Sometimes It's Hard

waiting for my flight and a second glass of wine

I would be remiss if I made it seem like moving around and travel is all fun and games, because it's not. For a plethora of reasons, sometimes it's really hard. Sometimes you see things that are hard to understand and digest, like violence, and I'm often reminded of how fucked up and unfair the world is. Usually when I am confronted with the world's injustices, at home or abroad, it makes me really upset.  

Here's an example.  

In my travels recently, the premium that exists on light (AKA "beautiful") skin, a standard that applies primarily to women, has been blindingly apparent in every country I've been to in Africa and Asia. While I think that many of us who are interested in race and oppression would read that and say "of course," there is a different application and expression of this globalized racist norm from what I observe in the US. I hate seeing every facial product in the drug store promise whiter skin, and women wearing make-up three shades lighter than their natural skin tone, and billboards of blondes in countries where blondes are not native, and women and children telling me that my skin (but even more so than mine, which is a little tan, white folks' skin) is pretty and theirs isn't, because it shouldn't be that way. But it is.  

I work actively to be aware of how individuals manifest systemic oppressions, so when I speak of getting upset I do not want to give the impression that I feel bad for or pity a woman in Cambodia or Senegal who puts her arm up to mine and tells me mine is prettier, because it's not really about them. For me what's upsetting is the ways that some people in the history of our world have imposed standards on everyone that are only beneficial to a few, at the expense of many. At the same time, I also know that my skin color, mannerisms, and most importantly, passport from the USA (AKA privilege) are hugely influential in my ability to even get around. My experiences with movement just illuminate how complicated life is, and that there are no easy answers. But it's OK because I like learning about and trying to understand complexity. On occasion I attribute Why I Travel to an addiction to new experiences. It's like I can't stop putting myself in new, challenging environments, seeing how I hold up and then come out on the other end. It's some kind of personal test I do over and over and over again.  In spite of and because of the hards times.  So far I think it's made be a better person, and lord knows I can't stop yet.

How Many Faces Do You Count?

sunrise seminar under the gaze of the Bayon temple

Angkor Wat is all it's cracked up to be.

"Anyway, so the pilgrim learns how to pray the way these very mystical persons say you should -

- I mean, he keeps at it till he's perfected it and everything.  Then he goes on walking all over Russia, meeting all kinds of absolutely marvellous people and telling them how to pray by this incredible method.  I mean, that's really the whole book."

"I hate to mention it, but I'm going to reek of garlic," Lane said.

"He meets this one married couple, on one of his journeys, that I love more than anybody I ever read about in my entire life," Franny said. "He's walking down a road somewhere in the country, with his knapsack on his back, when these two tiny little children run after him shouting 'Dear little beggar!  Dear little beggar!  You must come home to Mummy.  She likes beggars.'  So he goes home with the children, and this really lovely person, the children's mother, comes out of the house all in a bustle and insists on helping him take off his dirty old boots and giving him a cup of tea.  Then the father comes home, and apparently he loves beggars and pilgrims, too, and they all sit down to dinner.  And while they're at dinner, the pilgrim wants to know who all the ladies are that are sitting around the table, and the husband tells him that they're all servants but that they always sit down to eat with him and his wife because they're sisters in Christ."  Franny suddenly sat up a trifle straighter in her seat, self-consciously. "I mean I loved the pilgrim wanting to know who all the lades were." She watched Lane butter a piece of bread.  "Anyway, after that, the pilgrim stays overnight, and he and the husband sit up till late talking about this method of praying without ceasing.  The pilgrim tells him how to do it.  Then he leaves in the morning and starts out on some more adventures."

From Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, which I read for the first time today.  I liked it very much, and not at all just for the passage above.

Watch the Movie "Burma VJ"!

The Moei River looking over to the Burma side.

Jika and monks crossing the Friendship Bridge linking Mae Sot, Thailand 
with Myawaddy, Burma.

When Jika and I traveled after finishing work in Cambodia, we spent the majority of our time in Mae Sot, Thailand.  I have so many thoughts and emotions about my time there, because being there struck me faster and harder than any place I've been in recent memory, that I haven't yet figured out how to share the experience in written words.  When I talk to friends and family about being there, it all comes out in a jumble about "former political prisoners" and "underground journalists" and "refugees" and "resistance" and "ethnic hill tribes" and "economic migrants" and and all the stuff that people that know me know I am really into.  In an effort to be succinct, I will essentialize and say that Mae Sot:

• is not only on the Thai border with Burma, but also has a formal crossing point with the Burmese town of Myawaddy.
• hosts a large population of Burmese refugees and migrants.
• is the hub of political and democratic resistance activities against the Myanmar junta.  

