to wake up wondering

Posted on September 17, 2010 by sol

the cow outside my window (in the village of Kanda, Uttrakhand)

Oh. Creaky, rusty fingers. Of which I would prefer to point at the Himalayan monsoons in blame. But really, we all know, the real culprit is disuse.

Blog content comes to me like the first bubble on the bottom of a pan being watched for boil. I wait. And then there’s this tiny thought. And I stare at it. And recognize that there might be something there. But if I get impatient, distracted, and walk away to water a wilted plant, turn another page into the next chapter on my book, or remember an online bill that I have to pay today – well then the pot boils down behind my back. And even if I remember it, and run back, I find myself scratching my head over my initial intended use. What was it I was, again, I was watching or waiting for?

On the other hand, if I focus, meditate really, on that first bubble. (And it is not easy.) If I put aside the natural ADD of the mundane world and really WATCH that bubble. Then before I know it, there’s another by its side. And then the whole bottom of the pan has suddenly multiplied with these tiny, disorganized but themed dots of thought. And that’s exactly the moment when I need to grab a pen or saddle into my keyboard. For a moment too late, and it’s still all steamed away.

So this the first bubble spotted on my bottom of my unboiled thought: “I wonder how these sheets were dried?”

A little context:

I’ve flown for 14 hours and two days into the future and landed in the ever-dusky city of Delhi. Delirious with time travel, I tip out the taxi driver, uncurl my stiff Hindi tongue and hand over my passport to the hotel manager. Without a fight, I allow a boy to take my bag and show me to my room, collapse into bed, dissolve a melatonin pill under my tongue, and black out with the night.

When I awake, this is my first though: “I wonder how these sheets were dried?”

They smell clean. And they are absolutely crisp. For everything, always, is pressed in India. (Even my socks are returned to me with pleats.) The hot iron, however, usually erases the story. Bleaches all sheets equal. But still I’m left smelling and wondering of the industry that dried my sheets. Was it sent to a dhobi (laundry man) as I do myself when I’m settled locally? Did he roll it up in a bundle and tie it to the back of his bike, and return it two days later, with a whistle at the door? Was it dried on a roof in this monsoon, but sweltering hot, season? Did it flutter in the fog and pollution of the city before an iron pressed the history out of it? Or was it stuffed into the people-machine of a newer urban underground industry? In this fancy, developed, city – was it actually tumbled in a dryer? I’ve heard rumors of them existing, but still never seen one in India.

Wait a minute.

Have I ever, once, woken up in hotel or bed at “home” and had an entire mental discourse on my sheets? Have I ever done more that kick them aside?

Ah yes. This is why I travel. To do less. Or more. Than just assume and kick aside. To feel the texture. To inhale deeply. To task my imagination. And to question.

To wake up wondering.

stuck on FF

Image

I know. Totally absent. Apologies my friends and family.

Sometimes life just hits FF on you and the button sticks. For the first day in weeks, today I hit Pause.

Let me collapse on the couch for a few. I promise my fingers will soon warm up.

a time hangover

Posted on November 12, 2008 by sol

This has been the longest year of my life.

I realize this entirely now upon touching down in India. For while I feel this country to be at least be a few emotional Christmas’ distant, I count on my fingers to the realization that I was last here, less than three months ago. Not a single holiday in between.

Really?!

I’m trying to shake the fog of my time hangover, but it’s difficult when Delhi is covered in what the little weather box on the front of the India Times, which is normally the happy home of clip art yellow suns and frowning clouds, calls “smoke.” On that same front page, there is also an article on the worrisome blanket of “smog” that has tucked the city deep into a seasonless sleep. The author worries about the “Beijing effect” on a set of games planned in Delhi for 2010. I worry more about the 30% increase in complaints of congestion and burning eyes and ponder a new communist environmental disease that will level Delhi by discriminating against neither caste or class. And having never seen a blue sky in Delhi, I begin to wonder if human beings foster their short term memories, safely, for the purpose of forge-ahead acceptance? But those are just the insomniac thoughts of girl shrugging off a 12 hour time difference by sleeping 16 erratic hours in a room with a broken window but no light.

