Sustainable Good

Summer's Here: Don't Spend it at a Resort

It is June, which to me means summer is here! It is getting hotter, kids are finishing their last days of school, and parents are planning vacations (maybe less this year because of the recession). I thought this would be the perfect time to talk about one of the most frustrating things I have ever experienced--the resort vacationer.

International travel can be one of the most amazing experiences imaginable. It can open your eyes to new cultures, new foods, new ways of life. It can also break your heart and change your life. It can help you to see how little material things some people have. It can inspire you to ACT. On the other hand, it can also just be a luxuriant week of excesses that does little besides reinforce the inequality in the world.

Khakis, Pockets and Adventurous Hats: Tourism and the Colonial Imagination

I needed an adventurous hat – khaki-colored with a broad brim, evocative of Indiana Jones. Such were my thoughts as I prepared for a visit to Kenya during a summer break from college nine years ago. The hat made me look incredibly silly and eventually I came to my senses, giving it away. But for a few weeks it made me feel like a bona fide swashbuckler.

A couple years later, as I shopped for clothes before going on an aid work assignment in Zambia, I went for the whole look – buying khaki trousers and shirts with hundreds of pockets. I looked like a bad caricature of the European explorer in Africa (see the photo of me by the taxi) but I felt dashing and exciting nonetheless.

As I have spent more time on the African continent I have begun to reflect on the absurdity of this behavior which is so common among North Americans and Europeans that come here.

Kenya Revisited

I first visited Kenya as a summer WorldService Corps volunteer in 2000.  It is a bit of a cliche to say so, but the experience really did change my life.  Ever since high school I had wanted to be a foreign correspondent or a humanitarian aid worker and had glamorous fantasies of me trekking through 'exotic' countries and spinning tales for the people back home.  However, I was completely unprepared for the sobering reality of living and working in a country wracked by political tension and trapped in oppressive conditions of poverty.

Questioning the War on Drugs

I'm 5 feet away from Uribe, the president of Colombia, but I can't help but question the way the billions of dollars the US provides to fight drugs in Colombia is being used.