Traveling Cat

Susie recently pointed out that we’ve both been back in the States almost a year now… how crazy! After my year working in Kenya with Cindy, after the backpacking trek across all of Southern and Eastern Africa with Susie, after the high tech trip to Korea to visit Laura and Hanna, and continued backpacking in the US from Austin to Chicago to Asheville, Caroline and I eventually met up and did another road trip from Austin across to California and then up to Seattle. So much has changed between when I left for Kenya, when I moved back, and where I am today. I had no idea what would come after life in Kenya, but I know I wouldn’t have predicted a life that includes living in my same old apartment building, leaving the nonprofit world, a new job in environmental consulting, dating in a crazy new scene, and last minute decadent trips to Vegas.

As for travel… I’m consulting again, which means a fair amount of (domestic) travel for work. And while I have no big international trips planned till Thailand in spring, I daydream about my “top ten” places all the time and think about where I might be able to visit next. More immediately though, I am very excited about my upcoming trip to Burning Man this summer and all of the craziness that entails. Hope y’all are well!

This is prolly my favorite t-shirt in Korea. I solemnly vow to introduce “prolly” and “awesomest” into my normal vocab…

This mother of two kids had the awesomest “I love my hooker” t-shirt. I can only assume she doesn’t know/read English.

Why get matching t-shirts when you can have couples underwear?

Typical Asian fashion: face masks. You can even get them with skulls or kittens designs on the front.

People spend money on “Beauty smile trainers”? This was just one of a large selection of similar smile training tools… bizarre.

Cute stuff, just a bit too ruffly/frilly for me, ya know?

That’s a lot of pink!

Lots of fake Converse everywhere here… quite a popular shoe!

Nothing says sexy like tight jeans and a hot pink zipper t-shirt! This very sweet vendor picked out this t-shirt because he knew it’d be perfect for me. How very kind!

After a year and a half on the road, I flew home today to Austin. My three flights on Asiana and Continental were long, tiring, dull, and no where near as nice at KLM or Qatar Airways. I survived with no muscle cramps and only mild delerium.

Arriving at Austin is always a happy moment… green trees, giant blue sky, a live musician on the upstairs stage over by baggage claim, the Austin City Limits shop and AusChron shop, and local food vendors galore. It was a bit tragic when one of my bags didn’t show up in Austin, but I kept calm (probably partially because of the excitement at meeting Gus, and probably partially because of the afore mentioned delerium). I’m happy to report the luggage was eventually found 6 hours later and delivered to my parents home just moments ago. (Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!) Was great to have Gus leading the welcome committee with a sign at the airport and was great to see my family tonight. (Btw… now that I’ve met him in person, I can confirm my nephew is indeed one of the cutest one year olds ever!). I don’t have much energy or sanity left in me to blog tonight, but wanted to throw out two invites for the Texas crowd:

** There’s a welcome home party this Saturday from noon-5pm. You’re invited. My eye is 99% healed and I promise not to get any pus on you. It’ll be at my parents’ new(ish) house and you’re all invited. Yes, of course you can bring your babies. Oh yes, and we’ll have burgers and such, soda and beer, etc. Email me for directions/rsvp/etc.

** Saturday evening we’ll be paying homage to this great city of Austin by supporting the local live music scene. Soulhat plays at 7pm and Bob Schneider goes on at 8:30pm. The show is downtown, tickets are $11, and everyone’s invited. See you here then there!

Nightlife in the Kangnam district near Hanna’s house

Tons and tons of people, and interestingly enough, many bars with signs that forbid US military guys

Bars, clubs, kareoke, dance rooms, and even DVD rooms. DVD rooms = room to rent with couch to watch a DVD = room to have sex with your boyfriend/girlfriend since you live at home with your parents till you’re married.

Korean for “one more cup” – such a happy sign

Not so happy sign… is that a chicken flicking us off?

Yep, that’s me. Disgusting. Want to hear all about it? I woke up yesterday with a bacterial infection in my eye. Generally I wake up, open my eyes, and the day begins. I was confused yesterday when I woke up and my eye wouldn’t open. It was actually crusted shut and I had to go to a mirror and use my hands to physically pry open it open. I felt like a scary character from a Neil Gaiman book. As I pried it open, a whole layer of crust fell off onto my face. Gross. The green pus, however, stayed put. Double gross.

