I’ve posted steadily about our trip to southern Africa. It’s fun to write about! The region is a bottomless wellspring of inspiration.
That trip gave me something I don’t feel very often: hope.
We’ve spent months in Asia in natural habitats that are now being dammed, or mined, or paved in the name of progress. It’s all happening so quickly. We know we won’t recognize those places when we go back.
Laos. China is damming the Mekong River and neighbors to the south will be impacted (ie, all of them)Borneo. Indonesia has moved the capitol city Jakarta from Java to Borneo, reducing the orangutan’s habitat even furtherSittwe, Burma. The junta is crushing all resistance; Uwe and I won’t be allowed to visit this region if we go backnorthern Cambodia/Laos border. The rare Irrawaddy dolphin will go extinct if the water in the Mekong River is further reduced
But in southern Africa, in Botswana and Namibia, we were thrilled by the wildlife and the inhabitants. These countries spoke in growls and whistles and birdsong and hippo songs and human voices.
The Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) is the largest transnational conservation area in the world at 444.000 km2. It is enormous, larger than Germany and Austria combined and nearly twice as large as the United Kingdom. The KAZA TFCA lies in the Kavango and Zambezi river basins where Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe converge. [1]
There are issues to deal with – the loss of domestic animals to predators. The way elephants eat or trample crops. The complicated cross-country agreements. But, as their website states, “Local communities participate with enthusiasm in management of the TFCA through the Transboundary Natural Resources Managment Forum. The aim of this forum is to maximize skills and resources to promote sustainable land use, conservation of wildlife and landscapes, and rural development.”
I urge everyone to learn about this multinational effort to preserve the environment for the benefit of ALL inhabitants, whether winged, hooved, legged, or finned. FINALLY! A region of the world that’s getting it right!
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).
The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and keen social critic, born on June 25, 1903 in Motihari, India during the British Raj. His life and writings were strongly influenced by his years working as an imperial police officer in occupied Burma, at the time also still a province of British India. Orwell’s works include Burmese Days, Animal Farm, and 1984. In his honor I give you one of the posts I wrote after our visit to Burma, currently ruled by a military regime, currently known as Myanmar. – Jadi
We love travel. I refer to traveling to new cultures and places as connecting the dots. With each trip I feel a little more connected to the world at large and to the various dots that make up my picture of this planet and we who inhabit it.
While in Burma, we took a boat up the Irrawaddy River from Mandalay to Mingun for the day. Yet another fallen kingdom, Mingun is reknowned for the largest functioning bell in the world. It weighs in at 55,555 viss (90,718 kilograms or 199,999 pounds). The sound is a deep claaangg, rung by thumping the bell hard on the lip with a mallet. Mingun is also famous for the king who bankrupted his people with an attempt to outdo every shrine-builder who’d ever lived: King Bodawpaya wanted to build the huge stupa known as Mingun Pahtodawgyi.
It would be the highest in the world, a magnificent 150 meters tall, dwarfing everything built prior to it.
How the stupa would have appeared finished
Work began in 1790.
King Bodawpaya never finished his religious edifice. He ran out of funds; or, halted construction due to a prophesy that his realm would end when the building was completed; or, that completing the stupa would signal his death. An earthquake on March 23, 1839 dislodged the huge bell and damaged the structure beyond saving. The Mingun Pahtodawgyi became the world’s largest pile of bricks…
Mingun Pahtodawgyi. Can you spot the teeny tiny humans in the photograph?
The structure stands, all semi-finished 50 meters (150 feet) of it, roughly a third of the original planned height.
It’s a holy place and the faithful still come to worship. And the curious come to climb it [enter Jadi and Uwe, stage right]. Now, at any sacred Buddhist site, you remove your shoes at the base of the structure.
Going up, sir?
And you climb the stairs, barefoot, and then clambor on the ruins, barefoot, for one truly awe-inspiring view of the Irrawaddy River and the surrounding countryside.
View of the Irrawaddy River and several of Mingun’s gorgeous temples
Shan pilgrims in traditional outfits had also climbed the stupa and gave us the gift of their smiles and waves.
Shan pilgrims
It was a magnificent afternoon and yet another highlight of our four weeks in Burma.
Picnicking on the Edge
It wasn’t until we were safely home again that I got a good look at Uwe’s photographs.
Go on, I dare youJust a few small jumps and you’re there
There was a photo I had taken, too.
Hope those bricks are stable!
In memory of George Orwell, 25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out.
Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. The Trail Back Out was American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
Joni Mitchell was born November 7, 1943 in Fort Macleod, Canada. Singer, song writer, painter, Mitchell’s intensely personal songs reflect her thoughts on the inner and outer worlds. In her long career she has explored folk music, pop, rock and roll, classical, and jazz. I have read articles that describe Joni Mitchell as the major female artist of all time. I say this: She is one of the most important and influential recording artists of any age, period.
An amazing voice and unique guitar playing frame her writing…. Here are a few lines from A Strange Boy.
We got high on travel
And we got drunk on alcohol
And on love, the strongest poison and medicine of all
See how that feeling comes and goes
Like the pull of moon on tides
Now I am surf rising
Now parched ribs of sand at his side
– Joni Mitchell [1]
In her honor, I am reprinting a post I wrote while high on travel in northwestern Burma. We spent several days in a region that is now closed off tight to the rest of the world. – Jadi
***
We had arranged in Sittwe for a guide, a boat and a special day visa in order to travel on to the semiautonomous Chin State. As we headed up the river the small boat traveled slowly. It was the last day of the year, a calm morning with no winds.
Sky and water reflected one another like twin mirrors.
