"Traveling" with WWF

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  Shangri-la, China
Sunday, December 18, 2005

For the month of December, I have been in Shangri-la working with WWF, although technically I should say that I'm still a tourist, as the Public Security Bureau (PSB) has granted me my last visa extension until I get a business visa--I'm getting the boot on or before December 27. So instead of "work," I must say that I'm "traveling," My "L" Visa or Tourist Visa doesn't allow me to work or volunteer in China.

So I've been "traveling" around lately with WWF. In the morning, when it's typically about 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit, I travel a few hundred yards and enjoy the sights between my new apartment and my new WWF office. On the way, I stop by the baodzi store and pick up some meat-filled steamed buns or some oranges (orange season has come as banana season has past), admiring the truck depot, the yak skulls, and the burning piles of plastic.

Once in the new office, I keep my coat bundled, as it has no heat, until the sun warms the place by 11 am or so. Even then, I can usually see my breath. For some reason, despite being a school, all eight bathrooms are almost always locked, so I just pee into a coffee cup and throw it out the window (got any better suggestions?). Yes, I check to see that no one is walking below me. And, no, I haven't no. 2 in the coffee cup yet. Somehow, no one has keys to the bathrooms and the school won't give us any either (or for the front door for that matter, so I've been locked in with some teachers a few times). Maybe if I left some coffee cups on the principal's desk, he'd get the picture (if I knew where his desk was).

01 The Solar Home

I also have to pray to the electricity gods so that we don't have a power outage, which seems to happen every time I'm working...ahem, traveling on the computer. Thus is life in the new school.

Lately, travel has consisted of writing a briefing document for the ecotourism plan for Baimaxueshan Nature Reserve. In a few days this will be completed. The briefing document will be translated into Chinese and then given to nature reserve staff and villagers for review.

A briefing document has many sections:
Purpose
Goals
Mission
Ecotourism Guidelines and Principals
Natural Resources and Scenic Features
Cultural Features
Tourist Overview
Marketing
Ecolodge Design
Trail Design
Staffing
Issues and Threats
Opportunities
and more...

Wendy Breiby, my good friend who goes way back to 1998 on Martha's Vineyard, has been helping me with the Ecolodge Design as her focus is permiculture, short for Permanent Culture i.e. sustainable living. Thanks to her for all her great help via Skype and e-mail. She is my savior.

Other travel I've been doing involved giving a presentation on watersheds for an environmental education workshop. I've also organized our video footage, fixed computer glitches, and established a Geographic Information System, in bare bones form currently. WWF staff has created greeting cards, posters, and brochures from my photography, which has been an honor, but really the photos are reflections of people, flowers, monasteries, animals, mountains, stupas, and rivers; I just press the shutter button.

After traveling around the WWF office, I travel to the south side of town to eat some dinner.

And, yes, Tiffany (PSB), I hope to come back with my business visa when I return from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. I just need to get a letter of invitation from someone, as I saw what happened to the last WWF-China director, who came from Taiwan--he got the boot for good(WWF is not a Chinese organization so cannot provide a letter of invitation). Now WWF-China is on its third director since I've been here and is twitching and squirming as any organization in extreme flux would be. I hope things calm down and get more organized.

All I need is a letter of invitation and a business visa, that's all I need. Oh, and a signed contract...and reimbursements from months ago, that's all I need.

Next stop: Indochina. 72 hours and counting.

Then...I'll be traveling for real.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

02 The Solar Hot Water Heater

03 The Truck Depot

04 The Stores Near My Apartment

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