Category Archives: Heritage Travel

Our national parks: We REALLY need to get out more

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Black families need to get out and enjoy nature — and the rest of America needs to get used to seeing us doing that.

Lately, I’ve had a number of readers write to me with concerns about how they are likely to be received when traveling abroad for the first time. They are especially concerned with the possibility that people might stare at them.
IBIT2013
Let’s handle this right here: If you’re a black American and you’re traveling outside of North America, someone at some point will stare at you. It’s going to happen. And seriously, it’s no big deal.

But you don’t have to go to Eastern Europe, Asia or Latin America to draw stares.

Way back when I was 10, my family made the drive from Oakland, CA to Yosemite National Park. To look down from the highway and see the valley open up before you, with Half Dome on the right and the 100-foot pine trees on the valley floor looking no taller than the whiskers of a closely cropped beard, was magic.

Sleeping in a wood-framed tent. Skipping stones across the clear, icy river. Squirrels, chipmunks, bluejays, deer, a sky clear enough to see every single star — it was all heady stuff for a 10-year-old city kid.

On the morning of the second day, my brother and I were lugging our ice chest back to the car, past a row of other tents. Near the parking lot, a young blonde woman sat on the tent steps with her even more blonde daughter, who couldn’t have been more than four or five.

As we struggled along with our burden, the little girl jumped — no, bounded — off the steps, pointed at us and cried:

“LOOK, Mommy! DARK people!”

We turned to look, frozen in place, not knowing what to expect. Mommy, clearly as much caught off-guard as we were, did her best to limit the damage.

“Yes, and they’re people,” she said with a nervous smile. “Just like us.”

Sorry, Mom, your daughter’s not havin’ it.

“But Mommy! *gasp* They’re…*gasp*hellip;DARRRRRRRRRRR-rrrrk PEEEE-pulllllll!”

We laughed so hard, I scarcely noticed that I’d dropped the ice chest on my foot. Even so, we “got it” instantly. Our family was in a national park, a place where black families were seldom seen. But we sort of expected that.

After all, it was just 1960.

Fast-forward to 2013 and you find that things haven’t changed much. Our faces are still seldom seen in places like Yosemite, Yellowstone, Kings Canyon, Denali. Which is what makes this weekend so important.

Because this is the weekend of the African American National Parks Event.

Regular IBIT readers already know all about this. If you’re reading about it for the first time, check it out here.

There are plenty of good reasons for African-Americans to visit our national parks — not just this weekend, but all year round. Breaking away from the 24/7 urban vibe and spending a little time in places where the air is fresh and the water is cool and clean, the places where it’s quiet enough to hear your own soul, is good for our health, both physical and mental.

It’s also a good chance to connect with a piece of our history, because you’ll find that the famed Buffalo Soldiers played a role in creating and protecting our national parks, and that’s a thing to be proud of.

But maybe most of all, the rest of America needs to get used to seeing black Americans out in nice places with our families and friends, doing positive things and having a good time like everyone else.

If “mainstream” America bases its understanding of “us” purely from what it sees on “COPS,” “Lockup,” “Beyond Scared Straight” or “Basketball Wives,” that’s a problem, for both sides.

For more information on the African American National Parks Event, email Teresa Baker.

A day (or two) in the parks

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Yosemite Valley

Yosemite Valley / © Thicoz | Dreamstime.com

A young Oakland woman who loves Yosemite is mounting her own campaign to get black Americans to visit America’s national parks.

Have you heard about the African American National Parks Event? If you haven’t, you should. It’s a two-day pledge campaign, June 22-23, but it’s a pledge campaign like none you’ve ever seen before.

This one’s not asking you for money. Instead, it’s asking you to take a road trip.

The idea behind this event is “to gain the attention of African Americans across the United States, so they will see the benefits of being out in nature, which will encourage them to invest in protecting and securing our vital natural resources for future generations.

Teresa Baker

Teresa Baker


“We are organizing 2 days, when African Americans from San Diego to Boston will congregate in one of their local National Parks or National Monuments.”

That’s it. That’s all. Pick a park. Visit. Enjoy. Go home.

America’s national park system just might be the greatest in the world. Visitors come from all over the globe to take in the breathtaking beauty of places like Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, to name just a few of the best-known sites. There’s a national park, monument or recreation area within a day’s drive of nearly ever American.

Black Americans, by and large, seldom visit these places. The National Park Service has bemoaned that fact for years. So much so that it appointed Mickey Fearn as a deputy communication director, with the specific mission of pulling more black American visitors to visit the national parks.

But it wasn’t the NPS that put together the African American National Parks Event. instead, it was the brainchild of one Teresa Baker.

And who, you ask, is Teresa Baker? She’s a young black woman from Oakland, CA who loves Yosemite — and got tired of feeling like a lone face in the crowd.

“I’ve been going to Yosemite since I was little and I love, but I don’t see faces that looked like me,” she told IBIT. So I started working on this a year ago, trying to get African American youth to our national parks.”

The very reason Teresa felt the need to organize this effort also was the thing making it difficult. “Parents were saying they were reluctant in doing it because they didn’t see any other African American faces out in the parks,” she said.

So, on her own time and her own dime, she starting reaching out, sending letters asking people to commit themselves to visiting Yosemite on a specific date. She also reached out to Shelton Johnson, a black Yosemite park ranger who portrays a Buffalo Soldier and the role the famous all-black US cavalry unit played in protecting the park.

