Prior to Covid, my husband and I took a repositioning cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to England, where we spend part of our time. It awakened memories of our tourism work from 1988 to 1993. My husband and I met when we both accepted an offer to work for Interface, a small UK charity initiated by a retired Church of England Canon. Our boss was establishing a center working on the interface between church and society, part of a movement across Europe. Interface was helping the unemployed train for new jobs, and also renovating an old flour mill as a business incubator. I was helping companies provide job placement services and creative work force alternatives to businesses facing downsizing and shut-downs of operations in the US, which connected to the work of Interface. Rowland offered experience and commitment to peace and justice work across faiths. Canon Finch’s most passionate interest, however, was alternative tourism, as a way of providing positive person-to-person travel experiences. Interface became active members of Tourism Concern and took over a travel agency, where the profits were committed to tourism issues in the developing world. This led us to the meeting where we committed to setting up a new effort to help the countries of Thailand, Taiwan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines stop the trafficking of children for sex tourism. Memories of our work haunted me throughout our trip.
We were a part of a coalition trying to inform tourists, soldiers and business travelers about the growing abuse of children in sex tourism in Asia. The combination of places like Thailand as R&R sites for the military, and the fear of aids, had pushed the age of prostitutes lower and lower. This resulted in children being brought from remote villages to major cities like Bangkok. Some were enticed by offers of work in the city, others were bought from desperate parents, and some were kidnapped. These children were drugged and abused and then sold several times a day as “virgins.” There was no fear of prosecution for a pedophile, a soldier, or a casual tourist enticed by a brochure or advertisement that promised to deliver it “all.” Our British coalition was infiltrated and forced to end its work. I lost my work visa and returned to the US. In despair, I wrote the screenplay and then the novel, The Lie Beyond, and watched as the small gains we had made were overcome by the spread of exploitation and modern-day slavery across the world.
Cruise ports in the Caribbean started in Jamaica. I could see that the island’s economy was dominated by foreign interests, particularly the US. Our cab driver told us that there was little employment, outside of the tourism industry. There was minimal agricultural production, therefore food is imported, primarily from the US. It reminded me of all of the tourism issues already looming in the eighties: limited water supplies consumed by golf courses and daily showers by tourists, foreign resorts prohibiting fishing and swimming by the indigenous people, gated resorts where tourists had no exposure to the local culture.
On the ship, I wondered – Where is our food supply sourced? What will the next island bring? Will it be more of the same or will there be some ‘bright spots’ in the Caribbean where the residents have put feeding their own population ahead of the pressure to use the land for commercial development? Will there be islands where diversification of the economy is still seen as important for their own security? In Ghana, West Africa, many years ago, I found that the only coffee available was instant Nescafe, although they were growing coffee as a cash crop. They added Carnation milk to it, but it didn’t make it taste any better. Years later, when I returned to Ghana for a conference, young participants were asking the question – why do we export our raw coffee and then buy a powdered instant product? One young man had a grandfather who was drying and roasting his own beans and it made him curious. Have young people in Ghana impacted this practice? Are they asking why oil and gas are imported and nuclear energy promoted, when they could supply all their energy from the sun and the wind? As we continued our trip I pondered about the same questions as we moved from island to island.
Over the years we have seen the rare example of places that have controlled their own tourism development, using local developers, builders and food suppliers. A few islands have committed to ensuring that their energy and food supplies sustain their own population. In the Portuguese Azores, a guide years ago was proud to tell us they raised ‘happy cows’ and organic tea, and used geothermal power for all their energy needs. Tourism was important to them, but it didn’t dominate their economy. I look for those places and believe they have a better chance of survival in a rapidly growing climate crisis. I weep for the islands and vulnerable areas of the world where their destiny is dependent on tourism.
Traveling to other islands, we enjoyed swimming in the blue-green waves, but found ourselves listening to taxi drivers, speaking of their color-less lives. We saw all the possibilities for wind and solar energy, and learned they use imported gas and oil and are opposed to efforts to change to solar.. One island has no supply of drinking water and others are at sea level. We drove by the hurricane damage in St Maarten, still apparent after almost two years. No matter what country was responsible for the island, the Dutch, the French, or the British, they all seemed dominated by the US dollar and imported food and energy.
It wouldn’t be easy to change what is happening across the Caribbean and other islands, because the forces of the developed economies pressure poorer countries with loans and promises, tariffs and threats. They attempt to control how they use their land, not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of corporate profits and cheap products for the rest of the world. Think of the novel and film, The Hunger Games, and how it might apply to what is happening on a global scale.
Should we stop traveling to these areas? Would reducing tourism be more harmful to their economies? If we choose to travel, we can listen to local people, share our thoughts about renewal energy and growing local food for their people, but can we support them? We need to understand that our own lives will depend on creating local economies that are diversified and self-sustaining, providing us with safe food and renewable energy. The climate crisis is impinging on the survival, not just of islands and sea level shorelines. It is affecting all of us on this precious planet.
