It took us over three months to cross the country by bus, reaching San Francisco just in time to make my flight back to the East coast. I slept in my old twin bed, ate my mom’s cooking, took a deep breath, then flew 24 hours to South Africa.

Maya had been studying abroad in Johannesburg for the previous five months, and I needed to go there myself to understand her experience. I crossed the Atlantic overnight, stopped over in Paris, changed planes and grabbed a croissant, then stared out the window for the next ten hours watching the farmland of France, the Mediterranean Sea, the dry Sahara, and the green Congo pass below.

On my first day in South Africa Maya brought me into Kliptown, an informal settlement in Soweto where 40,000 people share 40 running water taps. I met her friends at the SKY youth center, as well as the subject of Maya’s documentary—Clap-and-Tap pastor (an afro-centric branch of Christianity), Gift, who now considers Maya his daughter.

Children ran to us and playfully jumped into our arms as we walked the dirt alleys of Kliptown. I shared laughter and hugs with these new beings, so quick to joy, but as night began to fall and the cloud of smog settled in the air from the thousands of coal burning makeshift furnaces (which heat the homes fortunate enough to afford them) we said goodbye and “shop, shop” (cool, cool) to our friends. We got into our car and returned to our warm hostel while our brothers and sisters in Kliptown returned to their shacks, with no running water and too little food. Maya experienced this day after day for five months.

We left Joberg heading East, past the mine dumps and dry savannah and out to Kruger National Park—a vast sanctuary protecting the land and other animals from the humans.

For three weeks we explored South Africa, sharing the roads with rhinos, elephants, and baboons (though in Kruger lions and leopards kept us inside our automobile). In the Kingdom of Swaziland we immersed ourselves in the savannah climbing “Executioner’s Rock” and sharing game paths with warthogs, zebras and hippos. We wandered the streets of Durban and bought spices in the Indian market, and trekked through the seaside pastures of the Wild Coast.

On the shore of the Indian Ocean we stayed at one particularly magical hostel called Bulungula. The dirt road into the remote village of Nqileni was accessible only by Land Rover driven expertly by the one Mr. Rufus—an old Xhosa man with eyes soft and blue from cataracts. The hostel sat between the rolling pastures and old black mangroves trees that stood atop the dunes between the pastures and the sea. Solar panels and a small wind turbine generated all of the electricity the compound needed. The toilets were all composting—wasting none of the precious freshwater. The grey-water from the urinals and sinks fed a grove of papaya and banana trees. The delicious Xhosa bread and stews were all baked in a solar oven. Every wall was a piece of art, and inside every toilet stall there was a different mural.

When we asked for the key to our rondavel hut (made of cow dung and pasture grass), we were told that there are no locks here because no one steals–a stark difference from Johannesburg which has one of the highest murder rates in the world. At an orange farm outside of Kruger, while Maya and I slept soundly in our dorm room, a French family was robbed at gunpoint in their private Chalet on the same land. In another remote hostel just a few hours down the coast, security guards roamed the grounds at night, women tried desperately to sell beads by falling at our feet and tying them around our ankles, and children offered to sing for tourists then begged for change.

But the village of Bulungula owns 40 percent of the hostel, and receives 100 percent of the profits from activities like the herbalist tour, guided fishing, and the village tour. The people were materially poor, but they were not dependant on handouts from whites. In other hostels the villagers were kept outside the gate, but at Bulungula the children filled the communal room of the hostel to dance to the stereo, while the men and women gathered together conversing under candle light.

We spent our days exploring the Wild Coast’s hills and cliffs, trekking along with the cows, goats and sheep that grazed freely in unfenced pastures. At night, as the full moon rose over the Indian Ocean, we would return to the hostel to sit by the fire, drum, dance, or play Jenga with the children. We were sad to leave but other adventures in the Drakensburg zMountains called us.

We arrived back in Boston, and before any jet lag could settle on us we were off to New York City to see Daft Punk on Coney Island. The robot/astronaut DJs took the stage and drowned our egos in sound and light. Thousands of beautiful freaky people became one, dancing and celebrating together.

After the concert Maya and I stood on the sidewalk and watched unique human beings stream by us like a galaxy of stars. After South Africa, where so much keeps people divided, it was a wonderful reminder of that all that space between us is truly just an illusion.

