Passports With Purpose Round Four

 

It's mind boggling that it's been three years since the launch of Passports With Purpose and the first time that I, in collaboration with Kamoka Pearls, have donated a Tahitian Pearl (or more) to the cause. And what's amazing is that every year the wonderful folks who organize this fundraiser seem to come up with even more vital causes and raise significantly more money.

This year to me is the best yet: clean water. There's not a more basic need than that. And the location, Haiti, is where this should happen. With donations towards the unusually special array of blogger prizes (tours, gift vouchers for flights and hotels and even a ukulele) PWP hopes to raise $100,000 this year and proceeds will go to Water.org to dig wells for clean water in Haiti.

I have never been to Haiti (I lived in Tahiti for 15 years and I cannot count the times that people have mixed the two up and asked me about the earthquake) but I'm fortunate to have a colleague Paul Clammer (@paulclammer you should all follow him) who wrote the Haiti guidebook for Lonely Planet and has more recently written a very comprehensive Haiti guide with Bradt publishing. Through Paul's tweets and Facebook I've followed photos, stories and snippets that have made it clear how desperate things are over there.

Throughout my travels I've met heaps of aid workers and villagers who have things to say about aid workers and I've never heard more glowing reports than of a Peace Corps volunteer in Vanua Levu, Fiji who almost single-handedly brought clean water to a remote corner of the island. The villagers told me that within the first year they noticeably saw their children become, bigger, healthier and more thriving. I can't imagine how it would be to raise a family while constantly getting parasites or worse, and hoping that whatever came along wouldn't be strong enough to kill. Eradicating that fear and seeing the whole community thrive has got to be the biggest game changer there is.

So there it is. In hopes of helping this year's drive reach it's goals (I have no doubt it will so let's go for way past those goals) my husband Josh at Kamoka Pearls and I have donated a truly spectacular pearl. It's dark and bright with a liquid-y, deep orient that makes you want to touch it, hold it and wear it against your skin. It's mostly green with hues of purple and pink. We decided to mount this pearl with a very simple loop to show off how gorgeous it is, in no need of extra fanfare. If this were in our online shop we'd price it at $430. It's a gem.

So go over to Passports With Purpose and donate! We always donate too and last year we won a fabulous wine tour of the Walla Walla area of Washington State. Not bad for a donation that felt good anyway!

Happy Island Kids

It's Friday the 13th today so I thought I'd dig up some pictures from the depths of my (mostly unused) photo archives, of kids on islands frolicking, not worrying about bad luck and superstition and generally having a blast. I actually didn't take the first and second photos - these two were snapped by my husband Josh Humbert who is much more of a pro at this photography stuff than me. Both were taken on Bunaken Island off of Northern Sulawesi, Indonesia. I love that in the second one these kids look like they're about to land on a bunch of rebar - don't worry, they didn't.


I took this next photo on Ko Phayam in Thailand in around 2008. I went back last year and this kid is now a great big tall man but I still recognized him. Unfortunately, I didn't see the dog. Hopefully the burying him in the sand thing didn't get out of hand. He told me at the time that the dog liked be buried because it kept him cool.

It was just me and these three kids hanging out on the wee island of Namu'a in Samoa for a few hours. We spent at least an hour of this taking silly pictures and after each one they'd shout "Wanna see! Wanna see!" I wore out my camera battery flipping through all of the pictures. It was really fun.


Here is my son gracefully leaping off the oyster platform at my family's pearl farm in Ahe, French Polynesia. Speaking of kids growing into big tall men, this was taken a little over a year ago and now he's my height.


You may remember this scene from another post a few weeks ago. These boys in American Samoa were leaping into this pit of spiky lava with a huge and powerful swell heaving in and out of it. Danger was everywhere but they couldn't have given a flying and of course no one got hurt.


And last, I love this boy. What a character and I hope you can tell from this photo. This is in Ovalau, Fiji. I stayed in a homestay and "Billy Boy," besides cracking jokes and constantly getting into trouble also knew how to drive the boat, fix the motor, cook, clean and sing loud and clear at church. He's a great kid. He's 12 years old.

