On the Road Again

6am in Dar came early and dark. We woke up to find ourselves behind the driver on an old bus at Ubungo bus station - already teeming just before sunup.

Brown packages scribbled to who knows where were being thrown over the driver onto the dash into the growing pile. This rusty old bus - one in a long line of many others decorated with old window paint and random American bumper stickers -  was already full of people. You should see all those beautiful khanga colors sitting patiently in balding old stained carpet seats, with babies and bags all propped on laps. The sun was rising over the din, through the dirty windows of the old bus. And the bus station - well, lets just say you’re probably better off in times square on new year’s eve wearing a monkey suit and waving a communist flag.

We had been successfully snuck on the bus just like two bags of powder cocaine without being noticed. We sat up front behind the driver, the only mzungus in sight, and watched the scene unfold below.  The tops of heads flowed like coffee beans from a spilled bag or flies on a mango, in every direction with no clear path.  People doing so many different things at once your eyes couldn’t keep up without making you positively dizzy. Tickets being sold randomly in the crowd scribbling out receipts this way and that. Vendors knocking on bus windows toting bags of bread, newspapers, T-shirts, cashews, random plastic Tupperware, basically anything that could be picked up at a local goodwill store. Buses pulling out into the crowd without warning and without breaking for rivulets of people weaving around the front. Luggage on heads, coins in hand, nothing on the faces as they make their way through the madness. Two buses pulled out at the same time ahead of us, inches from each others bumper and of course 4 or 5 people somehow passing in between. One attempted to turn wide through an opening the size of less than a single lane while the other inched forward at an angle at its side, blocking a stream of people that then flowed around it like water round a rock. The bus reversed and the people leaning against it casually stepped out of its way.  The smell of dirty diesel made its way through the bus. Someone threw a cigarette precariously into a mucky pool of rainbow oiled water and I was just waiting for the whole place to burst heads first into flames. Five buses were jumbled at all angles around us within a space of about a two lane highway - believe it. Vendors crowded the doorways and banged on the sides, making kissing noises to attract attention. It took nearly 45 minutes to make our way off onto the highway.

Then we were off and wobbling on our jelly wheels. By the way we were moving in and out of traffic, you’d think we were a Ferrari needing a paint job. If there isn’t a space, pull out and make one. If the person is going too slow in front of you, come in so hot that they pull off on the shoulder to your left to let you through. If there are people walking in the road or in the crosswalks, simply pull forward into them and instead of dispersing in panic they will simply amble off. Except for the stragglers who fail to move in time, and they will simply be inched out of the way by the bumper. Speed limits simply need not apply. The bus door is open 90% of the time, even on the highway and the attendant swings outside of it and yells things as we pass by the villages. All the way from Dar to Arusha, there are only one lane highways. This means a hierarchy of some kind must exist - and that class system is, very simply, the bigger the better. Every square foot of mass a vehicle has adds to its priority on the by ways. If you are smaller, you will receive a short honk and then be expected to move over to the side or be sideswiped. Honk honk. Comin’ through. When passing (and you must pass often), no slowing down is necessary - only swerving into the other lane for a full five minutes and any oncoming, smaller traffic will veer into the shoulder to let you complete your pass in peace. Being the big kaunas on the road simply to the effect of their size, these coast-to-coast buses really get moving, I can tell you. This gives the general feeling that you are actually safer while other traffic is present, regardless of how many near collisions you may need to avoid with these vehicles. This is because when the road is empty, the bus drivers feel the need to make up for all the time they have wasted swerving in and out of traffic. Which leaves you no choice but to strategize what body position might give you the best chance at surviving a bus rollover of this magnitude. And given the rusty shape of the 1970 frame, the odds don’t look so great. In Africa, it seems it really is about getting where you want to go or die trying.

Twelve hours went by, alternating between certain death and peaceful countryside views. Villages upon villages passed by like still frames. Most of the country is green cut with this ruddy red dirt like a rare steak. A woman walking carrying a machete on her head. Huge bags of charcoal wrapped in twine sitting in potato sacks on the side of the road like little travelers themselves. Trash lacing the ditches and burn scars scraping black patches in the grass. Shirtless men sweating in the sun, hacking at the weeds with a scythe on miles of overgrown roadside. A barefoot child squatted in the red dirt playing with an old brown shoe as if it were a toy airplane. Boys playing a rugged game of soccer in the bush with an empty water bottle for a ball.

