Smuggler & Stowaway. A Life of Adventure with Timothy Jay Smith

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How's a good thriller adventure sound that includes mercenaries, African jails, child prostitutes, smuggling, arms deals, wannabe terrorists. It's the stuff of great novels. But what if it's not a novel? My guest, Timothy, writes excellent thriller novels, but much of what he writes comes from his own experiences, both as a Shreve willing, devil may Are youth and as an adult representing the US at the highest levels of foreign governments. So hang tight. He's got some great tales to tell. Join me, Brad Shreve and my guest, Timothy Jay Smith, and Queer we are.

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Timothy j Smith, welcome to Queer Are. Thank you, Brad. Appreciate being here. It's good to see you again. You Are on my old podcast, Queer Writers of Crime, which folks are still available to listen to. And your book, Fire on the Island, was one of my favorite books in 2020.

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Thank you. Talking to you about that book, you have such a fascinating life. You've got a new book coming out, Istanbul Crossing, which we're gonna talk about, because so much of the information you get is from your lifetime, and you are one of the most fascinating people I've ever met.

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You you must have met very many people.

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Oh, no. Come on. Come on. Smuggling and Yeah. I forget. What is it when you jump on a ship and you're not supposed to be there? A stowaway. Stowaway. You were stowaway too? Yeah. So let's start with ideas. As if I don't know the answer to this, where do you get the ideas for your novels? Which usually is a tough question for people to answer. Well, I do take them from my personal experiences. What motivated me to start writing novels and really take it seriously as opposed to just enjoying the writing aspects of my life was I was working in, Israel Palestine for a couple of years. And, there was a story I wanted to tell after being there and seeing sort of all the players, involved in that conflict. And I felt I could tell a story that might actually help foster peace in that situation, which obviously did not happen, because of my book. But, I I I'm always looking for something that moves me and interests me in terms of society, politics, social consciousness, economic justice, whatever you ever you wanna put it, that's what's always motivated me in my entire life, in my career, and then later when I quit to become a writer. I that's what I look for in writing. I look for what's the issue I wanna want to inform people about a little bit and my that I know about. And then I create a suspenseful plot that surround that issue, and I look at how that deal that affects sort of ordinary people who might be involved in that plot. So in the case of my very first novel, A Vision of Angels, I followed the story of 4 families that involved an American journalist, an Israeli war hero, a Palestinian farmer, and an Arab Christian grocer.

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And there's a terrorist plot that's gonna take place, and it's not really the story is not about that terrorist plot or that even happening. It's really about how these people are involved with that by that plot and by the Israeli authorities who are taking actions to try to stop something from happening. So that's how I really find my stories. I've I've written about human trafficking, a couple of books on basically refugee issues in in Europe. So that's what that's how I do it. That's where that's where they come from. The first novel you mentioned, the A Vision of Angels, what year did that publish?

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To be honest, I'd have to look it up, but I think it's, like, I think it was 2,012. Okay. So you started writing, about a dozen years or so ago? And it might have been close to 2,008.

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I've been writing for about 20 years. Well, let's talk about some of your experiences because it was earlier than that that you were involved in the arts because you smuggled something from behind the iron curtain. Let's talk about that story. Well, that's not a huge story. People tend to think it's probably a little little bit more exciting than than it was, although it was a dangerous situation or dangerous thing to be doing. I I don't know anybody else that smuggled things out of Russia or the USSR. I smuggled it out of, Czechoslovakia.

