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Intro

 

By Cira Riedel

 

 

 

Matt George is a hero for our age. A selfless individual who is making our world a better place. His urgent, intimate, emotional and at times severe style is incomparable. His text is an excerpt from a more extensive essay entitled HIGHER GROUND, scheduled for publication soon, which relates the author’s journey towards international voluntary work.
Since his work in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, Matt has served the United Nations on the front line in the disaster relief efforts after the earthquake in Pakistan, the eruption of Mount Merapi and the Pangandaran tsunami in West Java. He was personally thanked by the presidents of both these countries for his endeavours.
As the humanitarian representative of Cazenovia University in Syracuse, New York he pressed for the establishment of the first degree in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in the history of the United States. His charitable organisation “The Last Mile Operations“ is currently stationed in the East Indian Ocean on the Mikumba 2, an 85-foot schooner for humanitarian actions, and is providing aid to outer groups of islands.
Whilst writing this essay Matt and his team 2007 were deployed in the most remote highlands of West Sumatra, helping victims of the Solok earthquake, and then in the Solomon Islands, offering assistance in the wake of the most recent tsunami disaster.

 

 

 

Accompany the journey at www.thelastmileproject.org

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Higher Ground

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Ruminations on the last mile

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By Matt George

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Illustration by Jenay Loetscher

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New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 03 SEPT 2005

It is so powerful that you do not smell it, you ingest it.
Before you, bloated, obscene in its popped buttons, straining zippers and
nudity, the body floats face up in its own front yard. It is female, which
makes it much worse. It is penned in by a chain link fence that now rises
only inches above the evil waters that have sunk an entire city. A small
current, caused by an open gas main, spewing a flame ten feet high, runs small
maelstroms around the body, making her spin softly and bump, bump, bump
against the fence like a billiard ball kissing the cushions. The sun,
merciless, ferments everything. Ferments the diseased blackened water,
ferments your sweat, your thoughts.

You stand by. Seated on your idling jet ski, hand on the throttle, your
bowels loose. You sweat, thankful that the water is going out and not in.
You cannot look away from the body. The indignity of it.
It becomes your own.

Two Blackhawk rescue helicopters thunder overhead at roof level. The sky is
filled with them, giant insects on a hot summer day. The sound is deafening
but you don’t even cringe, don’t even look up, don’t even cover your ears or
close your eyes. You cannot. You are looking at a bloated dead body; its
once ebony skin now bleached a grotesque grey, floating in its own front
yard. And you think: this is America.

You do not wonder what put you here, deep in the fabled ninth ward of New
Orleans on the back of a donated jet ski, tear-assing around looking for
people to rescue. You know the answer.

It took a Tsunami. December 26th, 2004, the day your life stepped on the
third rail. You remember the moment when you tuned into the BBC as you woke
up that day after Christmas. Tsunami on a massive scale right in the
crossroads of the entire surfing world. As a surfer, this Tsunami became a
personal matter to you. Indonesia, the greatest surfing area in the world. A
place you had been time and again. A place you knew intimately. A vital part
of your world. The world that formed you like a mother. A travel soaked
youth, ocean, ocean, ocean, the pathetic attempt at college, ocean, ocean,
ocean, the shot at the professional surfing career, ocean, ocean, ocean, and
then the 22 year post at SURFER MAGAZINE as a globetrotting
writer/photographer, ocean, ocean, ocean - all of it somehow leading to this
outrage, floating face down before you.

The awful smell makes you think of another. A different soul on the other
side of the world, months before. Another body, floating face down, off the
forgotten Banyak Islands of Indonesia. He stunk too. And you think about how
well you now know death. You actually have a nose for it. A smell
reserved for grave robbers.

Now it is in you, like a virus.

So you breathe it in and think back on the first days of January 2005 when
you and a friend bumped into each other at San Francisco international
airport with slightly confused grins on your faces, trying to explain to
each other what you were doing there. That you were going to Sumatra to help in
any way you could, because you were a surfer, and Sumatra is a surfing place
and that was about all you felt.

But that was then.
You are one hundred years older now.