I’ve worked with kids since I was about 12 years old and never once had pink eye. (Pink eye is viral conjunctivitis. It’s what kids commonly get from classmates and give to teachers all the time. Itchy bloodshot eyes caused by allergies to anything and everything. Happy to have always avoided it). I’ve apparently got bacterial conjunctivitis. I was hoping it was going to be itchy like a bug bite – annoying but able to ignore. I’m actually a little surprised how painful it is. I have itchy bloodshot eyes and a strong sensitivity to light like the viral conjunctivitis, and I’ve also got gross green pus pouring forth, an eye swollen mostly closed, blurry vision, and my eyes seriously crusted shut in the morning. Whine, whine, whine.

I prefer a cure to pain, so yesterday I went to the International Clinic (where you happily pay Western prices for a doctor who speaks English). I started antibiotics within an hour of the doctor’s visit and ideally I’ll be better in no time. (It’s still painful today, but it hasn’t been too long yet). Okay. I’m done whining and being disgusting now. Thanks for listening. Take care!

Six days to go before flying home for real. Had some fun touring around with Hanna, with Beal, and with friends Grace and Chris too. Saw some palaces and fountains, hit some shopping districts, saw live music at a b-boy competition finale concert, and some live jazz at an art cafe. (Still trying to find some live Soul music in Seoul for Suzan, but most seems to be jazz or hip hop or Asian ballads or who knows what). Been eating tons, walking around tons, and spending lots of time people watching which is fabulous fun. Even went to a Korean spa which included lots of naked time with older Korean women, scrubbing, facial masks, hot baths, hot hot saunas, and even phat bing soo (ice flake stuff with red bean and gummy fruits – yum!).

I’m honored to find that both of my fabulous hostesses have been very generous with their time and energy… Hanna even treated me to a great Engrish t-shirt that includes the words “think” and “honeypot” and Beal treated me to jujube tea and snacks at a traditional tea shop in Insadong. Today’s a national holiday which means last night we got gussied up and stayed out all night long. By gussied up, I mean to say I wore makeup and body shimmer and painted my toenails again and wore a crazy shirt and a giant necklace (that Brett helped me pick out from Mombasa). Korea’s very into girly, ruffly things so I tried to play the part for a night. Was highly entertaining all around. We went dancing at a packed club (it’s been way too long since dancing!) and then we did karaoke literally till the sun came up. Here in Korea it’s called “norebang” and you get private rooms, crazy decor, and free ice cream. Our room even had floor to ceiling windows facing the street so the crowds of revelers outside at 5am could watch our sweet moves and awesomest dance steps (while being oblivious to our awful singing as we belted out George Michael, Hedwig songs, and even some classic Mr. Big). A good time was had by all.

I am now down to my last week here… and still have lots of plans and a long list of things the girls think I should do. I’ve started to look for jobs online in the mornings, but it’s a bit depressing (and expected) to not find much yet. The search will intensify, but probably won’t start in earnest till next week when I’m home in Texas. For now, I’m enjoying Seoul, loving seeing friends, and enjoying time to think and process the transition. Hope everyone is well. Many more photos and observations to come later! Take care!

Observation: My safety isn’t constantly at risk. In Kenya in the village, Cindy and I had to be home in our house each night before dark (about 7pm). It just wasn’t safe to be out and we needed to be home behind locked doors and gates. Even behind locked doors, you never knew when thugs might come to your house at night with a gang of men with guns (like when they robbed David and his wife in their home, or Paul and Josaphat, or the multiple attempts at the Sisters’ house). You never knew if your matatu or bus would be the one stopped by thugs in the woods to rob everyone. In Korea, on the other hand, it feels like it’s always safe and tons of things are open late or even 24 hours: grocery stores, clothes vendors, cafes, bars, coffee shops, internet cafes, spas/saunas, etc. I can even leave my bag at my table in the cafe, leave for a few minutes to go to the restroom, and then return and see my bag and belongings safe and sound. Such a different reality here than the worries inherent in the rural life of much of Africa.

