11 Months on the Road!

Hello, friends!
Well, after 11 months on the road, and particularly the past 3 weeks in Mwanza, I’ve come to a few conclusions about the world. I’d like to take this unique opportunity to share them with you – so sit back, and be prepared to be amused.
Conclusions number 1 and 2 come from recent experiences inspired by my “good friend” Liz in Mwanza, Tanzania. Certain activities that women often do together inspire both conclusions, and while I’m not making any value judgements about friends who suggest either of these activities to other friends, I invite you to read the following stories and judge for yourself.

Story # 1: Liz and Jess decide to get bikini waxes at Liz’s prompting. The relevance of this story to my important world conclusion will become clear -- so bear with me. In case you (like Jess) are blissfully ignorant of this procedure, consider the following analogy, designed to adequately represent our experiences:

Imagine you are a naked mole rat. As a naked mole rat (NMR), you take pride in your nudity, and over the years you’ve become tired of the maintenance of remaining naked. For, folks, a naked mole rat was not born hairless, as all other mole rats (specifically the male ones) like to imagine. They are constantly plucking unsightly hairs from behind their ears – a task made exceedingly difficult by the fact that they’re blind and lack opposable thumbs, not to mention by the excessively inadequate equipment for such delicate hair removal.

Well, one day while chatting with your “good friend” who we’ll call Wiz, she mentions that she too has become tired of the same ole’ routine. Wiz knows of a place, though, that will take all the pain out of unsightly hair removal (these are her words, mind you – or squeaks, since we’re NMRs). There are other NMRs there with years and years of experience removing hair from behind one’s ears, and the procedure is dirt cheap (pardon the pun). Many of your joint NMR friends swear by the procedure, Wiz reassures you, and after a brief moment of waffling you decide to join her at her next appointment.

Well, off you scurry to the nearest salon, where you place your orders and flop down to wait for the next available practitioner. While you’re flipping through magazines (a pointless pursuit since you’re blind, but apparently it’s what you do at this sort of place), your friend Wiz disappears behind a curtained partition with an NMR of gentle, smiling demeanor. She emerges approximately 20 minutes later, and assures you that the unsightly hairs behind her ears were successfully removed and that she will remain blissfully hairless for weeks to come, and that now it’s your turn! Excited for this simple procedure, designed to save YOU the trouble of hair removal in hard to reach places, you proceed behind the curtain with the smiling NMR attendant.

You are asked to lie as still as possible, and the attendant heats up a bowl of a mixture quite similar to honey mixed with beeswax mixed with tar. Before you know what’s happening, she has shmeared this mixture on your unsightly ear hairs (with only a few perfunctory cooling blows), has put a piece of paper onto the cooling, viscous mixture, and has RIPPED THE HAIRS OUT BY THE ROOT. Now, it’s been a little while since you last removed the hairs yourself (you’ve been busy, you haven’t been going out much, etc etc), and there are quite a number to deal with. And she just RIPPED them (THE HAIRS) OUT BY THE ROOT. And you have to go through approximately 20 more applications of this procedure, without emitting so much as a little squeak because your “good” friend Wiz didn’t seem to mind so much.

Let’s leave this analogy, because we now have enough background to understand Conclusion 1, which I informed Liz of at a retrospectively louder volume than I probably should have immediately following my emergence from behind the curtained partition, causing her to erupt in laughter. This conclusion is:

1. Prior to engaging in a bikini wax, patients must first view another woman undergoing the procedure and sign a release form indicating their willingness to continue.

We feel like this is one way to reduce the unnecessary pain and suffering undergone by women whose “good friends” convince them it’s a good idea to get bikini waxes. We also think that this should be the title of an Onion article commenting on the recent absurd abortion regulations in OK. Jess also feels like the Geneva convention should outlaw this practice as an obvious application of torture, but that’s just her.

Story #2: Liz has been living in Mwanza for the past year, and so has become aware of the great variety of activities available for any one evening’s entertainment. She has mentioned one particular activity in connection with the words “fun”, “exciting”, “dance”, “not too hard”, and “big mamma”. This activity, as you might have guessed, is Tanzanian Step Aerobics.

