Love Without Borders

Cameron Powers, musician and linguist, begins cross-cultural explorations early in life by mountaineering in the Peruvian Andes and running his "terrible tours" in Mexico and Peru. "Whatever you do, don't go there!" is the clue needed to choose an interesting destination. Ultimately Cameron's calm but adventurous spirit led him to enter Baghdad while the city was still in flames following the 2003 bombing so that he might sing Iraqi love songs on the streets to demonstrate a very different methodology for cross-cultural relations. His current partner, Kristina Sophia, accompanied him. Cameron's path carried him into Greece where he took up residence with his Greek girlfriend and dove into learning Greek language and music. Cameron had already acquired musical skills and language-learning skills from years of training in linguistics. HIs quest for fluency in both Spanish and the Inca language, Quechua, had carried him through many academic programs. Returning to Colorado from Greece, he married his Greek girlfriend. They raised two children and formed bands which performed in local Greek, Persian and Arabic restaurants. Playing for belly dancers led Cameron into beginning the study of Egyptian music and Arabic language. Cameron had been accompanied on two of his early trips to a remote Quechua village in Peru by his then girlfriend Lisa whose journal entries add feminine perspectives to the story. Cameron has featured the roles played by Lisa, Leda and Kristina since his preference was not so much to travel alone but rather to travel with a woman and enter into the structures of family life in not only Peru and Greece, but ultimately in Egypt, Jordan and Syria. So many travel adventures feature lone males traveling into remote and sometimes dangerous areas of the world with a journalist's or even a soldier's attitude. Cameron's approach is very different. Always aspiring to learn languages and local love songs and finding the entry portals into the hearts of other cultures through endless musical performances, Cameron has seen the world from a close up and tender point of view. Cameron came to believe that love without reservations or borders could be the magical ingredient for which so many travelers have sought without knowing how easily this can actually be achieved. Love Without Borders is an adventure tale of endless affairs of love, sometimes sexual but more often attuned to whatever local family values prevail.