At some point in those rough 16 hours, the hotel receptionist knocks on my door to remind me, kindly, to eat. And for this alone, I forgive India all her environmental faults and, with a hand over my heart, pledge to cherish her people and culture till death do us part. India’s respect for the all-healing quality of food and concern for its guests (who by all Indian religions, are regarded as none less than tiny incarnations of God) rank the highest in the world. Respecting the kind prompt, I crawl the four flights of stairs to the rooftop restaurant. No other worldly cuisine pleases my tastes more, and as I say a tiny prayer of total gratitude over my single dish of maatar paneer and zeera rice, I look down and for the first time realize that Indian food is never meant to be eaten alone. Multiple dishes are meant to be served and communally dispersed and enjoyed. Cuisine that promotes sharing, family, service and community? Obama would be pressed for a better motto. And so while I proceed with eating my meal entirely wrong, I still do so with heightened respect and intention.

Ready to retreat right back into bed, I venture out into the street briefly to find a replacement for the tube of toothpaste that I left on my sink in the States. At the nearest pharmacy/everything shop (the most common of India street stands) I request a few toiletries and turn the rusty crank on my old Hindi. After our tiny chat, the shop owner sizes up own newfound 30-second friendship, puts a wait-one-minute finger into the air, and disappears into the back of the shop. When he returns, he removes the tube of toothpaste that I have chosen and paid for, and replaces it with another. It’s the same mark and size, but the replacement tube comes with a free toothbrush attached to the box, and the shopkeeper steps back a little and offers a smile with his gift to me. I almost don’t catch it. I almost push the toothbrush back at him with the insistence that I have no need for an extra toothbrush. But I catch myself just in time. It’s a gift. Not only has he decided not to rip me off (for something for which I’ve already paid), but he’s offering me a free commodity in a country where commodities are generally needed and never rejected. So instead, I appropriately and generously thank him. To which he says, “Yes! Same price! But with a toothbrush! Very good, yes?!”

Very good indeed. Okay. Story time over. A little light seems to be seeping through my broken window and it’s time for me to get out of this room and explore the day. I also need to re-explain myself to the receptionist who reminded me to eat. When he communicated his worry that I had been sleeping all day, I tried to explain to him the half-day time difference between the US and India and, in my exhaust, wrongly communicated that, “in the US, we sleep all day.” To which, of course, he just nodded kindly. Oh, what would we do without the curiosity and compassion that cultural miscommunications breed? The world would be a boring place indeed.

pilgrimage of poem & music
(an intimidating book to open)

Posted on September 22, 2008 by sol

Opening the book on our adventures in the Dolpa (rural Nepal) is as intimidating as the 17,000 foot passes we crossed to get there. Just look at a single page of my notes!

So instead of hesitating any longer, I’m just going to open and type.

Scared, exhausted, breathless, hungry, sore, cold and wet, on the first week of our pilgrimage in the Dolpa, I woke up early and as Sangeetha took to her morning ritual of flicking at the beads of water that accumulated into breaking dams on the low roof of our tiny tent, I scribbled into my journal the following:

THESE are the adventures of Kavita and Sangeetha in the Dolpa of rural Nepal.

Names, dates, times, heights, distances and places cannot be confirmed as such numerals and characters have little value when that to which they are respective does not exist. Let it suffice that such measures, here, change with the wind, waning moon and a timeless culture’s mood.

My name is Kavita. Kavita means, “poem” in Hindi. The name was given to me by a man born a shepherd of the Ladakhi North Indian plateau, at the summit of a pass in the Himalayas as a gift to crown the acceptance of the path of adventures that would ultimately lead to this one. On that same cliff of life crossroads, I, curiously, kicked not one, but two, copper horseshoes.

Upon finding my first phone, weeks later, I called my best friend and told her of my decision to follow my open-ended whim in South Asia. She replied, “then I’m coming too” and so I sent to her, by way of messenger, the second copper horseshoe.

Fall, winter and spring pass before we find ourselves reunited in the smooth clay underground room of an attending Tibetan family in a tiny and ancient village in rural Nepal. My friend is sitting cross-legged and wide-eyed at the underground world of which she has so suddenly entered. She keeps trying to bow lower than the dark, wrinkled man holding a prayer mala (rosary) and chanting mantras (Buddhist prayers) beneath his smile, for whom she has an unnamed source of reverent respect.

