Crossroads Dispatches

Burnt Sienna Memories of Aid

I think it really - I mean I don't know how it took so long - really hit me that my experience as a fellow tsunami survivor was not so relevant to the situation any longer.

The discontinuity in our lives was a connecting bond, but the trajectories are far too different. I didn't need rice sacks and dahl and clean water delivered to the community shelter where I was housed with sixty families for months.

It might have happened in Hambantota, Sri Lanka that I realized quite another life experience bonded me more to survivors of natural disasters.

The west and south coast is fairly urban and one sees Army tent shelters alongside luxury gated resorts, but from Matara on, the scene changes to lush green rice paddies, stark white egrets and cocoa-dusted water buffalo. My contact lensed eyes felt refreshed after weeks of city dirt. I sunk into my seat and enjoyed a bus ride to Hambantota. (It was the bus ride from Hambantota I remarked on yesterday; that was altogether a different experience.)

Maybe the fact that 35% of the people are employed in agriculture comes alive here. This is the heartland.

There was a funeral that day. A fisherman in the neighborhood ran out of oxygen while part of a dive training program.

Death isn't foreign here. So many of the men died at market - too close to the sea - that Boxing Day, that it's mostly women in attendance today.

The monthly 'psycho-spiritual healing programme' at the temple school was running about a half-hour behind as mourners trickled in.

While the counselors and lecturer prepared, I entertained myself by glancing at posters - reminders for the teacher - such as: "A child is not a vessel to be filled - but a lamp to be lit."

As they settle, I count 28 although the numbers are in flux as kids arrive and elders depart throughout. One woman peels back her red blouse to nurse her baby as she listens attentively. Two hours glide by. Some other day I'll tell you more about those hours.

The program erases from my mind. At the end of the day, I'm introduced to a woman. Her hair is long and tucked back like most Sri Lankan woman and she wears what resembles a house-dress. She could have just walked out her bathroom. My mother snaps into focus with her signature house-dress and slippers. She is listless and numb too.

She stands there shifting slowly while the counselor speaks to me in English. The three girls are maybe eleven. Maybe twelve. They wear matching polyester blouse, skirt, black ponytails. When I was a child I would have sketched in the barefoot triplets with scrawls of burnt sienna Crayolas.

Crayola Inc adds a romantic dash to burnt sienna: The Japanese do not have a specific word named brown. Rather they use more descriptive names such as “tea-color," "fox-color," and "fallen-leaf.”

In Sri Lankan brown would be husked-coconut-color, bed-tea-color, water-buffalo-color, cinnamon-bark-color.

The three girls eyes aren't cloudy like their mother's. They mostly follow your gaze rather than look at the temple floor.

Christy was 14, Yvette was nine. I was just shy a few weeks before high school prom night when Papi died.

I'm close to that age when Mom was buying a casket for her husband at 42.

Mom's English was mangled but we understood her just fine. Her last job was teaching before she fled Cuba as a political refugee. She had a two-year teaching certificate. She didn't drive although we lived in suburban labyrinth of Miami.

And.

There was no life insurance.

Now this life experience is much more relevant to the people I meet post-tsunami.

How to pay for my college education paled in comparison to how are we paying the mortgage and eating dinner and keeping the lights on. I feel blessed that no one was surveying us forlornly as the three of us stood to the left of our mother. But maybe it's too easy to be invisible at times like this.

One of the best things that happened to us wasn't a donation or a handout. Papi was no longer around to boom: "No, you can't have a job. Get good grades. Go to college." A man with a junior high education quickly surmises that you can't scrape by in the U.S.A. without an education.

"Can you type?" my aunt Nina asked in her chirpy Brazilian accent.

A Story A Day For 37 Days

The 37 Days Challenge (background: Why 37 Days?) and reading passages from the book Running in the Family (Michael Ondaatje's memoir) have inspired me (kicked my butt) to get back on track to tsunami anniversary storytelling vignettes. Microstories. Whatever. Excuses. Over my temper tantrum with words. So. Go write girl.

Patti is (and invites us to also) "for at least the next 37days, I'm going to write an essay each day, shorter, different, exploratory, fodder for longer essays, rough works in progress, notes on a palette of sorts, thoughts that might end up here in some form."

