Thank you to all those who wrote in to our debate.

Bernard from the US wrote in to say, “A quick stop in a place shouldn’t necessarily qualify as “having been to a place”. According to such thinking, I have travelled to Canada, though I was only there one day on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Also, I travelled to Amsterdam, though I was only there for a weekend; doing a last quick bit of European sightseeing before heading back to the states. I believe the essential point of travel, is to gain some degree of familiarity with a geographic area & experience with the local culture; ideally in order to come away with a greater understanding & appreciation of the place where you have been. A person just stepping foot on foreign soil for a day or two, just isn’t going to cut it. However, I understand there are others who may disagree. In reality, anything less that this is just basic sightseeing”.

Richard, also from the US, wrote in to say: “I have had this problem a number of times. I don’t count an airport stopover as a visit. If you never leave the airport building (or step more than a few feet from the riverbank as the person in Feb e-news did in Laos), you shouldn’t count it. I believe that to be fair, one needs to experience some of the country, even if it’s only a one-hour guided tour or a bus ride into the nearest city. Involvement with a local resident also would help validate the visit, even if it’s only buying a snack from a street vendor (outside of

the airport/dock area). Sixty-seven “real” visits and counting!”

What do you think? Write in and let the Beetle know.

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Iris is a British lady of considerable character and pluck, on a 23 week overland expedition from Quito in Ecuador to Caracas in Venezuela. After this, she plans to do a 3-month voluntary placement in Ecuador, and then visit Central America for another overland trip between Panama City and Mexico City, ending up with perhaps another 2-month voluntary placement somewhere in South America again. This amazing journey will take Iris one year. Here is an extract from Iris’ journey notebook.

30^th November cont.: Cuenca

Onward, ever onward, to Cuenca. By the time it had reached 1845 and we had been on the road for 11 hours we were all becoming increasingly impatient to arrive. Darkness had descended, quite a lot of the time, after leaving our lunchtime site, it was raining heavily, and for hours we had had to make our own fun in the back of the truck, playing cards, some of the lads giving us a selection of the music they had brought on mini discs and mini disc players – most of it being quite presentable – Robbie Williams, Abba, Kylie, to name a few, although when a Turkish member of our group produced a CD of Turkish music, the reception was somewhat mixed, and when someone produced a couple of CDs of Australian folk songs, there were a lot of jeers, even from the Aussies amongst us, about songs like “Tie my Kangaroo down sport!” or “Waltzing Matilda” and others of that ilk.

One of our amusements, rather unkindly but not intended so, was our 68 yr old, Judith, my room-mate in Baños. Poor Judith, she had been very jet-lagged when she had arrived in Quito, but she had had four nights to recover, so everyone was very amused when she proceeded to fall asleep. She was sitting with one of our younger men (Matt is about 33, I would say, and he is a quiet man) and he had an inflated neck cushion and had dozed off leaning against the window (the seats are like public bus seats, there are no head rests and support ends at just below the shoulders) so poor Judith was lolling back with mouth wide open, catching flies.

Kindly, our policeman, Paul, who was sitting sideways on behind Judith decided she had to be given a cushion and so a sleeping bag, rolled up in its sack was produced and placed strategically behind Judith’s head, which seemed successful, but as the sleeping bag roll was in a large empty cavity between Judith’s front-facing seat and Paul’s side-facing seat, every movement of the bus sent it sliding away from Judith, or Judith sliding away from it. Another sleeping bag roll was produced but then Judith would gradually slip between the two rolls! Then it was decided to wedge the sleeping rolls in place with a water bottle and this did the trick but then Judith found Matt’s shoulder and snuggled up to him! This just went on and on throughout the day. Both Matt and Judith would wake up at intervals but gradually both (Judith more than Matt) would drop off into slumberland once more and the whole pantomime would be played out again, very much to everyone’s amusement!) We reckoned Judith slept for at least seven of the 13 hours we were on the road!

Eventually, after many small disappointments as one large town vanished into the darkness to our rear which had been mistakenly identified by us as our destination, we arrived in Cuenca and got to our hotel. But we had all to share 3 or 4-bedded rooms, although that is par for the course when so many have to be accommodated in large city hotels. I shared with three other ladies – Alison, Eren (our Turkish lady) and Judith, and after we had all got settled we went off across the road to an Italian restaurant for a meal (as our last meal had been some 8 hours previously on the side of the road), however, at 2130 we were not too keen to eat anything too much and Judith and Eren just had soup and a roll, and Alison and I had pasta.

Today, the rain has vanished and it is quite sunny in Cuenca. We had a light breakfast (rolls and jam and scrambled egg) and then I decided to go my separate way. Judith and Alison and Eren wanted to go to an archaeological museum out of town, but I wanted to wander around on my own. Unfortunately Eren is ill today, being sick and feeling poorly so in the end we left her in the hotel room bedded down. I don’t know what she had eaten and neither did she, that had made her sick, but it is not diarrhoea, just sickness, so hopefully, she will be recovered by tomorrow for our next 366 km journey to Punta Sal where we will be camping on the beach for 3 days.

