Their canoes, our rockets their sea, our space.

They have been compared to astronauts these elder navigators who sail vast open oceans in double hulled canoes thousands of miles from a small island.

In Ecuador and Bolivia some indigenous students must travel long distances on foot for hours, cross rivers and use canoes to attend schools that often lack piped drinking water.

BJ And it has these bulkheads made out of plywood, covered with fabric curiously similar, in fact, to the plywood canoes that Adrian's father used to make when he was a boy in their workshop.

But self reliance will be impossible to achieve as long as the rich countries favor free markets and free trade only when it suits them. Even UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has warned that the unrestrained tide of globalization might not raise all boats, but only the yachts while overturning a lot of canoes.