We drove North visiting Maya’s family in Maine and continuing over the border to meet my family in Canada. My mother grew up in northern Nova Scotia, the oldest of eight children. Soon after we arrived my aunts and uncles and all their little children gathered at our house. We kept my little cousins busy gathering raspberries, adventuring into the forest, and performing in talent shows (the djembe drum I brought back from South Africa was a big hit) while Nana, my mother and her sisters prepared dinner. We ate mackerel and snow crab (brought to us by my “granduncle” Jackie), potatoes, green beans, and vegetables from Papa’s garden, bread and rolls from Nana’s kitchen, and for desert her delicious blueberry pie, the berries freshly picked from Papa’s fields.

My great grandfather built and operated a water-powered sawmill with his son, my grandfather does the same with his son Chris. By taking only what they need and replanting where they cut, the forests and fields (they harvest blueberries) have sustained the family for generations.

Since the passing of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) in 1994, business has been more difficult. Their small mill, operated by three men who only cut what they can re-plant and replenish, must now compete with the large unsustainable U.S. logging corporations. My uncles now leave their families for several months a year to work on the tar sands oil operations in the wild west of Alberta just to maintain their standard of living. I asked my grandfather about the situation, and he just shakes his head when trying to imagine how people can cut down forests and not re-plant.

I left Nova Scotia with a full belly and a full heart, already longing for the day when I’ll return. But I had a plane to catch and 23 strangers to drive from San Francisco into the Black Rock desert for Burning Man.

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Just outside DC we passed the affluent Virginia suburbs of Mclean and Vienna, stuffed with upscale shopping facilities, fat houses and mega churches that look like concert venues. Many of the residents live off our tax dollars in some form, as congressmen, diplomats, and those employed by the “defense and intelligence” business and other highly subsidized private industries.

Across the Potomac River and into DC, I spotted the JFK library and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial; between rows shady trees and white pillared embassies, stood the dome of the capitol building (Atop the dome of the capitol building, at the highest point in Washington, DC, stands the “Statue of Freedom”. Designed by Thomas Crawford in Italy in 1854; the bronze stature was cast by slaves in the United States, and put into position in 1863).

The Washington Monument on our left loomed over a shantytown of tents and young activists that spread out across the lawn. The shantytown was part of an action called “Displace Me”, intended to encourage the government to support peace talks in Uganda where a civil war has displaced millions over the past decade.

(Meanwhile, the Uganda conflict action network reports, that “U.S. has dramatically increased its involvement and arm sales to the Horn of Africa and East Africa in the last three years“ and “direct US weapons sales increased from $39.2 million in 2005 to nearly $60 million in 2006”. I am glad to see creative democratic attempts to influence foreign policy, and I hope that the activists protest the actions of own government in both producing and selling arms to Africa, as well as the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan with equal passion.

Ethan and I met Brandon on Semester at Sea in 2004. We hadn’t heard from him since the voyage, until he got in touch with us two months ago. Brandon works for the American Council on Renewable Energy, and he invited us to volunteer at a conference that aimed to connect the efforts of the varied elements of the renewable energy industry and politicians by bringing them together in one room.

We arrived at his apartment, showered, relaxed and traded tales of our paths and adventures since SAS. Traveling around the world expanded our opportunities and the possibilities of our lives. Brandon told us of his epiphany about the future of energy in our society—the realization that renewable energy requires a quarter century commitment to shift our ingrained infrastructure. And retold tales of his adventures to Northern India, to Mount Kilimanjaro and of one particularly close encounter with a silver back gorilla in Rwanda.

“Okay so there’s me and my friend, two guides and four armed guards—so we don’t get kidnapped by raiders coming over the border from Congo. We hike for about six hours climbing up through thick, thick jungle and the only place that’s open enough to walk is where the gorillas have already stomped a trail. We get to this clearing and there’s a group of about 40 gorillas spread out, just lounging and munching on leaves. I’m walking around, just in awe, taking pictures. Then we hear this thumping sound coming down the hill toward us, and our guide turns and starts running and waving us along yelling ‘Let’s go! Let’s go!’. But I’ve got my back up against a steep berm, so there’s nowhere to go behind me. Then I hear the thumping coming closer, the leaves around me start shaking. And maybe 20 ft away this giant male silverback crashes through the bushes. And he’s huge. He’s about 600 pounds and six feet tall with his knees bent. He takes a few steps toward me and he’s staring me down. I know that you’re not supposed to look a gorilla in the eyes ‘cause they’ll take it as a challenge, but if I’m going down at the hands of a silverback gorilla I want to see it coming. He takes another hop toward me, about six feet away now. He’s just a monster, so powerful, his chest is probably four times wider than I am, and his arms are thicker than my torso and stretch out to about an eight-foot wingspan, so he could reach out and grab me by the neck if he wanted. I’m thinking, ‘alright this is it. This is going to be like a bad prison movie’. He looks over at the other gorillas then back at me. He lunges toward me, rips a tree out of the ground and Bam! smashes me in the face with it. He just grunts over me walks away. I’m on my back just stunned, but not too fucked up. But when he made the move toward me I held my camera to my chest and captured the whole sequence.”

