Hello 2012!
Hi all, Sarah here. As a new year begins, I thought I might ‘guest spot’ on Dave’s blog and share some reflections five months into our year-long world trip. While I’m present in his stories and some photos, I realise my voice has been quiet since we’ve been travelling (and the iPhone prised from my fingers, handed back into work from whence it came). After initial Facebook withdrawals, I have come to enjoy its absence and haven’t much put my reactions or meandering thoughts into words outside my own head (except for lists of potential PhD research topics…). So this is as much for me to think about what I’m experiencing as to share it with you.
Reflecting back on 2011, the first half was a blur of work deadlines, medical appointments and exhaustion. There was a hiatus when we spent Easter down the NSW South Coast and between rolling green hills spotted with dairy cows, the rough amber sand and turquoise waves, we decided to take a year off to travel. The rest of our time in Australia before we left was another blur of work deadlines to handover projects, trip planning and visa applications, and packing to cover multiple countries and climates. Our farewell drinks photos show two tired but happy faces. The comments I’ve heard most on our travel photos is that we look relaxed – a state we evidently hadn’t been in for a while (I can’t recall – refer ‘exhaustion blur’ above).
We are currently in Ghana, West Africa. We paused for Christmas in a small, French-African beachside bungalow with delicious cooking, 3 pet dogs, fireflies, crashing waves and palm trees. Locals walked by on the beach dressed elegantly in brightly patterned swathes of fabric and tubs of freshly caught fish on their heads. For New Years Eve we are in the former capital of Kumasi, the seat of the traditional Ashanti kingdom. Since we left Australia in August we’ve visited Canada, California, Mexico City, Cuba, New York, Iceland, London, Jordan, Israel and now Ghana. We’ve caught up with family and friends, some who we hadn’t seen in over a decade. We have thousands of photos. I’ve read 25 books (a PB against my usual 4-books-a-year rate). We’ve caught 16 planes and I’m getting a little better at not holding Dave’s hand in a death grip each time there’s turbulence. We’ve met many warm, interesting people and got to know a mixture of locals and other travellers such as: a Cuban baseball coach, a Jordanian cake-maker, an Israeli atheist, a Russian professional gambling financier, a Ghanaian-German peace-builder, a Spanish banker seeking to convert to Judaism, a Lithuanian spiritual tour guide). We’ve met Elvis once (a coconut-seller on a beach in Cuba) and Jesus twice (one a perpetually-smiling employee of a Cuban bed and breakfast, the other a Palestinian tour guide in Bethlehem). We can report that taxi drivers are the same in every country (honking to get your attention, offering to drive you again tomorrow); as is human kindness and hospitality.
It’s been both as exotic as it sounds, and much more normal. I know from my anthropology studies that humans are incredibly adaptable, and it has proved to be the case with us too. Within a month it felt utterly natural to be living out of a backpack, changing locations every couple of days, and most of all, not working! The sum total of our responsibilties at the moment are: visiting people, seeing remarkable historic and natural sights each day, travelling to the next place, planning and booking future flights and accommodation, sorting through photos, blogging and deciding where to eat today. These obligations, such as they are, replaced those of the rat race quickly and effortlessly. I had thought I’d be pinching myself each morning with incredulity but in fact, it has become the (very pleasant!) norm. There was also amazingly little adjustment for Dave and I to be spending 24-7 together all of a sudden. In the beginning we would get irritable with one another every 2-3 weeks and schedule a day apart. Now it’s been a while since we’ve had one, and we’re probably due for another, but until we get too snippy with each other it doesn’t occur to us to suggest it. Not spending all this time together seems more odd. I’ve been trying to start daily meditation but often struggle to find the time (seriously…). When I do, and focus on gratefulness, the opportunity to take this time and step outside our life at home, hits me again. I am incredibly appreciative and cherish it.
Travelling always broadens the mind and exposes you to different ways of seeing and living in the world. It is good to be reminded that there are many ways to do things apart from the ones you’re used to. That can be discombobulating but also illuminating, and mostly I’m finding it to be freeing. Dave and I are lucky to have travelled quite a bit before, together and separately before we met, but I’m glad that travel doesn’t seem to lose it’s impact the more you do it. Some favourite experiences to date include being kissed on the cheek by a camel in Jordan; walking on a glacier in Iceland; learning African drumming with a Rastafarian on the beach; watching families in the local cemeteries celebrating Day of the Dead in Mexico with flowers, skeleton candy, songs and dancing; talking about religion after preparing a Shabat dinner in Israel; dancing salsa in Cuba; and learning about the shameful slave trade on the Ghanaian coast. Those are some that immediately leap to mind; there are many many more, described by Dave in earlier blog posts.
