy, now there were crocodiles and hippos.  We hurled rocks, made threatening gestures, and yelled banshee shrieks to keep them away.  Late in the day on January 3, 1976, we glided into the outpost town of Gambella.  The villagers there had neither seen nor heard of Angus Macleod.

I never told Angus’s relatives of our last search; we didn’t find what might have given them solace.  What I found I kept to myself, buried treasure in my soul. It was the knowledge of the precious and innate value of endeavor.

I wanted to believe that when Angus boarded my tiny boat and committed himself, he was sparked with life and light, that his blood raced with the passion of existence –perhaps more than ever before. As we first launched our rafts on the Baro ten of us thought we knew what we were doing: another expedition, another raft trip, another river.  Only Angus was exploring beyond his being.  Maybe his was a senseless death, moments after launching, in the very first rapid.  I would never forget the look of horror in his eyes as he struggled there in the water.   But there were other ways to think about it.  He took the dare and contacted the outermost boundaries.  He lost, but so do we all, eventually.  The difference, — and it is an enormous one — is that he reached for it, wholly.

 

 

 

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Youssou N’Dour: Answering a Familiar Call

It’s no secret. Music has always been a passionate harbinger of change and social activism. From Woody Guthrie’s “This machine kills fascists” message emblazoned on his beat-up acoustic guitar, to Bob Dylan’s stunning political messages perhaps most unequivocally stated in his timeless anthem “The Times They Are A Changin’”, to the Woodstock era’s desperate and eloquent pleas for peace during the Vietnam war, even up to Bruce Springsteen leading the charge on a couple of Vote For Change tours here in the 21st century, the musical community has forever used it’s bully pulpit to sing loud the possibilities of making the world a better place, or at least reminding us of what’s wrong and offering some ways to fix it via song. But perhaps no single musician has had a bigger influence on a bigger audience than the brilliant Senegalese musician/percussionist/activist Youssou N’Dour.