I'm late. About four days late. Yeah I'm in.

Quote lifted from the 37days Challenge post:

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear." - Joan Didion

Bonus: "i read this quote once from the spiritual teacher adyashanti. i don't know much about him, but the quote was on an advertisement that came in the mail. it was about writing and revelation. he said that the act of writing for an audience is uniquely helpful in helping a person become clear about things. there is something about writing with the intent of making yourself understood that brings about greater self-understanding and growth than just scribbling phrases or rants in a notebook. i find that with this blog. i've been journaling since i was 10 and have never had the kind of personal experience that i'm having in this type of writing." - This Life blog (great blog, btw)

Oh, if only all my blog-writing was un-self-consciously Zen:

Loretta said...
I think all writing is very zen in that the writer is totally immersed in the moment as the words are created. In that context, I think all blogs are "zen".

Furious At Words

For two months, I realized I could live and function daily quite well (perhaps better) without being consumed with what's hot on Memeorandum. But that's not why the question of giving up blogging occured to me (that is, after my tsunami anniversary posts were published).

I didn't want to write - anywhere - ever - again - period.

I'm not a social constructionist, but as a (former?) writer and marketer you wonder about the impact of writing and conversations and language - if any. In a recent post, Lisa Haneberg writes, "To change what’s real, change the conversation. One of the most powerful ways to create change is to shift what people are talking about."

Changing the world one post at a time?

The fact was I was furious at words more than the futility of writing. (I pondered the A-List koan: if a blog falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?)

I wrote to Julie that my tsunami stories thus far have underwhelmed me (Julie spoke at Northern Voice about storytelling).

There is a gulf between letters on the keyboard, sentences on the screen and anything I know to be true. Words rang false. I wrestled with the world of language. I can never ever convey to you the pungent scent of cinnamon and how I was able to escape from the prying fawning fingers between the cracks of the seat by jutting my face out the window on the Hambantota bus. But it goes deeper than that.

Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being, between the silence of the world and the silence of God.

Yes. That's it in a nutshell. That's precisely why I did not want to write anymore.

I resolved the wrestle along the windy road to Nilambe on my second to last day in Sri Lanka. It it happened somewhere between the lace-and-sarong clad jug-woman and before the sack-aproned-tea-pluckers and long before the meditation center itself. Thomas Merton continues the quote and quietly confirms:

When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality. - Thomas Merton

p.s. I will create a new category on Writing. Words spoken from silence are perfumed with the source which they came from, said the mystic Jean Klein. (And I suppose that is what James Joyce was driving at when he philosophized about 'proper art'.)

So How Does It Feel to Be A Global Micro-brand?

I received an email from someone writing a feature on marketing innovations and global microbrands.  I answered the writer's email questions while I watch tonight's The Apprentice. (TV is rare for me, but concentration isn't a problem as I learned to do homework in a household that adored TV sets in every room.)

Donald Trump is having lunch with the winning team. He's asked (gushingly):

How does it feel to be a brand?

Trump (I'm paraphrasing):  I don't think about it. It puts too much pressure on you... When you look at people dying every day in India or hungry in Africa, what we're doing isn't that important.

Hmmm. Trump gets a few brownie points on my end.

The writer's questions had me re-evaluate the value of blogging. I'm not sure I'd have realized that there were so many business people that shared my interests without this blog. Sometimes I think I'm really going out on a limb and I need to reel it back in and discuss Technorati rankings and Web 2.0 and Techcrunch parties. Precisely at those moments an email comes in from a CEO stating his own preference: "I like some of the messages with a deep meaning" or from a financier: "Beautiful. Just exquisite. Thank you."

That's why I keep plugging away.

This is a good time to attempt to answer question #1 publicly. It's still rough:

1. How would you describe your profession/work?  What do you do (for money)?

I'm a freelance marketing consultant and writer. Or I was a consultant.  I'm in the middle of a transition out of a typical consulting role that began after my brush with death and global loss, the Indian Ocean tsunami.

