Trade route journey explained-hopefully!

This is an attempt to explain the trade route journey that Kathy and I are now on for we would love to take some of you with us in this! For regular readers of this blog you will recognise much of the material. However some of it is new. It began in the city of Damascus four years ago.

Hope it makes sense.

The power of story and the coffee bars of Damascus.

Damascus is a massive city for me for whilst there in November 2007 I and my friends encountered the Arabic storyteller. We had been looking for him ever since leaving Whiitby! So often in life our stories get buried beneath the pressure of simply surviving economically. Our own journey walking across Europe and into the Middle East was,amongst many other things, a refusal to bow to that god. Now I am committed to discovering an economic that empowers story rather than one that sacrifices it at the altar of the laws of global finance. This is what this trade route journey is all about. To understand more of this journey hit the link here  The power of the pen-encounters in Arabia  In March 2010 our journey east took us to Saudi Arabia. Travelling with my new friend Solomon his intent was to start a business in pens, manufactured in India and imported into Saudi. We took notice therefore when on the heights of that locked up nation we came across this monument to a pen. Stories and pens go together and a new partnership was birthed; story book in one hand, a pen in the other. To read more follow the link here What does a new story look like? We have no idea! However to give just one illustration, we soon will be appointing a worker for us in the gateway port of Jeddah, just beneath Mecca. The normal practice for the employment of migrant workers in Saudi is for their paspport to be taken off them; at best a means of control, at worst a form of economic slavery. Our worker will be one of the first, if not the first,to keep hold of his own passport. One example of the new story we are looking to craft. ** So thanks for reading this far. We are looking to see a beachhead established in the gateway city of Jeddah. A base from which we and anyone else who cares to partner with us can begin to help scribe a different story on these global portals of power,A place where people are treated as commodities and units of economic growth, and a place where economic slavery is very much alive. ** Finally, for those who received an email from me last week, thank you so much for praying. We saw an immediate shift in Jeddah. Communication is flowing, our first batch of pens have hit the market place and we have a temporary worker in place. An amazing and immediate shift. ** More over the next few days