Floating in the Desert

My instinct is to write, but I can’t find my words.  My instinct is to smile, to say hello.  But I can’t do that here with the men, because it’s taken as an invitation to “tease Eve,"; semantically innocuous, it's simply a rosy way to say sexually harass, verbally or manually.  My instinct is to talk it out, respectfully, with kindness.  But I can’t do that either, because a woman negotiating with the average rickshaw driver has little leverage and no voice.  My instinct is to treat myself on a good day or anesthetize on a bad with a frosty beer.  But I won’t do that here, because as much as I want to, I’m determined to stick this out, to absorb India, and allow her to absorb me.  People ask me if I love it or hate it, like it has to be one or the other, like those two very active verbs are mutually exclusive and not two parts of the same whole.  Yes, I answer.  Both.  All.  India is everything, all at once, from a million different directions.  I read somewhere that it’s the heart of the world.  But I don’t think I agree; I think it’s the guts.

The digestive system of our little planet, where everything that passes through begins in one form and ends in another, where the good is pulled apart, separated from the bad, and you learn what you’re really made of; there's no room for pretense in the guts.  Where your healthy bits are saved and refined and built into your whole and the sticky parts that weigh you down are strained and chemically altered into waste you didn’t know you didn’t need.  People underestimate the magic of the guts, the revolutionary physiology of churning and transforming that renews our bodies and sustains our life.  I’m sure of it: I’m tumbling around the guts of the world, being sucked into the bowels of the earth.  But it’s a hell of a show.

Entire worlds expand and contract, here in the guts.  Swirling around with me are hundreds of ethnicities, and thousands of languages, and millions of gods.  Bedazzled wedding processionals clog the street seven nights a week and hundreds of bats as big as dogs artfully duck and weave under the fireworks that shower smoldering ash onto me and my computer even as I type.  I hold my breath during the traditional Rajasthali folk dances, and savor the breeze that blows off the Thar desert, almost cooling the air.  Almost.  My tongue sprouts new tastebuds under the chilis and curries and paneer, and my ears search and plunder for connection to what I’m hearing.  There’s a distant thunder, a startled resonance as my prehistoric memory awakens to the beats and blasts and strums from these instruments I’ve never seen before.  This music lights up quiet little corners of my soul.  It’s the language of the desert, and the language of our ancestors, and a hallowed reminder of our humanity, and our divinity.  And it shoots sparks.

So that’s India to me, in this moment.  Crawling home at the end of the day, fighting to unscramble what I’m learning from what I thought I knew.  Treading without the life vest of my intuition that I've always relied on but no longer applies.  Drifting rudderless on invisible currents pulling me deeper into the subcontinent of my imaginings and farther from the west that raised me.  So I press further into the fathomless depth of the desert at the height of an Indian summer.  Counterintuitive, you say?  Welcome to India.

To the Brownest Green Village Ever

The thick red dirt clings to every available inch of my surface.  Freckles, cuticles, the new friendship bracelet adorning my wrist, an extra-special gift from my 6-year old South African bestie.  This is a self-sustaining little nook of a place, 2300 meters above the nearest village.  Using only horses and people-drawn rickshaws for transportation, surrounded by mountain peaks and overlooking a river cutting through the valley, it’s a respite for Mumbai locals looking to escape the crush of the city.  It seemed the perfect solution to my emerging I've-gotta-get-the-hell-out-of-this-city disease. 

10 days into Mumbai, I used the vestiges of my energy to disallow my bitchy alter ego from snarling at the hundreds and thousands of stares, the strangers lining up and surrounding me with their cell phone cameras.  Indians have perfected the art of the stare.  It’s an absolutely immodest, head craning, eye bulging gape.  Every.  Single.  Time.  It’s tuk-tuk drivers twisting their head exorcist-style to see us riding the tuk-tuk half a dozen lanes across from them.  It’s entire families kneeling backwards in their booth to improve their view of me sipping water 2 feet away.  It’s a dozen giggling men peeking through my window as I read a book.  I rummaged for the vestiges of patience buried beneath my vexation; there’s neither a pretense of subtlety nor a pretense of malice, so why should I be so disgruntled by their curiosity?  That said, I was precariously close to snapping out, and jumped at the invitation to join Justyna.