What? What’s that? You don’t associate Step Aerobics with any of these words? Well, perhaps that’s because you haven’t spent quite as much time in Tanzania as Liz (or Jess). Perhaps I should have been wary of her judgement after the experience we just discussed, but after 2 weeks of hearing about this exercise practice, I gave in and agreed to go. What could be so bad, I thought? Apparently both men and women participate in this activity, and it’s led by an extremely muscular 5’3” tall Tanzanian man who tends to shout sentences such as “Hakula chakula” (don’t eat food) “Hapana chipsi na kuku” (no fries and chicken) and “Hapana mafuta mingini” (not a lot of oil) -- which to me suggested that it couldn’t possibly be too difficult. Plus, Liz added, big mammas often engage in this practice, and in Tanzania big mammas are BIG – if they could make it through the 90 minutes of mild physical exertion, so could I (I assumed). Liz, of course, encouraged this feeling of capability, adding that it was “really fun” and that I should bring water in case of mild thirst.

As we drove toward Aerobics, the story started to change in ways that I was not entirely comfortable with. First, I’d have to ensure not to breathe in too deeply, due to the lack of underarm deodorant in Tanzania and the propensity of big mammas to extremely odorous sweating. Second, often times the moves would become so difficult that you’d have to stop, re-gather your wits around you, and launch back in – but everyone else would be continuing on, oblivious of the extreme difficulty you faced, because they’d all been doing this for years. Finally, she mentioned, we’d probably be the only wazungu (white people) there, ensuring that, as I tripped over my own feet, I would be the center of attention (and ridicule by the instructor, it turned out) at all times.

But we were already there, so what the hell. I paid the requisite $1.75 (I seem to have a thing about paying for torturous experiences in Tanzania), and we launched in with high-intensity stretching. Now, I managed to get placed directly behind the biggest mama in the room, who incited much yelling and pointing by the instructor-from-hell, transferring his attention to my portion of the room, where, upon realizing I was being observed, I would immediately trip over my own feet and get yelled at in rapid fire Kiswahili – or, on one memorable occasion, caused him to join me on my 20 inch long wooden step in a misplaced attempt to allow me to follow his steps – which instead resulted in my stepping on his toe and still having no idea what was going on since he was BEHIND ME. The muscle-bound midget also had a propensity for shouting “FIVESIX” and “SEVENEIGHT” at random times that had no relation at all to the number of times we had stepped over our box with alternating feet, which had the result of causing me to step on my own toes in fear when he did it from directly behind me. After about 40 minutes of this, half the class (including my big mamma) left – but my “good friend” Liz continued on, seeming to skip over her box with the ease of a winged fairy creature – and so, knowing beyond all doubt that there was no way I was going to survive the other half of the class, I continued to drag my hambone thighs up and down in exciting kicking motions, refusing to fail.

This continued for 40 more minutes, followed by a “cool down” session of high-intensity stretching, followed by my immediate collapse into a chair, chugging of a liter of water, and termination of my friendship with Liz. For, as conclusion number 2 suggests:

2. Friends don’t let friends do Tanzanian Step Aerobics. In retrospect, I should have been much more wary of anything with the same initials as TSA (notorious for forcing you to go through increasingly embarrassing, difficult, and sometimes painful procedures in the name of “safety and security”, or “fitness and health”). I was convinced I was going to die twice.

Now, lest you worry, our friendship was reinstated that evening, when Liz bought me chipsi na kuku for dinner and let me drink beer. It was delicious. Take that, angry Tanzanian Aerobics guy.

This officially ends Story #2, and I just realized that I don’t really have any other conclusions to share with you right now, which might leave you hanging just a little bit. However, lest you feel as though something is missing, I shall fill you in on my plans as-of-tomorrow-morning prior to my departure from this blog.

Tomorrow morning, at the arse-crack of dawn (6am), I board a bus bound for Arusha. This is where I was based during my semester abroad in 2007, and so I’m looking forward to a long weekend of reminiscing. I’ll be staying with, and meeting, fellow Couchsurfers while there, so it’s bound to be a good time. I’d like to take this moment to thank my recently-reinstated friend Liz and her lovely fiancé Ryan for their hospitality over the past 3 weeks – I love you guys, and your strange partiality toward suckling cats.

