“Blue Water” sailing is the kind where there’s no land to be seen, hopefully for days or weeks on end.

It’s not an easy life but it’s a deeply rich one. The ratio of lives lost at sea to the quantity of poetry and music composed by the people who live there is impossible to calculate. Incredibly, in this day and age of instant connectivity of all kinds, there is still a way to fall off the edge of the human world, and that’s the provenance of the Blue Water Cowboys. These women and men inspire us, push us beyond our edge into adventure, and also help us get to where we want to go.

Outer Voices is honored to present to you Blue Water Cowboys – three radio pieces presented against a backdrop of the images, words and sounds of the lives of a tight knit family of sailors who we’ve been lucky enough to know, and to sail with.

Read about Pacific island sailors. View photo galleries and listen to recorded interviews from the crews of the Hokule’a, Blue Water Marine, Goodewind, SV Kwai, Gershon II, and The Matthew Turner.

Click to download audio as: MP3

The nation of Kiribati is a comprised almost entirely of water, with small pieces of land barely an interruption to the powerful wash of the equatorial currents and the trade winds that blow through them. One group of Kiribati islands, called the Line Islands, lie barely north of the equator and due south of Hawai’i, and that’s where I met up with the SV Kwai.  The Kwai is a sailing cargo ship that travels thousands of miles through the Pacific Ocean every year to bring much needed supplies to the people who live in this far flung part of the world. Line Islanders get double use out of the Kwai, turning the cargo ship into a ferry to get from place to place.

I got on board with them at Christmas Island, sleeping on the deck with them between Christmas, Fanning and Washington islands.  After the passengers were gone, I stayed on board for the long journey home to Honolulu. While on board, I had my microphone on as much as possible, though it wasn’t always possible.

The crew of the Kwai and the people of the Line Islands are defined by the shape of the sea – a tough shell protects a gentleness not far underneath. The lives of passengers and crew are intertwined with each other, and with the elements of sea and sky that they share – something common to so many people I know who live their lives, by fate  or by design, on the open ocean. 

These islanders, this crew, and all the people like them, these are the Blue Water Cowboys.

Blue Water Cowboys is the at the center of three radio pieces about them, and the ocean that weaves them together.

Producer: Stephanie Guyer-Stevens
Supervising Producer: Claudia Taranto
Sound Engineers: Judy Rapley and John Biewen
Script Consultants: John Biewen and Cathy Fitzgerald

You heard the voices of the SV Kwai crew: Nacaniel Polania, Teibitoa Rubeniti, Arina Tembeu, Tebaueti Tetabo, Ben Vroom, and Captain Evy. Music performed by the crew of the SV Kwai and recorded on board at the dock in Honolulu. You also heard the voice of Kaleo Wong, navigator of the sailing canoe Hokule’a.

Many thanks to boat owners April Fountain and Brad Ives for their generous hospitality and to Captain Bruce Blankenfed of the Hokule’a. Gratitude also to Kaeti Boanareke, Bruno Delala, and the people of the Line Islands of the nation of Kiribati for their kindness.

Major underwriting for Blue Water Cowboys was provided by Terry Causey.

The guys sailing the Hokule’a back then were renegades, but also serious Hawaiian watermen. They lacked the traditional knowledge themselves to guide the canoe, but that didn’t stop them.  One man, traditional navigator Mau Pilaug, from Micronesia, agreed to help them get to Tahiti using only traditional navigational techniques – wind, stars and waves, and the elements around them – to make the 1500 mile voyage. They did it, and the legacy began, and still continues.

Hokule’a is now a treasured icon of Hawaiian pride and independence. She’s two thirds of the way through a worldwide voyage, called Malama Honua, which means the health of the planet.

We were lucky enough to intercept her in Australia, when I was there in the spring of 2015. I recorded a conversation about traditional navigation with their navigator, Kaleo Wong, on that visit. You’ll hear him on Blue Water Cowboys. Luck was on my side once again when the Hokule’a visited here, on the island of St. John in the US Virgin islands. Around the World in One Canoe is a piece I reported for NPR on her arrival here.

Click to download audio as: MP3

What does it take to build a sailing ship? Wood, nails, but maybe in even larger measure, a love for the sea, trust in the wind to carry it, and a longing for a place that’s not on solid ground. The Matthew Turner was for many years an idea of a ship, a dream of a boat, that one man, Alan Olson, had. His idea was a tall ship, where young people from the San Francisco bay area could feel the feeling of being at sea, away from land and maybe closer to themselves and to the wild. He dedicated the boat to Matthew Turner, the last of the great California boat builders. Hundreds of other people worked over many years to make this dream a reality. I stepped into a slice of time in the process of the work of building the Matthew Turner. We wanted to feel the verb, the motion and emotion behind this massive project, so we traveled to Sausalito to hear for ourselves.