“And it all just kind of took off from there,” she said. “Right now, I have over 600 people committed to participating.”

So far, more than 200 groups in California, Boston, New York, Atlanta and even Canada have responded to Teresa’s request. A hundred people have signed up in the San Francisco Bay area alone for a meetup at the Presidio, a former US Army base in San Francisco, for a presentation on the Buffalo Soldiers.

The Presidio, standing in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, is now a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area — and perfect example of how readily accessible our national park system is to just about everyone.

“You don’t have to come to California,” she said. “Go to a park near you. Go to a national monument or near you. We’re asking people to take a picture inside the park and send it in for a collage.”

You would think the NPS headquarters in Washington DC would be delighted by these developments. So far, though, their response to Teresa’s efforts may best be described as lukewarm.

“I do get emails, but it’s from individual national parks, not from NPS headquarters,” she said. “It’s hard to get calls returned.”

Teresa is forging ahead, anyway.

“There’s absolutely nothing that NPS has to do, other than have the parks open. That’s it.”

You won’t have trouble finding a place to visit. Just check out this map of the US National park system or take a look at this list.

Still don’t think you can find a national park site to visit? Try this little experiment: Get a map of the United States, paper or online, and find your hometown on it. Now draw a 400-mile radius around your hometown, roughly a day’s comfortable driving distance.

I can virtually guarantee you that somewhere within that circle will be a park, monument, lakeshore, seashore or recreation area belonging to the National Park Service. One of the most beautiful such networks anywhere. One which your taxes pay for. And one which African Americans have played a part in protecting and preserving.

All you have to do is go, and enjoy.

Teresa has hopes of this becoming an annual event. So does IBIT.

Can’t stop the NOLA

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Photo from nola.com

Photo from nola.com

Three weeks after a couple of knuckleheads wounded 19 people shooting up a traditional New Orleans second-line parade on Mothers Day, the organizers re-stage the parade on the same route.

New York and Boston may not be the only American cities that can stand up to terrorists. The people of New Orleans made a statement last weekend, in one of the time-honored ways that folks in this town make statements.

With a celebration.

Every year in the city’s 7th Ward, residents hold a second-line parade on Mothers Day, organized by the Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club. Both the parade and the club represent longstanding traditions in black New Orleans neighborhoods.

Three weeks ago, in the middle of the festivities, a pair of young thugs started shooting into the crowd of paradegoers, wounding 19 people.

Shootings in the NOLA, much of it related to street gangs, are almost as common as second-line parades and this wasn’t the first time gunplay had broken out at one. When rival gangbangers turn up at the same events, too often they bring their rivalries — and their guns — with them.

Even so, the Mothers Day parade shooting was beyond almost anything the city had ever seen before. Around the country, a lot of people looked on in horror, wondering how people in the city would respond to this outrage.

Last Saturday, about 500 people delivered the answer, in person.

Led by the same club that organized the original parade, they staged a “re-do” of the event. On the same route, with the same three bands leading the way.

The same singing and dancing in the streets. The same sidewalk grills turning out hamburgers, hots dogs, pork chops and chicken. The same sodas and beers. Whole families turned out, and everybody had a blast.

Without anyone getting blasted.

It was one of those public displays of joie de vivre that New Orleans has made world-famous. But it also amounted to a giant middle finger to the youthful gangsters who have terrorized black neighborhoods, seemingly at will, for decades.

If you know the NOLA, you knew that was going to happen. Why? Because as much as any American city and more than most, New Orleans holds tight to its traditions.

One such tradition is the second-line parade. Most New Orleanians just call them “second lines.”

A brass band — the first line — leads the procession. Those who fall in behind them constitute the second line. It’s about as informal as you can get. If you want to stand on the sidewalk and watch, you can. If you want to step out into the street and join in, you can.

The organizer of the Mothers Day second line, the Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club, represent another black New Orleans tradition.

SAPCs began as benevolent societies. The dues you paid into them served as a kind of financial safety net if you lost your job or fell into ill health.

When you died, your SAPC dues would cover the cost of your funeral, which often included a jazz funeral, led by a brass band…and a second line.

The Krewe of Zulu, the first officially recognized black Mardi Gras organization, began as a social aid and pleasure club, and retains that title to this day.

But when the Original Big 7 hit “reset” on their Mothers Day second line, they also put on display another, less well-known New Orleans tradition. The NOLA never backs down from a challenge.

Some of the world’s most defiantly obstinate people live here. Tell them they can’t do something, then stand back and watch them do it, anyway.

They may offer you a cold beer while you watch.

That stubbornness hasn’t always been a good thing for the city, but in the end, New Orleans probably couldn’t survive without it. When you live your life several feet below sea level, it’s more than just a personality trait. It’s a survival skill.

In other cities, residents might have felt the city’s gun-toting street thugs were so totally out of hand that re-staging the parade was unthinkable. It would have been the safe, cautious, logical course to take.

The NOLA doesn’t do safe, cautious or logical.

This is a city with a long history of defying the odds. Invading foreign armies, Civil War occupation, bitter conflict over civil rights, chronic poverty and prejudice. The Mississippi River is too high one month, too low the next. And then, there are the hurricanes.