Searching for the Perfect Fijian Island

It was a tough job but somebody had to do . . . OK who am I kidding? Covering the remote islands of Fiji was possibly my most fun gig out of my seven years of working for Lonely Planet. Why? Well, it's not for the reasons you'd expect. The weather was terrible - I saw the sun maybe three hours in four weeks and I only got in the water five times; I drank about six beers total, had flights cancelled and skipped several meals due to my over-full work schedule. This wasn't your cliché fun in the sun voyage. No, the reason it was so great was for intangible factors that escape tourist brochures: the real, ever-present smiles, the way everything happens in the present (so forget planning or dwelling on anything), kava drinking at night to songs everyone knows, feeling safe all the time, a red hibiscus flower behind the ear, the list goes on. Fiji, to put it straight, is as heavenly for its culture as it is for its coral gardens and rainforests.

My first stop on this trip was Labasa, a landlocked sugar industry center that the guidebook describes as dusty and of little interest to travelers. I got off the plane after about 20 hours of flying and transfers, got my bag and found a taxi. The driver was a plump Indo-Fijian woman who, within five minutes of chatting, invited me to stay at her house. I didn't take her up on the offer because I'd already booked and paid for a hotel and I was too tired to want to worry about the politeness it requires to stay in someone's home, but I was touched by her gesture. Then stuff like this kept happening - and Labasa was the least friendly place I visited.



On the boat to Taveuni I met a woman with three children who invited me over for lunch. She was a school teacher. The house had three rooms without one piece of furniture although the walls were lined with giant sheets of brown painted tapa. We sat on woven pandanus mats and ate boiled eggs, toast and milky tea, laughed and chatted while the children gazed at me, intrigued - then her husband drove me to my guesthouse so I didn't have to pay for a taxi.

My job looking at hotels the next day was probably the most pleasant I've ever experienced. I saw about 10 hotels and guesthouses on foot and each one I stopped at (whether they had any idea what I was doing or not) invited me in for food or drink and I ended up sitting and talking with them all at least a half hour - way more time than I usually allot. Although I'd never met any of these people before it felt like I was visiting old friends. When I walked down the street random people would come up and just start talking to me, pleasantly and without any motive beyond being natural and nice. And this went on everywhere I went.

Towards the end of my trip I met another woman on a boat who invited me to stay in her village - which happened to be near several places I needed to visit. This was a highlight as anyone who has stayed in a Fijian village will tell you - I could write an entire blog post on this alone. The point is, you get invited, everywhere, and it's safe, fun and all warm and fuzzy.



When I hired a boat man to take me around islands he caught a bunch of fish and gave them all to me just because I said I liked fish. When 16 locals were drinking kava at night and playing music, they would make sure that every few songs would be an American song I'd probably know so I could sing along. They would figure out my music tastes without asking as the night wore on and would be able to dig up classics I not only knew but liked (4 Non Blonds' What's Up was a personal fave).

In the meantime five minutes anywhere became an hour, flights were cancelled constantly so tourists were missing international connections and I lost two work days because of airplane malfunctions. And nobody, not even the most uptight looking tourists with business meetings to get to, cared. Anyone who has been in Fiji more than a week knows that there's no point in fighting 'Fiji time' and you just gel yourself into the moment where, hey, you're in Fiji, so enjoy. Stress seems silly. The Internet never works so email becomes irrelevant. No one wears makeup or fashionable clothes, there are rarely mirrors anywhere and you begin to forget what you look like. Someone everyday will beckon you in for a bowl of kava and if you don't like kava just go in and sit with them anyway and it's OK. Fiji is that place where all the world's crap has been raked away to expose a clean and shiny humanity. It's refreshing and mesmerizing and it stays with you after you've left.

I spent my last few days on Viti Levu where I learned quickly that my pure Fiji experience unrolled the way it did because I was in the outer islands and not in the main tourist center. I got pick pocketed, ruthlessly hit on by beach boys and saw every other female I met get as aggressively hit on by hotel staff and local surfers to old Chinese shop owners. It was a transition back into the 'real' world, on the way to LAX with it's unsmiling TSA agents. Luckily my home is a good place and I've been tackling work with less stress than I usually do. The happy Fiji feeling will fade, this I know, but the lesson has been absorbed and I will try to remember that all this modern stuff is nothing compared to a smile and a shared cup of tea.

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!!!