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And, okay. I'll tell you a really crazy story. I'd gone to Greece with a little grant to buy a donkey to go along the Greek Albanian border and photograph life at that time. That would have been whatever year Turkey invaded Cyprus. That would have been, I think, 1974. And because Turkey invaded Cyprus, there suddenly was a no man's land of about 30 kilometers along the Albanian border. So I couldn't really go to the border and buy my donkey and do what I planned to do. So instead, I decided to take a trip through Eastern Europe, and I had a friend study Slavic studies in in Prague. And I got up there and spent some days with him and, met some playwrights, and they knew I was I was a Berkeley student, basically, or was going back to graduate school there. And they wanted a couple of plays smuggled out to that department that could get the get the plays out and out out in read by I don't know who I had no idea what I was really doing except I knew I had to keep secret these plays. And when I got back to Berkeley, I passed them on. I don't know. It could have been Havel that, wrote the plays at the time. I didn't know any playwrights' names from Czechoslovakia. So that's sort of what happened. It's it sounds exciting, but I mean, if I had been actually caught, I'd probably still be in Are, you know, a Russian prison. But, I wasn't caught. And I was just careful, and that's sort of what I did. But you did get caught on another adventure, and you wound up in an African jail Yes. On a devil's barge? That's what okay. So What is a devil's barge? And tell that story. Okay.

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So I was I was living in Greece, and I was ending an assignment in Greece a couple of years.

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And my closest friend was a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal.

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So I decided I was going to visit him in Senegal. You know, it was just before the internet. I had no way of finding out how to get to Senegal from any place else. And I looked at a map. I was visiting my sister was studying in Paris. I was visiting my sister on my way to Senegal. I saw that these group of islands called Cabo Verde or Cape Verde, which are Portuguese territories, were really just off the coast of Senegal, it looked like to me. So I thought, well, I'll fly down there and get a boat to Senegal. Well, it turns out that there were no boats between Portuguese territories or any relationship at that point because Guinea Bissau, which borders southern the southern border of Senegal, had just had a revolutionary movement. And the leader of that revolutionary movement had been killed by Senegalese or something like that. So the countries weren't there was no communication between anything Portugal and Senegal.

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So I was stuck on this island, and I was gonna be stuck for at least 4 weeks. And this cargo ship comes up with apparently with a broken rudder, though I'm not really sure if that was true. It might have been an excuse that I wanted to go to Senegal. So I go to the captain and I asked for passage, and he wanted an extraordinary amount of money. And I said, I don't have that amount of money. And he knew I was fairly desperate. So he said, okay. You are a stowaway on my boat. You are not allowed inside.

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You must stay on the deck. It was a 3 day passage to Senegal. I had nothing but a small package of, like, 6 biscuits, like Oreo cookies, and that's all I had, and no water for 3 days. And to go to the bathroom, I had to literally hang on to ropes and put my rear end over the side of the boat. And where I was staying in in Cabo Verde, the landlady of this pension, this kind of rundown house I stayed in, when she found out what boat I was gonna be on, simply shook her head and said, that's the devil's barge, which was not a particularly nice thing to say to me as I was planning to be a stowaway on it. But, anyway, that's that's what that was all about. I when I get to Senegal, I'm immediately arrested because I have no exit visa, and I'm not allowed into the country without an exit v without an exit not a ticket visa, but a ticket out of the country. So the police would come to the boat. They take me away. They take me to the police station. They Are to feed me this slop, which was rice with bird fetuses in it. It was it was just horrible. It was it was really terrible. And That's awful after you've been gnawing on, Oreo cookies.

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Yeah. Exactly. I I couldn't eat. I still couldn't I still couldn't bring myself to eat this stuff. Anyway, he and I are going back and forth. And, of course, all he wanted was a bribe, but I didn't know that. I wasn't sophisticated enough or old enough or mature enough to know that that's exactly what what I was being set up for. So I just kept saying, you know, take me to some travel agency where I can buy a ticket out of the country, and they let me in the country.

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And he finally said to me, you know what the problem is? I'm black, and you're white, and that's why you don't understand me. And I said I said to him, catch 22. He said, what's that mean? I said, well, I'm always gonna be white and you're always gonna be black. And if that's the problem, catch 22. He immediately arrested me. He's he's he says, okay. You're under I'm putting you under boat arrest. I knew out that I was really in trouble because the captain of this boat really hated me. And, as I was being dragged out of the plea out of the policeman's office, I'm hanging out of the doorway, shouting to people, waiting for whatever in some waiting room, my name, what boat they were taking me to, and asking for help. I get back to the boat, and the captain confiscates my passport, looks at me, and says, I knew you were trouble. And they were supposed to leave the next day for an 8 day journey to Puerto Rico.

