Half a Year Away

A Christmas Miracle

2010-11-30T11:32:00.009-05:00

Hey Everyone,

It’s hard to believe, but we’ve already been back half as long as we were away. How is that possible? Three weeks in Costa Rica felt like three years, but three months at home feels like three days. And the well-worn track of routine is only picking up speed as the holidays approach.

There’s lots I plan to write about our return home; the challenges of re-entry, the complete disaster zone our renter turned our house into, things we learned, ways we’ve changed. But those stories will have to wait a bit longer. At the moment, I am hard at work writing the whole adventure as a book, even have a world-class agent in NYC excited to help me sell it. Though I’m working full time, chauffeuring the kids, dealing with life back on the gerbil wheel...I’m writing when I have time, scribbling on napkins when necessary. Quite honestly, I have not been this excited about a writing project since I lived in LA back in the late 80s. Which feels pretty good, I must say.

So why am I breaking my long silence now?

I’m writing today with a Christmas wish. If you’ve followed this blog, you’ll remember the orphanage we visited in Banbassa, India. For me, the Strong Farm Agricultural Mission (or The Farm, for short) was the most transformational place we visited. The love these 100 orphan children shared with me and my family, the smiles on their faces, the joy in their eyes has helped us all redefine the concept of “happy” in our own lives and continues to tie us to the Farm even when we’re 13,000 miles away.

Anyway, I got a letter from Clifton Shipway recently. Clifton is the 25-year-old Farm director and his letter was not good news. His mother Maxine passed away shortly after we left, but this loss was made all the more difficult by a series of lesser losses that followed. A new Farm car was stolen in Delhi along with a laptop, a passport and a significant amount of cash. Then Clifton was in a taxi crash; shaken but OK. And a critically ill Farm boy needed immediate medical attention. And torrential flooding hit the area, damaging stored winter clothes and grain supplies. As they say: when it rains it pours.

Clifton’s note was not a complaint or a pity letter. But he was seeking assistance. With Christmas coming up, with 100 orphans on hand, with supplies running low, he was looking for a Christmas miracle of his own.

This holiday, Traca, Logan, Jackson and I will be setting aside a portion of our gift allowance and sending it to our friends at The Farm. It was a unanimous decision and one that feels much more meaningful to all of us than another present under our own tree.

But I’m wondering…

If you were moved by this blog...if you felt either inspired or entertained...perhaps you’ll consider including The Farm in your holiday giving as well? All money goes directly to the kids; having been there, I can say this with complete and total confidence. What’s more, any donation, whether large or small, goes a long way in that part of the world. So every little bit counts.

One thing I did learn after six months volunteering our way around the world: You don’t have to do anything big to make a difference. You don’t even have to leave home. The desire to reach out and touch someone’s life is the only requirement. What better time than Christmas to put this simple concept into practice?

So if you’re looking for a way to increase the amount of joy on Earth this holiday season, I can think of 100 smiles that will shine a little brighter with your help. Thanks for considering this and please call me or respond here with any questions. You can also click here for some more pictures and inspiration from the Farm website as well as to make a donation.

With love and hope for little more joy,

John
Gorham, ME
cell: 207.232.2985
home: 207.839.8743
work: 207.774.0051 x114

The End of The Road

2010-08-10T12:49:00.008-04:00

For those of you still with us...this will be my final entry on this blog before returning home. With time running out on this adventure, I’m finding my desire to live each moment far outweighs my desire to write about it. At least for now. As a result, I’m falling further and further behind on the story with a precious few days left to wrap things up. And while it’s a little like driving all the way across the country only to be left ticketless in the Disneyland parking lot…there will be time enough for stories in the days to come. So. To the wrap up.

Our time in Ladakh was incredible. For eight days we lived above 12,000 feet, in the shadow of the Himalayas, in air so thin simple tasks left us gasping. “I was out of breath eating breakfast,” Jackson said one morning.

Ladakh is the Northern most region of India, part of Jammu and Kashmir but not far from the Tibetan border. Cut off as it is from the rest of the country by the tallest mountains on Earth, Ladakh feels completely unlike the insane whirl of Mother India to the South. In fact, it’s known as “Little Tibet” with people, culture, language and religion all drawn from the former Tibetan nation to the North.

Our purpose was to visit the tiny village of Stok, home of Khen Rinpoche Lobzang Tsetan; a Buddhist monk and a friend of the family. Khen Rinpoche started a school in Stok and we were going to help out. At least that was the plan as we drove from Rishikesh back to Delhi for our 55 minute flight to Ladakh’s capital city of Leh.

As luck or the Buddha would have it, we ran into our favorite monk at the Delhi airport. He had a flight 15 minutes before ours and he was just sitting in the terminal at two in the morning when we arrived. With his deep red robes, his bald head and his near constant smile, he was kind of hard to miss.

He’s one of the few people I’ve ever known who is never flustered. He is not impatient, angry, annoyed, judgmental, worried, scared or—near as I can tell—unhappy. He travels most of the year, raising money for his school and other projects near to him and I asked him once if—at 74—he liked this rootless life. “No choice,” he said in his deep gravely voice, big smile on his face. “Best to like.”

When I first met Khen Rinpoche a few years ago in Maine, I thought he was just your typical monk. True, he was sweet, amazingly centered, easy to joke with…but a lot of monks are this way, aren’t they? In Ladakh, you see monks everywhere, deep red beacons on the otherwise dry and barren landscape. But as I have come to discover, Khen Rinpoche is no more a typical monk than the Pope is a typical priest. In fact (and please forgive the crude basketball analogy), if there were an All Star team for Tibetan Buddhism, Khen Rinpoche would be on it. The Dalai Lama would be the captain, of course, but Khen Rinpoche might just make the starting five. He’d definitely be on the second string.

Which is how we got invited to meet His Holiness in the first place.

When we were back in Thailand, I checked the Dalai Lama’s website to see if he might be in India. Turns out, he was speaking four hours North of Stok in the tiny town of Disket around the time we were planning to be in the area. Checking in with Khen Rinpoche on Facebook (Ah, such a modern world we live in!), I asked if he was planning to attend. “Yes. I am going,” he wrote back. “Would you like to come with me?” Which was not a difficult invitation to accept.

But getting there is the trick. The road from Stok to Disket in the Nubra Valley is unique, to say the least. As the crow flies, it’s an easy 20 minute flight. But as the Jeep crawls and bounces and inches its way along, it can be six hours of white-knuckle, bone-jarring, high-altitude driving that will test even the strongest nerves and the strongest stomachs. It’s mostly a one-lane road with occasional pull outs to allow huge diesel trucks to squeeze past. No guard rails. Just sheer cliffs falling to certain death below and rising into jagged, snow capped mountains above.

Traca had the hardest time with this, literally reciting a safety mantra in the back seat for much of the trip. And with good reason. As we made our way up, the burned out shells of many contract carriages lay forgotten on the rocks below. Massive potholes waited at the highest altitudes. Rock slides were a constant threat. The road is only open four months of the year because, as I said, this road is unique. The sign at the summit says it all: The World’s highest passable road. 18,380 feet.

Altitude is a new focus for us since arriving in Ladakh. Stok sits at 12,000 feet and anything over 10,000 is capable of producing AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) if you don’t take sufficient time to acclimatize. The AMS handbook recommends you spend at least 36 hours basically laying around and growing more red blood cells. If you don’t heed this warning and you over exert yourself straight out of the Leh gate, you may experience severe head aches, dizziness, swelling of the brain and/or death. Which makes 36 hours of rest seem preferable.

But when you drive straight to 18,380 feet in three hours, there’s no time to adjust. As I stepped from the car for the obligatory pictures at the top of the world, I felt winded and delirious. My head was pounding. My lungs and eyes hurt. Honestly, I felt like lying down in the snow and going to sleep. Forever. Luckily, I made it back to the car and rolled down 8,000 or so feet to Disket in the Nubra Valley.

As for the Dalai Lama, he was holding three days of talks in one of the most remote corners of the planet.

The first talk took place in a wide stone valley, below and between Disket Monetary and a new 150 foot golden Buddha statue, surrounded by snowcapped mountains and packed with local villagers dressed in traditional (and sweltering) Tibetan costumes.

Still at 10,000 feet, the sun was intense and the wind non existent. But the crowd didn’t care. Thousands upon thousands of devout Buddhists arrived hours early and sat a hundred yards away to spend time with their beloved leader. We, on the other hand, we guided to the extreme front of the festivities and seated a mere 20 feet from the podium.

And this, my friends is where this journey will end for now. We are currently in Salema, Portugal, ten years after we last lived here, meeting old friends, enjoying the beyond-beautiful ocean, savoring the sun and every minute of our journey that remains. We walk through fields of fennel and rosemary, down paths lined with fig and almond trees, searching out empty beaches, sleeping late, eating fresh local food, and attempting to process the road we have been on. From Costa Rica, to New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Laos, India and at last Portugal, we will soon be back where we started, 26,000 miles to return to the same spot. But not really. I can not process all that has happened, for Traca and me, for Logan and Jackson, any more than I can believe the time has past so quickly. But here we are. And while I remain on this side of the Atlantic, with my family still intact, however temporarily, I intend to soak it all in while I still can.

I have loved sharing this journey with all of you and I have loved hearing your comments as we have gone along. Gator Bill and Meredith, I will give you special mention as our most consistent and treasured blog responders. Thank you for the heart felt words, the encouragement and the unexpected laughter. My sincere hope is that the journey will not end when we touch down in Boston but that the spirit that has guided us safely on this meandering path will continue to infuse our days with adventure and passion. If it can vicariously offer the same to you, I will be all the happier.

Thanks for traveling with us and see many of you Stateside soon.

This is only a test...

2010-07-30T21:52:00.003-04:00

We interrupt this blog to simply say: We’re still here.

At the moment, we’re back in Delhi after an incredible 8 days in Ladakh, the northern most part of India. Scarce internet, busy schedules and a lack of oxygen made blogging difficult but I’ll try to catch you up in the next week. We have some serious relaxation coming up.

We spend one day amid the horns and heat and crushing humanity that is India’s capital city…then we’re off to Portugal for a week of nothing much. As we did when Logan was seven and Jackson was five—ten years ago!—we’ll be living in a tiny Algarve fishing village, simply chilling on the beach, playing in the surf, catching polvos (octopus) in the morning and relaxing with some vinho verde (green wine) in the afternoon.

So much to write about, so little time. I’d love to tell you all about our meeting with the Dalai Lama, our camel ride through the Nubra desert (with our friend Brian), our drive along the highest passable road on Earth…but it’s late and I’m bushed.

For now…
To all those who sent curious e-mails essentially saying: Are you still alive?
We are.
With more of the story to follow.

The Beauty and The Reward

2010-07-20T04:46:00.010-04:00

In the past five months, we’ve packed up and moved on many times. But leaving The Farm was the hardest good-bye of them all. “You will cry, Uncle,” many of the Older Girls said before our departure date and I suspected they were probably right. It had only been three weeks for Jackson and me but I knew these kids would not be letting go of our hands or our hearts easily.

To wrap things up, Jackson and I threw a couple of parties. For the Small Boys we decided on a “Lord of The Rings” movie night. (LOTR was their choice.) I really wanted to take them all to an actual theatre; they’d never been and that nearly qualifies as child cruelty in my book. Ironically, they’d seen movie theatres only in movies but they didn’t really grasp the scope of the experience. “Picture a 60 foot screen,” I said. “As large as that tree. With speakers all round. And the action so big and loud you feel like you’re really there.” The Small Boys were spell bound by this description. “So nice, it sounds,” Clifford said. But it was not to be. The closest proper theatre that did not feature X-rated films was over three hours away—so their cramped TV room would have to do.

As far as viewing experiences go, it was not ideal. The ceiling fans drowned out most of the softer audio, the room was hot, we had to ration popcorn and soda when many of the Older Boys turned up…but none of that mattered at all. The Small Boys loved it like Christmas morning and talked about it for days. Amazing what five dollars of snacks and four hours of time can be worth.

For the girls, we went back and forth. Initially, Jackson wanted to take them for an overnight in the jungle. She even offered to use most of her birthday money to cater the adventure. “They work hard everyday,” she said. “They deserve a night off.” But when heavy rains turned the jungle trail to mud and made the river all but impassable, we needed a Plan B.

So one evening, I was sitting in the courtyard, talking with the Older Girls when I found three wrapped candies in my pocket. The kids call them “sweeties”—not to be confused with the man-eating monkey in Costa Rica by the same name. A bag of 120 sweeties sells for one dollar in Katima so we bought a bag to hand out. (Call me crazy but the opportunity to create a moment of pure delight by slipping one of these less-than-a-cent toffees into a small, unsuspecting hand is a pleasure I just never get tired of.) Anyway, I’m sitting with the Older Girls, find the candies, pull them out and hold them up.
“Anybody want a Sweetie?” I ask. And everyone does. But who to choose?
“Let’s have a contest,” one of the girls suggests. “The best song wins.”

There were no amazing performances that day. April sang two gruff lines of a Hindi song then said, “Now give me the Sweetie!” and tried to wrench one from my clenched hand. Shirley, a typically reserved girl, stood up and proclaimed that she would be singing “in anger”, then proceeded to belt out some Bollywood tune as if she were shouting it at her worst enemy. The girls laughed hysterically at all of this, cheering when a winner was selected, enjoying even the worst, most embarrassed attempts. In fact, they were so alive, so eager to play that it gave Jackson and me the idea we were looking for.

We decided to hold the first ever Strong Farm Talent Show and the girls were instantly on board. A sign-up sheet went up the next day and, in no time, 18 acts stepped forward; all singers or dancers, all girls. I was hoping to get the boys involved but the laws of Indian decency would not allow it. Besides: “Boys will just tease and make fun,” one of the participants said. “Only girls is better. Plus Uncle.”

As for talent show prizes, Jackson and I and Kim (a sweet 24 year old volunteer from New Zealand) walked into Banbassa one afternoon armed with around twenty dollars. Like Paris Hiltons-in-training, we bought rings and bracelets, ear rings, hair bands, nail polish, make up and anything else that caught our eyes. Jackson was mostly in charge of this operation. “Oh, these are so pretty,” she said at one point. “Can I have one for myself?” I said that she could. At 47 cents, the flashy silver anklet in question seemed like a decent bargain even to stingy old me.

When all the prizes were set, we then loaded up on drinks and popcorn and cookies for the big night. Our goal was not to skimp. We wanted the girls to pig out if they felt like it. Not a handful of popcorn each. We wanted bucket loads and left overs. Perhaps it is my abundant American mind set, but I thought, to an orphan, the gift of “too much” might feel as wonderful as the gift itself. Plus I think it all cost like five bucks.

The day of the talent show, I was asked one question over and over again. “What are you going to sing, Uncle?” When I signed up to do a song, I just wrote “Surprise” as the song title, mostly because I couldn’t decide what to play. I wanted something that spoke to these girls, something that said a little bit of what I felt for them. But by noon of the big day, I still didn’t know.

As show time approached, I was amazed at how much work the girls had done on their own. They created a talent show banner to hang behind the stage, they rigged up a curtain to frame the action, they organized all the music and pulled together all the equipment to play cassettes and CDs and whatever else we needed. Food was ready. Programs were printed. Jackson, Kim and Clifton’s wife Priscilla were the judges...

...I was the host, and every girl on the Farm, young and old, was ready for the show to start.

What can I tell you? It was a hit. Amanda did an ultra sexy dance to “Sexy Lady on the Dance Floor” and everybody cheered. Then Hope and Usha did an ultra conservative and simple pom pom dance and everybody cheered just as loud. Gladys screeched a mercifully brief acapella tune that didn’t win a prize but did scare away all the stray dogs for ten kilometers. (And everybody cheered.) And Iris dressed up like a man and rocked out a hilarious number that had Jackson and all the girls buckled over with laughter.

When my turn in the program came up, I strapped on Clifton’s guitar and played an original song called: “I Want To Thank You”. I wrote it fast that afternoon and it is without a doubt the most unapologetically sentimental song I have ever written. No subtly here, no hidden meanings. I just wrote how I felt and trusted the girls not to wince. They didn’t.

…I want to thank you
for holding my hand
All of your laughing smiling eyes
Make me a happy man.

And I want to thank you
For all that you do.
Just like my daughters across the water
That’s how I’ll think of you…

The song went on and on, verse after simple verse, and the girls absolutely loved it. Especially the part where I sang to each one of them, thanking all 52 Farm girls by name in a long musical list. Jackson held my papers, I tried not to stumble over the long Reena-Meena-Sabrina-Corrina-Seema tongue twister...and when the final name was sung and the chorus kicked in again, the explosion of applause that filled the room was a sound that I and the girls (and probably the surrounding villages) will never ever forget. It was beautiful.

We’re in Rishikesh now, ten hours North West of Banbassa. Rishikesh is a wild Hindu city on the Ganges river, crowded with beggars posing as holy men...

...holy men posing as beggars, small girls dressed as brides maids, old women in colorful saris, lecherous men who ogle Jackson everywhere she goes, honking motorcycles, blasé monkeys...

...road blocks of cows, cow poop everywhere and a zillion billion flies on everything. It is both a spiritual place and a nasty place; heaven and hell all rolled into one.

Traca and Logan finished up their 12-day yoga course and by all accounts, they enjoyed it—though Traca would enjoy 12 days locked in a root cellar if she could do yoga, so that’s no surprise. But Logan stuck it out as well, the youngest by a decade or more, running through the cow patties during his free time, making the most of this unique opportunity. We’re here for one more day before heading up into the Himalayas but honestly, my heart is still back on the Farm.

The day we left, the goodbye we received was nothing short of overwhelming. The kids made stacks of cards for Jack and me, the Older Girls sang “Our Golden Days Are At An End”, many of them openly weeping as they did.

I was holding up pretty well, just floating along on a river of love and good wishes—until I saw Job.

He didn’t say anything. He just walked through the crowd and handed me a card. “You OK?” I asked and knelt down to his level. But he didn’t answer. He just hugged me with all the tenderness in his young body. I could feel him sobbing against me and I started crying right along with him; this boy who I have known for only three weeks; this boy who I may never see again. “Just so you know,” Clifton told me later, “Job doesn’t do this with everyone. So feel special.” And I did. I really did.

I’m including Job’s note here not for what it says about me or him but for what it says about the power we all have to affect the lives of others, just by reaching out, just by showing up. It doesn’t have to cost much or take much time. All it takes is a willingness to give. It’s almost selfish, really. For if I have touched Job’s life, he has most certainly touched mine. And that—we have learned—is both the beauty and the reward that all giving holds.

Dear Uncle John
May God bleass you. I will miss you very much. Pleas come back. Thank you for everything you have gived us. Thank you very very much for coming hear. I will awals rember you. God sent a gift for me and you are the gift. Thank you.
Love from Job

Shy Boy and Birthday Girl

2010-07-13T04:29:00.011-04:00

With so many stories to tell here on The Farm, I realized that I’ve only been focusing on my own experiences. So in the interest of family fairness, here are a few snaps from the rest of the Traveling Marshalls. Let’s start with Traca.

When Traca was here, she had basically three primary story lines. 1) Work; she loved to help out in the kitchen doing dishes, scrubbing clothes in the laundry, baking bread, whatever needed doing, Traca was there. 2) Babies; as if it was a condition of her Visa, Traca almost always could be found holding one of the tiny nursery kids. Not much for the Human Jungle Gym routine that the larger kids demanded, Traca never seemed to get tired of a sleeping child in her arms. 3) Yoga; each day before dinner, Traca held a beginner’s class in the Small Girl’s courtyard. She even bought four yoga mats that she donated to the Mission. Little children and older staff would come to stretch, laugh and, well, mostly laugh—though I doubt the activity will continue now that she’s gone. Yesterday in church, a guest preacher tossed a bit of fire and a dash of brimstone on the seeds Traca was hoping to plant. “Some people may try to bring yoga to you,” the preacher warned. “But this is the first step toward Devil.”

As for Logan and Jackson…for the most part, I think the Farm has been a powerful, fun, life lesson for them, though it has had its challenges, too.

Logan’s biggest hurdle was the Older Girls.

Coming from Thailand where girls his age essentially bowed at his feet, swooned over his every antic and openly adored him for simply being white and alive (and cute, I suppose), the Farm girls were a tougher crowd. For one thing they speak English so relationships based on mere swooning and fawning were—much to Logan’s dismay—no longer necessary. They were also, in spite of their Farm isolation, more worldly and complex than their Thai sisters. Perhaps as a result of being abandoned, many of them abused, the Older Girls were no pushovers and, initially, they teased Logan as he had never been teased before.

“Hi, Shy Boy,” they would say. Or, “Good morning, Shy Boy.” Or, the double whammy, “Why are you so shy, Shy Boy?” At first, Logan didn’t know how to handle them. He’d push back when he was pushed, try too hard to prove them wrong. But acting un-shy when you’re not really feeling it is a posture the Older Girls saw right through. “Shy Boy. Shy Boy. Shy Boy!” they hounded, driving Logan deeper into his shell.

“Are you enjoying the Shy Boy game?” I asked him when I found him hunkered down in his room one afternoon.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I think it’s nice.” And by “nice” I could tell that he meant “torture”.

On the opposite side of the shy scale, Jackson struggled through a few obstacles of her own, most of them centered around a 17 year-old girl named Dora. Jack has no idea what she did to piss Dora off. None of the Older Girls do. “Maybe it’s the way she rolled out chapatis?” one of them speculated. But I doubt it. As Dora huffs around, ignoring Jackson’s repeated requests to talk, I wonder if it’s something deeper, some intangible insult that Jackson represents more than anything she actually did.

I wonder sometimes what we must look like to the children on the Farm. On one level that is both true and false, we probably look rich. Though we took a loan out to finance this trip, the Farm kids know and care nothing about home equity. With our stories of other countries, our American roots, our freedom and resources to come and go, we must appear to be privileged beyond measure—and I suppose we are. On another level that is probably even more powerful, we are a family; the one thing every orphan yearns for and—by definition—does not have. As father, mother, son and daughter, I wonder if we shimmer like some dream come true as we stroll across the grounds. Maybe we remind Dora of the family she lost, the father she’ll never have. Or maybe she just likes a bit of drama. I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.

Like high school girls the world over, drama is the juice, along with lip gloss and boys, that keeps the days on the Farm interesting. As far as Jackson goes, the drama meter spiked as her 15^th birthday approached. Dora said she was not going to attend the party (which is a little like a starving man passing up lunch), and she repeated this to me every time we met as if I had zero short term memory. Then, for no apparent reason, another Older Girl: Rita, jumped on the birthday boycott, proclaiming that, yes, she too was staying in her room on June 30^th.

Thankfully, the vast majority of girls were excited about the party and—on their own—got to work; making a Happy B-Day banner, baking a cake...

...assembling snacks and gifts and creating what I’m sure will go down as the most memorable birthday celebration of Jackson’s young life.

My personal favorite part of the party was the way they treated Traca and me.

