Some people don't care for economic expansion

I just finished reading Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger, which is the story of the five years he spent exploring the Southern part of the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1940s.  On the surface, this is a book about an explorer traveling through the deserts of the Saudi Peninsula known as "The Empty Quarter" and is classified as a travel book.  But this book is significant because Thesiger was one of the first Westerners to travel the area, where he had the unique opportunity to live amongst Bedu and meet people from many of the tribes in the area.  Though he never learned to identify the tracks of his camel, he was a keen observer of the people he traveled with and among, and has documented the lifestyle and values of a people who are now almost extinct.

All of the people in the area were Muslim.  Many of the tribes he encountered were acutely xenophobic and anti-Christian.  Material possessions were few; his travel companions generally owned camels, guns, the shirt they were wearing, and little else.  Even settled tribes seemed to have very few possessions.  His travel companions were willing to kill for their tribe or traveling companions as a matter of honor.  They were generous to the point of poverty, always offering food to anyone they met while traveling, even if it meant they went without any food for the day or longer, and Thesiger's companions seemed incapable of saying no to a request, even if it threatened the provisions required to cross the desert.  It is also clear that there is great variation in degrees between different areas and tribes, with some not so concerned about Christians and others calling Thesiger's companions infidels because they were accompanied by a Christian.

In the five year period in which Thesiger completed his travels the area was in constant turmoil.  Tribal alliances were complex and the areas of conflict were constantly shifting.  Thesiger follows these tribal conflicts like a local, and recounts tribal conflicts that consolidated power and facilitated exploration for oil in the period between his travels and when he wrote the book.

The rigors of the desert created a society that differs dramatically from our own Anglo-Saxon society.  This book provides insight into where the Muslim religion was formed, and the growth of values that seem utterly foreign to many westerners, which is especially significant in the current climate of Christian-Muslim animosity and the global threat of terrorism. 

Thesiger aspired to define neither Arabs nor Muslims in this work.  However, his keen observations of the Bedu peoples amongst whom he traveled provide insight into the values of both.  Thinking back on my geography education, reading this book would have broadened my understanding of the Middle East far more than the chapters of our text book on the topic managed.  On top of all this, it details the challenge of crossing a desert five hundred miles across by foot, with only the provisions they could carry on their camels, amongst warring tribes.  It's well worth reading.

Recycled clothes to ease the travelers conscience

I bought a pair of high tech travel pants today, the kind where the material is partly composed of old plastic bottles.  The tag had a picture of the aforementioned bottles awaiting conversion into these pants.  As I started to examine the picture, I expected to see lots of Coke bottles; Coke is ubiquitous.  But I saw only one or two.  The vast majority of the bottles in the cage were water bottles.

I only rarely drink bottled water.  It is generally reserved for occasions when I need the bottle more so than the water.  I am fortunate enough to have lived my life in places where there is a safe supply of clean water delivered directly to my taps.  Mind you, I did start filtering my drinking water a few years ago when we lived in a house where the water ran brown for the first few seconds whenever you turned on the tap.  However, even when I travel, I usually drink the local water if I've been told by a local that it is safe (the one exception to this is when I visit my mother's house, where I can't stand the taste of the water after brushing my teeth).

A while back I went to Belize.  I spent nearly a week in a small town that would hardly exist if it weren't for the tourists.  On one of our excursions we noted that Coke was still delivered in glass bottles which were sent back to be refilled, but all the local tourists carried a disposable water bottle rather than a reusable bottle that they filled at their hotel.  Each of these disposable plastic bottles came with a little plastic cap to cover the mouth piece, which was further wrapped in plastic to keep it in place during shipping.  These bottles, caps, and little plastic wrappers were all over the roadside.

When I went to Spain a few years later, it was nearly impossible to get water that wasn't bottled; Restaurants didn't serve it and there were no drinking fountains.  The expectation was that everyone would purchase their drinking water in a bottle.  In fact, no matter how nice the restaurant, if you asked for water it was delivered to your table in its original plastic packaging, never decanted, so that it would be obvious that it was not tap water.  I guess this is for the same reason that bottles of wine are always opened in front of the customer.  I can imagine a stuffy old man quaffing his glass of water and puckering his lips as he says, "Hmm, a citrus bouquet, with rich mineral undertones."

About 90 billion liters of bottled water is consumed each year in the world.  The Italians drink the most per capita, but Americans now drink over 4 billion liters of it.  Friends of mine consume bottled water because they perceive it to be cleaner and more healthful than what is available through the tap.  It pays to take care when purchasing bottled water, though, because up to 40% of it comes from a tap.  When in the U.S., where community water supplies are among the cleanest in the world, it hardly seems worth the bother to get your water from a bottle rather than the tap.

Anyway, all this bottled water requires a lot of bottles.  In a place like small town Belize where they barely have garbage collection, the bottles are as good as garbage.  But in Australia and the U.S. they can be turned into pants that are designed to be worn on trips to exotic places with dubious water quality.  It's appropriate that the people creating all that plastic waste are the same ones purchasing the high tech pants.  It's too bad the recycled pants will reduce waste where the tap water is safe and not from the destinations where the pants are intended to be worn.