New Orleans just looks at it all, shrugs and lets the bands play on.

Eight years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I summed up New Orleans this way for a California newspaper:

“You can’t kill this place. You can drown it, burn it, lay siege to it, level it, but you cannot drive it under. The willful spirit of the people who live here will not be submerged. Not even by walls and waves of contaminated water.”

Nor, apparently, by random gunfire from neighborhood thugs. It just doesn’t matter. You can’t stop the music. You can’t stop the culture. You can’t stop the NOLA. In a city beset by problems both natural and man-made, that willful spirit just might be its greatest attribute…and its best hope.

Can you help document some history?

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A documentary film crew needs donations to help fund a feature-length program on the first all-black American team of climbers to take on North America’s tallest mountain.

Yeah, I know. Your mailbox and your email get flooded daily with people pitching you for money — charities, politicians, you name it.

This one’s more than a little different.

Next month, a team of nine mountaineers will attempt to climb Denali, aka Mount McKinley, the highest peak on the North American continent.

Nine young black American mountaineers, the first such team ever to make this attempt.

The National Outdoor Leadership School helped train them for the climb. Now, NOLS wants to take a crew from Distill Productions in Montana to record it for a documentary, but they need $107,500 to do it.

They’re trying to raise the money online via Kickstarter, which has agreed to finance the project…IF they raise the money before the deadline, which is less than 48 hours from now.

So far, they’ve raised about $79,000 in pledges, which puts them $28,500 short, with two days left.

Kickstarter won’t fund the documentary for anything less than the whole amount, so getting close won’t cut it here. It’s the $107,500…or nothing.

Can we help these folks out a little bit? You can donate as little as $1, and there are rewards for donors at levels above a buck.

As for the climbers themselves, Denali isn’t the end of anything. They’re out to bag each of the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each of the world’s seven continents.

And yes, that includes Mount Everest.

It also includes Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, which actually has a higher failure rate among climbers than Everest.

These mountains are no joke. Somebody dies on these peaks nearly every year.

This is an inspirational story of nine black Americans who have worked and trained hard to take on one of the world’s toughest climbs. And seriously, couldn’t we all use a little inspiration right now?

Wouldn’t you love, just one time, to turn on your television or log on to YouTube and see something other than the usual mass media force-feeding of stories about crime, drugs, single mothers, deadbeat fathers, kids with sagging pants and which rapper got arrested today?

How cool would it be to turn on the box and see something to show us that we can do anything — and that in fact, we already do everything?

This is not strictly a black thing, however. The Denali climbers want to inspire all of us who live strictly urban lives to re-connect to the natural world, something we need for our physical and mental well-being.

It doesn’t have to be anything as daunting as climbing towering mountains. There are beaches, hiking trails, bike-riding trails in or near our own communities. How many of us live within a four-hour drive of one of America’s great national parks, but have never been to one?

That needs to change, and these six brothers and three sisters are part of a small but growing movement to lead that change.

A click on this link will take you to the Kickstarter campaign where you can make your contribution.

Honestly, it shouldn’t even be necessary to do this. CNN, National Geographic, even BET and AspireTV should be all over this event. But that’s a conversation for another time.

How many times have we heard friends and family complain that there aren’t enough positive programs about black Americans on TV? How many times have you made that same lament yourself? Well, here’s a chance to help get one on the air.

How about it? Can we climb this mountain? Let’s go!

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Climb every mountain

How Ghana does democracy

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IBIT Guest Columnist Roxanne L. Scott left a teaching gig in China to become an expat in Ghana, just in time to observe her first African presidential election. Here’s what she saw — and perhaps more importantly, what she didn’t see.


Five Things I Admired About Ghana’s Elections
by ROXANNE L. SCOTT
ACCRA, Ghana — No war. No coups. No vote rigging. A peaceful election with a highly engaged electorate.

Sadly, because of the portrayal of the continent, you may be surprised I’m referring to an African election. Ghana, to be exact.
Roxanne L. Scott
Ghana had their presidential and parliamentary elections this past December, and I had the pleasure of covering them. Here are five things I took away from observing the political process in Ghana.

  1. Political Pride
    Political flags wave in the air. Busloads of people head downtown to one of the many political rallies. Cars and the public transportation minivans I use to commute are proudly draped in the colors and flag of their party of choice. Yet voters are able to put their political differences aside to still communicate and cooperate with each other. It’s electrifying.
  2. It’s a Party, For Real
    In the US, though we have a plethora of political parties, when it comes time to hearing the various voices on the political spectrum, we’re only left with two – Republicans and the Democrats. During Ghana’s presidential and vice presidential debates, all eight parties participated in the debates! This would probably make our heads explode in the States.

    It is true that there are still two major parties in Ghana, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), but hearing alternative voices can open up new ideas concerning society’s ills and political policy.

  3. High Voter Turnout
    When discussing with my editor the benefits of Diasporans being allowed to vote, I made a comment, saying: Well, if you lived outside of Ghana for such a long period of time, would you bother voting? He laughed in my face and said the following words that I’ll never forget: “Ghanaians love to vote.”

    He was right. The 2012 presidential elections had an 80 percent voter turnout.

    Let me write that again — 80 percent voter turn out.

