Category Archives: on transitions & “home”

retired is my aching

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Past are the afternoons scribbling in journals on wooden docks floating between home and away.

Silenced are the nagging questions of my 20′s as to my exact being, purpose, and fate.

Retreated has the wave of life overwhelm that I used to feel ever sneaking up behind my back.

And taken are the pictures of sunsets, flowers and friends met along the way.

Surprised am I, with the realization that silence, grounding, home and routine are words for which I now have affinity.

The elders snicker. They kept their little joke. As it was kept from them.
Knowing the most lucid in life – comes always by surprise. And not denying me that pleasure.

If there is anything that I have learned from Life, it’s that it has a sophisticated sense of humor.
Only Life can pull off, without mean-spiritedness, the expert use of irony, pun, and satire.
With the effect of leaving me shaking in simultaneous tears and laughter.
After all, those are the moments,
Where I feel my heart beating, in my feet, and in rhythm,
With something greater.

Missing are the sentences of explanation within my paragraphs.
Dissipated is my ambition to be distinguished.
Quelled is my fire to move.

Yesterday I stood on top of a small mountain and cried at the perfect sound of the last golden aspen leaves applauding in the wind.
Today, I stood on top of the same small mountain and grabbed the mulch of the fallen and breathed deeply of its decomposing musk,
Sending me to the profound underworlds of memories unknown.

Alive is my ability to tremble with raw beauty’s stab at my soul.
Engaged is my appreciation for every breath of life I’m awarded.
Curious is my spirit for the sighting of all that moves when one is still.

This month, I quit half my job: the “stressful half” I tell people.
Last night, I recorded six subsequent dreams in my journal.
More than all the dreams I recorded in the entire year prior.

This year I lost two friends, my own age, to cancer.
I feel them close. At the top of the mountain.

I’ve spent 6 of the last 7 months travelling.
But said are all my sentences in summing up my travels.
Uninterested am I in talking about myself.
Please don’t make me. I find myself constantly pleading.

The weather, today, calls for snow.
And I will keep my eye on the horizon. Waiting.
I will hike up the mountain again. And even though it’s cold, I will take off my sweater.
To feel the bitterness of the wind on my skin.
And when the snow comes, I will welcome the blanket of quiet,
Mirroring that of my retired aching.

Three times this week, I’ve sat with time, coffee, and stalled fingers over my keyboard.
But nothing came.
Confused is my instinct on where to begin.

Last night I fell asleep at 9.
This morning I woke at 5.
And clear was the voice that whispered,
Just begin where you are.

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i’d rather walk…

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This is the third time this week that I’ve sat down to write, and then decided.

I’d just rather walk.

Every spiritual guide and clairvoyant I’ve ever encountered has told me this: you live too much in your head. I believe this blog to be evidence of that fact; the ruckus of clambering thoughts channeling through their own medium.

But on my walk, I am left only to listen.

The sound of the creek I know will equally approach me, as I it, at the bend in the road. The rusty-rich waft of decomposing layers of last fall’s leaves, reliably escape through a pocket of collapsing snow, rising to meet me in a vivid reminder of the season past and to come again. There is a story, in the earthy brown eyes of the aspens, that reveals itself only if my imagination is set free to wander. Newly naked bird nests, dolloped each with a foot of fresh powder, shock me with the secrets held from me by the trees of which I walked unaware, each day, under. The missing footprints marking where the heard of elk clearly took flight over the fence. Their musk sending my black lab into a frenzy, from which she returns from circles, with a determined snort of the snow off her black nose. And the only sound that echos, is that of my resulting laughter.

Having spent so many years, neck to neck, and thus in stillness with the speed of the seasons, it is dizzying to have stopped allowing them, now, to wash over me. On my last flight from India, I rebelliously refused to shut my window at the attendant’s kind request. Instead I fogged up the tiny window with the breath of my awe at the continents of land masses, passing quietly beneath me. But I’ve always looked out the window. Why is it different now? An insightful friend chuckled knowingly, “because now you have a home.”