The lush green grasses and papery banana leaves of coastal Tanzania soon started to run into rolling savanna and the vegetation became squat and irritable. Small rocky hills and ridges rose up from the roll of the road and everything becomame progressively dustier. Miniature, portable looking towns came up and fell away fast like the wave of a hand. Twists in the road that lead to more nowhere. The tall, dark and wispy figures of the Maasai tribe could be seen draped in robes of their signature colors, rich red and purple, and long walking stick. They come into view like distant colorful ghosts, almost always solitary on a long stretch of empty bush land, and then waft around in your memory as gracefully as they appeared to you in life. Sometimes you can see them riding their bicycles, with beaded anklets on their long bare legs and their positively gorgeous traditional wraps flapping like crimson flags in the wind. By the time we neared Arusha, the bush had become dusty, thorny and seemingly endless - an intimidating patchwork of flatlands and dry grasses. And when the base of Kili rose like the thick stump of a huge redwood, its peak shrouded in clouds, we knew we are almost there. We giggled in spite of ourselves as our driver nearly overturned a minibus that is riding the ditch like a sideways caterpillar in an effort to get out of our way. We were certain we would look back on this day and laugh.

In the Bag: Arrival in Bagamoyo

We have arrived. Down the hot and dusty roads. Past both laughing and stormy faces. Under a scowling hot sun. And what a landing it was!

After an overnight flight to Nairobi and a bright, hot little puddle jump, we arrived in Dar at 9am in the morning. The sun was low but already molten and we sweat through our clothes before we even reached customs. After securing our Visas in a slow-moving, craggy little customs office, we finally walked out into a blistering, swaying Tanzanian morning.

I had not been feeling well the last 12 hours of flying and turned up weak and a little worse for the wear. We had been introduced via email to a friend of a friend who we had been told would greet us at the airport. As we arrived reluctantly prepared to venture a try at Kiswahili to negotiate on an inflated mzungu price for a  cab, our new friend was waiting smiling at the doors. We were so glad to see his friendly face we almost fell all over each other. Over 30 hours of travel dissipated instantly into euphoria as he drove us through Dar, dodging skirted jaywalkers carrying bananas on their heads, bicycle carts, old buses or “dala dalas” full to the brim with glistening faces and severe eyes. Our friend Omar spoke in a slow and lovely accent, explaining every sight as we passed , and we all laughed out loud at the crazy Tanzanian drivers, listless policemen and throngs of people  casually crossing the road without hurry or apology. We arrived at his house, a beautiful, sandy-colored home with a leafy garden, a spacious white interior and…air conditioning! We sunk into comfortable chairs with glasses of clean cold water thinking we had died and gone to heaven. A fan cast its steady, beating shadow across the white walls. Omar was having breakfast prepared for us. I thought for sure I was the luckiest person alive.

Omar, a native Tanzanian, a stranger when we arrived, became an instant friend. He had an unassuming sense of humor and extensive knowledge about just about everything in Tanzania. He insisted kindly on driving us all the way to our destination, coastal Bagamoyo, along with his brother in law to be who was visiting. As we drove the paved but ribbed road up the coast, our unslept eyes could hardly absorb all the things we saw. If only every snapshot could live forever in my mind. Shanty markets with full wooden walls stacked with fruit, fabrics, and other wares. Buckets upon buckes of newly ripened mangoes for a dollar or two a bucket. Children running joyously in bare feet in citrus colored dust. Dark faces and long bodies lounging in the shade of doorways watching the traffic roll by. Tattered sheets for doors waving in the hot breeze. Men at work in the sun hammering, sawing, whittling or hauling goods in the sun. Each side of the highway was like a cut right down the middle of an isolated, bustling African village, with giant mansions belgoing to foreigners and a few very wealthy locals looming empty in the background.

When we at last arrived in Bagamoyo, we set out to find out village school, Nianjema. To do this, Omar would simply flag someone down from the car window every half mile or so and ask, after an extensive greeting in Swahili, their take on directions to the school. Many renditions, corrections, beautiful Swahili words and small detours later, the car bumped down the dirt road to the school past curious eyes.

Almost steaming in the heat of the afternoon, the school was a series of small white buildings around an open courtyard. A few school elders lounged on the stairway. They knew little of our arrival and so we were glad to find Sylvie and Ian, our starcrossed friends who had been at the school for four months, in a classroom doorway. Ian and I had gone to high school together, and by seeing a random, chance posting on facebook about the school, had discovered a few months earlier that we and our significant others were going to volunteer at the same little school in Africa. Sylvie and Ian had helped us prepare by email and their blog posts, and they would prove to be great friends and vital resourcse for introducing us to African life. Sometimes, when you decide to dive a bit to deep into a pool where you cant see the bottom, life appreciates the gesture and throws you a lifeline. They were unmistakably ours.