Brett IM’d the other day… we both left Africa within a week of each other and are now doing some little re-adjustments to life in developed worlds. He was asking about safety. “Isn’t it weird not worrying about getting robbed?” What a funny question, Brett, but actually YES. It actually IS very weird. At first I hadn’t really thought about safety as I’d walked around at night both by myself and with Beal and Hanna. I think I noticed it for the first time my second night in town when I was walking solo after dark. There were other people out. I had my purse (with sunglasses, money, ATM card, ID, camera, notepad, snack, etc). And I heard quick footsteps behind me. What did I do when I heard the quick footsteps behind me? I immediately clutched my bag and turned quickly to assess the danger. It was the perfect reaction – I’m relatively well traveled and know enough to follow my instinct and watch out for myself. Of course, in this situation, I just felt a little silly realizing no one was going to rob me… it was only some guy hurrying somewhere who couldn’t care less about me.

In Kenya, one of the unofficial national mottos is “pole pole” – slowly slowly. Or, “there’s no hurry in Africa.” The first time I remember hearing the footsteps of someone running on a city street was when Cindy and I were accosted by robbers in Kisumu. (It was that whole scary messy “I will kill you!” episode that reiterated the need to be home before dark and never walk with a purse or valuables). The second time was when a thief grabbed my digital camera through the window while I was taking a photo from a moving vehicle in Nairobi. He ran, while the camera was strapped to my wrist, and the camera lens broke off in his hand – bastard. Otherwise, no one really runs in normal day to day life. There is, indeed, no hurry in Kenya.

Here in Seoul, everyone’s in a hurry and people seem to run everywhere… they always seem to be in a rush to get to some unknown location. People here also carry more electronics than I could ever hope to own and they carry them openly without fear of getting them robbed by thugs. Everyone seems to carry both fancy mobile phones and iPods or other MP3 players. Many additionally carry digital cameras, portable Play Stations. and even 2″ mini TV/video things to stay entertained on the subway. Whoa.

Mini video player

Surrounded by technology in Seoul… mini movies and a mini Play Station. In Kenya, no one can afford gadgets like this, and if they could they’d likely be stolen. In Seattle, we just read library books when on public transit. Guess I need to get used to the idea that people aren’t going to attack me or steal from me. And guess I need to get used to the idea that in a developed country, I’m going to be the (materially) poorest one around my peer group for a while.

Observation: Everything’s fancier here… especially toilets. This is a photo of the very first toilet I used in Korea. I shouldn’t have to tell you how alarmed, shocked, and entertained I was to walk into a stall and see this facing me. I didn’t even know where to begin… I was just dying to go pee, and instead I was faced with a remote control keyboard for a toilet??

After peeing I could concentrate and I checked the pictures and puzzled over the foreign Korean characters. I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I’m an advenertous sort so I was willing to push the buttons and give it all a try. What did I find? A seat warmer – fancy. A bidet for my bum – interesting. A bidet for my… girly bits? Whoa. (Hard not to giggle out loud when trying that one… makes you feel kind of silly to be in a public bathroom giggling, but c’mon… you’d giggle too if it happened to you). In addition to all of that, you even get variable settings for water strength and water temperature. OMG… what a strange and foreign land I arrived in.

Let’s compare to my house toilet in Kenya. You already know my house didn’t have running water. We threw away toilet paper used during “short calls” that we’d later burn in the trash pile. For “long calls” we’d throw our paper in the toilet (aka hole in the ground) and “flush” it all down. How to flush when you don’t have running water? Easy… save the dirty water that you used for bathing during your bucket bath from the day before and keep it in a another bucket near the toilet. Use an empty butter container or a small pitcher to scoop water from the bucket and flush as much as needed so the house didn’t start to stink of sewage. At work we didn’t have an indoor toilet, just an outdoor pit latrine.

Things in Korea are fancy. Things were just a wee bit different in Kenya:

1. You’d have to search hard for public toilets in Western province. (Men just pee on the street, women hold it all day and get bladder infections).
2. Even if you found public toilets in Kenya, they weren’t likely to be clean.
3. You’d always have to remember to carry toilet paper in your pocket on a daily basis, and more if you were going to be gone for more than a few hours at a time.
4. Many toilets were drop toilets and didn’t have seats, this was ideal in my book. The toilets that had seats usually had pee all over them… yuck.
5. Most toilets didn’t have running water and were often outdoors, sometimes were smelly, and regularly had big spiders and other bugs cohabitating.