I met Justyna at our dirty little hostel in a dirty little neighborhood in the thick of the city.  A Polish yogi of my own generation, she was warm and chatty and as it turns out, a beast navigating this city, and an expert at refuting the constant efforts of seemingly everyone to scam us at every turn.  Her strength was contagious and helped me believe I too would eventually relax and learn how to do this country without killing someone.  In the meantime, we sought our next adventure together, and headed out of the city to this reputed little haven.

After a brutally hot day riding trains jammed with hundreds of people and goats and cucumber vendors, we finally arrived in the village atop the mountain.  We were, putting it mildly, underwhelmed.  This reputedly beautiful village was deep in the heat and drought of summertime; green and lush it’ll become yes, but not until it receives the much needed rain that will arrive with monsoons in June.  Our timing was impeccably off, but such is traveling, and we made the best of it.  We rode horses to lookout points and feigned being impressed as we tried to discern the cracked, bone-colored riverbed through the brown clouds of dust kicked up by our tread, and the pink cloud of smog that followed us from Mumbai. We trekked through the dehydrated jungle, and shot sweet chai from our favorite vendor, a handsome man with a magnificent mustache and a soft pink shirt.  We sucked down coconut after coconut hoping to restore the vitamins and minerals we were surely sweating out, even as we laid under our fan in our underwear.  And ardently, fervently, vigilantly, we eyeballed the perpetually encroaching monkeys.  

In a single day, we managed to avoid a certain rabid fate several times over by no more than a hair, thanks to the respective protection of a man, a slingshot, and a mama dog.  Because here, there aren’t a few monkeys, or even a hundred: there are thousands, crawling the metal grates on our windows, and climbing ladders, and tumbling around on the playground.  They are spritely little goblins and I'm determined to find their kryptonite.  Or at the very least to learn to use a slingshot without hopping and squealing like my toes are on fire.  So off we'll go, armed with the unsolicited advice to temper the heat by eating lots of onions, and a new determination to perfect my impersonation of a monkey barbarian.  If they’re going to stare, I may as well give ‘em a show.

Through Mumbai

I’m so brain-tired, but can’t sleep.  I’m awestruck and horrified, overwhelmed and captivated.  This is a city birthed from the jungle, with new limbs and appendages emerging all the time.  On the Arabian Sea, Mumbai and her slums rise above the murky brown shoreline a dusty mirage of rainbow-colored shacks and crumbling imperial mansions.  From the back of my rickshaw, I try to shrink into myself, to be as inconspicuous as possible.  I want to be in the middle of this steamy madness and breakneck shuffle, but just as much I want to curl up in a ball in a cool, dark, sanitized hiding place.  I feel the weight of a shame I didn’t expect; I understand nothing.  So I try to be present in all my senses, to yield to the sweat streaming into all my nooks and crannies, to unclench my fists at the always overt, occasionally lewd stares.  To dredge through the translucent fog that burns my throat and bleeds my nose, beneath the smells of hanging animal carcasses and a shit-filled ocean, and to breathe in the marsala and cardamom and curries, the burning incense that wafts from the millions of shrines across the city.

Gateway of India

As far as the senses stretch, the horizon is full of gold-shellacked dreams and dazzling despair.  Ethereal street babies crawl along the sidewalk fence, barely separating them from the mayhem that is Mumbai traffic.  Their toddler caretakers wring filthy water from blankets, as the eldest among them, not older than 8, rakes heaps of trash equal to her bodyweight from the sidewalk; the sidewalk is their home.  There are packs of feral dogs and cats, I can’t tell if they’re living or dead until they subtly flinch under the weight of too many flies swarming their hiding place under cars parked on the street.  I wonder how they survive until I see a man butcher a still-bleating goat in the midst of a crowd; his goat siblings look on, tamed by their fate.  The nearby dogs and cats however, perk up considerably.

I feel like a fake.  Am I exploiting this ancient history, the streets lined with maimed and disfigured "untouchables” because I'm too determined to draw conclusions, to make sense of things that are far, far beyond my scope?  I see beauty everywhere.  Soiled, unkempt, astounding beauty.  Skeletal slum grandmothers washing and laughing together in their jewel-toned saris.  Men sharing tobacco and dough balls over a gutter as jaunty street kids playfully and purposefully hustle what they can to share with one another.  And the people.  Old and young, poor and wealthy, the people.  So, so beautiful.  With luscious hair cascading to their waists and gold embroidered everything, I can’t stop staring.  Wealthy families enfold their little ones in outfits embroidered entirely in gold, accentuating their enormous kohl-lined mahogany eyes: extraordinary measures to protect little ones from the evil eye.  Can't.  Stop.  Staring.