We got settled into the home of the school’s founder, Charlie in the spare room with Sylvie and Ian. The house is cement and white, with open screen windows, whirring fans and small lizards legging their way up the walls outside. After a good 20 minutes of starting at each other blankly and sweating in the living room, Sylvie and Ian took us down the twisting path into town for some mango juice.

In African villages, the paths wind right through and all around people’s homes and dust yards. Some can afford cooler cement block houses but most are outside of their mud huts with thatch roofs cooking over a small fire. After a few days, we have begun to get used to the spectacle that we cause every time we travel anywhere down these paths, past peeping eyes, children’s laughs and a wide variety of faces, greetings, and grunts. Most often, the children will up from their play and get to peeping with wide eyes, jumping up and down chanting “Mzungu! Mzungu! Mzungu!” (meaning, white person). We respond with smiles and  “Mambo” (whats going on), and the local reply is “”Poa” (cool). “Mzungu!”’s will come flying at us, even from unseen children shouting from windows. The adults will address us politely with Swahili hellos and sometimes Karibu, welcome or you are welcome here. Some glower at us, some mutter insults in Swahili or jest at us . But every time, even badly disguised in local Konga skirts or mumus we are much like the traveling circus!

Over the last few days , Ian and Sylvie have shown us African life. Scott and I have struggled to adjust to the heat, which never leaves you with a dry brow or a cool morning in the height of the African summer. But we are beginning to manage and with Ian and Sylvie’s wonderful guidance, we have been doused in African language, culture and comings and goings. We visited the beach, ate at local huts, drank Tanzanian beer, lounged out on the porch in the evenings with the mango trees rustling to our conversation. Yesterday, they took us for lunch at the home of an African family, who graciously cooked rice, beef and beans for us, prompting and helping us through our Swahili. Ian and Sylvie’s Swahili is quite good after their months here and they have learned fast. Scott and I on the other hand just stared blankly and smiling at the mother, who spoke no English but spoke to us kindly and repeated her questions slowly for us, allowing us to repeat every syllable, while her children translated in English. We ate with our hands of course, although occasionally forgetting to only eat with our right hands as is customary. They were patient with our awkward Swahili greetings, asked us things about where we were from and poked fun of us good naturedly. We took pictures of all of us together in the living room and Scott taught one of the sons to use the camera, which he took to like a pro and wanted to carry it around proudly with it around his neck.  “This day, I like it very much.“ The father said, patting us on the backs and telling us not to bother calling before we come visit, as we are always welcome there. Their son was one of the students at the school and Sylvie and Ian finished showing him how to send an email on their laptop out in the yard under a thatch hut. A small crowd of village children gathered, most of them not knowing what they were looking at but patiently gawking at the small computer screen and squeezing in to see.
After the computer lesson, the father asked if we would like a walk to the beach. Of course we could not refuse and so in lines of two or three we wound our way through the villages and down to the beach, each member of the family paired with one of us in engaging conversation. As I chatted with the son who was a student of Nianjema in slow English, he reminded me softly when a pikipiki (a motorcycle) would approach us to get off far to the left on the small dirt roads as the pikipikis have priority and can be very dangerous to pedestrians. His younger brother who was about five walked spritely in between us as we walked away from the setting sun. He had not learned English, so he could not understand me but I occasionally addressed him anyway, just to see him smile at me happily, satisfied to walk with us attentively into this cooling African afternoon. I heard Scott talking about Africa behind me with the father. We twisted and turned on paths through the village that we might never feel comfortable enough to venture by ourselves, and from time to time I thought we were going to walk right through the cooking fire of one of the neighbors. The locals watched silently as we passed, the Maela family and their Mzungu friends. As we got closer to the sea you could feel it in the breeze, lifting the heat off of your skin just enough for you to notice, and the palm trees thickened, edged with the setting sun. The older son and I continued our conversation as we neared the beach, with the youngest in between us. Just when I had forgotten the heat and realized how special this afternoon was, the youngest reached up and took my hand - and held it, with arm stretched up above his little head as I was much taller than him, all the way to the sea.

Into the Arms of Amsterdam.