Rather than relegating Mom and Dad to some place at the back of the room or banishing us entirely from the festivities, the Older Girls set two extra seats right in the front. Jackson sat beside April (another girl with the same birthday), and Trace and I sat beside them like honored guests. Leave it to orphans to know how to treat parents.

Like all parties, there was singing and presents and plates of food—though there was also end-of-the-world rain falling outside and a bat circling the room looking for bugs and a way out. To make things even more interesting, as soon as I took my very first bite of cake…the lights went off. This is a fairly typical occurrence. Most days, multiple times per day, for no obvious reason, the power will simply stop. Sometimes it’s off for only for a few minutes, sometimes for hours. In the heat of the day, it helps you appreciate the fan that had been spinning above your now-sweating head. In the sweltering night, it makes sleeping all but impossible. At the party, it plunged us all into total darkness, filled the space with shrieking girls, and had everyone moving to the exit like moths where a generator light was still shining.

What followed was the kind of drama and joy that you simply can not script.

One by one, the party goers stepped out into the rain. Water from the roof drain came down like a fire hose and Logan took it on the head, grabbing girls around him and pulling them into the deluge.

Jackson danced in the deafening rain, splashing in shin deep puddles, hugging her sopping friends and laughing directly into the monsoon’s face. Happy birthday, indeed.

As for the challenges the kids have faced…it’s all good.

Logan won the Shy Boy Girls over in the end, not by being brash and bold, just by being himself. “We’ve cured him of his shyness,” one of his worst tormenters said to me. And perhaps they did help a bit. Either way, Logan definitely made an impression here. After he left for Rishikesh, three of the Older Girls told me in confidence that they were in love with him. One had a dream that she married him and they had twin baby girls. Another, who was only 13, worried she was too young for him. “Not a problem,” I told her. “When Logan’s 24 and he comes back here, you’ll be 20. That’ll be fine.” She laughed, but her smile also looked a bit like relief to me.

Jackson, Dora and Rita also came to terms, working out whatever needed working out without ever having to actually discuss it. If there were any lingering doubts that secret resentments were still being harbored, they ended last night when Dora slipped Jackson a note. It was hand written on a lined sheet of paper, the opening line of which read:

Dear Jackson

Your one of my sweetest and closest friend. Whom I dearly care 4. And whom I really love. Thanks 4 spending time with me. And making our friendship so beautiful.

One Blue Marble

2010-07-11T22:19:00.006-04:00

Most of the time here on the Farm is tightly scheduled, which makes sense. With 100 kids and a skeleton staff, order and control are of utmost importance. We were lucky enough to arrive during the pre-monsoon vacation, where free time was more abundant—but now the kids are back to school and the schedule looks like this:

6:45 AM Breakfast
7:30 AM School begins
10:00 AM Morning Tea
1:00 PM Lunch
2-4 PM Rest and Study
4:00 PM Afternoon Tea
5-6 PM Play
6:00 PM Dinner
7:30 PM Bed

Which is how, a few days back, I found myself spending a few hours in the Small Boys room in the middle of the afternoon.

The Small Boys share a small, dark room with five bunks and two ceiling fans. The walls are painted a soothing blue with a few scant posters taped up for decoration. My favorite is a picture of a mansion with a Lamborghini parked out front and the caption: Even in darkness, light dawns for those who believe.

When I entered the room, the boys were playing their favorite card game. It’s played with a deck of World Wrestling playing cards, each card depicting a different hulky wrestler with various statistics printed along the bottom. Things like: height, weight, chest, bicep, rank and fight—thought what “fight” is and how it is determined is one of the great mysteries of the game. To play, one boy deals out the deck, then the player to the dealer’s left looks at his first card and selects the statistic he thinks will top all others. So he might say: “Weight: two hundred seventy” or “Fight: One twenty-two.” In its purest form, all other players draw their first card without looking and see how their wrestler compares. If the wrestler’s arms are the biggest, he wins. If not, he gives up his card. The problem is, the boys are consummate cheaters who craftily scan their decks, looking for larger chests or lower ranks, tossing these ringers into the ring…then fighting about them like rabid spider monkeys before moving on to the next hand.

On this particular resting day, one such cheating argument got so heated that Aunti Violet, the boy’s toothless den mother, heard the commotion and ordered them to stop the nonsense and get in their beds. I assumed this was my cue to leave but Job grabbed my arm. “Don’t go, Uncle,” he said. “Rest with us. This bunk is empty.”
“Yes. Stay here,” Kamal said.
“We will make it so nice for you,” Clifford promised.

Now, to be totally honest, my first instinct was to decline. Maxine and I had a conversation just the night before about lice—what a big constant problem they were, especially for the younger children—and, at first glance, all I saw of the bunk being offered was my chance to be infested. But as the Small Boys began scrambling around, now buzzing at the prospect of my joining their nap time, my desire to please them overcame my aversion to itch. Lice or no lice, I climbed up and laid down.

Like a sleep over with the seven dwarfs, the bed was ridiculously short for me, ending at the bend in my knees. To fix this, the boys built a box tower and placed pillows on the top to support my lower legs. Then they removed my sandals and placed them gently on the ground. Then a little boy named Jackey brought me a dirty, silk sleeping mask for my eyes. (What’s a few more lice among friends?) And Ekindar sprinkled powder on my neck. “To keep you cool, Uncle. So nice it is. Yes?” he said. Another pillow was delivered, forced under my head. And something was placed in my shirt pocket. “From Kamal,” Kamal whispered in my ear. The topper to this pampering was a lullaby Job sang to me. As the boys settled into their bed, screaming at each other to be quiet and not to disturb Uncle…Job sang two lines again and again:

Sweetie Sweetie, go to sleep
Have a lovely sweetie dream

His voice was soft and tender, high pitched as if singing to a baby—this boy who has perhaps never had a lullaby sung to him in his life.

I actually did fall asleep. Even with both fans swirling overhead, the room was hot and I was tired. For one hour I was just another Small Boy, resting on orders from Aunti Violet, dreaming of that Lamborghini on the wall to my right…

When I woke up, I was sweating, looking through red silk, delirious. I sat up in bed, pulled my mask off, careful not to have my head lopped off by the ceiling fan above me. With my legs bent over the edge, they nearly touched the floor and I looked down. Job was sleeping on the bare concrete beside my bed, curled up like a puppy.

My plan was to just slip out, let these boys sleep, but they all sparked to life at my smallest movement. “Please stay, Uncle,” they said. “Tell us a story. Sing us a song.” So I grabbed Clifton’s guitar from his office and we sang Christmas songs in the baking heat of the late Indian summer. Hark the Herald. Deck the Halls. “Clap hands,” Job would say after every song. And everyone would clap.

“You have a song for Logan?” Ekindar asked during one break in the Christmas medley. It was a strange request but the Small Boys all hushed, eager to hear my answer. They all loved Logan when he was here, some even writing stories at school in honor of his visit. One such story was entitled “The Story of Family” and it began with the opening line, “There was a best friend and his name was Logan and Ekindar.”

Turns out, I did have a song for Logan; something I wrote for him when he was small; something I’ve sung to him hundreds of times to get him to fall asleep. It’s about drifting on the ocean, asleep without a care, totally safe as the wind gently carries you home. I sang it for the boys:

…So goodnight, my Logan
I know where you’re going
And I’ll have the wind take you there
Off you go now, my Logan
You’re heading for home
And when you awake you’ll be there.

“Clap hands,” Job said. And they all did, these boys who have never had their father sing to them before, who—other than The Farm—have never known the safety of home.

And then it happened.

It took me by surprise as it usually does, though I suppose I should be used to it by now; I’ve been bombarded with the question ever since we arrived. It’s something these children are desperate for me to answer “correctly” so I guess until I do, they’ll keep asking. With sincere conviction and not an inch of wiggle room, Job looked me in the eye, tipped his head slightly to the left and said, “You are a Christian, Uncle?”

I shook my head and spoke as gently as I could. “Actually,” I said, “I believe in what Jesus taught. And I believe in the example he gave. But I also I believe, and I’m not saying I know, but I just feel in my heart that other people might possibly be right as well.”

There was silence in the room, all eyes looking at me, not one of them buying it for a second.
“Then we can not listen to you, Uncle,” Ekindar said.
“Yes. Auntie Maxine said you are wrong,” Kamal added.

They were not angry with me, just telling me the Truth. And as I looked from face to face, the simple certainty I found struck me like a slap to the face. It was a supremely humbling moment for me, an Ah-ha moment (as Oprah would say) where I finally fully realized who I was talking to. Faith for these boys was not something to debate or deny. It was something to hold on to. It was a lifeline for them when the world had tossed them aside. It was their lullaby. In a very real sense, it was their Father. Who cares what I thought? For me to cast any doubt into their lives, these boys who I have come to love, filled me with a palpable sense of shame that made me blush and sweat and back pedal with every ounce of sincerity in my body. “Actually, I think that what you believe is 100 percent correct,” I said.
“Yes. It is,” Job said and we left it at that.
It was four o’clock. Time for tea.

As I walked to the dining room alone, I remembered the gift Kamal had placed in my pocket. Pulling it out, I found a pink plastic Easter egg with a smaller green plastic egg inside. Inside the green egg, there was a small blue marble, scratched and chipped from use but still—like a child’s faith—clear and brilliant in the afternoon light.

The Rocky Road to Rishikesh

2010-07-08T06:18:00.006-04:00

If you ever want to really feel a tidal wave of love, do this: Tell a group of orphans that you are leaving, then tell them that you are staying a bit longer. Here’s how it happened.

It has been Traca’s dream to study yoga in India and so she is going to the Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh. After much debate, Logan has decided to go as well. They’ll be taking a 10 day Yoga Intensive course on the banks of the Ganges river; 4AM meditation and chanting, daily yogic breathing classes, plenty of yoga postures—all of which sounded like pure death to our little Jackson. As a result, Jack and I will be staying on at the Mission for another week or so and, for that, I couldn’t be happier. Personally, I feel there is much more for me here with the kids than by myself on the mat and Traca was cool with that. She and Logan left today.

But getting there is the trick. We woke up at 4:30AM to catch the direct bus to Rishikesh, which seems like a straight-forward maneuver, but then this is India. There are no clean and tidy bus terminals. No orderly lines. No assigned seats. In fact, without a seasoned Indian traveler like Rick Shipway—Clifton’s Dad—to pull this off, I seriously doubt I would be back in my room writing about this at all.

Rick is 57, thin, a wiry Australian farmer. He first visited the farm (and met his future wife Maxine) in the late 70s when he delivered a plane load of high milk-yielding dairy cows to India. It was to be a humanitarian effort, so naturally the Indian Government impounded the cattle, demanding absurd duties be paid before the cows could be given away. Unable and unwilling to pay, Rick contacted Mother Theresa who not only convinced the government officials to back down but became Rick’s friend in the process. Knowing a little bit about both of them, I can see how they got along. Like the Angel of Calcutta, Rick is a powerhouse of energy, a focused force for good who moves through the world with a sense of purpose and conviction—qualities that also come in handy when attempting to navigate the confusion that is daily Indian life.

So the bus leaves at 5 or so and we are cutting it close as we pull out of the Farm. We’ve seen a few buses rumble past, heading to the right for Katima...but Rick takes a chance and turns left for the short ride to Banbassa.

Even at 5AM, Banbassa is chaos. The town is a maze of tiny shops and every one of them is opening. Horses lope alone down the center of the street. Children sweep the dirt road, crouched like rubbish in the path of the traffic. Hundreds of men walk in all directions and Rick honks at every one of them. Cows sleep here and there, mostly here. And buses line the road, just a string of rundown old school buses, colorfully painted, with indecipherable Hindi printed on them.

Rick pulls alongside each bus and shouts out about Rishikesh. His Hindi accent makes girls on the Mission laugh, but none of the men in Banbassa laugh. They don’t seem to react all that much at all. They mumble…point…chatter on about something that Rick later translates as simply “rubbish”. At several point, he jumps from the car, bulling his way through the crowd, the only white face in a growing sea of local brown. If the Rishikesh bus is here, I have no doubt that Rick will find it. But it isn’t. We just missed it. We have to go to Katima after all.

Katima’s only ten minutes away and not a big deal under normal circumstances. But two years ago, the Farm and the area experienced the biggest flood in history. A whopping 82 centimeters of rain fell in a 24 hour period. That’s 25 inches of rain in one day! Naturally, the normally dry river bed swelled beyond capacity and the only bridge that connects The Farm to the Katima side of the world was washed away. Two years later, work still plods along. We stopped one day to watch the process and I was shocked to find cement being carried, one bucket full at a time, by a line of old women.

Dressed in colorful saris, these women balanced their heavy basket on their heads, back and forth, Granny labor in the mid day sun. I asked Rick why they used these women for this back breaking job and he corrected me. “They’re not old,” he said. “They’re probably around 25 or 30. Just a hard life, is all.”

With work still progressing, the only way across the river is to drive through it, no problem in the dry season, but a bit dodgy as the monsoon sets in. In typical Rick fashion, he races his Bolero to the water’s edge, eyes the flowing brown water for a split second, then guns it. I’ve heard it said that a car can be washed away in as little as six inches of running water and if that’s true, it’s not always true. A wave of water splashes over the hood, soaking the windshield and tires lunge over the rough, rocky river bottom. But we make it. Rick honks at no one in particular as we pull onto dry land. “Horn still works,” he says. “Can’t drive in India without a horn.”

By now Rick is racing the clock, really punching the gas pedal, honking at every dog, donkey and monkey that even thinks of getting in our way. Monkeys are all over this stretch of road.

In the Hindu religion, twice a week, believers pay homage to Hanuman, the monkey God by feeding these wild macaques, turning them into dependent beggars. Rick took us one afternoon to pay our own respects and we were literally surrounded. These monkeys are much bigger than Sweetie and the other spider monkeys back in Costa Rica. They’re also capable—I assumed—of taking much bigger bites out of my hide. Thanks be to Hanuman that they were content with the day-old chipatis we frisbeed to their greedy little hands.

Past mother monkeys with babies, humping adolescents, lazy males sprawled out on the tar, Rick is a rocket; 125 kilometers per hour or roughly 77 mph down a narrow two lane road. “If this whole Mission thing doesn’t work out,” I say, “you can always get a job as a race car driver.” Rick just smiles and hits the horn.

As it turns out, we miss the bus in Katima by just a few minutes and Rick makes a quick calculation: With a little hustle, Traca and Logan can catch the 5:30 bus to Haridwar, the center of Hinduism in India, then hop a short Rishikesh transfer. “We’ll have to hurry, though,” he says, as if there is any other way he travels.

Back to the river like a shot—but there is no getting across now. An overloaded truck stacked with garbage is stuck in the water and no one can get around it. Cars and buses line up in both directions, squeezing to the sides to allow a back hoe to rumble through and pull the truck to safety. It is all the opening Rick needs.

In a flash, he races between the trucks, cutting two dozen vehicles in the process, narrowly parallel parking between two giant buses as the oncoming traffic begins to flow again. From this point on it is pure travel insanity. A motorcycle tries to squeeze past us, only to be pinned to the side of our car by a huge truck. His rear-view mirror is bent backwards. The rider barely pulls his legs to safety. “Everybody out,” Rick says. “We’ll have to hop the bus right here.” Packs down from the roof. Trucks and buses rumbling past in clouds of thick black smoke. “OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD,” Rick shouts over the roar of diesel engines. “HE WON’T STOP!” Logan, Tom and Yasimine scramble over but Traca hesitates. “LET’S GO! RIGHT HERE!” A mad dash. Traca and I cut between two trucks, like running through the elephant line, and make it to the other side as the Hardiwar bus lurches up the hill. With her huge sausage pack on her back, Traca tries to jump in the open moving door…but misses. Running out of time. Logan’s inside. Bus going up the hill. With no time to spare, Rick pushes Traca from behind and she lands inside the bus. Looks back with a smile that says, “What the hell am I doing?” “GOODBYE,” I shout. Logan just raises his eyebrows and then is gone. Eleven hours from now, they should be in Rishikesh.

Back on the Farm, all is quiet and when the 6:45 breakfast bell rings, Job is waiting for me. “You are really staying,” he says and grips me so tightly, like a corset, around the waist.
I say: “Yes. We are staying.”
“Then my prayers are answered,” he says.
And we walk, hand in hand, to the dining hall.

The Older Girls

2010-07-06T03:11:00.006-04:00

I don’t usually think of myself as old, but I get that a lot here at the Farm.

The other day I was sitting on the ground talking with some of the Small Girls. Most of them were also sitting but three of my favorites; Jimica, Anthya and Khushboo, were standing beside me, looking down at the top of my head.

“Oh. Look at Uncle’s hair,” Jimica said, as if discovering a fascinating surprise. “So thin.”
“You can see his skin,” Kushbu said, amazed to find my scalp when she pushed my hair aside.
“So white, it is,” Antea said, though I’m sure she meant “distinguished grey”.
“Old,” Jimica said. And that’s exactly how I felt. Old.

I heard the “O” word a few days later when I was talking to Clifton about the Older Girls.

The Older Girls rage in age from 15-20 or so, and they are perhaps the most isolated group here. In India, in general, young women are sheltered, hemmed in by a conservative society and bound by codes of modesty and propriety that make your average American teen look like a free love hippie tramp by comparison. In the pre-Clifton era here on the Farm, girls would be beaten for even looking at a boy, much less talking to or touching one. Today, conforming with Indian expectations, boys are still simply not allowed to mingle freely with girls; Older Boys live on one side of the Farm, Older Girls live on the other. There are a few officially sanctioned co-ed hours during the week, but even then there is no physical contact permitted.

So the big problem then is: Who can love these girls up? Without any safe, nurturing men in their lives, ever, the answer is usually: no one. At 25, it would be inappropriate for Clifton to hug or hold hands with one of them, the same for most of the young male volunteers who pass through the Mission. As a result, they are raised almost exclusively by women, bound in a tight sisterhood of cooking, dishes, laundry and housework, watching Hindi dance movies at night, and hungry—as all daughters are—for a little fatherly affection. “Some girls fall in love with the first man who gives them a sweetie,” one of them told me. Which had me concerned right from the start.

When one of the girls playfully called me Daddy, I talked with Clifton about it. I didn’t want to step on any cultural toes. But Clifton dismissed my concern like so much rubbish. Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You’re old. Go for it.”

Once the momentary sting to my young-feeling ego was gone, I found my advanced age was a huge asset, freeing me to get to know and interact with these amazing girls in ways they seem to deeply enjoy.

And so I borrow Clifton’s guitar, go into the kitchen while they are making chipatis and I sing to them.

The room is cement, hot and smoky, and into this space I hold nothing back, belting out every song they request, making the songs up if I have to just to see them laugh. As Christians since arrival, they love Sunday School songs and, luckily—as a mandatory childhood Christian myself—I have unlocked the vault in my brain that contains the entire Sunday School song book and together we sing our little hearts out.

In God’s green pastures feeding
By his cool waters lie
Soft in the evening walk my Lord and I.

And I scrub the kitchen floor with them, though many of the girls find this hard to watch. “It’s so girlie, Uncle. Don’t do it,” they say. But I insist. And they laugh as I sweep, and scrub and get down on my knees with a spatula to scrape away dried dough, and toss buckets of water until the floor shines.

Then, filthy and drenched with sweat, we turn the buckets on each other and soak ourselves clean.

And we talk most evenings around 6PM, just the Older Girls and me and the setting Indian sun.

They ask questions, mostly about our family. In fact, the minutia of family life seems to be—understandably—endlessly fascinating to an orphan. They ask us how we spend Christmas and what do we do for birthdays and what our house looks like and on and on. And they tell me stories of their lives; boys they like, dreams they have, how they came to be here, what their early days were like.

“Oh, they used to beat us so badly,” Shirley says with a laugh.
“And not just with a switch,” Juanita chimes in. “With a stick. Round as this.” She makes a circle as large as her thumb and index finger will allow.
“For no reason, Uncle,” Hope adds, a huge smile on her face. “Aunti Florence would hold me under water, in a tub, until I will drown and all the while she is beating and beating me.” At which point Hope explodes with laughter and rolls on the ground, tickled to the tips of her toes at this memory.
“Why are you laughing?” I ask. “That sounds horrible.”
But they can’t help it. The pattern is this: Horror story, Big laugh. Things like:
“They would shave our heads so we would not be so proud.” Laugh
“They would lock us in at night with no fan and no toilet.” Laugh
“And we were fed one month only radishes.” Laugh
“Radish for lunch and radish greens for supper.” Laugh
“My hand was broken five times, Uncle.” Big laugh
“And they would land the stick anywhere. On the head. On the face.” Laugh
“Oh, but we enjoy, Uncle.”
And everyone agreed with this.

It wasn’t all bad, I guess. When they weren’t comparing bruises at the end of the day, there was laughter, mischief, friendship and God to see them through. Still, their constant smiling is a little hard to swallow, all things considered. So I ask them directly. “You seem happy now. But are you happy?” Oh, yes, everyone says, like happy robots. But I try to dig deeper: “Really?” I say. “Not here in front of me or in front of the staff. But when you are alone. When you are in your own room and you are being totally honest with yourself...are you happy?”
“Yes, Uncle,” they say. “We are happy.”
And I believe them. Most of them.

Among the Older Girls there is one particular girl who is perhaps the most traumatized of them all. Let's call her Beti (pronounced Bay-tee) which means "daughter" in Hindi. I’m told she was so badly sexually abused, her home town got together and removed her from her home, bringing her, at age 14, to the Farm. Now 16, Beti is a tall girl, quite pretty, but she is deeply damaged. No one knows for sure which came first, the abuse or the damage, but the result is the same. In many ways, Beti acts like a child. She can not retain the simplest information so she does not attend school. She rarely speaks and is, understandably, distrustful of men. Most of the time, she stands on the sidelines of any activity, alone in her own private world, not talking to anyone but herself.

But as my time here at the Mission has unfolded, Beti has started to approach me; asking me to sing a snippet of a Hindi song I have learned, taking my hand, leading me around the grounds. And so we walk together. Sometimes with my arm around her shoulder. And I read her simple picture books, making her laugh with my character voices, tickling her neck to keep the laugh going. In the evening, when the Older Girls and I have our talking time, she usually joins, always sitting beside me, her head on my shoulder, her hand in mine. And I tease her. I talk with her. And I take her face in my hands and tell her, as easily as I tell Jackson, that she is beautiful. That she is special. That she is loved.

“I love you, Papa,” Beti said to me yesterday and in that moment, I have never been so happy to be so old.

Cynthia, Salone and Job

2010-07-02T11:09:00.008-04:00

This is Cynthia.

She is three years old. She has lived on The Farm since she was just born. The burns on her shoulders and chest were the result of a recent cup of spilled tea, but she’s fine. She talks like a cartoon mouse, uses Logan as a jungle gym, and entertains all of us volunteers with cuter-than-cute improve dancing each evening at dinner. It’s hard to believe her mother threw her away, literally tossed her into a storm drain before she was rescued and brought to the Mission.

This is Salone.