Yesterday, I almost fainted on the train.  I knew it was a risk when I hopped on in the morning, suffering the previous day or two from a circus of flaming-nunchuck jugglers in my stomach: I felt like a big white raisin, cavernous and dehydrated, in this land of juicy red grapes.  Seeing stars, I mentally slogged to the conclusion that if I didn't do something quickly, it would be lights out.  Through my fading periphery I saw the humor: there was no way I would have fallen, as tightly packed as we were on the female-only car.  Before I realized what was happening, I was surrounded and shuffled by no less than 4 women into the seats that each of them, simultaneously, were scrambling to give to me.  A young Muslim woman kindly ordered me with gentle pats on the arm to sit and rest, assuring me that it happens to everyone: it's a million degrees here.  When I was finally able to open my eyes, the English-speaking nationals checked in verbally, while from others I received shy smiles and the Indian head wiggle of greeting that I'm coming to love and trying to master.  It was the grace I needed in the form of an undeserved kindness, a sweaty, humbling reminder: I'm here, I'm finally here, and if I surrender and allow myself to be enfolded into their world, I think I'll be okay.

Across the Universe

Besties

The Cape of Good Hope is where the two oceans meet.  Or perhaps more accurately, crash into one another.  The Indian Ocean crashes to shore full of mystery from the far east and the Atlantic is icy with the arctic current that renders it impossible to swim for all but the bravest of children and wetsuit-clad surfers.  Not that I’d be swimming anyway; having a shark flag alone, as all the beaches here do, is enough for me to remain parked on the sand, I don’t care which color threat blows in the breeze.

It seems appropriate, the crashing of these two oceanic worlds in a place of so many other worlds crashing together.  South Africa is a place of tremendous wealth behind barbed wire home security fences, and townships without running water, where the horror of poverty rivals what I saw in my beloved Kenya.  This is a land of eleven national languages where everyone uses words like whilst and whereby and pleasure, and it tickles my old fashioned ears.  Where the races of Black, Colored, White, and Indian still maintain distinct cultures and languages, and it matters to which you belong.  Here in Cape Town I’ve delighted seeing biracial couples of every combination and their rainbow babies, strollers full of plump hope for a new South African reality.  But I’ve also experienced the not-too-far-post-apartheid discrimination while out with a proud Colored man, when he received fist bumps from those of his own demographic and offensive insults from men of my own.  Here in Africa I often feel like I’m sculpting sandcastles with bones. 

Hasta la vista, Arch Nemesis

I arrived here in Cape Town nearly 6 weeks after arriving in the country.  It seems as if this is the city where all of my other South African experiences and impressions are suddenly in high definition, like falling into one of the African oil paintings that line the stands of nearly all of the street vendors.  This is a city where carnival means parade, and parade means thousands of people from every race and neighborhood converging to celebrate the unique diversity that is this city.  Where Colored floats feature artists spraying live graffiti to local township music, and Indian mamas dance in their saris, and painted Zulus perform warrior dances with their spears on a cloud of balloons.  Cape Town reminds me more of Chicago than anywhere I’ve been on this continent, perhaps because of the sparkling waterfront full of foodie shops and craft markets; though nobody, anywhere, rivals the craftsmanship of Africans.  The city centerpiece is a brilliant public garden built in the 17th century by the East India Trading Company, also known for importing slaves from Western Africa, Indonesia, and Madagascar; the same slaves who built this city into what it is today.  The garden is home to foreign trees, tropical plants, and scores of homeless people curled up in any scrap of shade they manage to find; lives flourish and wither on their respective vines.  I can’t help but wonder how much has been invested in feeding the flowers while the people sleeping beneath go hungry.

My last few weeks here have been spent as a guest of a most delightful family.  And it’s been fun, and cozy, and holy-moly-loud, full as the apartment’s been with little kids and medium kids and young adult kids, and on holidays and weekends, grown-up kids.  Lindsay has been a tremendous source of refreshment and encouragement, and my spirit feels lighter and braver having spent time with her.  Her kids have generously shared their laughter, and hugs, and countless performances of show tunes and home-choreographed dances.  Really, they’ve enfolded me and invited me into their version of normal.  Because of Lindsay's generosity
here on the Cape Town peninsula, I've had a home.