I enter the smoke-filled room and Sonam Tashi, our Tibetan ponyman, looks up with his perennial smile, just as he snaps a set of new batteries into an aged radio (and only medium of this otherwise communication-less world).

“SANGEET!” he shouts, as his arms, inflated by enthusiasm, rise into the air.

As I cross the room to my seat on the richly carpeted clay bench, I do a little line dance in my best impersonation of traditional Tibetan dance as I have seen it. Our small audience laughs in surprise, claps to the beat, and, finally, applauds my short act. Finding my seat next to my friend, she asks of me, “What did Sonam Tashi shout?”

“Sangeet. It’s Hindi and Nepali for, “music.” That’s it! That’s your name! Sangeetha!”

For it was only a day ago that my friend charmed an entire bus of local passengers waiting on a cliff ledge (for a secret amount of time) with the guitar she had struggled to bring half way around the globe to this moment. As she sang and strummed on the muddy step of the bus, a beautiful Punjabi boy in a pink turban snapped his fingers, gyrated his hips and thrust his arms about in animated poses of what he claimed to be his culture’s traditional dance.

The name is perfect, and thus are born the adventures of Kavita and Sangeetha.

days debrief

Posted on January 5, 2008 by sol

Visions of India Dec 2007 – Pushkar, originally uploaded by seekingsol.

For most Westerners, it’s unfathomable for a major city to function without 24-hour electricity. Yet like the monsoon rains on their mission to Ganga-ji (respected river), the 1.3 million people who live here in Varanasi somehow always manage to redirect, divert, finagle and finesse around the obstacles of 10 powerless hours, to fluidly find a way to go about their day. And despite the fact that the electricity has gone off TWICE in the typing of this single sentence (once for 3 hours, once for 20 minutes), I’ve never heard a native complain. Hold on. I have to “save.”

Three hours ago, my resolve to sit down at this computer and write till something came out was as strong as the espresso I shot to chase it. But the power outages, along with missed trains and traffic jams, prepared yet another alternate reality and route to amble along. So now I’m back at the blinking cursor, but the caffeine I fired up with four hours ago has stopped doing jumping jacks and crashed on the couch. Being the hated type that jumps out of bed at sunrise, I now write from a slightly sleepy and somber mood; why not? Let’s try something new.

No one knows what I’m doing these days; neither my family nor friends. So if you fall into one of two former categories, don’t feel left out, because much like Varanasi, everyone is in the dark. So it is with the purpose of filling in this gap of trivial yet missing information that I chose the content of this update. Also, my fingers are still stiff with bed rest, having spent too much of the last month turning many pages (of books and in life) but not outputting much in the medium of type. *save*

So what am I doing? I’m squinting my eyes and wondering myself. And that is because I don’t do very well without two-page checklists to reference. Ah, yes. So, it’s something I don’t think I’ve ever confessed to, but certainly responsible for 74% of my life successes: I’m a relentlessly effective multi-tasker and organizer. (My sister, in an email today, made reference to this same quality that we’ve inherited by blood from my mother as, “itchy butt syndrome”; I laughed for 10 minutes.) This, as all our best qualities are, is a sword; the other edge being that in the process of my ruthless swinging around, I am often negligent of emotions, people, creativity, alternatives and details that I arrogantly slaughter in the name of producing the fastest and highest yield. (And I call myself a vegetarian.) As my co-leader recently wrote of me in my evaluation: “…she just needs to remember that there is more than one (i.e. her) way to get up the mountain.” So wise and true. And there are just as many ways to get around the mountain — meaning it’s taken me an impressively long paragraph to summarize the sentence: “My days are simple.”

