Spirit of Soccer featured on Fifa’s website

My crazy buddy Scotty Lee’s organization Spirit of Soccer is featured on Fifa.com. The article is really cool for me to read because I’ve met all the coaches mentioned in it, but you should check it out.

An excerpt:

In a land where almost two million people died through war and hunger, Gne Kom’ Sorth’s story is unexceptional. On the day she was born her father was murdered by the Khmer Rouge. The young girl grew up in a terrifying environment involving dances with death through minefields as she fled between villages. But now, thirty years on, Gne Kom is fulfilling the vow made to the dad she never knew by helping to bring joy to the very fields that witnessed so much horror during Cambodia’s long civil war.

This year she became one of just two Cambodian women to pass the FIFA-approved D-license football coaching badge. Among the six to be recruited by the organisation Spirit of Soccer, a Football for Hope Implementing Partner and streetfootballworld network member, she is now imparting her knowledge of football and of the dangers posed by landmines to a new generation of children born after the fall of the Khmer Rouge but still being killed and maimed in high numbers.

When NGO’s employ locals – essentially, having a people help themselves – I think their causes are served much better.

Website of the Week: Geoff Toons

Everybody needs cartoons in their life. Geoff Hassing the cartoonist who drew my Where am I wearing? shirt has joined the blogosphere and I’m pretty excited about it. Geoff’s work is hilarious. He’s always exploring new characters and ideas and I expect he’ll feature quite a few of them on his new blog.

For a good Geoff sampler check out his Film @ Eleven series.

Kelsay scores touchdown for Bills

If you are watching Monday Night Football on ESPN, you saw the Bills defensive lineman Kelsay intercept a pass and score a touchdown. Annie and I saw the Bills’ throwback jersey he is wearing being made during our factory visit in Perry.

During the tour I was secretly hoping they would give me a Kelsay jersey because it was manly and almost had my name on it. See, most of the things that have, or almost have, my name on them are usually pink. In fact, sometimes I even get registered for conferences as Countess Kelsey.

Go Bills! I’m sure the citizens of Perry are rooting for you. And if you could please double up Terrell Owens because if he scores over 19 fantasy points “The Gods of War” my fantasy team will drop to 2-2 on the season.

Scotty Lee’s Spirit of Soccer

A little crazy goes a long way.

Take for instance professional soccer coach and former player Scotty Lee. Scotty met some Iranians at a bar and the next thing he knew he was working as a humanitarian in Bosnia during the war for the Iranian government. Scotty has stories with snipers, mortars, and tense check points. All crazy.

But he’s a good kind of crazy.

While on a return trip to Bosnia some kids were killed by a land mine during a game of soccer. Scotty had a crazy idea. Teach soccer and teach land mine awareness. It may not seem like the most logical correlation, but as Scotty puts it, “You can’t be a football player without legs. And you can’t be a goalie without arms.”

Scotty put some materials together and visited villages where he conducted soccer clinics followed by mine awareness sessions. The program grew into the Spirit of Soccer, “a grass roots childrens football charity which is registered in both the USA and UK and operates two soccer/football coaching projects at present in Bosnia and Cambodia.”

When I’m traveling somewhere, especially when I don’t speak the language, I’m always looking for a pickup game of something: basketball, soccer, pool, Frisbee, hackey sack, Kabbadi, baseball. You name it and I’ll play it. Sport has the ability to break down the social reservations that the players may have and open lines of communication. There is no better way to win over a village worth of kids than to play a game with them.

I suspect this is why Spirit of Soccer has been so successful and has passed on the love for the game and its lifesaving message to more than 50,000 kids.

I saw the organization at work in a village near Battambang (you can see pics and hear audio in the Made in Cambodia slideshow) and I later met Scotty in Phnom Penh.

Besides being the founder and backbone of a good cause, Scotty is one of the most interesting people I’ve had a drink with in awhile.

Learn more about Spirit of Soccer

Oh and I promised Scotty I would pose this question to you all: Yes or No, Art Garfunkel and I are twins separated at birth?

Moto drivers are people too

“Moto?”

“Sure, why not?” I went for a run tonight and don’t feel the need to walk.

The Mondo BBQ has the cheapest fruit-shakes in Phnom Penh and that’s exactly what I want for dinner. I’m not very hungry.

It takes about five minutes to walk there, one by moto. A pointless moto ride for sure, but why not give this fella something to do instead of harassing all of the other ME’s out there?

“Join me for a fruitshake?” I ask.

At first he thinks I want him to wait for me. I make the appropriate hand gestures and he gets it, takes off his helmet, and sits down across from me.

