Through Yangon

There is no need to fear.  The blood red stains flooding the sidewalks and streets and walls here in Yangon are in fact not a crime scene, but the crusty DNA of millions of people chewing and spitting millions of beetlenuts.  Even teenagers’ teeth blend into their gums, so permanently stained are they.  And be careful on those sidewalks.  Nearly a meter above the oft-flooded streets but only a single person wide, it doesn’t slow down the foot traffic in both directions, and is harrowing every time.  Despite that and the fact that I can’t go a single block (or sadly, a single meal) without seeing rats commuting to and from their sewage lairs, I think I love it here.  

The humidity hovers always around 100%, but it's not yet raining 24 hours a day, as this wretchedly hot Asian summer floods into an Asian monsoon.  The locals are quick to smile, prompted or not, and are perpetually singing.  Justin Bieber and Michael Bolton appear to be top favorites, because, America.  The tourist scene so thick in other Asian countries hasn’t yet oversaturated this gentle people, and it’s refreshing, apart from the staring and being asked to be in photos, which I am 100% over: it’s been a lot of months being an anomaly, and I’m over it.  

The Burmese language sounds like a baby’s curls feel, and to see it written you can understand why.  The traditional cuisine is full of sour, bitter, and spicy.  Guts are big here too, fried, steamed, boiled and skewered, however you fancy.  And can’t forget the fried bugs: don’t taste too bad really, if you can handle flossing legs from your teeth.  For the first time ever, I am on a selfie mission.  The fruits are exotic in appearance, and even more so in taste.  If you’re lucky, one of the locals will teach you which to eat and in what succession to accomplish your fruity yin yang balance.  Lest, they say, “It’ll drill a hole in your stomach."

This is largely a Buddhist nation, and as such, it is normal to see monks and nuns, young and old, everywhere you go.  Little ones collecting their alms for the day, elders leading prayers.  While I wasn’t surprised by the presence of these holy ones, I was surprised by their Nikes, and iphones, and even occasionally, their ipads.  I even stumbled into an arcade to find as many little monks running around as I did teenage boys clad in bunny costumes.  It was adorable, and disorienting, and not a little trippy.

This morning I’m headed to a remote border town, a leap off the beaten track to meet a friend of a friend.  I’m in the domestic airport, watching the locals artfully eat the traditional breakfast noodle dish, wondering for the millionth time this year if the free drinking water is potable.  Off I go, to manifest clean water and if I’m super lucky this sticky Sunday morning, a western toilet.  Wish me luck.

*I have great photos to share.  Alas, I'm not sure there's enough wifi in the entire country to load one of them...  

With A Little Help From My Friends

Angel in Ruins

I’m sitting here in Quatar, a fancified spaceship that is allegedly also an airport: I’ve not seen anything like it.  The toilet stalls alone are cleaner than anywhere I’ve visited in Asia, and their coffee saucers are asymmetrical, which is as cool looking as it is impractical.  I’m watching Muslim families take countless foodie photos, and trying to calm my gag reflex at the exorbitant prices.  My blog is  ordering my writing from right to left in Arabic, and effectively blowing my mind.  I’m on my way to the newly democratic state of Myanmar, though I have a hard time remembering to call it anything other than Burma.  I’m taking advantage of stellar wifi, and catching up on all of my Spotify playlists, the perfect .accompaniment to this writing

Pottery Square, Bhaktapur

I laid awfully low in Nepal, often doing nothing more physically exerting than slithering from bed to rooftop to cafe, in no particular order.  I sent texts and emails, and was even able to video chat a few times, no small miracle.  I caught up with my immediate family, some of my closest friends, and even some of my favorite humans from a million years ago.  I thought a lot about what I’ve been doing these past 10 months, what I want to be doing the next 10 months, and my spirit was effectively boosted.  I’m excited to keep going, yes.  But more than experiencing another temple, or stupa, or mountain range, it’s people I’m most excited to encounter, both known and unknown.  