Elephant's Eye View

On one hand, sometimes I feel like a South African baller: I have girlfriends to meet for coffee, and kids to play with, a proper kitchen in which to cook without dozens of European college students, and even a sweet South African beau.  But then I acknowledge reality, and realize that even after more than two months in this country I know I am not even minimally scratching the surface of this South African universe.  Because a place with eleven national languages and even more distinctly unique ethnicities would take a lifetime to learn even a little bit.  So once again I'll bid goodbye to a place that's shown me so much, and confronted me unapologetically with what I believe about race and class and privilege, including how each contour the lenses through which I see and live in the world.  So to Mandela and his rainbow nation, a heartfelt thanks: I'll take the gift of enhanced personal responsibility over the roiling Indian Ocean to where your curries came from, and where the Indian mamas, if I'm lucky, will teach me to wear a sari.  It has been, as you say, my pleasure.

By Steph!

This blog was written by Steph, my first-ever guest blogger!  More than a mommy and wife, Steph is an avid bike polo player, an expert of public displays of nonsense, and an exceptional friend.  Thanks for sharing, Steph!!

The last eight months I have been lucky enough to add “mommy” to the list of titles I hold.  No one really gives you any direction how to keep your own identity while you try to selflessly become someone else’s everything.  There are days that go by when you realize you didn’t do a single thing that wasn’t centered around your baby.  I am honored to be in this position, yet I know myself well enough to know that in order for me to be my best self, I need a few things: adventure, laughing, friendship.  Enter Katie!  

Kalk Bay, Cape Town Peninsula

I had been following my old buddy’s travel blog for 6 months when I started to have this underlying feeling that she could really use a familiar face.  But this was a crazy thought.  I’m a new mom with, like, responsibilities.  And I hadn’t been in close contact with Katie since high school.  That’s sixteen years!  So, what do you do when you are tight financially, have a 7-month old baby, and are in the middle of taking classes to get your real estate license?  With full support and encouragement from your amazing spouse, you buy a plane ticket to Cape Town South Africa to see about your friend.      

Almost instantly we were “peas and carrots” again.  Our cab driver from the airport actually raised his hand en route, telling us he didn’t want to interrupt two people who were clearly so happy talking.  That about sums it up.  Over the course of the next six days, Katie gave me the gift of an adventure that has helped remind me of who I am at my very core.  We’d walk out the door in the morning with a backpack and somewhat of a plan, and come back at night after a full day of exploring, laughing, learning: we were Iiving.  How special it was to visit the museums, climb Table Mountain, tour the prison where Nelson Mandela spent eighteen years of his 27-year sentence, all while catching up with such a dear old friend.  

I can’t even put into words what this trip meant to me.  Travel is so very powerful for my soul.  It gets me out of my bubble.  It expands my awareness.  It resets everything about me that is able to be reset, in the most magical way.  Whether it was aimlessly walking around the city of Cape Town, interacting with the locals trying to decipher which of the eighteen buses was the one we wanted, trying to not get killed crossing the street since they drive on the other side of the road, or declining the offer to pay an arm and a leg for a cider beer to be personally delivered to us on the beach, it was ALL done with such joy in our hearts and smiles on our faces.  Sure, we covered the hard stuff from our pasts too, but even those conversations were interrupted by shrieks of laughter and looks of, I wish I had been there for you during that time.

I have to admit, it had crossed my mind whether Katie would still be the same Katie I remembered.  Mind you, she has been traveling the world for 8+ months.  She’s seen some difficult things and has had to come to grips with the realities of some very small children in heart-breaking situations, among other things.  I knew by day 1 of my trip that Katie was still Katie.  I knew it watching her ask someone for directions with that big smile and irresistible positive energy.  I knew it hearing her nervous-yet-endearing giggle when she contemplated talking to “that guy”.  I am so happy to know that Katie’s travels haven’t hardened her: her heart is bigger and juicier than ever.  Thank you, mon amie, for being you, and allowing me to be me.  Thank you for allowing me to be a girl with a backpack and an adventurous spirit. 

With Some Badass Ink

Can you see it??

I’ve wanted this tattoo for years.  A gnarly, wild, tangled tree at first, for the million reasons that trees represent life and seasons and looking dead but being secretly alive, for drawing water from parched land, for bearing fruit and leaves and beauty, for being a home to some and a safe place to land and seek shade and solitude and peace for others.  I needed her to be feminine, gloriously, powerfully, wondrously feminine.  Because I love being gloriously, powerfully, wondrously feminine.  And I needed her posture to reflect the kind of life I want, the kind of woman I want to be.  Deeply rooted, and expectant, and grateful.  And I wanted my babies, my niece and nephews and godsons to be in there somewhere, the ones I’m committed to giving life to as long as I have life to offer.  Because one day they’ll be brave enough to take flight, and I will be a home to which they can return, no matter what.  