“Order whatever you like.” I say.

He orders a small orange juice, the cheapest thing on the menu, and I order a fruit-shake and the anemic spaghetti (2 nights in a row eating Italian, what’s up with that?).

We chat.

Today he gave four people rides, five counting me. On an average day he makes $1 to $2, which is barely enough to support his stay-at-home wife and his two kids. Six months ago, due to downsizing, he lost his job working for an NGO as a security guard where he made $200/month and had health insurance. Now he makes a fraction of that and has no health insurance.

At no point in time does he complain. He just states facts.

He smiles when he talks about his wife and laughs when he mentions his kids.

He drops me at my guesthouse and rides off.

Everybody has a story. This is what makes life interesting. And once we know that story, even small pieces of it, we can begin to understand each other.

Where Kent is Wearing

All of our underwear comes from somewhere. This is where Kent’s came from.

Kent, aka Denzel, a member of WAIW’s Underwear Wall of Fame, sent me the address of the factory that his MADE IN CAMBODIA boxers originated. I tracked it down. That’s me in front of the Suntex factory.

The Suntex factory is on the outskirts of Phnom Penh near an infamous Killing Field. I went there on a scooter. It was hot and the road was a dusty, stinky mess. From the entrance, the factory looked big, more of a compound really.

I didn’t get a chance to meet any of the workers, but I can give you a rough idea what they are like from my other encounters.

- 90% of them are women
- Most of them between the ages of 20-27
- They left their home village to work in garments
- They average somewhere between $45-$80/month (pretty decent in Cambodia)
- They think I’m weird

Dalton

In what appears to be just another one of those things that isolates us Americans from the rest of the world, our cell phones are locked to work only in our country. Where the rest of the world can swap SIM cards in and out depending on what country they are in, we cannot. Why would we want to leave our country anyhow?

I arrived to Bangladesh with my locked Motorola phone. Good thing too, because I was referred to Dalton Zahir, the GM of the Motorola store in Dhaka. Dalton and I immediately clicked. He’s a writer, photojournalist, author, and businessman, although he doesn’t like to talk about that. Dalton took me to his home village where I played Kabaddi, to the textile factories where I saw underage kids working, introduced me to almost every journalist and writer in the entire country, and published my photo in a local newspaper.

When we weren’t meeting his family or friends, Dalton was sneaking me in places.

“Dalton, this time tell them the truth: I’m a journalist in search of the factory where my underwear was made.” I told Dalton countless times before meetings.

We would walk in, he’d say something to the party we were meeting in Bangla and the next think I knew I was a big garment buyer from the USA or a Motorola executive. I don’t lie. Not for moral reasons, but more because I’m lazy. I don’t want to take the time and effort to spin a story and to remember what I told this person or what I did there. I know that I would get caught up in my own web. I’m not clever enough. Dalton is.

“Kelsey, if you say you’re on business, people will be much nicer to you and show you much more.”

So, I was always on business. And anytime that I wasn’t sure what my business was, I let Dalton do the talking.

We would leave a meeting giggling about what he said or what I said. I didn’t feel right doing it, but it was kind of entertaining.

Besides his cleverness, Dalton is one hell of a guy. At the age of 19, before he worked for Motorola, he was put in charge of the construction of one of Dhaka’s fanciest hotel, the Lake Shore Hotel. You may not believe that someone would put a 19-year-old in charge of a multi-million dollar project, but you haven’t met Dalton. You haven’t been with him to the hotel where, now seven years later, everyone treats him with the utmost respect. You haven’t stood by his side as he talked with executives of hotels and multi-national corporations, or there when people approached him, “Your Dalton from the Lake Shore, right?”

The most impressive thing about Dalton is the conditions he overcame to get where he is. He lived in a small village, hours from any major city, was educated there, survived an ugly rickshaw accident, a midnight robbery on a river, and a broken family. He’ll be the first one to tell you that he isn’t a rich man, “I don’t own any land. My family relies on me to support them. I don’t have financial status, but I do have social status.”

I would have never guessed that my time in Bangladesh would be so rich with stories. I have hopes, and an agent that also hopes, all this Where Am I Wearing? experience will be a book. The thing I’m worried about now is that as chapters of my story, Cambodia and China will not be able to carry their weight compared to Bangladesh.

It’s a good problem to have. I have it thanks to Dalton.

—-
I helped Dalton setup a blog, Dalton’s World. He plans to post pictures ever week or so about life in Bangladesh. Although, his current post is all business - he’s soliciting ads. Dalton constantly looks for a way to get ahead and I suspect that’s why, in fact, he has gotten ahead.

