Tainted Love

As the longtail pulled up to the rocky beach and the calls of 'take!' and 'slack!!' filled the air, it felt as though I had never left.

Tonsai beach loomed up in front of me, it's limestone cliffs and jungle growth glowing in the sunlight just as they had that first week in Thailand, so many weeks ago.



Within a few hours of my arrival I had secured a home and was sitting around a plate of chicken and rice with a group of 'old' friends. By the day's end I had climbed a few routes and found a means of employment.

Everything is the same as the first time.



And yet everything has changed.



I am not the same person I was when I first left home almost a full 365 days ago. I am not the girl who landed at an airport in Thailand and decided "maybe I'll try rock climbing for a few days. That could be fun."

I have changed in ways that only the open road can change a person. I have grown in ways that only a backpack home and a 'plan-not-to-plan' can let you grow.
I. Am. Different.



That's why we travel, I suppose. So that we will push our limits, so that we will know a side of ourselves we could never see from the comfort of our couch. So that we become something new; dare I say it something better?



Or maybe ignorance really is bliss.

---



Today I got an email from Bex, a beautiful and inspiring woman whose passion and dedication have continually astounded me. She's in Kolkata right now working with Deepa.

As I sit in my tropical paradise, alternating between drinking ice coffees and climbing rock ladders to heaven, she is elbow deep in the chaos of the City of Joy.

As I lay back on a cushion and watch the sun setting out over the turquoise blue waters, she makes the daily trudge past naked children and bleating cows, through crowded streets and up a stuffy cement staircase to the cries of 35 children in an enclosed space.

My greatest frustration in a day is not sending a route. Hers is trying to help a little girl learn to speak while surrounded by noise, filth and apathy.

Last time I was here, I didn't know. I didn't know that in some places in the world half a city sleeps in the streets each night. I hadn't stood at the foothills of the Himalayas and had my breath taken away. I hadn't ridden a wave or felt the power of sending a route. I didn't know what a family of five living on $10 a month looks like. I had never been dirty before. I had never been hungry before. I hadn't witnessed outright bigotry, I hadn't rocked a baby to sleep in the back of a rickshaw as her 17 year old mother sat smiling beside me.

I hadn't met Deepa.

Do all of these experiences mean that it should be harder for me to enjoy the beauty of now? Should I feel more guilty smiling in my little corner of the universe?
Because I don't.

I just feel luckier.

Which is why I'm going to check out until the end folks. This will be my last post from paradise. I'm about to dive in headfirst and enjoy these last moments of the journey without outside contact.

See you when I get home.

Livin the Dream

You know when you're a kid and you dream of that perfect vacation?

I remember as a little person, lying on my bed looking at magazine pictures of people catching waves on perfect white sand beaches, with little bungalows dotting the shoreline, and thinking to myself "how much cooler would I be if I could do something like that?"

I guess I just got a whole lot cooler.
------
Indonesian paradise, a few friends, a couple of beers, a beachside guesthouse and some waves.
It wasn't a traditional Christmas, but it sure was an amazing one.

The day would begin with the sunrise, as the sound of water lapping the shoreline roused me from a night being rocked to sleep in a hammock stretched between two palm trees.

Gradually the team would emerge from their respective abodes, rubbing sleep from their eyes and reaching for a cup of coffee.

Ten minutes later, boards tucked under our arms we would head down the beach to the waves that rolled and crashed in the distance. Allegedly the swell wasn't that great for those of us endowed with natural talent. For a beginner like me the magic of a first surf trip was enough to keep any and all complaints at bay.

A few hours of battling the waves, with a few explotives uttered under my breath as mother nature continually attempted to drown and bash me against the reef was all worth it for the two waves I would catch each morning, as the sun rose over the jungle covered hills that surrounded us.

Returning to our temporary home, the rest of the morning would be spent eating breakfast, sitting in lounge chairs, watching the water, catching rays, and generally enjoying the easiest and most beautiful moments life can offer.

Afternoon surf time: do it all over again.

Come back from the second session of the day, play scrabble, laugh, drink a beer.

Get invited to a local mining party (food and alcohol complementary...we thought we'd all died and gone to heaven...Jack Daniels and giant prawns on the house? Merry Christmas indeed!!)

Stumble home from the party arm and arm with friends, and collapse in a heap on the sand in a fit of laughter.
Lie back under the southern hemisphere stars, mesmerized by the fact that the sky above is completely different from the one at home.

Laugh some more. Make a few memories.

Move from sand to hammock, and let the wind rock you to sleep.
---------
The days we dream of, the nights we will remember forever.

