Feb 16 2012
The Whole World Through Her Eyes
A century or two ago, it wasn’t uncommon for a young Cape Codder to head off around Cape Horn to China.
Multi-year voyages, these were as much education as employment, setting the stage for a career on the sea. Go out as a cabin boy, come back as a an able-bodied seaman, then leave as a seaman, come back as a mate, and then mate to shipmaster.
For a three-year voyage, that’s nine years right there. It is no wonder that sea captains typically retired, if they survived, in their 30s. With the capital they had accumulated, they might set up a store to support themselves and their families. So it was a young man’s game, a very young man’s game. But exclusively for men.
How times have changed.
Last spring, my daughter Sofie and her friend Ava took to skies, flying across the globe to visit China’s Pearl River Delta. No pleasure trip this was. That is unless your idea of relaxation is two girls, age 7 and 8, exploring and filming for 13 hour-days of nonstop movement.
Like the ships of old, this young crew were looking to bring back a valuable cargo.
In this case, the cargo was their experiences, to be shared after months of studio work, with voice-overs and film editing. Through My Eyes premiered their China series on WGBH last October as the centerpiece of their Kids’ website. Sofie and Ava’s cargo were 10 videos, documenting their firsthand encounters with the one area of China open to their predecessors centuries earlier. Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Macau.
I had the honor to participate, and to watch my daughter visit the same places I had 13 years earlier. She had seen pictures of the Five Story Pagoda in Guangzhou, Victoria Peak, overlooking the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, and swirling tiles of Senado Square in Macau. I have to admit I still get a little choked up watching the episode in the Foreigners Cemetery in the Pearl River. Having grown up exploring the cemeteries of Chatham, she learned her alphabet reading the inscriptions on the tombstones. Now here she was in a place I had found hidden in the jungle a decade earlier that told the stories of the sailors who nevercame home.
She and Ava got to convey their own personal observations of the people they met and the places they visited. For the elementary school classrooms watching all across the country, what these two girls were saying and doing was gripping. Much more so than if an adult had been on-camera or off, spoon feeding the information they deemed important. Kids see things we don’t.
For centuries, those who have grown up on the Cape have learned to survive by their ingenuity. A seasonal economy in a place with few resources means you have to remain flexible, act on opportunity, and often take those skills elsewhere if you ever wish to have a life here. Yet those houses down on Lower Main Street in Chatham are a testament to the hold of the place on those who would span the globe for their livelihood. It is a good place to live, once you have the means.
That is Cape Cod’s creative economy at work. It was in evidence when Matt Griffin and I set off to tell the story of the Columbia Expedition, and its commander, John Kendrick. It continued when our Hit and Run History crew dove into Cape Verde during the dengue fever epidemic as we followed the Columbia’s track. And when we were stranded in the Falklands for an extra week last year, by making the most of it by getting deeper into our story. We seize every opportunity to increase the value of our cargo.
So these two girls, age 7 and 8, left as globetrotting newbies and returned as an experienced travel show crew. Fittingly, they’ve set their sights now on a trip around Cape Horn this spring. Natural science will be at the fore as they explore the fjords, glaciers and penguins at the very end of the Earth.
And perhaps just as fittingly, Sofie’s added another option to her career plans. Besides wanting to be a veterinarian, she told me, “Once Through My Eyes wraps up, I think I want to open a store. But when I’m older because we still have lots of places to go. Like when I’m a teenager.”
Read this and other columns online at The Cape Cod Chronicle.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these girls to share the wonders of glaciers and penguins with classrooms across the country. So many topics can be explored: from marine life to environmental science to culture and maritime history. Just imagine the sorts of adventures Ava and Sofie can share with children in schoolrooms back home, meeting penguins and navigating ice fields.