I'm creating (slowly, organically) an affinity group (future: Dwelve.com) that transcends any product or service. One hub spoke of the strategy involves helping international brands that exude spiritual capital -  not in that syrupy jumping-on-the-Zenification-bandwagon but as an authentic expression of the company (and stakeholders) wish to engage in the world rather than succumbing to the escape-to-Tibetan-monastery-virus. (BTW, I think the only way to operate the new and distinct operation is something other than the typical C corp.)

A lot of brand-builders talk about meaning-making. But I'm not talking about anything made or manufactured, but pointing to a deep naturalness, something fundamental, and universally essential yet expressed uniquely. In Mindfulness in Plain English, by Venerable Heenepola Gunaratana, he makes the point that the most basic of things - words like the - are often the most difficult to explain.

For instance, I met an author and poet in Sri Lanka. She hosts a monthly Enlightenment Seekers Study Circle in her home outside Colombo. Her husband works with women's microfinance in Hambantota. I felt I knew the family intimately after two afternoons.

It was only late in our relationship that I even learned her family owned a socially-conscious tea plantation. One son learned yoga on his own from books at thirteen and meditated in a Japanese Zen monastery at 17. Eventually I learned her daughter-in-law (said son's wife) was packaging and selling the tea. Reading the website I saw that their presence, their story simply wasn't coming across at all. It could be any tea company - albeit a high-quality Ceylon tea.

Tea is sold by auction in Sri Lanka. Taste enters the equation, but essentially plucking tea leaves and selling them in bulk is awfully close to a commodity.  There "value-added" export means bagging the tea leaves.

The real value-add, IMHO? (A great cup of tea is expected, a given these days.) Value add is caring about and wanting to support the people and mission behind and beyond the tea product.

FYI, the list of questions. Be curious to hear responses. I can send you my answers via email (I didn't ask for permission to post):

1. How would you describe your profession/work? What do you do (for money)?
2. Hugh MacLeod mentioned you in his rant on a “global microbrand”. What does the term "global microbrand" mean to you?
3. Is your blog a personal “global microbrand”? If so, how? And how successful has it been?
4. What is the difference between marketing by blogs for small business, and large  corporate b-blogs?
5. In such a saturated blogosphere (where most blogs have relatively few hits), how does marketing by blogs reach out to customers?
6. In the world of blogs, where entries become obsolete within a matter of hours, is marketing by blogs sustainable?
7. How do you think marketing by blogs will change the way people perceive of marketing/advertising?

The End of Planning as I Know It

Lisa asked me "What's next?" Perhaps a book?

The only honest answer I can give is: I don't know. Perhaps that is the only honest answer there ever was. Sure I have ideas but...

I don't know.

When I went to Thailand and Sri Lanka it was a pilgrimage into the unknown. An experiment that worked wondrously.

The problem was coming home, I lamented.

I came back exasperated that everyone was frenetically rushing around asking me what my plans were. In America I feel radically stupid saying, "I don't know." (But that's my deal that I felt judged.) I mean how clueless can you get?

"What your programme?" is among the top five questions I got in the conversational repertoire in Sri Lanka. Are you married? was number two. Usually the Sri Lankans ask  so they can help you with your schedule - arrange a ride for you, or share a contact. Many times my answer only spanned the next few hours. If even that.

"Are you going to Galle next week? The east coast?"

"I don't know," came comfortably to my lips.

"When are you leaving Khao Lak?"

"I don't know," was the song I sang.

There is a freedom when you move to a new city solo. I moved from Miami to Daytona Beach, then Daytona to Salt Lake City, then SLC to San Jose in my adult life. Each time it's a fresh clean slate that's not weighed down by your past or your history or the way things were. It's really liberating for a while.

That was what it was like traveling alone for two months - each and every day.

Sometimes the most interesting people I met were purely through serendipity. One minute I'm walking in an alley past banana shake vendors and dive shops and the next I'm racing to get under cover quickly from the afternoon deluge. That's how I bumped into Tom and Mama Dang, but that's another story.

Another time I'm having trouble hailing a ride back to Nang Thong beach in Khao Lak on my way back from the Tsunami Children's Foundation office. A seeming waste of time because it was after hours. I walk and walk and finally I walk past the Moken village and Rakdeaw beckons me over. Funny how Rakdeaw's food education curriculum, ideas about having the Moken children run a cafe, and TCF's culinary school vision fit together.