The moments I never thought I'd be lucky enough to live.


Pack up those backpacks kids....

Remembering

A few years ago a very dear friend of mine passed away. It was an incredibly difficult time for all of us who knew him, especially considering that he was the best of all of us. Talented, beautiful, kind, wonderful in every way.

When you lose someone like that, those who remain forever young, it makes you re-evaluate a lot of things in your life. How much should I be trying to achieve? Am I wasting my life? What can I change in my daily functioning in order to ensure that his death was not in vain?
....

I've been thinking about my friend a lot these past few weeks.

In that space between here and somewhere else, where his soul or memory or whatever you want to call it is drifting about and watching over all of us, what does he think of the choices I have made?

When I'm sitting on the beaches of Bali sipping my umpteenth Bintang and planning what to wear for that night's dancing and debauchery, it's hard not to think he might be disappointed. It's hard not to think that maybe I'm wasting my time; maybe I should be doing something far more productive and meaningful with my days here.

Then, one night, I had a moment.

With a group of friends, we headed to a local bar/club - a classy house away from the beach that opens up on Friday nights for drinks and dancing.

As I sat on plush cushions surrounded by smiling healthy bodies, weaving my body this way and that to try and catch an occasional whisper of fresh air blown by the fans in the corners of the room, I noticed how happy everyone there was.

Every face shining with the knowledge that they were living the good life. That every moment of their day was filled with pleasure and fun and doing the things that they LOVED.

Surfing. Swimming.
Playing. Dancing.
Spending time with old friends, making new ones.
Grabbing the boards and heading out to discover a new surf break.
Catching a wave and knowing the sheer exhilaration that only the power of water and wind can give you.

Joy. Pleasure.

Even if it isn't the most refined, the most analytical or questioning manner of living, maybe that's ok.

Maybe sometimes a full life is the one that is the most enjoyed....end of story.

If that's the case, then the people here are living the fullest life I have ever seen.

So my dearest Laurent, wherever you are, I hope you can look on me and this life I am leading and still be proud. Because this is the life that I love.

This is a life worth living.

Tu me manques, mon ami.

Tourist time.

Bali.

Sun. Sand. Scantily clad people. Freedom and lack of responsibilities, a party everywhere you look and a thousand tourists prepared to invite you into their play world.

The first thing I noticed when I stepped off the plane in Jakarta was the smell. That unmistakable scent of the south asian tropics - dripping with humidity, layered with pineapple and mango and a hint of sea spray. Within a few seconds, olfaction was overpowered by touch, as the 30 degree heat created a fine glow over my entire body. Palm trees swayed in the breeze, flowers bloomed, reggae beats pumped in my ears.


Southeast Asia....I'm back, baby.


Vacation time.


It seems strange to consider this a vacation, when some might say that my entire year has been a vacation. And yet, this is a vacation. A break from being a traveller, replaced by something simpler, something a whole heck of a lot easier.



Here the locals don't stare at you as you walk down the street (even if you're just wearing a bikini!!). Here there's McDonalds and Starbucks to appease the nervous westerners who fear local cuisine. Here the streets are clean, the temples are hidden from view, everyone speaks English. Here you get to be:

just.

another.

tourist.

Which is a-ok. Because after the chaos of the last seven months (seven months!!) of being a traveller in central asia, being in the relative calm and anonymity of Indonesia's white sand beaches is like a breath of fresh air. Constantly fighting to understand the local culture, being completely confused and lost at all times, battling pollution and poverty tends to take it's toll on your system. I don't think I had really realized that until I got here.

But let me tell you, it sure sunk in pretty quickly as I lay on the beach in my tattered shorts and bikini top. The warm breeze seemed to be chanting to me "relax. have a massage. buy something pretty for less than 3 dollars. take a break. we are here to make your stay as pleasant and easy as possible. no challenges necessary."

How can you say no to that?

Sorry mama and papa, I might not be seeing too many temples during this round. But I'll bring you back a nice souvenir to forgive my lack of cultural exploration...

Surf's up kids.

T.S. Eliot

Re-entry shock.

It's a well-known post-travel-stress syndrome, one which we all dread as we board the plane back to the world we call home.

As I boarded the plane to Geneva, to friends and comfort and family's arms, apprehension set in.

Was this going to be amazing?
Traumatic?
Empty?

After the chaos of 20 million souls in an oven of dust and poverty, how would Swiss impeccability feel?



One afternoon we went out for lunch. Driving through the countryside, lush green fields shimmering in the crisp autumn air, the yellows and oranges shining against a backdrop of grey and blue, I settled against the leather interior and listened to the music crooning from the speaker at my side.

