A Indian Among Los Indigenas: A Native Travel Memoir by Ursula Pike, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker

I first became aware of the author when she made a presentation at the Phoenix Writers Network.  I had an opportunity to share some similarities in our experiences, since Guatemala and Bolivia have a high percentage of the Indigenous population. I learned that she was from a Native American community, which gave her a perspective most volunteers couldn’t understand or appreciate. Like many volunteers, I was focused on just learning Spanish and surviving, so I wasn’t prepared to learn one of the 22 Mayan languages in Guatemala. When the author revealed that the pages of her copy of Moritz Thomsen’s […]

Continue reading

The Million Mile Walker Dispatch July, 2022 Inspiring, Encouraging & Mentoring: The Key to a Fulfilling Life!

  Inspiring, Encouraging & Mentoring: The Key to a Fulfilling Life! Dear Friends and Colleagues from Around the World, Last week, a colleague from my days with Food for the Hungry (over 25 years ago) wrote the following about the importance of mentoring and supporting those we work with: Hi! I was watching one of my clients’ videos about a program that trains homeless and formerly incarcerated people for jobs and helps them get placed. It’s been very successful and helped a lot of people by giving them a second chance.  One of the employers who hire a lot of […]

Continue reading

Travelers’ Tales: Central America, Editors Larry Habegger and Natanya Pearlman, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker

  Fellow travel writer Tom Miller warned me about the book when he learned I was working on an essay about Central America, The Guatemala Reader, “Mark –Careful! You don’t want to duplicate anything from Travelers’ Tales Central America.” When I reviewed the table of contents, I realized my book would be very different, as I’d be the author of all the stories focused on one country, while in this book, the stories cover Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Panama, as well as Guatemala. Also, all the travel writers like Paul Theroux, Ronald Wright, and Tim Cahill […]

Continue reading