I think this first week is being used to break us in gently to the rigours ahead of us – the jungle trip and the Inca Trail – so some long journeys have to be faced and some hotels are used so that we are not faced with too much hard work putting up tents every time we arrive at a destination, and camping to show us what we are in for when there are no hotels to stay in. So think of me on 1 Dec 02 having to face putting up a tent after a 12 hour journey!

Today in Cuenca I have just walked round the city centre, looking at the local shops and populace. I got to a little square and realised there was an art museum there so went in to have a look round. The young security guard, who watches over everyone coming in, got me to sign the book and put my passport number and name in the book and then was determined to practice his rather limited English on me. Anyway, to cut a long story short he ended up giving me a guided tour and I asked him if I could take his photo, but although he agreed he was determined the photo was going to have me in it as well, so I obliged him, when he produced a young friend to do the honours! After the guided tour I told him that I was returning to Ecuador next year for maybe two stints of 3 months and 2 months and asked him for his address so that I could not only send him the photo but also perhaps visit him when I return. He is a university student working as a guard at the museum during the day and has another evening job as well to bring in the money while he is studying. He is at Rio Bamba university and hopes to travel round the world when he has finished his studying. He is about 18, I would say, and demanded that we kiss each other on the cheek before parting to show our new-found friendship and the hope of it continuing in the future, so I obliged and insisted we do it the French way of kissing on both cheeks! Then as I left, he ran after me “I don’t know your name! What is your name?” And I said: “Francisco, you have it in your book, remember, I signed in?!” And he was so relieved!

If you’d like to contact Iris, whether to wish her luck with her trip or to ask questions about her itinerary and places visited, I am sure she would like to hear from you. She can be contacted on: irisej2002@yahoo.co.uk

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Los Angeles International Airport, code LAX is some 15 miles or 25 km away from the city of LA. It can be contacted by phone on: +1 310 646 5252. There are 8 terminals as follows:

Terminal 1 is for America West, Southwest and US Airways.

Terminal 2 is for Northwest flights plus Air Canada, Air New Zealand, ATA, Hawaiian, KLM, Virgin Atlantic and others.

Terminal 3 serves Alaska, American, Frontier, Horizon and Midwest Express.

Terminal 4 is the American Airlines terminal.

Terminal 5 is for Aeromexico, American, Delta, Spirit, Vanguard and other airlines.

Terminal 6 serves Continental, Copa, National and some United Airlines flights.

Terminal 7 is the United Airlines terminal.

Terminal B The Tom Bradley International Terminal serves most non-US airlines.

Back in the 1920s, today’s LA airport stands on the site of wheat and barley fields and what was back then part of Southern California’s wealthy ranching land.

Although there was no federal money available for investment, LA’s Chamber of Commerce promoted the idea of building a municipal airport on the land even though flying was still a fledgling activity. In 1928 they chose Mines Field from a list of 27 possible sites, named after a real estate agent called William W. Mines who represented the ranching interests. For years, the people of LA refused to call their airport anything else. The city leased 640 acres for ten years and aviation got an immediate boost when America’s National Air Races brought the crowds flocking to Mines Field to see pilots like the legendary Charles Lindbergh.

Los Angeles Municipal Airport was officially dedicated in 1930 when the lease was extended to 50 years. The depression years were hard for LA until the arrival of such as Douglas, Northrop and North American who established the area as an aircraft manufacturing centre. After the Depression, airlines increasingly came to LAX and to encourage further investment, the city bought the lease and became full owners of the land.

As a result of WW2, Southern California and the area around LA had become the hub of America’s aircraft industry. The airport management had already laid its post-war plans and in 1946, with all five major airlines installed, commercial operations began. Five years later, as world routes were developed, Los Angeles added ‘International’ to its title and in 1952 it made its first profit. A new terminal was built, the forerunner of huge development as the jet age arrived and the ten million passenger mark was reached in 1965. Since then expansion projects have come thick and fast with a $700 million improvement program, started in 1981, providing two new terminals and a $3.5 million cargo centre. Hangar Number One, the first building ever constructed at Los Angeles Airport in 1929, is still in use and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. LAX has never looked back!

For information by e-mail, infoline@airports.ci.la.ca.us

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Trade Aid’s next group tour is a unique opportunity to be involved in an 8 day, self-drive 4WD safari through the unspoilt countryside of Southern Tanzania. The route is via the Selous Game Reserve, the world’s largest. As usual, group rates and airfares etc give a good price reduction. The price for readers of the Globetrotters e-newsletter is £999 per person, including flights from the UK and transfers.