Neither meeting were in my day planner. That's how it was most of the time. Over and over and over.

The myth is if you stop planning for the future nothing gets done. I made plans but I wasn't a slave to them. As my teacher says, when we embrace "can't know", then we relax and become sensitive.

So then, what do you do? You do the next most obvious thing.

Traveling to a foreign country without a tour operator you are bombarded with decisions that aren't part of a routine life (that is unless you are nomad): what is the cheapest place to stay? how do you get to that town - bus, train, ferry, plane, hired car?  is that water safe to drink? can I trust that tuk-tuk driver's advice? is the distance walkable? where do I eat breakfast, lunch, dinner? is there cell phone coverage in that rural village? how can I find the right bus (may not be labelled in English) back to Galle? is it offensive to snap their photo? is it okay to wear this to the temple? should I bring a gift? is that pork in that curry? where can I exchange money? with all these electronics, will it rain today?

That was the easy part.

I also had to fill my days arranging to meet people well off the tourist track.

When you get to the place you're reporting, what is the first thing you do?

I usually show up in a town having made one appointment to see someone - say, a meatpacking worker, an academic, a union organizer. That person usually leads me to another, who leads me to another, and so on. I put a lot of faith in random conversations at bars. Once you show up in town there's a lot of serendipity involved. - Interview with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, in The New New Journalism, by Robert S. Boynton

Serendipity is not akin to luck. I'd say it has more to do with being sensitive and open without expectations (aka conditioned limitations).

"You can feel something move. I call what moves instinct. Like a baby moves to its mother breast. It's basic, primal. This inward leaning has no assurances. No answer comes back. When the ego "knows", it will answer, "Yes honey this is the right way." Illusion is always explaining and justifying itself. But when you ask instinct, it never explains itself. It's a magical way to move. You get used to surfing the inner dictates of life." - Adyashanti, notes from talk on the innocent mind 12/3/05

I have so much more energy because I am not paralyzed by the overwhelming array of options before me. Planning a year-long itinerary consumed me, so I never went on the odyssey to the creative class centers of the world back in 2004 (one reason I started this blog over two years ago was to write about it).

Now each step opens up the path to the next obvious thing.

Which reminds me I had the flu when I attempted my first 50K trail race. (I had less sense back then!) The first ten miles, even the first fifteen miles passed by effortlessly.  Each mile after that I only made it through because my focus was arriving at the next aid station: "Then I'll see how I'm doing and decide whether to keep going or quit."

I have finished every ultamarathon since with that strategy. The finish line fifty miles away may seem so outrageously far and distant... yet the next footfall is entirely natural.

p.s. I recommend Bryon Katie's book, Loving What Is. It's not about decision-making per se although she touches on it in chapter 9 on core beliefs, but it's nigh impossible to be sensitive and open without getting past this stuff. Instinct seems to shut down with resistance to what is actually happening.

No Sound Bytes I'm Afraid: Blogs as the Perfect Vehicle for Microstories

On the day after the tsunami anniversary, I ran into Ed, a Reuters foreign correspondent whom interviewed me and I had first met at an all-day meditation tsunami memorial event on Christmas.

We sat down for a couple of Singhas at an outdoor bar before he had to catch the island ferry and start the trek back to Bangkok, his home.  We were directly across the tsunami memorial park started by a couple who lost their little girl Sacha. I had just departed there and lost in my own world when I bumped into Ed.

We talked about the beauty of the paper latterns the night before. Dozens, maybe hundreds, were released by families along the beach to commemorate the one year memorial. Their burning flames trailing into a stream of lights across the night sky. Watching the twinkling fires fade and grow distant and vanish from view into the starry night. They continued onward beyond the limits of my perception. "When I die," he said, "I'd like to have those latterns in my funeral."

He asked me how things were going with my writing and the blog.

"This story [tsunami recovery and rehab] is like trying to photograph the Grand Canyon," I told him. "It's more nuanced and complex than the aftermath." I lamented no photograph can possibly do the Grand Canyon justice. No telephoto lens, no panoramic lens, no IMAX film. It all falls short of the 360 degree experience in the flesh.

"If it's like the Grand Canyon, then every shot will be a great one," Ed rejoined.