My days ARE simple. Awkwardly and healthily, uncomfortably simple. Right now, I only have three daily obligations. And they are kind of interesting, so let’s go there…

Hindi Classes. This is, without challenge, my favorite hour of every day. And that is because my Hindi teacher, Virendra-ji, is perhaps, my favorite man in the world. And yes, I think this of a hundred human beings. But part of being a “non-dualist” (invented term) means that I can have as many “favorites” as I want (infinite); or at least that’s how I rationalize it in my world (also invented). *save* Virendra-ji is single-handedly responsible for every fluent (Western-born) Hindi speaker I’ve ever met. He is considered the most respected master and guru of language learning in the city – and I too will confidently vouch for him as the nothing less than the, Yoda of Hindi. The man reads minds. He handles Jedi learning and memorization techniques like a light saber. He employs your subconscious and manipulates it like play dough. And us poor, lowly, ignorant students – we are blind to the firm and expert rationale behind his magic-like tricks. You may not get it, but hardly I do – so how can I explain? I’ve never known a teacher to be able to entice the subconscious of a student into secret action. But he does it. He’ll strand an especially complicated sentence together (transliterated example: Nato mai shadi-shuda hung na mai, philhal, shadi karna chahati hung: Neither am I married nor do I, for the meantime, want to be.”) and instruct me, “Don’t think. You will understand this in three minutes. Just repeat. Now repeat again. Now close your eyes. Repeat. Okay, say it backwards. Now say it forward. Say it fast. Slap your hand on the table when you say the last word! Now tell me what it means in fluent English. Not broken English. Fluent English! Now say it fluently in Hindi, with confidence. Good. Next.” *save*

Bamboo Flute Class. The vision, obviously, is of a charmed pilgrim, skipping her way through the winding valleys of the Himalayas, singing back and forth to the little birds, all the while smiling under the whistle of her simple wooden flute. The reality, however, is eight neighborhood kids taking a collective break from their cricket game to inhale just enough air to scream at the practicing pilgrim, “STOOOOOOOP THAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!!” It could be worse I suppose. Instead of scales and ancient, sacred Ragas, I could be murdering Mary and her Little Lamb. Either way, it’s bad. It’s very, very bad. And, to the recurring nightmare of my neighbors, it’s likely to be that way for still some months. My flute teacher however, is quite wise. He only gives me enough examples to take home for practice and then fills the rest of the two hours with warm chai and lovely chit-chat on the history, culture, and logistics of learning Indian music.

Brainstorming with Ajeet-ji, the visionary behind GURIA. Ajeet-ji is the lovely man I quoted a few posts ago from his speech aimed at elevating awareness of the flesh trade in India. I’m collaborating with him on a number of projects, all of which he groups into the single, endearing, category of, “high tech.” The projects’ task lists include collecting content, articles, photos, film and contacts for the purpose of furthering global awareness and sponsorship of the NGO and its objectives. We’ll see where it goes; it’s only in seed stage at the moment. But if you happen to be rich and reading this, and hoping to find an amazing non-profit in which to invest some money (with fantastic karmic returns), do email me: solbeam@gmail.com. There will certainly be more thoughts turning to print in future posts on the subject of GURIA as my involvement moves from seed to sapling. So rich or poor, stay tuned.

*save*

Wow. Maybe my days aren’t so simple? But they are. They are. I wake up at 7am (no alarm) and meditate every a.m. I have plunger coffee, brown bread and honey with a newspaper and Hindi conversation every day at the same place for breakfast. I go to my classes and then I read the same book (Indian Religions – The Spiritual Traditions of South Asia – An Anthology edited by Peter Heehs) while I sip on lemon mineral water and wait (1 hr) for vegetable paneer momos, on the same rooftop, every day, for lunch. I meet up with Ajeet-ji, or, in some crazy variation, venture on an exciting errand in the afternoon. And then I share my evening with my Indian homestay family, stop in for email on the way home, say goodnight to my landlord, review my Hindi vocab, crawl into my 0 degree sleeping bag, read a short story from Jo
rge Luis Borges, and fall asleep as soon as, sometimes before, my head hits the pillow. Occasionally, I wake up in the middle of the night with the intrusive and compulsive thought to recharge this or that appliance so that I, too, will be prepared for the 10 powerless hours of tomorrow to come.

And THAT, I guess, is what I’m doing.

(Please excuse my midnightishness.)

*save*

Footprints in Peru, Day 6: a welcome to the house of great mountains

Posted on August 18, 2007 by sol

a community service project sponsored by World Nomads

As we descend into the valley, I can’t help but feel like I’m strolling through a doctor Seuss picture book; it’s an awkward but fanciful arrangement of skinny trees with knobby tops, boulders sprinkled like bread crumbs from an earth-sized muffin, curlicue streams poured on the land like molasses, sheep and llamas dressed in perfectly color-coordinated camouflage, and little dashes of bright red, visible from infinite distances — climbing a hill, chasing a goat, tending to a field or trailing a cluster of other dashing red dots.

