Category Archives: African Travel

ETHIOPIA — Little-known heritage

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Worshipper in Sof Omar Cave, Ethiopia

Worshipper in Sof Omar Cave, Ethiopia

The East African nation of Ethiopia has nine UNESCO World Heritage sites. But the ones to see first may be the sites that haven’t won World Heritage status…yet. If you crave both culture and adventure in your travels, these could be your perfect destinations.

Of the more than 120 historical and cultural treasures in African designated as World Heritage sites by the United Nations, nine of them are in Ethiopia, more than in any other African country.

Perhaps the best-known of these are the rock churches of Lalibela, 11 churches carved out of living rock by Ethiopian Christians in medieval times.
Ethiopian flag
Others include the Simien National Park, the historic fortified town of Harar Jugol, and the royal compound of castles known as Fasil Ghebbi.

But in the view of Ethiopian cultural and tourism officials, their country actually has another five sites worthy of World Heritage acclaim, and UNESCO — the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — is thinking about adding them to its list.

They are:

If your thing is culture, nature or adventure, at least one of these sites is guaranteed to hook your attention.

For me, I think it’s the Caves of Mystery at Sof Omar. Ten miles of caves…vaulted ceilings…pillars six stories tall…and a river running through it all, underground? Yeah, I could do that.

(Before heading into the caves, though, I’d probably want to stop off at one of those 11 rock churches in Lalibela to pray. Just sayin’.)

World Heritage recognition would bring with it more interest — and more visitors — to these places. It also might attract some outside funding to help protect places like Bales Mountain from the growing encroachment of people looking to exploit the land for profit.

Every year, UNESCO puts out its annual list of new additions to its collection of World Heritage sites. IBIT will let you know if any of these fabulous five make it onto UNESCO’s list in 2013.

But you don’t need to wait for UNESCO’s blessing to visit these sites. That’s especially true of the Dirre Sheik Hussein site, which is located inside the walls of Harar Jugol, which has already made UNESCO’s cut.

If you like the idea of seeing incredible places before the tourist masses get there, these five candidates for UNESCO’s World Heritage list should be candidates for your own to-go list.

ADDENDUM
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee is now holding its annual meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. If any decisions are made on Ethiopia five nominated sites, you’ll see it here on IBIT.

ALSO CHECK OUT:
ON MY LIST: Africa’s Camelot

The IBIT Travel Digest 6.9.13

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The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel

Yuyuan Bazaar, Shanghai, China

Yuyuan Bazaar, Shanghai, China — ©IBIT/G. Gross

WINNING ON POINTS
There are travelers who have become so adept at using credit-card points, loyalty points and frequent-flier miles that they almost never pay for trips anymore.

One of those people is Brian Kelly, who calls himself The Points Guy. If you want to see how Brian rolls — and flies — check out his site.

Meanwhile, he also recently talked to USA Today about how he does what he does.

TECHNO-TRAVEL
The New York Times has a fascinating — and perhaps somewhat disturbing — piece on the growing use of technology in our travels, especially biometrics.

We’re talking everything from fingerprint and eye scans at airport security checks to a hotel wristband with an embedded sensor chip that automatically lets you update your Facebook status.

And there’s more coming, being used not only with travelers but with employees of hotels of other establishments that serve travelers, sometimes without even their knowledge.

The day is rapidly coming, if it isn’t here already. when we may need to take a vacation as much from our technology as we do from our jobs. From here, it looks as if getting away from the job will be a lot easier.

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BETTER TRAVEL SMARTPHONE TRAVEL PICS
And speaking of technology, are you among that growing number of travelers leaving their cameras at home when they travel and taking pics and videos with their smartphone instead?

The folks at Condé Nast Traveler have produced a truly useful online slideshow with tips on how to get better travel pics with your phone.

Smartphone cameras have a lot of travelers believing that getting great snaps is now just a matter of pointing and shooting, no need to fiddle with settings as you would with a camera. Others believe their phone has no way to adjust for those differences.