Brandon showed us the photos of the gorilla, uncomfortably close, then moving closer and reaching for a tree, and in the next photo the gorilla is mid-swing with the tree headed for Brandon’s forehead.

That night we picked up a lively group of passengers in front of the Capitol for a fundraiser cruise. Friends and former co-workers, SAS alumni, and my brother, his fiancée Marcie, who were in town from California, and Marcie’s parent’s from Ohio all piled aboard. I got behind the wheel and cruised the bus through Adams Morgan distric, our passengers hooting out the windows. The DC bar rabble, mostly recent college graduates who’ve migrated to DC, cheered and shouted back to us. I pulled the bus over letting the party spread out onto the street—spawning drum circles on the sidewalk, and a steady stream of people in and out of the bus. Eventually I herded everyone back on board and set off again, always with a couple of new passengers.

We passed through Georgetown. The flocks of matching striped shirts, the young professionals to-be, looked either dumbfounded or perturbed by the blue bus and our wild cargo. Our next stop was a pool hall in Arlington where we stayed until closing. Then, before dropping off our passengers, we visited the Marine Corp Memorial near Arlington National cemetery. It’s a cool spot, quiet at night—the giant statues of soldiers struggling to raise a flag pole at Iwo Jima. Around the memorial bronze plaques read: Tripoli, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua, and other places and dates where US Marines have died defending America by invading other countries.

Just before sunrise we dropped off the last of our passengers. Burkey joined our former SAS shipmates Ashley and Fernando at the ‘Displace Me’ shantytown. Exhausted, I drove past the Capitol Hill, and parked in a Boys and Girls Club parking lot.

After a few hours of sleep, the hot sun roused us out of bed. We fetched water and cooked breakfast outside the bus. That parking lot would be our home in DC, and it wasn’t long before we got to know some of the kids in the area. A couple of boys helped Ethan and I wash dishes at a spigot behind an apartment building, intrigued by the novelty of washing dishes outside. By the afternoon kids crowed outside the bus, asking questions and pushing toward the door. We let the excited little people on board to jump on the bed and bang drums. One girl led the group chanting the chorusus of popular hip-hop songs, calling out the names of everyone around the circle for dance solos.

“Go AJ, Go AJ, Go AJ!”

“Go Tamika, Go Tamika, Go Tamika!”

Some of the kids were sweet and some rowdy, some shy, some boastful, but all bright eyed and full of life like children everywhere.

The neighborhoods in that area alternate sharply between apartments for young professionals and publicly assisted housing. As I walked from the bus to Brandon’s apartment I saw Burkey straddling his bike, talking to a group of six African American boys—barely teenagers—who stood on the sidewalk looking frustrated.

“Where you from?” One of the boys asked Burkey aggressively.

“ Boston,” Burkey replied coolly.

“Boston? That’s a racist city, there’s no black people in Boston.”

“Have you ever been to Boston?” asked Burkey.

“No…this is 14th and Clifton, people get shot,” the kid reached under his shirt…and pulled out nothing.

“Where’s the worst place you’ve ever been?” the kid questioned.

“Roxbury,” replied Berkey.

The kid paused…“Man, there ain’t no black people in Boston.”

Berkey said “peace” and rode off. When I passed by one of the kids was trying to cut down a small tree on the sidewalk with a rusty old hacksaw he had found. Another boy started jawing and yelling with someone else down the block, “Man let’s go beat his ass!” “Wait’ll ya’ll see his face when I pull this out,” said the boy, who had given up on cutting down the sapling and hid the hacksaw under his shirt.