    If we had these numbers in the US, we’d be dancing in the streets. But many would argue that the powers that be would never want us to have these numbers. When providing Election Day coverage and interviewing citizens, many engaged in communal voting, not only seeing it as their duty to vote, but seeing it as their duty to encourage others to vote. The political organization Ghana Decides led a successful campaign to encourage youth voting, much like Rock the Vote in the States.

    4. Ghana Decides

  4. Women and Politics
    There were three women running for Vice President in these elections. Coming from the States, this to me was amazing. Women still hold a pathetic number of seats in parliament in Ghana, and women run into obstacles to running for office, such as raising sufficient funds for a campaign. But seeing these three vice-presidential candidates were inspiring.
  5. Change Makers
    Believe me, there are many problems concerning politics in Ghana. But there is also a hopeful generation that is willing to change that. Political organizations, NGO’s, citizen journalists and the like all recognize the problems and are making waves to solve these problems.

I’m in no means saying that Ghana is a perfect democracy. There isn’t a such thing. But I do think these points above are just many that we in the US can learn from Ghana’s political process.

the GAMBIA: Homecoming

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The 2013 International Roots Festival is returning this spring to the Gambia. It’s a biennial event in which the West African nation reaches out to Africans in the Diaspora with a simple two-worded message:

“Welcome home.”

The festival itself is built around the work of American author Alex Haley, who traced his familial heritage to the Gambia in his book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The fishing village where Kunta Kinteh was born (and where his descendants remain) is still where, as is the island fort where he and other African captives were held before being shipped to America as slaves.

It’s also where a select number of festivalgoers will symbolically embrace their own African roots in a symbolic initiation ceremony called the futampaf.

I attended the festival in 2011, my first time on African soil. Those will forever be ten special days in my life. The YouTube slideshow above is the product of those ten days.

For more about my Gambian experience, look on the AFRICA page under West Africa, where you’ll find a series of articles titled WEST AFRICA JOURNAL.

And check IBIT in the days to come for more detailed information on this year’s RootsFest, and how you can be there yourself.

NEW ORLEANS: Roll, Zulu!

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Zulu king, Mardi Grtas, New orleans

Zulu king, Mardi Gras, New Orleans — image property of nola.com

Mardi Gras Day this year falls in the middle of Black History Month. You can see some of that history in motion this morning when the Krewe of Zulu rolls through the streets of the Crescent City.

New Orleans is the city that taught America how to party, and every year during Carnival season, it gives a refresher course. For the last three weeks, it’s been parades large and small, day and night, fancy-dress balls known as cotillions, floats and flambeaux.

It all comes to a raucous, joyous head today, Fat Tuesday — or in French, Mardi Gras.

By now, the Skeletons, or Skull and Bones gangs, have already awakened the sleepy residents of predominantly black neighborhoods, dressed head to toe in black-and-white skeleton costumes and banging pots, pans and tambourines as they shout, “WAKE UP! YOU NEXT!”

But the official kickoff of Mardi Gras Day comes at 8 a.m. Central time, when the Krewe of Zulu rolls their parade through the streets of New Orleans, members dressed in their traditional black face, Afro wigs and grass skirts, handing down their now-famous Zulu coconuts.

(NOTE: In New Orleans, all Mardi Gras parades roll. To say anything else instantly marks you as a tourist.)

And that’s the moment when Carnival and Black History Month converge.

The krewes are the private social organizations that put on the big parades, with marching bands and gaudily decorated floats towed by tractors, each manned by costumed members throwing all manner of trinkets — some of which require parental guidance — to hundreds of thousands of spectators.

Zulu was the first black krewe officially recognized by the city. These days, the Krewe of Zulu holds equal standing with Rex, one of the oldest original all-white Mardi Gras krewes, which originated many of the Mardi Gras traditions that still exist today.

The kings of Zulu and Rex formally open the festivities together the day before on Lundi Gras, Fat Monday, when the mayor officially turns over the city streets to them.

But it hasn’t all been smiles and good times for Zulu. When the organization began back in the early 1900s, fun wasn’t really the point.

Zulu began as what’s known in New Orleans as a “social aid and pleasure club,” which collected due from its members. Together with black churches, these clubs formed a financial and social safety net for black New Orleans, a role both still play today.

The club dues collected served as a kind of life insurance, a pool of funds that members could tap into when times were hard — a frequent occurrence for black working men in the NOLA. And when you died, your dues paid for your funeral, which club members would put on for you.

Zulu banner

Zulu banner


Zulu was not the only such club in New Orleans, but were easily the best-known, and still are.

New Orleans Online offers a detailed history of Zulu here.

The early 1900s also was a time when black New Orleanians weren’t allowed to take part in the “mainstream” Mardi Gras activities. Joining the established krewes was “by invitation only” — and if you weren’t white, you weren’t invited.

You didn’t even show your black face on the main parade routes of St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street except at your own — considerable — risk.

The response of black neighborhoods was to hold their own Carnival parades and create their own Mardi Gras traditions, one of which became the Zulus, who set out to mock every aspect of “traditional” Mardi Gras.

Their parades were sponsored by neighborhood bars, a marriage of convenience for both the parade goers and the local “watering holes,” which could count on overflow crowds on parade days.

Not until 1968 did the Zulu parade roll on St. Charles and Canal. It’s been a mainstream parade ever since.

