Palestine - Walking for Peace

 



I went to Palestine not knowing what to expect and not particularly believing that peace could be achieved by the simple act of walking as proposed by William Ury (William Ury@ TED) the founder of the Abraham's Path Initiative (www.abrahamspath.org).
I joined API on their exploratory walk of the West Bank of Palestine in late February. My job was to walk the path and document the journey through photographs. API's goal is to facilitate an experience of the other side of the Middle East. They believe that the simple act of walking and experiencing a community and its people first hand will connect people powerfully, and reinstate a belief in a shared humanity.
Our small group of 8 international people walked, ate, and stayed with the locals throughout our trip. We experienced their wonderful hospitality while on our 140 mile walk from Nablus to Hebron.











Although I was there as an observer it was difficult not to become affected by the politics and the humanitarian issues I saw being played out all around me.   Long 8-10 hours days of walking in intense heat with limited food gave me lots of time to ponder 'things', one being my reason for being here.  As an agnostic I struggled to understand where I stood in the balance between all the opposing yet intensely genuine opinions being thrown at me day to day, village after village. What did this land, the heart of the world's 3 major religions and a place of intense modern conflict have to do with my life experience? What wisdom could I offer?  What did I really believe and where were the answers to be found?

5 days into my walk climbing out of the Jordan valley up to the Jerusalem Plateau it dawned on me that I was not here to find answers but to let go of what I thought my/the story was. What was I holding on to so tightly it prevented me from moving forward in my life? The very things in life you think are not negotiable actually are or so I realized as I trudged up the 'Valley of Death' in the hot sun with my soul bared and my ego in shreds.  I was in was a strange and very different place internally and externally.
This is what being on a pilgrimage is I began to understand. This is where the contemplation of the meaning and the realization of how to get to peace begins, within and without.
Here are the pictures that don't do justice to the experience but in the end I came away believing that YES, peace can be achieved simply by walking.


Read more about our journey at: Wend Magazine: Path of the Patriarchs
and Bark Magazine: Dogless in the Desert
Photos by Claudia Chang and writing by Jayme Moye

Kenya - Gentle Tourism?

Traveling to various destinations around the world I would convince myself that my traveler's footprint was relatively minor (Not including my flight) especially when I considered my low budget modus operandi. What has become clear is my naivete regarding the level of my impact. There are so many ways our impact as travelers is not measured or even recognized.

I now refer to my trips by the total number of plastic water bottles I used while there. My trip to India was a 112 liter plastic bottle journey. I was there for 28 days and used an average of 4 liter sized water bottles a day. (Water Bottle Usage Worldwide)

Getting access to clean water is a major issue for everyone. In Kenya I resigned myself to the daily rising count of plastic water bottles. It was distressing to be handed several pint size bottles of water every hour. Half way through my 2 week trip the count was up as high as 42 pint sized plastic water bottles. What was the alternative? Did one exist here in Kenya?

With this rising bottle count constantly on my mind I journeyed to Sasaab Lodge in Samburu in north central Kenya. The hosts Ali and Tony greeted us with a cool cloth to wash the red dirt off our tired hot faces and then handed each of us a steel water bottle filled with filtered water. I cringed at accumulating yet another useless item most likely manufactured in China. My dismissive thoughts almost made me miss what our host said next.

Sasaab gets all their drinking water from several large 18 liter recyclable water containers. Since they introduced the recyclable containers a year or so ago, they have gone from using approximately 200 500ml and 100 1 liter plastic water bottles a month to having no plastic water bottle waste at all. This fact is so important because much of the country in rural Kenya has no infrastructure to support the waste generated by travelers or their supporting lodges. Much of this waste must be trucked out or buried somewhere in the environment.

This beautiful lodge situated on the hillside above the Ewaso Nyiro river remains fixed in my mind as a special place not so much because of its location but because of the solutions it has created to the serious environmental issue of plastic water bottle usage.

Read more about our adventures in Kenya at: Wend magazine: Warrior Blood

Photos by Claudia Chang and Christina Erb.