And isn’t that a concept!? That I travelled lightly not for leaving my heavier books and boots, but for having left my sense of home behind! Or perhaps that I rather carried it with me. Some internal locus, which left the compass spinning, not out of control, but rather like a clock. Simply making its way around. Pointing to nothing in particular, evidencing, over time, nothing but a center.

I have a home? I suppose I have a place that comes to me, and not I to it. I have a place in which I’d rather not talk, but listen. I have a finish line with time, in which I’ve quit, and let the colors, visions and scent of seasons blissfully overwhelm me. The needle on my compass now leaves hesitantly, returns eagerly. Hum. Yes. I have a home.

And I have a quiet walk. With a path in whose subtle changes I take immense delight in discovering. Maybe I’ve run out of some words. Maybe I’ve always needed shorter sentences. Maybe my season of listening is simply upon me. There’s a peace in this. And it is welcomed.

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where it’s gone

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now which is more important?

I miss my writing too.

But in the way that I miss and love my mom. Feeling grounded by the fact that she’s there. Yet not needing to live in a bedroom in her house.

But I do miss my writing. Where has it gone?

It’s been sprinkled into 1-inch holes in the ground, along with arugula and red poppies and chamomile and wheat grass.

It’s been scratching the purring chin of my adopted black cat and tossing the frisbee of my adopted black lab.

It’s been crushing the Indian spices of cloves, cardamom, and lychee seed with  a mortar for a batch guest-welcoming  chai tea.

It’s been typing, typing, typing up notes, journals, contacts and stories into a Princeton bridge year participation guide.

It’s been scribbling in dates of weddings, births, graduations into a calendar of family & friendly events long ignored.

It’s been writing out checks for banal things like health insurance that I can no longer risk not having.

It’s been intertwined in the knots of my hammock as I gather momentum for my swing by pushing off the aspen trees.

It’s been scrolling excitedly through news on the politics and peoples’ movements of a society I once shunned, but am finally free to rally.

It’s been wrapped around my lover’s hand through ten blissful hours of sleep each night.

It’s been gripped (rather tightly) around his waist, as well, on the back of ancient Yamaha.

It’s been folding laundry and other tasks which would be mundane if they weren’t, for me, still new and charming.

It’s been pealing apart Kambucha babies and involved with other mysterious science experiments and home brew health remedies.

It’s been freeing 1500 live lady bugs into a garden in need of more predators to control a spider mite frenzy.

It’s been printing out photos and holding them up to the light, to look for memories that passed too fast, being all too back-to-back.

It’s been attached to wide arms wrapped around old and new friends from whom I’ve been gone too long.

It’s been folded around steaming black coffee cups, sipped silently with unearthly appreciation.

It’s been stripping leaves off of Kale and into salads of organics in new found fresh food access I’ve only dreamed of.

It’s been sipping cheap black boxed wine on sunny decks full of favorite people and knee slapping laughter.

It’s picked up the remote once a day to watch John Stewart reduce it all to what it is.

It’s carefully inspected the petals of the orchid who’s opened seven blooms since I’ve arrived.

And it continues on bud watch, for the three on standby.

It’s trailed its fingers, from a canoe, in the waters of the windy green river, while naked women danced unabashed.

It’s tossed a lot of dry Rocky Mountain snow into the air like confetti, buried the lab while at it, laughing all and only to myself.

It’s crumbled manure onto hungry beds of wild flowers yet to show their appetite appeased.

It’s wrung itself to brace the pain of a cracked molar four years deep in nerve damage neglected.

It’s dug into roof tiles, crawling to the top of the house for a New York mountain range sunset.

And it probably spends too much time dancing on the face of my iPhone appeasing my inner tech geek in scout of the most exciting new app.

It’s unpacked boxes of things I scratch my head and can’t remember owning.

It’s marveled at the aspens and their evidence of the first consecutive seasons, in over ten years, I’ve witnessed passing.

From heavy green, to pure gold, then brown, soon after fallen,

Stick-like wearing only snow, to strings of seeds and bulging buds,

This week, sprouts of miniature young golden leaves aged to adolescence, in a day’s time, before my eyes.