My sense of time has also changed with our trip. Taking away the mobile phone and emails, which imply an instant response, as well as removing work deadlines and travelling in rural areas where people around us count time in different ways, has both slowed and expanded each day. Reading up on the history of each place we come to has shifted out the scale of time I’m thinking in as well.
It’s strangely empowering to have everything we need right now, with us in our two bags. Ok, Dave will make me own up to the fact that he has a smaller backpack (65L) than me (70L) but still carried some of my stuff until recently. And he often has to talk me out of a small purchase by reminding me of this fact (but – a gift for home! It’s helping the local economy!). And of course, we’re not Bear Grylls here – we have money to buy food and shelter. But still, I feel pretty self-sufficient, having fit enough clothes and shoes for tropical, temperate, freezing, hiking, dancing, city touring situations, plus medical kit, sleeping sheet, travel pillow, towels, toiletries, kindle, notebook, head torch, mobile in my luggage – not to mention my female penis which enables one to pee standing up (not tried yet). Alright, I admit Dave’s point; I don’t need even half the stuff I accumulate at home.
The things which I am enjoying most are: daily reading and time for regular exercise (my back’s never felt so great!), learning the history of a place, trying new cuisines (cactus salad, anyone?), blending in and standing out, and most of all talking with locals and learning about their life and place. In this globalised world, I was a little surprised – but still delighted – to find that just as we’re interested in and curious about other people, so they are in us. Many are wondrous at the fact we’re not married and, at such an advanced age, don’t have kids. Our ‘five finger’ running shoes have been a source of mirth everywhere. Some can’t believe the softness of Dave’s hands (no physical labour). We’ve also had people from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Ghana and other African countries ask to take a photo of us – or take one surreptitiously. For once, freckles are an asset!
I find the very physicality and solidity of each place we visit comforting, from being just a name in our planning spreadsheet, then an outline from reading the travel guide, then a destination for a plane trip speeding across the earth. When we land and start travelling overland, seeing how immovable the place is brings home the immensity of the world. That a place existed before we arrived, welcomes us graciously while we’re there, and continues once we leave, makes me happy; in the same way I appreciate our smallness and trivialities when looking out at the stars.
I don’t miss using a computer and mostly sitting still for 8-12 hours a day; nor instantaneous internet access. But paradoxically, I am glad for Facebook when we check in, because it brings loved ones and home close – both quotidian and big news are there, it lets me immerse myself in life at home and say hi and not feel far away. Funnily enough, I have missed doing (some) chores! On the occasions when we’ve been able to cook our own meal, do our own washing, or clean up in a friend’s place or a rented apartment, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice to have as a change I guess – I loathe cleaning the bathroom at home!
Most challenging has been witnessing poverty and the lack of economic and political freedoms in some places, the significant inequalities in the world that make it possible for Dave and I to travel and safeguard our health, and impossible for others by dint of their place of birth or colour of their skin. It’s frustrating, disheartening, and catalysing all at once. I’m reading and talking with people to figure out how we are best placed to help address this, both while we’re travelling (e.g. staying in accommodation that is run as a social enterprise and ploughs profits back into the community) and when we get home (through working, volunteering, donating, political engagement).
The only other thing I haven’t enjoyed is being sick and homesick. These coincided when I was downed with altitude sickness in Mexico and then recently, we felt homesick on Christmas Day. Both made me yearn for my family, Vegemite on buttery toast and the particular light of Australia. But once recovered, and after meeting up with Mum and Dad in Jordan and Israel, I have been illness-free. And, as corny as this sounds, I feel like I’m home when I’m with Dave so it’s never disorientating wherever we are – although some mornings I’d love a bowl of Weet-Bix.
In 2012 I will turn 35. We will visit French-speaking Togo and Benin for the annual Voodoo Festival, then Rwanda, Tanzania, Turkey, maybe a -stan like Uzbekistan, India, maybe Bhutan, maybe China, maybe Indonesia. We will come home to Sydney in winter and have to adjust to no longer being DINKy nomads and completely in charge of our days. We need to figure out where to live, and pick up where we left off – but drawing on this year away. I’ve got replenished energy and a renewed appreciation of the fortune of Australia – potable water running out of taps, a broadly peaceful and trusting society, democratic (if not participatory) government, social safety net, functioning healthcare. These are things to be argued for, extended and made accessible. I want to make time to do some of the things that I enjoy and have been able to while away (African drumming?), fitting it around work. I worry I won’t be able to; but this time away is reminding us of other ways of doing things, that we don’t need a heap of material things, that we are part of the luckiest and most privileged people in the world, and so have the greatest advantage to realise ideas and dreams. I have to hope that the same adaptability that has emerged while we are travelling will help us settle back in.
Enough earnestness for now, I hope that this finds you well and looking forward to 2012. Dave and I send you best wishes for a very happy and healthy New Year!
Cheers,
Sarah
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