You remember those heady first days in Sumatra, and how they led to that
moment, $40,000 borrowed dollars later, when you pulled away from the pier
at Bungus Harbor at midnight on an eighty foot wooden boat laden with thirty
tons of food, water and medicine, a local team of Islamic female doctors,
canoes, fishing gear, school supplies, soccer balls, toys, 20 pounds of
lollipops, 4 goats and five chickens. You were setting sail for the
northern most point in the archipelago, Simeulue Island; 22 miles from the
epicenter of the quake, a place from where no word of survivors had been
heard. A place no one had even considered. Mysterious waters where
Westerners had not been allowed for over 25 years as a civil war raged on
the mainland. Distant waters, unheard of waters, rife with real, gun-toting
pirates, tall tales and terrific storms and danger, and that best teacher on
earth: adventure. And you remember discovering for yourself that it was all true.

Yes, and all the while you had sailed and sailed, reaching thousands of
lives, holding emergency medical clinics in the Tsunami-scoured villages,
aiding the fringes of life on the outermost islands, often working late into
the night in blizzards of malaria-ridden mosquitoes. And you had done all
this in today’s fucked-up global political climate no less, sailing
shoulder to shoulder with Muslims, Jews, Christians, Palestinians,
Catholics, Pagans, Fathers, Sons and Holy Ghosts.
There was a message to the world in that act alone.

And you felt ten feet tall, and still do and why not? You are a surfer, not a
choir boy. And you had bent every rule in the book to become that. Why not
feel great and yell to the heavens? After a life of surfing? Just about the
most self-serving lifestyle on earth? Why not yell to the heavens that you’d
finally and actually and absolutely done something for others, thousands of
others, and it was wonderful? After all the selfish moments and realized
desires in the ocean, surfing waves all for yourself, all for your own self.
After all that, you had actually put surfing aside, taken what surfing had
made you into and applied it to actions that would last long after your
final wave had washed ashore.

It is time to move away from this body before you.
So you hit the throttle, pick your way through the murdered neighborhood,
the body a late night haunting forever. You hit the throttle and you sweat
and you ingest this poisoned place called New Orleans and you think. You
think back on it all and how you got here and you ask yourself why you do
it. Ego? Addiction to the thrill? A romantic hero complex? Sure. You bet.
Run it down if you must. But it is still getting done. And no one else is
doing it. But you know deep inside there is more. Much more. Something primal.
Why do you do it?

For a day exactly like this one.

The one you are living right here and right now with the people of the ninth
ward of New Orleans. Surrounded by the salt of the earth. Saving people.
Helping human beings. Carrying old men through the muck on your back.
Rallying against the madness of this world. Adding your light to the sum of
light. And you do it for the eyes. The look in the eyes of those you help. The look
that convinces you that this is the way things should be. The impulse within
us all. To help.

Why do you do it?
For days like this one.
Absolutely goddamn right.
For days like this one.
You are a surfer after all.
And you will mine the salt of the earth, not the gold.

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Heather Nova

By Sanja Vidackovic
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Is it foolish to claim that there are people whose inner beauty can be recognised from the sound of their voice? The decision to ask Heather Nova to take part in our project was based on this very feeling.
Her sensual and enigmatic appearance is underlined by an expressive charm and grace, her magical and unmistakable voice has been enchanting the world for decades.
Heather Nova lives with her family in the Bermudas; she paints, writes, sings and gives her untiring support to numerous different aid projects. Her song Higher Ground, inspired by Matt George’s striking story, touched us deeply and even surpassed our idea about her character.
www.heathernova.com
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Lyrics:

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„Higher Ground“ by Heather Nova
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Why do i
Follow this heart of mine
Risk my life
Follow it every time?
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Ride the waves
Into the wild beyond
To bring you hope
That’s what im riding on
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It’s what i see inside,
I see in your eyes
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I can pull you from the wreckage
I can save your life
I can bring you what you need,
I can make it alright,
But it’s you who lifts me to higher ground
Yeah it’s you who lifts me to higher ground
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Why do i
Follow the call again
No one hears
But i can feel your pain
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Worlds away,
Everyone’s looking through
Glory fades,
But it’s what i am to you
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It’s what i see inside,
I see in your eyes
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I can save your life
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I can pull you from the wreckage
I can bring you what you need,
I can make it alright,
But it’s you who lifts me to higher ground
Yeah it’s you who lifts me to higher ground
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