Pigs in the Toilet & Odes to the Crotch Flap

It’s me again – “that guy inspired by his boxers.” At least that’s what writer Jeff Vize calls me.

Some are inspired by sunsets, others, lovely pieces of art. Not me. Give me some faded stretched out undies with some cartoons on them and I’ll travel across the globe and write you an ode to the crotch flap.

I’m a simple man.

This trip won’t be the first time I’ve been inspired by underwear. Why just this Christmas I bit the bullet and bought Annie some tastefully comfortable drawers at Victoria Secret. I almost died in the process. Call me a prude, but I don’t like to talk about boobs and butt cheeks with strange ladies in underwear stores. I wrote a little piece about the experience and read it to Annie AND HER PARENTS when I presented her with the gift. I would post it here, but she would KILL ME and I wouldn’t be able to post on here anymore, or go on my trip, or get married in September – all bad things.

Anyhow, Jeff posted about me on his blog/book “Pigs in the Toilet.” What is a blog/book, I’ll let Jeff tell you in a question answer session with himself:

What’s with the serial installments? Isn’t this just a travel blog?
Well, maybe – except that the entries are all six years old.

This is more like a book that I’m gradually publishing in a blog-like format. I promise there will be a story line, and that I’ll keep the anecdotes about stomach ailments, hotel rooms and meals to a minimum.

So if this is really a book, why aren’t you publishing it and making heaps of money?

Because I’m a free-spirited anti-capitalist who believes that fine art should be freely accessible to everyone, not just those with money.

You mean you couldn’t sell the book?

Yeah, pretty much.

I enjoyed Jeff’s most recent installment about traveling in Bangladesh and, seeing how I’ll be there in a matter of a few weeks, found it immediately useful and frightening. He writes about being in Bangladesh where light-skinned travelers are treated like rock stars:

The first rule was to never stop to look at your guidebook: You’d be surrounded by literally hundreds of locals within seconds. Continuing your journey would require handshakes, ten conversations and possibly autographs.

The second rule was to walk fast. People would still stare, but you’d pass like a phantom – leaving them to discuss whether you actually existed or not.

The third rule was to develop friendly yet slightly dismissive ways of acknowledging my fame. I had fun with this one. The easiest was the Princess Diana wave – a half turn of the hand at face level, punctuated by a slightly demure smile. On more energetic days, I resorted to the Richard Nixon victory pose…

What inspires Jeff? Goread Pigs in the Toilet from the beginning.

The WHY of Travel?

The good gang at Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding highlighted WAIW? just the other day. My little quest got them thinking about the “why” of travel.

There are just about as many reasons to travel as there are travelers. It could be as simple as checking off sites on your “must-see” list, or it could be an emotional journey tracing family history in the mother country. The “why” of travel can be a complicated question, and for some it’s never fully answered.

The “why” for me has changed through the years.

First there was, “Why not? What the hell else would I do with my degree in Anthropology?”

Next there was, “I’ve got the last half of my uber-cheap ATW plane ticket left. Why not use it?” Followed by several other Why’s involving a Dracula obsession and some SCUBA gigs.

Now, the “why” is I enjoy writing about places and taking readers along for the ride.

Rolf Potts wrote the book on the “WHY” and “HOW” of travel – Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-term World Travel. I suspect that Rolf’s current “why” travel is similar to my own. His writing are popping up all over the internet: a column for Yahoo! and recent reports for Slate.

He’s passed off a lot of the daily blogging responsibilities to his team of bloggers. They are doing a fine job of making the site interesting and useful to both travelers and writers alike. Note the permanent link over yonder.

WAIW? on the Tranquilo Traveler

Joshua Berman is the Tranquilo Traveler. He’s taken a honeymoon around the world, written award winning guidebooks, and is the champion of Volun-tourism. His Moon Handbook on Nicaragua was one of the best guidebooks I’ve ever used – readable, useful, and not full of clichés.

Yesterday he profiled WAIW?:

The Where Am I Wearing? blog will document Kelsey’s globe trot in a bold, individual attempt to connect producer with consumer. I think this trip has a lot of potential and look forward to keeping an eye on it.

Thanks, Josh.

If you are a traveler, a writer, or a mix of both, you should check out Josh’s Tranquilo Traveler blog. Josh is a hard working, hard traveling writer. I’ve enjoyed following his adventures. You would too.

Oh, that reminds me. I haven’t added any links yet to this site. Not sure if it’s much of an honor, but the Tranquilo Traveler is about to be the first.