Wrong and wrong.

Even if your camera is built into a phone, you still need to understand its powers and its limits. The slideshow shows the kind of results you can get when you work with both.

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AFRICAN AIRLINES: GOING LONG, GOING BIG
Two of the big dogs among Africa’s national airlines — Ethiopian Airlines and South African Airways — appear to be going all-in with the newest ultra-lightweight, long-range jumbo jets.

According to the African Aviation Tribune, Ethiopian, the first African airline to acquire Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners, is looking to add more of them to its fleet over next several years.

Its well-reported battery problems notwithstanding, Ethiopian is said to be well pleased with the Dreamliner’s performance and already is planning new routes to take advantage of its added range.

At the tip of the Mother Continent, meanwhile, SAA is eyeing both the Dreamliner and its competitor being developed by Airbus, the A350.

With African airlines having to fly thousands of miles to reach markets in Europe, Asia and the Americas, adding modern aircraft designed to make longer flights without stopping to refuel only makes sense.

While Ethiopian and SAA are going for distance, Zimbabwe, which has been pushing hard to boost its tourism in recent years, is going for size. The country’s national airline, Air Zimbabwe, reportedly is making noises about acquiring the world’s largest civilian airliner, Airbus’ massive double-decked A380.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from CNN
Airline kicks 101 allegedly rowdy high school students off a flight. The school wants to investigate the airline. This is going to get ugly.

from the San Francisco Chronicle
In a moment of apparent sanity, the TSA reverses itself and drops its plans to allow small knives aboard airliners.

LAND
from Budget Travel
If your idea of a cable car is confined to the ones running the streets of San Francisco, you may not be ready for these. No, you definitely aren’t ready for these.

from USA Today
Free things to do in ten of the world’s great cities. SLIDESHOW

from The Guardian (London)
Simon Gandolfi, by his own description, is an out-of-shape Briton who just turned 80. So how does he celebrate eight decades of life? By flying to India and making his way back to London by motorcycle, solo. Rocking chair? What rocking chair?

from The Guardian (London)
Now, this is my idea of a European rail trip — Paris to Sicily, by train. Yes, I know Sicily is an island. And no, it doesn’t matter to the train.

from the New York Times
Bike sharing comes to Manhattan. One user finds it a mixed blessing for tourists.

SEA
from USA Today
Bad news for the cruise industry: A Harris Poll finds that the spate of shipboard fires in the last year is causing travelers to lose confidence in cruising as a travel option.

FOOD & DRINK
from USA Today
Do U know your Q? A regional breakdown of barbecue in the United States. Because unlike men, all BBQ is not created equal.

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AFRICA
from the Times of Zambia
Zambia’s Liuwa Plain National Park may be unique among the world’s land reserves in that it spends the first four months of the year underwater.

from Associated Press via Yahoo!
A UNESCO survey team finds damage to cultural artifacts done by Islamist rebels in the fabled Mali city of Timbuktu to be fare more extensive than first thought.

from the Seattle Times
Beautiful, diverse, edgy Cape Town.

AMERICAS
from the Washington Post
In San Francisco, the neighborhood known as Dogpatch, once a collection of meatpacking plants, is stepping up in class.

from NBC Travel
Tornado tourism? Yes, people actually pay to go out and look at — and pose for pictures with — tornadoes. A potential killer of a trip.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from Agence France Presse via France 24
A Chinese farmer restores a run-down section of the Great Wall of China on his own time and his own dime…about $800,000 worth of his own dimes.

from France 24
About two hours outside of Beijing, a luxury hotel opens in the birthplace of Confucius.

from France 24
Promoting South Korean tourism…Gangnam style.