In Hindi, Salone means “beautiful” and she is that. She is three months old, one of two twin girls and the smallest member of the Strong Farm family. Salone and her sister Shavani were brought here by their mother when they were just days old. They were the 11th and 12th girls born into a family desperate to have a son and there simply was not room for them. Did the Mission want them? At first, Clifton refused. With resources stretched to the limit, they do not and can not accept every child that is offered to them and the high maintenance of two painfully small infants was more than even his heart could hold. But a month later, when Salone’s mother returned, her daughters now even smaller and appearing to be very near death, Clifton relented. Today, the girls are loved by hundreds of hands and they grow stronger every day. The staff and the older girls share the mothering, even Traca got in on the act, keeping Salone in our room last night, pouring out her vast Mother’s love on this very lucky little girl.

And this is Job.

At three days old, Job was dropped at the orphanage. Not an orphan, just abandoned like so many children in India. He’s 12 now and doesn’t remember any of the dark days at the Mission. He was six when Clifton and company stormed the gates and was—by all accounts—a holy terror of his own at the time. He would kill chickens, steal eggs, lie, punch, kick and generally bully the kids around him. Though he is small, he is the leader of the Small Boys as they are called (boys 9-13); for there is an intensity to Job, a quick tongue, a keen mind and an incredible power and fire within him that’s hard to miss

On our first day on The Farm, Logan and I took the Small Boys for a walk in the jungle when we came across some water buffalos standing in a river.

Water buffalos are notoriously unpredictable; they can be stubborn, they can charge. With small children all around me, I wondered how best to continue…but Job didn’t. Before I could stop him, he grabbed a stick and dashed into the river. “HA! HAAA!” he shouted, waving the stick like a madman, beating the water. The water buffalo could have easily trampled him, gored him, but they didn’t. They ran for their lives. And Job wasn’t content to clear our path. He chased them out of the water and across the dry river bed, shouting all the while, only stopping when they were well out of range, turning to scream triumphantly into the full heat of the day. We’ve been friends ever since.

Today, his loyalty is almost absurd. He gives up his seat when I enter a room, insists I sit near a fan, scrambles to find me an umbrella in the rain, loves to carry my tripod or my camera bag, always gives me his mango at lunch, and abjectly refuses any similar treatment from me. Honestly, it can be a little much at times.

I walked down the stairs of our guest house yesterday and Job was waiting for me, holding a long, wide palm branch that he immediately placed over my head.
“Good morning, Uncle,” he said. “Please. The sun mustn’t touch you.”
Like a slave, he held the wide dry palm so I was shaded and shuffled along beside me.
“I really don’t want you to do that, Job,” I said. “You’re my friend, not my servant.”
“Please. Uncle. The sun is hot. Just keep walking,” Job said.
I stopped walking and looked down at this earnest little kid who was carefully adjusting the shade between my face and the sun. “Job. I would like you to put that down, please,” I said.
Job refused. “Sorry, Uncle. Your safety is my top concern. I can not place you in any danger.” He was joking, of course, but he was playing out this little charade with total seriousness and military precision.
So I asked him: “What can I say to get you to put that down?”
And he said: “If you love me, put it down.”
So I said it. “If you love me, put it down.” And instantly, Job through the palm branch as far away as his small arms could launch it.
“Get away from me!” he shouted at the palm frond, with mock disgust. “I will never touch you again in my life!”
Then Job turned to me, smiled and hugged me around the waist in a death grip of love. “Good morning, Uncle,” he said.

I watch him sometimes when he moving around the Mission and I wonder what will happen to him. When I asked him one day what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said a soldier.
“But not just a soldier, Uncle,” he went on. “What is the highest job for a soldier in America?”
I said I’m not sure. Maybe the Secretary of Defense.
“He is rich, Uncle? This Secretary of the Defenses?”
I said yeah. Probably pretty rich.
“Then this is what I will be. I will be the Secretary of the Defenses in America and when I am, I will have body guards that follow me and everyone will stand to see me and I will take my own helicopter and I will fly to your house and I will give you a job that will pay one lak every year. You would like this job, Uncle?”
One lak is 100,000 rupies or about $25,000 per year.
“Yes, Job,” I said. “I would like that very much.

Today was the first day back to school for the kids on the Farm and I saw Job after the ten o’clock tea break. He was wearing his school uniform; yellow shirt, green pants, tie that is just a plaid strip of cloth on an elastic band. And he was looking at me, standing amid the chaos of children playing, a single source of stillness in the rain-soaked play ground. At that moment, I was surrounded by other children, all wanting to be seen and held, but I excused myself (as easily as a banana excuses itself from a pack of monkeys) and made my way to Job.
“What’s up, buddy?” I said. “How’s school going?”
“I am missing you today,” he said.
And he wrapped his arms around my waist. It wasn’t the dramatic act of a showoff. He didn’t move or speak. When I looked down at him, his eyes were closed. His clothes were still drenched from the torrential rains that morning but I didn’t mind. I just stood there in the play ground with him, closed my eyes, and listened to the children laughing.

Strong Farm

2010-07-01T05:51:00.009-04:00

When we stepped off the plane in New Delhi and onto the runway, the night air felt like the exhaust from a jet engine. Or a breeze from a blast furnace. It was 42 degrees Celsius. 108 degrees Fahrenheit at 10:15 at night. Luckily Clifton’s car had air conditioning though it was a tight squeeze. In addition to Clifton and his driver Robert in the front, we had Traca, Jackson and me in the back seat and Logan wedged in the way back. All of our back packs were roped to the roof as we pulled out into the traffic.

“Traffic” is not really the right word. In America, “traffic” brings to mind a certain order. It may be jammed and snarled, but there are rules and expectation that drivers follow, laws that govern the act of driving and so on. In India, however, such details appear to have left with the British. Just picture cars and trucks and bicycles and motorcycles and three-wheeled taxis and walkers and dogs and cows, and no speed limits and no lane markers and no traffic lights and everyone honking at once and passing in all directions, with stinky air and intense heat, even at night as we were about to discover. (Traca—who, back home, cautiously points out cars 50-yards ahead that might possibly be preparing to enter our lane—was forced to practice a new level of complete surrender as we weaved and squeezed and raced our way through the tangle of flesh and metal and darkness. She said at the end of the journey that it was the most exhausting trip of her life.)

It took a good couple hours to get free of Delhi’s crushing humanity but even then, the roads were packed with cars, every car utterly packed with people. Clifton said they were pilgrims, all heading to Garhmuktesar to participate in a mailer. A mailer is a mass dip in the Ganges River. Hindus believe you can clean up your karma by submerging in the dirty, brown waters—though trading your sins for a staff infection doesn’t sound like my kind of salvation. Turns out, we arrived in India on just such a day and we passed through Garhmuktesar around 1AM. The mailer in Garmuktesar is not the biggest gathering, not by a long shot, but still 1,000,000 people were expected the following day. As we rolled through the miles of impromptu camp sites, countless thousands of people were arriving, many sleeping, packed like sardines, on the side of the road, their heads inches from the streaming traffic.

People sleeping on the side of the road are not an unusual sight in India. At one point, we pulled onto the dirt shoulder for Robert to take a quick bathroom break and stopped a car’s length away from a human body. “The sad thing,” Clifton told us, “is that people can lie like that for days before anyone realizes they’re dead.” This person, an old woman, did move slightly as we waited for Robert to return, which was more of a relief than it probably should have been.

We stopped for chai (sweet milky tea) every few hours or so to keep Robert awake and I was always amazed that these roadside tea houses were open at all. Three o’clock in the morning and people are milling about, selling snacks and hand woven stools or Hindu statues or whatever. One guy at the bootleg DVD stand may have been asleep but his lights were on and he was physically at his post should any passing traveler desperately require a copy of “Sleepless in Seattle” before morning.

As for the road itself…The main road from Delhi to Banbasa may look like a highway on any road map you might check but it is not. Four lanes turn into two without warning, then two become one with two-way traffic, and one occasionally turns into a dirt off ramp which rumbles through a wreck of a town on a wreck of a road before rumbling back into four lanes again. Potholes appear to be the only recurring theme.

Logan definitely had the worst of this trip, tucked in the back as he was. He did manage to sleep a little bit, though how he ever got comfortable in the dead bug position is beyond me.

As the hours ticked by, Clifton essentially told us the story of his life and, as someone who tells stories for a living, it’s quite a good one. Turns out: The Mission was founded by his grandfather, Max Strong, in 1948, the year after Indian Independence. Clifton spent some time on the farm as a kid, made friends with some of the orphans—but he was primarily raised in Tasmania, an island off the southern coast of Australia. A self-described nerd, Clifton was living every computer geek’s dream: computer engineer by day, “World of Warcraft” addict all the rest of the time. He was making good money, enjoying his life. But all that changed in 2003 when his grandfather died and he reconnected with The Farm.

“What I found was pure evil,” Clifton said. The mission he had known as a child where God’s love and children’s laughter was the rule was all gone, replaced by a brutal institution of violence and greed. Children were being beaten, starved, locked in airless rooms, abused in every way imaginable. Children who lived through this period tell of eating grass to feel full. Eating mud. Eating chalk. “It’s so tasty,” they say today with a smile, but they were not smiling then. Resources were being hoarded by the staff and the kids were being used as servants. Pedophiles lived on the grounds. Something had to be done.

On April 7th, 2004, at the age of 19, Clifton arrived at the Farm with his cousin Max. Max was very large and ready for a fight. Together, Clifton and Max walked into the office and Clifton said: “As of today, things have changed. If you’re with us, fine. If you’re not, you have thirty seconds to leave the property.” And he meant it. Sensing the sincerity in Clifton’s eyes, maybe seeing the size of Max’s biceps, the staff literally ran for their lives, the evil regime was vanquished. Clifton didn’t know how he was going to manage it at the time or exactly what he was in for, but just like that, the fate of 100 children went from darkness to light.

After crying himself to sleep every night for the first few weeks, Clifton made a decision. At the age when most young hackers were content to plug into their computers and disappear from reality, shoot Nazis or zombies or whatever popped up on screen, Clifton dug his feet into the rain-soaked mud of Strong Farm. In time, he married Priscilla, an Indian woman and former Mission orphan and together with Clifton’s parents, they keep this place running. “I plan to spend the rest of my life here,” Clifton—now 25—said. “You’ll see. You won’t want to leave.”

It was 6AM, 8 hours from Delhi, by the time we pulled onto the Strong Farm property, just a few minutes ahead of the monsoon. Every year, torrential rains cover most of India after months of complete dryness. And as we rolled to a stop, our luggage on the roof, the first drops of the rainy season began to fall. We scrambled to our guest house and stumbled inside just as the sky opened and the parched Earth breathed its first collective sigh of the year—more salvation for this small corner of the world.

I slept for four hours, literally delirious from the ride, then stepped out into the heat to say hello. What I found continues to amaze me. From newborn baby twin girls to 18 year old high school graduates, Clifton and Priscilla, along with Clifton’s ailing mother Maxine, his father Rick and their Indian staff feed, clothe, shelter, educate, medically treat and basically love 100 of the most amazing kids I have ever met.

Without reservations I can say for me: this is the most powerful, transformational stop on our journey so far. What we are sharing with these kids—our love, our attention, even our simple abilities to juggle, do yoga, sing, play guitar—is nothing compared to what they are sharing with us. Without parents, without possessions, through some of the most difficult experiences imaginable, these kids smile more easily, laugh more genuinely and appreciate more deeply than I ever have.

But I’m learning. We all are. One hug, one piggy back, one tiny dose of salvation at a time.

Last Post from Thailand

2010-06-26T22:46:00.010-04:00

There are so many things I’d like to tell you about Thailand.

I’d love to write about the Thai wedding we attended and the seat at the head table we were immediately and inexplicably offered.

It was a little past 9 in the morning and a major feast was already in full swing. Over 100 degrees in the shade. Whole fish on the table covered with flies. Loud karaoke on stage. “You must sing,” a woman said to me. “Country road. Takes me home.” So I did. Sweating like a fountain. Traca offered me a flower on stage. Hope I didn’t drip sweat on her as I took it.

I’d love to write about our trip to Laos.

Our plan was to extend our 30-day visa by an additional two weeks with a quick boarder crossing. But after clearing all the logistic hurtles, paying the hefty fees and touring ancient temples in Vientiane for an afternoon, we discovered the re-entry visa rules had recently changed. As a result, we now needed to leave Thailand one day earlier than our original visa allowed.

I’d love to write about the local custom of blasting loud music after someone dies. It happened seven mornings in a row at 4:45 AM. And how loud is loud? You’ll have to trust that in this one instance I’m not exaggerating, but they had a truck parked across the street loaded up with huge hi-fidelity speakers, stacked three high in both directions like a rolling rock concert, cranked to the max.

And they’re not playing “Time To Rise and Shine” music, either. This is full on, Thai Pop with electric guitars and heavy bass thumping into the darkness and into our bones, giving “Loud enough to wake the dead” a whole new meaning. I asked someone why they do this and the answer was simple. “People sad,” I was told. “Music make happy.” Perhaps, but a good night’s sleep can do wonders during a difficult time, as well.

I’d love to write about some of the unique Thai foods we have come to love. Like the ngor. (To pronounce “ngor”, say the “ng” of “song” and add it to a long nasal grunt that only kind of ends in “r”.)

Ngor is something you eat. It has a hairy, thick red skin that you peel, revealing an opaque, egg-shaped fruit with an almond sized nut in the middle. Sweet with the texture of a grape, ngor sells for 15 bhat a kilo which is less than 50 cents for a plastic grocery bag stuffed to the handles. You can almost follow Jackson around the village by the trail of ngor peels she leaves behind her.

I’d love to write about our trip to the Tat Ton National Park; the stone hedge of Thailand and its nearby waterfall.

If you ever go, pay close attention to the welcome sign. It was translated in English by—I’m guessing—a non-native English speaker. I love the last line that reads, and I quote: “The two sides of waterfall you will find many kind of tree and it’s will be nature study’s way then you can rest on plenty of bench and taking you food.”

I’d love to write about our last day at school in Nongkha; the going away party we were given; the sadness Logan and Jackson felt as they said goodbye to their soccer friends after one more sunset game.

And I’d really like to write about our incredible three days in Bangkok. Traca’s aunt Patsy went to school with a member of the Thai Royal Family and, after an email request from Patsy to Putrie (now the King’s personal assistant), we were shown the royal treatment, to say the least.

Tours of the Royal Palace. Private boats to escort us to exclusive restaurants. Visits to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the gigantic Reclining Buddha, the Thai Heritage Museum and the beyond-spectacular Royal Throne Room. I could fill pages on the Throne Room alone, packed as it was with works of art to boggle the mind...but we have already moved on.

We’re heading for India and the Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission. (www.indianorphanage.com) It’s due East of Delhi in the town of Banbasa, 10K from the Nepal border. It’s a Christian orphanage with 100 kids run by a 25 year old Australian guy named Clifton Shipway. I found Clifton and this volunteer opportunity on the web just a few days before we left Nongkha. He welcomed us to come stay for as long as we wanted and even offered to pick us up at the airport, which, when you’re landing in the insanity of Delhi, is like offering an air conditioned ferry out of Hell. We don’t really know all that much about “The Farm” as it is called, other than the fact that it borders a jungle. I asked Clifton if he ever saw any animals in the wild and he wrote back: “In the last week I have seen a couple of elephants, a tiger and a leopard. Not to mention buffalo, stray dogs and cows up the wazoo!” So that’s where we’re going.

Still. There’s so much I want to write about Thailand before we leave. And I can’t decide how to sum our experience up without sounding overly sentimental. What did we learn? How did Nongkha affect us? It may take a while for us to fully appreciate this place. But for now, here’s one more story.

There is a girl in Nongkha named Aum. From very early in our visit, Aum was one of our favorites. She is a bit of a tom boy with a great smile and a spark inside of her that is hard to miss. She also has a great laugh and a sincere sweetness.

“Teacha. Please,” she’d say, guiding me off the road to protect me from a passing car; this girl who comes up to my elbow, 10 years old, shielding me from harm. For our first week in Nongkha, we saw Aum everyday. She loved Logan like a little sister and fought with him every chance she got. Soccer games, wrestling matches. She hung on him and laughed and growled.

And she was always looking when you would look in her direction. A quick glance and Aum would instantly light up, the beautiful spark within igniting at the slightest connection.

And then one day it stopped.

Aum didn’t come by after school anymore. She stopped talking with Logan much less climbing on him. And she wasn’t looking when we looked at her. She simply withdrew her attention.

Many other kids eagerly flowed in to fill the space Aum once held for us all. But I couldn’t help but wonder what happened. In conservative Thai culture, was she behaving inappropriately, too intimate with a 17 year old boy, too bold for a young lady her age? Or was there something else, something our Western eyes just couldn't see? Whatever the reason, her down cast eyes didn’t tell us anything other than to shield us from the spark we loved so much.

On our last day, Traca and I were teaching one of our final classes. “Things I like. Things I don’t like.” The kids in class were coming up with a list of both when Aum stepped into the doorway outside the room. Her eyes were instantly on mine and they never wavered as I approached. In her hands, she held something that she gave to me; a homemade card with a heart drawn on the cover. This was the first real contact I’d had with her in weeks and it would probably be my last. So I took her hands in mine and said with as much affection as I could: “Pùak row rák kun.” We love you.

Aum spoke softly, eyes locked on mine and said, “I love kun, too.” A huge smile lit across her face and her eyes exploded with pure joy. Then she walked down the hall and out of our lives forever.

There is so much we’ve discovered here in Thailand. So much we’ve come to know and love. So much that will forever remain a mystery. But one thing is crystal clear. More than a family dinner for three dollars, more than extreme natural beauty, it’s the people of Thailand that are its greatest treasure. Beyond welcome, beyond kindness, they exude a love and respect that is impossible to miss. It was as clear as the pencil printing on Aum’s card, a sentiment that was echoed in so many ways by so many of our new and unforgettable Nongkha friends:

Aum love John.
Aum love Traza
Aum love Jackson
Aum love Lohkan.

Many Rich

2010-06-24T04:17:00.012-04:00

Is there Teacher’s Day in the United States? Other than Christmas and the end of the year when students buy cheesy ornaments or “World’s Best Teacher” mugs, is there an actual day when students pay tribute to their teachers in any real and meaningful way? Without even knowing your particular school or the affection your children hold for those who seek to educate them, I can say with great certainty that the Nongkha kids have got you beat. Check this out.

Teacher’s Day at the Nongkha School is really a three day event. It began on Tuesday afternoon with a real time practice session of the actual event. On that day, it was hot. How hot? If the small travel clock/temperature gauge I carry around with me is to be believed, it was 50 degrees Celsius in the sun. That’s 125 degrees Fahrenheit! In the shade where I was sitting, it was 110 which probably makes it the hottest ambient air temperature I have ever experienced.

Into this air, all 280 kids were called to an open assembly hall. They sat on the cement floor, lined up in neat rows from grades one through twelve, boys on the left side, girls on the right. On the stage before them was an elaborate Buddha alter and a long row of chairs. This—the chairs, not the alter—is where Traca and I and a few other teachers sat for rehearsal, surrounded by electric fans.

What followed was a scene that I seriously doubt many Western schools could pull off without a stack of discipline problems or possibly even open rebellion. After a long lecture on the importance of Teacher’s Day, the students came forward, youngest to oldest in groups of eight. With painstaking precision and sincere little faces, the students practiced how they would bow before the Buddha and how they would prostrate themselves before the alter. Then, shuffling on their knees along a woven, banana leaf runner, they came before us, their teachers, practicing another very specific bow before offering their gifts, which for the moment were just slightly-embarrassed, imaginary hand gestures.

This went on for four hours.

The following day, there were no classes. It was an entire day set aside for the students to work—unsupervised—on their offerings. The idea was to make an elaborate, stylized flower out of clay and real flowers.

It was a contest and, near as I could tell, there were no guidelines. The kids just shaped and sculpted and meticulously crafted their presents, working in groups all over the school grounds. We, the teachers, basically hung out all day. We didn’t look over the kid’s shoulders or tell them to get off Face book or to stop texting their friends in the next room. They just worked. One group was up until midnight that night completing their masterpiece.

Thursday. Teacher’s Day. No classes. It’s show time.

Every student who was in need of a haircut yesterday was sporting a fresh new do. Many young boys looked like monks with their freshly buzzed heads. All clothes were cleaned and pressed. Everyone looked pretty happy.

We assembled at the assembly hall, kids on the floor, teachers and Buddha on the stage, and the bowing, prostrating and gift giving began in earnest. The flower gifts were absolutely amazing; intricate, creative, and clearly lovingly made. They also struck me as painfully temporary. In the 100+ degree heat, made mostly of small, fragile flower petals, they wouldn’t last the day.

The real stars of the show, for me at least, were the kids. Yes, they were well behaved, but it was more than sitting still. It was the look on their faces. Maybe I’m giving them too much credit but to me, their little scrubbed faces were shining with what looked like reverence; a sincere, humble respect for their teachers, for my family and me, literally at our feet, every last one of them.

When it was all done, there was one final flower/gift placed in the center of the hall. I thought it was going to be for the winner of the Offering Design contest but it wasn’t. It was for us. “You like,” one teacher told me with a smile. “Go sit.”

So Traca, Logan, Jackson and I sat around a low table as a Hindu priest recited an ancient incantation, designed—I was later told—to keep us safe on our journey and bring us luck in our lives.

As he did, the kids and the teachers formed a circle around us and a roll of string was unwound, tied to the flower centerpiece and continuing until it encircled the entire group. At the time, I had no idea what the man was saying but the feeling in the room was clear. We honor you, it seemed to say. And we hold you, for this moment, at the center of our lives.

When the prayer was finished, the priest closed his book and tied a small string on each of our left wrists. It’s a tradition in Thai culture. They do it at weddings; all the guests offer strings of luck to the bride and groom—and the sentiment was the same for us. By itself, a single string doesn’t look like much, just a white line across the brown of my arm. But a single string was not what our friends had in mind.

We were moved to four chairs and, one by one, in a beautiful receiving line of smiling familiar faces, the staff and then the kids came to offer us strings of their own. As they tied them, they also offered small wishes or blessings in their best English. Things like:
“Many luck.”
“Many Many Maah-nee.”
“Happy happy…everything!”
“I love Teacha!”
“Good aftanoon. Many rich!”
Some boys dared offer Jackson a bracelet, quickly slipping it on her before slipping away. Others fixed penny candies to their strings. Most strings were the traditional white strings that you buy from the monks in the village. Others were pink yarn. Some were baby blue.

It may sound like a simple gesture but it was incredibly touching. In fact, Traca was in tears for most of the ceremony, basking in the generosity and heartfelt kindness of these people. (Actually, it didn’t take much to push her over the edge; she’s been on a bit of kindness overload as of late. Her little cabal of female teacher friends recently had a custom Thai coat and shirt made for her by a local tailor...

...then presented her with an elaborate fruit carving one afternoon just because they love her.