Have you ever seen the Disney cartoon Mulan? Where the heroine decides to join the Chinese army in place of her father, masquerading as a man? I feel a little like she might on her first day, waking up before boot camp begins. "Day...One."

My bags are packed, my blackberry is back in New York, and it took me way longer than it should have to figure out the captain was speaking dutch and that I wasn't simply unable to comprehend my native language.

I'm almost off the map, baby. I've turned off the spiggot of my life. And now its just about taking it as it comes - straight up, on the rocks.

Our first overnight flight is behind us and we will soon wait for the second in the Amsterdam airport for about 9 hours. I fared pretty well, thanks to my right hand man, Tylenol PM. Scott, who is wearing that sleep-deprived, wide-eye swim goggles look, not so much. Getting ready for landing, we are heading into one of those pocky, perturbing patches of turbulence that, when strong enough to send a massive jetliner skating erratically on atmospheric ice, often leaves you gripped and negotiating with God for more than a few seconds.  And after you hit clear, open air once again on the other side, you feel like the idiot who hit the deck in a nice restaurant at the sound of a champagne bottle popping close by. Especially judging from the undisturbed eyemasks of the frequent international passengers around you. Hehe - why no, I was certainly not terrified for my life just then (teeth could cut a dinner plate). Sinking lower in my chair...


But the sun is up (although wearing very gray, wet clothes) and the day is in full swing in Amsterdam. Never have I had such an appreciation for having a partner along on a well-planned wandering off like this trip (and we are about to wander quite far)--especially a partner of such patience and brevity in times of squalor. Without him, I might have talked myself convincingly out of this at the gate, or worse yet, slept through all of my free meals on the plane. This morning, I have decided that there is truly no one better to have along in a prickly patch than Scott. And I get the feeling things are about to get prickly. That is of course if I live through this next microcell on our way in for a landing.

The Get Out of Town Countdown....

No wonder how long you wait for something, it still comes right up on you like a bedecked Christmas party guest you thought for sure wouldn’t show. But you knew it was coming. You planned it with mind-numbing care, you nursed it from a seedling over coffee, you budgeted for all its possible pitfalls, and you gave it all kinds of impertinent names with arm-candy adjectives like “grand”, “eye-opening” and “life-defining”. But even so, even slowly, it has prowled up on your plans as if uninvited, ready to spread its feathers, one at a time, and give you the adventure you asked for.

The day is fast approaching, with a signature New York City snowstorm precariously greasing its tracks. When my flight arrived at a frost-flecked La Guardia, flanked in dirty but determined snow drifts, I surprised myself by feeling nothing but displacement. Otherwise known as anxiety masked in pure confusion and denial. Six months worth of clothing, emergency medication, good luck charms, my own weight in feminine products and quick-dry-just-about-everything made the final cut and were rolled into a big red backpack. In true mammalian self-preservationist fashion, I spent the final days in Colorado obsessively labeling already labeled over-the-counter medication and counting the number of poisonous snake species in each country rather than telling my supportive friends and family how much I honored their presence in my life and how every word they said would hang in my head once I had crossed the border. My parents pasted over any fear or doubt they knew my hawk heart would be looking for and waved me goodbye, casually and quickly, with a “you’ll be fine” hug. My siblings saluted from their parting posts and in their own ways gave me the greatest gift of their unfaltering confidence. My friends turned up at every turn to tip their hat to a trip they knew would bring me back transformed, wholeheartedly willing to accept whatever version of me came back in my place. Meanwhile, I nobly focused most of my last week’s energy mentally bemoaning the small child howling behind me, squawking about hidden foreign conversion fees and fussing over the percentage of germs that competing hand sanitizers claim to eliminate. And all this, I have concluded, is what takes me successfully to the brink. Without it, I might flounder in those last days of comfort and familiarity, until I am flayed out over the things I might (and I will) miss - a rat asleep in a puddle of sweet wine.

Soon, its to the trenches… to the truth or to the trails that will lead us head-on toward the unexpected.

Please Prepare for Take Off

To prepare: One who, or that which, prepares, fits, or makes ready. To make things or oneself ready.

A month and a half on the clock before our plane departs for Africa. Winter has moved in downstairs. Our jobs are drawing up the resignation paperwork. Our things have been bagged, escorted across the country and stuffed away at our parent's houses. Our hearts are heavy as we cut small everyday losses to make room for such an adventure - little goodbyes and big ones, the last rites of our routines, closing the shop doors on years of New York minutes. But we know that the adventure is waiting at the door.