EUROPE
from the San Francisco Chronicle
Is tourism in Turkey likely to take the same kind of hit from the current spate of street protests that Egyptian tourism did? In Istanbul, they don’t seem to think so.

from the New York Times
Do you love the fluid, vibrant colors of Claude Monet, the godfather of impressionism? Would you like to explore his country garden from which he drew his inspiration? You can, and without fighting your way through mobs of tourists.

from USA Today
In Europe, spending less for a hotel can actually contribute to a better travel experience. So says European travel guru Rick Steves. Been there, done there. It’s true.

from CNN
Want to chill out and kick back in style, and maybe work in a little exercise at the same time? Consider barge cruising in France. SLIDESHOW

The Gambia: RootsFest cancelled

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Plans for the biennial festival honoring those caught up in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and honoring their descendants in the African Diaspora have unraveled. Why? Who knows?

It seems there will be no International Roots Festival this year in the Gambia.

Held every two years to commemorate the trans-Atlantic slave, the festival is based on the writings of Alex Haley’s book “Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” which began in the Gambia. It was held in early February, during the dry season.

Organizers made a special point of inviting visitors from across the African Diaspora — especially from the United Kingdom, the Caribbean and the United States — to attend.

IBIT was there in 2011 and made some wonderful new friends. Among them was Aadam Muhammad from London, who had bought a travel package to return to the Gambia for this year’s festival.

It was from Aadam that I learned that the festival had been cancelled. He had confirmed it first through the London travel company through which he had bought his Gambia package, then through the national tourism board in the Gambia itself.

Disappointing as this cancellation is, the circumstances surrounding it are, in their own way, even more disturbing. Why? Because no one knows what those circumstances are.

Well, someone knows what they are. They just aren’t sharing that information with the public.

To date, the only public word on the cancellation I’ve been able to find is this terse announcement on the festival’s Web site:

“The Ministry of Tourism and Culture regrets to announce that the International ROOTS festival slated for May 2013 has been postponed till further notice. Any inconvience(sp) caused is deeply regreted.(sp)”

BIG MYSTERY
The announcement uses the word “postponed” instead of “cancelled,” but with the less tourist-friendly wet season fast approaching, the likelihood of this event being held any time in 2013 would seem pretty slim.

So what happened? So far, it’s all a big mystery. Not a word about it anywhere in Gambian news media. Nothing from the tourism ministry’s own site. Nothing from the home pages of the Gambian embassies in the US or the UK.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Aadam wasn’t having any more luck than I was, even after personally contacting the GTA’s marketing director in the Gambia:

“I asked why it was cancelled and he seemed as if he didn’t want to fully disclose the reason. When I asked him if this cancellation has been officially stated on the primary Roots homecoming festival website, he once again chose not to respond clearly. For all we know, people may still be planning to attend; purchase tickets make other arrangements.”

I sent an email to the Gambian Tourism Authority, asking what happened, using the email link the GTA provides on its Web site. The email bounced back to me moments later, almost certainly unseen by anyone.

WARNING SIGNS
In hindsight, perhaps I should’ve seen this coming.

You know how certain things, when they happen, cause the little hairs on the back of your neck to stand up? I had that sensation when I first heard that the festival, initially scheduled for February per usual, had been reset for March. March then became May, which then became June, then back to May.

When a festival date becomes a moving target, for whatever reason, that will make you nervous.

The next clue came when friends who work in Gambian hotels told me they had been furloughed, right around the time that the festival was due to take place. As red flags go, that’s a big one.

When Aadam told me of hearing of the festival’s cancellation, it confirmed my worst fears.

I don’t know what happened in the Gambia to bring this about. So far, that information seems to be a big, tightly held secret. But winning back the trust of prospective visitors to “the smiling coast of Africa” will be a daunting task, indeed.

What a letdown.

It also points to the need to cover yourself with some form of travel insurance that offers you a chance to recover all your expenses when things go wrong.

ALSO CHECK OUT
the GAMBIA: Homecoming
An African Christmas lesson
AFRICA

Your ticket to the Gambia

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Slave fort, the former James Island, Gambia River |©IBIT/Greg Gross

Slave fort, the former James Island, Gambia River |©IBIT/Greg Gross

An Africa travel expert is offering to take you to the Gambia for eleven unforgettable days, May 1-11.

