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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