Passports With Purpose Round Three: Pearls for Libraries in Zambia

The day before yesterday Passports With Purpose (PWP) launched its third fundraiser, this year to build two libraries in Zambia. I was on a boat, a bus and then a plane on the day of the launch through last night (making my way from a remote isle in Fiji back home to Portland), so please excuse my tardiness, it has nothing to do with lack of enthusiasm for this annual project!

I do admit however that when I first heard that PWP was going to build libraries this year I was a bit disappointed. Yes I love books and learning and want the world to have access to this magical realm but aren't there other things that are more important like food, shelter and freedom from violence? As usual, the universe came and answered me. About four days ago, whilst on that small island in Fiji, I met an English woman who told me this story:

Angela was traveling through East Africa by bus. At a random dusty stop she heard a little boy very loudly and confidently proclaiming: "Public service announcement! Bananas contain potassium and are very good for your health! I have bananas for sale, get them here."

She found this adorable but she didn't like bananas. The little boy stopped at her bus window and asked her where she was from.

"England," she said.

"What part?"

She told him the town which was somewhere near South London.

The little boy then asked her what she thought of her local football team who he had seen play in a match on TV over the weekend - he knew the score. They chatted a little about football including the boy's favorite underdog team that happen to be the home team of another English couple sitting at the front of the bus.

"Here," said the boy after a few minutes. "Have a banana."

It was free gift but Angela didn't want a banana or get a freebee from this boy who surely needed the money so she refused.

Another boy nearby said innocently, "You don't want to be his friend?"

So Angela took the banana. With a quick thought, she decided to give the boys a magazine from the bus. The two boys immediately lit up, set down their bananas and poured over the magazine under a tree.

"All they wanted to do was read," Angela told me on that Fijian island. "I wished I could have given them a library's worth of books."

A light went off in my head; this is exactly what I was about to help do with PWP, except we're giving Zambian children two libraries worth of books. No it's not saving lives but it's certainly enhancing them and who's to say what's more important.

Now about my prize.

The "Mana Necklace" is Kamoka Pearls' signature adventure and travel jewelry and something I've worn on the road for years. Everything is sustainable from the pearl, grown with care in Ahe Atoll's lagoon in the Tuamotu Archipelago, to the kangaroo leather which is taken to quell over population in native stocks (it's also some of the strongest leather in the world).

The prize is a necklace on leather with a 10mm semi-round silver pink grade B pearl (great luster and two very small, nearly imperceptible blemishes) and an anklet with a 9.5mm medium tone grey-green-gold baroque grade B pearl (again very good luster with only a minor, scarcely visible scratch). You can see the details of the necklace line at http://buy.kamokapearls.com/collections/kangaroo-leather-line/products/mana-necklace but the anklet is a new product that isn't online yet - so this is a special pre-launch gift! The necklace is normally priced at $130 and the anklet is expected to be priced around $100 making the set worth around $230.

And if you're new here I might add that Kamoka Pearl is my family's farm run by my charming husband.

So please head over to the PWP website, bid on my prize and help build those libraries in Zambia!!!

Papeete's Green Revolution - Watching Tahiti's Capital Become Beautiful Again

Papeete is Tahiti and French Polynesia's capital city and for years it's had a bad rap of being a polluted, grungy embarrassment to the rest of the stunningly beautiful country. This is changing. I live an hour and a half away from Papeete and go there about once or twice a month so I've had a real perspective on how vastly the city has changed over the last year or so.

The metamorphosis is almost entirely from new landscaping along the waterfront. Several years ago Papeete's lagoon-side road was nothing more than a traffic-clogged concrete strip with fading 1960s architecture on one side and a view of a polluted port on the other. The only saving graces were some graceful old trees that grew in the road divider and the sailboats that docked along the main drag. There were a few dark years during this decade when many of these trees were chopped down and the sailboats were told to dock elsewhere, but luckily this was followed by some brilliant urban planning that has completely changed the face of the city.