That evening, as Ethan and I walked from our bus to Bus Boys and Poets café, we talked about the young teenagers we’d met, angry, frustrated, and fearful. As we spoke a woman stumbled across the intersection next to us, “That Motherfucker, motherfucker think he can do that shit ta me?!” she yelled into the night. On the next block a man staggered toward us from his perch outside a liquor store, begging for change. Before we reached the café, eight blocks away, we passed a half dozen more people—desperate and stupefied by drugs, alcohol, and poverty.

Too often I have noticed, as children begin to understand or are forced to deal with the circumstances of the world around them, cheerfulness and hope fade to despondence and anger. Those young teenage boys have probably watched older friends and sibling, who they admire and respect, get beaten down by a society that has left their community in a cycle of poverty, violence, drug abuse, incarceration, insufficient education and scarce opportunity.

According to the 2004 US census, 18.3% of people living in DC live below the poverty line. The DC Mayor’s office reports that “40 percent of the adults in our city read only at a third grade level.”

With all the white marble pillars of government buildings and the gleaming corporate towers it is easy to overlook the reality of life for many DC residents. But one need only walk a few blocks from those centers of power to be reminded that all that wealth creates, and is maintained by, poverty.

We met our friends Pam, Natasha, and BioTour crewmember-to-be Fernando, at Bus Boys and Poets Café. Nearby Howard University, Bus Boys and Poets attracts a diverse and socially conscious crowd. It has been a favorite spot for Ethan and I when we’re in DC. The five top selling books at the café bookstore are:

1. Stealing Democracy : The New Politics of Voter Suppression - Spencer Overton

2. Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict - Phyllis Bennis

3. Hearts of Darkness : How White Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa - Milton Allimadi

4. Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush - Center for Constitutional Rights

5. A People’s History Of The United States - Howard Zinn

The food is good and cheap, the walls display the works of local artists, along with and pictures of Ghandi, Martin Luther King, the Dali Lama and others. An excerpt from Langston Hughes’s poem “Let America be America Again”, streams across one wall:

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

****

O, let America be America again–

The land that never has been yet–

And yet must be–the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

The next afternoon Burkey and Cat checked out the Smithsonian museums, Ethan I planned to meet them with the bus on the National Mall. As Ethan navigated through DC traffic, I sat nearby banging a drum along with the Manu Chao songs blasting from the stereo. At a busy intersection right next to the Capitol two older ladies waved to us from the sidewalk,

“Beep the horn E!”

“What?” E yelled, not able to hear me over the music and drumming.

“Those people are waving on the sidewalk beep the…”

One of the lights turned green and E pulled foreword. He was halfway through the intersection before he realized that the green light was not for us, and our light was still red. We continued on toward the national mall expecting to get pulled over, as there were cops everywhere, but we saw nothing behind us. It wasn’t until we reached the Washington Monument several blocks away that we saw the cruiser behind us, lights blaring. E pulled over and shut off the engine. A moment later two officers were shouting at us through the door. One of them, a stocky young fellow skidded to a halt on his bicycle. Wearing a bike helmet and sunglasses and banging on the bus door he yelled,

“Get out of the bus, get out of the bus!”

Ethan opened the door and I got out placing half a cinder block behind the front tire.

“What is that!” shouted the guy in the helmet.

“It’s to chalk the tire,” I replied.

“What about the brake?” he asked loudly.

“It’s just a precautionary measure,” I said.

Then they turned on Ethan

“Take your hands out of your pockets! What did you run that red light!? Why didn’t you stop when you saw us behind you!?”

They had apparently been following directly behind us since the intersection, but so closely that we could not see them in our mirrors.

While the guy in the helmet went to talk on the radio, I struck a conversation with one of the other officers. They were secret service, one of a dozen or so law enforcement units operating in DC.

When the helmeted fellow stomped back toward us I explained to him what we were doing in DC, and that I was guilty of distracting the driver and apologized. He explained that they were on ‘high terror alert’ (which sounds like uncomfortable thing to be on) then asked me about the nun-chucks hanging in the window.

“Oh those, those are just plastic toys. See?,” I grabbed them down through the open window and handed him the plastic tubes covered in foam rubber padding that I’d won at a carnival. He inspected them, pulled off the rubber padding, and pointed to the end of the cylinder.

“You see how hard that is? This is considered a weapon in DC. You would not like it if I hit you in the head repeatedly with this.”

Well, that statement is true for most solid objects, but I held my tongue.

“Can we search the vehicle?” a woman officer asked sternly.

“Is there any reason to search the vehicle? We ran a red light,” Ethan said well aware of his fourth amendment right protecting us from unnecessary search and seizure.