Korea seemingly has nice, clean, and fancy everything. Here are a few more nice toilet photos… enjoy!

At the coffee shop

At the restaraunt

A toilet so complex it requires an 8.5 x 11 set of instructions

Thanks to modern technology, this is no ordinary bidet. It appears as though this public toilet can actually give you a free enema!

The fancy toilets aren’t everywhere, but they’re pretty common. Even normal apartments like Hanna’s have fancy toilets in the units.

Bum parts, girly parts, and a fan to dry you off afterwards

Observation: It smells good walking down the street! The roads are paved, not manure covered earth. There are no chickens, cows, goats, or donkeys fighting for space in the street. There are no matatus spewing black exhaust, but instead have recent model Hyundais or Daewoos with modern emissions standards. Lots of cafes of every flavor… so far we’ve grilled at our table, stir fried at our table, made soup at our table, eaten Indian food, Mexican food, Thai food, Middle Eastern food, sushi with no wasabi, Dunkin Donuts, and Baskin Robbins. Wild range of choices that all lead to yummy scents drifting out from cafes and down alleyways. (And if you’re into food that doesn’t smell all so great, there’s all of the Spam, kimchee, and dried squid you could ever want!)

Observation: Modern conveniences make us a little lazy. In Kenya, you take the stairs… usually rather dirty since they’re common space and not belonging to one specific business but instead shared by the many small businesses crammed into a single building. Some stairs in Kenya sometimes even smell unfortunately like pee (guess that’s no different than parking garage staircases in downtown Austin). In Korea, there are way giant businesses (in addition to smaller ones), and there are escalators everywhere and no public pee scent to be found! Koreans still manage to be generally thin, so I guess it’s okay to be a bit lazy…

Observation: English is rarely used! Unlike Kenya, a former British colony that now has both Swahili and English as official languages, Korea just uses Korean most everywhere. Very few things are labeled in English, very few subway or bus maps have English, very few people speak English. For an independent traveler who’s used to just grabbing a map and going out to explore, it can slow you down a little bit but is still quite do-able if you’re up for the adventure.

Observation: It’s expensive here! People told me “it’s super cheap to eat in Seoul!” but I find it to have pretty standard prices for a developed country. Most dinners we eat are way out of my normal travel budget… they end up about 7,000-13,000 won (about $7-13) without drink or dessert. And imported things are (understandably) even more. I was excited to see tortilla chips in the store and thought I’d make a quick batch of mango salsa for a healthy snack. I hit the produce aisle and am stopped dead in my tracks. The mangos at Home Plus near Beal are plastic wrapped and cost $4.50 US each! Plastic wrap? Geez. In the village in Kenya, we’d just buy our mangos on Fridays at the market from old mamas who set up shop on the ground directly on the dirt road. For smaller mangos, you could get maybe 30-35 for $1. The normal sized ones, like the ones in the grocery store in Seoul, were usually 10 Ksh for 3, so for $1 you could buy about 21. To buy the same 21 mangos here would cost about $94 US! Yikes! So much for mango salsa… I wasn’t about to spend $4.50 on just one mango. Couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Observation: While meat on a stick seems to be universal street food, it’s still somehow different. In Kenya, nyama choma (BBQ beef on a stick) costs about Ksh 10 (or $0.15) and you add salt and spicy pili pili sauce if you want any. In Korea, the meat on a stick (chicken) costs $1 each and they doctor it up all crazy like without a second thought. My first meat on a stick here included a marinade, followed by brushing on red sauce of some kind, followed by an orange powder sprinkled liberally across the top, followed by a while squeeze sauce (mayo? horseradish?), followed by a yellow/orange sauce (?). They then wrap it in tinfoil for you to take with you, mashing all of the sauces together so they’re mingled and unidentifiable. It was very different than the simple yet delicious nyama choma, but still good. (Yes, I am a former vegetarian of about 15 years publicly calling meat simple yet delicious).

My friend Martha wrote today and asked: “How’s Korea? Had any revelations about Africa? Any drunk Africa tattoos?” So glad you asked, Marth!