Jika and I met a lot of inspiring people there, Burmese and foreign, and we also went into Burma one day.  One of the guys we met works for the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) and filmed a lot of the footage for the 2010 Oscar-nominated, best documentary feature film, "Burma VJ."  The movie is about the 2007, monk-led Saffron Revolution, and comes from footage shot by Burmese undercover reporters.  You can watch the movie in increments on youtube, the trailer is here, and the first part is here. Having dinner with someone who, for over 20 years, has been involved in this movement against an oppressive regime was...  um, yeah I still don't know how to even describe without a parade of trite adjectives. One day I will find the words, but in the meantime, with the Oscars coming up on March 7, I wanted to share this and maybe people will have a new movie to root for.  

(P.S. Has anyone seen another movie nominated in this category, "Which Way Home?" about kids from Central America riding trains up to the United States?  Know where I can watch it?)

snOMG

It was very wonderful to walk around in the first snowstorm of the 2009-2010 winter season here in DC, the one back at the end of December.  It made everything different.  People were friendlier (while it was actually snowing, at least), people were putting on skiis outside their front doors, there were no cars and you had to walk in the street.  It felt quiet and slow despite there being a good amount of people out, and I felt a different interaction with the same places I've been walking to and past my entire life.

sledding and skiing at fort reno

taking the (invisible) dog for a walk

my street

Walking around also reminded me of possibly my favorite "Boondocks" comic strip of all time:

AND I learned, the very hard way, the lesson that you should never, ever wear liquid eyeliner in a snowstorm.  But I don't have pictures of that.

High (Line) Times

You don't have to move far in order to see dope stuff, and that's particularly true if your movement is transgressive.  A couple of times a few of us went up on the High Line, not on the new fancy-pants part (though it's nice over there too) but on the side where you're not allowed.  Getting off of ground-level in NYC always provides a vantage point for mesmerizing views, and this was no exception.

The first time I went we were looking for remnants of a (mostly) bygone time, the era of hobos and tramps, riding the rails and jungle camps.  We did see some hobo signs, which was pretty cool.

As well as some markings from more recent passers-by.

But most interesting was the home that we came across.  It was located under the High Line and over a building, where me and Melicious are squatting (no pun intended) here:

The guy that lived here had a lot of stuff, including a copy of Dark Days.

I'm not going to post other pictures of his home because, well, it's his home.  Meredith left a note for the guy and ended up talking to him a couple days later.  This whole excursion was pretty fantastic and beautiful and a bit surreal, and came about with none of us really knowing what we were getting ourselves into.  For me it really highlighted how much there is all around us that we are not aware of, but can catch a glimpse of if we pay attention.  (And maybe trespass a little too.)

Thanks to Tyler S., believer in creative appropriation, for the photos.

Border-(S)hopping

Borders fascinate me. 

The Senegal River is the natural as well as official border between Senegal and Mauritania, and in this panoramic picture between the small city of Matam, Senegal on the right and the village of Tofunde Cive, Mauritania on the left. Along the beach on the Mauritanian side is a row of small shops selling goods such as tea, fabric, personal care products and cell phones. Senegalese shoppers cross the river in pirogues to shop in the boutiques, which exist in Mauritania almost primarily for Senegalese consumption on the other side of the river.

I made the pirogue trip across the river on three occasions. I went the formal route, taking the government-sanctioned pirogue seen above, as opposed to one of the many informal, smaller pirogues that make the 10 minute journey throughout the day. On two of the occasions, I too was going to do a little shopping, to check out the boutiques and to buy some fabric. While the trip across is pretty seamless for the Senegalese, not so for a Toubab like me. I did not have a visa to enter Mauritania*, you see, and there is a border agent that sits in a hut on the beach to check for this documentation. Now, I wasn't really that pressed to go into the shops, and even less interested in paying a couple dollars bribe in order to be allowed to walk 100 feet, so when I was rebuffed on my last trip I just went back across the river.

While I did not get very far onto Mauritanian territory, I was amazed during these brief excursions how different this side of the 250 meter-wide river felt from the other. But then again, despite some strong similarities that exist between Senegal and Mauritania at this little crossing, the two countries are very, very different places. That is part of why borders fascinate me, because despite the often arbitrariness of their creation, their impact is real and can mean everything depending on who you are, what you look like, where you come from, and where you are going.

*I have a fascination with Mauritania too, which emerged after reading Kevin Bales' Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. During my time in Matam I had a few encounters with the continuing practice of slavery that exists in Mauritania today.