Comfort.

Enjoying a delicious meal and sipping chilled white wine, I wondered that these pleasures brought me no guilt. Shouldn't this feel more wrong somehow?

At one point a young mother and her 3 month old baby came into the restaurant, the proud new grandmother in tow. Sitting at the table next to ours, dressed in Gucci sweaters, gold and pearls glistening, they quietly ate their foie gras and sipped their wine, riches and oppulence oozing from all sides.

This did not bother me.

It didn´t bother me, because for once that wealth seemed to be about something more. Those riches meant education, and health and above all opportunity.

As I watched the young family heaping love and affection, nutrition and intelligence and time on the small boy in his mothers arms I couldn't feel angry or guilty.

In the face of all the disadvantaged children I've encountered in recent months, here finally was a child with a chance.

More than a chance.

That child, at birth, had all the endless possibilities of the world layed at his feet. After so many months of impossibilities and hopelessness, here, in front of me, sat hope.


Beautiful, clean, diamond-encrusted hope.

In the face of that, all the seemingly empty lives of the ´West melted away. With every opportunity that boy was given, I could forgive all the mindless daily rituals of the comfortable masses.

And when Grandpa Prosperity arrived with his perfectly groomed pooch, complaining about his fifth lost cellphone of the year, it didn't ´need to bother me.

That someone with the means to save a village was crying over proverbial spilt milk didn't make my blood boil or tears flow. Because that wealth was being used for something good right here at home.

Because all that gleaming wealth, empty or not, was giving one child all the chances in the world.


Is that enough?

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

Final Countdown

One of the benefits of working within an organization is that they sometime propose experiences that you would never have access to alone.

Like the weekly bathing of street children in a center on the outskirts of Kolkata.

It all began with a bus ride through the streets, slums and every changing scenery of this place; past crowds of men performing their morning ablutions in the murky brown water of a public water pump, children squatting naked in the streets as they rubbed the sleep from their eyes with grimy fists, and cows grazing on piles of refuse, until our arrival at the center for the dying and the destitute.

Only every Sunday, that place is transformed from a place of death to one of life.

A hundred street kids dressed in rags stood waiting for us at the entrance gates, dressed in rags, holding hands and smiling.

'Auntie auntie!'
They descended on us with screams and shouts. The ritual of hope had begun.

Myself and five other women (can I call myself a woman at this point?) spent an hour and a half
pouring buckets of almost fresh water over these bundles of joy and tragedy. Scrubbing a week's accumulated grim from their skin and bones, laughing and exchanging a moment of love with these girls, I experienced a mix of euphoria and total devastation.

Cleaning a starving child. But a happy starving child. How is that supposed to make you feel?



Of course, as with so many of the adventures I've had in this city of joy, it was not the planned experience that will remain with me. Instead, a moment in that day will be anchored in my mind forever.

As I scrubbed my fiftieth body of the day, a girl around five years old came up to me, holding the hand of her little sister/daughter/friend. Relationships on the streets are complex. You become an adult by the age of 4, responsible for the fate of those younger than you.

"Auntie, mal." she said, her mouth set in a grim line, as she pointed to her younger charge's foot.

I looked down to see a foot covered in yellow, pussing cuts. Closer inspection revealed scars from similar injuries all over this little one's legs.

I don't know what those scars were from. At that point, it didn't matter.

Taking the scared little girl's hand, I gently removed her clothes and washed her frail body as she stood with her head bowed and eyes shut tightly.

After her shower, I helped her back into the dirty rags she wears each day (for laundry service is unfortunately not included in this program), and at last she looked up into my eyes.

Big brown saucers stared up at me, as this little Indian princess lifted her arms in the universally recognized plea to be held.

I picked her up. She must have wieghed about 10 pounds. I walked with her to the mobile dispensary, where a man was having his thumb sown back on with no ansethetic.

Trying to sheild the little bundle in my arms from a sight that was traumtizing even to me, I quietly sang into her ear

"The sun will come out, tomorrow"....

Her eyes never left the impromptu surgery being performed before us. Eyes that have seen far too much of the world in far too few years. Eyes that take in everything before them, eyes that have witnessed poverty and abuse and blood and tragedy since they were first opened. Eyes that are more open than mine ever could be.

Holding that little girl for ten minutes as we waited for her turn to get her wounds cleaned and wrapped up, I fought back the tears.

But tears don't have a place here. Tears don't make sense in this world - they're simply a manifestation of my own guilt. Tears don't belong in this 10 lb bundle's life. Tears don't help.