She was a little nut of an idea, and for years and years, she’s grown and stretched, and become fully herself.  But only in my imagination: I’m not immodest, but am decidedly not a drawer.  So for years I imagined her and nurtured her, this emerging vision, and fed her hopes and meaning and symbolism and the little birds.  After work, regular stops at my favorite tattoo shop, researching different types of trees, and different styles, and international tattoo standards.  And suddenly, somehow, South Africa became the right time and place to give her life, to birth her how other things are birthed, through pain and blood and the help of others.

I contacted friends far and wide, my favorite artists from home, and my first South African crush Duwayne, covered in ink and full of local contacts.  I talked it through with my favorite couple from Portland, and a princely vagabond from all over, a man named Michel.  I piteously tried to sketch my ideas and made appointments with different artists here in Cape Town.  And then I found her.  A woman with a style I love, a style laced with ferocity and detail and femininity.  And it was game on.

Bring it, 35

I’d like to say I was a baller, that I wasn’t phased by the length of time, or the proximity to my spine.  But the truth is, I remembered too late how much it hurts to be on the receiving end of a tattoo needle, and instead of visualizing the sea or puppies or my fatty fat face nephews, I found myself cursing my visual memory as I pictured my neurology textbooks and their diagrams of nerve receptors, and trying to inhale enough oxygen to prevent passing out.  Which I am a little proud and a lot relieved to report, I never did.

And then it was done; she was here, in the world, indelibly stitched onto my soft, strong, burning back, owning her space and commanding attention: I can’t stop looking at her, and only wish I could walk around topless, for the world to know.  And she didn’t cover my boring old tramp stamp that means even more to me now than when my best friend and I got it all those years ago, but she curls around it a bit, keeping it safe.  Which is appropriate I think, and as important as bringing life to others, that the me of 35 will respect and protect the Katies of the past as much as I will welcome and honor the Katies to come.  So bring it on, 35; our roots are planted, our hearts are wide open; we’re ready for you.

With a Hometown Favorite

Penguin in a Tree

There are fewer things I miss more than my girlfriends.  Sharing history that spans decades and distance and marriage.  Discussing our aging physiology and body functions, including how easily we now wet our pants.  Gracing one another with the space to be fully authentic, even if it means being angry, or sad, or straight up bitchy.  I have girlfriends related by genetics, and college, and hometown, and Chicago.  I don’t have material possessions waiting for me at home, but I am a rich, rich woman in relationships, and I miss them every day, all the time.

Mandela's Original Cell

When Steph started poking around to figure out my schedule, I became suspicious, but dared not get my hopes up; could it possibly be that someone was coming to visit??  I understand and respect that everyone is busy leading full lives at home, and traveling around the world costs time and money and energy; it’s no Sunday brunch.  So I could hardly believe it, could hardly contain my excitement when she confirmed my suspicions and told me she was on her way here to South Africa.  There was no better medicine for my travel-weary spirits as I anticipated her approaching arrival, and I was nearly bursting out of myself with excitement as I rode the bus to meet her; we hadn’t planned on it, but I wanted to surprise her at the airport, knowing how lonely it can be to arrive to a whole lot of nobody in a foreign country.  Our reunion was sweet as I pounced on her from the tree behind which I was hiding, stealthy girl that I am.  Thus began our whirlwind week of the century.

We tore up Cape Town.  We devoured historical museums, collected sightings of wild animals, and met ghosts on Robben Island.  We experienced Cape Town’s renown nightlife, wondering at the inexpensive cost of cider and the audacity of the local men.  We hiked Table Mountain with our favorite South African family, and bemoaned the state of our quads the morning after.  Wearing our dirty t-shirts and hiking shoes, we emulated the sexy photo shoots that surrounded us on the beach, simply because we are that mature and it made us laugh.  Because even now, 20 years into our friendship, laughing is what we do best.  Whether over coffee in the morning, or in completely inappropriate situations, whether when we were half asleep or in the company of people who had no idea what was funny, our marathon giggling epitomized not only the beauty of true friendship, but the beauty of Steph.  So here's to another 20 years of hilarious adventures, old buddy...  WHALE!!