Vanda was born in the south of England, and emigrated at the age of 20 to Australia, where she now holds citizenship. She converted to Islam in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1998 (her adopted Islamic name is Siti Sarah).

Holder of an Australian Bronze Medal for Precision Ice Skating, Vanda has spent eight years in Television News and Current Affairs Production. She is currently teaching English to migrants and refugees: "I have been tutoring many nationalities including Indonesians, Japanese, Chinese, Iranians, Bosnians, Koreans, Sri Lankans, and Indians. I feel a deep satisfaction by helping them to feel accepted and comfortable here. I often tell them: ‘bring your traditions with you, don't forget them, and keep them in your heart. This will make Australia a more colorful and interesting place.’"

Vanda brings significant singer-songwriting skills to The Friendship Caravan. One particular song she has recorded is a haunting Middle Eastern-inspired piece called "Bahrain," part of a compilation album by culturally inspired musicians. "Many pieces I have written have desert themes such as "Sand Storm", and I am now composing the theme song of the Friendship Caravan." At one point Vanda ran an Information Service for the British pop band Culture Club, which entailed a colorful and peaceful Melbourne street protest when Boy George's music was banned from a Melbourne radio station.

On her conversion to Islam: "When I married into an Indonesian family I was overwhelmed by the endless kindness bestowed upon me by the Muslim people. To see the world as sacred and live our lives in an orderly and prayerful manner, while remembering Allah is the source of everything, this brings great beauty and calm to my life. Converting to Islam seemed an easy and natural progression in my life. I had already spent a lot of time with spiritually-minded people from India and taken a pilgrimage from Delhi along the east coast of India to Puri. Islam for me was the logical next step.”

"The Muslim people of Australia have enriched our lives in so many ways. It was the Arabs with their camels that put in the first telegraph wires between Adelaide and Darwin in Australia's pioneering days. Now Australia has the largest population of wild camels in the world, and they're fitting into the environment perfectly!”

"The Friendship Caravan like stepping-stones over a river of cultures. If God is willing I hope I can serve as a beacon of peace on this beautiful camel ride that holds such good intent. I am most honored to be part of it and hope it may even lead on to an Annual World Pilgrimage for Peace and Friendship. When compassionate and motivated people come together for a kind, loving and intelligent purpose, wonderful things really can happen. We can begin to appreciate all peoples, cultures, and nations and see the exquisite beauty and endless charm of this lovely blue planet God has given to us."

Read Michael's Résumé

Born and raised in Bardstown, KY, Michael has spent much of his adult life in the Arab and Muslim countries of North and West Africa, for personal as well as professional reasons.

Selected to the Who’s Who of International Photojournalists, Michael has for more than two decades written and photographed feature stories for such well-known magazines as National Geographic, Life, Geo, Stern, and Paris-Match. Specializing in Africa and the Arab World, he has interviewed many chiefs of state, among them Muammar Qaddafi, Yasser Arafat, Hafez-el-Assad, Nelson Mandela, King Hussein, and Felix Houphouët-Boigny. His writings have been translated into more than 20 different languages.

An inveterate desert enthusiast, Michael has operated an adventure travel company in the Sahara, an expanse he has traversed some thirty times.

In the late 1980’s he founded and headed The America To Africa Society (ATA), an organization that created media events to facilitate image change and counterbalance negative stereotypes about Africa with positive information about its people. At its peak ATA had offices in seven countries. In the context of ATA, he organized an event similar to the Friendship Caravan, called The Peace Caravan Across Africa. It was also a caravan of camels, setting out to traverse North Africa from West to East. After an opening fanfare in Morocco, it was unfortunately curtailed by the Gulf War.

He has also been at the foundation of several humanitarian organizations, most notably Tilalt, a political action group in France to promote better treatment of Muslim minority groups in Africa.

On The Friendship Caravan: “America is at a crossroads in its role as world leader. Today we seem poised to rule though military hegemony, but I believe this option can only lead to further hatred against America, futile loss of human life, and eventually to an increase in anti-Western terrorism. The Caravan proposes that in order to live in security America must lead through promoting positive outreach to other cultures, offering our founding values through example, not through vacuous preaching and domination. I think that we all will benefit by reciprocal sharing of cultures, and would like to offer this event as a spiritual center of reflection about the future of the planet.”

On camels: “The imagery evoked by a caravan on the horizon is the stuff of legends. An animal whose very size imposes reflection, the camel is nonetheless one of the friendliest and most humble of creatures. What better example for America, another lumbering giant?