With those as primers, a parade of over 200 adoring well wishers easily filled her heart, our hearts, to over flowing.

But then I suppose that was the point of Teacher’s Day all along.

A Million Univited Guests

2010-06-15T21:57:00.010-04:00

I am absolutely covered with flies.

This is the way with Thai cooking—and eating, for that matter: Flies find food and hang out. Whether you’re chopping or chewing, flies will crawl on the lip of your wok or on your lips if you let them. And what are they doing? If they are wiping their nasty little feet on the rim of my glass, or laying eggs in my Pad Thai, it is not overtly obvious. I’ve watched them closely (not hard to do in the middle of a swarm), and near as I can tell...they’re licking. Or kissing. With their freaky, distendable mouth apparatus, they crawl on anything that eats or can be eaten and they lick/kiss it; a thought that did not—I can assure you—enhance my desire for the tomatoes I was chopping into salsa at that moment.

And why was I making salsa? Because Traca had the great idea to throw a dinner party for a few local friends. Initially, the guest list included four teachers from school, the three members of our home stay family, plus the four of us for an ambitious table for ten. After much debate and fruitless searching (If we wanted to make Thai food we’d have no trouble finding ingredients!), we settled on a Tex Mex extravaganza with, among other things: guacamole, refried beans, cheese and salsa—all things you will not find in the typical Thai refrigerator. To pull it off, we bought supplies while we were in Chiayaphum and we were all set to cook after school on party day.

But as we quickly discovered, in a small village like Nongkha, there is no such thing as a private party. Soon friends were inviting friends. Children and grandchildren piggybacked on invitations. Apparently, everyone wanted to see what the giant fa-long family ate for dinner and, frankly, it had us a little concerned. With less than six hours till guests were scheduled to arrive, it looked like we’d be having somewhere between 20 and 40 visitors. Which only meant: We needed more food.

In the middle of the school day, with two free periods before us, Jackson and I hopped on a mo-ped and set off into the 110 degree day. Our plan was to buy more of everything and add potatoes to the menu. Many Thai people we spoke with thought American food meant French fries and we did not want to disappoint. And since the closest potatoes that anyone could think of were twelve miles away at the Ban Huayangdam public market in the Nongbuadaeng District, Jack and I hit the road to make some tracks.

Rural Thai markets are fun. You can buy just about anything that can be eaten; live fat toads, live eels, bugs, huge sad fish swimming in shallow tubs of dirty water, octopus on a stick, whole pigs heads or, if you so desire, a local delicacy that includes a pig’s ear and a strip of skin leading to an intact snout—which we did not buy. You can also—by being an American—get all the attention and assistance a person could possibly want. Jack and I walked past the simple stalls, inspecting the heaps of local produce and edible curiosities with all eyes glued to us (like flies on snouts), following our every move. Eventually, a bold woman from the legion of female vendors stepped in front of me and pointed at my chest. Then she pointed at Jackson. Back to me. Back to Jack. Raised eyebrow but smiling. Her expression said, “Explain this, please.” So I did.

“Kǒrng pǒm lôok sǒw.” My daughter, I said. And the lady beamed as if I’d just purchased a big bag of eels. “Lôok sǒw,” she said, and then called out. “LÔOK SǑW! LÔOK SǑW!” What followed was a chorus of “Lôok sǒw”s as every woman in the market told her neighbor that I was not, thankfully, married to this young woman. I was, in fact, her father.

Anyway, supplies in hand and relationship clear, Jackson and booked it back to Nongkha, taught our final class of the day, then headed home to get cookin’ for the masses.

Two things about Thai cooking (other than flies): It’s quick and men don’t do it. So as I stood in the kitchen endlessly boiling the beans and chopping the previously mentioned tomatoes, our housekeeper Boon was in a cultural panic.

She tried maybe a dozen times to take the knife from my hand, looking me in the eye each time like a sympathetic nurse come to help her delusional patient. And she couldn’t stop turning off the burner the beans were bubbling on, literally bringing me bean samples at two minute intervals. Each time I’d politely say, “Mâi, Boon. Rórn mâhk.” Literally: No, Boon. More Hot. And Boon would groan a soft sound, imploring me to reconsider. When I would insist, she’d reluctantly leave, fire up the stove, and return a minute later with another uncooked bean for me to inspect.

Eventually it was show time and the guests started to arrive. Cars, mo-peds, families on foot. Traca and I have thrown many dinner parties in our 20+ years together but I feared this one was going to be a colossal international flop. One of our Thai friends, Ba, poked her head into the kitchen, sampled the bizarre green guacamole and screwed up her face, the universal symbol for “Yuck!”

“Thai no like weg-i-tables,” Ba said. “Like meat.” Damn. We should have bought some of those ear-snout appetizers after all.

In the end, our party won’t be remembered for the food. Some people liked it. Some didn’t. Most of it was eaten by the time we went to bed. And it won’t be remembered as a wild shindig; we sat on the floor, politely chatting, many people leaving in less than one hour. I think the final head count was around 25.

But for me, the evening will be forever inscribed in our Dinner Party Hall of Fame for an event every party planner fears. I’m speaking of course of the cloud of thumb-sized flying insects that descended on all of us, precisely at the moment I delivered the final bowl of beans to the feast.

Thai houses are open. Windows often have no glass, ceilings and walls can have large gaps, doors are rarely closed. So the swarm that invaded our village had no trouble getting in. I’m not kidding. This was a full on, repent for your sins, holy mother of God plague in our kitchen. And our living room. And our guacamole. And our salsa. One guest was quick to point out, “You can eat,” she said. "Fry. Many protein.” I suggested the French fries which appeared to have grown wings. In fact, wings—and the creepy bugs they flew in with—were everywhere. In my hair, down my shirt, sticking to my sticky skin. Traca and I were laughing (with mouths closed) at the sheer absurdity of it all. “What does Emily Post say about plagues?” Logan was running around with a broom, attempting to beat back the Apocalypse single handedly.

Jackson found all of this wildly funny, particularly the big lizard that appeared out of no where, gobbling as many of the fallen as his mouth could hold. “Godzilla’s in the kitchen,” she said, gasping for breath as the swarm swirled around her. “And I think he’s hungry.”

And then it was over.

I have no idea why, but ten minutes after they arrived, all the bugs fell to the ground. The floor—literally: the town—was littered with wings, millions of them, everywhere. But the bugs were gone.

And so we sat down and we poured ourselves a drink and we talked with friends and life returned to normal. Naturally, the flies were there, licking-kissing by bowl, my spoon, my arm.

But this time, for a million dead reasons, I didn’t mind them all that much at all.

White Glamour, Be Damned!

2010-06-10T02:29:00.007-04:00

For every slightly shy American boy who wants to feel really good about himself, might I suggest a vacation in rural Thailand.

Places like Chaing Mai in the North and Phuket in the South have been crawling with tourists for years, but here in Nongkha and the surrounding countryside, the sight of a large, white boy is still a novelty and has the power to get the local people—particularly the ladies—excited. To give you an idea how Logan Mania plays out in our day to day lives, how’s this for an ego boost?

Logan and I were sitting up on our porch, resting in the 100 degree heat, watching the storm clouds form over the mountains…when Jackson came running up the stairs.
“Logan,” she said. “You have company.”
“Who is it?” Logan asked, expecting some of the neighborhood ten-year-old-and-under boys that dog his every step.
“I don’t know,” Jackson said. “It’s girls. They’re not from school.”
Turns out, they were from the next town over; four 17 year old girls who heard about Logan through the Thai grapevine and had come to see what all the fuss was about.

In the fifteen minutes that these total strangers were here, they posed for camera phone pictures, swapped e-mails, asked every question their smattering of English would allow, and basically basked in his presence for as long as possible. Add this to the continued autograph signings in class and the general pie-eyed mooning that follows him around school and you’ve got the makings of an international pop sensation. Seriously, if this continues, I’m thinking about putting up a little souvenir stand by the road, featuring “POM RAK LOGAN” T-shirts. Jackson thinks I could make a killing.

Speaking of which: Jackson is no less adored—but Thai boys are not the type to show up at your house, unknown and unannounced. Though they often shout “I love you!” from a safe distance...

...and write it on the floor in spilled rice...

...they are generally quiet and—I suspect—a little intimidated by our brash and powerful young lady. Take, for example, a class Jack and I taught the other day.

One of the most basic English class exchanges is the common greeting. “Hello. How are you today? I’m fine, thank you. And you? I’m fine, too. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too.” Not exactly Oscar-winning dialogue but it gets ‘em talking. So we go around the room, play out this scene with every student, usually shake hands at the end. But last week when I told the 12th grade class that Jackson would be the one walking around to speak and press the flesh with them, most of the boys literally cowered, scrambling to the back of the room, huddling around the farthest desk. It was all very funny; the girls laughed like crazy. But I could tell some of these senior boys were really nervous. One poor fella, who clearly will not be taking Jackson to the Thai prom, grabbed his books and walked—stone faced—out the door and gone as Jackson got a little too close for his comfort.

I’ve wondered about this crazy adoration and I see a few possible explanations. For one: Many TV commercials I’ve seen here in Thailand are really just corporate American spots dubbed in Thai. So the faces the local kids see are beautiful U.S. teens, happily hiking through the Rockies or enjoying an ice cold Coke in the Los Angeles sunshine. As I watch these ads in the context of this village, Logan and Jackson appear to have stepped right off the set and into the Nongkha school. So the girls swoon and the boys quake.

There’s also a cultural fascination with white skin. When the TV isn’t showing happy American kids pitching chewing gum and soda, the stations run an endless litany of skin whitening product ads. And all the TV shows features incredibly pale Thai actors. And the models in the magazines are all bleached out, like perfect shells on the beach. It’s a little creepy, actually. In the bathroom at our home stay, there is a product from Lux called “White Glamour” and it promises: “…fair and admired skin.” It goes on to say: “With skin so alluringly white, you will be empowered to unleash and enjoy your feminine spirit.” In case you were wondering how to do that.

Traca talked about this with Aud, a female teacher at school who has perfectly even, beautiful brown skin, like a mocha-latte come to life. When Traca asked why anyone would ever want change such skin, Aud shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said, a little embarrassed. “I black. You bee-you-tee-fall.”

Fair skin is not a modern fascination, I’m told. For centuries it has signified high social status. As in: If you are rich enough to stay out of the fields and out of the baking hot sun, your pale complexion and lack of wrinkles will tell the world all about it. But as we look around our school at these kids and their perfect brown skin, the kind every American teen dreams of and flocks to the beach to find, the kind the entire tanning industry is built on, I just wish there were an ad campaign telling every Thai child how bee-you-tee-fall they are, just as they are.

As for the crazy adoration, Pee-sin, our chef and den mother here in Nongkha, explains it in a much simpler way. “Thai woman laav fa-long,” she says with a big smile. “Much much maah-nee!” Which does explain all the fat, balding, obnoxious older white guys we see with their hot young Thai wives. But it doesn’t explain Logan. Well, maybe a little, but I think it’s even simpler than that.

Each day after school, around 5:30, Logan and Jackson ride over to a neighboring village and meet up with a dozen girls and a few boys from all over the area. They converge to play soccer and hang out. Jackson tells me Logan has his eye on this one certain girl and Logan does not deny it. And I picture them, after the game breaks up, taking a walk into the emerald green rice fields as the sky surrounds them with brilliant pink and red.

Just a girl and a slightly less shy American boy.

One Thai Day

2010-06-06T22:43:00.010-04:00

The day begins at 4:25 AM with roosters.

Before the sun is even a promise in the East, every rooster in Nungkha begins screeching, competing to announce the day. These are the ferocious Thai fighting cocks who strut around our yard like pimps, keeping their many mangy ladies in line. Curiously, as decked out as these loud dudes are, the chickens they lord over look positively plucked, like freaky zombie chickens, bald and ready for Paa’s pot.

Our yard is crawling with these birds, but as the cock-a-doodling begins in earnest, you can’t see any of them. Sunrise is over an hour away.

In spite of the raucous pimp chatter, we wake around 6 AM. Logan and Jackson have started a preseason running regiment so they hit the country roads and burn up some miles. Traca does a little running, a little yoga, a little meditation and I’m trying to work up the motivation to do any of the above. But around 7 o’clock, we all reconvene for the first shower of the day. Thais are very clean and it is expected that we will take at least two showers a day. Actually, it’s not just expected, it’s requested. “You wheel tack showa een mawning and in eve-a-ning. OK?” I heard this from three separate people the night we arrived. As for the actual showering part, it’s a little more involved than hot and cold knobs and a directional shower head.

In the bathroom, there is a large basin of standing water, a plastic bowl, a slightly sloped tile floor and a hole in the wall. To wash up, you fill the bowl with water and dump it on your head until sufficiently wet. Then, lather up and repeat step one. The basin is filled with rain water and its a little cold, but that’s OK. At 7 AM it’s usually 85 degrees in the house, on its way to 100 or more, so a cool dip/dunk is a very good thing.

Breakfast is served at 7:30 AM. It’s usually rice, cooked Thai vegetable, eggs, fruit, sometimes fish or chicken and hot sauce.

As the saying goes, here in the Udon Province: If it’s not spicy, it’s not Thai food. The food is always local, organic, fresh, abundant and delicious. I’m not sure what kind of ogre family they thing we are but we usually only manage to eat about half the food we are given—even with Logan, the bottomless pit, on our team.

8 AM and it’s off to school. We dress like dorky missionaries but that’s the dress code. For the men: pants, collared shirts tucked in and shoes, not sandals. For the women: long skirts, high cut shirts, showing as little skin as possible.

Thais are very conservative and modest in all aspect of life, even at the public pool. We went swimming the other day to beat the heat and every Thai swimmer, from the youngest to the oldest, wore knee-length shorts and a T-shirt. One teen-aged girl even wore sweat pants. I’m telling you, Speedo is not getting rich off the Thai market. By comparison, Jackson looked positively naked in her bikini but she simply could not conceive of a world where you swim in wet clothes. To her credit, she did wrap herself from neck to knee in her sarong as soon as she stepped clear of the water.

After a morning assembly where we sing the Thai anthem to the King and say prayers to the Buddha, classes start at 8:40 AM. Fifty minute classes, three of them spread out over the day. Class size ranges from six to twenty-six in grades 1 through 12. We see every class once over the course of a week.

As for the actual job, I can tell you this: Teaching English without a translator to a group of kids who really don’t speak English is not as easy as I thought it would be. For some reason—and this is probably because of my complete lack of training—I thought we’d show up, start talking, act words out, clown around a bit, and somehow, magically, we’d have everyone reciting Shakespeare in no time. But this is not how it has shaken down. What we’ve discovered is: These kids know a ton of vocabulary; all the body parts, numbers, colors, days of the week, animals, fruit, food, random flashcard words like unicorn, X-ray and yo-yo. They know how to sing “Happy Birthday”, “The ABC Song”, even the dreaded “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”. All the easy things ESL teachers pull out of their hats to get the language started.

But what these kids do not have is a single clue about how to put a sentence together or ask a simple question. They’re also shy by nature, especially some of the girls, so conversation can be an exercise in embarrassment. And some of the boys are simply not all that interested. After all, if you’re going to be a rice farmer like your father’s father’s father’s father, why do you need to know how many books I’m holding up? In English?

In all honesty, there have been days when we feel completely unqualified to pose as teachers, finding the students struggling with the most basic concepts and feeling like 50 minutes is an endless chasm to cross. But then, other days, we find our stride, see real learning going on, come up with an idea that actually works, and the time flies. As I’m sure every real teacher knows, it’s fun to see children get excited in class. One student walked out of one of our best classes with a huge smile on his face. He was bursting at the seams to say something and he paused in front of Jackson and me to express himself. “I…am…HAPPY!” he said. And I was thinking the same thing.

After school, around 2 PM, the day is ours. We walk home, buy a cold drink on the way, usually take shower/dunk bath #2 and then go play. The kids hit the town for more soccer or moped rides or general goofing off.

And Traca teaches yoga to her small but passionate group of women. Or we talk to the locals, or study Thai, or walk through the gorgeous, endless rice fields or down unmarked roads, through one village and then another, like an American parade of two.

Many times, we hear the ubiquitous “fa-long fa-long” from all sides, but even that is changing. In our own town, as we were taking a stroll late in the day one afternoon, we noticed the greetings were different. “Teecha!” we heard. Or better still: “Hello, Jawn. Hello, Tray-sa.” Nearly every home has a child that we teach and, as we walked by, they all came out to smile and wave. Which, I must say, felt pretty good.

Dinner is served at 7PM. More delicious Thai food. Then another shower before bed. Unless there’s some special event—a visiting guest to dine and speak with into the night, a funeral service to attend, a trip to town planned—we’re almost always in bed before 9. And with good reason.

The day begins at 4:15 AM with roosters.

When Do We Go...Abore?

2010-06-02T01:01:00.010-04:00

When you buy something here in Thailand, you might ask, “Rak-kah, tôw-rai?” Which means: “How much is it?” So long as you really drag out and swoop the “o” in “tow” from high to low, and roll your “r”s so they almost sound like “L”s, you stand a pretty decent chance of being understood. But since you have very little chance of understanding the answer you’ll receive, you’ll need to follow up with, “Dâi măi kee-an long hâi?” Which means: “Could you please write it down?” To illustrate how difficult the Thai language is…I was practicing these two phrases in preparation for my next purchase when an English speaking Thai friend dropped by. Acting as my pronunciation coach, she had me lay the lines on her.

“Dâi măi kee-an long hâi?” I said, proud of myself and expecting her approval. But she just stared at me, not a single glimmer of recognition. I tried again, a little less certain. “Dâi măi kee-an long hâi?” Nothing. At this point, I just figured—as I’ve always suspected—that I suck at this, and all, languages. So rather than prolong my listener’s confusion, I showed her the book with the phrase printed out in Thai characters. Right away she understood. “Oh,” she said. “Iss not right. You say: ‘long hâi’ But is: ‘long hâi.’”

That was it. My “hâi” swooped down. Her “hâi” swooped way up. Everything else: fine. And what do ya got? Zero comprehension. Such is the way with Thai. As a tonal language, inflection is everything. Take for example the word “mai”. If you say it flat it means “mile”. Say it low it means “new”. Say it high it means, “…, right?” Swoop it from low to high, it means “silk”. And if you swoop it from high to low, it can actually mean two things: the most basic word “No” or the verb “to burn”. Sheesh. What if you want to say: “We don’t want to burn a mile of new silk, right?” It boggles the mai-nd.

At first, I found all this high and low stuff to be ridiculous. I mean, come on. One wrong swoop and you can’t understand anything I’m saying? But then I had a chat with a local girl named Bè-oh and I realized: communication is tricky no matter which language you’re using.

It was after a Buddhist ceremony that we all attended. When the monks finished chanting and the crowd began to break up, I took a walk through the town, just taking a look around. As I came to a corner, Bè-oh was standing in her driveway and she smiled and called to me.
“Teecha, teecha,” she said.
“Hello. How. Are. You?” I asked, speaking as slowly as possible.
“I am fine, sank you,” she said. “Where you go?”
“I. Am. Walking.” I answered. “What. Are. You. Doing. Today?”
Bè-oh did not know this question and her face flashed concern. Quickly, she opened the English book she was holding. She was probably 13 but her book was a first grade reader. Still, she flipped though the pages, wanting to answer me, desperately looking for the words. “It’s. OK.” I said. “No problem.” But Bè-oh kept looking. She flipped faster, glanced up at me, more pages, more glancing, then she made a decision and took a shot. “How do we go…abore?” she said. She smiled. I smiled. But I had no idea what she meant. Her smile dimmed and she looked down, reading more carefully. “How do we go abore?” Wanting her to succeed but still totally lost, I stepped closer and took a look at her book. The page she had decided upon was titled “Transportation” and the first line was written under a picture of a plane. “How do we go aboard?” it said. Not exactly the answer I was looking for but a sincere attempt all the same.

Even non verbal communication can be a challenge. There’s an old man named Paa who acts as a caretaker for our property.

He’s 75 years old and speaks no English at all. So when we are talking, after I exhaust my limited Thai skills, we resort to full on pantomimes. Having been at this for one week now, I can say without hesitation that I do not want Paa on my team for charades. Near as I can figure, his signs and gestures are mostly random. He’ll hold up two fingers, point to me, put his hands on his hips, pretend he’s reading a book, throw a few punches, hold up one finger, answer the phone, dig a hole, point at me and then wait for my answer. I usually throw a few punches and dig a few holes myself. And in this way we pass the time.

But a funny thing is happening to me.

When I was in 8th grade, I got a D+ in Mademoiselle Gosselin’s French 2 class. It would prove to be the lowest grade of my academic career and it says a little something about my ability to grasp foreign languages. It’s not just that I find them difficult, which I do. I’m simply not all that interested. Where Traca is fascinated and motivated by the challenge, I feel tired. All those irregular verbs, the masculine and feminine nonsense, the future tenses. I’d rather just take my D+ and go home.

But with Thai—and this comes as a total shock to me—I’m actually having fun learning a language for the first time in my life. I can’t really explain it. Maybe because it’s so impossible, because I’m certain to fail, I can just relax and play around with it. I don’t know. The thing is, it actually doesn’t even feel like a language to me. It’s more like a random string of sounds that mean nothing unless I relate them to some word pictures in my mind. So I picture a raccoon eating some rye bread when I want to ask someone their name. Kun chêu à-rai? (Coon chew a rye?) Or I picture Atilla the Hun eating his chow to remember the word for “breakfast”. Ah-hǎhn chów. (A hun chow). Naturally, as with all things, potty humor is the most effective way to remember anything so I’ll never forget the words for Sunday (wan a-tít), butterfly (pĕe sêu-a or, to me: “pee sewer” with a bit of a Maine accent), pink (see-chom pou: see chomp poo) and my personal favorite, the word for corn: kâu-poon, which sounds enough like “cow porn” to make me smile and spark my memory.

Life here in Nung kah is incredible. The kids continue to be rock stars at school.

Traca’s teaching yoga to a group of local women

And I’ve got 280 young tutors to help me crack the Thai language nut. Is it possible to reduce an entire 1000 year old language to a series of ridiculous English word pictures? I doubt it. But I’ve got four weeks to find out.

Luckily, to say “four weeks” in Thai you say: “see a-tít” and who can forget that?

Sour Tea Crap

2010-05-29T01:58:00.009-04:00

“Yaw name eez?” a girl said. Her eyes were wide with hope and she smiled like an adoring fan. Behind her, a dozen other girls all watched, too shy to approach, equally excited to hear the answer.

Jackson smiled back. “My name is Jackson,” she said.

The girl’s smile broadened and she took Jack’s hand, pressing the back of it softly to her cheek. “You ah so byu-tee-fall,” she said. “I love Jacksun.”

I’m sure Miley Cyrus gets this all the time but Jackson is still getting used to it. Being here in rural Thailand has given her and Logan instant celebrity status—which is a far cry from the danger and violence they were expecting when our plane landed in Bangkok three days ago.