Two years ago, a group of us, black American travel professionals, photographers and expats, journeyed to the Gambia for the International Roots Festival.

Among them was Gaynelle Henderson-Bailey of Washington DC.

Ahead were eight days of unique scenery, introductions into West African culture and the unbelievable warmth and friendliness of the Gambian people, who have a special place in their hearts for black Americans who visit their country.

Young men in Albreda, Gambia

Young men in Albreda, Gambia | ©Greg Gross


The two words you may hear most often while you’re there are “welcome home.”

The Gambia was made famous in America by author Alex Haley, who traced his own ancestry back to a small Gambian village in his book “Roots: The Saga of an American Family.” The village where Haley’s ancestor, Kunta Kinteh, grew up is still there, and we met some of his descendants.

We also ferried across the river to the ruins of James Island, the slave fort where Kunta and other African captives were warehoused before being loaded onto slave ships for the gruesome journey across the Atlantic Ocean to America.

And we were on hand the day that James Island was renamed Kunta Kinteh Island by the Gambian government.

The most life-changing moments came during the futampaf, the day-long rite of passage in which participants are adopted into Gambian families and given their family name.

“I’ve been traveling to Africa since I was 18,” she said. “But when I came back, my family couldn’t believe how excited I was.”

Mosque, Kaolack, Senegal | ©Greg Gross

Mosque, Kaolack, Senegal | ©Greg Gross


Two years later, Gaynelle is going back. And she’s inviting you to go with her.

Her agency, Henderson Travel Service, is offering an eight-day tour package to coincide with this year’s International Roots Festival. And those who go will experience even more than we did two years ago.

Travelers will fly on South African Airways from Washington-Dulles airport to Dakar, the capital of Senegal.

“We’ve allowed a day and a half in Senegal,” she said. “There will be a tour of Dakar, which is a thriving metropolis, and Goree Island.”

After that, it’s off by road and river ferry to the Gambia. Your stay there will include:

  • Dinner and a welcome reception.
  • The official opening of the International Roots Festival, including a colorful parade of masks, drummers, dancers and musicians.
  • A cruise up the Gambia River to the twin villages of Albreda and Juffureh, the home of the Kinteh clan, as well as to Kunta Kinteh Island.
  • A two-day stay in Kanilai for the futampaf.
  • A boat ride through the Makasutu Cultural Forest.
  • A gala dinner and awards ceremony.

The cost: $2,999 per person. You could pay that for airfare alone.

When it comes to African travel, Gaynelle Henderson-Bailey has quite the heritage of her own. Henderson Travel Service has been around since 1955, the first fully appointed, African-American travel agency in the United States.

Back in 1957, its founders chartered a plane to take American travelers to Ghana to celebrate that country’s independence — the first black African colony to gain its independence from Europe. The agency has been promoting African travel ever since. So these folks definitely know their way around the Mother Continent.

If this sounds like a great trip — and believe me, it is — Gaynelle tells me she has a few spaces available, but you need to act fast. If you’ve ever dreamed of an African homecoming, you won’t get a better chance.

CONTACT:
Henderson Travel Service

And if they ask you how you heard about their Gambia tour package, tell them you heard about it from Yaya Colley on IBIT.

Row of kora players, International Roots Festival, Banjul, Gambia | ©Greg Gross

Row of kora players, International Roots Festival, Banjul, Gambia | ©Greg Gross

ALSO CHECK OUT:
West Africa Journal

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.

AIRLINES: A new African bird

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Airbus A319 of Gambia Bird

Airbus A319 of Gambia Bird

The Gambia has a new national airline linking together West Africa, just in time for this year’s International Roots Festival. But its implications for West African travel extend far beyond that.

There’s a new bird in the skies over West Africa — a Gambia Bird.

From its hub in the Gambian capital city of Banjul, the airline first took to the skies last November with a paired of leased Airbus A319s.

Gambia Bird’s primarily flies to West African countries belonging to ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States. However, it also connects the Gambia to Europe via London Gatwick and Barcelona, Spain.

