On October Saturday 4^th, our first speaker was Globie member Roger Widdecombe who showed us what a Raleigh International expedition is really like. Roger’s project was in the west African country of Ghana. These trips are no holiday: participants undergo assessment and rigorous training in orienteering and crossing rivers, first aid etc. Once in Ghana, there were many projects for Roger and his group to take part in, including building a school in a remote village, health programmes dealing with blindness caused by cataracts and for those who wanted to work nights, working on a project monitoring turtles as they came in each night to lay their eggs on the beach. Roger assured us that although the participants do work hard, they also have a lot of fun, including playing football in forty degree heat with the local people and enjoying canoe expeditions on Lake Volta.

Whilst our first speaker had talked of travelling and doing good, our second speaker Juliet Coombes’ theme was travelling and having fun! Juliet’s talk was about the festivals around the world. She showed us colourful photos of the bulls at Pamplona, mad water festivals in Thailand, The Full Moon festival in Laos, and the colourful Venice festival held in the weeks leading up to Lent. The Venetian festival involves lots of dressing up, particularly in masks and in previous centuries was an excuse for much debauchery, sorry Globies, you are 200 years too late! There are thousands of festival around the world each year, too many for Juliet to show us, but she did tell us about boat festivals in Cambodia and Elf festivals in Iceland, before winding up her talk by looking at London’s own Notting Hill carnival.

Next month, on Saturday 1^st November, Amar Grover will talk about India – The “Hindustan Tibet” road and on to Ladakh in which Amar looks at India’s National Highway 22 “The Hindustan-Tibet” Road, an old trading route that exited the Raj but never quite took off. His talk includes the Tibetan regions of India, Spiti and Ladakh.

After Amar and the break, Tom Freemantle will be talking about Mexico to Manhattan with a Pack Mule, a 2,600 mile walk retracing the footsteps of his ancestor, Colonel Arthur Fremantle, who travelled from North Mexico to New York at the height of the American Civil War in 1863. The swashbuckling colonel used stage coaches, paddle steamers and steam trains to get around but nearly 140 years later his great-great nephew used a cantankerous but heroic mule called “Brown”

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

Dear Reader

Please let me introduce my country, Indonesia to you. I am a native born Indonesian and have lived here all my life. My life is very simple: I live in the suburbs, in a small village, Makassar, in South Sulawesi. I am working in tourism. My parents work as subsistence farmers. I would like to relate a little information about the area in which I live. This gives me the opportunity not only to practice my English, but also to become more self reliant and learn from others.

First, I would like to change the views of anyone who thinks that Indonesia is dangerous to visit. Be assured that the real problems that exist here are internal and are related to the way our government works. The people of Indonesia are peaceful and are as shocked by the recent Bali bombing as the rest of the world, and want no part of this global terrorism.

Secondly, I want to make one thing very clear, that Indonesia is a very beautiful country and is an interesting place to visit and far different to the media’s view of terrorism and danger. On behalf of all of my people, I would like to stress: INDONESIA IS PEACE LOVING AND FROWNS ON ALL VIOLENCE.

Most people coming to Indonesia know only Bali, which is a great shame as Indonesia is an archipelago consisting of 17,000 islands in 27 Provinces, and one of them is SULAWESI. Sulawesi, formerly known as CELEBES has a total land area of about 227,000 square Kilometers and is divided in to four areas or provinces : south, central, northeast and the north, with a total population of over 10 million people.

Sulawesi is home to an amazing variety of people. The majority are fisherman, catching flying fish, shark, tuna, mackerel, squid, as well as other fish. We have farmers who grow wet and dry rice, maize, tapioca, sago, vegetable, coffee, cacoa and cloves. There are numerous small groups of upland people who practice slash and burn agriculture in the interior of Sulawesi. Unemployment is a big problem in my country.