In school when I didn’t know where to start or how to move forward with a paper, a story or a thesis, I was told to take out the dictionary. Start with a word that will define your paper and then define it. Seek and absorb its full definition, that which aims at its essence over the course of its life in the English language or the languages before that. Break up the fibers of a word into its syllables, class, conjugations and historical contexts and soon you will see the nuances of its nervous system – a network of meanings, multiples and interpretations. Once you have understood its energy – one that can never be fully captured due to the elusive and coy, shifting nature of language –you can use it to propel you forward into the pages that follow. Start with the definition of one word and the rest will fall into place. Like footfalls on a long journey after the first… purposeful… step.

Life is very much like language. Seeking to capture, understand and describe that which ultimately cannot be. But how very close we come. And before we can grasp the whole of it by the tail it slips from our fingers… but not before we’ve reveled in the richness of what we’ve learned so far.

And so I’ll start with the word I am seeking that defines this less-than-sacred space I have crossed into: prepare. This is a room of mirrors reflecting illusions that appear to be real and familiar but are already fading into fallen footsteps on a road already travelled. The carpeted rooms of my childhood home, my old bronze maxima in the driveway, the trappings of this comfortable Colorado life bumped up against the steel spires of downtown New York, the rumble of subway cars, the delirious delight of evening cocktails around a crowded bar.

To prepare: To make things or oneself ready. To make ready beforehand for a specific purpose. To put together or make by combining various elements or ingredients. To fit out; equip. To lead up to and soften.

To make things ready. Shots, clothes, passports, VISAs, medications, notifications, communications.

To make oneself ready. Expectations, goodbyes, hellos, compromises, doubts, hopes, I wonder ifs. Agreements with yourself you know you might not be able to keep. Balking at your own courage.

For a specific purpose. To find, understand and share meaning. Teach, learn. Learn, teach. ARRIVE. Arrive into my own life and into that of others. Start something. Anything. Become.

To equip. For a game I don’t yet know how to play. With things that will mean very little next to the new tools that the world is about to demand that I discover.

To soften. The threads of the heart on the alter of the unknown. To allow. To hunt for knowledge and then relinquish it. To negotiate for terms, guarantees and assurances only to end up signing it all away in exchange for adventure. To embrace the pieces of the journey that belong to you…and befriend the pieces that don’t.

Its not much. But it’s a start.

Raindrops on Roses

In New York, and in life in general, when it rains, it pours. In the city where anything is possible, everything suddenly becomes impossible (getting a cab, getting delivery, getting your groceries home, getting a life). Thus, its the perfect opportunity to stay up late alone in the dark, let the central heating out through an open window, listen to the cabs slosh down first avenue and feel the minutes of your life go slowly by.

I've been in New York for two years now (and like a true New York patriot, I was far too busy to realize or celebrate our anniversary together). Each day here has been blended like a Kandinsky painting, circular in the patterns of living out loud and then working overtime to quiet down, or at least until the morning sheen of self awareness wears off once more. This morning -- suddenly and unexpectedly -- I became aware of the passing of time.

The hair that I had cut short and sharp well over a year ago and has miraculously seemed to stay that way, suddenly looks like it has grown an inch. My bedroom smells like my T-shirts and residual chamomile tea instead of the peeling paint and borrowed furniture of my early twenties. My apartment, or at least the part of it I preside over, looks a lot like my mother's kitchen and I get the itchy and strangely electric feeling that I imagine she must get also when I clean it maniacally-- allowing a momentary, secretly profound grasp on my own tangible existence and impact on the empirical world perhaps? Words, like marriage and career and income, that have been for most of my life distant orbs of cosmic mass barelling toward me through space that wont reach me until after the sun runs out of nuclear fuel, becomes a red giant and swallows the universe...have overnight become more like very real words that can be found next to my alarm clock at 7am that demand to be both respected and feared.

But most of all this morning I realized that I was afraid to live my life forever as it is now and equally as afraid to make any change at all to it. The very distinct welling of fear that collected in my esophagus when I thought of the countries I would like to trek through, the writing I'd like to do more of, the new city I would like to live in, the inspiring companies I'd like to work, for was enough to make me stop and notice myself, there running on a treadmill called New York City, which was itself rattling in the bed of a pick-up truck on the Interstate which was...my life. And that was the moment when I caught time red-handed walking quietly through my life while I was busy burning dinner in the kitchen. And when it saw me looking back at it, it stopped dead in its tracks. Until I closed the window against the rain and went back to loudly sorting silverware.