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I was not gonna survive that journey. Oh. I was not gonna be on that boat when I arrived. So I was planning to jump in the water, basically swim to shore that night and try to, you know, save myself. And I'm telling everybody who's walking by the boat, I'm yelling at them saying, you know, my name is so and so and I'm an American citizen. Please go to the embassy and whatever. And I'd asked to see the chief of police, and the policeman who arrested me said he was the chief of police. Well, it turns out he wasn't. And the chief of police did arrive, who was really probably the biggest big this man I'd ever seen. And he was in a starched white outfit.

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And he said, I'm the chief of police, and what is the problem here? And I said, no problem. There's no problem. Take all my money. Take my passport. Just get me a ticket out of the country so I can get into the country. And that's what he did. I said, please come back within a couple hours because I don't think I'll be here in 2 more hours. He came back and the situation got resolved, but it was a very, very dicey situate situation for me. I was only, kind of how what was I? 23 years old, faced with, you know, crossing 8 days in Puerto Rico with a captain who hated my guts, basically. So I just can't imagine how terrifying that would We, having to scream out my name and and all that information because It was I don't wanna disappear.

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Yeah. Right. Exactly. It was pretty terrifying. I've never been in a situation like that. Yeah. Well, I was.

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So I'm I'm curious because you said the captain hated you, but you were a stowaway by invitation. Did he set you up? No. I just think that the fact that, I became a problem for him once we got to Senegal. I mean, he really did not allow me inside the boat. The only food I I got I guess I I had a couple of biscuits on my own. I actually didn't have 6 biscuits. And then a flying fish, like, on day 2, came flying over the deck over the side of the boat and hit the deck.That's a miracle. It hit the deck hit the deckhouse, and I grabbed this fish and then I I I, traded it with the chef for like another another cookie or 2. That was it. That's all I had. I had no water for 3 days. It's unbelievable that I survived. It is unbelievable. I I thought you Are gonna tell me you'd gnawed on the on the raw fish. No. I I would've. I've had a couple of experience like that, but that was the worst really seriously. So what was it what was this barge like? I figured it's not it wasn't a cruise ship. No.

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It was really a barge, and, it was going to Senegal to pick up sand, of all things.

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That was a very fine sand that was being used in cement. And so we were docked next to this huge in in in Are, Senegal, this huge pile huge pile of sand with a steady breeze that kind of blew it over me. I was covered head to head to toe with black oil from the deck of the boat. And so all this all this sand was sticking to me. You can you can imagine that this this is what I looked like. It was unbelievable what happened. So I will tell you, I'll finish this story by saying, so the police chief came back with a ticket to San Diego that he bought on me for me from on a credit card and handed me back, like, $4.50. I only had, like,$20 in my pocket, seriously. Wow. And, I mean, you know, when you're young, you do crazy things.

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But I got to the town that my friend was living in.

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I spent I had spent everything I had on the ride down there. I got there and I had to the only way I knew to get to his house was to tell a rickshaw driver where he lived. That's what he that's what the instructions were. I know no real address he had. It was just sort of between here and there and something like that. When I got to my friend's house, he wasn't there, and I needed 50¢to pay the Rickshaw driver. So the Rickshaw driver is very angry and hangs around for a while. And finally, my friend shows up and, pays the 50¢ that I was a free man.

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You don't wanna make your rickshaw driver angry. No. Never. No.

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No.

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Despite your horrendous experience in Africa, in Senegal, on the opposite side of the continent in Tanzania, You're doing good things, great things with the Tanzania Shreve Project. It's an organization you founded. But let's first start with the journey before you got there. After all that and all the crazy things you did as a kid, what did you do before you became an author? What direction did you go?