I guess those are the places my writing has been.

And perhaps if my writing hadn’t been anywhere else, it would take no joy in the simplicity of what it’s doing.

But it’s been everywhere. It’s been all over the world. And thus it knows.

It’s happy right where it is.

Home.

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re-defining home

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(The following question was posed to me by the editor of TravelBlogs.com)

What does home mean to you after traveling for so long?

When I first left the country, I was an angry girl; ashamed of my country, annoyed with American tradition & culture, disregarding of my family history, disappointed with my education, and I was no longer on speaking terms with religion.

It was the story of the young shepherd, Santiago, in The Alchemist that filled my spirit with an insatiable fire to move, and specifically to buy my first open-ended ticket to what would eventually accumulate into seven years of adventures abroad. But I still vividly remember the moment when I closed that little book and said, with noted disappointment, to myself, “Wait. The boy ends up where he began?” It was foreshadowing on my life that I was just barely smart enough to note with a squinted and suspicious eye.

Of course, I ignored the winking omen. And picked up the challenge of the chase. Home? I don’t need one. House? On my back. Family? They can live without me. Country? Never belonged there. Religion? I’ve got big skies and starry nights to answer those questions now.

Over time, my notion of home as an outward place harboring social detest, devolved into something much softer and closer. For somewhere along the path, I picked up meditating. And I remember, for a few years, telling people that “home” was that warm little nook in which I centered myself every morning, with my eyes closed, about ten minutes deep into sitting.

But this version of home is lonely. And, as every long term traveler eventually learns, the charms of a transient life are, mockingly, transient. I began to feel myself scrapping; the surfaces of cities, the shallowness of temporary friends, the stereotypes of a culture, the Lonely Planet highlights of a country. Feeling my travels weighted too heavily on the side of quantity, I added a few stones to the quality side, by slowing down my itinerary and stationing myself in small communities for 3-6 months at a time, usually working with this or that NGO with the goal of fostering the connection between local and international circles. In this way, I did finally learn full names, foreign languages, local bus routes, and the best street food stand in town. But still, I found myself in the strange position of never asking a person his or her name before finding an above-par answer to the question, “How long will you be staying?”

And that is perhaps when the big “C” word entered my mind and vocabulary. I decided that I did not care WHERE in the world I lived, so long as I was surrounded by people with whom I shared like values, trust, mission, curiosity and intentions; Community. One in which I could foster my new understanding of the concepts of interconnectedness and interdependence. A place and people in whom I could invest and connect. For just as I, in my perpetual pilgrimage had learned that my travels were less about the goal than the journey. SO had I learned that my relationships were less about the people, than my interactions with them. And I needed a circle. Of brothers and sisters and parents and lovers and extended family and community with whom I could exchange: trust, teachings, experience, dependence, beliefs, challenges, support and, of course, love.

But before I continue, I must also include the most noble, impacting, profound and beautiful lesson that my travels have BEATEN into me – and that is of Humility. The thought of the arrogance and ignorance with which I set upon my world “stomp,” today, changes my cheeks to shades of shame. That I left my country on the spit and snarl of these two charges, just emphasizes the depth of my personal projection. Such self-righteousness we assume in the task and name of seeking change! The world IS change; it’s the predominant characteristic of nature and the Earth and nothing but comical to presume that we need seek it out. We human beings, both individually and cumulatively, will constantly be presented with the challenges and opportunities to evolve to our higher selves regardless of the continent upon which we happen to find ourselves born or standing. I need not cross the world on a jet engine to either solve the puzzles of the planet or recognize the mystery of life. But perhaps, like Santiago, we just have to make the physical journey to come to that same, mocking-with-good-humor-at-our-humbling-expense, conclusion.