On Tuesday morning (most likely), I’ll take another unnecessarily early bus out to Dar es Salaam on the coast, where I will stay with another CSer for a few days before heading out to Zanzibar, the Spice Island, for a few days of R&R. I plan to meet up with some friends on the island, possibly stay with yet another CSer, and enjoy myself some fresh seafood. Following Zanzibar, I’ll head south by a yet-to-be-determined route, but probably straight down the coast to Mozambique for yet more time eating seafood (most notably lobsters, which I hear are dirt cheap in Moz) prior to making my way to (and through) S Africa.

I’d like to end this blog with another shout out to my most wonderful fellow World Traveler, WT Kirschner, who is apparently lost after trying to walk from her WWOOFing gig on a random farm in Italy to Florence. Once she emerges from this walk, I’m sure that she will have stories for us – so check them out on ekirschner.blogspot.com! Happy 11 months, Em Face – I miss you!

Love to all of you wonderful people out there! This is WT Jess, signing off. Time to go buy another t-shirt!

Where, Why, and What Next??

Hello faithful readers, and happy May! I just realized that Cinco De Mayo is my half-birthday, so I hope you all celebrate with chips, salsa, and a toast to my health as I hit 24 ½ years old. Cheers!

Where in the world IS Carmen Sandiego? While I may not be wearing a red leather jumpsuit, and may not be fighting crime, I’ve still been asked this question a lot lately, and so here I am, writing to update you. However, this post is going to be a little different. It won’t be entirely place focused – in fact, beyond the first paragraph, none of it will be place focused. I’m hoping that THIS post will be unique in that is will leave you with a little bit more insight into the thoughts which occupy my mind while I travel. While you get a picture of many of the pieces of thought that influence my decisions, I’ve not taken the time to discuss any of them implicitly. I’ll take that chance now, as well as giving you a picture of my plans for post-travel. So, sit back, grab a beer, and let your eyes get to work – you’ve got a lot to get through!

A summary of where I am and how I got here before I jump right in: I am in Mwanza, Tanzania, hanging out with my friends Liz and Jake. I was here in the spring of 2007 with both of them during a semester abroad in university (the trip that originally begat this blog). They both live and work here in some capacity currently, and I’m planning to spend about a month here visiting, writing, reflecting before I move on.

I left the Swedes in Nairobi, after one of the most incredible drives that I’ve ever been on. We drove through the savannah, the desert, oasis’ to leave Ethiopia; we entered Kenya at a place with no border posts, and kept driving. We met up with overlanding Germans whom we had met earlier, and created a little caravan (check their stories and pictures at www.afrikatruck.de) . Picking up two hitchhiking backpackers, we bush camped for 3 days in a row since there were no towns around. Arriving in Nairobi, we got our official “in-stamps” for Kenya 6 days after we actually entered the country… and we all departed the next day; the Swedes for Mombasa and myself on an overnight bus to Mwanza, Tanzania.

I want to take a minute to thank the Swedes, Bjorn and Mikael, for an incredible month of travelling together. We shared some amazing experiences and landscapes that, without the benefit of their super-loaded land crusier, I never would have had the chance to see. I feel lucky to have shared such an important part of my travels with them, and have learned so much from their willingness to share their view of the world with me as we went through some interesting places and experiences. After a month spent in the presences of Swedes, it’s impossible to think that I won’t visit Sweden in the very near future – and perhaps even live there, if it’s as cool as they say it is. So, Bear and Hamster, a shout-out to both of you – thanks for the wonderful time, and I count myself lucky to be able to call you my friends.

So, now the meaty (or tofu-y) part of this post, the part I succinctly summarized in the opening of my note to you. I’ve travelled from Tel Aviv, Israel to Mwanza, Tanzania since leaving Athens on February 2^nd! It’s a crazy part of the world to have crossed so quickly, and to think that I was planning on crossing it in less time that it has taken proves that I had no idea what to expect along the way. Which is the best part of travel, and particularly of travelling alone -- the completely blank slate, the lack of expectations, the ability to spend a week here, a day here, an hour here, and then 3 weeks in another place. I have complete freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want – and it’s marvellously refreshing to be able to live simply, day to day. Many of my choices on whether to stay in one place or to move on are based on people whom I encounter and with whom a deep rapport quickly develops – on the relationships I form while on the road.