Producer: Stephanie Guyer-Stevens
Script Consultants: John Biewen and Julia Barton, and the participants in Center for Documentary Studies’ Making it Sing 2018 workshop
Music: 33 Bowls, by 33bowls.com

Building the Matthew Turner was first boadcast on KWMR.

Many thanks to Alan Olson, the volunteers and staff of Call of the Sea.

For more information about the Matthew Turner, visit CallOfTheSea.org

Major underwriting for Building the Matthew Turner was provided by Terry Causey

Click to download audio as: MP3

In the Kham region of Tibet, there are families who have been nomadic herders for thousands of years. Almost everything they need, they get from a herd of yaks who graze on the wide expanse of grassy hills within sight of the distant peaks of the Himalayas. Last fall, Stephanie Guyer-Stevens went to Kham and met a family of nomads and their yaks. She heard about the spirits that protect the holy mountains, and learned about some yak economics. Families now send their kids away to school, and there is increasing pressure for them to join the modern economy. The nomadic life is gradually fading away.

Produced by Stephanie Guyer-Stevens and edited by John Biewen. Thanks to the Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation, Lucius and Eva Eastman Foundation, and Terry Causey for their support of this work. Special thanks to advisors Françoise Pommaret, Alex Gardner, Robbie Barnett, Annabella Pitkin, Wade Davis and Ariana Maki. Also thanks to Karma Lhamo and Demba Jhyentse, Gesar archivist and storyteller and to Tsebtrim, guide and translator.

Photos by Stephanie Guyer-Stevens

Fill in your email address if you would like to be notified whenever we release a new audio documentary.

Click to download audio as: MP3

Produced and researched by Shebana Coelho

There I was, an Indian woman on the move in a strange new land –  Mongolia – and it didn’t feel so strange. So much resonated – especially the voices of other women – like Monjago, a nomadic herder, Munkhtsetseg, a horse trainer, Onika, a student, Amgalan, a language teacher and Jainaa, a singer. They made faraway feel like home.

Shebana Coelho is a writer and documentary producer. Her work has been broadcast on National Public Radio, BBC Radio Four, American Public Television and the Discovery Channel. She received a 2007 Fulbright Research Fellowship to Mongolia. Her website is www.shebanacoelho.com

She can be reached at email: [email protected]

“This is a great piece. I used to live in Mongolia and Ms Coelho’s work really transports me back to this incredible place. I like her use of sound and the way she creates her sound-scape with voices and natural sound. I particularly enjoyed the segment on Amgalan — truly inspiring. Great work! Even if you’ve never been to Mongolia, this work will put you right there on the vast steppe.”

Charles Rice, listener

Sounds for these segments were collected on a 2007 US Fulbright research fellowship.

Post-production funding by: 

Additional Mongolia information:

nomadicencounters.blogspot.com

Photos by Shebana Coelho

Fill in your email address if you would like to be notified whenever we release a new audio documentary.

Click to download audio as: MP3

Bhutan is a land of prayer flags and happiness. But people are people, and human suffering, including domestic violence, is as prevalent here as it is anywhere. Queen Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuk takes her job – creating happiness for the people of her kingdom – seriously – so much so that she treks into the most remote corners of the country to meet the people who she would otherwise never see, to find out about their lives, strategize about health care, and to help end domestic violence. Outer Voices accompanied her into a remote unmapped corner of the high Himalayas. We’re honored to be the only foreigners to ever be invited to accompany a Bhutanese monarch on a trek, and the first journalists ever to interview Queen Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuk.

Sponsors: Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation, Terry Causey, and other generous individuals.

To learn more about RENEW and their work to eradicate domestic violence in Bhutan go to their website at www.renewbhutan.org

Photo by Jack Chance

Fill in your email address if you would like to be notified whenever we release a new audio documentary.

Click to download audio as: MP3

War decimated the landscape of Vietnam. The drastic economic times that followed drove Vietnam into the globalizing economy at lightning speed — and the country soon became the second largest exporter of rice in the world. After the war, Vietnam catapulted into the global marketplace, fast becoming the second largest producer of rice in the world. But the price of this rice is still being calculated: one out of every seven people in Vietnam goes hungry, for lack of rice, and farmers are spending more on chemical fertilizer than they are earning in profits.

Outer Voices traveled to Vietnam and Laos to see first hand what environmental leader, Tranh Thi Lanh, has done to create a movement for sustainable agriculture in this region. This is a story about farming — the pressures of the global economy on people and land, the deep spiritual relationships that people develop with land, and that they in turn use to preserve it. And underneath that, there’s what it is to build an environmental movement in Vietnam, after agent orange.