Sulawesi is full of rich and varied cultures and traditions, languages and religious beliefs practiced by several ethnic groups such as: Makassar, Bugis, Mandar, Pamona, Tolaki, Manadoi and the Hulontalo. There are many religions, including Islam, Christianity, Budhism, Hinduism, Confucianism and Animism. The Animism beliefs until now can mainly be found in Torajaland or Tana toraja, an upland area of southern Sulawesi. Here the religion’s belief has a special name in the local language called “Aluk Todolo.” Aluk mean :rules or belief and Todolo means: Ancestor. According to this teaching, human beings in the world have only two problems that are opposites, for example: ” lose or benefit”, and “happiness or sadness”. This philosophy has been manifested into their ceremonies and they have two kinds of ceremony: Thanks Giving Ceremony and Funeral ceremony. The Funeral Ceremony is very sacred because according to the Animists, Death is the end of life.

If you come and visit tana toraja in Sulawesi, you can see many houses in the village, and the owners put the body of their loved ones in a coffin in a room and consider them as sick person before they died, until a funeral is held although this maybe as many as 10 or 20 years have passed from the date of actual death.

After the funeral is held, the family take the coffin to a cave in a mountain for burial. The cave can also function as a house. Their philosophy is that ” Death is an event that changes from the real world to the unreal world”.

I hope from this small article you can get a feel for how remarkable Sulawesi is. Although it is my home, I believe it is quite special. If you are planning a trip to Indonesia, do please come and visit Sulawesi, and do not hesitate to contact me for information about tours and personal itineraries. I would be very happy to share my knowledge with you and help to show you around.

For more information, please visit my simple website: http//www.alamnusantaratour.ch

Please be assured that our traditions of warmth, trustworthiness and memorable hospitality make an enduring memory for our guests.

Syamsu Alam (Alam)

Tel/Fax. (062)411-553927

E-mail alamnusantara@hotmail.com

Website: www.alamnusantaratour.ch

Michael Rakower, an attorney in New York with long-standing wanderlust gave a talk on November 1^st about his latest trip in which he and his wife (also a lawyer) left the comfortable confines of law jobs in exchange for a one-way ticket to Cape Town in March 2002. They bought a car, some camping equipment and drove around, over and through South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Rwanda. Along the way, they encountered fascinating people, went on several safaris, worked for three months in the Prosecutor’s Office of the United Nation’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and even learned a little about auto mechanics. After a year-long journey, Michael and his wife returned to New York with newfound inspiration and a lifetime of memories. Michael’s latest passion is working with the American Friends for the Kigali Public Library to build Rwanda’s first-ever public library. Michael is also a regular contributor to our very own Globetrotters e-newsletter.

For details of forthcoming meetings email newyork@globetrotters.co.uk or register for email updates, click here at our website.

New York meetings are held at The Wings Theatre, 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 .

Puerto Maldonado, Peru: The Piedras Biodiversity Center (affiliated with Tambopata Expeditions) is looking for for 2 volunteers to help out with an amphibian survey scheduled for November/December of this year. The project will last about 6 weeks, and the work will be “quite adventurous,” involving the night-time collection of various frogs and toads in swamps and streams. Previous experience is helpful but not necessary, and all volunteers will be trained. This is a great way to get into the jungle while helping a worthwhile project. It is also easy on the pocketbook! If this sounds like the project for you, please email Tambopata Expeditions at info@tambopataexpeditions.com and visit their website at www.tambopataexpeditions.com

Did you miss out on a Gap Year when you were 18 and are considering making up for it now? Have you always wanted to be a TV star ? The BBC have asked us to help find a number of mature (30 +) people who are wanting to volunteer abroad and star in a documentary. The programme will show how the various volunteers cope with the planning and the assignment itself. It will focus on how they are affected by the experience.

So if you have always wanted to volunteer abroad and be a TV star, get in touch with us, Muir’s Tours now. We provide a wide range of support to various communities in Asia, Africa and the Americas. If you want to be one of the 8 BBC stars you need to be free to travel abroad during the period December to March. The ideal candidates will be:

• over 30
• self-financing, or at least have a healthy budget
• planning to travel alone
• planning to leave in late 2003 / early 2004.

Get some ideas from our list of placements and then we put you in touch with the Beeb. See http://www.nkf-mt.org.uk/volunteer.html