Relationships are strange things in general (understatement of the century, and also cliché, but you know), and even stranger whilst travelling the world. I’ve mentioned my favourite poem of this trip in previous posts, Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” – I’m going to try to use parts of it to better clarify some of the things I believe about travelling, my feelings while on the road, and things I’ve heard echoed by many a traveller. In reference to relationships, Whitman writes:

…Why is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?

What with some driver, as I ride on the seat by his side?

What with some fisherman, drawing his seine by the short, as I walk by, and pause?

What gives me to be free to a woman’s or man’s good will? What gives them to be free to mine?

For some reason, when two travellers meet (and I mean something very specific by the word “traveller”, but for now you can just think of it as someone who’s like me or WT Kirschner), whether it’s for 2 days on a boat to Sudan, or for an unexpected 3 week stay in Dahab, I find that we are able to connect much more rapidly and on a deeper level than would be possible in the “real world”. It’s like you are given 100% freedom to be yourself, to be unconcerned with the judgements of others, and you know that that the other traveller will do the same. Neither of you have expectations, but it’s possible to become so close and to tell what were complete strangers things that your best friends don’t know. You don’t even mean to launch into particularly meaningful discussions, into dissections of the major decisions you’ve made in your most recent relationships, into the personal and private reasons you travel, into what you are running away from or to – but you immediately find that you share some of your deepest thoughts and emotions on the road with these other people. It’s so weird that someone can echo your deepest thoughts within moments of meeting you; it’s weird to hear your thoughts coming out of someone else’s mouth.

So, I’ve met many a traveller who echoes this feeling, this connection with other travellers that is unlike anything we’ve experienced before. Some have had experiences similar to mine; some knew things about parts of the world that I had never been to. Either way, meeting people has been the highlight of my trip. The thing I’ll remember in the future is not the 3 hours I spent walking around the pyramids; it’s the young local girl who tried to help us find a way to sneak over the wall into the pyramid complex, and who then laughed at us as we decided against it. It’s not the 17 hour boat ride to Sudan, where we got to see Abu Simbel from the boat; but, instead, the cool backpacker whose t-shirt represented a major political party in a few countries he had visited, and who was travelling for reasons very personal to him that he still felt able to share on a short walk to and from a local football game.

This is what means the most to me on this trip -- this complete freedom I feel to interchange with strangers, the deep connection we can develop in a seemingly disproportionate period of time; and, yes, the deep feelings of loss I feel after leaving this new travelling companion, though I had known them but an hour (or a day, or a week). But travel on I must, for what is the reason for our travels but to see more, experience more, express the true freedom to go wherever the winds take you?

My feelings about freedom as I travel are accurately summed up by the following stanza of Whitman:

From this hour, freedom!

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,

Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,

Listening to others, and considering well what they say,

Pausing, searching, recieiving, contemplating,

Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

I love meeting people, of sharing and being proud of my unconventional method of living and seeing the world, of laughing at myself when I make silly choices, and of gently leaving everything that I become close to in search of something more. You learn lessons about yourself on the road that are often amusing, often clarifications of something you thought you knew before but with new meaning now. Another part of Whitman:

…The Soul travels;

The body does not travel as much as the soul;

The body has just as great a work as the soul, and parts away at last for the journeys of the soul.

I think this journey of the soul is the most important part of my travels. And that’s all I have to say about that just now.

*Changing topics, to consider what the future holds for Jess*

So, 10.5 months on the road. For those of you who knew my original travelling plans, you might be starting to wonder when I’m going back to the states, and the inevitable question: what next? Can I really stop travelling and settle down, or will I do this forever?

My plan is to be back in the states by the beginning of August. Between now and then, I’m going to get to S Africa (I may catch a World Cup game in Cape Town in late June), and then I’ll either fly to Europe for a month before coming home, or kick it around S Africa. Eventually, when I do get home, my plans are a little crazy. Firstly, I’m going to need to travel up and down the east coast seeing all of you people (D.C., NC, RI, NJ, CT, MA, NY, NH, ME, MD, OH are all states that are on my list, which is going to necessitate a large amount of driving around). This should take approximately a month, and needs to take only this long, because I’m planning a cross country bicycle ride which will begin in early September!