In a mirror
We sailed on for several hours, and I was overtaken by a sense of displacement that was complete. It was preternaturally still, so quiet and without movement that it seemed we had sailed to a place located somewhere between firmament and earth. It wasn’t quite attached to either.
Finally the boat came to a stop and we debarked and began our walk up into the first Chin village. The villages are extremely remote and what makes them extraordinary is the Chin art of tattooing. The tradition had been strongly discouraged by the government since the 60’s, and was believed to have almost died out.
In the villages we sailed to by boat, only the old women were reputed to still have the facial tattoos. The men had gone out into the jungle and gathered the materials necessary for the tattooing process. Several days of painstaking tattoo work ensued; only faces of young teenaged girls were transformed.
We walked through the village with our guide talking to the locals.
Chin village path
Pigs and puppies tumbled on the path as people worked. The tamped dirt was cleared and clean.
After perhaps 20 minutes of walking through the village and watching and being watched, the female elders suddenly appeared to meet us.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist for the Independent Author Network, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
One of the strangest experiences as a traveler is to visit a place that later vanishes. I’ve visited two countries that no longer exist: West Germany and Czechoslovakia.
Uwe and I once stood on a part of the summit at Mount Etna on Sicily. A few months later a flow of erupting lava buried the very spot where we’d stood. It’s in the nature of Nature to be transitory. Nothing lasts forever.
Maybe that’s why Sicilians pray when they drive by spots where the lava flow stopped just short of towns. Every single time an Italian car passes, the driver makes the sign of the Cross. I laughed – but they sure know something about life’s fragility.
Some changes are somber. In 2009, before Myanmar briefly opened up to the world, Uwe and I spent a month exploring the country. Once known as Burma, Myanmar was closed off to the outside. We needed special permits to be allowed into several places.
We explored spots that seemed to have sprung out of fairy tales, like this market in Sittwe.
Market, Sittwe
We took off our shoes to enter temples.
Those areas of Myanmar are shut tight again. It feels like a book of fairy tales that has been closed and locked away. All the mysterious creatures can’t be seen anymore. But the ogres and demons and the special people with their magic remain…
Pa-O guide to Kakku Pagoda Complex, Taunggyi in the heart of Shan StateInle LakeU-Bein BridgeMrauk UChin village elder
When places vanish from our consciousness, they aren’t really gone. Sometimes, they are simply hidden.
As you drive past the spot where they were once visible, be sure to make a sign to ward off bad fortune. And make sure you acknowledge the spirits now unseen…. but very much still there.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. The Trail Back Out was honored as 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist for the Independent Author Network, and American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was a semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts, and named a Finalist for Greece’s international 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
We’re almost done. This is Installment #40 in my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
In The Trail Back Out two strangers meet in the woods. Children wear masks. A gambler hides in the cellar during a Category Five hurricane. A wife considers a hit-man’s offer. Princess Rain Clouds searches for happiness. An entire village flees, a life is saved, and a tourist in Venice is melting. Everyone keeps trying to make sense of strange events far in the past or about to occur. Let these characters be your guides. Join them on the trail back out – to a familiar world, now unexpectedly changed. The Trail Back Out was named an American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Awards Finalist in the category Fiction: Anthologies. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and buy my books.
We’ve reached Installment #33 of my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
How did the farrow fare?
The ballet performed a water ballet.
Oh, no! The piddle piddled again!
The rumpus caused quite a rumpus.
The circus is no circus.
The brace braced itself against the leash’s leash.
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Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
I’m amazed at how long this blog thread has grown! Each post describes what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
This tell could tell tales!
The glimmer glimmered in the dying light.
The last thing you want is this intrusion intruding!
The raft’s feet make it difficult to sit on a raft.
I want a kaleidoscope of this kaleidoscope.
Is there wisdom in thinking a wisdom wise?
Glimmer memberTell visit in Yangon, Myanmar home
Answers:
Tell of crows
Glimmer of dragonflies [1]
Intrusion of cockroaches
Raft of loons [2]
Kaleidoscope of butterflies
Wisdom of wombats
Perching on the top leftWisdom memberKaleidoscope, back trails, Cranberry Lake, Adirondacks
Somewhere my father is grinning with approval at my never-ending blog thread for him! I present installment #26 describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
The scurry scurried off.
I always fall for a fall in fall. [1]
A hood lived under the hood.
The cover covered the shoreline.
The sawt sawed at the meat.
Is a cowardice cowardly?
Cowardice member, U Bein Bridge, Amarapura, Myanmar
Answers:
Scurry of squirrels
Fall of woodcocks
Hood of snails
Cover of coots
Sawt of lions
Cowardice of curs
Scurry member, Granary Burying Ground est. 1660, Boston, USACover, North Island, New Zealand
I present installment #25 from my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
Here is installment #22 from my eternal blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page.
They gammed about the gam’s lack of gams!
Sometimes a pounce pounces.
A vagrant vagrant member is all alone.
Is a deceit deceitful?
A sord is not sordid.
The posse shot the posse – and ate it.
Answers:
Vagrant vagrant, Loro Parque, Tenerifa
Gam of whales [1] [2]
Pounce of cats
Vagrant of sea urchin
Deceit of lapwings
Sord of mallards (in flight)
Posse of turkeys
Pounce, Nga Phe Chaung Kyaung Temple, Inle Lake, Myanmar
There are issues to deal with – the loss of domestic animals to predators. The way elephants eat or trample crops. The complicated cross-country agreements. But, as their website states, “Local communities participate with enthusiasm in management of the TFCA through the Transboundary Natural Resources Managment Forum. The aim of this forum is to maximize skills and resources to promote sustainable land use, conservation of wildlife and landscapes, and rural development.”