I don’t know what I expected of the Andes, but it is not until my descent into the valley that I realize my imagination would have been aptly challenged with the task of a preconceived vision as colorful, dimensional and whimsical as the one I’m witnessing. In between long sighs trailed off with adjectives whispered only to myself, Reality takes a full box of crayons and colors in the black and white image with which I came.

We arrive at the bottom of the valley where a particularly large cluster of small red dots has been pulling hair, investigating insects and poking at old body wounds in the boredom of our long-awaited arrival. Teachers quickly smarten the little bodies and limbs into erect and organized lines and set the step for a march towards our group. Each child is dressed, from hat to toe, in rainbows of home-woven clothing and accessories. Though each shawl took months of detailed attention by tremendously patient and skilled hands to create, the children are not dressed up for this occasion; this is their traditional dress, the same as what they wore yesterday and will wear, again, tomorrow.

I am immediately shocked by the familiarity of the rosy mountain-pass-chapped cheeks and earth-toned and tough skin; apparent adaptations for those accustomed to living in close(r) quarters with the sun. I recognize many of their faces as fraternal twins to those I’ve encountered in the Himalayas of India, Nepal and Tibet and realize that they must be siblings in the family of those who have made for themselves the same home, on different continents, of great mountains.

Each child in the procession carries a white flower. The flowers were brought from the lowlands and their drooping faces, which evidence their exhaust from the distance they traveled, are a comic contrast to those of the children whose heads are upturned with expressions widened in excitement and unabashed curiosity.

The teachers urge the children forward and, with this encouragement, one of the young girls approaches me. When I kneel down to her eye level, she hands me the flower with one hand, pours confetti on my head with the other, grins, gives me a quick hug and runs, giggling all the way, back to her group. Low to the ground, I approach her group and whisper the question as to if anyone speaks Spanish. They all just bat their huge black lashes and giggle. I’m sad that I’ve forgotten my Quechua phrasebook at home, but will learn later that while these girls don’t speak Spanish, their older sisters do; Spanish being reserved for late primary school.

As the children continue with the rituals of their reception, and our initiation, to their village, I decide it to be the sweetest gesture of the Quelqanqa community; sending in the most precious of their possessions in life, to make offerings of welcome and greet us as their guests.

———————————————
*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

monsieur peanut

Posted on July 18, 2007 by sol

(story continued from prior post: curvy)

Now I pulled this same idiot move in Guatemala when I spent a day working at a coffee finca and was baffled by the red and green candy-colored skins masking my coffee-shop bean incognito.

Again, I have no excuse except for unadulterated ignorance. Perhaps I was misled by the airs of that top-hat-ed, cane-tapping, Mr. Peanut, who looked down at me through that funny one-eyed looking glass from the TV. Perhaps he was rather happy to bury that part of his history, now living the American dream of pulling himself from the working-class earth and earning himself the prestige of a truly refined peanut. I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting peanuts to tap dance out of the bushes, but I just didn’t expect them to be uprooted from the earth either.

But they there were. A more petite and varied version with each shell distinctively claiming its own separate space and style. Some holding the double curve of two nuts, but just as many proud to claim only one, And none afraid to protrude in any way out of whatever could be construed as, “ordinary.” Have even the nuts in my country subscribed to unquestioned conformity? Am I reading too much into my peanuts? Perhaps.

I squat, observe, and easily tug a few nuts from the root. I roll them in my hand and then look up, to my hosts, for permission to investigate with a third sense.

Now which is more ridiculous: that this white girl has traveled from her country of *purported* milk and honey and asked to work in the fields, that she didn’t know a peanut field when she was standing in the middle of one, or that she’s asking for permission to eat a nut she picked herself from the Earth? Do I have to continue to describe the faces contorted in questions of absurdity?

So put whatever expression you’d like on their faces as they witness and realize that it’s the first time this silly toubab ever seen or tasted a raw peanut. And if you also were fooled by the costume of our American ambassador Mr. Peanut, you too should know that a raw peanut has green undertones and is a little chalky on the tongue, but is just as tasty in its un-roasted form. I bite. I chew. I hum my delight. My hosts, in turn, briefly smile their happiness with my approval of their humble and naked nut, but this game is ridiculous and over and it’s time to get to work. I’m handed the shovel.