A few months ago, I drank yak butter tea in an underground stone house at 15,000 feet, on a shelf of the Tibetan plateau. And as I watched the children playing with puppies, and the women chatting happily over the meal cooking on the fire, and the father spinning yak wool while checking in with the teenagers coming in from the fields, I realized that every community is precious, none more or less than another. Be it a tiny village high in the Himalayas or the park of a busy urban city street, the challenges, lessons and connections are the same. We don’t need to cross borders, but only to venture into the unknown. For only by leaving all that we know, do we discover exactly who and where we already are. And there, sipping tea in one of the most remote corners on the world, I concluded that the joy of travel, is not where it takes us, but the new awareness of where and who we already are. Very little does it actually matter where we go and, thus, where we began is the only place in the world in which we can end.

In the end of The Alchemist, Santiago returns to the sheep, fields, trees and family of his upbringing with a smile. Santiago’s community did not change. But his awareness and appreciation of his interwoven role within it, did. Home, to me, is defined as the circle of people and places in which we choose to foster kindness and love. It’s a community: of friends, teachers, lovers, mentors, family, students and every messenger met along the path. Home is the web of our interconnectedness. And once we realize the degree to which we are interdependent, the rest, I believe becomes irrelevant. Home is left, and returned to, as being nothing more than a new awareness of what’s been there all along.


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citizen of the bardo

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I think it was this photo.

… that made me and my girlfriend change our plans, mid-sentence from…

“Let’s just go. We’ve been planning this trip to Kashmir for months!”
to…

Fresh protests erupt in Indian Kashmir

“Hum. Maybe not.”

And suddenly I find myself in Thailand; sweltering under both monsoon heat and the trail end of a three-day 102 degree fever.

Don’t worry; the fever bit is just my body’s fiery way of detoxifying what’s left of a country in me right before I leave it. You’ll find records of these repeat incinerations throughout my archives, in the sweat soaked and twisted sheets of the airport hostels in Madrid, Antiqua, Calcutta and Bangkok. It’s a fact of my body/travels with which I’ve been forced into a delirious peace treaty.

So. Temperature at a steady and un-medicated 99 (yea!) with street-stand Thai-iced tea in hand I, today, come to you. Forgive me my delirium-ramble, as I’m still spinning from the surprise severance of my South Asia adventures, which was as blunt as the fever hot. In response to the baffled stares of the hostel staff downstairs, I have quickly relearned to rename “curd” as “yogurt” and “motor rickshaw” as “tuk tuk.” May you, as well, practice patience with me as I stutter through these sentences and this transition.

Tibetans identify this state of being by a word I (probably inappropriately) use and (perhaps unhealthily) spend a majority of my life in: “bardo.” Which means something like, “liminal passage, intermediate state, the state of consciousness in the course of migration between death and rebirth.” Yep. That’s what I’m putting on my next immigration form in the box asking for, “country of permanent residence.”

Now, I haven’t posted in over a month and I’ve got years of editing and entries to catch up on, which is about to change as I devote the next five months to exactly these creative pursuits. Writing. Posting. Not traveling. Because the realization has only JUST dawned upon me (I’m slow!) that remote travel and the processing/posting of its inherent experiences are two circles that are close to mutually exclusive. I know. Mind blowing realization for me to have just stumbled upon. But yes. I have to sit. In one place. At a computer. To put it all together. And that is the plan. (But don’t hold me to it, because as you well know, sometimes I’m all talk.)

What I have not yet confessed is that sometime in the spring of 2003, while deep in pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago, I pulled a pen out of my red bandanna and wrote the following into my journal:

“7 Years of Movement; 7 Years of Stillness”

As with many of the sentences that I hastily scribble down, I wasn’t sure what it meant, or what seed, exactly, I had planted into my life path with that statement. But here I am. At the conclusion of what I estimate to be (an accumulation of) 7 years of travels abroad.

And for the FIRST time in my life, I am ready.

Ready for what?

Stillness, friends.

Stillness.

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*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.

