Posted by: andrewedwardmorgan | January 22, 2010

Interview up on Couchsurfing.com

Friday 1/22/10  Gulu, Uganda

Couchsurfing emailed me a while ago and asked if they could include me in their Surfers Making Waves section of the site.  I was honored to be approached about this because I think the site is one of the most powerful travel tools/websites in existence.  Allowing budget travelers to stay for free with other budget travelers, and making it easy to contact locals to ask for travel advice and information, the site is helping to revolutionize the way we travel.  For broke young people, Couchsurfing is the key many of them use to unlock a round-the-world tour.

I just received word that the article is up.  Check it out here.

Posted by: andrewedwardmorgan | January 21, 2010

Crash Landing in Heathrow

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Above: Inside New York’s Guggenheim Museum, a good representation of the type of modern design I write about in this piece. I didn’t take any pictures of the scene described below for fear of being tackled, questioned, detained, and ultimately accused of being a terrorist.  Airports are no longer safe places to take pictures :(

Thursday   21/1/10  Gulu, Uganda

This is a piece I wrote in my journal about flying back to New Jersey, a visit home that had been two years in the making.  Landing in London’s Heathrow airport was…surreal.

I walked off the plane and followed the crowd.

The air in the walkway to the gate was oddly crisp.

Everywhere inside, glass.  And architecture infused with art.  Nowhere, trash.  Or dust.  Or faded shirts and muted colors.

We rounded a corner and entered it—the main lobby area of Terminal Five, the newest structural addition to London’s Heathrow airport.  A glowing cave of modernity.  Flat screen monitors hung in place of posters, advising travelers to get to gates early and to alert officials of some thing or another.  A line of X-ray check points, each manned with a crew of six or seven security officials, spanned the width of the main hall, more than a dozen stations in all.  Hundreds of travelers waited to pass through the beeping gates of the security stations, and each and every one of them looked awkward and slightly uncomfortable as they removed their shoes to prepare for inspection.  I couldn’t help but wonder if some of them felt strange standing shoeless on the cold, sterile floor.  Strange not because they were embarrassed by the smell of their feet or their hole-in-the-heel socks, but because at that instant, feeding their warm shoes into the flap-toothed mouth of the X-ray machine, it becomes clear to them that the world is no longer as safe as it was when they were children.  Now, death hides in the soles of shoes.

Read More…

Posted by: andrewedwardmorgan | January 17, 2010

Help Invisible Children Win 1 Million Bucks!

Sunday 1/17/10  Gulu, Uganda

In the words of Juno, I need you to do me a solid.  Chase Bank is giving away $1,000,000 US to whichever charity gets the most votes in a contest.  Right now, Invisible Children is in the lead.  Please help us win this!  This is big money for us and will help us do lots of incredible things in the US and Uganda.

You can vote via Facebook here.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Posted by: andrewedwardmorgan | January 10, 2010

Stunning Bike Video

Saturday 1/9/10  Cherry Hill, New Jersey

This is absolutely spectacular.

Posted by: andrewedwardmorgan | January 8, 2010

The Start

Friday 1/8/10  Cherry Hill, New Jersey

I’ve been back home for five weeks now, visiting friends and family I haven’t seen for the past two years.  The visit has been amazing.  My mother’s tuna fish salad has managed to somehow become even more delicious since the last time I had it.  Tomorrow I leave to head back out to Uganda.

The other night my dad showed me this video.  It was surreal watching it.  It shows the first few moments of the bike trip, when I pulled away from my parent’s driveway in New Jersey with thousands of miles of uncertainty ahead of me.  What you can’t see in this video is my nervousness.  I was nauseous with anxiety, trying all the while to keep a smile on my face and confidence in my words.  When I started the trip, I did so with no past touring experience and next-to-no bicycling experience.  On day one, I was weak with fear and self-doubt.  I imagined being robbed of bike and cash.  I thought about tropical diseases—stuff like this—and wondered how I’d survive in places like Mexico and Colombia.  I believed in the deepest parts of me that I had gotten myself in too deep, that I pledged to complete something I obviously couldn’t complete.

I nearly drop the bike in the video.  Foolishly, I hadn’t ridden with the trailer fully loaded until the morning of my departure.

Enjoy.

Posted by: andrewedwardmorgan | December 9, 2009

An Acholi Wedding

goat small

Animals are an important part of Acholi dowries.  These goats, two of eight given, were part of Jennifer’s dowry.

Awkwardly, the men crawled into the circular hut, leaving their shoes in a pile at the door.  They slid their knees across the worn, earthen threshold, slacks and all.  Under the light of a bare bulb dangling overhead like a banished star, they took their places against the mud wall, sitting on reed mats.  Facing them from an arc of thrones, nine men sat in plastic chairs that lined the hut’s opposite wall.  The few women in attendance—all elderly with the exception of the bride and her sister, all in ornate, spotless gomas—sat on the ground at the periphery of the scene.  A large metal pot filled with gifts—a live chicken, boxes of matches, a gas lantern—acted as the room’s clunky nucleus.  Once silence blanketed the space, the stage was set:  Jennifer and Shanti’s wedding could now begin.

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Posted by: andrewedwardmorgan | November 7, 2009

New Photos: Zanzibar and Tanzania

me, Pongwe, Zanzibar

Saturday 11/7/09  Gulu, Uganda

I just got back from a two week holiday in Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania.  The pictures from the trip are up on my Flickr page.  Check ‘em out here.