I won’t try to paint any dramatic cliff hanger here. In all honesty, our arrival to Thailand could not have gone any smoother.

In the airport, we discovered that the curfew had been extended another night; no one was allowed on the street after 9 PM. Since our plane landed at 9:10, we were told to have our passports ready in case we were stopped by the police, but we weren’t stopped. On the drive into the city, the streets were all but empty and the usually vibrant all-night party was dark and still. Without incidence, we checked into the Suda Palace, locked ourselves into our room and—rather than risk anything—went to bed without dinner.

After breakfast the next morning, to counteract the stress of the previous few days, we each got a Thai massage. It was offered in our hotel by blind masseuses and, at five dollars for an hour, it was hard to pass up.

Twelve noon saw us at Mochit bus station for the 1 o’clock VIP bus to Chaiyaphum (pronounced: chai-ya-POOM). Mochit is not laid out like any bus station I’ve ever seen. It has four floors of ticket windows, literally hundreds of individual bus lines arranged in no particular order and all with signs printed in the utterly incomprehensible Thai language. It’s just a guess, but I bet Thai, both written and spoken, is one of the most difficult languages on Earth. Letters are ornate and cryptic, bearing no resemblance to our English alphabet what so ever. And the sounds of the words, at least to my American ears, are nearly impossible to understand.

In class the other day, I asked a boy his name. He said, clear as a bell: “Baa.” So I said, with equal clarity: “Hello, Baa.” And everyone laughed. “Baa,” everyone repeated, like a paddock of sheep. “Baa,” I echoed. And everyone laughed twice as hard. Now I’m a pretty good mimic so I tried again while the sound was still fresh in my mind. “Baa?” I asked. I had ‘em rolling in the aisles with that one; huge laughs and big smiles all the way around. “No,” they all said, when the hilarity had past. “Baa!” And around and around we go.

The problem is: Thai is a tonal language. Vowels can make 5 sounds that are critical to the meaning of the word. Rising, falling, neutral, high or low. Say the wrong one and watch your class crack up. About the only word I can hang onto is the Thai greeting for Hello. “Sa-wat-dee, krap,” I say, bowing politely. Sour Tea Crap, is how I remember it.

Luckily, there were a few English speaking bus reps wandering around Mochit and, though we were running a bit late, we made the bus on time. Six hours later, we landed in Chaiyaphum where no less than 12 people were waiting for us including the director of the school we’d be teaching at. Clearly, they were eager to obtain—and vastly overestimating—our English teaching skills. But there was still one thing we needed to do before our Thai teaching careers could begin

In Thai culture, appearance is everything. How nicely you dress will determine how much respect you are given. Thais like you to be clean, well dressed, and full of easy humor. Meet these three requirements and they will love you to bits. After three months on the road, however, our clothes were barely clean and hardly what you’d call nice. So we pulled into a Chaiyaphum department store for a little shopping and our first real dose of regular Thai life.

A few things stood out to me. For one, things are really cheap. At 31 Thai bhat to the dollar, most clothes cost less than 5 bucks. For another, there is not a pair of shoes in the Thai shoe department that even remotely fit my feet. Even the largest size was five sizes too small. In Thai there is a word for this. It’s called falong. Falong is…me. I haven’t had a great translation but it’s sort of like: Big White Person. You hear it every where we go. “Falong! Falong!” As if the local kids were screaming: “The giants are coming. The giants are coming!” In the department store, one little boy was so surprised and excited at the sight of me, he literally jumped up and down, laughing and screaming “Falong! Falong!” Then hugged me and ran beside me, utterly blown away by the fact that I was there at all. There is no disrespect in the word. We have seen no disrespect in the country at all. But there is no doubt we stand out. This area—where we’ll be spending the next month—doesn’t get many visitors and Westerners are still a novelty.

Eventually we made our purchases, hopped in the van, and made our way to Nong Kah, a tiny village in the Udon Province one hour away from Chaiyaphum. Our house is simple but comfortable. This is our view from the back of our second story apartment.

We have fans in our rooms and new micro-screens on the windows. Our beds are comfortable. The food is delicious with a maid to do the dishes. It’s all good.

But the school is really the thing. Picture this. As we walked into the courtyard on our first day, four falongs from the land of White, 280 students from grade first through twelfth stopped what they were doing to wai us. A wai is a Thai greeting; palms together, hands below the chin, bowing slightly, huge smile on face. “Good mawning, teechas,” they all said. Girls giggled. Everyone looked happy.

Then, after morning assembly, without any orientation or training of any kind, we were assigned classes, given a schedule and sent to teach first period. “Iss easy,” we were told by Por, our smiling handler. “Have fun.”

So we did. Three classes a day, five days a week.

We teach every grade from the youngest to the oldest. Were not the Berlitz family, but we get better every day. And, no matter what we do, the students seem to be beyond thrilled just to have us in the room.

The most amazing thing about this whole adventure so far is the reaction Logan and Jackson have been getting.

They started off teaching their own class but we decided to go with one adult/one child when we realized their combined star power was a little overwhelming for the local kids. For example: at the end of one 7th grade class Jackson and I were teaching, all the girls swarmed around Jack to pose for cell phone pictures.

Another 5th grade group clamored for autographs, actual autographs, offering notebooks and pens, fawning over the printed name Jackson gave them.

And though I haven’t seen this personally, Traca tells me Logan has a teen idol effect on the young Thai ladies. They literally shriek when he enters the room, shout out “I love you!” when he passes by. One girl was so nervous around him, she peered over a sheet of paper the whole class, afraid of what direct face-to-face contact might do to her. It’s crazy. But it does make one thing very clear.

The danger we felt before arriving in Thailand feels very far away now. The village is peaceful, the villagers are kind. Everyone smiles as if seeing a newborn baby when we walk by. And we are only getting started. Near as I can tell, the greatest risk we are facing won’t come from angry protestors at all. But if it is possible to be killed by adoration, the kids better watch out.

Safety Concerns

2010-05-23T20:17:00.002-04:00

We’ve been thinking a lot about safety lately?

I guess if we really wanted to be totally safe, we wouldn’t be out here at all. In Maine, there are no exotic diseases to speak of. The water is fresh and clean. The air is pure. No bombs, no guns. If safety were the highest goal, we would stay with what is easy and familiar; the same job, the same house, the same street. Risk taking, adventure, the unknown. These are all just more words for danger, right?

I remember living in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots in the late 80s. For hours on end, Traca and I watched images of violence, looting, lawlessness, even death. We watched as Reginald Denning was pulled from his truck and savagely beaten in the street. Black smoke and flames filled the TV screen and it felt, as we watched, that the whole world was on fire.

Austraia was supposed to be just a two day stop, a brief “G’day” on our way to our next volunteer adventure. Through a U.S. organization called Volunthai, we were set to teach English in a rural Thai village. Logan and Jackson might even get to teach their own class rooms which sounded pretty cool to us.

But on the eve of our departure, after months of sporadic fighting in the capital, the government tanks rolled in. It was a classic David and Goliath stand off. The Red Shirt protesters thought the new Government needed the boot and they were demanding the president step down, dissolve parliament and call for early elections. To make their point, they took up a position in the middle of the ritziest shopping district in Bangkok, barricading themselves behind a makeshift wall of bamboo and old tires. The government was trying to be patient, letting them have their democratically protected say. But as tourism numbers started to fall and the fighting intensified, enough was—as they say—enough. The tanks pushed into central Bangkok, scattered the resistance, arrested the leaders and imposed a curfew across the city and many of the surrounding provinces.

Like Los Angeles 20 years ago, the vanquished Red Shirts raged, lighting fires in their retreat, burning the stock exchange, a shopping mall and dozens of other government offices. Then the US Embassy closed. And an Australian news caster appeared in our room and said the following: “The government has raised the travel advisory to: Do Not Travel To Bangkok.” That seemed pretty clear. We called our airline and postponed our flight by three days.

In that time, we’ve visited the Melbourne Zoo, toured the botanical garden and tried to make sense of the unfolding situation. From all accounts we could find on the ground in Thailand, the violence was more or less isolated. Most people lived their lives normally. Some even had no sense that there was any conflict going on at all. Particularly in the countryside. We emailed other Volunthai volunteers already at schools in the region we were headed to and they used terms like “beyond tranquil” and “deeply peaceful”. In short, they encouraged us to come.

And yet, the closer our new departure date came, the more fear we received from home. Normally neutral friends pulled out all the emotional guns. A coup is likely, they said. The conflict will almost certainly get worse. And spread. You will be a target! With the conflict more or less divided down economic lines, with the poor, rural Red Shirts seeking the removal of the elitist government and their wealthy supporters, we would be perceived—we were warned—as “rich” Americans and might represent something the rebellion didn’t like. All scary thoughts. And all sent to protect us.

What is the nature of safety? Is this danger real? From our small hotel room, we scowered the air waves and the internet, looking for clues, reading blogs from the thick of it and asking the same questions over and over to our contacts in Bangkok. Is it safe? Is it really safe?

In the end, I suppose it boils down to faith. And odds. And information. And instinct. I remember being in Los Angeles, watching TV all day and feeling, really feeling, that the rioters were outside our door. The TV was filled with their anger and rage. The flames licked the edges of our screen and fueled the panic of our attention. But then we went outside. And the sky was blue. And the city was completely quiet. For miles and miles in every direction, the sun was out, the birds were singing, people were helpful and unusually open. And the city had never looked more beautiful.

As I write this, I am sitting on a plane bound for Bangkok. Jackson and Logan are watching movies. Traca is lying across three seats, listening to music, eyes closed, with a smile on her lips. The curfew in Bangkok and the surrounding provinces was lifted this morning and we’ll be spending one night in the city before catching the 1o’clock bus for Chaiyaphum. We’ll be met at our hotel by a local woman named Oh and we’ll be met by Oh’s father at the Chaiyaphum rail station tomorrow. In the country, we’ll be staying with a local family and working as part of a small rural community.

I wish I could say with 100% certainty that there was no risk here but there is always risk. To live with monkeys in the Costa Rican rainforest. To walk 50 miles the uninhabited wilderness of New Zealand. We didn’t quit our jobs, pull our kids out of school, rent our house to a total stranger and carve out a year of new experiences because we were looking for some easy living. We did it to be fully engaged in life. Nothing more.

For all those who warned us not to go, we thank you for your deep concern. And we assure you we do not have a death wish. Quite the contrary. We have a life wish and it is simply this: To step outside the narrow focus of fear, to put our faith in the goodness of local people, and to stand, as a family, in the safety that we feel in our hears is waiting for us.

That’s the plan anyway. We land in two hours.

Of Sheep and Men

2010-05-23T19:57:00.010-04:00

Final day and I need to telescope some time. Big news to report so I mustn’t dawdle. I’ve been running about two weeks behind and I’m determined to get caught up today.

Our last day on the Heaphy Track was a wonderful, manic push, a mere 16.2K, a five hour walk along the most stunning coastline I have ever seen. Inspired by their post-weka dash ahead of us the day before, Logan and Jack left the Heaphy Hut first and never looked back.

Traca and I tried to catch them but it was no use. By then, Traca’s feet were basically pulp ready to pop, so we just shuffled along together. And with a plague of sand flies waiting at every stop, we barely stopped at all.

It may sound anti-climactic to simply say we made it but...we made it! 82K in four days. Nearly two full length marathons of heavy-pack hiking. Overall it was an incredible adventure. As the kiwis say: Good on ya, mate! Good on us, mate, indeed.

For the purposes of drama I have played up the difficulties on the track, like any good reality show. But there were many other elements that don’t play so well on the big screen. Things like absolute silence. And untouched nature. And hours, days, to absorb them into your soul. If Traca were writing this blog, I’m sure the story would read like a song of love to God, a hymn of thankfulness for the opportunity to be here in this majestic place. She probably wouldn’t even mention her blisters, but that’s just the way she is. Sausage, blisters, she loved every minute of it.

Logan wished we could have done it slower. Jackson says she’s glad it’s over. I thought it was an unforgettable four days that will be vibrating in our lives for many years to come.

But now it’s time to leave the Heaphy behind, take a bloody shower, for Stink’s sake, and leaf through a few choice events the way a movie montage shows the passage of time. Hit the lights and roll the tape.

We hitch hiked into Karamea, spent the night, and caught the first bus ride south to Westport.

With no public transportation running on Saturday, we found space on a local middle school bus, riding with a troop of rugby boys and netball girls.

Working our way to Greymouth, we rent a car (kiwis say “Hire a car”) and make our way to the Franz Joseph glacier.

4PM, with the sun setting, we enter the largest bowl I have ever seen, walk on a lunar landscape to the eerie blue ice of the glacier, snap a few monochromatic shots and make it back to the parking lot in the dark. Have never felt so small, like a rice krispy in a swimming pool.

Next day: south to Haas. Many New Zealanders consider the Hass Pass to be the most spectacular scenery in the land, which is probably the highest praise a stretch of road can receive here on Earth. Absolutely epic!

At Logan’s request we stop at the fabled Blue Pools, crystal clear glacial melt like giant liquid sapphires hidden in an enchanted forest.

Spent the night outside Twizell at a huge sheep station, which is a good point to pause the montage and say a bit about sheep:

There are only one million New Zealanders in the South Island and something like 32 million sheep. How to put this delicately? With so many sheep and so few people, I’m sure certain depraved shephards have, at extremely lonely times, sought out and enjoyed the comfort and companionship of various female members of the flock in what might best be described as “nonconsensual relations”—if you get my “Sheep Sex” drift. But unless this is something of a secret national past time, it doesn’t account for the sheep shagging humor that we’ve seen in gift stores all across the country. We’ve seen boxer shorts featuring cartoon kiwi birds shagging cartoon sheep, a novelty yield sign reading “Men At Work” in which a silhouette sheep in backed up to a silhouette man in a way that God did not intend. There is even a pub in Kiakoura famous for a bottle of beer that celebrates the pleasures of the wooly delights.

Am I missing something here? Or are we missing a great marketing opportunity in Maine? Postcards featuring lobstermen and their catch, caught in the act of some torrid shipboard romance. And let’s not forget the moose. I’m sure hunters get as randy as farmers after a long lonely traipse in the woods. Maybe their love can be depicted on coffee mugs or refrigerator magnets? (I’m not sure where I’m going with this but it’s fun to write. Anyway, back to the montage.)

Last day in New Zealand, we drive to Christchurch, eat as much Tip Top ice cream as possible, sleep in a dive that still costs $100/night, and wake at 4AM for our final left-side-of-the-road drive to the airport.

We’re off for two days in Melbourne, Australia, then on to Thailand. Yet as we board our plane and say good bye to this fantastic country, we have no idea the turmoil the next few days will bring.

Attack of the Wekas

2010-05-23T19:45:00.007-04:00

“I HATE WALKING!” Jackson shouted. And with this, we set out for our third day on the Heaphy Track.

Without animals or really many birds to speak of, the Heaphy Track is almost a meditation. Unless you are a tree enthusiast, giddy at the sight of a broad-leafed Pigeonwood or a twisting Supple Jack vine, the best you can hope for is an occasional fantail sighting, which—though they’re cute and friendly—is a little like spotting a sparrow back home. The guide book even goes so far as to list: “40 species of land snails and large native worms that grow up to a metre long.” Damn, you know you’re reaching for fauna when you include worms as potential highlights.

This lack wildlife, however, creates an even more overwhelming sense of solitude. To walk the Heaphy Track, especially in May, is to experience a true rarity in today’s modern, crowded and bustling world. Other than the track and the bridges which were built by people, you are offered the chance to disappear into pure stillness for a while.

Our objective on Day 3 was another 20.5K, a mere 13 miles, a nice half marathon to wake the blisters. Luckily, most of it was slightly down hill. Unfortunately, it rained like the apocalypse the night before. After the mountain runoff, our path was now wet and slippery and most trickling streams were over flowing their banks.

As you can imagine, wearing the Fat Bastard on my back made the ballet-like rock hopping the trail now required all but impossible; even the slightest momentum in the wrong direction threatened to drag me down with the current. Even Logan was getting grumpy, and that is saying something.

By the time we reached our lunch hut, Logan and Jack looked a little pissed. There seemed to be nothing that could snap them out of it. Not joking, not peanut butter and jelly, not motivational chit chat. They were plain and simply tired, in need of a jump start. Which was precisely when the wekas showed up.

The kiwi bird is the national symbol of New Zealand. (New Zealanders even call themselves kiwis in the same endearing way that Costa Ricans call themselves ticas.) It’s a small brown ball of a bird with a long thin beak and thin long legs. Like a kiwi fruit with a head and feet. Kiwi birds are nocturnal, flightless and very rare but their obnoxious cousins, the wekas, are not.

Wekas are also brown flightless birds, but where kiwis are shy and elusive, wekas run right up to you and steal your lunch bag. True to form, while we sat in our shelter to get away from the sand flies, a band of shell-less turtles with our packs outside the door, three wekas poked into our packs, stole our lunch, garbage and toiletries and ran into the bush to party. It was a huge gift.

When the kids saw this, they leapt into action like super heroes, screaming like aboriginal crazies, ripped into the thicket, flapped around like flightless birds and emerged, smiling, and triumphant with all bags accounted for. Sorry, wekas. And thanks.

From here it was a straight shot. Channeling their new found energy into focused tramping, Logan and Jackson took off, leaving Traca and me in the bushy dust. Over long, fantastic swing bridges, past towering limestone cliffs, we reconnected three hours later at our final sleeping spot. The Heaphy Hut is without a doubt the jewel in the Heaphy Track chain.

Set at the mouth of the Heaphy river, the hut is swamped with visitors all year long, famous for its breathtaking location, all alone on the unspoiled ocean with nothing around for 20 miles or more

We saw not a single person that day and once again had the hut all to ourselves. More rain whipped through as the sun began to set. So we made dinner, lit a fire, played cards and watched the lightening flash over the Oceanside mountains outside our window. There was more round-robin massage stations which everyone loved the night before, but it ended this night with a twist.

As a final round, each person received all three massages at once; feet, back and head. And as I lay there in the candle light, face down, eyes closed, with my beautiful family focusing their 30 fingers on my tired body…well, let’s just say I was grateful for every step, and not just on the Heaphy Track, that got me to that moment.

Where's Zac Efron When You Need Him?

2010-05-22T08:05:00.009-04:00

Day Two could not start early enough for me. With only a balled up fleece for a pillow and a too-tight sleeping bag, I tossed and turned all night, was sweating and freezing at different points, stuck to my bare plastic mattress like a moth in the honey, basically couldn’t wait to get up. After some instant oats and minor grumbling, we strapped on our packs once more, laced up our shoes and set out for the Mackay Hut, 24.2 kilometers or 15 miles away.

At first it was fun. While the day before was a steady uphill schlog, this was mostly flat, maybe even a little pleasantly sloped. Plus the scenery was magnificent. We passed through vast open areas of red tussock and silver beech trees. Known as the Gouland Downs, this expansive open tract is both beautiful and isolated. And, as this was the off season for New Zealand, there was virtually no one out walking but us. Above, storm clouds amassed like an invading army but we just soldiered on, over funky cable swing bridges, into seemingly endless wilderness, like the only people left on Earth.

Two hours into the day, however, maybe 8K or so, the first signs of trouble began. Jackson’s ankles were giving their notice and Traca’s body—most of her joints—were really starting to hurt. To help out, Logan strapped The Sausage onto his strong back and gave Traca The Bean. But Jackson had no such luck; she just walked off into the distance with Logan, the Red Tumor riding her like a fat jockey.

With the kids forging ahead, Traca and I took our time, taking in the incredible scenery. One of the most amazing features of the Heaphy Track is how varied the terrain is. From the boundless open Downs, we stepped without transition into a dense forest where everything was covered with moss.

The trees, the stones. Even some of the moss had moss growing on it. As a result, the layers and shades of green were unlike anything we’d ever experienced; a special all-green Crayola box edition come to life all around us.

But then, around one corner, we found Jackson. Not walking. Standing. Her feet were really hurting. Traca gave her the Green Bean for a bit and that seemed to help. But she was still unhappy, in need of a little distraction. So I started asking questions.

“If you could take one hour and leave the track,” I said. “Go anywhere you wanted and return to find yourself one hour further down the trail…where would you go?”

Logan immediately shouted, “Cinemagic Grand”, which actually sounded pretty good to me. But Jackson had some more specific help in mind.

“I’d go to a tropical island,” she said. “And I’d drink cool drinks with my friends. Then get spa treatments delivered by Zac Efron, Taylor Lauton and that hot guy from Gossip Girl.”

Hey, whatever gets you down the track.

After a late lunch, the final three hours were like a zombie marathon. Traca had stopped talking, clearly in pain, limping and inching forward like an old lady.

And Jackson felt like her feet were falling off, stopping at one point to cry in the middle of a twisting mossy path, at the end of her emotional rope. In contrast, the hill beside her was covered with smiling, encouraging faces, hundreds of them carved in the moss by those who had walked this route before us. Maybe they suspected others might need it. If so, they were right.

In the end, Logan and I bulled forward and found the Mackay Hut around 4 PM. A few minutes after that, after 8 hours of walking, we backtracked to find Traca and Jack, took their packs like the gentleman that we are, and walked together to rest for the night.

It’s a funny thing about pain, though. It’s based in time. And after dinner and foot baths all the way around, the misery of the day was gone.

We made a fire to keep us warm. Lit some candles to see. And we had the hut all to ourselves. In an inspired moment, Jackson suggested we set up a round-robin massage spa and she pulled two mattresses out of the bunk room. The idea was to rotate through feet, back and head treatments, alternating between giving and receiving.

As the sun disappeared, the storm that had been building all day suddenly let loose, with pounding rains and winds that threatened to rip off our little hut roof. But inside, we relaxed. And we laughed. And though I’m not the hot guy from Gossip Girl, I do give a pretty good foot massage.

The Heaphy Track

2010-05-22T04:13:00.009-04:00

When four people walk the Heaphy Track, there are really eight characters in the story. There are, of course, the walkers. But there are also the packs.

As there are no services on the 82 kilometers trail, other than huts spaced fiendishly far apart, each tramper must carry everything they’ll need for the full length of their tramping time. This includes all food, utensils, cooking supplies, cold, warm and wet weather gear, sleeping bag, first aid kit, and anything else you think you might enjoy. A book, a camera, flashlights, drinking bottle. The list is potentially endless but it all adds up.

In order for us to pull this off, we mailed six full and heavy boxes from Collingwood to Karamea. Then we packed everything that remained into our packs like binge-eating turtles and set out for the start of the trail. For the purposes of our story, the four additional characters that resulted are as follows:

Logan’s pack, The Green Bean, is the newest pack, the most comfortable and tied for the lightest: 14 kilos or roughly 30 pounds.

Jackson’s pack, The Red Tumor, is older, bulkier, harder to carry. Though it’s also 30 pounds, it feels much heavier. Traca’s pack, The Sausage, is probably the worst pack to carry. It’s just an old, formless sack, stuffed to the gills, that hangs off the wearer like a boulder. And it weighs 18 kilos: 40 bone crunching pounds.

