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Asia Bound

Asia Bound

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Tomorrow I leave for Asia: three days in Bangkok and nine in Nepal. My mission: to cover my organization’s board of directors’ trip and do additional reporting on women electric vehicle drivers in Kathmandu. It’s a plum assignment and I’ve been preparing for weeks: getting a visa and antimalarial meds, filling out forms, conducting interviews, writing and editing stories that can be published while I’m gone.

This morning I’m fielding emails from Nepal and making a last-minute schedule change. I’m figuring out how to cram two suitcases worth of clothing and electronics (I’m a human pack animal, ferrying swag and equipment from one continent to another) into one suitcase.
And finally, finally, I’m imagining what these places will be like on the other side of the world, the mountains, the temples, the Buddhist prayer flags waving.
It’s time for another adventure … 
A Walker in Afghanistan

A Walker in Afghanistan

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If I lived in a war zone I would probably walk, crunch and use the elliptical. The stress relief would be worth the tedium, or even the danger.  So I get why people wear their fitbits when they’re in harm’s way, especially if they’re gadget geeks who want to measure their workouts.

But I don’t get why they share their data with a fitness sharing app called Strava, which then posted the whereabouts and movements of their customers in a heat map available for all to see. So by clicking on a route called Sniper Alley outside the American base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, you could find the names and hometowns of those who use it. Combine this with some basic Googling and you have a trove of information.

I first read about this oversight yesterday, how it was discovered almost by accident by a college student in Australia. Why didn’t someone realize sooner that this technology could be used to reveal troop movements, the identifies of agents and so much more sensitive information?

Sharing data is a way to personalize technology, to humanize it.  But whatever is shared can be abused.

I hate to admit it, but in a world of smart cars, smart appliances and smart houses … we’re going to have to start reading, really reading, those privacy statements. And companies who collect sensitive data must do a better job of telling us how and when they use it.

Otherwise we may find ourselves walking in Afghanistan — with sniper guns trained on us.

(Photo: Washington Post)

Instagram Takeover!

Instagram Takeover!

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My knowledge of technology is not always tip-top, so when I heard that a story I wrote would “take over” the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Instagram page this week, I acknowledged the news with an “oh, yeah, that’s great” mentality.

Turns out, this is actually a big deal. USAID’s Instagram account has 87,400 followers. Make that 87,401. (I just joined Instagram so I could “love” the post.)

Here’s the human story behind the numbers: I met this woman, interviewed her and her parents, walked the narrow, muddy path along the lake to her home. Her father hacked coconuts for us so we could drink the milk. The family brought out their plastic chairs so we could sit in style. The woman, who I call “Aditi” (but which is not her real name) fell prey to sex traffickers when she was 19. She was rescued before being taken to a brothel in India, but the experience nonetheless changed her life.

Trafficking victims are often shunned by family and friends. But the organization I work for has a project that comforts and counsels and trains trafficking survivors. Aditi is a star student. She has taken the help she’s been given and run with it. Now she’s the one who counsels survivors, the one who tells friends and neighbors how to avoid being trafficked. She’s proof of the great good that can come from small investments. I was privileged to speak with her and her family, to be hosted so hospitably in their home.

I’m now adding an exclamation point to my headline for this post. Make that “Instagram Takeover!”

Crushed Shells

Crushed Shells

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Just out on the deck for a moment this unseasonably warm morning, I find that some of the shells I’d laid out on a glass-top table have been scattered and crushed. This is not the end of the world — I should have put them away months ago. But they looked so pretty on the table, a natural collage, that I left them there way too long.

As I gathered them again to slip into a cup, I marveled at their tiny whorls and notches, at the beauty of their architecture, which is born of practicality. And I couldn’t help but think of their collector, a young girl who was trying to earn a few coins from us on the beach in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. She had a shy pride about her, and an eagerness. Once she knew we were willing to pay for shells she took off for almost half an hour, combing through the tide pools looking for the loveliest specimens.

Now I’m thinking of her face when she opened her hands and showed us her collection. Some of the shells may be gone, but that memory has not faded at all.

Houston Delivers

Houston Delivers

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To riff for a moment on a city defined by a sentence amplified by a movie— “Houston, we have a problem” — let me just say Houston had far fewer problems than I expected to see.

While there was evidence of Hurricane Harvey — a boarded-up motel and piles of refuse in neighborhoods (the latter viewed by other wedding-goers, not me) — the city, on the whole, glittered and gleamed.

