I want to tell you about traveling.
Two things you should try to do as much as possible: travel and read. It doesn’t really matter where you travel and it doesn’t really matter what you read. Just try to do both as much as possible. I’ll talk about reading sometime in future. But, today, I want to talk about traveling. In specific, I want to tell you about the trip I took after college.
My brother is about 2 years older than I am. He decided that after college he wanted to go into the Peace Corps. In what seemed like a whirlwind of events, he filled out some paperwork, got a passport, got some immunizations, bought a backpack and we drove him to the airport where he jumped on a plane to go to Africa.
We had been roommates at Indiana University and I remember when he got the letter from Peace Corps telling him where he was going. We had a big map of the whole entire world hanging on the living room wall of our apartment. He had requested that they send him to Africa but wasn’t sure if it would work out. So there he was, in our apartment, tearing open the letter that would tell him where he would spend the next 26 months of his life. He quickly scanned the letter and we both ran over to the map. There it was, in Western Africa, just north of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, sitting there waiting for him. Burkina Faso. I can remember him running his fingers over it on the map, already getting to know it. I looked at Indiana, then at Burkina Faso. It didn’t look that far away on the map, only about two feet. And, like I said, there was some paperwork, some packing, a going-away-party, graduation, and then he was gone.
I continued through college. We wrote letters. We talked on the phone a couple times. And the two years flew by.
I’m not sure whose idea it was, but sometime early in my senior year of college, it was decided that the graduation gift from my parents would be to travel around the world with my brother. He was set to finish the Peace Corps just months after I graduated. I would fly out to live with him in his village for a while then we would set off together to see the world.
I signed some paperwork, got a passport, got some immunizations, bought a backpack, my parents drove me to the airport and then I too was gone.
I won’t belabor you with every place we went to during those months of traveling. I will just say that
I flew out of Chicago, heading east. By the time I got back to the US, I flew into San Francisco from the west. I had gone around the whole darned world. But my first stop was Burkina Faso, Africa. I remember meeting by brother at the airport. He was behind a security checkpoint outside the baggage claim. When we locked eyes, he motioned me forward, past the guards. I slowly walked past them. I kept my eyes on my brother, watching him watch them. Once I was clear and was closing the final distance between us, I saw him make a small fist pump in the air. The gesture was slight and almost just to himself, as if to say, “You’re here! You’re really here!” In my 34 years of living, this short moment, only about a half of a second long, is one of my favorites.
I lived with my brother in his small mud hut in the village of Gode for a while. We spent the days walking around the village, biking around the countryside and visiting with the locals. In the afternoon, I’d take a “shower” with a bucket of water warmed by sun all day. The “shower” was outside the hut, surrounded by a low mud wall. I’d wave to the villagers as they came in from working all day in the fields. We spent our nights writing and playing music on the nylon string guitar he had.
I’d like to tell you about what happened one day while I was in the village because I think it is important. Part of my brother’s purpose for being in the village was to educate people about the Guinea worm. To put it simply: this is a terrible parasite that grows inside a human, enlarges and then starts to come out through the skin, usually in the lower leg. It is a terrible problem in third world countries. One day, while my brother and I were in the medical clinic of the village, a small boy was brought in from the fields. His older brother was with him. The patient was about 10 years old. He had symptoms of a Guinea worm starting to exit his body. It looked like a large boil on the outside of his calf. The way you get a guinea worm out is to lance open the skin, get a stick, and slowly start wrapping the worm (which can be up to 2-3 feet long) around the stick. This is a very slow and very painful process. The older brother seemed to be in a hurry and seemed anxious. I asked someone what was bothering him and he told me that both boys were needed back out in the fields to work as soon as possible that day. It shocked me that this boy would have to go back to work so soon. I stood there and watched them cut his skin and start to get the worm out. This little boy was trying his hardest not to cry, and although he made no noise at all, large tears were falling down the sides of his face. I’d had enough; I excused myself and went back to my brother’s empty hut. I sat down and cried. I felt very far from home. Your mother is telling me that this letter is getting a little long, but there is one more thing that must be mentioned. This takes place in Tasmania. While there, my brother and I found a campsite to spend the night in. As were we making camp, a whole bunch of men showed up and started unpacking just up the trail from us. They were big, burly men and there were a lot of them. They looked like trouble. What we didn’t know at the time, was that the Australian rules football championships were going on. The Tasmanian team lost and, to celebrate the end of another season (or to drown their sorrows of a lost match), they decided to camp out for the night and have a party. Like I said, we didn’t know who they were at the time, but we had decided to try our best to stay out of sight and to keep to ourselves. It didn’t take them long to notice us and two of them lumbered over to our campsite. They were already drunk. One of them had an axe. They told us that they would be having a party all night long and that we were welcome to come over. After they left, my brother and I discussed our options. We really had no desire to go over there. We had been traveling for a long time by this point and were pretty tired. On the other hand, we didn’t want to insult them by not going over, if just for a little bit, just to be polite. So, after I while, Andy and I walked over and introduced ourselves. We were immediately given a cold beer and some food. They asked us all about ourselves. Where we were from, where we were going. They could not have been better hosts. I’d love to take the time to tell you about how crazy that night was and I fear this letter is long enough as it is. But I remember they had a guitar and these large men were singing along to Counting Crows songs and Simon and Garfunkel songs. I remember we played “Wimoweh” and they sang the high parts loud and drunkenly. “In the jungle, the might jungle, the lion sleeps tonight…” I remember seeing the Southern Cross in the night sky. I remember my drunken brother being dared to try to tackle a Tasmanian devil in the bushes. The night just got crazier and crazier and it never seemed to end. It was one of the best nights of my life. I never saw it coming.
Crab fishing off the coast of Australia
The sunrise from the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Tanzania, Africa
See you next week, Daddy.
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