Zulu has had its share of controversy, especially back in the 1960s, when a lot of black folks in town felt that its black face and grass skirt get-ups were demeaning to an increasingly self-aware Black America. At one point, their membership shrank to a mere 16 men.

One of them was my father, who was as proud of being a Zulu as he was having been a Navy Seabee in the Pacific during World War 2.

Stubbornness is a major character trait — some would say character flaw — in New Orleans. It was that stubbornness that led those last 16 to hold out and hang on in the face of all the scorn heaped upon them.

In the years that followed, Zulu not only survived, but grew and ultimately flourished. The annual Zulu Ball became of the city’s major Carnival events, and one of its most highly prized invitations.

Today, Zulu finds itself at eye level with every other major krewe in New Orleans, known as much for its charity work, feeding poor families during holiday seasons, and for sponsoring local schools and college scholarships as for its noisy, gaudy parades. Their continued existence is a testament to the creative, defiant, joyously stubborn spirit of black New Orleans.

And they’re rolling right now. If you want to see them live, and you have the time, go to the WDSU webcam…right this second.

Roll, Zulu!

THE ZULU COCONUT
After Zulu started rolling on the mainstream parade routes in 1968, it didn’t take long for the Zulu coconut to eclipse the doubloon as the most cherished of all Mardi Gras “throws.”

These are real coconuts, each one individually gilded and decorated by hand by Zulu members, who make up the designs themselves.

But there was a problem.

Tossing out plastic beads and fake gold doubloons was no big deal, but throwing Zulu coconuts could be life-threatening. More than a few parade goers who lacked the receiving skills of, say, a Jerry Rice ended up getting brained by these things. Zulu became the target of so many lawsuits that insurance companies wouldn’t go near them.

Finally, the Louisiana legislature stepped in, passing a law that exempted Zulu from liability — provided they handed out their coconuts to the crowds. No more throwing.

Every so often, some overly exuberant Zulu member forgets himself and flings one, but for the most part, they stick to the rule. Which means spectators can go home with their beloved coconuts — without a detour to the emergency room.

It also meant that fewer parade goers would even get a shot at going home with a Zulu coconut, making them even more prized than they already were.

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All on a Mardi Gras Day
NEW ORLEANS: Streetcars and Baby Dolls

MOROCCO in black

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Medina of Fes, Morocco

Medina of Fes, Morocco — © Typhoonski | Dreamstime.com

The land known as “the Western Kingdom” has a reputation for anti-black prejudice almost as old as its mosques, and as current as today’s headlines.

When you first look at Morocco, the images are stunning — mountains, deserts, valleys, uninterrupted miles of beaches on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

Then you look at the way blacks are treated in Morocco, and the picture changes. Dramatically.

Ethnically, Morocco is 99 percent Arab and Berber. A sizable number of the remaining 1 percent are black.

And from all appearances, many among that 99 percent never let them forget it.

Blacks in Morocco, be they natives, immigrants from elsewhere on the Mother Continent or black Americans, will tell you that many Moroccans use the word “African” as an epithet, ignoring the fact that Morocco is in Africa.

Not an easy trick, ignoring geography, but a lot of Moroccans seem to have mastered it.

Last fall, the French cable news channel France 24 showed a Moroccan newsweekly magazine reporting on the increase of clandestine immigrants to Morocco from sub-Saharan Africa coming into the country. Its title: “Le péril noir.”

The black peril — or, if you will, the black menace.

It also shows the cover of a different Moroccan magazine, written in Arabic, depicting what appears to be African immigrants standing in front of a building. Its cover title: “The black crickets invading Morocco’s north.”

I’ve seen black people referred as varying forms of wildlife over the years, but being likened to a plague of insects is a new one for me.

“DIRTY BLACK MAN, BLOODY NEGRO”
Above that, a young student from Guinea, in Morocco to study computing, describes his life among Moroccan Arabs:

peril-noir

“Often, when I’m just walking down the street, people will call me a “dirty black man” or call me a slave. Young Moroccans have physically assaulted me on several occasions, for no reason, and passers-by who saw this didn’t lift a finger to help me. All my friends are black and they have all had similar experiences. Even the girls get insulted in the street. To avoid getting hurt, I now try to ignore the insults. But if someone starts to hit me, what can I do? I have to defend myself…”

France 24 changed the speaker’s name and obscured his pic for his own safety.

This isn’t the first time or place in North Africa that I’ve heard about this, but Morocco may be the worst.

In a lengthy article for the Afrik-News site, Smahane Bouyahia puts it this way:

“In Morocco, and north Africa, there is a serious problem of racism towards Black people. Called “Black Africans,” they are considered descendants of slaves and labeled “hartani”—literally, “second-rate free men”—or even worse, “aâzi”—which translates to “bloody Negro”.

“Moroccans are known to be racially prejudiced towards people with darker skin shades. In Morocco and the rest of the Maghreb, Black people have long been subject to different forms of discrimination. Constantly persecuted, insulted, abused and even assaulted, black people are subject to humiliating conditions on daily basis.”

You can read the entire Afrik-News article here.

SLAVERY NEVER ENDED
None of this is new. Consider this telling observation from French historian Pierre Vermeren, who has published several books about Morocco:

“Slavery was never officially abolished. The French Protectorate at the beginning of the 20th century, simply (forbade) the act. But the initiative never came from Moroccan society itself.”