And bingo! there he had it. The closest "strategy" I've come up with for sharing the avalanche (or dare I call it a tsunami) of material I have is to simply write keep writing vignettes. Dozens, hundreds if need be.

Yes, there are overarching themes and patterns and big picture stuff, and I fret those will be missed if one reads a standalone post only. I thought of using tagging to tie related themes and patterns. And I always keep pitching for essays in print media where there is space and attention for long-form journalism.

Ed's optimism reminds me of an exchange I had with Bala Pitchandi (SEA-EAT blog and wiki) and Brian Oberkirch (Slidell Hurricane blog) today. We're preparing for next week's panel at the NewCommForum confererence (see speakers page for bios) in Palo Alto, CA.

We're on for the "A New Voice: Citizen Journalism and Disasters" panel on Friday, March 3, 11:30 a.m. (I'm hoping as a citizen journalist and marketing consultant to tie-in the citj lessons learned to the PR, communications, and business audience in attendance.)

I called them vignettes in my head and in my journal, Brian called them microstories in our chat. Brian said one of the points he'd like to cover is blogs as ideal vehicles for microstories.

I don't normally blog private exchanges, but this small excerpt from our chat I thought needed to be shared.

[11:50:51 AM] Bala Pitchandi says: but from your perspective, how do you think the rehab is going?
[11:56:17 AM] evelynrodr says: the rehab is a huge issue - no sound byte I'm afraid - physically Thailand is doing good - emotional and economic not so good (they calll it economic tsunami); Sri Lanka - lots of folks still in tents and the one-room wooden temp shelters still - but I am trying to also focus on soln's & what IS working in my writing

LATER BRIAN JOINS IN:

[12:30:58 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: I was talking with a group of tech non profit folks last week
[12:31:23 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: and I told them that I was at a loss when people ask me how things are in NOLA now
[12:31:27 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: I can't tell you one big story
[12:31:33 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: but I can tell you a zillion small ones
[12:31:53 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: That's what blogs can do well, I think.  Help you make a composite image, made up of lots of story fractals.
[12:31:55 PM] Bala Pitchandi says: just browse the NOLA metblogs for all of them --
[12:32:01 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: right
[12:32:05 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: lots of data points
[12:32:22 PM] evelynrodr says: wow - bala asked me earlier about rehab  - how's it going  over there - I said I didn't have a sound byte - i tooo have zillion stories & vignettes
[12:32:34 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: which, as a whole, are much truer than whatever 2:30 min. standup they'll do on the NBC news tonight
[12:32:49 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: perfect, see....your experience is the same

Perfect, hmm, yes perfect indeed.

tags social media journalism citizen journalism blogging disaster relief storytelling tsunami katrina

Small is the New Big?

I actually like the small-is-the-new-big (and related less-is-more) meme, and am looking forward to Inc. editor Bo Burlingham's new book, Small Giants, just featured in the this February Inc.

The Devil's advocate in me mouths off:

Is simply shooting for small or less sufficient? 

Actually Burlingham's book appears to be about greatness - without worrying  and preoccupying yourself as you go about resultant size or extrinic measures of worth - be it big or small.

No bird soars too high,
if he soars with his own wings. - William Blake

My Technorati Rank Plummets - And Why It Doesn't Matter

I knew it would happen. I wasn't reading or linking to blogs for about 69 days. The startling thing is I'm not freaked about it.

(At all. It's harder to get me flummoxed - even though it feels awkward to be this cool and collected. Something subtle happened over there. Anyway...)

I was hovering around 2000 when I left to Asia. I sheepishly check the stats today:

Technorati Rank: 2,545 (970 links from 423 sites)

Ouch!! "The ones that matter most, of course, have gobs of readers--with enough eyeballs to attract investors and advertisers," says the Chicago Tribune (authoratively of course) in their early obituary for blogging.

Hmmm. The ones that matter most.

"Don't let any Technorati feature -- and I'm not referring to a specific feature as I can't keep up with them -- define your authority or popularity or pecking order," says Rex Hammock in the wisest post I've read recently. (That would be in the last two days.)