For more information about the work of Social Policy Ecological Research Center please visit their website: http://speri.org

Fill in your email address if you would like to be notified whenever we release a new audio documentary.

Photograph by Kamilah

Click to download audio as: MP3 | WAV

HIV/AIDS is defined by people: their complex lives, their bravery, their fear, their sadness, their need, their laughter, their inconsistencies–basically, their rich humanity. LiveHopeLove looks at the universal problems faced by people with HIV/AIDS, through the specific lens of Jamaica, where almost no one is unaffected by the disease.

What are the unique realities of this small island state that set its HIV/AIDS sufferers apart from those in the rest of the world? Poet and writer Kwame Dawes travels to Jamaica to explore the experience of people living with HIV/AIDS and to examine how the disease has shaped their lives. Dawes’ poems, inspired by their stories, take this documentary into deep realms of the heart.

LiveHopeLove: HIV/AIDS in Jamaica is the second of two multimedia reporting initiatives undertaken by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting with support from the MAC AIDS Fund. Visit LiveHopeLove.com to explore the interactive website with rich photography, the complete set of Kwame’s poems, short video documentaries and musical interpretations of the poems.This documentary constructed entirely from film sound, was created in conjunction with the Emmy award winning website.

This is an exceptional piece of audio. Kwame Dawes’ poetic-narration is vivid, beautiful, and effective. Using a poetic form rather than prose to prepare the listener for each section allows the folks featured in this piece more autonomy to tell their own story than a traditional narration would have. Live Hope Love shows the listener that while contracting AIDS is a tragedy, AIDS patients are not, by definition, victims.The music is excellent, and effectively integrated within the spoken word and audio footage. The reggae and hiphop convey a distinct sense of place, lift the spirit of the story, and communicate that AIDS is no longer a death sentence; it is a disease people can live with and survive.

LiveHopeLove was commissioned by The Pulitzer Center in Crisis Reporting, in partnership with Public Radio Exchange

Photo by Josh Cogan

Fill in your email address if you would like to be notified whenever we release a new audio documentary.

The Story of Lata explores the efforts by the people of a remote part of Solomon Islands to preserve their traditional boat building culture and navigation. It explores traditional Polynesian navigation in a region where the technology and knowledge is still intact. We listen to the older women who remember the old days of sailing, and who consider their role were this tradition to be revived. And we also consider the reality of modern life, which they are slowly being required to adapt to. How feasible is it to revive these ancient arts, which take time to learn?

Behind the whole story is the myth of Lata, which guides us into a profound understanding of the limitlessness of time and space so necessary to the navigators behind the Polynesian navigation, and consider that our modern world could do well to be informed by the patience and durability which it required.

For more information about Vaka Taumako and their crucial work to support traditional cultures in the Solomon Islands visit their site: http://www.vaka.org.

“Producer Stephanie Guyer-Stevens has sailed halfway around the world to bring us a beautifully produced story just in time for Asian Pacific Heritage Month. “The Story of Lata” explores the cultural traditions and contemporary challenges of Solomon Islanders in a remote corner of the South Pacific. Here, the tides of modern life have steadily eroded away knowledge of the ancient arts of sailing and navigation that once defined this culture. And it’s Polynesian women who remember the old ways.

Learning again, from the story of their cultural hero, Lata, to build te puke (canoes). Guyer-Stevens weaves a wonderful watery tale with just the right amount of culture, a taste of technology, and good old storytelling: perfect summer listening.” Catherine Stifter, Producer

Click to download audio as: MP3

Along the Thai-Burma border, we meet the women peace activists working in the midst of the world’s longest running civil war. In the Karen language, Kawthoolei is the name of a mythical homeland in eastern Burma (Myanmar). The Karen people have been struggling for control of this land for nearly 60 years. This conflict between the Burmese military regime and the Karen National Union is now considered the world’s longest running civil war. There are numerous reports of ethnic cleansing, and hundreds of thousands of Burmese and ethnic refugees have flooded western Thailand, yet this conflict is often overlooked by the western media.

Produced along the Thai-Burma border in the refugee camps, medical clinics, and rebel military bases, “Kawthoolei” attempts to demystify the complicated history of Burma’s ethnic groups, while focusing on Karen women activists working for non-violent solutions.

This documentary features interviews with Nobel nominees Zipporah Sein and Dr. Cynthia Maung, as well as several other women activists, observers, humanitarian workers, and refugees.

Photo by Kristofer Dan-Bergman

Photo by Kristofer Dan-Bergman

This documentary is stunning work. Simply said, it gives the unheard voices of the repressed Burmese a chance to relate how the government’s cruelty, torture and ethnic cleansing has nearly annihilated them, except for the hope that still lives in the quiet work of women activists. The listener becomes captivated by the determination of these people, and the sounds of their everyday life, as difficult as it may be.