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a creative life

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For about six months I’ve been feeling something shifting inside of me. I can only compare the sensation to being made of sand; where every move I make shifts a million grains into a new order that fills the holes and packs down to take the shape of each novel form, motion and angle into which I contort. The shifting brings confidence in its settling. But it also brings some discomfort in its weight and slow reluctance to continually resort itself from a form in which it was content. Regardless, this shifting brings me no alarm; it feels natural, timely and called (subconsciously) upon. While I feel it scraping around my insides and clearing the space for something new, with too many options on my table, I wonder if I will be doing the choosing or if, eyeing the clean and ready slate, it will be one of my choices that will snatch the opportunity and choose me. But then again, perhaps every decision is only the “x” where time and opportunity cross – and one (choice and chooser) could not exist without the other. In any case, comforting is the fact that there is also an unaccredited confidence that I am approaching a surprise conclusion. I’m not sure if I’m making any sense, but I attempt to explain this “shifting,” because I like to call out my phases as I move through them, especially for those mislead into thinking that I’m as solid and unwavering as my path sometimes projects.

While the shift is still nameless, there is a new theme that is taking shape. This week I found myself pondering my history and recognizing that while in high school and college I pursued what I imagined to be a “perfect” life (with perfect grades and perfect partners and perfectly pretty places) I finally (and think correctly) rejected the preposterous notion of “perfect” and replaced it with “unique.” And so I spent the next ten years singing to the theme song of, “of all my lives, this will be my most unique” and whistling this tune I walked to a few corners of the earth. Now while this message, of the options and expanse and magic of a unique life, continues to be the most important I carry and share with others, I feel myself now ready for something new. There is an important parable in Buddhism that asks, when you cross a river with a boat, and finally reach the other shore, do you pick the boat up and continue to carry it with you? In this way my “unique life” has served as my boat; and while it was essential in transporting me to where I am, I feel it now weighing and constricting me from my path forward. On a new side and shore, it’s time for me to respectfully leave the paradigm, as I would a child that has come of age, and reassume responsibility for my life, free of the constraints that even a “free” life contains.

So I move. And while perhaps it is not wise for me to so casually and quickly replace one word with another, it is my nature to theme my living, as aims, goals, intentions and dreams, I have yet to resolve as unessential.

The word I have chosen is, “creative.”

Can you hear the sigh in it? Does it not immediately drop bars and overwhelm with relief? Does it expand horizons beyond the straight lines of “unique”? Doesn’t it give room to color in instead of expand straight lines out? It does all these things for me.

And the word is full of challenge.

With a left brain sharpened by a business degree, statistics, excel spreadsheets, and finance, my right brain, while spinning quite out of control in dreams and sometimes in type, has yet to find the outlets through which it would like to fully breathe.

My “creative life” was seeded in birth, fostered in childhood, neglected through school and only started dropping hints as to its existence through the pockets discovered in the path of a “unique life.” But I’m turning those pockets now inside out, and challenging myself, starting this week, to the task of exercising the muscles and employing the tools of a creative life; to drop my bars of perfectionism and contours of exclusivity and open myself to the peaceful process of coloring my life in; focusing on the details, character development, and the lines on and stories behind, the hands that touch my life. It’s a big theme, but a small daily task, to stop looking forward, and instead consider the angles. And it’s a new beginning, with creative muscles that shake with neglect, weakness and fear. But it’s also an invigorating relief, to have a new boat, and new shores, and a new journey, to color in front of me. And I’m especially appreciative of the community of exercised artists that, with great luck, I have subconsciously called into my life as best friends, and of whom I will be calling upon for mentorship on this new phase of, “my creative life.”

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*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.

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sorting out the new space

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*****

“The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the inner-most shrine at the end.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said, ‘Here art thou!’

The question and the cry ‘Oh, where?’ melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance ‘I am!’”

- Rabindranath Tagore

*****

Sorry for the distance, but I’ve been consumed with saying goodbye to my dear student group (below) and then sorting out the emptiness of waking up without them. Additionally, my computer “kaput”-ed again, and so I am laptopless. “Koi bhat nahi.” (No problem.) For I’m quite adept at both quickly adjusting to the space around me (full or empty) and also creatively finding access to keyboards. I’ll be back with new adventures and thoughts soon.