Read all of it. It reminds me of how hard it is to erase mass media mentality from our minds. I remember reading the January 21 issue of The Economist story moaning "don't write off big media just yet". Among the proof: "Yahoo! has a media unit, but so far it hasn't produced any hits." (The media unit is mainly blogs if I recall.)

Hits? (You mean the fat head before the long tail?)

Ironically, this is the same The Economist issue that reports on findings that show how grassroots broad-based "people power" is the way most despotic governments are toppled.

Rex's explanation of a blog's value is particularly useful and gets us out of mass-market mass-audience publication mode:

A couple of weeks ago, someone who owns a firm that manages phone systems for small businesses told me that he didn't want to start a weblog because he didn't want to "compete" with the 30 million blogs "out there," -- that the level of "discourse" on 30 million couldn't be that high.

I then said to him, "I could apply the same logic and come to the conclusion that I shouldn't have a business telephone. That reasoning would lead me to forego having a telephone because I'm competing with 300 million other "telephoners" and the level of discourse of all those phone conversations can't be that high."

And my number one favorite sentence:

Blog because there are two or three people who actually matter in your life or work, or who share your passion for a particular topic.

p.s.  Rex says: "When you set up a weblog, don't think of it as launching a "publication" or any other "mass media" and don't measure success in terms of "size of audience." Good, my next blog has an even smaller 'audience' size potential than this one.

I Am A Materialist For Many Years...

In  a recent comment that I suspect comes from a spammer (please let me know if you are a real person) I get a great catalyst for posts to come:

"I am reading your entries and I am thinking that nothing from it understands, I am a materialist for many years I am working for money..."

Reminds me that my teacher insists that there are plenty of unenlightened poor people. Of course he tells me this after I have spent the year without pay immersing myself in spiritual pursuit and pro bono work.

True renounciation isn't about things - it's about letting go of thoughts - ultimately giving up limits - but I'm getting ahead of myself.

This all reminds me that before the two-month citizen journalism pilgrimage to Asia, I felt I had not raised anywhere near enough money. Yet I was committed. After I paid my most pressing bills and got my airline tickets, I was nearly penniless the day I embarked.

I felt so desparate that I wrote on a Travelpod forum asking for advice on staying in monasteries. I was bouyed by recollections that one could eat pad thai on Khao San Road in Bangkok for fifty cents.

Luckily I was surrounded by wise teachers that weren't as logically minded as I was.

Deep down, I knew this too would be part of the journey.

In my last weekly A Course in Miracles study group I revealed my plight. Commiseration? Nope. "That's perfect!" beamed Andrew.

And a very prescient blogger I thoroughly respect (and whom comes across much more logical than I) wrote to me before my trip:

It was earlier this year that I started letting go of trying to control everything and plan out every detail of my future, and I started to let go and trust in my intuition more and more.  Actually it would be more accurate to say that this was a gradual shift that began in 2003.  Initially it was very unsettling to follow my intuitions and the synchronicities that came to me.  I had a hard time trusting them.

But eventually I could sense there was a greater intelligence at work, as it seemed almost magical how these synchronicities and my intuition would weave themselves together to create results that were very different than anything I could have planned.

Now I'd say I run my life about 80% by intention, intuition, and synchronicity and only 20% by logical planning.  It took me a good couple years to get comfortable with it though.  What helped me was to allow myself to trust my intuition in small ways first... when the risk of failure was minimal.  For example, I'd go into a bookstore and allow myself to buy whatever book I felt most intuitively drawn to.  If it's a bad book, no big deal, right?

...I think the reason it's so important to learn to trust intuition is that there are lessons ahead of you that will be very tough to understand logically in advance.

Terrified I re-read the chapter, "Two Penniless Boys in Brindaban" from the classic Autobiography of a Yogi - twice - and then went to the airport. I was trying hard to imprint it irrevocably in my psyche.

I never slept in a monastery. I never went without. The Sri Lankans fed me so much rice and curry and tea around the clock I put on weight. How this all came to be possible is ultimately a mystery. Sure I have details. But first...

This is a small excerpt from that fateful chapter. It starts with a row between Ananta and the author. Ananta is the author's (Mukanda - later known as Yogananda) very sensible accountant brother:

"It would serve you right if Father disinherited you, Mukunda! How foolishly you are throwing away your life!" An elder-brother sermon was assaulting my ears.