I don’t get to use the shovel long. It was a test. And I failed. I tried to mimic the sweeping motion that the younger boy was modeling, but there is clearly experience-earned skills that the expert has mastered in order to not slide deep enough under the earth to expend extra effort but sweep low enough to clear the roots and not damage the shells – like I am doing.

After 15 minutes, the older man sighs heavily and takes the shovel from me. He indicates that I am to take his job of rounding up the scratchy bushes into nice organized mounds while pulling out all the weeds and vines belonging to anything other than the peanuts. This, is quite a task at first; my eyes blind to the discrete details defining one from another. But slowly I begin to recognize the jagged shape of a leaf, the tiny thorns, the soft felt of a vine, or the darker shade of green; all cues that identify the invaders of the field from the harvest.

In this way I sift, and sort, and bundle; every hour passed proving further my durability and earning the soft and curious respect of my hosts till finally the older man comes over and claps me on the back and shouts in Wolof to the younger boy.

The boy smiles and translates to me, “He says you work HARD for a woman.”

stomach aches

Posted on March 4, 2007 by sol

holes

Our seventh passenger halfway arrives.

He isn’t actually going where we are going, but his destination is along the way and if we’ll chip in, he’ll pay a little extra and we’ll all (three hours since my arrival) finally be on our way. Agreed and extra small bills piled in the middle of the car, we all suck in our breath, pull up our knees and squeeze in.

We don’t go far at first. Just long enough for a flashing hole between my feet, where I can see the road pass underneath, to catch and hold my attention and make me ponder what is actually essential to making a car run. Whatever “it” is; it and only it, is here. The gray blur passing through the hole steadies itself on oily, black, concrete. Even I know better than to wonder why the driver is, only now, going to the gas station: he collects our pool of money and uses it to purchase the fuel needed for the trip.

A man with a briefcase is suddenly at the passenger window catching his breath from chasing after us. He’s speaking Wolof and so I can’t catch any decipherable gist of what he’s saying but can see that whatever it is, it’s making the newest arrival squirm in his seat next to me waving “move along gestures” and the rest of the men in the car look around at each other for someone to take the lead they want to follow but not initiate. Everyone stalls. Finally one speaks. The others all nod. The man next to me squirms and shakes his hand again. The man at the window pleads. The others nod again. The man next to me keeps shaking his hand and looking straight ahead. There is silence.

And this goes on for 30 minutes; plead, squirm, agree, shake, silence.

I get it. I don’t have to speak Wolof to comprehend that a full paying passenger has arrived who will return to the rest of the passengers in the car the cash we just chipped in.

At 9 am, four hours after my arrival at the taxi station, my new neighbor has tucked his briefcase between his knees and we all pull out of the gas station and hit the road.

“Hit the road,” while perhaps less an expression in this case, is an exceptionally accurate description of what I will do for the next 12 hours of this overland journey. Through that little hole in the bottom of the car, I watch hundreds of foot-deep crevasses, cracks and divots pass. The driver’s spine is erect in attention and his eyes are squinted and focused intently on the road. I can’t help but think of that game at Chucky Cheeses’ where you slam the padded hammer on the gofers as they emerge from holes and they pop up faster and faster, sometimes even two or three at a time. We swerve violently; left, right, sometimes backwards I feel. Often we bang, bump and sink and quickly I understand how anything unnecessary would quickly shake off the frame giving birth to many such holes as the one beneath my feet.

a heavy little bag

Although it is inevitable, for some reason I am surprised when an unseen signal calls for the car to halt and one of the men in the seat in front of me opens the door and runs into the bushes. He swaggers back slowly, with his eyes closed and clutching his stomach. He collapses back into the seat of the car for only a second before he leans out the door and vomits again.

The first time everyone in the car is sympathetic. The fourth time in half an hour, the driver is grinding his teeth and everyone is sighing with either annoyance or aggravation.