Because more than any comfort or convenience, it’s people I miss the most,  relationships to which I’m tethered, relationships that remind me of who I am.  On the road, I’m anonymous.  And until recently, it was a feeling I reveled in, and took advantage of: who am I apart from my roles in others’ lives, my responsibilities, my professional acumen?  Who am I when I’m scared, or tired, or hangry?  What these past few weeks of connection and reconnection have done is remind me, just a little, of just that.  A wise friend encouraged me to attend to the little things, the smiles, the connections with people I’d otherwise never have met, and to let go of the arrogance that compels me to understand, to “fix” everything.  He was, and is, totally right.  But I’d lost sight of that under the weight of the ills of the world: humbled again.

I was lucky enough to find a guest house run by the loveliest family ever.  My two day stay unfolded into nine as we befriended one another without a common language, and I allowed my edges to be softened by perfectly spicy homemade curries that sweated my eyeballs without sweating my colon.  I now understand why my friends complain when I squeeze their cheeks, as it became a multiple-times-daily occurrence by Granny, a most mischievous little lady who, as they say, had me at hello.  Granny and her family squeezed blood into my cheeks, and encouragement into my homesick heart, and I’m ready for what’s next.  Bring it on, Burma

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*Typos drive me crazy, but it's nearly impossible for my brain to think backwards, so I apologize... I'm giving up!!

In Wonder

High

I am a wanderer and I am a wonderer, and that’s good, because they go together.  But right now, with intention, I am focusing on the latter.  Sometimes I send my sister selfies, when I’m having a good hair day, or to prove I’m not becoming skinny, or too dark and broody, only one of which is an actual possibility.  My last attempt caused her concern that I was high, which I kind of loved.  But while I wasn’t on drugs, I was in fact high on the rooftop of this coziest of places, overlooking a city slowly recovering from last year's earthquake.  So now I wonder at rubble, and the incongruity of life.  That potted plants bloom and thrive on the crumbled half-wall next door, that I’m craving classic rock in the middle of Asia, the fact that so many truths can somehow be true all at once, and I have the audacity to try to sort out one from the other.  Ego face.

Buddhist Peace Pagoda, Pokhara

People sat outside last year drinking tea, and playing games, and squabbling with spouses.  And then their homes and temples and shrines collapsed on them: they were in all the right places at the worst time.  In less than a minute every tangible effort and joy and heartbreak of their lives became the kindling of their burial pyres, and they were incinerated by the weight of their lives.  Only a year later they smile as they slowly rebuild their homes and lives, and they’re teaching me.  So despite my best efforts to avoid it, I am compelled by their perseverance to still my restless legs and sort through some of my own rubble, some of the bricks and mortar stowed away in my pack.  Wonder Katie, wonder.

As I squint out the mountains hidden by the haze while not-too-gracefully dodging the giant crows that swoop stupid-close to my head, I’m imagining future tattoos, and future loves, and future adventures, and whether I’ll have courage enough to see it all through.  Whether my crazy little cherub of a nephew over 7,000 miles away is yet inciting the daily wrath of his preschool teacher, or if my dog is getting enough snuggles from everyone: snuggle her up, s’il vous plait.  I’m missing friends I haven’t seen in 15 years, and marveling at the fact that a little girl named Hannah, who changed the trajectory of my life nearly 17 years ago, is suddenly old enough to go to prom.  What it feels like for one of my dearest friends, of a certain age, to have finally found the love of her life, or if one of my oldest friends on earth, recently resurfaced, knows how much I still love and believe in him.  I’m delighting in the perfection of songs like Space Oddity and Harvest Moon, and seriously questioning if Dave Matthews ever received my love letters all those years ago; passionate doozies, all.  How much of this nasty electrolyte water do I need to drink to cure my self-diagnosed fatty fat face syndrome?  Will I ever wear makeup again?  Or use face wash?  Will my thighs ever again feel the sharp side of a razor?  Where will I settle down, when will I settle down, will I ever settle down?