One small airline for West Africa. One big step for West African tourism.

The airline’s name itself is a clever play on Gambian tourism. Birdwatching is huge in the Gambia, and people come from all over to get a glimpse of some of the nearly 600 species of birds — some of which are flirting with extinction.

Its startup comes just in time for the 2013 International Roots Festival. But its importance to the Gambia and the rest of West Africa extends far beyond that one event.

gambia bird route map

Prior to this, few African airlines and even fewer non-African carriers served the Gambia, Africa’s smallest country. That left most travelers either having to reach the Gambia via Senegal Airlines from Dakar or traveling overland from one of the Gambia’s neighbors.

Road travel is seldom a comfortable option in Africa. If anything, driving for hours or days over beat-up, overtaxed and under-maintained African roads should be reserved for those who find value in suffering.

Gambia Bird not only gives West Africa a fresh set of airline connections, but also makes it easier for Europeans to fly directly to “the smiling coast of Africa,” as the Gambia is known. It’s also another option for Americans wishing to visit the Gambia, since there are no direct flights as yet to the Gambia from the United States.

Gambia Bird represents another European venture into the African airline market. It was founded by the German low-fare airline Germania, which offers some seriously cheap airfares within the European continent.

At reported in the IBIT Travel Digest, Britain’s low-fare easyJet already has set up shop in East Africa and is looking to expand.

Little by litte, with a push from European airlines exploiting an open market, Africa’s frayed web of airline travel is slowly being stitched together.

If Gambia Bird succeeds, don’t be surprised to see new hotels follow on the heels — or the wingtips — of this new airline.

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.

the IBIT Travel Digest 2.3.13

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The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel

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When you’ve finished overdosing on Super Bowl hype, chips and dip, come refresh your mind with a peek at what’s happening in the world of travel

PRICELINE+KAYAK=?
We are soon to find out, because according to Travel Weekly, the Federal Trade Commission has signed off on Priceline’s bid to buy the popular travel search engine for $1.8 billion.

That pretty much makes the sale a done deal, which could go down as soon as next month.

Snapping up Kayak gives Priceline a powerful search tool to tie in with its existing travel sales service. Less clear is how this marriage will benefit the traveling consumer.

On the other hand, Priceline has said that Kayak will to function as an independent entity, so we’ll see what happens.

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CAR SHARING: THE BIG BOYS TAKE NOTICE
You know that a new way of doing things really works when the big, old-line corporations start diving into it. That’s what has happened with car sharing.

Car sharing is kind of the automotive version of couchsurfing. It got its start in Switzerland in 1948 and took hold in the rest of Europe in the 1970s.

Once you become a member of a car-sharing service, you can rent a car for an entire day, a few hours or even a few minutes, if that’s all you need. You pick up the car in town, use it around town, drop it off in town. Cheaper and often more convenient than conventional car rentals, more flexibility and independence than taxis.

The concept doesn’t appeal only to travelers. Some people who don’t need a car full-time every day are actually getting rid of their own wheels (and the costs that go with them) and resorting to car sharing instead.

It’s also a good way to get a real-world feel for operating an unfamiliar vehicle type, whether it’s a pick-up truck or an electric car — without having to put up with a car salesman.

One of the pioneers in this field has been Zipcar, available in 34 states and the District of Columbia, as well as Ontario and Vancouver in Canada, as well as Barcelona, Spain and five cities in the United Kingdom.

How well does this concept work? Well enough for some of the rental car industry’s biggest players to take notice.

Hertz is answering its challenge by creating a car-sharing service of its own which it calls Hertz On-Demand. Enterprise followed suit with what they call WeCar. Even U-Haul has jumped into this game with U Car Share.

Avis, too, is buying the Zipcar concept. It’s also buying Zipcar…for $500 million.

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MORE (CRUISE) SHIPS AHOY
At this point, I’m not sure if the cruise industry’s shipbuilding binge is entering its second decade or its third. The one thing I do know: It’s not stopping.