For further details and bookings contact:

TRADE AID – Burgate Court, Burgate, Fordingbridge, Hampshire SP6 1LX UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1425 657774; Fax: +44 (0) 1425 656684; E-mail:tradeaid@netcomuk.co.uk

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Meeting news from our branches around the world.

Journalist, historian and novelist Jan Morris will share her love of writing and travel with an audience at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) on Tuesday 15th April.

It promises to be an enlightening evening: Jan Morris “one of the most remarkable literary careers in the second half of the twentieth century” (The Guardian), has been writing for over fifty years and is a major figure in journalism travel writing in Britain and the United States. Major reporting landmarks include coverage (as James Morris) on the British ascent of Everest the day before HRH Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation in 1953 – an event that touched the world. Since then she has gone on to write over thirty books about her travels around the world, covering the British Empire, Europe, Venice, Hong Kong, Sydney, Spain to name a few.

Described in the New York Times as “perhaps the best descriptive writer of our time”, Jan Morris is renowned for her unique writing style – her use of peculiar words, her personal perspective and her descriptive and imaginative prose which captures the spirit of the place she is writing about. In her own words she says “The best way to find out about a place is wander around. Wander around, alone, with all your antennae out thinking about what’s happening and what you see and what you feel”.

Date: Tuesday 15th April 2003

Time: 7.00 pm

Location: RGS-IBG, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR

Details: An informal interview, travel writer and journalist Jan Morris talks to Libby Purves about her love of travel and writing.

Cost: £5 per ticket

Ticket Request: Events Hotline on +44 (0) 20 7591 3100 or email: events@rgs.org To view more details, visit: www.rgs.org

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Globetrotters meeting on March 1st by Padmassana

Two old friends of Globetrotters gave this month’s talks. First off was Geoffrey Roy, who talked about The Great Wall of China. Geoff started off by dispelling a few myths that surround this ancient construction – that it cannot be seen from outer space, it is not a continuous structure and that there are no bodies entombed in the wall (they would have decomposed and would have weakened the structure). Many sections of the wall have been repaired for the benefit of the 89 million tourists who visit China each year. Of the parts tourists do not generally visit, many are falling down through weathering and the occasional earthquake, or have been bulldozed to make way for roads or to use the stones for new building. Where the stones have been taken Geoff showed us that the mortar still remains, this is because it was made with a kind of rice that sets as hard as concrete. Geoff’s super photos of the wall and surrounding countryside gave us a more accurate view of what the wall looks like today, not just the tourist sections that we see on TV travel shows. Geoff also showed us the China we expect to see such as Mao’s picture outside the Forbidden city in Beijing and people doing Tai chi in the parks. (Find out more about Geoffrey http://www.kaaphotos.co.uk)

Our second speaker was Lesley Downer, who spoke to us about Sadayyako and her journey around the world. Sadayyako was born in central Tokyo and was sent by her family to train as a Geisha (“arts person”). She was in the top echelon of Geisha’s and was soon noticed by Ito, Japan’s first Prime Minister and subsequently became his mistress. Lesley compared them to today’s Posh and Beck’s (for any non UK readers they are a footballer and ex pop singer). As Sadayyako got older she realised that her Geisha work would slow down. Sadayyako then married the equivalent of a pop star, Together they formed a theatre troupe and went to tour America, performing abridged versions of Japanese Kabuki. Lesley explained that Kabuki is traditionally performed by men, with men taking women’s parts, however this would not go down well in 19^th Century America, so Sadayyako stepped in and with her Geisha training soon became the star of the show. After America they took a boat to Liverpool and played to audiences at the Coronet theatre in London. Europe beckoned and they travelled to Paris for the 1900 Expo, then other European capitals including Berlin and Bucharest and onto Moscow. They eventually returned to Japan where they performed abridged versions of Shakespeare. Lesley’s last pictures were of Sadayyako’s house in Nagoya, where she died aged 75. If you want to read more about Sadayyako Lesley Downer’s new book is called, Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Seduced the West.(see http://www.madamesadayakko.com for more information.)

Next month, on April 5^th:

SIMON MYERS talks about China. Simon spent five years in China before riding a Chinese motorbike and sidecar back from Beijing to London. His first book “Adrift in China” has recently been published. ANNE MUSTOE talks of “Two Wheels in the Dust” – a cycle journey from Kathmandu to Kandy. Anne’s journey followed the paths of the Ramayana’s characters Rama, Sita, and Hanuman, in a lone cycle journey crossing the Indian sub-continent from Nepal to Sri-Lanka. Her two previous epic journeys have circled the world following historical routes – the first made travelling westwards “A Cycle Ride” following the Romans then the Greeks to India and finally across the States following the “settlement” in reverse. “Lone Traveller” follows the Conquistadors from Lisbon across South America, pursues Captain Cook over the Pacific to Australia, Indonesia, before following a caravan Silk Road from Xian to Rome.

London meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden at 2.30pm the first Saturday of each month. There is no London meeting in August, but we will be back in September. For more information, you can contact the Globetrotters Info line on +44 (0) 20 8674 6229, or visit the website: www.globetrotters.co.uk

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‘But do you actually do any good?’

As a foreign aid worker I often get that question, usually asked rhetorically by my travelling friends who have long ago made up their minds that ‘expats’ are a waste of space. They punctuate their prejudice with pithy anecdotes from their travels – tales of drunken UN workers they saw picking up girls in bars, the 4×4 cars with logos of famous charities spotted on safari in African game parks. Or the aid workers who commandeered a luxury local villa (complete with swimming pool) upwind from the refugee camp.

And many foreign aid workers are as quick to stereotype travellers. There is the bargain-hunting backpacker who barters locals under the poverty line, or the holidaymaker glued behind a video camera who wanders into a war zone.

I recently saw these counterpoints crystallised in a string of messages posted on the Internet, on a travellers’ bulletin board. The comments kicked off with a backpacker in Africa who called foreign aid workers ‘the ultimate travel snobs, on some kind of human suffering safari’. Another weighed in with: “The majority of foreign workers I have come across in east and central Africa are just there for the money and good life.”

Aid workers – who obviously are tuned into travellers’ web sites – quickly hit back. Said one: “Can you imagine what it was like in post-genocide Rwanda? I can, I was there. So if aid workers want to get drunk and blow off a little steam then I can understand.” Another added: “What the hell business does a back-backer have being in either a war-zone or a disaster site? Chances are good that they are getting in the way.”

And so it flowed on with arguments launched from both sides of the divide. I read with great interest, perhaps because I have a foot in both camps. I had worked in long-haul adventure travel years before I became a Logistician for MSF. So I have met a myriad of traveller types, just as I now know a kaleidoscope of aid workers, of varying competencies and qualities.

I like to think there is good on both sides.

Travel is the world’s biggest industry and potentially a huge power for economic good. Tourism, properly managed, can generate a quick flow of cash from rich to poor pockets. And those hard-bitten backpackers (the same ones who slag off aid workers) are the pioneer species of their type – hardy weeds who spread into those corners of the globe still ‘caution strongly advised’ by the Foreign Office, but precursors for more lucrative tourism that will surely follow if better times come.

Do aid workers do good? I can only talk from my own experience. As a field worker for Médecins Sans Frontières in Colombia I have never doubted for a minute the value of our project. I worked with MSF in the conflict zone, helping get mobile health clinics to a civilian population terrorised by opposing war gangs; guerrillas, paramilitaries or drug gangs. In most cases these villages were abandoned by the state, or worse subjected to barbarities by the same state forces supposedly there to protect them.

Often we were the only outsiders to reach these villages. I will never forget the joy of the campesinos who come to greet us. Just our presence in this troubled zone was as vital as our medical work. Alongside our local and dedicated Colombian counterparts, we ran risks every day to get our work done, and as expats ‘in charge’ we often worked months without a day off. It was not a holiday.

Yes, I admit, at first I was thrilled at the ‘exclusivity’ of our mission, seduced perhaps by the frisson of being a one-and-only in the backwoods of a country at war. No, I can’t guarantee that our work – however welcome in the short term – will affect the torturous path of Colombia’s 40-year war.

Because of course aid workers cannot cure all of the world’s ills, any more than travellers and tourism can provide a post-op panacea. Both have the power for good and harm.

But I would like to see those lush hills of Colombia to be traversed by happy mountain-bikers. The campesinos, in between farming avocados, guiding birdwatchers and orchid lovers along the banks of clear streams. Homesteaders sell bowls of fragrant chicken stew to grateful hikers. The abandoned health posts are repaired, the village schools get their roofs back, the bullet holes are plastered over, and a teacher welcomes his young smiling students. Then I would be happier to be on holiday than working as an expat.

Steve has been on 3 missions for medical aid charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Colombia and El Salvador. He is currently in Angola as an MSF Logistician on a primary health care and nutrition project. Take a look at www.uk.msf.org for more info on volunteering for MSF.

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Next month on April 5^th 2003:

Ladakh: the last Shangri-la? “In the forbidding terrain of the Himalayas, a robust people embellish their frugal lives with rich endowments of faith” (Thomas J. Abercrombie, National Geographic). Experience the beauty of this exotic land through a slide show by Kenneth Axen, PhD, research scientist, graphic artist, and serious amateur photographer.

For details of forthcoming meetings email newyork@globetrotters.co.uk or register for email updates at click here at our website.

New York meetings are held at The Wings Theater, 154 Christopher Street (btw Greenwich St and Washington St), to the right of Crunch Fitness, in the Archive on the first Saturday of each month at 4 pm.

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