  

Bhaktapur

I’ve met some beauties recently.  The family running this place, who, after recovering from the shock of encountering my fiascoed self following a 120 kilometer, 14 hour bus ride in the piercing heat, cooked for me a proper dal bhat feast at nearly 10 o’clock at night: they served this sopping mess of a human plate after plate of spicy Nepalese kindness and sent me straight to bed.  Two of the nicest Brits I’ve ever met, who made me laugh, and reminded me what it feels like to be safe with men, Sunil dazzling me all the while with his gentleness and gorgeous smile: he has no idea.  A fantastic German couple, full of advice on traveling this corner of the world, with whom I share an intensity to voraciously learn and a weariness of living with European teenagers on gap year: they are magic.

Pause.  I could do this all day, this wondering, and indeed, most days I do.  But instead, I'll comb the clouds from my hair and head downstairs for family dinner.  Rubble enough for today.  A girl's gotta eat.

With a Pep In My Step

My favorite Aussie mama in all of her wisdom recently reminded me of something.  Something important, and something true.  That perhaps my heart was broken, but my spirit, my person, my deep parts, were not.  Are not.  The truth is, I’m worn out.  I don’t know if I’ll last another month on the road, much less another year.  And so, I’ve made a plan.  A plan!  I’m on a mission, not to save the world or understand the intricate complexities of things I know very little about, not to educate every bonehead man who crosses my path, but to just be.  To remember how to do that.  India was a unique experience certainly, but finding myself in this position of total burnout is a well-traveled road for me.  In some ways, I did it to myself.  Wherever you go, there you are.  Blurg.

This is some of the best trekking in the world, people come from all over to face the Himalayas, to take on elevation sickness in hopes of a glimpse of Everest.  Not me, nope.  I’ve trekked my tail off, and I’m tired.  Also, as much as I hate to admit it, my achilles have yet to forgive me for the Camino.  So instead of trekking because I’m here, or because I “should”,  I’m going to pat these eager young hikers on the back while telling them how strong and brave they are, all from the cozy little perch of my floor pillow.  I am donedonedonedonedone with the shoulds.

Oh coffee, my love.  Instead of worrying about budget, or fighting to palate watery Nescafe or chicory, I’m going to splurge.  Every day, twice if I want to.  I’m going to double-shot my way through this country, because it’s finally, gloriously, wondrously, easily accessible and I love it so much, and I am a nicer person after I drink it.  Also, as my hostel is under construction, and deafening during daylight hours, napping is impossible and I am a shameless napper.  I’ve come to love the dopey feeling that arrives unannounced, that feeling of sinking into myself regardless of what’s going on around me.  So to honor my sleepy self, I’m going to get my own room; it’s easy here, and usually not more than a few dollars more.  Beauty in a cup of coffee, and silence and solitude.

I’m going to look into this ‘shopping’ thing I’ve heard so much about.  I love the colors and sparkles and detail of handmade wares, and until now I’ve largely avoided paying them much attention; I wasn’t in the market for the extra weight of souvenirs, my pack is heavy enough.  But dang.  I’ve missed out, and I know it.  So now I’m going to haggle the mess out of these vendors, learn about their art, and maybe even buy up some beauty: there is a postal service, after all.  I consider my first venture a success, befriending two lovely elderly Tibetan refugees.  Of course I didn’t haggle them at all, (girl power!), but they were warm and chatty, and shared with me life stories and friendship bracelets: I am bedazzled.  Beauty in sequins.

I am going to invest in some self care, from the bottom on up.  I will spare the details, but suffice it to say my feet were buried beneath 10 months of trekking before the poor girl at the spa got ahold of them.  Apart from a mild aversion to hepatitis, I did my best to relax and not kick her teeth out as she tickled my digits with the razor blade she was using in her desperate attempts to beautify my tired tootsies.  Also, my knots have knots, and I suspect my chakras are full up: show me what you got, eastern massage.  I don’t know if I look tired or 35, but I need a boost.  So I will learn to treat my hair like the locals with coconut oil.  I don’t know what I’m doing: my hair is a slippery silky mess, but I smell delicious.  Beauty in beautifying. 

I’m going to read my eyes off.  This isn’t new, books remain the closest thing I have to a travel partner.  But now, at least for a bit, instead of focusing on post-apartheid violence, or institutional poverty, or corruption in the developing world, or gender inequality, I’m going to read about things that are hopeful, and funny, and maybe even salacious: until I discover an Asian comfort food, I will gobble words.  And I’m going to write.  Write my ass off.  Write to my family, write to my friends, write out all that happened this last month, these last 10 months.  At least until my computer dies: electricity here is limited to a few hours a day.  Beauty in words.