Royal Caribbean, locked in mortal combat with Carnival for the dominant share of the market, is showing every sign of both expanding and updating its fleet super-sized cruisers.

They’re already moving to trademark the names of six new Oasis-class vessels that haven’t even been built yet.

The Oasis-class — led by its namesake, the Oasis of the Seas — is currently the largest cruise ship afloat, maxing out at 5,400 passengers.

But Royal Caribbean isn’t stopping there. The line also is working on a new, slightly downsized cruise ship, the Sunshine-class, designed to transport and entertain a mere 4,100 passengers at a time.

This ship is so new, the first one hasn’t been named yet, much less built. But according to Travel Weekly, Royal Caribbean has already committed to building a second one.

I have no idea how the folks at Carnival will respond to this, but you know that they will be respond. It’s like an arms race, only with oceanview suites, water slides and Bahama Mamas.

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AND FINALLY…
If you were (or perhaps still are) a regular viewer of the 1970s TV series M*A*S*H, you might vaguely recall lots of occasional references to some mythical town or village whose name sounded like “Wee-John-Boo.”

Well, it turns out that Uijeongbu is no myth. It’s a real place, where the real Mobile Army Surgical Hospital operated during the Korean War. And in South Korea, its legacy extends far beyond film and television.

The people of Uijeongbu, desperately hungry during the war, made meals of whatever they could get their hands on. The result was a dish the locals called budaejjigae, Korean for “army base stew.”

Basically, it combined traditional Korean ingredients with whatever leftovers the locals could scrounge or smuggle from U.S. Army mess tents.

The shooting eventually stopped (the Korean War has never formally ended), but “army base stew” remained a staple of Uijeongbu — and Julie Wan of the Washington Post took advantage of a visit to her family in Seoul to seek out this most unconventional dish in its birthplace.

And as you’ll see when you read her story, she found it.

If you know the origins of things like gumbo, barbecue or fried chicken, you can relate to budaejjigae. Cookbooks today are full of dishes devised by poor, hungry people who tossed anything and everything into a stew pot and used a slow fire, a lot of spices and their imaginations to create something unforgettable.

If I ever find myself in South Korea, I may need to make a small side trip to Uijeongbu.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from Travel Weekly
JetBlue experimenting with an expedited security service that could — maybe — speed you past regular airport security lines. For a fee, of course.

from Smarter Travel
Visual advice on how to dress for air travel. Aimed mainly at women, but the fellas can learn a few things from this, too. SLIDESHOW

from Smarter Travel
The TSA shuts down an airport terminal in Atlanta because of an unattended…toothbrush? You can’t make this stuff up. I mean, those Colgate bombs can be deadly…

from Smarter Travel
Did you know that fresh oranges, in addition to being healthy for you on the ground, can help keep you hydrated in the air? These and other healthy food tips for air travelers.

LAND
from Travel Weekly
Hertz now letting its Gold Plus Rewards members upgrade their rental cars via their smartphone app.

SEA
from Travel Weekly
Carnival cancels Belize port calls for two of its biggest ships through 2013. The cruise line says the port is overcrowded with ships.

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AFRICA
from Tanzania Daily News (Tanzania) via allAfrica.com
Serengeti National Park, already a UN World Heritage Site, wins a prestigious international tourism award.

from The Star (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
The German cruise ship MV Astor makes a historic port call at Lamu, setting aside fears of kidnappings by Somali bandits.

from The Star (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
Are British Army units training in East Africa arming and equipping poachers?