Then there’s my pack.

At 22 kilos, it is very heavy. 22 kilos is 50 pounds. 50 pounds is equivalent to the largest bag of dog food you can buy. Six gallons of water weigh 50 pounds. As do some small cows at birth. My pack I will call The Fat Bastard. It deserves much worse but I’m a forgiving person.

We arrived at 11 o’clock. Day One was a 17.5 kilometer walk or roughly 11 miles, like walking from our home in Gorham to downtown Portland. Only this walk was all up hill, every inch, through dense bush and dappled forests, switch backing up the slope on rocky terrain. Jude dropped us off, walked the first hour of the track with us, then hugged us all goodbye like her beloved children going off to war. Sadly, we had no idea how accurate that comparison would prove to be.

The first day was relatively uneventful. I won’t try to paint this as some idyllic walk in the woods. The trail was beautiful. The weather, cool. But I felt like I was giving a piggy-back ride to some inert 12 year old for six solid hours. And Traca’s feet were really hurting by the end, covered in nasty blisters that even hurt to look at.

Jackson’s left foot was hurting at the start of the walk but she pushed through, Red Tumor and all. Only Logan and The Green Bean felt spry and solid when we reached the Perry Saddle Hut around sunset that day.

In spite of it all, Traca was loving it. “This is a dream of mine,” she said. “A dream within a dream.” In a way, I agreed. Only in my dream, my pack was magically floating beside me.

We made some instant soup and beans, carrots for fresh eating and plunked in our bunks. Somewhere in the darkness, a kiwi bird cried out. But I was too exhausted to go looking for it.

And the longest day was coming up next.

Honorary Weasleys

2010-05-19T04:28:00.007-04:00

Of all the WWOOFing hosts we’ve met so far, Liane and Rich seem to have it figured out. Unlike Sherab who had lazy, half-cocked WWOOFers always descending upon her kitchen, devouring every crumb in sight, the Rumbles have mostly WWOOF-proofed their home and their lives. We live in a separate hanger just off the main house and often have our food delivered to us. If we run out of milk or fruit for breakfast, we have to ask for more. Not that they’re stingy with the goods—we’ve had rock lobster for dinner, paua (abalone) that is more precious than gold, and all the Weet-bix we can eat. But the difference is: they’re in control No invasion of the WOOFing locusts at the Rumble’s house!

And they expect us to work, 5 hours a day. Since arriving we’ve split and stacked a small forest of fire wood, we’ve built these massive lasagna-style compost piles, weeded our little fingers to the bone (Jackson hates weeding) and built a chicken coop that will be the envy of every guinea fowl in the country. Plus we’ve become good friends with these guys. Just in time to go.

I’ve had a chance to look through the actual New Zealand WWOOFing book and, of the 300 or so hosts that are listed, I could only find 19 that take four or more WWOOFers at a time. So when a family accepted our request from the beautiful area known as Golden Bay (the curved little spit of land at the tippy top of the South Island), we said goodbye to the Rumbles (Little Jimmy actually said: “I HATE YOU!” when I went to give him a hug, though I know he didn’t mean it), hopped a bus to Blenheim and transferred to Nelson where we were met by our fairy godmother: Jude Zwanikken.

Jude is 52 and the mother of seven children. While raising a family, her husband Henk worked as a painter (still does) and Jude stayed home with the kids (still does).

Their two youngest are still in high school; Ike is a 14 year old happy punk rocker-in-training and Maisie is a 16 year old who can type a text message using only one thumb faster than anyone on Earth. Their house is well off the road, surrounded by eucalyptus trees and gardens. And while it’s small, simple, rustic, crowded on the inside with books and games and instruments (and no TV), it is positively brimming with love like a warm bath. It’s Jude’s life’s work. While she bakes her own bread, grinds her own peanut butter, cooks in her wood-fired oven, hangs her clothes to dry in the kitchen…she is giving all that she has to her family and—while we are here—to us.

“It’s like living in The Burrow,” Logan said. “The Weasleys had seven kids. Jude is Mrs. Weasley.” I told this to Jude and she laughed. She also knows, like all Harry Potter fans, that this is high praise, indeed.

There really isn’t a dramatic story here. I wish I could say that we rescued a beached whale while we were here but we didn’t. Due to a gradually sloping shore where the tide goes out all at once for miles, Golden Bay as a region has more whale strandings than anywhere on the planet. But no whales came ashore during our visit. And while Traca went horseback riding on the beach and was thrown off when her horse got spooked, she was not hurt in the least bit. We didn’t even crash the car when we took to the left side of the road for the first time. We just drove.

That’s pretty much the way this past week has gone. I don’t think Jude would mind if we didn’t work at all but she welcomes our help tilling new gardens, pruning trees, mulching, stacking and lawn mowing.

After work, Jude lends us her car and points us to the most beautiful beaches and interesting spots in the area. Then, each evening, she makes wonderfully hearty and delicious meals that fill Logan’s belly with 17 year old delight. As honorary members of the family, we even attended one of Ike’s rock concerts and spent an afternoon cheering at one of Maisie’s netball games.

[For those unfamiliar with netball, I’ll offer this little aside. Netball is like basketball only without the backboards, dribbling, moving with the ball in any way or physical contact of any kind. On offense, you must pass the ball and try to get it under the net. On defense, you must remain a safe three feet from your opponent at all times, even if they are attempting to score. Should you get a little rambunctious and actually touch them while they’re in the act of shooting, the whistle will sound sharply and a free shot will be awarded, requiring you to stand limply at the shooters side and watch them toss the ball through the hoop. At the professional level (and yes, there are professional netball teams down here), the Michael Jordan of the sport is a gal named Irene Van Dyk. Irene boasts a 98.5% field goal shooting percentage which basically means: she almost never misses. Though I’ve never seen Ms. Van Dyk play, I’m guessing her ridiculously high average can be attributed in part to her skill but also to the fact that she is shooting uncontested lay-ups all day long. At least that’s the only shot that anyone in Maisie’s game ever took. But Jackson screamed her head off like an obnoxious American fan just the same.]

Anyway, the point I was trying to make was: After five weeks as a WWOOFer in a variety of different settings, Jude and the Zwanikkens are the reason that WOOFing is such a great idea. Sure, we could come to Golden Bay, go up to Wainui in the Abel Tasman National Park, spend the afternoon at the beyond gorgeous Wharariki Beach, eat at the Mussel Inn and the Naked Possum. Lots of people do this every year and rave about it afterwards. But with Jude, with Henk, with Maisie and Ike, we’re not just visiting. We belong here. We are part of the community. Part of a home and a family,

Still…

Before our time runs out, we want to hit the fabled West Coast of New Zealand for some of the most untouched gorgeousness found anywhere. To get there from Golden Bay, there are only two options: drive five hours back to Nelson and over to the Tasman Sea or walk four days and 51 miles carrying 47 pound packs on our backs.

Guess which one Traca pushed hard for and won? Details to follow.

The View from Mt. Fyfe

2010-05-17T01:30:00.009-04:00

Climbing Mt. Fyfe in Kaikoura is no walk in the park. Though the trail is essentially a crushed gravel road wide enough for a truck, it’s steep and relentless, with each switchback revealing another switchback, each more steep than the next. Ten minutes after we started to climb we were leaning forward like ski jumpers, plodding like turtles. The hike is posted as eight hours to the top and back, but Jackson’s foot started to hurt around hour one. And by the time we got to the midway hut for a lunch break, it had not improved. Worse still, we were completely socked in with fog, surrounded by a colorless world with no view whatsoever.

Views are something New Zealand in general and Kaikoura in particular do really well. Whether you’re walking around the peninsula or walking to the outhouse, at any hour of the day, you are surrounded by beauty. The pink morning light on the mountains, the rising afternoon fog along the rugged coast, the sunset glow across the pasture lands. No matter where you point your camera, New Zealand is the supermodel of countries: it just doesn’t take a bad picture.

But on Mt. Fyfe that day, there were no pictures to take. Instead, we just sat outside a small shelter and ripped into the food our WWOOFing hostesss, Liane, had prepared for us; gourmet egg salad sandwiches, homemade scones (cooked in our own wood-fired oven the night before), sweet apples, dark chocolate, totally delicious as usual.

Before becoming a mom and a self-sufficient homesteader, Liane was a chef. Though she doesn’t like to brag about it, she was the personal chef for former Beatle George Harrison back around the time George was stabbed by a deranged fan in London.

Back then, she worked there with her husband Rich who was head of security, a post he was promoted to immediately following the stabbing. When that long and winding road came to an end, Liane and Rich traveled the world, working aboard multi-million dollar yachts, managing schwanky resorts together, finally settling down in Kaikoura to surf, start a family and host WWOOFers like us.

But as another great English rock band once said: You can’t always get what you want. Turns out it took seven long years to conceive their first child and by the time Jimmy Rumble popped into the world, Liane was 42, Rich nearly 40.

Today, two years later, Jimmy is a majorly strong-willed chap who, even at two, uses such phrases as: “DON’T LOOK AT ME!” and “YOU DON’T TALK!” and my personal favorite: “DON’T DO WHAT I TOLD YOU WHEN I SAID IT!” All these commands are delivered with utter disdain and incredible gusto for one so young and—though he’s as sweet as he is sour—we can tell it wears on Liane. Not so much that she loses her touch with the egg salad; but still it takes a toll.

It’s like our world trip, in a way. At considerable expense, with the best intentions, we hoped to give our children an amazing gift; a treasure box of experiences to take with them into life. But the night before we climbed Mt. Fyfe, Jackson was up late crying in her own mama’s arms saying, “I want to go home. I just want to go home.” She missed her friends and missed her life. She was tired of pulling weeds and sleeping in the same room with her parents. It didn’t matter what our hopes were for her or the big picture we could see. Sometimes the fog is too thick to see much more than what’s right in front of you.

After lunch, we continued up the mountain, splitting up into alternating configurations of two, chatting away in the clouds. And gradually, just the smallest bits of white at a time, we began to find snow. It rained yesterday down on the beach where we’re staying and it put the first snow on the highest mountains in the Kaikoura Range. Too much snow and the path becomes impassable. But this was only the start of the season and we hit it just right. Step by step, the snow got a little deeper. A little further and the sun began to peak out from time to time, making our snow-covered, evergreen-lined trail look like the entrance into Christmas Town. And then the blue began to appear. And then we stepped above the clouds completely…

There is a space between what you wish for and what you get. Sometimes you hope for a bundle of joy and you get a petty tyrant for a while. Or you hope to offer your child the world on a silver platter and all they really want when they're tired is go home and eat at Gorham House of Pizza. The top of the mountain seems like a good idea when you’re standing at the bottom. But then the weather changes. And the tears begin to fall.

Still, if this trip has taught me anything so far it is this: Sometimes—not all the time but sometimes—if you keep walking, no matter how difficult the climb or how foul the weather, the sun comes out at just the right moment and the view is better than you ever hoped for.

Like Snorkeling with Goats

2010-05-09T07:14:00.009-04:00

The sign simply read “Ohau Stream Walk”. If I had been driving, I probably would have driven right by. In an area that boasts of epic snow-capped mountain treks and deep water dolphin encounters, a common stream walk seemed like the most minor of minor attractions to me. But like a sign that reads “Big Hole Ahead” at the entrance to the Grand Canyon, I had absolutely no idea how understated the Ohau Stream Walk sign actually was when we got out of the car in the parking lot.

At the time we were with Liane Rumble and her two year old son Jimmy. The Rumbles were our new WWOOFing hosts in Kiakoura (North of Christchurch on the coast) and we were off to collect a trailer load of seaweed as fertilizer for their organic garden. But it’s not all work for us WWOOFers. Before we hit the beach to gather the messy, smelly mountain of washed up weeds, Liane thought it would be fun to pull off the road for a little walk. She was right.

A few feet up the stream, we found a fur seal sitting in the shallow water. Signs all over town recommend you keep a distance of 20 meters (roughly 60 feet) from all wild seals; seal teeth are like small ice picks and a bite can give a nasty infection. But this little guy clearly hadn’t read the signs. We were maybe ten feet away and a few feet up on an elevated path. “Let’s keep back, you guys,” I said, parentally, but the seal wasn’t listening. After a few acrobatic twirls and loops, he climbed the bank without much trouble and flippered right up to our feet.

I’ve seen plenty of seals in my day. In zoos and on TV, occasionally popping up like stray dogs along the coast of Maine. But I’d never been so close to one in the wild. This seal was a young one, not afraid at all, just taking us all in with his large black eyes. And as I watched my own reflection in those dark alien orbs, they reminded me of something I saw in a movie once.

“The Lord of the Rings” gets a lot of attention in New Zealand; all the epic exteriors were filmed down here and there are tours you can take to visit many of the old sets. As big fans, Logan and I can’t resist posing for nerdy pictures whenever the backdrop inspires us and we tend to chat about the film more than Jackson would like.

Anyway, if you saw the films, you might remember the bad wizard Saruman had a dark crystal ball called a palentir. The palentir was like onyx only a bit smoky, alive with some dark power. At the risk of sounding like a super LOTR nerd, seal eyes have roughly this same quality.

We hung out with that little seal for five minutes or so, kept little Jimmy from riding off on his back, considered ourselves lucky to have stumbled upon him and continued up the stream path and into the party.

Turns out the first seal was just a teaser, like finding a penny outside the vault, and with every step we took, we began to see more and more of these flippered little fur balls. At first, they seemed confined to the stream. There were six, then ten, then maybe twenty young seals hopping from rock to rock, playing in the deeper pools. But when Jackson spotted one seal waddling through the trees...and then another...we started finding seals everywhere.

It was a little like finding goats on the ocean floor when you’re out snorkeling—which is a weird way of saying: seals aren’t the animal you expect to find in the woods. Unlike Costa Rica, the New Zealand landscape is utterly bereft of animals. In fact, it has no native mammals whatsoever. None. (No snakes, either, Traca’s happy to report.) Traipse through the bush and you will only find birds. Cool birds but only birds. Not a single squirrel chattering in the trees, not a single mouse scurrying through the undergrowth. Even in New England where animals are plentiful, you never get the sense that the forest is crowded with wildlife. But the Ohau Stream Walk was beyond crowded. It was bustling, rush hour, Times Squares, three ring circus crowded. And we were right in the middle of it.

Hundreds of seals. Everywhere. Sleeping under trees. Curled up under bushes. Piled up like cord wood in the path. Waddling through the Ponga trees. Clogging the waterway. Barking and burping their deep guttural grunts as if to say, “Hey guys. Welcome to the picnic.”

Liane told us later as we were pulling seaweed that this only happens a couple times a year. For some reason, the young seals leave the ocean and—accompanied by a pack of graying adult seal chaperones—hit the bush for a fur seal play date. I have no idea how many seals there were in total. The stream path was maybe a quarter mile long and they lined every inch of that. But the real hub of the party, like a hot seal nightclub, was the gorgeous waterfall at the end of the trail.

Emerging from somewhere high above (a distant source 100 feet up that was no doubt crawling with seals as well), the waterfall cascaded into a dark pond that was completely alive with acrobatics. Seals jumped and flipped, barked and rolled, swam in packs that charged this way and that way, obviously having fun and happy to let us watch. Jackson couldn’t resist and touched a young curious pup.

Logan posed beside the crowded pool and a dozen seals poked up to say cheese.

And through it all, Traca and I just stood like happy party crashers, matching smiles of pure wonderment on our faces, grateful for the winding road that brought us to that particular spot at that particular time.

Tireless Robot Slaves

2010-05-06T00:34:00.009-04:00

It may sound funny but one of the things I’m really enjoying about WWOOFing is the work. Particularly for the kids. At home, Logan and Jackson have never been what you’d call “willing workers” and that is putting it mildly. To ask them to work for a solid hour, say out in the yard raking or shoveling or stacking wood, is like asking for an organ donation, a major sacrifice accompanied by much groaning, grumbling and frequent requests for the time, as in:

Annoyed child: “What time is it now?”
Me: “It’s only been fifteen minutes.”
Annoyed child: “Uggh. I hate my life.”

I remember we asked Jackson to do the dishes one night before we hit the road. We don’t usually ask. I typically do them if Traca cooks and it’s not really a big deal. We have a dishwasher. But this night, Traca asked Jack to do them and Jackson reacted as if she’d been slapped. “What about Logan?” she barked, shocked at the unfairness of it all. When we did not relent, she huffed, stormed to the sink, did one dish and looked back at us with complete contempt. “So you guys are just gonna sit there while I do these all by myself? Great!”

Have we spoiled them? Perhaps. Chores have been spotty. Demands: few. Consequences: fewer. But here in New Zealand, because it’s part of the deal and because they are not working for their unfair parents, they—for maybe the first time in their young lives—work hard, rarely complain, even get into it from time to time.

One of our last jobs at Sherab’s was to dig out around her black lagoon of a pool. The idea was to make a level base all the way around, suitable for pouring concrete. As a job, it was hard work; the Earth was wet clay, hard and heavy, and there were mountains of it to move. But the kids led the charge, digging, hauling, leveling. Right up until the sun set and we could barely see, they goaded Traca and me to work harder, faster, really wanting to make a major dent in the project before calling it a day.

It’s not changing the world, moving buckets of clay from here to there, but I see it changing our kids day by day. With every door we frame up, window we install, garden plot we weed or wheelbarrow of shit we shovel, our children are getting a crash course in manual labor, in taking pride in their work, and in sucking it up and doing what needs to be done.

They’re also learning how not to impress the boss by watching most of the 20 year old WWOOFers we live with. Drunk by noon, high most all the time, these guys do as little as possible, eat as much as they can, then sit around watching Dexter DVDs until 3 in the morning. By comparison, Logan and Jackson come off looking like tireless robot slaves and I think they like that. If they are secretly hating this experience, silently cursing their mother and me for dragging them here, they are not letting on. And not asking for the time all that often either, now that I think of it.

So the work has been good but the time off from work has been even better; we typically do four hours of work, then we’re off to explore the surrounding area. We’ve been to Bethell’s Beach, which is beyond spectacular, jumped off massive sand dunes that surround a pristine nearby lake, tramped through the bush to stand beside 1500 year old Kaori trees.

But like so much on this trip, our greatest discoveries are not what we expect to find at all. In fact, our greatest discovery recently—at least for the kids—is probably an old man in a bus who lives just up the hill beside the Gypsy Dancer.

His name is Bob Paul and in all visible ways he’s just an ordinary chap. Bob is in his 70s with a pinched face, a large nose, thinning hair and a quiet demeanor. His body is long and lean, somehow seeming both frail and strong at the same time and his presence is not what you’d call commanding. He doesn’t open his mouth very wide when he talks, doesn’t always look at you when he’s talking, suffers from early onset Parkinson’s disease. From the outside looking in, he’s just another face in the background, a lonely divorced dude, living in a plain blue bus. But this is not what the kids see at all.

Turns out, Bob was a world class runner. He won a silver medal at the Kiwi Nationals back in the day, specializing in 5K and 10K distances. He ran marathons well into his 50s, nearly made the New Zealand Olympic team, and still gets out there to take on the rural hillsides just for fun. More successfully, Bob was a coach, training many of New Zealand’s top runners to greatness. Chat with Bob for more than five minutes and you’ll find he’s an encyclopedia of running information, with story after story of races and records, injuries and crazy screw ups on the track and in the field. The beautiful thing is: The kids love him. He coaches them, adjusts their stride, writes up training regiments and soaks up their attention with equal delight.

We leave for a flight to Christchurch tomorrow, a brief overnight and then a bus to Kaikoura the next day. The South Island is famous for some of the most beautiful scenery in the world and I’m sure we’ll find that. But like the pleasure of a job well done or the value of an old man’s life, the beauty around us is just the start of what we are hoping to find.

The Gypsy Dancer

2010-04-29T04:59:00.008-04:00

“Don’t be alarmed, John,” Sherab said. “This is just the start up.”

With that, she cranked the key on board her bus and it gasped for life, its old diesel engine grinding a dozen times before finally catching and settling into a deep throated idle, like a dragon with a smoker’s cough.

Living on a bus has always fascinated me. When I was ten, a friend and I used to play in an old camper van that was parked in the back of a local gas station. In that dusty little enclosed space, we imaged ourselves to be explorers, living on our own, everything within reach. I’m not sure exactly why but having your bed, your kitchen, your bathroom and your action figures all in one place—and on wheels!—excited us so much that we naively asked the gas station owner if we could have the van. The fact that he basically laughed in our hopeful little faces did nothing to lessen the pull that van held on me for years.

That said, I liked Sherab’s bus the moment I saw it; maybe not a work of art but definitely a work of imagination.

It’s much too tall, the color of old parchment, with a hand-carved Balinese door in the back and the promise of lush pink velvet on every surface inside. Tutira calls it the Brown Potato but Sherab calls it the Gypsy Dancer and it would be our home for the next three days.

The plan was to drive three hours North to Whangarei (pronounced Fung-a-ray) and meet up with a traveling gypsy fair. It’s a routine Sherab knows all two well. Shortly after her second son was born, her long-term partner and the father of her children just up and left. How the birth of a new baby translates into a good time to split is beyond me. But the fact remained: he was gone. Suddenly a single parent and desperately wanting to be with her kids, Sherab made a bold choice. She bought a bus, spent two years building it out herself, learned as much bus maintenance as possible, then hit the road. For the next seven years, she and her kids traveled with a modern day band of gypsies; no permanent address, no mortgage, no schools, no roots. Just her boys, the open road, a weekly fair to make some money, and the Gypsy Dancer. She still sleeps in it every night, had her 3rd child Tutira in the narrow bus bathroom, and seems totally in command behind the large steering wheel—fingerless driving gloves on—as we lumbered out of the parking lot.

Down the first steep hill, everything groaned and creaked. Cabinets rolled forward. Wind chimes and baskets swirled overhead. The woodstove door slammed open. The jar of kitchen utensils smashed over. The whole contraption seemed ready to tip. But it didn’t and I was loving it. We all were.

Before I get too wrapped up in the fun of being on board, I will say two practical things. First: the Gypsy Dancer is slow. At times, as we struggled in first gear to climb the steep New Zealand countryside, we had a line of traffic backed up behind us like a funeral procession. Five miles per hour would be generous and that’s no joke. Second: the Gypsy Dancer is loud. Everything vibrated, rattled, the diesel dragon hacked up a lung. Even so, it was a magical ride. As we drove through towns or stopped at intersections, every face looking back at us had a smile on it. Every kid waved. We were a parade of one. A giant brown potato on wheels!

In her glory days as a gypsy, Sherab says it was quite a show. Everyone involved pimped out their buses and lived on them full time. There were artists and craftspeople, jugglers, fire eaters, dancers, stilt walkers, and tons of kids. 40 families in all, each choosing a life on the road to a house in the suburbs, just a loud, slow raucous tribe wandering the whole of New Zealand. At the time, they were famous. The press wrote articles about them. TV crews followed them around. It was a wild ride, I’m sure. But no dance lasts forever.