Korea’s pretty fun. It’s been a good couple of days so far and we already have a routine. Beal works from 1:30-8:30pm, so that means we meet up for dinner around 9-9:30pm. We go do something around midnight. Go to sleep around 4am. Wake up around 11am or noon. Kind of a bizarre schedule right now, but it works so we’ll see. Hanna works normal hours, so I often get to see Hanna after work before Beal. This leaves me a little afternoon window of free time to relax on my own. Sometimes that means using the wireless internet in the apartment and catching up on web stuff (so great!). Or it means doing Beal’s laundry and dishes that have piled up (she’s got a washing machine… wohoo!!). Or it means walking around the neighborhood willing people to smile at me, testing free samples of who knows what in the grocery store, and giggling in the public toilets.

Korea is actually a decent place for transition… seems it was a good impulse decision on my part. Everything here is super modern, big city, Westernized… much like NYC. There are over 10 million people (18 million if you include suburbs), good subway system, lots of street vendors, and it’s a city that never sleep. But it’s also Korean so there are distinct cultural differences from either the US or Kenya or other parts of Africa. It’s fun to be with Beal (white American) and Hanna (Korean American) who’ve been learning the local Korean culture (and Hanna even knows the language!). We can spend hours comparing Kenya and Korea and it’s not a one sided story. Most everyone at home is currently steeped in the US culture (whatever that is) and I doubt many people will want to sit around till 4am nightly chatting about crazy local foods, the problem with dating eldest sons, and the local views towards disabled (except maybe Maggie… thank God for fellow travelers!). The rest of you can happily correct me if I’m wrong (as though I’d expect anything less)… as I’ll happily chat till 4am with anyone willing!

As for tattoos… I only have one and it’s about 12 years old. No new ones to mention, though “mzungu” does seem like a fun idea!

As for revelations… I’ve actually had tons. I haven’t gotten around to writing many down yet, but I’ll post a few today, and will continue to post more in the coming days. Cheers to enjoying life after Africa in Korea! And thanks for writing Marth… it’s always a special treat to get mail from you!!

My first night in Seoul… looking a bit haggard after my 27 hour journey with no sleep!

Observation: Greetings. Beal was excited to see me, and Hanna was excited to see me, but I realized no one else in Korea cares. I walked to the grocery store the other day while Beal was at work and half way there it struck me really hard that no one was speaking to me. Not one single person would even meet my eye contact, much less say hello on the street or stop to shake my hands. Some would even quickly avert their eyes and look down. Later I met a bunch of Beal’s coworkers at dinner and upon introduction I reached out to shake their hand… and was left hanging. I quickly tucked my hand into my pocket and sat down to pretend like I was still cool. I know it’s no different from the US where we all ignore everyone, but this is quite unlike Kenya – a country where everyone greets you on a daily basis, neighbors and strangers alike, some with a verbal greeting and others with both verbal greetings and a handshake too. Even disabled one year old babies at our centre in the village knew to stick out their arm to shake hands. While the greetings can get old on occasion in Kenya, and while the handshaking can be dirty and snotty fingers, I still learned to love the greeting process.

Note: Don’t be alarmed if I get home and try to shake your hand. Just spin me in a little circle, give me a hug or a kiss, and write it off as a quirk that’ll fade with time…

Observation: Water’s everywhere! After coming from a year in the village where I had no running water, it’s odd to be in a place with washing machines, hot showers, kitchen sinks, etc. And even when traveling around Africa where there might be running water from pumps, tanks, or city water, there was virtually nowhere that had any drinking water (much less safe, clean, filtered drinking water). I was shocked in Seoul to see clean drinking water given out everywhere here for FREE! Grocery stores even have free dispensers with little paper cups and public places have water fountains… how novel! Life just got easier!

Question: What do you notice different about my feet?
Answer 1: Piece of my left sandal is missing since a RAT ate through the leather the other morning before leaving Kenya. These are the only shoes I have, so it’s kind of sad to see my Wolkys eaten, but you just have to chalk it up to part of the adventure.
Answer 2: I’ve got my toenails painted in glitter and with butterfly stickers.