Today for lunch I ate my Nepalese go-to, momo.  I was joined by a Nepalese gentleman, the same age as my dear old dad back in Pennsylvania.  We talked for hours about work, and life, and the state of women in the world.  And he shared, as earnestly as anyone I’d ever met, how he’d grown to understand the value of women.  He was equally startled and convicted by this recent revelation, and even a little sad that he’d had only sons.  Here in Nepal the birth of baby boys is celebrated on their 6th day of life.  Not so with girls.  But this fellow, Uday, said that when his granddaughter arrived, he’d changed the game.  He’d thrown a party, a grand celebration for the baby girl lucky enough to be born into his family.  Of course as much as I tried to tell him, he couldn’t possibly understand what an encouragement he was to me, what a source of hope.  But he was, and I’m better for having met him.  Beauty in people.  Still, always, irrefutably: beauty in people.

Broken

This is a truth: I’m cavernous, hollowed out, a husk.  I can see it in my own eyes, someone feral, someone I don’t fully recognize.  I feel like a caged animal, and for the first time in my life, relate more to wild dogs fleeing cruelly delivered kicks and blows than to the men who so gleefully deliver them.  I too am fleeing.  My 3-month plan of becoming zen and willowy, of being transformed by this land I’ve dreamed about for 20 years, has become a waking nightmare.  It is an experience of primal fear, of adrenaline surging through my veins all day long.  Fear doesn’t sleep, and neither do I.  It is the collective fear of every trauma that’s ever happened and nearly happened at the hands of a man, and I am everywoman.  It is a fear that creates physiological responses to keep me alert, and a fear that effectively cuts me off from enjoying and experiencing the beauties that I’m still sure exist here.  Because even now I believe that, and grieve the loss of what my relationship with this country could have been.  So very much to grieve.

My sistercousin Amy asked me if anyone physically hurt me.  Hurt me?  No.  I’ve been followed, cornered, surrounded, groped, grazed, punched, prodded, grabbed, harassed, ignored, patronized, taunted, deceived, disrespected, pushed, and berated.  I have been soundly silenced.  I have spoken, and shouted, and cursed, and cried, and my voice, and all the brain and heart she carries with her, meant nothing.  Was nothing.  And the reality of my life’s work of helping others, particularly those least heard and most disenfranchised to find their own voice, hit me with all the subtlety of a landmine.  Listen with your stethoscope, and you’ll hear shrapnel.

Pop told me when I was a little girl that hate was wasted energy.  I believed him then, and I believe him now.  So do I hate India?  I hate what I’ve seen through my very narrow keyhole into the reality of women and girls and untouchable kids diving headlong into an overflowing dumpster, competing with the family of swine for the best of the rubbish.  I hate watching little girls balance giant bowls of concrete on their heads as they hike up 10 flights of stairs in the hospitalizing +110 degree heat to the men on the roof who wait.  I hate how my vulnerability is a dangerous liability, how my femininity is my weakness and their strength and their toy.  I hate that I can’t get out from under my anger at the injustice of it, that even this, my anger, gives them power undeserved, and corrupts my own heart.  That my anger is just a fledgling attempt to control a hurt that threatens to overcome me.  Not threatens: I am overcome.

I need some kind of healing, some semblance of peace.  I need to be gentled the same way those feral dogs need to be gentled, with kindness and time and hopefully lots of fresh air.  I need to sit in the tension of living in a world where this hellish month represents not the worst but the best that many women in the world could hope to expect.  I need to connect with Pop and my brothers and Uncle Jack, with my male friends and cousins, to remind myself of their goodness, and what it feels like to be treated like a human.  I need to, I know this, forgive.  But not forget; I’ll never forget.  And hopefully someday I will help to create extra little nooks where women are safe and valued and precious: extra nooks in our world, and extra nooks in our hearts.  Heaven knows we’re in desperate need of both.