Today, the fair is more of a weekend activity for most participants, a retirement hobby by the looks of the other wrinkled “gypsies” who turned up.

Most buses are simply RVs with awnings out front. No psychedelic paint jobs. No fire eaters, unfortunately. The flash of the production is long gone, replaced by a single Maori lounge singer karaoking his way through the entire late 70s sing-a-long book:

"I like dreaming. ‘Cause dreaming can make you mine.”

Even so, the trip felt like a grand adventure. We pounded stakes like circus roustabouts, slept in teak lofts like stowaways on a steamer ship, stayed up late talking into the dark like kids at camp.

We also hit a skateboard park, climbed to the top of Whangarei Look Out, and stopped at a natural hot spring on the way home for some therapeutic water from the center of the Earth.

But the highlight for me was a simple thing, a non-moment that inched by; loud, slow and unnoticed by anyone else. We were passing through the spectacular New Zealand countryside, the huge windows of the Gypsy Dancer filled with rolling green hills and distant blue mountains and the sea and the sky and a million sheep all around. And I was sitting beside Jackson, sharing her iPod headset, listening to a song we both knew, singing above the roar of the diesel like bad, lounge karaoke singers:

I’m walking on sunshine. Woah-oh.
I’m walking on sunshine. Woah-oh.
I’m walking on sunshine. Woah-oh.
And don’t it feel good!

In that moment, I felt totally happy. Honestly, I felt like the ten year boy I once was, only this time, the owner of the gas station said, “Yeah, sure kid. Take the van. It’s yours.”

The Divine Goddess of Discerning Wisdom

2010-04-26T17:37:00.011-04:00

After six days at The Sharda Centre, our “To Do” list was virtually done. I’d finished mudding and taping a sheet rock bathroom, Logan was done with his painting project, we’d all helped build a worm farm and pulled more privet than should be allowed by kiwi law, we’d explored the surrounding area, seen the glow worms at night. Jackson was even done ironing the bed skirts after a week end retreat wrinkled up the place.

And though Sharda was like Traca’s Disneyland (spiritual talks at meals, late night chats about peace, love and understanding, visiting Shamanism groups to shaman with, yoga and meditation mornings down where the Golden Temple may one day be), we all agreed it was time to WWOOF our way down the road.

So how does one choose from the hundreds of farms on the WWOOFing website? Most profiles have pictures, showing off their welcoming hosts, spectacular views or handsome sheep; a little local flavor to help you decide if you’d like to visit. But for our next stop, two hours north, we were flying a bit blind. All they had were the words “No Photos Added” where their photos should have been. They did, however, have the words “Yes, please!” beside the word “Kids” on their profile—which we took as a promising attitude. It didn’t hurt that they were located near Bethell’s Beach, included on a few online lists we dug up as one of the ten most beautiful beaches in the world!

So after a two hour train ride, we stepped out at Swanson station and were met by our next hostess; a spit-fire, fairy gypsy named Sherab Palmo. In Tibetan, Sherab means “Divine Goddess” and Palmo means “Discerning Wisdom” so this was no ordinary chauffeur. Sherab (rhymes with “cherub”) is 48, thin with bright blue eyes and long brown hair.

A native New Zealander, she may look like a sweet-faced waif (in the arms of her partner Jo, shown above), but don’t be fooled. She can tear apart and rebuild her own bus engine, frame out an addition, design her own clothing line, have it made in Indonesia, whip up a meal for twenty and still find time to politely rip into a lazy WWOOFer who isn’t pulling his weight. “I open my own jars,” Sherab told me—not a bad title for her autobiography—but she said it with a smile, not a threat at all. An environmentalist, a sincere Buddhist, a mother of three, Sherab has a heart that welcomes the entire world. And that’s pretty much what we found when we got to her house.

Where the Sharda Centre was quiet and restorative, Sherab’s place was a hive of activity. It’s a sprawling property built high on a steep hill; ten acres of buildings, buses and debris like a moderately organized junk yard. Though we all grew to love this work-in-progress house that will be beautiful when it’s finished, our first impressions weren’t overly positive. Boards were rotting on the eaves, the smell of mold and old beer greeted us in the basement. The pool was jet black.

And the bathroom was called the Long Drop; a simple outhouse, open to the dense bush, with flies as big as your thumb that buzz out between your legs when ever you sit down to do your business. Beyond this, it was absolutely packed with people. In addition to Sherab and Jo and their nine-year-old son Tutira, there were four other WWOOFers (Zeke from the US, Hendricks from Berlin, Linnia an Hannah from Sweden), Nic, Kristen, Andy and Jeff (all kiwi boarders), Rana and his girlfriend Rachael who lived up the hill in a bus and Vajra and his girlfriend Karen who lived down the hill in a bus. Add the four Marshalls to the mix and there were 19 of us at dinner, everyone drinking, laughing, playing musical instruments and talking about everything from politics to travel to the best way to get rid of parasites picked up on the road. Mmmm, pass the pasta.

The cool thing about WWOOFing—unlike just plain traveling—is: it gives you an instant connection to a place. Rather than stay in stale and sterile hotels, visit crowded tourist attractions and eat out at impersonal restaurants (and pay the cost associated with all three activities), WWOOFers are invited into homes, given good work to do, fed home cooked meals by local people who know the area and are happy to share their lives and information with you.

We’ll be here for about a week or so and I understand there’s lots to do. Of course we’ll be visiting the aforementioned top 10 beach, but there are also great bush walks and some massive sand dunes not far from here. And there are no shortage of jobs to do around the property—which is a little like saying there are no shortage of jobs to do around Haiti these days. We’ve even been invited to run off with a traveling gypsy fair this weekend in the pimped out double-decker bus Shereb customized herself. Naturally, we accepted.

Being momentary gypsies ourselves, we should feel right at home.

The Sweat Lodge

2010-04-21T04:00:00.005-04:00

To the Lakota Indians of the American South West, one of their most sacred rituals is the sweat lodge. Using heat, steam and smoke, the sweat is designed to purify the body, mind and spirit—or at least clear your pores out really well. Traca’s been to a few of these and raves, but the kids and I are new to the experience. So it was with a little apprehension that we accepted Rahaman’s invite to attend an authentic sweat lodge here at the Sharda Centre.

On a purely physical level, taking part in a sweat lodge is a challenge.

For one thing, it requires you to sit on the ground inside a small domed spaced, surrounded by intense heat and total darkness for three hours or more. As someone who finds it difficult to get comfortable in my reclining coach-class seat (sipping ginger ale and watching in-flight movies), I had my doubts that sweat lodges and I were going to be new best friends.

The ceremony began at 4PM with a proper smudging; a little sage and an eagle feather and we were good to go. Next we needed to heat the rocks that put the sweat in the sweat lodge. To the Lakota, these egg-shaped lava rocks are referred to as stone people and after cooking in intense heat for over an hour, our particular stone people were glowing red. As the sun was setting, by the time we were ready to enter the lodge, there were 19 of us, a full house for this small space. Most of them were local kiwis who come for a cleansing each month. There was also Rahaman, a few other WWOOFers, the ready-to-sweat Marshall clan and an intense-looking Moari warrior, his face completely covered with traditional Moari tattoos.

The Moaris are the indigenous people here in New Zealand and, like the Lakota, they were royally screwed over by the invading Europeans. Though they once ruled this gorgeous part of the world, today it’s very rare to see one of them with full face tattoos out in public. It’s even more rare, according to Rahaman, to have one of them attend your sweat lodge ceremony.

When the sun was gone, we crawled into the lodge on all fours, first the women, then the men. Logan was right beside me as we took our spots, shoulder to shoulder, around the pit where the stone people would attempt to make my previous epic jungle sweating look like a mild case of Granny perspiration. Cedar was passed around the circle. And deer antlers. Then one by one, the stone people arrived, blazing red, almost translucent. Then the flap was closed and it was pitch dark. And Rahaman began chanting prayers, tossing water on the hissing stones, filling the space with steam. It was intense. I was breathing like a fish out of water, sweating like Oprah wearing a wet suit in the desert.

Wankan Tonka
Wankan Tonka
Wankan Tonka
Wankan Tonka hey hey hey…

We called out to God, the great spirit who is in all things. We welcomed all of our ancestors, those living and those who came before us. We chanted at the top of our lungs, completely invisible to each other in the utter blackness. To a night vision camera, we would have made quite a sight; 19 mostly naked people, barking out Lakota prayers, sweating as if all trying to wring a cup of water out of our underwear.

Three times during the ceremony, the flap was opened and water was brought in, cooling things off a little. We passed a communal water ladle around, a petri dish of liquid refreshment in any other context, but in the sweat lodge I just drank it. Rahaman referred to it as, “The Sacred Water of Life” and that’s exactly what it felt like to me. The fact that it touched every sweaty hand and sweaty mouth on its way around the circle to my sweaty hands and lips…I tried not to think too much about.

Once we are all watered and ready to go, they brought in fresh hot recruits, more stone people hot from the fire. Then the flap was sealed. Into the void. Water on the stones. Wankan Tonka.

It’s a funny thing being suspended in total darkness like that. At times, I couldn’t sit any longer, so I’d move onto all fours, my face a foot from the stone people, chanting into the steam-filled space loud enough so my relatives in Denmark—living and dead—could hear me. And it felt like dissolving. Unable to see borders of any kind, your voice mixing with so many others like a single sound, your mind completely absorbed in heat and vibration and blackness…it felt like transcendence of some kind. But then that’s probably the point all along.

The grand finale of the whole affair was the pipe ceremony; two pipes were passed around the circle near the end and all were free to enjoy. Rahaman made a short speech about the sacred nature of tobacco inside the lodge and the dangers of tobacco on the outside (for Logan and Jackson’s benefit) but he needn’t have bothered. Neither kid took a puff of the communal pipes when they found themselves holding them in the dark. Or so they say…

All told, it was a powerful experience that ran the gambit between the sacred and the profane. At one point, the group was set loose to pray and chant at will, and the guy next to Logan held nothing back. In addition to blessing every deity from Allah to Zeus, every tree spirit and star nation, every house fly and dandelion, he ripped off a bizarre litany of sounds, sort of like speaking in tongues or baby babble.

“FOOPA. SWAA. SWOOPANO. FUBANOSWAPATAWNYWABBAN. FOOPA!” And so on for ten solid minutes.

Logan sat beside me, invisible, gone, but I could hear the smile on his face. I could feel him choking back the laughter. And when it erupted, softly, politely, just a puff of unrestrainable delight that only I was listening for, it sounded to me, at that time, in that place, like the kind of prayer the Great Spirit would enjoy.

It may not come as a surprise to anyone, but Traca is a natural sweat lodger. She even said when it was all over that she was barely present for most of the chanting, so caught up in the ceremony that she all but disappeared. For the kids: they probably won’t be doing another one this week end but they made it. All four hours, through the heat and haze, they crawled out with the rest of us and rose up into the night. By then it was after 10PM and the contrast between inside and outside could not have been more stark. Our skin was hot and drenched, our clothing soaked. But the New Zealand air was cold and crisp, the sky vast and arched overhead, the stars thick as ancestors above. In a very real sense it felt like rebirth; every inhale a deep grateful gulp, every exhale a sigh of release.

FOOPA SWAA SWOOPANO, indeed.

The Sharda Centre

2010-04-21T02:33:00.005-04:00

Before we land in New Zealand, we need to talk a little bit about WWOOFing. For those of you who have never WWOOFed, WWOOF stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms and it’s an international movement that is particularly popular in New Zealand. The way it works is: You become a member on the WWOOFing website (www.wwoof.org: it costs $30 US for one year), you set up a profile, then you search the area you’d like to visit and send out email requests to various farms that look interesting. Our biggest challenge was finding places that would accept four people at once—but they’re out there and that’s where we were headed.

True to form for this rambling tour, as we left L.A., we weren’t 100% sure where our first stop would be. We had several in the Auckland area that had said, “Yeah. Come on, then,” but we hadn’t heard officially from either that it was a go. So after 14 hours in the air and probably 8 hours sleep between the four of us, we stepped off our plane at 5 AM, dog tired, disoriented but delighted to learn that someone named Rahaman was coming to pick us up. In the brief email message we found waiting for us, Rahaman was described only as, “…an older man with a grey ponytail,” but this hardly begins to describe the remarkable, complex person who would be our host for our first kiwi week.

Rahaman was born plain old David Brown in conservative ole England back sixty-odd years ago. In his 20s, he was a self described “righteous hippie”, taking LSD to expand his consciousness and serving time in jail for all the expanding he did. It was a crazy time and a wild ride, but David wasn’t really in it for the high. He was seeking a direct experience with God and this desire would ultimately take him to every corner of the world. He lived in Afghanistan with the Sufi mystics, spent four years in an Indian ashram studying under the provocative guru Osho, traveled for years more into the most remote parts of the Amazon to learn from the indigenous tribes of Brazil, explored Native American spirituality in the American Southwest, took peyote with the Lakota until the smell of the plant made him physically sick, became a sacred pipe holder in the Lakota sweat lodge ceremony, and on and on and on. It was the Sufis who gave him the name Rahaman, which means “compassion” in Urdu and—after a lifetime of searching—it is to the Sufi order that he feels most closely aligned. “It’s all Sufism,” he told me, referring to a belief system that is tolerant of all faiths, accepts all holy books, and promotes personal experience over dogma. It’s also the reason he showed up with his grey ponytail, loaded us in his shell of a van (no back seats, just a bunch of blankets) and drove us to the tiny town of Tuakau for our stay at the Sharda Centre.

The Sharda Centre is a Sufi retreat founded 30 years ago by a sweet and fiery English woman named Helima. Helima’s vision was to create an international retreat center where tolerance and peace could flourish. When this goal was more or less achieved, she further dreamed of building a magnificent Golden Temple that would bring believers of all faiths together. Well into her 80s, with pure white hair and a believer’s conviction, Helima worked tirelessly to drive this temple idea forward; she had plans drawn up, space cleared, fundraising underway. But some dreams take more than one lifetime to achieve. Helima died four years ago and today the Golden Temple remains just a cleared spot of ground on the Sharda property.

Without Helima or the Temple, the Sharda Center feels a bit like its treading water. (Holy water, but water none the less.) When we arrived, there were no guests in the large dormitory so we all got our own rooms, which was nice. But without guests (or an organic farm that we could see), we had no idea what willing work we would be asked to do.

WWOOFing is essentially a barter arrangement; the organic “farms” on the list need help, the wiling workers offer to help. In exchange for an agreed upon number of hours work each day, free room and three meals each day are offered. There is no set length of stay required. WWOOFers can hang out for a few days or a few months, so long as all parties are cool with the deal. If everything works out, it seemed to us—at least on paper—like a very inexpensive way to see an otherwise expensive country.

Our first day at Sharda was spent weeding. When the Brits landed in New Zealand way back when, they brought with them much more than a bland and uninspired culinary tradition. They also brought invasive plants. Privet and barberry for hedges. Wandering Jew and Asparagus Ferns. And my least favorite: Jasmine. Jasmine grows in long, tough nodes that spread out like cancer across the ground. If left unchecked, these plants strangle everything native. Unless of course, a bunch of American WWOOFers show up with willing fingers and a sunny day to use them.

It’s not exactly monkey wrestling but it was about all we had the energy for. All four of us sat on a hill under an apple tree, pulling jasmine out by the roots. There was no rush to the work; we were all practically zombies from sleep deprivation. And though we managed to amass a small green mountain of the wicked choking weed, we eventually ended up asleep in the sun, just four more foreign transplants, soaking up a warm afternoon.

If you were to drill a hole from Maine through the center of the Earth, you would end up not far from where we were sleeping. As a result, everything is backwards down here. While Spring begins at home, Fall is just getting started in New Zealand. Drivers use the left side of the road instead of the right. Water spirals down the drain counterclockwise instead of clockwise. And rugby is by far the most popular sport instead of being a sport that is used as filler on ESPN2. But some things remain the same.

At the end of our first day, Rahaman took us all for a ride to Sunset Beach, a beautiful stretch of New Zealand shoreline on the Tasman Sea. The kids almost immediately crashed back asleep like drift wood on the sand, their jet lagged body all but shutting off, but Traca and I jumped in the sea as the sun set in the West. Just like in Maine, the water was freezing, an icy shock of pure aliveness. And it reminded me of why we took this trip in the first place. Like Helima, like Rahaman, like all the mystics from every tradition throughout history, we’re all just looking for as much direct experience as possible.

Big Orange Sheep

2010-04-13T07:32:00.009-04:00

Los Angeles was really just a stop over, four days to see old friends and make some last minute adjustments before launching into the great unknown for the rest of the trip. Traca and I lived in L.A. for five hears half a lifetime ago and so we stayed with two of our best friends, then and now: Heidi and Liv Naesheim

Heidi and Liv are sisters, best friends, beautiful blonde Norwegians. Liv is the taller and older one (on the right); a photographer and part time restaurant hostess. Heidi is the shorter and younger one; a personal trainer and part time waitress. But they’re much more than this. They’re the kind of friends you pick right up with after ten years apart without a single awkward moment. The kind of friends who make me feel ten times funnier than I actually am because they laugh so easily and with so much enthusiasm.

The kind of friends who decorate their apartment with all the stuffed monkeys they can borrow in honor of our arrival. The kind of friends who are willing to jump over and over again in Joshua Tree National Park for a difficult-to-time picture I was hoping to get. The kind of friends who pull out a box full of wigs after dinner one night for an impromptu photo shoot. You know...that kind of friend.

So while Heidi and Liv are rockin’ goddesses of hospitality and awesomeness, I did have a little trouble sleeping at their place initially. Like a veteran fresh out of combat, I awoke on my first two nights in L.A. with the certainty that there were monkeys in the apartment. Not stuffed ones. Real ones lurking all around me. In the half-awake murk of 2AM confusion, I saw the open sliding glass doors and thought: Where are the bars? Without bars, the monkeys will get in! All around me, shadows looked like tails, like long arms, like menacing figures waiting to pounce. Seriously, I was about ready to burst without a bathroom dash but I was pinned in my bed until the fog lifted, convinced that Sweetie had somehow managed to follow me to Santa Monica.

Other than that, LA was relaxing and carefree. Well, mostly. I don’t really want to go into it, but Liv did manage to turn what should have been a 2 hour drive to Joshua Tree into a 5 hour wild goose chase from Hell. Not that it’s a big deal or anything. I mean, most drivers would just jump on the 10 freeway, follow it in a straight line into the desert and then turn left for a day of fun and freaky, spiked trees. But for some reason that I'd rather not hash our here, Liv decided to drive south, hugging the cost, eventually coming within 50 miles of San Diego before detouring through a portion of road so steep it literally had “Warning: Big Horn Sheep” signs along the switchback shoulder. (Jackson heard Liv read this sign out loud and thought she said “Big Orange Sheep”, then spent the rest of the drive looking for the woolly orange buggers.) But all that’s in the past. Bottom line is: the park was a blast, I talked to Heidi the whole way. And who cares if Liv lost a couple hours of our trip? She’s awesome. Not so hot with directions, but awesome

Anyway, LA was really just a stopping place and after four days, we boarded a gigantic Air New Zealand 747 at 9:30 PM on a Wednesday, endured the 14 hour flight and crossed the five time zones and the International Date Line, arriving in New Zealand at 4:55 AM on Friday. Somehow we lost Thursday completely.

I’m not sure how, but I think Liv was somehow responsible.

Sweetness Suckers

2010-04-13T01:43:00.004-04:00

OK, let’s make some tracks. We’ve been out of Costa Rica for over a week so it’s time for a quick wrap up, a long flight and some new scenery. First: The wrap up.

Now that the Caboya dust has settled in our lungs and the Osa bites have all but healed on my skin, we leave Costa Rica with a few unexpected things. Here’s a very incomplete list in no particular order…

We know it’s a gecko making that seven note song in our rafters. And we know how to pick a Toucan out of the jungle choir. We’ve seen a sloth’s tiny human-like ears.

We know the sound a baby kinkajou makes during his midnight feeding…and the sound Jackson makes when it’s her turn to feed the baby kinkajou at midnight. We learned not to eat wild cashews until they are dry. (Until then, they’re in the same family as poison oak. Calamine lotion shots, anyone?) We learned that collared peccaries eat wild cashews by the bucketful. (They also eat mud so think twice before kissing one of those piggy guys.)

We learned that owls grow to full size in 45 days and will eat most anything you dangle in front of them. We also learned that parakeets—at least the brood we inherited—are not so hearty. (Sadly, Traca’s last parakeet, Big, died a few days after we left the Osa. We were told he just sort of gave up the will to live, but I suspect it was Traca’s will for him to live that kept him alive so long in the first place.) We learned there are good cages and bad cages. We learned to tell the difference between a happy anteater and a sad one. We learned that an outdoor shower in the jungle late at night can make you take a shorter shower. We learned that even card games can make you sweat. And that a single brownie cut into four small pieces can be the most delicious thing in the world. Most of all, we learned that with full attention, you will be ready for the miracles (or the monkeys) that are lurking around every corner.

Just a few days before we left, I was standing by a window looking out into the dense foliage when a hummingbird flew directly in front of me, hovering, looking. I expected him to flit off like the restless nectar addict he is. But he didn’t. He bobbed a few inches right, back a few inches left, all in the general vicinity of my face, pointing his sharp beak directly at me. In the sunlight, he was iridescent, like a flying jewel, and his wings beat a powerful hum with each shift of position. For thirty full second—an eternity in hummingbird time—we stayed like this; two bits of life that couldn’t be more different.

Traca tells me, in Shamanism, hummingbirds represent two things; persistence, to fly across the ocean and a reminder to keep it light and suck the sweetness out of life. As we leave Costa Rica in search of new adventures, I hope we’ll all remember this final lesson. Bye, Sweetie. Bye, Anti. It’s time to suck some sweetness somewhere else.

Mingling with the Locals

2010-04-09T23:17:00.004-04:00

Being here in Rainsong is a completely different animal from our time at the Osa Wildlife Sanctuary. For one thing, it’s dry. Down South, it rained most everyday, cooling things off, creating a bumper crop of mosquitoes and requiring protective nets for sleeping. Here in the North: no water, no bugs, no nets, just dusty hot like the Devil’s vacuum. In the Osa, I was on a constant state of high alert like a gazelle at the watering hole. At Rainsong, I begin each day by cleaning out the Turtle Garden, an activity that does not even register on the “Approaching Danger” scale. There is also a greater sense of freedom up here. In the Osa, we were isolated for the length of our Sanctuary stay, no roads in or out, no stores, no restaurants (which actually was pretty cool, minus the monkey teeth). Up here, we work from 8 to 12 noon, then have the rest of the day free to explore and mingle with the locals.

To mingle in Coboya means speaking Spanish which for me, for the most part, means: being quiet. Traca is the family master of foreign language; she’s fearless to try with the ability to concoct an endless variety of sentences using only words she actually knows. This may seem obvious. How could you and why would you say things you don’t know how to say? But that’s the problem for me. Rather than say what I know, I think of what I want to say.

