I love to travel!! To me, the greatest invention ever is the airplane. For all the journeys I ve taken it still amazes that with the right piece of paper and a ride to an airport, its possible to go from one world to another in no time at all! I love "culture shock" - it s my favorite high. And I ve had wonderful adventures from Bulgaria to Afghanistan Ireland to Japan. Though the story I like to tell the most is of the journey I took to find my daughter who vanished from sight in Thailand - a journey full of blessings, grace and a happy ending it s not the story I m compelled to tell today.

A new kind of traveling what is it travels of the heart and soul of conscience and opening eyes began with my trip to El Salvador and Guatemala on a Witness for Peace delegation in December of 1998. Though I had long been politically active and concerned about issues of Latin America, I wasn t prepared for what happened to me. Received with a warm and open welcome into the lives and realities of the people we met, in two weeks my heart was forever opened - to their experience of horrific oppression and violence, to their struggles and hopes for justice and peace, to the ties that bound us together. I became a citizen of the world, forever changed!! 

The stories we brought home from that trip were very painful. We were there to understand the devastation wrought by the US- supported wars in both countries and the specific role of the US Army School of the Americas in training Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency tactics. Our travels took us from to El Mozote in El Salvador, where almost a thousand people were massacred in one day to the tiny hamlet of Ximbaxuc in the Highlands of Guatemala where we listened in the dark, one candle flickering, to the stories of the massacre they had experienced and their struggle to regain their land and their lives. The great joy of that trip was meeting Grupo Morazan, a band of young musicians from Segundo Montes in El Salvador and helping to bring them to the US where they brought to us their stories of survival, courage and hope in their music and in their laughter. 

And then in January of this New Year a dream come true! Ten days in Cuba co-leading another Witness for Peace Delegation. This time, our goal was to learn about Cuban society with a special focus on the arts to see past the U.S. media distortions and demonizing of the revolution and Fidel - and to learn about the effects of the U.S. embargo/blockade on the Cuban people. 

How different it felt to be in Cuba! Fading and crumbling colonial architecture gives a sense of distant grandeur, the old cars of the 40's and 50's give a twist to time, no advertisements of any kind except for the revolution, hope and the future. Everything is owned by Cubans no Esso stations - no McDonalds. No soldiers like the ones we saw in El Salvador and Guatemala with guns guarding the property of the rich, no homeless people. Music is everywhere - at the outdoor cafes in Old Havana, jazz clubs, on the street and in their homes, it is woven into the fabric of Cuban life and brings happiness and life into even the most difficult of circumstances. The city was safe! The countryside beautiful!

People were friendly and warm, happy to meet us, generous with invitations, smiles, and spontaneous conversation. Cuba is a poor country, but we heard over and over what many of us already knew that the revolution had brought security to the poor of Cuba through universal free health care, free education for all, affordable housing, jobs and the access to basic food stuffs for all Cubans. 

Yes, I love Cuba and I will return soon! Yes, there are problems and challenges it is a system in process. But it is the 40 year long embargo/blockade imposed by the U.S. government in an attempt that is still very much alive today, to bring the Socialist system of Cuba down, that is under my skin. It is the misinformation that most people in this country have about Cuba and the general ignorance about the U.S. government s role in countries like El Salvador and Guatemala and Cuba and Iraq, where our foreign policy feeds the insatiable greed of multinational corporations and manifests disregard for human life and our precious environment in so many ways, that drives this feeling I have that I should stop what I m doing and get on a soap box and shout what I see is the "truth" every day, all day until people wake up and say "No More!" I ask, "if I don t do this how in the end, am I not the "good German"? I ask, "how much of what I can do is enough?" and the answer seems "really, never is enough."

I hope to travel again just for a good shot of culture shock and to see more of the world this wonderful planet of ours. I recently heard of the adventures of someone who visited the white world of Antarctica and had little penguins climbing on his lap and I felt to my bones " O-o-o I want to go too!" But for now, I choose to walk with the many thousands of others who are joining delegations to Chiapas and Columbia, Nicaragua and Iraq, folks who are crossing the lines of distance that separate us from our brothers and sisters in other countries, who are willing to hold the pain and the sublime frustration of not being able to easily change what we see that is so wrong, who are willing to come home and say it like we see it. And so I go!