Memories of my travels

My last post brought me some hate mail. The fact that I consider myself a citizen of the world rather than a patriotic American brought out the hate in some people. No wonder there are so many wars with patriots like them around.

But I was asked a good question the other day, "What favorite memories do you have from all your travels?" I have lots of memories I have to admit. I can sit for days and rehash my travels. It has been a long time since I first started to travel in the late sixties until now so my memories have slipped somewhat. There are still a few moments that stand out in my memories and here are a few of them in brief descriptions and in no particular order.

The first day I landed in Scotland and I could not understand two young boys speaking to me in English with thick accents was probably the first memory seared into my brain. I was totally taken aback by the sounds of their voices and my inability to understand a single word they spoke. I ended up sitting down with them at the airport coffee shop drinking coffee and hot chocolate while they taught me to understand their English. That day I learned a lot about communicating with people without words that served me many more times around the world.

The next moment was Christmas eve in London when I came across a group of homeless men singing carols along to one of them playing the piano in a cafe. I was struck especially by the piano player, a large shaggy man wearing filthy clothes who played the piano entirely by ear never having had a music lesson in his entire life. He was so happy playing away with the rest of the men. His infectious enthusiastic personality was absorbed by the dirty looking street bums from young men to very old toothless ones singing their hearts out. I stopped and stared as I was walking by and was pulled into their group for the entire night of singing. The shop owner gave us all free coffee and some snacks as he and the staff all joined in with the singing. It was my favorite xmas ever.

On the island of Ibiza after taking the ferry there and spending the afternoon drinking wine and eating seafood with a group of locals and a couple tourists I walked up a twisting path to the top of the village and looked back at the village built on the hillside with the bright blue sea, anchored fishing boats, white rocky beach and bright blue cloudless sky contrasting the whitewashed buildings and I was in love with the day. I frequently think of that moment when I need to get away in my brain.

Morocco was the next time I experienced a similar moment. I stepped off the ferry and was rushed by all the little boys hustling to make a living. They spoke all the languages needed to get whatever edge would work for them to make a little money to keep them alive for another day or whatever. I tried to imagine my own younger brothers the same ages as these streetwise urchins doing the same thing and it was a moment of awesome awareness of the reality of living in different places that struck me. The easy life back home where people complain about the smallest things versus these kids enjoying their life and death struggle to survive. I saw this in other places as well but I always thought back to my first thoughts on the disparity of life around the world that began at that ferry landing.

The next time I experienced another moment was on my way to Timbuktu in Mali. I was camping alone in my tent along a sandy riverbank in after leaving Senegal the day before. The sun had just come up in the desert. I was sitting on the ground in front of my tent eating some oatmeal and drinking tea when a naked young black girl about twelve years old came running over the top of the sand dune near my tent. She was laughing loudly and smiling with a huge grin as some naked younger kids chased her around. When she saw me she stopped suddenly and stared at me frozen in time and space for a moment. The kids chasing her bumped up behind her and they all stood silently staring at me as I was at them. I tried to match her smile still frozen on her face as I looked up from my breakfast and then she continued running back in the direction she had come from with the other kids trailing behind her looking over their shoulders in my direction as they ran off. I stood up and looked over the rise to watch them going and I saw their mothers standing naked in or near the river washing clothes. The older girl told them about me and they stopped and looked off in my direction. Then the whole group walked over and stared at me as I took my tent down and packed my things to continue my journey. I realized at that moment as the naked girl stood in front of me that yes I was now in the black Africa that I had seen in so many National Geographic magazines. I kind of shuddered at the thought. Lots of things raced through my mind about the future dangers and pleasures ahead for me in Africa. It was only a brief moment but so many thoughts were crammed into that short span of time as the girl and I looked at each other for a few seconds that I find it hard to believe that time did not freeze while all the thoughts tumbled around in my head. This was probably the single moment in all of my memories that I go back to over and over again.

I was walking though the jungles along a narrow trail heading toward East Africa one day when I heard a loud drum like thumping sound. I followed the sounds to a small thatched mud hut in a small clearing of trees. A mother and her daughters were standing in a circle around a heavy wooden base which was a large mortar and pestle. They had the large wooden pestles, that looked like giant baseball bats, in their hands and were taking turns pounding down on whatever it was they were grinding up. They worked as a well oiled machine taking turns so that there was a constant stream of hits pounding into that mortar. The sounds echoed through the jungle. I stood there unseen by them and watched as they worked away. I could not hear them talking but I could see that they were as they chatted and laughed as they never stopped pounding away. I finally walked further along the path until they could see me and they stopped pounding and stared at me. I am not sure if they were afraid of me or not but they stared at me motionless before they again started talking and laughing as they resumed their work. As I got closer I realized that they were singing not talking and I stopped to listen for a minute. I was reminded of railroad workers singing blues songs as they worked. I walked on past the scene and continued my journey but the sight and sounds of them has stuck with me ever since.

I had lived in India for almost a year by the time I got to Calcutta. We had taken a very crowded train up from the south. The words very crowded do not begin to describe just how overcrowded this train was. We arrived at the station in Calcutta in the early morning hours and we were struggling through the mass of humanity packed into the station. The crowd was literally moving us so strongly that it would have been impossible to stop. We were flowing toward the exits to the overcrowded streets caught up in a pedestrian traffic jam so to speak. Then in the station near the exit I notice the people in front of me glancing down at the ground so I looked down as I got to that spot and there was a dead body on the ground. People were just continuing their push behind us and in a second we stepped over the body and were pushed into the street. The image of the thin ragged body on the floor stuck with me. It epitomized how hard and calloused I had become by the year spent in the poverty of India. Later that night as I tried to sleep I was struck by that realization and I broke down in tears for a couple of hours. A few weeks later as I was taking off out of Calcutta in a jet for Burma I again broke down thinking about the dead body and just how hard life had been over the last year in India. I saw starving people, twisted deformed beggars, sick stick like children with bloated bellies and more. Although to survive while I was still in India I had acquired a thick skin, the moment I stepped over that body I started to soften again until on that plane where my tears again returned me to the reality of what I had witnessed in India.

There were lots more moments in my travels but these stand out in my memory for various reasons. I relive these snapshots frequently. My mind has probably reshaped them somewhat over all this time as well. But they are why I love to travel. I can't wait to get back on the road again.