Sometimes when I’m in another country, thoughts don’t hit me as quickly as they should. Perhaps because I’m the one out of place and there’s already enough attention on me, I avoid calling for more. But it isn’t out of disrespect but out of neglect that I wait for the forth stop before I tap the leg of the man with the suitcase and say, “Attente! J’ai la médecine!” He yells up to the driver and repeats, “Wait! She has medicine!”

The sick man rolls his eyes toward me, but hasn’t any energy to respond. The driver turns off the engine, walks to the back of the car, opens the trunk and starts pulling out all the baggage until he finds mine. He shoves my backpack into my arms.

The whole car empties out and all eyes are on me as I desperately search for my little plastic bag of first aid supplies. After a futile five minutes of searching, I want to lynch myself for putting myself into the aggravated-sighing-spotlight when, yes! I find it! My foiled little package of tiny Dramamine pills that I regularly disperse to sick students when I’m working as a guide. I hand the silver package to the driver like a golden ticket. He could care less for anything except getting back on the road. He gives it a quick glance over, hands it back to me, and starts throwing everything back in the trunk.

The sick man is propping his cramped body on the back of the car. I punch out two pills for him and hand them over. He looks me in the eye for a long second. I have no idea what he’s thinking or deciding, but at the end of his thought, he tosses the little pills into his mouth, nods and gets back in the car.

I am left alone still holding the little bag. For the first time, I really look at it. In addition to motion sickness medications, it holds anti-malarias, different sets of antibiotics for giardia, amoebas, urinary tract, and broad gastrointestinal infections. It has antibiotic drops for eye infections and prescription creams for skin infections. It has disinfectants, tools for cleaning wounds and sterile bandages.

The little bag suddenly becomes very heavy as I realize that it holds the cure to the diseases that kill hundreds (or thousands?) of the inhabitants of this continent on a daily basis. The thought makes my stomach hurt.

breaking bread and borders

The driver yells at me to get over my realization and back in the car and I snap back into action at his quick command.

The sick man quickly passes out against the window and after a half hour of relatively uninterrupted driving (for unfortunately there are no pills for potholes), everyone stops holding their breath and there is a collective sigh of relief. (The sick man won’t wake up till we arrive seven hours later.) People finally cozy down in their seats. The man with the briefcase asks me questions and offers me cookies. I pass around a bag of my own crackers as others laugh at my weak attempts at Wolof. I come to realize that our shared problem and my contribution towards solving it, has effectively broken down a social barrier that I hadn’t recognized earlier as erected. But I am thankful for finding my own seat suddenly a lot more comfortable.

(still to be continued)

*****

Since you all know Mbouille now, if you’re interested in seeing a love note video that we sent from Boulder to Senegal last week, you can watch it here.

Je suis ici!

Posted on September 15, 2006 by sol

And although my French is shy, awkward and stuttering, Paris is as smooth, soft and sexy as the voice of a French lover whispering in my ear. The problem, really, with my French, is that I know just enough to begin any conversation, but can’t comprehend enough to respond to the answers my questions may have summoned. I’m disappointed but relieved when my question in French is responded to with English. And I fluster up a curious mix of Spanish, English, French, obscene sign language and red-faced silence when the conversation changes into fast lanes of French to which I have been blind-sided.

But these words – fluster, curious, obscene, embarrassed, blind – they are good words, ill-fitting only to show me where I can grow. On the couch in the studio of a friend I have not yet met, my stomach grumbling on something I ate that might have been meat, or cheese, bone marrow or bean paste (only in France, for the richness of all foods, could you not know the difference), I count my Euros, which are all now in coin having distributed only large bills in fear of giving anyone exact change for mistake in comprehending the number owed. Oh how I remember this same storm of struggle with Spanish in Spain! But it’s a storm I seek, and dance in. And as if on cue, outside my window, lightening flashes and thunder snaps with a trailing roar. Rain pummels down onto the metal rooftops outside as French accents, food smells and street songs continue to waft their way up. Childish delight festering at every root end and finger tip, I gather up my day’s successes — navigating the airport, purchasing train tickets, steering my way through the maps and maze of metros, meeting two new friends, asking for help and directions, buying bananas and nectarines at a small fruit stand — like I did the small trophies I earned in dance competitions in 3rd grade. And with a smile that insists on staying the night, I curl up on the couch, and fall asleep with them.