AMERICAS
from CNN Travel
Today’s Super Bowl is more than just a battle between two pro football teams. It’s also a tale of two cities, Baltimore and San Francisco, and how they play. SLIDESHOW

from NBC News
New York City’s Grand Central Terminal celebrated its centennial last Friday. The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty may be great monuments, but if you want to locate New York’s beating heart, you’ll find it here.

from the New York Times
Yes, you can send an email to the Bahamas, but a mail boat can send you there.

from Travel Weekly
Haiti officially protests the latest U.S. State Department travel advisory on visiting the island nation, which reads in art: “No one is safe from kidnapping, regardless of occupation, nationality, race, gender or age.” State denies trying to discourage Haitian tourism.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from Yomiuri Shimbun
Deep in a forest, well away from the mad urban bustle of Tokyo, a village of Japanese craftsmen hand-builds elegant wood furniture with skills honed over 15 centuries.

from France 24
Missed out on the New Year’s Day festivities Jan. 1? Well, there’s still Chinese New Year coming up on Feb. 10, and the place to party is Hong Kong.

from CNTV
A small lake fishing village in China’s Yunnan province becomes a hidden tourist gem.

EUROPE
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Feel yourself choking on mobs of tourists in Venice? Find a way to go eat with some of the locals.

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Is this the world’s most beautiful train ride? It’s in Norway.

from Travel Weekly
The Waldorf-Astoria hotel chain is making a serious move on Europe. With hotels already in London, Rome and Versailles, the luxury brand is now opening a Waldorf-Astoria in Berlin. And they’re not done. SLIDESHOW

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.

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NORTH AFRICA: A decidedly mixed travel picture

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© Jeffrey Thompson | Dreamstime.com

© Jeffrey Thompson | Dreamstime.com

Resumption of deadly political unrest has Egypt looking like a no-go zone again and Algeria has ongoing issues beyond what the mainstream media focus on, but one major cruise line is returning to Tunisia.

For awhile, it seemed as if things were looking up for travel to Egypt. The political winds of the Arab Spring had swept longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak from power and most Egyptians seemed happy about their prospects for the future.

Tahrir Square was no longer the scene of daily demonstrations and clashes with police and counter-protestors. Tours of historic sites in and around Cairo and Nile River cruises, cancelled during the troubles, were resuming. It was all looking good.

For awhile.

The conflict between the Islamists who back the new president, Mohammed Morsi, and secular Egyptians who fear that Morsi is trying to ram an Islamic state down their throats has erupted into daily street violence that so far refuses to die down. Dozens have been killed, well over 100 hurt.

Morsi has put a state of emergency in effect in three different Egyptian cities, none of which is Cairo, which means the unrest extends well beyond the Egyptian capital.

IBIT says: If you were thinking about making that trip to the Giza pyramids this year, you might want to think a little longer.

To the west, Algeria also looks shaky. Algerians have been protesting for the better part of three years over things like a housing shortage, high food prices, unemployment and corruption, and those issues are far from resolved.

The recent raid on a natural gas facility by radical Islamic terrorists and the bloody government counterstrike pretty much seals the deal.

Cruise ship Rotterdam of the Holland America Line

Cruise ship Rotterdam of the Holland America Line

IBIT says: You go to Algeria now at your own risk — and at the moment, the risk looks pretty high.

The news isn’t all bad, though.

The cruise line Holland America has returned making port calls in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began two years ago.

A spokesman for Holland America Line tells IBIT that the cruise ship Rotterdam is scheduled to make three Mediterranean cruises this fall of 11, 22 or 32 days between Western Europe, Italy and the Holy Land.

Each will be making a stop at La Goulette, the port of Tunis.

Tunis is Tunisia’s capital. It’s also an ancient city whose existence predates the Roman Empire. This originally was Carthage, the land that produced Hannibal, the general who invaded Europe, led an army with elephants across the Alps and for a time, scared the Romans right out of their tunics.

When the Romans returned the favor and overran Carthage, they tried their best to destroy every trace of evidence that the Carthaginians ever existed. They didn’t quite succeed, though, and you’ll find the remnants of that glorious past in Tunis.

Plus, Tunisians are wonderfully welcoming and friendly to visitors, in the true tradition of Islam.

IBIT says: If you’ve got the time as well as the cash why not? Just monitor events closely and make sure you have travel insurance.

Morocco also remains a quiet and stable travel destination these days. However, Morocco may have some issues of its own regarding “us,” which IBIT will be exploring in the coming days.