“We travel, initially to lose ourselves, and we travel next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and our knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are […]

    Harriet Denison lives in Portland, Oregon, close to Forest Park where birds and hiking trails provide daily contacts with nature. Between adventures, Harriet worked as a consultant in non-profit management. She volunteered for ten years in the Women’s Funding Movement finishing as Chair of the Women’s Funding Network. She recently retired after working […]

Firewood Source Back home in Oregon, I caught up with hometown news and I despaired as I read about the road building initiatives to log our remaining trackless forests of the last old growth trees. Ghosts of the barren and bleeding hills I just witnessed haunt me. For us, it is not too late, but […]

Rice Planters Rice is the staple of the Malagasy diet, brought from Indonesia by the first settlers. In the highlands, where there is a dependable water source, terraced rice paddies fill the valleys and some slopes. Even in the middle of Tana, the largest city, the bottomlands are dedicated to rice paddies and the streets […]

Madagascar’s early human history is unclear but remnants of ninth century fortifications built by Arab traders attest to the island’s importance to early sailors. Asian and African migrants arrived 2000 years ago. The Asian descendants populate the highlands, while Africans stayed near the coasts. In 1794, most of the people were united under the highlander […]

There are no Malagasy monkeys, and the 32 lemur species fill the primate ecological niche. We were fortunate to see many lemur varieties. In the semi-arid dry forest of southern Madagascar, we are walking on a ten-foot wide cattle trail lined with prickly brush and tamarind and eucalyptus trees. We hear the vigorous rustle of […]

The Author in the Jungle The shy terrestrial bird is close. Our guide signals us to fold the umbrellas that protect us from the fat drops of moisture rolling off the rainforest canopy. He hoots again, challenging the bird to defend its territory. We crouch and peer into the lush underbrush watching for any telltale […]

UUSC Ambassadors I never understood what it meant to witness until I went to Guatemala. As a Unitartian, the word is not one we use, though I am aware that it is often used in other religions. In Guatemala, we listened to the stories from survivors of massacres that occurred during the 1980’s. Stories hard […]

Forensic Lab The tiny, mud-flecked shoes sat next to a few bones and pieces of cloth in the forensic laboratory in Guatemala City, waiting for someone to identify the little girl who caught the fatal bullet so many years ago. In 2006, her remains and those of her family and neighbors were dug from one […]

I was lucky. I slept in a bed last Saturday. Nine of my friends in our Cuba AyUUda group slept on the cold floor of the Havana airport. What many people want to know is what were you doing trying to get into Cuba? As for me, I do not live in a box. I […]

Camello A model of Havana shows a large metropolitan area for a city of 2.2 million people planned to grow and able to absorb new inhabitants. The rub is in the transportation system. Again, economics matters. For those who cannot walk or bicycle to their jobs or errands, the cheapest form of mass transit is […]

University of Havana The students in the language school were mostly from European countries, with a sprinkling of Americans. They ranged in age from college students to one of my fellow Global Exchange participants who was taking up Spanish for the first time at age 75. This was my first language immersion experience, and after […]

Cuban Flag Cuba lies so close to our shores and yet has been shunned by the US for most of my life. It was on my list of places to visit one day because of the contradictions that make it so fascinating. Is Castro an idealist or cruel dictator? Is he Communist or populist? Why […]

Historical Buildings After a short flight from Cancun in a vintage Russian plane, my group was driven into Havana past sugar cane fields, which gave way to houses, tiendas (small shops) and the shaded parks of the suburbs. We passed baroque and neo-classical mansions as well as more modern buildings but all were in poor […]