The world has come to know of their aspirations through Aung San Suu Kyi, but just as eloquent are the voices of women who have organized illegally to advance not only their people’s survival but dreams of a peaceful homeland. Kawthoolei is the name the Karen people–the largest ethnic group in Burma–give to their mythical place of origin. Their wish is to recast that place in Burma. The Karen Women’s Organization has trained refugees living in camps on the Thai border to become literate, to gain life skills, and more importantly to receive medical care. The stories of Dr. Cynthia’s clinic and her Backpack Medics are astounding.

Producer Jack Chance guides us through this Burmese journey with insight, good writing, and exquisite use of sound, music and tone. The hour is gripping because of the way it is put together, and also because it delivers an exceedingly complex topic in a crystalline way.

Yolette Garcia, KERA

Fill in your email address if you would like to be notified whenever we release a new audio documentary.

Click to download: MP3 | Transcript

In January of 2005 our team travelled to Cambodia to meet Chanthol Oung, the head of the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center, a grassroots organization dedicated to preventing violence against women, and working to stop the illegal sale of young women into the sex industry. We talked to a number of young women who told us their stories of having been sold into brothels, and who had managed to escape. They also told us about what they are doing with their lives now. These remarkable stories have been chronicled into “Girls From Cambodia”, along with the stories of shelter workers, policemen and Chanthol Oung herself, forging the struggle against an entrenched system of human trafficking.

Girls From Cambodia includes emotional firsthand accounts of brave young Cambodian women, speaking frankly about being sold into sexual slavery and escaping their captors. and their hopes for a different future.

This poignant portrayal features Chanthol Oung, the founder of the the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center who has forged the struggle against a deeply entrenched system of human trafficking.

Chanthol Oung was the Southeast Asia recipient of an International Woman of Courage Award by the U.S. State Department this year. The “International Women of Courage” award is the State Department’s only continuing awards program exclusively for emerging women leaders.

Sponsors

“Disturbing, Engaging, Sound Rich… This is an outstanding documentary. I recommend finding a slot to broadcast it. It is sound rich and compelling. There is a good narrative throughout the hour. The producers did a great job of letting the girls tell the story.The writing and ambient tape gives a good sense of place. It provides continuity and sets scenes, but lets the tape tell the story.The stories are disturbing, but important to hear. This is great public radio.”

“This is disturbing. little girl voices talking about being sold into brothels with the same tone as if describing chores. It grows bone chilling with each account…the indigestible blurring of prostitution and pedofilia . There is history told, revealing the now seemingly bottomless shelters, ever full of young women and girls seeking respite from a dispicable life. The shelter and crisis organizations have had to become a driving force within the social structure and conscience of an entire country; it’s almost like a political movement or conservationist in any other country.More testimony, perhaps quiet celebration too, of the burning strength and inimitable stamina often required for female survival and their redemption. Produced thoughtfully with unobtrusive narrator and music – generally this is a radio experience that leaves your mouth agape.”

Fill in your email address if you would like to be notified whenever we release a new audio documentary.

Click to download audio as: MP3

In “The Hula Lesson” we join Hawaiian Hula teacher Roselle Bailey and her multicultural halau to find out what hula is, what it means to Hawaii, and why so many non-Hawaiians love it. Hula is more than girls dancing with coconut bras and grass skirts, with strains of Don Ho in the background. In fact, hula is a complete expression of a traditional culture, which uses dancing and singing for teaching social lessons, and for recounting history. When we know our own social and cultural identity, then we can understand who we are in relation to others. Roselle feels this is the necessary first step for creating a peaceful world.“The Hula Lesson” is our foundation piece.

The role of “The Hula Lesson” in the Outer Voices series is to provide an opportunity to examine what is perhaps the core issue of effective peacemaking. The foundation for peace, as we learn in “The Hula Lesson”, lies in understanding who we are in relationship to other people.

To learn more about Roselle Bailey and the halau, Ka’Imi Na ‘auao O Hawai’i Nei, visit their website: www.kaimi.org

“We ran this special a few years ago – it’s great – I think we’ll run it again. Outer Voices has an established record of producing high-quality, engaging and sound rich documentaries. This one is no different. This special provides excellent public service and rich production values. The great thing is it gives listeners to really learn about the Hula – far more than you would ever learn attending one. Even when you visit Hawaii, you have to really make an effort to lean about the culture and history. Also, it’s great to learn about the Hula. It’s easy for us to confuse that at a Luau, dances from around Polynesia are all performed. As with the other great docs from Stephanie and her team, this special is sound rich and lets the tape tell the story, with minimum narration. I encourage you to schedule this for your showcase slot or for a holiday special.”

Fill in your email address if you would like to be notified whenever we release a new audio documentary.