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Well, I was very clear about what I wanted to do, even before I left high school, and I managed to accomplish it, which was I, was very affected by the civil rights movement.

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That's what I grew up during. I was grew up during the sixties, came of age, kind of during the sixties. I decided I want to basically help low income people. And, it was a time of the war on poverty, so I essentially worked on domestic and then later international projects that where I really worked, on behalf of the poorest of the poor around in the US and eventually around the world. Those jobs had a lot of significance in some places. In the US, I, play some very significant roles in, provide getting resources channel to, community based organizations and protecting some tribal rights in Alaska and things like that that, you know, just sort of a myriad of things that I I worked on, then eventually I flipped international work. And I, was at one point, the US government's finance adviser on every project, in Asia, urban and urban and housing project in Asia, sponsored by US Agency For International Development. From there, I went on to be a, an adviser for for the World Bank to the solidarity government's first minister of finance, and solidarity came into power in Poland in 1989, 1990.

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Ultimately, my last job was running, a US government project, the first the first US government project to help Palestinians, and that would have been 94 to 97. And, I had project offices throughout the occupied territories and in Gaza. 7 different project offices and had a small local staff, and we were basically helping rebuild the economy of Palestine, as part of the peace process.

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So when you see a a problem, national or global problem, you don't just sit around and bitch. You wanna do something about it. No. That's right. I I do. I I mean, I spent you know, I I started working I literally started working when I was 12 years old, and I and so I I was able to quit working when I was much younger than most people Queer working. I quit working for I quit working formally when I was 46 years old. I just saved my money and decided I was gonna write. And then I wanted to write about the same issues that I've been working with. So, it's just it's just a continuation, but in a much lower paying job, which is called writing. So much lower paying job. People look at, Stephen King and JK Rowling and no. There are many of us that are there.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I that's what I did. So and still do. And now you encountered human trafficking. Where where was that?

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Well, the way I got involved in human trafficking is that I, I was planning to write a novel that would deal with blood diamonds in Africa. And it was not something that I knew much about, but some Africanist friends of mine who had worked a lot in Africa really felt that combining my interest in sort of social issues, social consciousness issues with writing that that they wanted to see me do something on blood diamonds. And so, do you know what blood diamonds are? Should I explain what that is? No. Actually, I was gonna ask. Okay. So they're called conflict diamonds or blood diamonds. And these these are the diamonds that are mined in primarily West Africa, but also a little further south down in the Congo and stuff. And they are fought over, by the government forces and the revolutionary forces, which are constantly going back and forth because this is what what supports their buying weapons to fight their wars. And, there's a it's a huge international issue where the efforts to try to stop the trade blood diamonds to stop in order to stop the wars and all the terrible things that go on in in these countries. So I was on my way, in a few days. It's back in 2005, I think. I was going to Antwerp, which is the diamond center of the world to basically learn about the diamond business and Blood Diamonds in particular. And there was a a program came on NPR, Talk of the Nation, and it was a program that was featuring the photographer of that month's issue of National Geographic, which was the 1st national magazine to feature modern day slavery, otherwise known now as human trafficking. And I was so shocked by what that story talked about.

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That at that time, which is 20 years ago now, there were already, like, an estimated 26,000,000 people in the world that had been trafficked. And that number was going up by about a 1000000 people a year. Trafficked out of the country and a 1000000 people trafficked within their own countries. And then America had 50 had an estimated 55,000 slaves at that time. These are mostly sex slaves and women under 18 years old. It was so shocking to me.