What helps is that at noon that Sunday, this little girl whose name I will never know sat down to a hot meal, along with 99 other children from the sidewalks of Kolkata. Clean skin shining in the mid-day sun, a crisp white bandage wrapped around her foot, she scooped handfuls of dal and rice from a tin plate into her mouth.

And an hour later, she joined the troop of hardened street children as they walked out the gates and back to their homes, a banana tucked into their pockets, hand in hand with their sisters and brothers, smiling from ear to ear.




That was my last day in Kolkata. My last chance to explore and experience, to be challenged and hyperstimulated and confused. That was one of my final memories of a world that I have slowly fallen in love with.

And as I head to the airport, to the skies, to the comforts of European cuisine, clean sheets, a bath and family, I don't know how to say goodbye to that world.

So I guess I"ll have to come back....

Stories of success

Sometimes the universe really does its thing well.

As you may or may not have been able to tell from recent rants, things in the development sector out here haven't been the easiest the last little while. Although Deepa continues to improve (she's started copying words more consistently, the little trooper), it somehow always seems so futile.

How many kids actually get out of this place? What's the point in teaching a little blind girl how to talk when she's never going to have a chance to go to school or have a job?

Because that's the norm for disabled people here: An institution. The street. Those are the options.
So what's the point?

And then, two days ago, something happened to shift my perspective...

...again

As I was climbing the stairs to work on Tuesday morning, I passed a young couple sitting in the hallway.

"Bonjour" the young girl said with a smile.

Surprised to hear French from the mouth of someone so clearly Indian, I smiled and returned the greeting, continuing on my way up the stairs to the crashes, clangs and screams of forty little bundles of joy.

A few moments later, as I sat saying hello to the kids, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the same girl.

"Excuse me, do you speak French?" she asked shyly.

Sometimes being bilingual realllllly comes in handy. The girl quickly explained to me that she was afraid something had been lost in translation.

"I think they think I want to adopt a child. But that's not it at all. I was adopted from this place when I was 8 years old. This is my first time back in India. I just arrived and I'm hoping the people here can help me find the village of my birth. I don't know anything about my childhood. Can you tell them that?"

Please remember that this is all happening at 8 in the morning on a Tuesday. That's a serious start to the week.

Turns out this beautiful young woman had literally JUST landed in India. She and her fiancee had flown from Switzerland, where she grew up, and landed in Kolkata an hour before I met them.

I suddenly found myself following this young couple through the orphanage, and bearing witness to an incredibly emotional experience.

"I remember the bars on the cribs were painted green, not yellow." quietly, as we walked through the dormitory lined with dozens of beds.

"Did there used to be a park here? I remember my friend and I used to play on the swings together. We loved the park." tentatively, as we sat in the courtyard and listened to sounds of children playing beside us.

As memories came flooding back, I tentatively translated the girls words from French to English, and the sister's responses from English to French.

Slowly, as we toured the rooms of her childhood, her story came out.
It wasn't a nice one.

As a child, a train accident stole her sister's life and one of her own legs, leaving her an invalid in rural India. Not a good start.

Later, her mother committed suicide.

This left the little girl to survive in a small village with no one for company but her abusive, alcoholic father. Alone and afraid she fled.

"I remember taking the train for a really long time. And I remember a train station. And a sister.

The sister took care of me. She brought me here to Kolkata. Later, I remember a plane ride. I met my adoptive mother for the first time when I landed in Switzerland. I was 8 1/2 years old".

Snippets of memories, with no names, no dates, no faces to attach to any of them. Imagine, an entire childhood unknown. Growing up in a world just like yours and mine, where birthdays and hometowns and childhood friends and family picnics are so important. Imagine living in that when you don't know your real date of birth. You don't know where you born. Everything before the age of 9 is a haze, and there's nobody who can make the image any clearer.

Sadly, the girl's file, thin and faded with time, brought us no answers. The only name in the file was the girl's own. The only date of birth was the one she had always used, one which had been chosen for her when she was rescued from the streets. The village listed as her birthplace was the village where she was found not born.

Saddened by her inability to shed light on the past, the Sister turned to me.

"please tell her I'm so sorry we cannot help more"

the translation was met with a smile.

"There's nothing to apologize for. Without these people, I never would have had the life I did. I owe them everything" the girl said, her voice quavering ever so slightly.

No past. But a future. Some would say that's a fair trade.



I don't know why that girl said hello to me in the stairwell. I don't know why I responded. But I do know that I needed this experience.

I needed to be reminded that good things do happen here. That there are success stories and fresh starts amidst the dirt and the noise and the chaos.

That amidst all the impossibilities of Kolkata, some things are still possible.