"You well know, Ananta, I seek my inheritance from the Heavenly Father."

"Money first; God can come later! Who knows? Life may be too long."

"God first; money is His slave! Who can tell? Life may be too short."

"So you feel quite independent of Father's wealth."

"I am conscious of my dependence on God."

"Words are cheap! Life has shielded you thus far! What a plight if you were forced to look at to the Invisible Hand for your food and shelter! You would soon be begging on the streets!"

"Never! I would not put faith in passers-by rather than God! He can devise for His devotee a thousand resources besides the begging-bowl!"

"More rhetoric! Suppose I suggest that your vaulted philosophy be put to a test in this tangible world?"

"I would agree! Do you confine God to a speculative world?"

"We shall see; today you shall have the opportunity either to enlarge or to confirm my own views!" Ananta paused for a dramatic moment; then spoke slowly and seriously.

"I propose that I send you and your fellow disciple Jitendra this morning to the near-by city of Brindaban. You must not take a single rupee; you must not beg, either for food or money; you must not reveal your predicament to anyone; you must not go without your meals; and you must not be stranded in Brindaban. If you return to my bungalow here before twelve o'clock tonight, without having broken any rule of the test, I shall be the most astonished man in Agra!"

"I accept the challenge." No hesitation was in my words or in my heart.

...

My friend Jitendra spoke protestingly. "Ananta, give me one or two rupees as a safeguard. Then I can telegraph you in case of misfortune."

"Jitendra!" My ejaculation was sharply reproachful. "I will not proceed with the test if you take any money as final security."

"There is something reassuring about the clink of coins." Jitendra said no more as I regarded him sternly.

The riveting account of the entire day is thankfully online. Here's a small peek at the end. (There's yet more to the ending - but read no further if you hate spoiling the end whatsoever.)

[After the two enter Ananta's bedroom:] His face, as he had promised, was a study in astonishment. Silently I showered the table with rupees...

"The law of supply and demand reaches into subtler realms that I had supposed." Ananta spoke with a spiritual enthusiasm never before noticeable. "I understand for the first time your indifference to the vaults and vulgar accumulations of the world."

Fluff Pieces and the American "Entertainment" Press

While I was on Phi Phi island, a British tourist living in Hong Kong tells me he sees the American press as "entertainment." He doesn't read it for any insight. That's a pity...

That it's true. Thank god then there are NGOs including UN-Habitat that have noted the human rights issues related to the tsunami.

I hadn't written anything hard hitting yet because I'm looking for the appropriate venue (I'm not sure this blog is it) and I needed distance and perspective to remain fair and balanced. (BTW, I'm available for podcast interviews, etc. now that I'm home. Plus thinking of guest contributing to more appropriate and wider venues like Global Voices, WorldChanging - any other media suggestions?)

Within the first hour of my arrival in Bangkok in mid-December, the evening is winding down at Noreiga's Bar which is the meeting place I've arranged with Graeme, whom did work with UN-Habitat post-tsunami.

Stefan just happens to be there that evening when I arrrive from umpteen hours in the air from San Jose via Tokyo. He's just met Graeme himself - he came for the music and drinks. I briefly introduce myself as a writer and survivor.

"So you're here to write about the tsunami."

"Yeah."

"The land grab, heh?"

"What land grab?"

We don't get far in our conversation before Stefan grows weary: "Ughh, can we talk about something else." Fair enough - it's not exactly light bar conversation anyhow. And it's way past two in the morning.

Turns out Stefan worked non-stop for days after the tsunami getting German tourists safely back home through his job at a major tour operator. I sense that never ever talking about the tsunami again would suit him fine.

It didn't take me long to find out land grab Stefan was talking about.

When I left Phi Phi island on January 1st, folks whose homes, bungalow resorts, restaurants, and shops were completely destroyed (repairs were allowed) still hadn't obtained permission to rebuild as the government "considers" the new zoning plan.

After the entire evacuation of the island in the days after the tsunami, many islanders have been yet to return and still live in camps in Krabi (on the mainland).

The common refrain up and down the coast especially among business owners: "The government is colluding with wealthy investors about turning it all into a millionaire's paradise."