Observation: In Korea, appearances mean a lot and fashion is important. Men wear suits and women wear funky fashion, super short miniskirts, super high heels, makeup, etc. There’s not much fashion to be found in Kenya, and much of the clothes in villages comes from the second hand clothes market shipped from US or European Value Village/Goodwill type stores. And people certainly don’t spend much money on toenail polish, glitter, nail stickers, and nail stencils.

In Korea, on the other hand, nails are all kinds of hip and Hanna does up her nails in a French manicure with glitter and stickers.

Note: My apologies for the many blurry photos from today and to come. I find that using a flash really draws the attention of the crowd, and as a conscientious traveler, I don’t want to use my flash and be too blatant taking pics in a new place right at the beginning. So to blend in just a little bit better, and try not to disrupt the areas I’ve visited, I’ve avoided the flash for many casual shots and am going to post more blurry shots to come. Enjoy!

Today is Day One on the start of my new journey… a journey that begins in Seoul but is more accurately a journey of navigating life after Africa. My wise, world traveler friend Maggie sent a long, heartfelt email this week with her musings on life after she returned from her round the world trip a few years ago – www.y2k2go.com. She was also gone for a year and a half and, like myself, wasn’t ready to go home when the trip was finished. “Coming home is easy,” Maggie wrote. “What I’m trying to say is that it’s HARD to be home.”

I think I know what she means and I suspect I’ll be navigating life a bit differently for a long while to come. Expect belated photos and posts to show up here on the site for a good while, and expect to see some musings slipped in between the cracks as well. I think most of it will be lived out inside my head as that’s the way things like this usually go for me, but I might try to get some of it down in writing as well… we’ll see what time permits and see where life takes me.

For now, I’ll leave you with a little passage from Beryl Markem that really spoke to me. She was born and raised in Kenya, worked there as a horse trainer and bush pilot as an adult, and eventually moved to Europe later in life. This is a passage about when she left Kenya from her book “West With the Night.”

I knew that while Africa would be there for ever, it would not ever be there quite as I remembered it.

Africa is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change, but is a land of moods and its moods are numberless. It is not fickle, but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradled not only cities, but civilizations – and seen them die, and seen new ones born again – Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm, or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom.

Today Africa may seem to be that ever-promised land, almost achieved; but tomorrow it may be a dark land again, drawn into itself, contemptuous and impatient with the futility of eager men who have scrambled over it since the experiment of Eden. In the family of continents, Africa is the silent, the brooding sister, courted for centuries by knight-errant empires – rejecting them one by one and severally, because she is too sage and a little bored with the importunity of it all.

All nations lay claim to Africa, but none has wholly possessed her yet. In time she will be taken, yielding neither to Nazi nor to Fascist conquest, but to integrity equal to her own and to wisdom capable of understanding her wisdom and of discerning between wealth and fulfillment. Africa is less a wilderness than a repository of primary and fundamental values, and less a barbaric land than an unfamiliar voice. Barbarism, however bright, its trappings, is still alien to her heart.

There was no sign that Africa was aware that we were leaving, or cared. All things return to her – even such trivial things.

~ Beryl Markham, 1942

I’m in Qatar right now on a layover between Nairobi and Seoul. Yep. It’s Sunday, I’m officially out of Africa, and it’s a sad, sad day. Not as sad as driving away from the village in December with all of our bags… Cindy and I were a great pair and I think we did impressively well with village life, an intense work environment, and creating a partnership as coworkers, roommates, and friends. And getting on the plane today wasn’t as sad as leaving Lamu and leaving Susie earlier in the week. Susie and I were also a great dynamic duo, finding our groove and having a great time full of adventures. Leaving Lamu on Friday felt like The End with me gliding away on a dhow while Susie and Hasan waved goodbye from the island’s main dock.

Flying out today was just the next mechanical step in the leaving process. Anonymous cab ride to the airport. No one waving goodbye. No hugs. No tears. Just a very large man in the seat next to me taking up all of his space and some of mine. However, since it was time to go I suppose Qatar is not so bad a place to be on the way out. In fact, it’s pretty great so far as layovers go… gotta love free internet kiosks in airports! It’s the fasted internet I’ve used in eons, and it’s even free! Too wild. I’m sad to begin the journey home, but still looking forward to seeing Beal and Hanna in Seoul, and looking forward to meeting my nephew Gus very soon! Much love to everyone!