July 18: More In Transit

Airport in Chicago. I get my oatmeal breakfast and don't realize I have to exit security and be re-screened. I dash over to the Terminal 5 International departures... there are about 150 people milling around with no apparent order. Someone near me asks, "Is this the right place for international departures?" and is told, "Yes, it was very slow earlier so we didn't set out the queue ropes." I actually chuckle out loud and think, this is good preparation for what I've heard about the so-called organization in Africa.

Swiss Air Flight to Zurich. Swiss Air is seriously better. The seats, the service, the food (free), the design of the tray tables, the bathroom sinks, the little personal TV remotes rather than touch-screens that just make you end up punching your neighbor's seat. My very beautiful seat mate, a young woman reading Hebrew but who speaks English to the steward, may be lovely to look at - but she does not believe in deodorant.

The Zurich airport at 6:25 AM is a amazing. Silent. Clean. Squared Away:

Zurich. I lost my Elemental water bottle on the plane. It's just past midnight at home but I am wide awake. I'm waiting for Meggie to arrive. The night before I travel anywhere, I distract the gods by asking John with a smile, "I wonder what I forgot to pack?" So far, over the Atlantic? I've forgotten:

• Pocket knife
• Prescription nasal spray for my post-nasal-drip issues that happen, from time to time
• To use the State Department's registry program to tell them where I'll be (if I need to be retrieved)

July 18: In Transit

Perfect morning to fly out of Portland; the clouds are a thin soup when the plane gets above them, and the hills leading to Mount Hood are oyster crackers floating in it. Rob at work sent me a Twain quote yesterday:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

And flight is the crusher of limited perspective. It's cloudy in Portland but not up here. 

I'm overwhelmed with expectations and some of the intellectually-true but not-yet-experienced comments keep repeating in my head. 

"This is going to change your life."

Sure it will. But I don't yet know how. I know I'll come away with appreciation for the sheer lucky circumstances of my birth. (It doesn't get better for a woman to be born now, be born white, be born as a US Citizen, be born to parents who wanted you and had way beyond basic means to care for you.) I know I'll come away with guilt for those very same things. I suspect I'll come away overwhelmed by the goodness and maybe the selfishness to be found in those with few material possessions - and how that shrinks the world right down to being not all that different, wherever you are.

I know I'll be in awe of seeing it with my own eyes - the (non) infrastructure, the roads, villages, the sea of skin color not my own, the light, sounds, stillness, animals, food (oh, WHAT will the food be like?!). But I can know all of that inside this overactive mind, inside this confident intellect... but I don't know any of it yet in my spirit, in my calm but eager inner self. Instead, I'm counting the minutes til we land in Chicago!

But there is this clear vision this morning - my spiritual self. Centered, relaxed, open to the experience. And beyond the experiences - beyond the things I've listed that my mind says it knows - is what will happen because of it. 

That's where my mind falters and my spirit shrugs unaffectedly. She smiles more. 

I ask, will we come away with a path of wanting to adopt a child from Tanzania? Will we come away even more of a clean freak? Will we come away knowing, planning, having a best Next Right Step revealed? My mind is spinning but my spirit doesn't know - and doesn't need to know. Content to wait in mystery.

P.S. Why Zurich?

In the post below, I forgot to mention... why a layover in Zurich? Why not Paris or Barcelona or Casablanca or Amsterdam or Munich? Because Zurich was the only city in Europe - perhaps due to a webpage fluke that day - that allowed me to enjoy a layover with no additional cost to the flight price. It was the same cost to fly straight home from Dar as it was to add 48 hours in C.H., so I took the opportunity to see Zurich, decompress, and booked a cheap hotel.

And, oh my, that cheap hotel felt like absolute luxury! It included a breakfast with APPLES and KIWIS! (Fruit for the last couple weeks was bananas-only twice a day, and a few slices of pineapple once a week.) An apple was absolute heaven.

Wherever you go, there you are.

I contemplated calling this introductory Tanzania entry one of the following:

• This Trip Brought to You by Bonine!
• Meggie & Emily's 15 Night Sleepover
• Big! Big, big, big. But, not so very big.
• Seekers

But, I went with the old standby above. (And all the others will get explained.) Because while the trip was life changing, isn't everything life changing? Even the things we DON'T do change us (maybe they do especially). The little events and the big decisions have to change us, because if we're not changing, we're dead or dying. (Or I would be. And this is my blog, and my story.)

So now that we're home safe, sound and without any permanent physical scars, I'm breaking my promise to just re-type the journal entries as they were written, day by day, in Tanzania. It quickly turned out that I'd have time to capture either the What (happened) or the How (I reacted). So I began writing only the How, and thus I'll have to re-create the What for each entry that is to come.