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I I I just couldn't it's the only time I've ever pulled off the road and stopped the car to listen to a radio broadcast finish. And I thought, I'm leaving for Antwerp in 3 days. It's the 2nd largest port in Europe. If there's trafficking going on, there's gotta be trafficking going on in Antwerp or in Belgium. And so when I got to Belgium, I began to check it out and I contacted the FBI agent who was assigned to the US Embassy in Brussels and he put me in touch with, rescue homes for trafficked women. And, so I visited a couple of these rescue houses and just made it something that I wanted to learn about. So I did some more traveling around. I, went back to Israel, which is I understand understood the time, I that prostitution is legal, which makes it a prime place for traffickers to bring their goods, which are these young women. And, I met with the head of the anti trafficking task force in Israel and, just basically inform myself about what was going on. And, then I ended up writing this book called Cooper's Promise. It's a gay deserter from the war in Iraq, who's left because his own life has put into danger because he is gay. And he can't really go home because he's a deserter. He's gonna be thrown in jail, and he's claustrophobic. So he ends up in this West African country. I don't I make it a fictitious West African country. And, he hangs out in a Are, and there are young girls there that are prostitutes.

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And he thinks like I used to think when I was in those situations, well, these are just poor girls who can't do anything else.

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14 years old and they can't get jobs, they're not educated. No, they're trafficked and that's what he learns. He kind of learns. I combine both the trafficking and the blood diamonds in the same novel and all of this is told from his perspective. And he's a fairly naive guy, and he learns about what's happening and ends up in a situation where he has to do something he doesn't wanna do to save a young girl who has been trafficked, that who he's befriended, and become pretty close to.

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You know, and it's funny. I think most of us, when we think of human trafficking, we think of, sex trade for women, and, obviously, that's the vast majority of it. I was really surprised to hear there is a male sex Brad as well. And I knew there was, but I always assume assumed it was children, But it's actually adults as well. Are you familiar with that?

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Much about it with men. I've I've I never interviewed any any men who Brad been trafficked, and I like I did women. So but I'm not surprised. I I just assume it's it's it it's kind of everything. The reason I bring it up with you is you've had experience in that side of the world, and you may understand this thought process that the people would have. I read a story about men that were being trafficked. They were from the from Eastern Europe. They were originally in New Jersey and eventually taken down to Florida. And because they were from Eastern Europe, they couldn't attempt to reach their families because they were straight, actually. They weren't even gay.

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So they were having to have sex that wasn't their orientation, being forced into it and couldn't contact their families back in that part of Europe. Does that not surprise you having been there? Or No. It doesn't surprise We. And I'll I'll say a couple things that, first of all, I I do know enough about the male trafficking to note that they aren't necessarily gay men being trafficked into gay situations, that they are actually straight straight men. I I I have heard that. What I did learn when I was in Antwerp and I was in these rescue homes for women, there were women from Africa and there were women from Eastern Europe. And what happens in those situations is very different. In Eastern Europe, basically the way people are held in the traffic situations that they they can't go home, they can't contact home. It's very much like the KGB operating. They threaten the families. If you run away, we'll kill your mother or we'll kill your family. And, for the African women, it's it's very different. What happens there is that it's based on they're held back from running away by what happens is that what we call witch doctors and what they call madus, at least in West Africa, have pieces of their hair or fingernail clipping. You know, the kind of thing that, you know, witch doctors hold on to, and they will put a curse on the woman's the girl's family if the girl tries to escape and go back home. So, you know, in one case, the witch doctor is gonna get you, you know, the case, the KGB is gonna get you. And that doesn't surprise me that these men will not contact their families. It would just put them in more danger.

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Wow. Well, I I I wanted to talk about because human trafficking just, it's to me, it's just so vile, and Oh, horrible. Surprised to hear that slavery still exists in our world today even though I know that for a fact. So thank you for being part of the solution. Thank you so much. Well, I don't know if I'm part of the solution, but but those who have read Cooper's Promise, at least know more about it. So That's more than most people do, and you share about it. It's it's a subject that just when I first learned about it, I thought, oh my god. I just can't believe this is true. And then the more I found out about it, the worse it got. So it's terrible. You know, what's Are? Truth is stranger than fiction, that is such a cliche, but I've the the older I get, the more I realize that is really true.

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Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty true. As an author, is it difficult to come up with a twist on some of those things that that are going on, or that does it actually help you?

