What happens at Sea?

Hey everyone! I know that it has been ages since I checked in! For all of you that are not SAS Alumni, you should know that time at sea is filled with full time work. It is a mad catch up when we all get back on the MV and have classes and papers and projects due and everything has to get done before our next stop. This is one of the many reasons this trip is NOT a vacation. Before I fill you in on all the Ghana details I wanted to share with you some of the things that we discuss while at sea. In my sustainable communities class we discuss a lot of issues both environmentally, economically and socially that affect the environment. My teacher reminds us “not to let the landscape over ride our mindscape.” We talk about a region, such as Ghana that was once inhabited by 2,000 and now has a population of over 3 million and how that affects community, resources and survival. We discuss our role as students, teachers, community builders, voyagers and travelers and the notion of “giving someone a fish or teaching them how to fish.” We refer to people in the field such as Howard (who studied the importance of garden cities), Mumford (who studied the growth of industrial cities) and Leopold (who said, treat the land for the land) and how these ideas relate to the now and our current state in the world.  From all this we conclude that we need “enough, for all, forever,” and it is up to us to take the next step to “be the change we wish to see in the world (Gandhi).”