Sri Lanka Volunteer’s Blog

April 18th, 2007 | By Joshua | 4 Comments »

Meet Doug. Doug is an Engineer and Humanitarian Aid Worker from San Francisco who is stationed in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. Doug is helping to build schools while avoiding land mines and dealing with poisonous snakes in his toilet. Doug and my brother met at Burning Man a few years back, and he and I tried to get together when I was in Sri Lanka last year, but it didn’t work out. Although some of the world’s most beautiful beaches are reportedly just up the coast from Trincomalee, it was too far from our post in Nuwara Eliya and we ended up opting for Hikkaduwa for our one beach vacation. In any case, here’s his blog for your enjoyment.

Domodah in the Afternoon

October 20th, 2006 | By Joshua | No Comments »

Nothin’ like a rich, cayenne-warmin’ bowl of groundnut stew when one is writing a story about The Gambia. There are as many ways to cook domodah (as the Mandinka call their national dish, or maffe in Wolof), as there are villages in West Africa. I like to mix and match from these recipes, but you might as well go straight for this winner.
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More Gordon College Blog Power

October 14th, 2006 | By Joshua | 2 Comments »

There are now 39 comments on the “Why We Came to Pakistan” post about Tay’s Great-Grandfather and his alma mater, Gordon College. These comments are all from Pakistanis, many of them scattered around the world, and all of them excited to connect wtih fellow Gordonians. I’ve been meaning to collect the emails from these folks and help them put a website together, but I haven’t done it yet, and in the meantime, they keep coming!
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The Gambia from Space

October 13th, 2006 | By Joshua | No Comments »

Just stumbled across this great NASA image of The Gambia River, or as Kunta Kinte remembered it, the “Kamby Bolongo.” Here’s the Wiki page where I found it. The thin black line is the country’s political border separating it from Senegal, and it actually extends quite a bit farther east. Tay’s village of Sara Kunda is on the north bank, toward the right of this image.
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Ballad of a Traveling Buddha

October 6th, 2006 | By Joshua | 3 Comments »

I’d been carrying him for more than 10 years — a little rosewood, pot-bellied, traveling Buddha with a big smile and a hobo sack slung over his shoulder on a stick. I don’t remember where he come from, from whom, or exactly when he joined me, but this didn’t matter after our first few years together. Throughout the U.S. and Central America, he journeyed with me through several generations of backpacks, stood guard on many a hospedaje window sill, and, perhaps, protected me from road gremlins as I made my way.
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Rocky Mountain Arrival: Howdy from the Hogback

September 26th, 2006 | By Joshua | 1 Comment »

Colorado greets us with winter, the first snow on the first day of fall which, apparently, has been cancelled this year. It is frosty on the Front Range, the sky as milk-white as my iPod, which means it is dumping in the mountains. Two feet of powder in Vail and Beaver Creek! The September 23 Denver Post shouts jubilation from the ski industry and frustration from aspen leaf lovers, their annual golden foliage show cut short by the cold.

Tay, my Colorado native wife, shrugs it off as not unusual. It has snowed on her birthday plenty of times, she says.
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I gots dem Interstate-70 Bleary-Eyed Blues

September 23rd, 2006 | By Joshua | 2 Comments »

…from my thinnin’-hair head to the bottom of my gas-pedal shoes. Though I dread the impersonal, thundering girth of a road like I-70, I also appreciate its value, not only for connecting people and cities and states, but also for reminding me of how big this country actually is.
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Keepin’ it Tranquilo in Middle America

September 21st, 2006 | By Joshua | No Comments »

Pushing through West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana on blue highways is both a nice break from the I-70 main vein and a refreshingly weird slice of Los Estados Unidos. We drive past high school football games, yard sales, bingo halls, and a hundred churches. There are frontyard forests of local election signs (”Pudge Richardson for Sheriff!”); there are exits for Turkeyfoot Road and the Dixie Highway. There are towns named Rabbit Hash, Gnaw Bone, and Stoney Lonesome.
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Roadtrip Ho! To West Virginia

September 20th, 2006 | By Joshua | No Comments »

The welcome sign to my birth state used to shout “Wild Wonderful West Virginia!” Now it says “West Virginia: Open for Business.” Yes, the Mountain State’s mountains are now home to corporate centers, the FBI, and the ubiquitous strip-mallization of the country in three shades of beige and a billion billboards. But it ain’t so bad while speeding through green tunnels, a lot of nature left to conquer, and it’s nice to hear Grandpa say “you’ve made my year” over and over, so happy he is with our visit and the chance to get out and drive around Clarksburg.
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Raise the Blue Peter! Setting Sail for Middle America

September 19th, 2006 | By Joshua | 1 Comment »

When the Blue Peter, a nautical flag consisting of a white square against a blue background, is raised by a ship in harbor, it means, “All persons report on board as the vessel is about to proceed to sea.” In other words, it is the sign that the vessel in question is “Outward Bound.”
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