Category:Ecotourism

Back in the day, when your GreenPolicy360 Siterunner has left NYC publishing for Hollywood producing and packaging, one of the films that our company put together was with LaVar Burton. He tells a great story about almost getting eaten by a croc in Africa and, it turns out the 1977 "Roots" Miniseries story of Kunte Kinte, as played by LaVar, and later in the TV movie, "Roots: The Gift."

LaVar's story of the crocodile was true, even though his Kunta character was fiction.

I know because a friend from back then, who I helped with the publishing launch of his eco-tourism whitewater adventure company, Richard Bangs, had invited LaVar along to the first whitewater descent of the Zambezi River, the never before rapids below Victoria Falls, and until he almost got eaten, LaVar was along for the ride.

"Until" is the key word. It seems that not far from "putting in" and beginning the adventure with the team of explorers and assistants, who were along for safety, that the kayak of LaVar experienced an encounter. As told, a very large snout with very large teeth, came out of the water suddenly and puts it teeth through a kayak next to LaVar. He rapidly paddled to shore, he proceeded to call in a helicopter from shore, and soon was swept into the sky.

The whitewater team wished his a good-bye, then proceeded to complete their journey down the Zambezi, without losing anyone or having anyone eaten.

There's a sequel, a south of the Zambezi sequel. It's an "Eco" sequel.

It is about old, old, old Africa and even though the story involves colonial explorers looking for lost tribes (as I read about back in those days of Bangs and his many rivers run throughout the world, and the new ecotourism adventuring we were doing, in different spheres, pushing into new visions of geo-adventures and experiences (with me there was also the rainforest canopy and Don Perry, the National Geo hero, a 'Jacques Cousteau of the Richest Biosphere' on Earth, the tropical forests.)

The idea was to introduce the modern world to the old world in order to save the old world by showing the new world how valuable the old world was and for all our sakes had to be preserved and protected. It was and is about a Living Earth. The eco-adventuring and new ways of seeing was really about opening eyes to what we had to do to save the world.

A green, environmental calling was strong in my way of looking at the world and I realized back then that, as modern people, we were not good listeners, or observers, or appreciators of the wildness and richness of life around us. The native peoples knew so much more and, as I have found out over the course of my life, there was much we, as modern people, could and should learn by listening to the voices from the past.

With this in mind, here is the story, a sequel story to crocodiles, deep (but not dark) Africa, and Amazon, and Australia, and central American Costa Rica and to all the wild places and the indigenous ancient wisdom.

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Earthrise

File:Earthrise 100 Photographs That Changed the World .jpg

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ECO

In Australia they call them the 'Bushpeople'.

In Africa, south of the Zambezi, they are known as the San.

I call them 'Voices from the Past' and they are whisperers to the people of today.

They are who we call, too often call, 'primitives', but they are not 'primitives' on closer look.

The San and the Bushpeople and many, many more of the Indigenous Peoples have a message that the people of today need to hear.

It is an 'eco' tale told throughout, a tale of being part of the world around us, an integral part of the whole, not a distinct, separated 'ego', but rather a commons.

A tribe if you will, a voice from the peoples of the past to the peoples of today to listen, to listen to the stars, to listen carefully to the wildlife around us, to flora and fauna, to a living earth.

That's it. That's the message.

Eco... an eco-message

(SJS / 2023)