One of my readers is a young black woman born and reared in Morocco, now living in central Africa. “I couldn’t wait to get out of there!” she told me.

Here’s what she had to say about growing up in “the Western Kingdom:”

“…as you spend more time there you get to understand what the insults in Arabic mean. You get to understand that they are really calling you the N-word, and not just teasing you. I always tell my friends (black or not) that it’s a great place to go as a visitor, not so much to live there if you’re Black.”

That’s the key to it, appearing to be of African descent.

When blogger Matthew Helmke, a white man, wrote of the abuses of Moroccan blacks he witnessed at an immigration office in the famous city of Fes, a black American woman living in Rabat left this comment in response:

“I can’t tell you how many times I have been spat at on the street and have had the most inappropriate things done to me believing that I am Sub-Saharan African and that I have no recourse…Yes, I am black and so could be Moroccan but they know that I am not Moroccan; I am different. So it is alright to spit. Mind you: They know that Europeans are different, but they would NEVER think to spit.”

Even more telling than her account of racist treatment at the hands of non-black Moroccans is this:

“My Moroccans friends are shocked some even outraged when I tell them that Morocco is the most overtly racist and xenophobic place that I have lived…when we Americans raise this, the Moroccans insist that we are projecting our issues of race unto their society! This, after I cannot get a taxi to take me to the American Embassy and I have to say no constantly to the taxi driver as he goes through the name of all the Embassies of Sub-Saharan Africa.”

“SAHRAWA”
Evidently, in the eyes of some Moroccans, you can’t really be an American if you’re black.

Then there was the Moroccan who commented in response to her remarks. He defends his homeland and points out that not all Moroccans act this way. What blogger Helmke witnessed was not racism, he says, but a kind of favoritism catering to whites, based on an inferiority complex.

But then he follows all that with this:

“People of Fes hate us people of the south and they call us ‘Sahrawa’ or black people.”

If you think I’m just cherry-picking comments calculated to cast Morocco in a negative light, just do a Google search on the term “morocco racism” and see what happens — anywhere from 15 to 20 pages of items on the subject.

When the crop is that abundant, the “picking” is easy.

I’m always of two minds when I hear stories like this. One says that if you really want to see and experience Morocco, you should, for all the reasons already mentioned, and not let anyone’s racism stop you from seeing the world.

The other mind says there are too many other places in the whole where I can go to enjoy great natural beauty, ancient history and culture, without having blatant bigotry spoil the view.

Which way will I go on Morocco? I’ll cross — or burn — that bridge when I come to it.

ALSO CHECK OUT
NORTH AFRICA: A decidedly mixed travel picture
JAPAN in black
The Middle East & North Africa in Black
EASTERN EUROPE in black
RACISM: Cuba faces its demon

the IBIT Travel Digest 12.16.12

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The good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media

©IBIT/G. Gross

©IBIT/G. Gross

DOWN AND (NOT) DIRTY EATS, WORLDWIDE
I’m not a foodie; I just like food. And I love checking out the hidden, under-sized, under-rated places. The incredible street vendor. The lovingly run Mom-and-Pop storefront.

It’s great when you do that in your hometown. When you can do it on the other side of the world, it’s magic.

So I could hardly restrain the joy when London’s The Guardian newspaper introduced me to a blog after my own heart, or at least my own palate: Culinary Backstreets.

This blog focuses on five cities — Istanbul, Athens, Barcelona, Mexico City and Shanghai. If their content is any indication, you could lose your mind — and gain some weight — in any of them.

It’s a reminder that you don’t need a fistful of Michelin stars to find a galaxy of wonderful flavors.

The specific blog post that The Guardian locked in on was one about a street food paradise in an old Shanghai neighborhood that was almost lost to redevelopment.

A story like that speaks not only to my love of urban street food, but my taste for preserving and enhancing an old community instead of tearing everything down and replacing it with the new, the shiny, the sterile.

Real people, in a real community, making and selling real food. How does “urban renewal” improve on that?

ANSWER: It usually doesn’t.

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AFTER-CHRISTMAS (TRAVEL) SALES
One nice way to beat the post-holiday blues would be to score yourself some after-Christmas travel bargains, and the period between the day after NEw Year’s and Martin Luther King Jr. days is one of the best ties of year to do it.

The folks at The Motley Fool call this period “dead time” for the travel industry. I prefer to think of it as hunting season for the smart travel consumer.

To that end, the Motley Fool folks have some tips on how to snag some killer travel deals during that period.

Happy bargaining hunting.

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LUGGAGE TAGS? TRY LUGGAGE APPS
Believe it or not — and I know some of you won’t — the airlines are getting better at not losing your checked bags. Statistics from the US Department of Transportation say so. Considering that they make you pay nowadays for the “privilege” of checking them, I’d say that’s only fair.

Still, air passengers do sometimes find themselves left waiting vainly at the luggage carousel, something we’d all love to avoid. And yes, there’s an app for that.

Delta Airlines started the ball rolling with its Fly Delta app that, among other things, allows you to track your checked baggage.

The makers of Bag-Claim say their iPhone app sends a signal to your phone and your Bluetooth headset to let you know when your bag is nearby, and it continues until your bag is literally in your hand.

Another possible option, depending on whether the Federal Aviation Administration decides to loosen up its rules on the use of personal electronic devices in flight, would be to toss your own GPS tracking device into your bag.