Before the telling begins, I am writing these reflective words in Zurich, a brief lull between the third world and my everyday world. I built in about 48 hours worth of a layover here, knowing I'd land at 8:30 PM and have to be back at my desk by 8 AM the next morning. This is an example of Past Me outsmarting Future Me; I can't go to work - I'm in Zurich! I could have flown home and taken 48 hours for re-entry, but Past Me knows Future Me better than that. I'm going to my desk as soon as I can, because that's how I am. So now, in Zurich, I have some solo time to absorb and process, and at the end of 19 days away from regular life, there's been one thing conspicuously absent the whole time: rushing.

There has not been a single thing I've had to hurry up for (excepting the O'Hare Airport on the way overseas, International Terminal 5 be damned). Since then, every meal has been leisurely, every line accepted as long. The work we did in the village was done at a virtual turtle's pace by American standards - but to be fair, we would complete what we set out to start; it just wasn't ever measured by a clock. 

After dinner each night, reading or conversation came to end when it felt right, and the only frustration - in a Dar es Salaam traffic jam, at wi fi that was down the only day I went into town, in the customs line here in Zurich - was mine. There was no deadline in any of those cases - my little nurtured pieces of frustration were merely internalized Americanness, and not based on any need to get to any place, or to any person, at any certain time. There were no consequences for moving slowly, so slowly was how we moved. 

This is not to say there was no stress. Far from it!

As a group of mzungu in East Africa, known by sight for having American dollars and very weak stomachs, there was plenty of stress each day. But stress without urgency is a new experience for this list-maker, task-killer, time-effiency lover. Stress without urgency can be picked up carefully, examined from all sides, and handled thoughtfully until a full understanding emerges - and the stress is diffused. 

I know when I am back at my desk, within a few hours of firing up the computer, the pressures of busy and important men, and the pace of a hungry start-up company, will bring stress plus urgency back, waterfalling over me. So what can I take away from this? For that, stay tuned. For now, stay and hear the story. 

And remember that wherever you go, there you are. I expected to be knocked over the head with brand new thoughts, new realizations, new goals and entirely new philosophies. Instead, I discovered that this was not an experience I can box up with a pretty ribbon, and leave outside of my "normal" life. Nope. Instead, it contains threads and threads that are clearly connected to ideas I've had before, thoughts I've been mulling over, goals I've missed terribly and ones I still strive for. I didn't turn into a new person for 19 days (can you believe it!?). I was just this same person but in a new place, and the journey before it led me precisely to it, and already - just 15 hours out of Africa - it is making perfect sense that it came at this exact moment in my life. I forgot another of my personal mantras: the path is only linear in the rear view. 

Or, put another way: Leap. The net will appear.

Home.

We're home! We're safe! I was the only person in our volunteer group to get sick - and boy, did I have 8 hours of hell followed by 1.5 days of recovery - but beyond that and a few minor physical complaints, we survived and got what we came for... a dose of reality, an experience of a lifetime, and a thread in the bond of our friendship that I think we'll be in awe of as the years roll on.

The travel blog will begin here this weekend; thanks for your patience so I can tell the tale well, and right - and thanks for tuning in.

Tuonane baadaye

That means 'see you later' in Swahili - also called Kishwahili. Boy, are my ears in for a treat!

With that, beloved readers, I will see you later!

Internet access will be spotty as all get-out in Tanzania; we've identified maybe 2 or 3 times it will be possible to jump online. So, it's unlikely I'll post here - but you never know.

Plan on when I return, August 6 to the U.S. and really part of this world again on August 7, to look for daily entries. They'll be in chronological order, as-written while in-country.

So between now and then: Be well, and do good work.

34 hours til wheels up

The countdown is really on. Having planned this trip when I had a different job, the timing then made sense. At a new job? It's frantic - to say the least. There are about a hundred things to do between now and 4 AM tomorrow morn

But, merrily we roll along, and a few decisions made over the packing process in the last few days:

• I need to take my lucky lighter from Sean; college graduation gift that he got in Japan.
• It was time to purchase an extra large Pack Towel and not try to take a real towel.
• I have three courses of antibiotics - 1 penicillin and 2 cipro - which feels uncomfortable to be in possession of.
• How many pairs of underwear? 4 quick-dry backpacking kind. 3 extra cotton kind.
• The shoe dilemma ends with me wearing my Danner hiking boots on the plane, and packing my clogs and beat-up sneakers.
• Yes, I am bringing mascara. Sue me.