From the Johnson Space Center to the funky soul food breakfast joint my sister-in-law found to a host of museums on everything from medicine to bicycles — Houston delivered.

The best part was walking through the parks, past fountains and waving pink grasses and through the studied stillness of the Japanese garden. Dogs and families, girls in ballgowns for their quinceaneras, even a tightrope-walker — everyone out to savor the cool breeze and sparkling low-humidity day.

Observe the Moon

Observe the Moon

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On a tour of the Johnson Space Center yesterday I learned that tonight is International Observe the Moon Night, a date set aside each year to look at and learn about Earth’s satellite. I didn’t even know there was such an event, but I consider myself lucky that I learned about it where I did.

Home of moon rocks and interplanetary dust, of an intact Saturn rocket housed in a building as impossibly long as it is impossibly tall, the Johnson Space Center is also where the Orion spacecraft is coming to life. Orion is built for interplanetary travel — and will someday take humans to Mars.

Also on the Space Center campus is the historic mission control center: the place where nine Gemini and all the Apollo missions were monitored, where scientists scrambled to bring Apollo 13 astronauts back to Earth, where cheers erupted when the words came crackling through the monitors: “The Eagle has landed.”

It was the moon they saw, the same moon we can see tonight. Only for the first time in history, a human footprint was outlined in its dust.

Backward Glance

Backward Glance

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A couple days ago on a walk around the block, I came across the end of a beach volleyball game in Crystal City. Couldn’t resist snapping a photo of the sand. To heck with the game, it’s the sand I love, the sand I crave. So, on this last day of summer … a backward glance at this summer’s beaches.

I had my Florida beach fix in August, days of sun and surf with tropical breezes and breathtaking sunsets.

And then, I took in a bonus beach in Bangladesh. Cox’s Bazar is the longest natural beach in the world., and we managed to find a spare hour to visit it despite our crammed-full schedule.

I’m thinking of it now, the width and the breadth of it, the people and animals we met: a young girl selling shells, a labor trafficking victim who’d gotten a new start in life as a photographer, a merchant hawking pearls, a yellow dog.

It was a different kind of beach experience, no towels or chairs, no umbrellas, no skimpy suits. It was a rock-strewn beach with dark, hard-packed sand. But it was glorious just the same.

Weighing the Differences

Weighing the Differences

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It will probably take months to digest all the sights and sounds of Bangladesh, and the feelings I had experiencing them. Strolling to work this morning in a light drizzle, I noted the lack of people, the lack of goats — the lack of life.

It’s a safe, clean, sanitized world here. We’ve made it that way, we want it that way. I’m not complaining.

But there is a jumbling, jarring craziness there that I miss. Horns honking, buses flying, rain falling. Life lived in the open, nothing much left out. Now that I’m back here in the relative quiet, I’m weighing the differences.

Feeling for Florida

Feeling for Florida

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The picture taking up much of today’s front page features a white whirling dervish of a storm swirling toward a slender green peninsula. From this vantage point, Florida seems nothing more than a vulnerable appendage, a state that should be retractable, though what it would retract into I am not sure. Georgia, perhaps?

My recent trips to Florida have made me fond of the place. It’s a beach lover’s paradise, and its tropical air and foliage set it apart from the rest. It’s another world for me, and it’s threatened like it hasn’t been in decades.

The picture leaves little to the imagination. It’s hard to see how Irma could do anything but clobber the state. All we can hope for now is that there be as little loss of life (none, please!) and property as possible. Now we’re all feeling for Florida.

Faded Flower

Faded Flower

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The wonder of it all is why we’re not all sick more often. Or at least that’s what I think when laid low. I mean, think of the germs we come into contact with on a daily basis. Think of our valiant immune systems, fighting them off.

But sometimes, our immune systems come up against something they can’t surmount. That’s what’s happened to me since I returned from Bangladesh. While I’d like to think this is something I picked up at home, all signs point to it being a souvenir of my wonderful trip.

I’ve been remembering the last couple of days. Should I have peeled that apple before eating it? It came from the swanky Dhaka hotel, so I didn’t. Or did I ingest a smidgen of non-bottled water when brushing my teeth?

Questions without answers. All I know is that I feel a lot like the faded flower pictured here. Nothing to do but hang on, wait it out — and keep pumping the ginger ale.