One example would be the Pocketfinder GPS Locator. Like Fly Delta, it works with iPhones, Android phones, Windows Mobile devices…and for us digital troglodytes out there, even Blackberrys.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from Business Week
Eastern Europe’s state-owned airlines are struggling in the post-Cold War era, with some cutting services and one, Malev of Hungary, shutting down altogether. Hopes that their Western European counterparts might buy them — and thus save them — so far seem in vain.

from Associated Press via Yahoo
Can you put your smile on strike? Flight attendants for Cathay Pacific sas they intend to do just that. And no, this is not a satirical piece from The Onion. The’re serious.

from USA Today
Is South Korea’s Incheon International Airport now the world’s greatest air terminal? The Airports Council International says yes. See why, and see how the world’s other major airports fared.

LAND
from the UN News Service via allAfrica.com
The number of tourists worldwide hit the 1 billion mark in 2012, a record. And as ominously huge as that number might sound, the UN World Tourist Organization thinks that could be a good thing. Maybe even a very good thing.

from Smarter Travel
Is duty-free shopping really the bargain it’s cracked up to be? ST’s Ed Perkins says don’t believe the hype.

from Independent Traveler
If you’re traveling in Britain, better keep it down in the hotel. The hotel noise police are looking — and listening — for you.

from Travel Weekly
Washington fires a warning shot at 22 hotel operators over their hidden fees.

from Travel Weekly
Hertz competes its purchase of Dollar Thrifty rent-a-car. What was three car rental agencies not that long ago is now one. Hertz now controls 26 percent of the rental car market. The company that owns Enterprise, National and Alamo controls 50 percent. So much for competition.

from Travel Weekly
OFFICIALLY COOL: Need some exercise? Need to charge your smartphone or your laptop? The Starwood Element Hotels chain is installing exercise cycles in its hotel gyms that simultaneously let you do both. Charge your devices by burning calories? Genius.

SEA
from Friends of the Earth
The cruise industry has sent the last decade or so trying to clean up its image as an environmentally unfriendly industry. If this report card from Friends of the Earth is any indication, it’s still a work in progress.

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AFRICA
from The Star (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
Kenya launches a campaign to promote cultural tourism abroad.

from East African Business Week (Uganda) via allAfrica.com
Turkish Airlines begins flights between Istanbul and Mombasa, Kenya. Flight time, about six hours. Turkey could make a nice stopover enroute to East Africa. Hmmmm…

from The Herald (Zimbabwe) via allAfrica.com
Poaching in Africa is taking a frightening turn. Park rangers in Zimbabwe kill two elephant poachers in a shootout. The rest flee, leaving behind…mortar bombs? If poachers are using mortars, against animals or people, this is no longer a police matter. This is war.

AMERICAS
from the New York Times
Manhattan is for lovers. Book lovers, that is.

from BBC Travel
Think of Idaho and a lot of words may come to mind. “Cultural mecca” probably won’t be among them. Think again, says the BBC.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from The Guardian (London UK)
In Japan, the best skiing is found at small-scale local spots. No crowds and lots of perfect powder. Are you packing yet?

from GrindTV via Yahoo
This is how you get around China’s Mount Hua. When they say the view is to die for, they mean it. If you slip, you’ll be falling for awhile. Actually, you’ll be falling for a mile.

from Travel Weekly
Myanmar, the country most of us grew up knowing as Burma, may or may not have fully abandoned its dictatorial government and fully embraced reform — but that’s not stopping US and other Western travelers from bum-rushing this country. Good idea, or bad idea?

EUROPE
from the New York Times
There’s more to anchovies than those super-salty strips of fish most people want “held” off their pizzas — and anchovy season on the Black Sea in Turkey may be just the time and place to find out why. Ask for the hamsi.

from Reuters
Well, this is not jolly good. A TripAdvisor survey of travelers finds London not only dirty and expensive, but the second most unfriendly city in the world. Only Moscow was worse. Bloody hell, eh what!

from the Los Angeles Times
An early peek at Sochi, Russia, the Black Sea venue for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

ON MY LIST: Africa’s Camelot

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Fasil Ghebbi royal compound, Gondar, Ethiopia | © Matej Hudovernik --| Dreamstime.com

Fasil Ghebbi royal compound, Gondar, Ethiopia | © Matej Hudovernik –| Dreamstime.com

The land in northern Ethiopia left behind by that country’s Jews was once known as the Kingdom of Gondar. The Ethiopian Jews are gone, but Gondar remains.

Went last weekend down to the WorldBeat Cultural Center in San Diego’s Balboa Park to check out a photographic exhibit on Ethiopian Jews. It was a visit that may one day lead to a trip to East Africa.

But first, some background. The Jewish kingdom in Ethiopia is known as Beta Israel, or the House of Israel. It also was known as the Kingdom of Gondar.

Ethiopia’s Christian majority had a different name for them — falashas, meaning invaders, exiles, aliens. It was a clue to what they had in store for the House of Israel.

Ethiopian Jews were persecuted for centuries.

It got worse in the 1600s, when the Portugese arrived and convinced Ethiopia’s rulers that Judaism was a threat. The Ethiopian Jews were attacked, forced to become Christians and then sold into slavery. Their ancient history books and religious texts were burned.