It all began with the building of To'ata Amphitheater right next to the lagoon ten or so years ago. A walking area with brick patio stones shaded by frangipani trees was built around this prime theater and a few good restaurants sprung up in the water-view pedestrian only area. A few years later the Vaiete Roullotte area at the other end of the waterfront got a facelift with a little gazebo for live bands, more paved areas, trees and some great public restrooms. This was followed by the building of a fancy new tourist office (with more great public restrooms - much needed in Papeete) and a little crafts market near the Moorea Ferry docks.

But the biggest changes have been recent. The area between To'ata and Vaiete has seen the return of some (but not all) of the docking sailboats and an ever-growing landscaped garden park that includes an enclosed child's play area as well as some lovely spots to sit and watch outrigger canoes glide in front of the setting sun. There are trees, winding grassy areas, paved areas for bikes, trees and flowers. As someone who's seen Papeete through it's worst years, it's hard for me to admit it, but the city is looking very pretty these days.

I hope that the new look will soon spread into the city's interior, which still is crammed with shabby architecture and peeling paint, but the waterfront is where the city's charm was always meant to lie. Now, for the first time in several decades, Papeete is living up to its exotic reputation.

Note: Photo courtesy of Tahiti Tourisme

My Favorite Maa Tahiti

It's my first weekend back home after nearly a month in Southeast Asia so I decided to try and get back into the island groove with one of my favorite things in Tahiti: maa tahiti, traditional Polynesian food baked in an earth oven. Now not all earth-cooked meals are equal; in fact they can go terribly wrong if the fire isn't hot enough, the food is uncovered too early, the food isn't fresh to begin with or if the food packages were prepared too lazily. One of my biggest pet peeves is when my favorite dish, poulet fafa gets prepared with spinach instead of authentic taro leaves - it just doesn't taste the same.

Today I indulged in what I think is the best maa tahiti on Tahiti, served at the Botanical Gardens Restaurant right next to said gardens and the Musee Guaguin. This place, in what should be the heart of tourist land but never gets any tourists, is one of my favorite places to eat in my area. The food is always fantastic and it's a simple down-home Tahitian style place with gravel floors, plastic chairs and Tahitian fabrics stapled on to the ceiling for decoration. The restaurant is right on the lagoon against a low breakwater, so you sometimes get splashed if the waves are too big; on weekends there's often a synth band playing cheesy Tahitian dance hall hits. Today the place was packed with a large party of old Tahitian women dressed up in their best and most colorful dresses, strings of black pearls and flower crowns. They were living it up, laughing and drinking cheap red wine bottle after bottle. Not a tourist was in sight despite the tour bus parked at the entrance to the gardens.


But back to the food. My daughter and I decided to split the maa tahiti plate (about US$40; only available on Sundays), which is always huge, but when it arrived we all had to laugh because it could have comfortably fed three very hungry people. Every dish was perfect. I'm not a huge meat eater but the pork had a caramelized crispy layer on the fatty parts and tasted like candy. I had to restrain myself from eating too much of it. The poisson cru (raw fish salad - click here for my recipe) was fresh with a perfect lemon and coconut milk balance; the poulet fafa had plenty of fafa (taro leaves), which is time consuming to prepare so often places skimp on it; there was perfectly cooked taro, bananas and sweet potatoes; pua choux, a pork and cabbage stew; and last a whole separate plate of delicious poe banane, a baked banana pudding topped with coconut milk. Many restaurants make maa tahiti in conventional ovens but at the Botanical Gardens Restaurant you can faintly taste the wood smoke from their ahimaa (pit oven), which gives it a more complex flavor.

Now I feel home. We finished off the meal with a long walk in the gardens while the restaurant kept our copious leftovers in their fridge for us. I think I'm having pork for breakfast tomorrow morning.

PS Now I'm back home I'll be back to blogging more regularly again!