That's just the tip of iceberg.

Prime real estate is at stake. Much of the Thailand was the King's dominion. Over generations, families lived on the land and passed it on, but didn't own it. Private property titles are a newer phenomenon - and like anything else in Asia they can be bought for a price.

As a human rights worker told me, "Those families have been 'in the way' [of developers obtaining title] for a long time. Once the tsunami came, their problems conveniently were wiped away. The developers even cite karma as the reason they deserve the land."

When there's not a building left standing and the occupants have fled for a night or two in the hills, new titles for new owners suddenly appear overnight.

Slow recovery? Considering the government's friction, the physical infrastructure recovery in Phi Phi and Khao Lak had far exceeded my expectations.

I'm no investigative journalist, but I heard too much from varied sources to dismiss. Even basic media literacy teaches us to peer closer and know what's at stake and who's invested where and what their interests are.

Anyone that spends time on the ground like this six-month volunteer notes the same: "The goverment corruption is rampant with officials and developers conspiring to move people off their land."

There is a lot of money at stake on the postcard-perfect Andaman coast, you hardly have to read between the lines. You just have to talk to people outside of government authorities and chambers of commerce.

Besides NGO reports, thank god for international press like The Economist.

Lest you think that could only happen in Asia, The Economist in the January 21, 2006 issue reported that the government may apply imminent domain in New Orleans.

"[R]esidents in the harder hit areas, such as the Lower Ninth Ward (which was also hammered by Hurricane Betsy in 1965), would have until May 20th to show that they would return in sufficient numbers to keep their neighborhoods alive. If they fail to do so, homeowners could be "bought out" in some way and the areas in question could revert to swampland or be turned into parks...

[But] in general, plans to shrink the city's size could mean the end of a lot of poor black neighborhoods." - "The Big not-quite-so-Easy", The Economist, January 21-26, 2006

"Here people at least call a spade a spade," says one Asian-American volunteer in Khao Lak, "In the U.S., they'll surreptiously take a section of New Orleans and find a way to give it to Disney for a new park." He says that's exactly the rumor he hears in African-American neighborhoods back home: Disney is eyeing distressed property in New Orleans.

I've seen too many tsunami recovery and anniversary fluff pieces with loads of inaccuracies from American newspapers notably from those whom sent a reporter overseas for a few days. My suggestions to local newspapers as your profits keep sinking:

• Do a better job at covering your own locale and region and syndicate that to other papers. That's your core competency.
• With foreign correspondents you're more likely to get insight, rather than entertainment, pieces like this popular land rights story. If you can't afford to hire foreign correspondents like the two wonderful Reuters correspondents I met in Phi Phi, Ed and Bazuki, whom live in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur respectively, consider syndicating citizen journalists already on the ground and already residing in the field that already have first-hand insider knowledge of the culture, politics, religions, values, history and current events.
• Editorially guide citizen journalists that aren't familiar with foreign audience's interests on what is of interest to an outsider reader who isn't enmeshed in the same way. What they may dismiss because it's common knowledge locally might be newsworthy and compelling to a foreign audience.
• Oh, and don't expect all your citizen journalists to work solely for glory either. Consider incentives, payment, for instance, at least cover expenses. Think creatively if you are strapped for cash.

p.s. I'll be using new funds (it's tapped out now) coming in to the artisan journalism microfund to give Mon, a woman that I quickly trained to blog and lives in Khao Lak, Thailand a small stipend. I'd love to have her supply me with ground information for a while. For instance, Mon personally knows Ratree, the woman who is in the infamous land dispute in Laem Pom. (Ratree's story was originally published in Bangkok Post last April. And has been covered internationally. The BBC's early presence in Laem Pom is to be applauded; it helped kept the guns and mafia at bay and kindled the international interest which resulted in the Chicago Tribune's recent follow-up.) There's plenty more stories though. BTW, Mon is thinking about having her own public blog too (she likes to live simply in nature and in the background, so it's a bit of a sell).

p.p.s. I spent five weeks in Phi Phi, Phuket and Khao Lak through January 26, 2006.

tags social media journalism citizen journalism journalism blogging media literacy human rights tsunami katrina