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*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.

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following a pilgrim songline

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So where were we? Ah, yes. Eluding the croissant-pusher.

In Australia, I once learned that the Aboriginals used to track their way through the vast bush by secret songlines; riddles, in song format, of which each individual in a tribe held a single verse, and (only) when strung in line and sung in harmony, were these verses laced together to present an intricate map and lay of the land.

Now really, have you ever heard of anything so beautiful?

So while I’m certain our voices were never as skillfully in synch, we pilgrims also sang a song; more to the tune of rumor and gossip, but none-the-less, still an elusive code passed from pilgrim to passing-pilgrim, that functioned as a compass directing us, as a tribe of nomads united by common destination, across the country.

Having no maps, it was only on the note of one of these pilgrim songlines that, upon finding myself standing in front of a large painted arrow that clearly directed all down the hill – I turned right and walked up and away instead.

Having spent many months of my teenage years grounded and confined to walls of my dungeon-ous room, there was definitely a satisfying sense of trouble giggling somewhere inside my stomach; I had no food, no idea of the distance to the next town, no idea where I’d stay, and hadn’t yet seen even a single marker confirming existence of the rumored deviant route I fancied myself to be following. Yet something born of the womb of these unknowns was wailing with simultaneous relief and exhilaration; something whose unexpected cry led me to wonder if freedom was perhaps less about granted permissions, and more about emptiness of expectations.

But I have diverged from my divergence; let me get back to getting off track. :)

Sustained by this strange energy source, I walked with suspicious speed. Occasionally a colored marker and matching number would, in another tribe’s songline language, tell me — in a code I couldn’t read — exactly where I was. But as I have learned to be the grammatical structure of many universal languages, it is often less about the letters than it is the pattern they follow. And so on this pattern I focused, in faith of the rule of the universe — that every path leads somewhere, and where ever that was, would be where I was supposed to be.

About a dozen kilometers later, and on top of the dozen I had already walked earlier, the satchel of my enthusiasm for wandering without sight of destination waned. Approaching the summit of a significant little hill, I — hungry, tired and feet arches threatening to collapse — hoped desperately for a glimpse of something habitable on the horizon.

Now I am quite convinced that Southern France’s Chemin de Saint Jacques de Compestelle’s horizons present the originals of that which inspired the artists to sketch such likenesses into fairy tale picture books. And at the top of this hill, it was exactly those pointy church steeples, looming watchtower tops, windy cobblestone streets and chunky white-block walls – that made the 7-year old in me want to reach my hand out and touch the page.
In my awe, it took me a minute – before I noticed that what really made the colors of this picture pop with vividness – was the darkly shaded, indigo blue, of the heavy looking clouds laying low in the sky, directly behind the image.

The sky was threatening to cry at any moment and I knew that if I didn’t pick up my pace significantly, I would soon be soaked in one of its more infamous expressions of emotion. A strong wind swept my way from the picture book page I faced, and with one huge ominous teardrop of water left splattered on my forearm, added the dot to the exclamation point following its clear warning and command.

(sorry! super busy! to be continued!)

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*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.

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bush taxi, part i: pride in a name

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(Playing Part in the Diallo Family)

Portland, Oregon

The fact that our food is thirty minutes tardy is hardly given a wink of conscious thought; our mouths full, with the gossip that spans the months between this and our last reunion, leave little room left for hunger.

Our layers of excited questions and answers are continuing to stack themselves like a deck of cards in the center of the table when one of my girlfriends, with the effect of jack-slapping the deck, asks me a question that breaks the pattern of exchange by giving me pause, “…but HOW did you GET out there?”

She’s referring to the story I just told where I placed myself near the border of Guinea and Senegal.

I’m caught off guard with the question and feel my eyes look up and search the left corner of the room where they seem to think they’ll find the answer.

And I DO find the appropriate vision; I step immediately into an especially thick memory; I can feel it and smell it, but find myself in an awkward dogpaddle in search of the right words to buoy the description.

“Well.” I answer, “by bush taxi.”