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I guess it helps me in some ways. I'm I I've been struggling with a I've never read a book set in America yet.

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And I I know what I wanna write, and yet I I'm discouraged so much by what's going on in America that I feel like it might be a really sad thing to write for me. I'm 16th generation American. So my family came over in the tailwinds of the Mayflower. And, I grew up, you know, very proud of my American heritage and my family. I mean, we we know who these people were. My mother did research that took us what what was called back to the shore and then beyond back to England. So We knew what how engaged my family was in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War Are all these sort of things. So for me to see America faltering like it is now is a very sad thing for me. And I'm not sure I'm I'm still sort of struggling with whether I really wanna write that book or not.

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Let's talk about your book that's it's currently on preorder, and it comes out in Yes. It's not on preorder yet. Oh, okay. Because I saw it on Amazon. Oh. Yes. I did. I my publisher hasn't told me that.

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I'll go on Amazon immediately.

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That's a great coup. I didn't know that. Thank you. You're very welcome. Tell us what that story is and how that how you were inspired for that one.

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I've been go my partner and I have been going to the same island in Greece for the last 20 years. I've been going to Greece for longer than that, but we've ended up going to the same island for the last 20 years. We're part of a community there. We love the island. And it just so happens that the island is island of Lesbos or Lesbos, depends on who you're talking to. Correctly, it's Lesbos. But because lesbian comes from the name of the island, people in in English tend to use a b for Lesbos. But, anyway, Lesbos was ground 0 for the refugee crisis in Europe between about 2015 and 2017. That's where all the boats were were arriving from Turkey. Our little village of about 500 people had 500,000 refugees land on the beach adjacent to it over 1 12 month period. And we were very, very, very actively engaged in helping the refugees. The village itself was split down the middle between who wanted to help and who didn't wanna help. Because some people saw these refugees as ruining their economy, ruining tourism, and all this. And other people saw it as as a human tragedy that needed that needed help. So I I did write a book with refugees figure in it, which is Fire on the Island. You mentioned it earlier. But they're really a background in that book, and they really are the reason why the village is in such conflict because it's it it sort of forced conflicts that go back even a 100 years in the village to emerge.

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But I didn't really write about the refugees themselves. And when I finished writing Fire on the Island, I I I said, you know, this is not is not really the refugee story, and I wanna tell the refugee story. And I so I thought about what do I wanna tell? And I realized that I all these refugees Are coming on rafts from Turkey, but I don't know how they got I don't know how they got on those rafts. It never really dawned on me that they were walking from places 800 miles away to get to Istanbul, to get on a bus, to get on a raft, to get to Greece. Wow. So I went to Istanbul to find out how that side of the of the refugee situation had developed or had occurred or what went on. And I I met with smugglers human smuggler people smugglers who Are really operating sort of just below the law. I mean, bribes got them to be able to do their jobs.

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And, they were helping refugees. And I went several times to Istanbul to learn about the refugee situation in Istanbul itself. My main character, is a gay Syrian refugee. He'd been having a an adolescent kind of homosexual affair with his cousin who was denounced by somebody, and he watches his cousin be executed by the Islamic State for being a homosexual, turns on his heel and walks to Istanbul and wants to just live there, and and he can't work because that the Turks Turkish government didn't allow refugees to get work permits. So all he could do is be a smuggler, And that's what he does. And he develops a reputation for being resourceful and honest. And he's contacted by the CIA to help smuggle high profile people who need to escape the Turkish government out of Turkey. And he's contacted by the Islamic State to, help smuggle people back into Turkey who have been off doing terrorist kind of things. So he's kinda between 2 two rocks or 2 hard places or whatever you wanna say. They both have things that they can use against him if he doesn't really help them. And he has to basically juggle all of this.

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And in the course of juggling these 2 really becomes 2 operations.

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He meets 2 different men and has sex with him, falls in love with him and has to decide between them ultimately. And they offer very different futures to him. So it's, it's a love story too.