Panhandlin'

Sunny weekday afternoon, I've got my headphones in, walking with purpose along a busy sidewalk in the middle of proper downtown Portland. A small gaggle of young, homeless men sit on the sidewalk, nearly on the curb and well out of the officeworkers' way, with a couple cardboard signs in front of them, their black markers out to improve witty panhandling sayings they'll use on tourists all weekend.

One is standing over the rest, observing, and he looks up to see me coming. I set my jaw and keep walking, as he says, "Miss, do you happen to have -" and then he stops. Before I've passed him. He looks down, and now I am passing him by, totally ignoring him, my usual approach.

As I move past him, he says with a genuine shrug, "You know what, never mind. I want you to have a nice day!" It's not aggressive, it's nice and sounds totally natural; he may even be saying it to his buddies, rather than to me.

I don't keep my tunes turned up very loud when I'm walking; I want to hear buses and sirens and possible emergencies that might need my help, so I start to laugh, and turn around, but am still walking. I catch his eye and smile and chuckle. I look forward again and keep walking, and hear him say, "Yeah! There it is! A great smile!"

Midpoint

Here we are, just past the midpoint of the year. How are your resolutions going? Oh, I'm sorry - is that you, cackling with laughter? To be fair, we ARE closer to making new 2014 resolutions than we are to maintaining 2013 resolutions.

But at this halfway point in a year where I chose grounding as the word to guide me, I'm reflecting on what I've done this year - you know, instead of staying grounded.

• I switched jobs, from the federal government to start-up high-tech software - and immediately had to ask for time off for a 4-day trip and then a 20-day trip later in the year.
• I prepared to go on said 20-day service trip (including buying insanely long airfare (27 hours +) and raised funds from friends and family for the volunteer portion) to a hemisphere I've never been to, a continent I've never been to, where a language I have not really even heard is spoken, where I'll clearly be a differently-skin-toned foreigner visible to all, and in a truly developing country (which I have never been to).
• I chopped all my hair off. 
• I went backpacking (i.e., overnight into the woods with no outhouse or car nearby in case of emergency) for the first time ever.*
• I bought a fancy bike and started riding in the city, including commuting to work and riding home at 1 in the morning (hands-down best time to ride, it turns out!). 
• Then I rode in Portland's famous World Naked Bike Ride and was a topless (but helmeted) and whooping rider with 8,000 new naked friends at 10 PM on a seven-mile route through Portland where literally thousands of clothed people stood along the route and saw me.
• I quit Facebook, and then rejoined it to help with fundraising... and I (say) I'm committed to quitting it for good when the trip is done, photos are posted, and thank you's are completed.

I'll be going to Zurich for the first time too - only my second country in Europe - and I'll be staying in my own home for all of Thanksgiving and all of Christmas, which is (amazingly) also a first since leaving home at 18! 

But while none of this is outwardly grounding, or appears to be, I'm looking back at how I intended to use the word grounding - and all of these actions are right in line. 

I was (am) aiming to be more open, more connected, more in-awe of life and less concerned with plans, shoulds, perfection, coordinating, creating orderliness and having control. This has been, hands down, the most out-of-control six months I've had in years - but it's a self-propelled bit of disarray. I am choosing it, every day. 

I find myself pushed to a different kind of limit so far this year, and just beyond that limit, I sense this loving circle, a caring safety net, that's going to envelop me as I get to the place I want to be. I'm a bit off balance right now - going a little fast, a little hard, doing a little too much... but it feels less like bad habits, as it has in the past, and more like part of a larger plan that ends with a better understanding of what grounded really means for me - and how I'm going to do the work to stay there, where it - and I - evolve rather than stay static, or cling to a thousand shoulds.

*Stay tuned for the review of this new experience!

Taking the Advice

I've been trying to figure out the best way to wear a bike helmet and not be annoyed about sweaty, matted, swinging-into-the-eyes hair. I looked at bike helmets with a ponytail cut-out. I looked at bike helmet airbags that you wear around your neck like a scarf, and they sense unusual/extreme motion like a car's airbag (or your MacBook's internal drive-saving-device) and pop out when needed. I read Bike Portland's advice for new riders forum, their women's forum, and various cycling fashion forums.

And in the end, I just took the overriding advice, and went for what people kept saying will work every single time, no rider excepted, for beating helmet hair, helmet sweat and helmet crankiness:

That said, there were honestly more reasons, bigger ones, that I decided to go for The Chop. But with each passing day (it's been a week now!) I love it more, and on the warm bike ride to work this morning, I was rewarded with a perfect coif at 8 AM and no need to carry brush/gel/pins/elastic bands. No matter how cliche it is, this is liberation.