Three heads crook their necks at me like kittens watching a swaying string.

I give it another shot; “Well, they are called, “sept place” – which means “7 seats” in French.”

The four heads crook to watch the string sway to the other direction.

And then I can feel it coming. It is not particular to this audience, this reaction. And it’s nothing I ever take personally. But I can sense the difference between when a story of mine is worth exploring for explanation and when the audience is about to opt to sweep it under the, “maybe next time we’ll go there” rug.

As predicted, with only a second of silence the conversation card is swept, the deck re-dealt, and new topics fly across the table again.

I’ve since left Portland, but I find that I still hold the card and question.

While on the road, I rarely have time to compose complete-sentence thoughts. Instead, I scribble down quick lists of words that I know will conjure up the essence of a particular moment, observation or realization.

So I pick up my most recent travel journal, flip to the Senegal pages, and find the following listed under the word:

bush taxi

pride in a name
discerning intention
aggressive or cultural misinterpretation?
hole
saving the day
sharing food, breaking borders
toubab Umpaloompas
a brave minority
blue brothers of the sect
utilizing a common enemy
small circles
a community affair
mad feels good
the smell of a sai sai
where only guides go

Now I look over this list, feel the weight of multiple paragraphs under each item, and wonder how I could have possibly come up with 15 chapters for one taxi ride. At the same, I think this underscores the depth and layers of my every interaction with Senegal. And I hope that the following chapters will give those observing just a wink of insight into the power of my interactions with the country and people of Senegal.

So with no further hesitation, and over the course of a few posts, I will attempt to answer my good friend’s question, “But HOW did you get there?”

******

pride in a name

The first time I see Mbouille, his huge smile is framed by a taxi window that, for his overwhelming excitement, he looks ready to jump through.

He grabs the shoulder of the driver and shakes it until the taxi halts and then jumps out of an almost-still-moving car. He’s carrying a crumpled up piece of paper and as he shakes my one hand with two of his, I can see he’s doing all he can to resist hugging me. His wide smile extends mine to its own limits and I burst into laughter when he unfolds the crumpled paper to reveal a blown-up, black and white picture of me that he has downloaded from the internet as an aide to my identification.

What I don’t find out until weeks later, is that Mbouille has traveled at least three hours out of his way, transferring at least four times via different jam-packed forms of public transportation, just to greet me upon my arrival in Dakar. What I also don’t understand until later is that this is a traditional African approach to welcoming a guest; I am not just a “friend of a friend”; I am family. And I am not just family; but treated as royal family. There is nothing this man won’t do to show me how special, accepted, revered, and respected I am.

“We must give you a name!” he declares (for in Senegal, you are nothing without a Senegalese name, which defines your place in society) and thus he gives me three choices for a first name, and one choice for a last name.

“Maimuna Diallo!” he appoints me with great pride.

What I will learn over the course of my travels, is that Diallo is a highly respected name in Senegal. One of the few sentences I learn in Woloof (local language of the Northern half of Senegal) is how to introduce myself by this name. And although a few of those to whom I introduce myself will insist I change my last name to theirs, all will ultimately concede, “Yes. It’s a very good name you have,” and many will shake my hand with increased eagerness and proclaim, “I’m a Diallo too! We are family! You are my daughter/sister! Please sit. Please eat. Please stay!”

Mbouille takes me to his house in the neighboring city of Thies to meet my new family. I intend to stay only two days with him, but by the time I leave his house, 8 days have passed: his beautiful wife has taught me how to cook Senegalese specialties, his older sister has shown me how to sway and grind to Senegalese music, I have taught English to a group of his students in one of the schools where he teaches, he’s organized my adventure to help harvest peanuts in one of the fields outside the city, I’ve bathed his babies and snatched the broom and other chores away from his younger sister, his family has served me all the choicest morsels on every dinner plate, and the women of the house have taken me to a tailor and helped me pick out a traditional Senegalese dress for a weekend wedding of which we all, as a family, attended.