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So it's a good book. It's a great book, actually. Well, as you say, you gotta put a good love story in there. Yeah. Come on. And then you have the CIA, and you have you have ISIS in there. I mean, this is not a book to Brad, doze you off to to go to bed.

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No. Not really, but it's a it's a good Brad, though. I mean, it's not it's a it's a it's a fast read. It's a good read. It's it's exciting.

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Oh, I I have no doubt of reading your last one. So even in retirement, you're not sitting in your smoking jacket just casually putting out novels. You continued your good works.

00:34:27.369 --> 00:34:34.875
And in 2017, you founded the Tanzania Shreve and Water Project, and I think it's fabulous. Talk about that.

00:34:35.815 --> 00:34:37.914
Why you decide to start it, and how's it going?

00:34:39.414 --> 00:34:50.385
Well, my Are, Michael, and I were on safari, in Tanzania. By being on safari, we're not shooting animals. We're basically in Land Rovers looking at animals and shooting them with cameras.

00:34:50.465 --> 00:35:24.443
Yeah. And, we had we we've been on number of safaris. The guy we had on this particular safari turned out to be the best guide and spotter we'd ever had and also was a genuinely beautiful human being and a leader in his village. And he had these ideas for the village. He started talking about one of them, which was he's trying to get the farmers to plant trees that take Are particular tree we're talking about takes 16 years to mature, and there's no social security in in Tanzania.

00:35:24.744 --> 00:35:40.213
He says, so he wanted to get farmers to plant these trees that at the time cost about 50¢ as seedlings, grow them for 16 years, and you plant you sell the trees for$200, which sound like a pretty good investment.

00:35:41.315 --> 00:36:03.239
I've always wanted to plant a lot of trees because I use a lot of paper. And I they tried to plant trees in a fairly big way if I could in, Brazil and also in Israel, but it was just too expensive. You couldn't, you know, trees are ultimately with all the costs Are everything, it was like$50 a tree. Well, it was 50¢ a tree in Tanzania. Yeah.

00:36:03.239 --> 00:37:12.835
So a couple of years after the safari, I went back to, his name was Ellie, and I asked Ellie if, the farmers would be interested in trying to plant trees in big numbers. And, we Are out with thinking about 3,000 trees a year and we're now up to 5,000 trees a Queer, and we have planted, I think my numbers are correct, 24,580 500 and 58 trees. You've been busy with your shovel. Yeah. Good luck. You're out there too. You know, I'll tell you, I it's it's a project people love. And I so I get donations from people. And, you know, you you you spend $10, you're planting 20 trees or something like that. Or, you know, you're a $100, you you're planting a 150 trees. It's a it's a win win all the way around. It's a great project. Yeah. It's it's such a simple project that can make such a big difference. Yeah. Big difference. And the trees are useful in a lot of ways. They also are using the trees to shade, kind of a new crop to them, which is coffee plants. It's rebuilding natural habitats.

00:37:13.798 --> 00:37:28.364
It's reforesting an area that used to be heavily forested and has been deforested over the centuries. It is a good project. In in addition to the trees, there Are a couple of villages adjacent to each other, about 5,000 people that had no water access.

00:37:28.985 --> 00:37:50.135
They had to walk 2 miles to the nearest well. And so with some help from donors and and my own funds, we put in a a pump, ran a 2 mile, pipe, basically. And now something like 1500 families are being supplied with water on a needed basis with within a close walking distance.