That’s right: Jess’s next adventure is going to be travelling across the US on 2 wheels. My good friend Jon and I will leave the east coast in early September, get out to northern California, and ride our bikes slowly down the coast, getting into shape for the major undertaking of biking from San Diego to somewhere out east. We’ll get from northern California to Sacramento by Sept 25^th , where we will pause for the weekend in order that I may attend the Kosho Gathering (martial arts seminar) that I’ve gone to for the past 10 years, barring last year. Then, we’ll start east. I expect our ride will take 2 months, give or take a week or two.

I’m excited by the prospect of travelling across the states because it won’t be difficult in terms of the actual day to day life stuff – eating, sleeping, water, language, toilets will be SO easy. I’m replacing the difficulty of travel itself with physical difficulty, and I think that’ll be an interesting challenge. If I hate it, the physical exertion part, I’ll probably think twice about through-hiking the Appalachian Trail (AT) next spring– but that’s for the future to figure out, of course, and I don’t expect I will hate it.

Hehehe… yes, I did just say through-hiking the AT, and threw it in there as if it was no big deal. For those of you that don’t know, the Appalachian Trail runs from GA to ME, and every year hundreds of thousands of people hike portions of it during spring break, summer vacation, winter hunting trips. Also every year, about 2000 people set off at the southernmost point of the trail sometime in March (or the northernmost point in June, though fewer attempt the hike N to S), and attempt to hike the entire 2200 miles (give or take) in one fell swoop. It takes between 4-6 months, and only about 10% of those who start out to hike the whole thing arrive at their perspective end points having accomplished this goal. I plan to give it my best shot, after working in Lewisburg for a few months between the end of the bike ride and March, 2011.

Originally, I had some friends on board to attempt the entire hike with me, including the friend Jon with whom I will be biking this fall. However, my plans have changed in relation to some thoughts I’ve been having during my past 2 months of “solo travelling”. I’ve realized that, the entire time that I’ve been travelling alone, ie without WT Kirschner, I haven’t actually been…alone. I had initially wanted the chance to experience what it was like to be off in the world by myself, and while I have had the chance to experience the freedom of being able to make decisions based purely on my own desires at any particular moment – a key part of travelling alone – I still haven’t lacked companionship, purposefully or accidentally, for any longer than a day. I’ve discovered that I love travelling like this – the ability to hook up with a pack of travellers for a day or two, to change my plans based on something that someone else is doing that sounds cool, and to leave when I get tired of being with those people (or when the winds of adventure call again – I rarely tire of the cool people I meet on the road) – it’s great! I don’t think that I want to be alone “out in the world” for more than a week or so – I can imagine laying on the beach in Mozambique, for example, and purposefully not seeking out the companionship of anyone else just for the chance to think and just be with myself. However, I like meeting people too much, and I am also happy avoiding the difficulty of figuring out every little logistical problem by myself – travelling doesn’t always have to be about maximizing the number of challenges you force yourself to face, I’ve found.

However, I want to do SOMETHING alone, partially to prove to myself that I can, and partially just to give my mind the space to do some serious thinking that isn’t influenced by other people’s reflections at that particular moment. And, thinking about the AT, I realize that’s the perfect opportunity. It’s not going to be particularly taxing scenery, so I won’t be distracted by the world around me at every turn – I hear it can even become monotonous, though this I doubt. I’ll be comfortable enough with being physically uncomfortable after the challenge of my bike ride, I assume. I’ll hit town every 5-7 days, get to reconnect with people, and then disappear for a while again. I love the thought of being left alone to my own thoughts and my own challenges for a week at a time – it sounds exciting.

And then, after the AT, I really want to go live abroad for a while, I think. In reality, however, I have no idea of my plans past the end of the AT, and I love that – the not knowing is exciting. It’s strange to me to have a plan that lasts until sometime next autumn, and I sometimes get a little weird about it and want to change my mind just because I’m not used to having this sort of stability that comes along with knowing what you’re going to do for more than the next day. But I think I can handle it.

So. How’s THAT for a blog post! I’m going to leave you all here, with a lot to think about and anticipating your comments, suggestions, and overall declarations of my insanity. I look forward to them, so don’t keep me hanging. As always, I love and miss all of you, thank you for your continuing support of my adventure of a lifetime, and can’t wait to see you when I get home.

Yours,

Jess