At the end of the week, Mbouille no longer calls me “Maimuna”; he now addresses me as “sister.” As there are few men that I admire and adore more than this one, my eyes well up with pride when I am allowed to return the respect and love by addressing him as, “brother.”

Never in all my travels in the world have I been welcomed with such warmth into a community, culture and family. If there is any one thing that I have, so far, learned that sets African culture aside from all others, it is this intimate integration of community and family; the two being one and same.

So how do we get from here to the bush taxi?

My story starts here because it is Mbouille who wakes me up at 5am, from the bed that I share with his little sister, to whisper the following:

“Come sister. I must get you on the first taxi that leaves this morning. And I must organize the price so that they do not rip you off. And you must call me every day after today. Are you sure you must go? Please stay, Maimuna. Okay. Okay. Okay. I know you’ve already stayed so much longer than you intended. If you insist, Maimuna. But come; let’s go. It will take you a full day to get where you’re going and we must go right no
w so that I can assure that you travel with a safe driver and nice people and for a good price. I don’t know why you want to leave me sister. But I suppose you have to go. Okay. Okay. Okay. I know. You have to see the rest of Senegal. Let’s go then to the taxi stand, sister.”

(to be continued)

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*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.

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strange math

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I’m in Boulder, Colorado.

I’ve been deferring that declaration; hesitant only because not even I know what that means.

There are certainly known variables – like that I’m broke, that I love my job and the people with whom I work, and that there is hardly a healthier place in the States for me than this sunny and snowy little town – that are easy enough to factor in and out of the equation. Less quantifiable, is the feeling that I’m on vacation; roaming around Disneyland, waiting in lines for rides with bags of goodies and big eyes; seeing (and enjoying) but not quite believing and having a sneaking feeling that while I’ve got my hands up in the air, Time is pick-pocketing me from behind. But since the last few months spanned years in memories, I guess I have some to spare and won’t fret over a little lost change.

And I am happy. I know. It’s crazy. And if I spin around in my head and catch the shadow running, I can see that I feel guilty for feeling happy here – which is plainly ridiculous (right?). Don’t worry. Half of my happiness is rooted in the fact that I AM on vacation. That’s another constant for the equation: even if my “path” treads occasionally through it, I still see no potential for a long term commitment to this continent. Actually, it’s exactly because I AM engaged to a lifelong pilgrimage that it’s so easy (now) for me to flirt with and court this country.

So I’m here. And, (turning around real fast; watching it flee)… happy. In my office, I’m surrounded by an inspiring community of people who share my travel history, living ethic, and personal mission statement. After work, I have salsa, break dancing, (new) art classes and I just signed up to volunteer with three different local community outreach programs. At home, I have a black lab who smothers me with kisses from feet to face every time I walk through the door and barks and moans in anticipation of the “w” word (which excites me equally). And only in Boulder do the clouds graciously dump six inches of snow and then quickly move along and make way for blue skies and sunshine to do that thing where they make the whole world glitter and glow.

I guess there’s always a chance I’m fooling myself. Maybe, at the core, I’m miserable and just wearing a faux coat of luxurious delusion. Or maybe I really have just turned a corner and found that the calm confidence of knowing I’m always on my way again to another side trumps my old need to have a fire chase me there. I’ve heard that accumulations of experience/years can do that kind of thing to a person.

France to Senegal to India to Colorado; I wonder if it’s the leapfrogging of extremes that’s leveling my experiences of reality all to the same shade of gray? I think I get it now, why the wise men all hang out in caves. It’s not indifference. It’s acceptance and it’s faith. It’s not that it doesn’t matter. It’s that it already makes sense. And it’s not about the numbers or even isolating the variables; it’s simply knowing the equation exists. And maybe that’s a clue to the mystery of how I always did so well in math, but never learned a single solid thing? If I’ve lost you, don’t worry; I think I’ve lost myself as well. But for what else are Sunday evenings other than long diddle-doddling rambles as the above?

*****

Thank you for all the sweet letters and notes regarding Hanley; the shared soft words and stories all helped in letting the peace settle in.

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*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.

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