Enjoy!

roadkill in Lushoto, Tanzania

me in Lushoto, Tanzania

our hut in Pongwe, Zanzibar

Lushoto, Tanzania

me, Zanzibar

Pongwe

fisherman, Kendwa, Zanzibar

Posted by: andrewedwardmorgan | November 7, 2009

Captain Morgan’s Snorkeling Trip Off Mnemba Island

kendwa beach, stitched image----click for more detail

pongwe beach, stitched image---click for more detail

Above:  Two stitched images from Zanzibar.  Click on the images, then click ‘All sizes’ for more detail

Taken from my journal:  10/21/09  Kendwa Beach, Zanzibar

When I asked the stocky Zanzibari who sold me the tickets for the snorkeling trip what his name was, he smiled and said, “Captain Morgan.”  Before we parted ways, I tried to put down a small deposit to save our spots for the trip the following day.  Captain Morgan shook hs head and closed his eyes, incredulous.  “No, no.  No deposit.  If you give us money now, we’ll drink it all away tonight!  Pay all tomorrow.  Hakuna matata.”

The  next morning, a motley batch of foreigners filed onto a battered boat with a crew of muscled Zanzibaris.  Most of us tourists clutched cameras, bottles of water, and sunscreen in ways that made us seem vulnerable and fragile, like eggs rolling across a freeway at rush hour.  Even amidst all the sand and cerulean seas, despite the hammocks, naps, sundowners, and familiar Western meals, we still somehow seemed completely out of place and reliant on talismans and habits from home for soul support.   The Zanzibaris, most shirtless and all with the chiseled arms and sinewy hands of fishermen, joked and loaded things onto the boat for the voyage:  gasoline, coolers, two 10-pound tunas.

Our destination for the day was Mnemba Island, a tiny tree-shagged island circled by a wide, Saturnian disk of white sand off Zanzibar’s eastern coast.  The island, Captain Morgan assured me the day before, was famous for its fish-populated fields of coral.  The schedule he pitched me back on the beach went something like this:  Leave bright and early from Kendwa, snorkel at two spots off Mnemba, then head to the beach for an all-you-can-eat fish barbeque, returning to Kendwa by 3:00 pm.  Things went kind of as the Cap’ said they would…sort of, but for a trip that cost half of what the certified dive ships were offering, I couldn’t complain.

incredible water!!  near Mnemba Island, Zanzibar

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Posted by: andrewedwardmorgan | November 7, 2009

Sketches of Zanzibar

Stone Town

stone town corner, stitched image

Above:  Images from Stone Town.  Click on the bottom image to see it in more detail on its Flickr page.  Click ‘All Sizes’ above the image to see it in a larger size

Taken from my journal:   10/23/09   Stone Town, Zanzibar

Stone Town is the cultural and commercial hub of Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous island off Tanzania’s coast.  Known for it’s labyrinthine maze of allies that dices up the downtown area, Stone Town is a place where shadows thrive; where mosques cry out through the megaphone mouths of their minarets; and where veiled school girls walk home whispering amongst themselves, oblivious to the groups of camera-wielding tourists hunting scenes to shoot and take home.

The charm of the place lies in its close-quarters-ness—the tightness of its streets and the odd angles of its intersections—and the way afternoon light cascades down the faces of its buildings like half-frozen paint slipping down a fresh canvass.

scene from Stone Town

The doors in Stone Town are often so ornate that entering buildings seems pointless, for nothing found inside could stimulate the mind and eyes as much.  Kaleidoscopic designs punctuated with nipples of weathered brass form the doors’ edges, while handles rounded by the touch of a thousand hands bulls-eye their centers.

Everywhere Muslims—almost entirely of the Sunni sect—walk under cap and veil.  The men wear earth-toned, patterned cylindrical hats atop their heads, and women bury the contours of their bodies under ankle-length cloaks and bright head scarves.

The eyes of some women float down the street anchored in clouds of black fabric, two orbs of identity set against masks of flowing obsidian and coal.

Jewelers sell golden pendants and bracelets across from carpeted mosques and next to cluttered stationary stores.

Chef-hatted fish slingers sell kabobs of tuna, kingfish, and lobster for a buck a piece each night under bare light bulbs in the plaza by the waterfront.

night fish market, Stone Town

Fanny packs donutting the guts of toursts bob and stop and float down aisles of souvenir manifestations of African cliches and stereotypes—zebra-head-tipped pencils and banana-leaf-jacketed journals, for example—and occasionally these same fanny packs spill forth their innards of shillings and plastic to purchase some kitsch trinket or another.

Old men stew in groups of three and four on concrete ledges in the afternoon sunlight like lounging lizards, nodding at passerby and sipping spiced tea from plum-sized glass cups.

typical scene in Stone Town

Cats with matted coats that betray their bastardness lay sprawled across stoops and gutters like 3D smears of looming death, disease, and sadness.  I pay them no mind, but one man tries to spoon milk into one dying, emaciated cat’s mouth.  Too weak to swallow, the cat rejects his offering, puddling a white, watery halo around its fallen head.

kids walking in Stone Town

Posted by: andrewedwardmorgan | October 12, 2009

From Bracelets to Savings Groups

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Betty, 55, sits in front of the hut she paid for with money earned as an IC bracelet maker in Awer IDP Camp

***Below is an interview transcript I just posted on IC’s website.  Enjoy!***

Invisible Children’s Bracelet Campaign used to employ people living in IDP camps in northern Uganda to make bracelets.  When the Bracelet Campaign ended in May, IC dovetailed the program’s phase out with the start of a new microfinance program called the Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA).  Because bracelet makers were trained in saving techniques, it seemed only logical to use them as anchors for savings groups in northern Uganda under VSLA.

Ex-bracelet makers are presently helping their fellow villagers save money in 20 different savings groups.  With 20 people in each group, VSLA is a powerful program affecting 400 Ugandan households, enabling group members to take loans from communal group savings funds that they themselves generate.  I recently sat down to speak with Betty, an ex-bracelet maker and current leader of one VSLA group in Awer, Uganda.   Below is a transcript of part of our interview.

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