Those who could neither fight nor flee killed themselves.

Modern times weren’t much better. A 1935 invasion by Italy killed hundreds of Ethiopian Jews. From 1977 to 1987, then-Marxist dictator Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam made the falashas his pet project, banning Judaism, forcing them off their farms, forcing 12-year-old boys into the army.

GOOD-BYE PERSECUTION, HELLO RACISM
Israel began airlifting Ethiopian Jews in earnest in 1991. Since then, more than 80,000 have emigrated to Israel, with another 35,000 born there — a noble gesture and one of the world’s great “feel good” stories.

Not all Israelis welcomed these newcomers, though. Ethiopian Jews who fled religious persecution in East Africa now found themselves facing racism in Israel.

One Israeli immigration official described them as “being a backward element…their development and mental outlook is that of children.” Black Americans who know their own history will have no trouble decoding those comments.

These days, there are very few Jews left in Ethiopia. However, as I was researching this history, I learned something else.

Gondar still exists.

Today, it’s both a city and a separate district known as a woreda, with a population of about 235,000. But this was once the imperial capital of Ethiopia. From the 12th century to the 20th, a series of emperors called this place home.

Some of those imperial homes still stand today in what is known as Fasil Ghebbi, the Royal Enclosure, a walled 19-acre compound of raised walkways, connecting tunnels…and a half-dozen castles, monasteries, churches and other buildings.

It is this complex that gave Gondar the nickname “the Camelot of Africa.”

The entire compound is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, headed up by Fasilides Castle, named for the Ethiopian emperor who built it and was the first of a string of Ethiopian emperors to call it home.

It also includes a massive baptismal font still used today for the annual religious celebration known as Timket, which Ethiopians celebrate around the world.

THE BEES THAT SAVED A CHURCH
Nowadays, we all know about Africanized bees — the so-called “killer bees” — that were brought to Brazil in a scientific experiment, only to escape in 1958 and slowly make their way north, terrorizing nations as they went.

In Ethiopia, however, these bees may be viewed a bit more kindly.

It has to do with the Debre Birhan Selassie Church, also known as the Trinity Church, built in the 1600s by the Christian Ethiopian emperor Iyasu II. Its walls and ceiling are literally covered with paintings of Biblical scenes.

When Sudanese Muslims led by a man who called himself “the Mahdi” invaded Ethiopia in 1888, bent on forcibly converting Ethiopia to Islam, they destroyed 43 of Gondar’s 44 churches — all except Emperor Iyasu’s church.

Legend has it that when the Mahdi’s men came to burn it down, the bees kept in the church orchard took exception to that… strenuously.

Again and again, they came back to torch the church — but the bees, for whatever reason, were just not havin’ it. The Mahdi’s men, tired of getting the Hell stung out of them, eventually took the hint and moved on.

There’s also a belief that an archangel with a flaming sword fended off the Mahdi’s attackers. No disrespect to archangels, but my money’s on the bees.

Either way, the Trinity Church and all its 400-year-old floor-to-ceiling paintings still stand today. If you want to get pictures of those paintings, bring a tripod for your camera; no flash photography is allowed inside.

IT’S A “G” THING
Gondar sits relatively high in the bowl of a mountain valley 7,000 feet high — too high, apparently, for the malaria-carrying mosquitoes that plague the lower countryside. Historians think that might be one reason Fasilides chose this spot to build his imperial capital.

Others believe it was a “G” thing, literally. According to legend, an archangel prophesied that the Ethiopian capital would be built in a town whose name began with a “G.”

When you look at Fasil Ghebbi, you see a place that, in its heyday, must have have displayed great beauty, majesty, dignity. But inside the palace walls, some serious mischief was afoot — plots, betrayals, junior family members gaining the throne by murdering their elders.

Shakespeare would’ve loved this place. Some of the folks who lived within these walls could’ve taught Machiavelli a few tricks. In the words of ethiopiatravel.com:

“The battlements and towers evoke images of chivalrous knights on horseback and of ceremonies laden with pageantry and honor. Other, darker, reverberations recall chilling echoes of…plots and intrigues, tortures and poisonings.”

Even today, the author writes, “The (compound) retains an atmosphere of antique charm mingled with an aura of mystery and violence.”

Other worthwhile sites in an around Gondar include:

  • the Qusquam Palace
  • Debre Sina Mariam in Gorgora
  • the Awramba Society, the only atheist communnity in Ethiopia

The mountains that define the valley in which Gondar sits also provide the setting for the staggeringly beautiful Semien Mountains National Park, another World Heritage Site.

The story of Beta Israel is one of travail and endurance, but the land they left behind has more than a few stories of its own — and a lot worth seeing.

Gondar is on my list.

IF YOU GO
Ethiopian Airlines has a brnad-new Boeing 787 Dreamliner that can fly you non-stop from Washington DC’s Dulles International Airport to the present-day Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. Other flights are available from Houston.

From Addis Ababa, Ethiopian has connecting flights to Gondar’s modest airport.

It would be a lot cheaper to take a bus or minibus to Gondar. It also will take a lot longer — an entire day, possibly two.

The Taye, Quara and Goha hotels are consistently the two top-rated hotels in town, with the Florida International Hotel and the Capra Walla Inn being the two bed-and-breakfast lodging most favored by TripAdvisor.