“Well, it’s our home,” I said.

“Do you consent to a search of the vehicle?” she repeated.

“Well, no.” I said.

“They don’t consent,” she called through here radio attached to her shirt sleeve. We were a bit worried that they might resent our not consenting to a search and try and screw us with any violations they could. But, to our surprise, we drove away with only a $75 ticket and some sympathy for anyone who has to spend their day on “high terror alert”.

“Grab me a silly hat!”, Ethan shouted, exasperated and looking to cool his rarely unsettled nerves. I handed him a green combat cap. He pulled it over his crown and turned up the music.

Soon we were parked on the on the National Mall answering questions from curious passers-by and playing on the grass in the warm afternoon sun.

Under a grove of trees about a furlong away, four men with shields and swords circled one another, poised for battle. Wasting no time Burkie and I ran toward them, beating our drums. Cat and Ethan followed. They were four Roman centurions, led by Dominus (or Sean) who told us about Dagorhir, the battle games with padded weapons. They fight using an honor system, if you get hit in a limb you can no longer use it, torso is a kill. Their band of centurions competes in weekend battles as well as huge mock wars several times a year. We borrowed broadswords, shields and daggers and fought each other and the four centurions to the death, again and again.

For the second time that day we had encountered people pretending to be roman legions protecting the empire, although the Secret Service guys didn’t quite have the same sense of humor about it.

On Tuesday morning Ethan, Brian and I showered, shaved, put on suits, and walked down to K street, disguised as people who don’t live on a bus. We arrived at the ACORE office to help them prepare for their “Joint Outlook Launch”—a conference encouraging unity between the renewable energy industries. We met the ACORE team—Brandon, Tom, Dawn, Jodi, Nicholas, Cheri, Mike—the president, Jim—communications director, and Bill—board member and chairman of the Biofuels Coordinating Council.

“So what are you guys doing?” Bill asked.

“We’re traveling the country on a school bus converted to run on waste vegetable oil.”

“Okay, great.”

“Yeah, the original diesel engine was—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know all that I’ve been doing this stuff for over thirty years. Let’s have breakfast tomorrow morning and we’ll see how we can help you.”

We undertook some of the necessary grunt work—putting stickers on hundreds of booklets, and carrying boxes over to the Ronald Regan building where the event would be held. As the leaders of wind, solar, geothermal, hydro-power, and other industries, as well as congressman, organizers and group leaders took the podium speaking on the outlook for the renewable energy industry, I sat at the greeting table just down the stairs and handed out nametags.

When most everyone had arrived, I climbed the stairs in time to hear Mike’s closing remarks. It was clear to him that renewable energy would succeed or fail together, their destinies are linked, and once everyone realizes that, the whole group will be better off. After the speeches, Ethan and I walked around the room drinking free wine and beer, eating hors d’ouevres and handing out business cards.

“Oh, Department of Energy, cool. I live on a bus that runs on vegetable oil, here’s my card.”

The next morning we met environomental warrior, Bill Holmberg, at the Army Navy Club for breakfast. As we ate omelets and pancakes Bill asked us about our goals and our methods and told us a bit of his own history and work for sustainability. He was a marine in Vietnam, and helped to revive some of the villages with small agricultural and animal husbandry projects.

“Where we actually built successful villages, there was relative calm. But, the higher ups in the chain of command were more concerned with body counts, and search and destroy missions,” Bill said. Bill set up similar village security sustainability operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He told us that aside from a few scattered projects, Iraq and Afghanistan are disasters. “War is an anachronism,” announced the old marine.

Over the past several decades Bill has pushed for biofuels in the United States, in addition to forest regeneration and sustainability projects at home and abroad. Recognizing that we shared the same goals, we returned to Bill’s office at ACORE headquarters to set about making them happen. For the next several hours Bill called contacts throughout the country, introducing us and connecting us with allies working toward similar ends.

Several hours later we set up a farewell photo-op with the ACORE staff in front of the bus. Mike let Brandon off for the evening and we returned to his place to cook and relax and take a breath after a series of very busy days.

Early the next morning, we bid goodbye to the Boys and Girls Club parking lot that had been our home, and realized that our pile of bikes was missing from the roof. With sighs we accepted that they had been stolen, then drove out of DC past the Supreme Court—carved in pure white marble, the Library of Congress, the Capitol building, and other grand government structures, standing majestic, like ancient temples in the early morning light.

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