00:37:50.840 --> 00:39:44.724
That's so fantastic. Yeah. And it's nice about the Shreve project is that the trees do need some water. There's water access, but, actually, we're planting trees that, are really drought resistant and native to the area. So there's not a lot of demand on the water. A year ago, there was an issue with a very dry, short rainy season, which happens about now. Some of that water was diverted to the Shreve. But, otherwise, it's just going to the families. And you do have a page on your website, that talks about the project and it that you can make donations there. So I'm gonna make sure I put a link in the show notes for that. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. Oh, no problem. Before I let you go, we've gotta talk about Palm Springs because the Palm Springs that exist today is a much different world than the Palm Springs you're familiar with. In fact, I live in a different part of the desert that you really knew nothing about, and I can tell you why. It used to be nothing here. There's actually half a 1000000 people here, but you never know because it's so spread out. It's just wide open desert. But it's people that can't afford to live valet. They're doing these 3 hour, you know Shreve out of the city. So And, so it's exploded up here and I'm sure you know Palm Springs has become the basically, everybody's leaving San Francisco and going to Palm Springs because it it's a lot cheaper to live. Just a few years ago, the mayor and the entire board city council, I'm sorry, identified as LGBTQ. I didn't know if you did you know that? Yes. I did know that. Yes. That wasn't where you grew up? No. In fact, I never heard the word gay when I was growing up. I didn't know the word gay until I don't know when I first heard the word gay. I know when I went for my first gay bar, but I think I had gone through undergraduate work without even knowing the word gay at Berkeley. I I it it just I wasn't that common. And, I went overseas for a couple years and came back and gay was everywhere.

00:39:44.724 --> 00:40:08.074
But, no. Palm Springs is not an openly gay town when I was growing up. I really had no idea. You know, I I still when I had my first love affair, the 2 of us thought we were the only 2 people like that in the world. You know, nobody else is homosexual. That was something it was we were the only 2 people. So Palm Springs does not teach me how to be gay.

00:40:12.829 --> 00:40:16.289
So I've obviously, the population must have been pretty small.

00:40:16.914 --> 00:41:43.224
Well, I think it's about the same size for Palm Springs itself. It was 18,500 people when I lived there. Yeah. It's actually Palm Springs itself is not hugely populated. There's actually, it's bigger than that. There's about 45,000. In Palm Springs itself? Yeah. In Palm Springs itself, there's 45,000. That's huge. I I had no idea I had grown so much. I mean, when when I grew up there, there was no Palm Desert. Just before I left high school, for college, there was kind of one little strip of Brad little shops and a couple of houses out in the desert and Cathedral City Are Cat City. Had the Sunair Shreve in and kind of a a little commercial Are, but not much. There there wasn't anything else. You basically the next town is India, which is 20 miles away. For those Are are thinking if you if you're not from our Palm Springs and you're thinking, well, 45,000 people is not very many people, it's kinda like San Francisco is very, very tiny. Of course, there's a huge number of people in that tiny little Are, but the city spreads way beyond that. Actually, LA is not nearly as big as people think it is. Right. So Palm Springs is tiny, but throughout that whole area, there's all kinds of resorts and that sort of thing if you get beyond the city itself. Yeah. But like Rancho Mirage, which I know is all built up now. Rancho Mirage, when I was growing up, it was 3 golf courses. That's all it was. I can assure you there's a lot more than that today.

00:41:43.445 --> 00:42:04.795
Yeah. I know. I did double check your book. The paperback is available on preorder right now with a price guarantee. So I will make sure I have the links to that. I'll have the link to your website with the the Tanzania Shreve project, all that information for people to check you out. Where is that link on the pre preorder? Is that Amazon? Amazon.

00:42:04.855 --> 00:42:11.539
Yep. Wow. Oh. It may be other places as well. I'm glad to hear that. Thank you, Brad. Made my day.

00:42:13.360 --> 00:42:17.025
Well, thank you for sharing your story again. I I just love hearing from you.

00:42:17.164 --> 00:42:42.130
Yeah. Well, thank you, for having me on again. Oh, actually, I may even see you in Palm Springs. I'm hoping so. I'm hoping so. You're gonna be on a book tour, and, you're only about 2 hours away there. Yes. That'd be that'd be great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Brad. Thanks very much. If you enjoy this show, tell a friend. Encourage someone else to take a break from all the noise in the news and the social media.

00:42:42.510 --> 00:42:49.894
Plus, word-of-mouth is the number one way podcasts grow, So let others know about Queer We Are.