For example: “How long have you lived here?”

Without engaging my brain I just get started, say the word for “How”, then realize midway that I don’t know the words for “long” or “lived”, leaving me with the imbecilic phrase: “How have you here?” and a bunch of hand gestures and flop sweat, which communicate very little except the certainty in my listeners brain that he or she is speaking with a mentally challenged person. Not Traca, though. If she only knew the verb “to have” she’d cling to it like a life raft and talk about all the things you, she, we, he or they have. Give her 100 words and she’ll churn out a State of the Union address. Another few months here and I have no doubt she’ll be fluent.

It’s really just a question of confidence and poise, like playing basketball. When you first start out and someone passes you the ball, you freak, you travel, you double dribble, you throw it quickly out of bounds for no reason. Sadly, this is me on the Spanish language court of Life.

The story my kids like the best happened with Luis. Luis is one of Pincho’s coworkers down in the Osa. He’s in his 20s, always cheerful, with a cackling laugh and a strong desire to learn English. Every morning, all morning, he points to things and ask what we call them. “Oh, that’s a rake,” I say and he says: “Rake. Rastrio.” “Rastrio?” I say. “Jess. Rake,” he says with a huge smile and a little cackling laugh.

Anyway, one day we were in the Sanctuary over by the birds. We replace the water dishes in the bird cages each day so I thought I would offer to do that task by myself, freeing Luis to do something else. The sentence in my mind was going to be: “Do you want me to do the water?” I even thought it through ahead of time. “Do you want” is just Quieres. The verb “to do” is hacer. Me = mi. The water: el agua. To any first year Spanish student, this would be a slam dunk. But they are not me. When I start to speak in a foreign language I tend to toss in needless words—sort of a Spanish Terrett’s Syndrome—and mix up the order of things just enough to obscure my meaning. In this case, what I ultimately said was: “Quieres hacer-mi en el agua?” Or: “Do you want to do me in the water?” Luis looked at me still smiling and—being polite and kind—simply walked away, singing.

My language difficulties aside, life here on the Nacoya Peninsula is good. When we aren’t at Rainsong, we’ve been into Montezuma, floating in the thundering surf.

We spent a day in Cabo Blanco; the first rainforest reserve in all of Costa Rica.

He hiked to the top of a 60 foot waterfall deep in the jungle where the kids jumped off the top, I filmed them doing it and Traca looked the other way until it was done. We attended a town soccer tournament to cheer on the home team and watched hermit crabs race by flashlight on the beach late at night. Traca and I also shared one magical moment that came at the end of a really long walk.

We ran out of money one day and Traca and I decided, late in the afternoon, to walk into town to get some more. If the buses were still running, we could have hopped a ride for a dollar but it was after 4PM so we had no choice. Leaving the kids playing cards at our cabin, we started out down the dusty 7K stretch of road that led to the ATM machine.

The start of all long journeys are fun. There are new things to see, lots to talk about. Huge Banyan trees by the side of the road. Bats in the air. Baby howler monkeys venturing from their mothers in the branches just overhead…

But time passes. The sun beats down. Your shorts start to chafe just a little bit and you wonder why you wore a bathing suit in the first place. And then you think: What’s with the flip flops? This isn’t a stroll on the beach. Then the 51st ATV kicks up the 51st column of dust in your face and you wish you’d brought water. Who goes for an 8 plus mile walk without water? By kilometer #5 you begin playing the game that all people play in the desert right before they die.

“If you could have any cool drink right now, what would it be?”

We fantasized about frozen lemonade and strawberry daiquiris. Ice cold Orangina, pretty much anything wet. But we made it. In the heat and humidity, through the haze of dust at dusk, we finally arrived, got our money, bought the most delicious grape juice and Gatorade the Lord has ever made and—without so much as a celebratory sit down—started back down the road for home.

For the metrically challenged (meaning everyone in the United States), 7K is 4.2 miles. Which means we had another 4.2 miles to walk. We were racing the last of the sun. Traca was moving at a pace that felt more like running. And there was more dust. And less light. When a voice called out from the shadows.

“Do you speak English?” a young woman said. (I love that sentence!) She was an American college student down here with her boyfriend Colby and their car was buried up to the bumpers down on the beach. Why they ever drove down there in the first place is a mystery only American college kids can answer but they were definitely stuck, below the high tide line with the tide coming in fast.

Traca and I pushed and dug and pushed and pushed and even got them rolling again, but there was no way they were making it back up the steep, soft slope to the road. Then a car pulled up, some locals with a chain. We hooked them together, pushed like mad again and succeeded in getting both cars buried and stuck like two turtles hunkering in to lay eggs.

By now, it was dark. Really dark. And I was sweating beyond belief. Logan and Jackson had been alone for over two hours and we were still at least a good 5K from our cabin. With best wishes and mild apologies we slipped away from the growing rescue party and flip flop down the road.

Setting out on any journey, even a walk into town, is an exercise of Faith. The road is full of tragedy of course, and danger and boredom and disappointments. But it is also dotted with unexpected happiness—like jewels that by themselves are small but in the context of the journey hold the power to lift the moment to a place far beyond the journey itself.

As we walked for our cabin, not talking any more, unable to see the howler monkeys or the bats or the Banyan trees, I began to wish for a ride. My legs were exhausted, my swim suit was rubbing my inner thighs away. I was sick of dust and ready to be done. In my mind I was picturing a truck. But what I got was much more than that.

The truck that stopped was old and beat up; two older men, locals with big smiles, waved us to hop in the back. It would have been enough for the Travel Gods to give us a ride but they decided to pamper us a little. As we climbed on board we found, of all things, a brand new mattress waiting to take us home.

We drove the last three miles, lying on our backs, looking up at the endless stars, the discomfort, the dust, all of it forgotten. We smiled like lottery winners as the air and the road raced past. And Traca thanked our rescuers profusely as we hopped down in town.

"Gracias," I said and nothing more. I'm pretty sure that means "Thank you".

Rainsong

2010-04-02T16:19:00.011-04:00

We were to arrive at the Rainsong Animal Sanctuary at 7:45 AM. From our little cabin, it takes roughly twenty minutes down main street Caboya; an unpaved slip of road that is dry as dust and blazing hot even early in the morning. Running late, we probably looked like the dorky U.S. Power Walking Team to the laid back locals but we wanted to be on time. Jackson even sprinted the last hill to make sure we were not late for our first day of work.

If you check out the Rainsong website, you might believe you are headed for Volunteer Heaven. In addition to helping rescued and injured animals, the site suggests you will learn such things as, “…tropical gardening, camping and trekking skills, identification and gathering of exotic fruits, guided nature tours on horseback,” and so on. They boast of butterfly gardens, a living insect museum, sloth search and rescue (whatever that means). And they have pictures of private waterfalls and communal meals, even a group shot of a dozen hot, young, male and female volunteers in bathing suits, like a “Survivor” cast party photo. “Oooo. They have a hot tub,” Jackson said, no doubt picturing herself and her bikini smiling back from some future photo gallery highlight.

At $40 a week, it might sound too good to be true—which, of course, it is. As we stepped inside the Rainsong gate, what we found instead was a small roadside zoo that was badly in need of some cleaning.

Rainsong is the brain child of Mary Lynn Perry. Mary and her then husband Simon started the Sanctuary in 2005 after poachers shot their favorite horse. The horse was grazing at the time, at night, in its corral. (I remember a story in Maine one year where a bulldog was shot in its back yard. On a leash. Wearing a hunting vest! So I guess hunter’s stupidity is not confined to any one border.) In any case, waking up to a dead stallion inspired Mary to take local action and thus Rainsong was born.

There are lots of stories around town about Mary and, depending on who you believe, she is either an eco-warrior or a nasty neighbor. Honestly, she wasn’t around all the much while we were there, apparently working on a turtle project in Manzanilla—but she leaves quite an impression.

She is physically large and seems even larger in the shapeless muumuu-style dresses she wears to keep cool. She wears her hair up most days in a baseball cap or down in a long, graying braid if asked for a photo. In her prime I bet she was a ball buster, smoking Cuban cigars as she bulled her way through this sleepy little end-of-the-road town. But now...she just seems tired. Recently divorced, there is a weariness about Mary, especially around the eyes, like someone juggling too many turtle projects at once in the hot sun with a lit cigarette in her teeth. We’ve heard rumors of volatile mood swings, rampant lawsuits and wild disorganization...but I didn’t see any of this. All I saw was a tired woman whose initial horse murder outrage has long burned out replaced with the $200 monthly electric bill, rotting bananas, and lots of messy cages to clean. Which is where we fit in.

Near as I can tell, the Sanctuary is almost exclusively run by volunteers; 100s of them every year come from all over the world to help out. On that first day, we worked along side a cute couple from Spain, two guys from England, a 72 year old retired school teacher and his sister-in-law from Virgina and several collage girls from all over the States. They rotate through for a week or longer, do what needs doing and try to make life at the Sanctuary a little bit nicer for everyone involved.

And so we raked the paths as a first order of business. When we got there they were completely obscured by a thick blanket of leaves and it took Logan and I the better part of two days to get the place looking spiffy again. Then we focused on the anteater cage. Having spent time in the Osa with Tank, a vibrant, solid, playful anteater, we were struck by how listless and thin Rainsong’s Anti seemed. Tank was constantly active and would practically jump into your arms at feeding time. By contrast, Anti just hangs limp, her rib cage fragile in your hands. The first time I took her out for a walk, she literally took two tentative steps and sprawled out on the ground as if waiting for death.

“Anti needs enrichment!” Jackson proclaimed. And so we gathered logs for her to climb on and built a section for dirt in her otherwise cement cage.

We cut up oranges and squeezed them in her new play pen to attract ants. Then Logan grabbed a machete and cut down thick branches with green leaves for a more wild feel to her sterile enclosure. We added a potted plant, Cut down termite nests. We let her forage for longer periods of the day in the open air. And we encouraged her. In every way we could think of, we loved her.

Traca's been enjoying the birds, adding palm fronds to their cages, covering to their roofs and long hose baths to their multi-colored, grateful little heads.

But the cutest inhabitants and probably the most troublesome for us all are the baby Howler monkeys. In a 10 x 6 x 6 foot cage, these little orphans spend their lives, pooping and peeing and waiting for the door to open. In the wild they would be hanging from their tails at the tops of the trees or riding on their mother’s backs, roaming the canopy for the fresh green leaves that make up 70% of their diet. But Mona, Doodles, Franchesca and Evey spend their days in a little wire-mesh box, eating mostly fruit and looking forward to the few hours each day that they are let out to play.

We all take them out into the back field—that feels like Africa—to a low tree where they can swing and jump and crawl all over the place. And we search to find Acacia leaves that they love. I came walking back to the tree with a handful of these leaves the other day and I was swarmed by all four of the girls, eyes wide with recognition, black fingers reaching for something so basic that is usually out of reach. For now, they are babies, relatively docile, light and delicate in the palm of your hand, willing to ride on anyone who unbolts the latch. But we worry about them. What happens when they are bigger and stronger and handled by a different group of volunteers each week? Having seen Seibo and witnessed how ferocious these monkeys can be, I can only wonder what play time will look like in the months and years ahead.

For the record, there is no tropical gardening at Rainsong. No gathering of exotic fruits or horseback tours. And unless you count the spiders that fill every corner of the place there is no living insect museum or butterfly gardens either. No communal meals or sloth rescue work or private waterfalls that I can see. Just a bunch of people who pay a little money in order to make as much difference as they can while they are able to do it.

At the end of our third day as I was getting ready to leave for the afternoon, I checked in on Anti the Anteater and found her asleep. In her little triangle of new soil. Under a hanging branch of green leaves. Nose in the dirt, with ants crawling on her fur. It’s not a lot but it feels like something; enriching a tiny corner of a tiny cage for a small animal who sleeps a little happier because you showed up. Maybe that’s all there is.

Now if we can just find that hot tub.

Escape from Monkey Island

2010-03-29T19:19:00.007-04:00

We wake up at 3:30 AM. It is pitch dark. We get our things together by headlamps, trying to make a 4AM boat for a 5AM bus. My goal is to get on board without any monkey contact. No teary/bloody goodbyes for me. With any luck, the monkeys won’t even be awake.

We walk to the Human Kitchen through the blackness. Headlamps almost make things worse in the jungle; they cast dark shadows that move like stalking predators when you look at them. It may sound overly dramatic but my heart is pounding. I’m walking fast, making a lot of noise in the silent morning, unable to see or hear what’s around me. I pass Tank the Anteater’s cage, nearly there, a few more steps when—

“THERE ARE MONKEYS HERE,” Earl shouts out of the darkness.

I can see shapes approaching. They are fast, already on the bars of the kitchen windows, coming towards me. Traca has the door open and I lunge to get in as a gentle black hand reaches out of the darkness and touches my cheek. I’m sure they will be on my backpack when I get inside—but they aren’t. The door latches. Somehow I am safe, holding my heart gently between my teeth.

Of course no one else if feeling any of this. Traca and the kids are all out in the dark, outside of the cage saying goodbye to their pals. But not me. When Earl lures Sweetie away with some raisins, I run for the beach. And not just run. I run the way Laura Dern ran from the raptors in Jurassic Park. Logan later said he was sure I was going to fall. I had no headlamp anymore, just moving blindly toward the Gulf like a man on fire, my huge backpack on my back and my smaller pack in my arms. When I reached the water, I splashed right into the surf up to my knees and tossed my gear in the boat. Moments later, at a leisurely and far less spastic pace, the rest of the family was on board, shaking Earl’s hand, shoving off, then motoring into the night.

The Osa Wildlife Sanctuary is an amazing place. Thousands of people come through every year on tours, learning the importance of conservation and interacting safely with some of the rarest monkeys in Costa Rica. It’s a cool and unusual arrangement Earl and Carol have created; a rehabilitation/rescue/release center on one hand and the only known Human/Spider monkey troop on the other. I suppose they could have tossed all the monkeys in cages like every other place on Earth. It would certainly be easier for them. Less disruptive. Safer for the visiting White Males like me. But to see Sweetie, Winkie and Poppy interacting with wild Spider monkeys who pass through the property, to watch them swing through the trees, foraging for food, harassing the slow-moving Howlers and simply being free…it’s hard for me to argue that cages and bars would somehow be an improvement.

Right before we arrived at the Sanctuary, Poppy (the oldest female) had been pregnant. No invasive breeding program. No sperm on ice for this little lady. She just saw the swingin’ boys at the top of the mango tree and slipped off for a little monkey business. Sadly, she lost the baby right before we arrived—but she’ll try again. The boys will be back. And life, as it was always intended, will continue on.

Contrary to a recent Nature Air promotional story, you cannot “…hug a monkey, pet a sloth and feed a weasel” at the Osa Wildlife Sanctuary. If you go (and I whole heartedly encourage you to do so), remember MAUUNKEY rule number one: Nothing holds a monkey unless it’s going to eat it. Or, in other words (and this is coming from a guy with nine monkey bite scars to show to his grandkids): Keep you fingers out of the Tayra cage, leave the poor sloths alone and hug a monkey at your own discretion and you own peril. You have been warned.

Looking back on it now, in spite of all the teeth in my body, we had an incredible experience at the Sanctuary. Earl and Carol were great, we learned a ton of new information and we will never forget our time in the jungle.

Still…

When that morning boat set out across the Gulfo Dulce and I was on it…I can’t deny that I felt like an innocent man leaving his cell behind for good. It was really a magical ride. The stars were thick above us, a billion billion lights overhead. And the spray from our boat was alive with phosphorescent sea life, more lights all around us. After 24 days without leaving the confines of the Sanctuary, our little adventure was hitting the road again.

I won’t bore you with the details of our travel day. I won’t describe what it’s like to begin a ten hour bus leg with the certainty that one is about to have explosive and prolonged diarrhea. I won’t describe the hectic transfer in San Jose that came together with perfect, synchronistic precision. I won’t describe the next but to Puntareanas or the ferry ride to Paquera or the next bus to Cobano or the extortionist taxi driver who brought us the final leg to Cabuya. I’ll just say this:

At midnight the next morning, a full 20 hours after we boarded that first boat in the Osa, we fell asleep in our new A-frame cabin near the tip of the Nicoya Peninsula. 7:45 the next morning, were at work at the Rainsong Animal Sanctuary.

As for Sweetie...I’m sorry, girl but it’s over. We had some good times, shared a bite or two, but I think it’s best if we see other people. In fact, I’ve already moved on. Her name is Evey and we’ve been getting along really well. Like you, she likes to sit on my shoulder but so far all she does is lick my ear and I kind of like it. You might say I’ve got her eating out of my hand (rather than eating my hand) which is a nice change. So take care of yourself, hope the leg heals up quick and don’t worry. The world is full of White Men just like me. I’m sure you’ll find a new guy soon who will be more to your taste. If not, I hope he at least tastes better.

As Politely as Possible

2010-03-27T16:34:00.006-04:00

It was a day that changed the direction of our adventure and one that just might alter the whole spirit of our trip. Like most pivotal moments, there was nothing unusual leading up to it. The day started out as they all have started out; the alarm goes off at 5:30, we harangue the kids to wake up, Jackson barely moves until 6AM, grumbling like a teenage ogre and generally being unpleasant. Traca is always the first out. Logan’s second. Jack staggers down eventually. And I wait to be called like the hiding, cowardly, pomfretphobic (someone with a fear of monkeys) that I am.

Around 10 AM that day, I was sitting in the Human Kitchen feeding Big. I’d just gotten back from snorkeling with Logan (Sweetie was over on a tour) when Earl walked in. He was red in the face, sweating—and right away I could tell that something was wrong. The opening phrase: “I’m going to say this as politely as possible,” was another indicator that the shit was about to hit the jungle fan.

“I’m going to say this as politely as possible,” Earl began. “This is not working. For Logan to be snorkeling in the middle of the day when there is work to do is unacceptable. You’re here to work. This is not a vacation.” And then he really got rolling. “Your kids arrive late for work every day. Jackson sits there on the computer all afternoon doing nothing. I can’t get either of them to fill out their feeding logs properly. And today I need everybody helping.”’

By “everybody” I knew he also meant “me” but I was done being monkey snacks. “I’m sorry, Earl.” I said. “I wish I could be out there—“

“Well, you could,” Earl interrupted. “You could. And if you’re afraid of the monkeys, you probably shouldn’t be here.”

To paint the whole picture, Earl was under an enormous amount of stress at that moment. A camera crew was over in the Sanctuary preparing to film the release of a ferocious ocelot named Lilly with State and Park officials on hand to witness the release. At the same time, Pincho and several other staff members were attempting to maneuver Georgia (the Alpha Capuchin monkey) into a transport cage for relocation. Georgia is a wild, aggressive female who once bit Carol so hard on the foot, one of her eye teeth got stuck in Carol’s ankle bone. At the same time, tour groups were arriving early, wandering on the beach and into the Sanctuary. One obnoxious visitor was heard saying “I’m going to go over there and hug that monkey.” At the same time the monkeys were uncontrollably curious about all the goings on and the last thing an ocelot release party, a capuchin containment crew or an bunch of uninitiated visitors needed was an amped-up group of Spider monkeys tossed into the mix.

Just before Earl read me the riot act (as politely as possible), he’d completed 14 trips back and forth through the jungle path, rounding up monkeys, directing traffic, trying to keep all primates—including the monkey-hugging jerk on the beach—from getting hurt. I just happened to be the one sitting around to take the brunt of his frustration.

I like Earl. He’s 58, wears a moustache and sandy-blonde hair tossed to the side, the look of an aging surfer, which he is. He worked in construction for many years, then as a commodities broker, before landing—like a coconut washed up on the beach—here. He can build most anything, cook most anything and has an encyclopedic collection of animal, bird, plant, insect and general trivia facts tucked beneath his sun-bleached hair. Having followed him for weeks as he gives his info-packed tours, I’ve yet to see him stumped.

“What kind of tree is this?” a woman will ask, pointing to one specific tree in a jungle of trees.

“Oh, that’s a Saragundi,” he’ll say. “You can tell by the leaves. They close up at night and are a popular medicine for arthritis.” And off he’ll go. When it fruits, what eats it, peculiar adaptations and so on. He’s not pompous, just knowledgeable. He’s easy to talk to, as cool as Carol is fiery. The kind of man who rarely gets mad unless something or someone pushes him to the breaking point.

After Lilly the Ocelot, Georgia the Capuchin and all the tour visitors were safe and getting on with their lives, Earl and I talked at length about what he said. And while he was embarrassed and apologetic about his comments and tried to back pedal a bit, for the most part, and I hate to admit this, but for the most part...he was right. Our kids have not—to this point—been what you’d call motivated workers. They’re doing it, going through the motions but they’re also complaining a lot, rolling their eyes, bored more often than kids with monkey playmates should be. And Jack does spend too much time on her Facebook page, even when we’ve told her not to. And Logan doesn’t like to fill out his anteater log. And I am afraid of the monkeys!

But it's not all bad.

There will be moments on this trip that change us forever. Some of them will be moments so wonderful they’ll inspire us with power and beauty we never could have imagined. Others will be horribly sad or painful, life changing in their own way for the impression they leave on our hearts. Still others, like the tongue-lashing from Earl, will come in disguise, teaching the right lesson at the right time. For the kids, at least, it was just what they needed to hear.

The next day, we woke up 5:30 AM...and the kids got right up. Not a peep. Not a word of complaint. They may have been tired and grumpy but they didn’t show it. They were to work by 6. They fed their babies and filled out their feeding logs without being reminded. No Facebook. No sitting around. After breakfast, they raked the jungle path together to be of use.

Then Logan assisted Earl on his tour without an eye roll or a yawn. Then Jackson gave her first solo tour at the Sanctuary; two hours of info to 17 people. In short: They were willing, powerhouse workers with gold stars beside their names.

But one issue had not been resolved: If I’m afraid of the monkeys, I probably shouldn’t be here. And so we’ve decided to go. We have nine more days before we fly out of San Jose so we’re catching an early morning boat and heading up to another rescue center in the North. Earl has connections, made a call and we’re in. It promises to be an epic day of travel but that’s why we’re out here. As Earl said while we were making pizza dinner on our last night: “This is your adventure. You don’t want to spend it in a cage.”

On that point as with so many others, Earl Crews is absolutely right.

Into the Cage

2010-03-26T20:36:00.006-04:00

It’s twelve noon. The second tour of the day is underway over at the Sanctuary and Logan is assisting Earl with that. Winkie is there too. Traca and Sweetie were doing a little yoga up at our cabin but now Trace is down swimming and Sweetie is hanging on the cage wire beside me. Jackson made herself a huge plate of pasta in an effort to “feel full” as she says and she just offered me the last few bites in an effort, I suspect, to have me wash the plate. And I am sitting at the end of the kitchen table, facing the ocean, taking it all in.

On the table at this moment are an unusual collection of centerpieces. Traca’s parakeet Big is doing well, filling out his fancy green pantaloons nicely, resting in his small pet carrier. Further down, another cage holds a baby jaguarundi; like a small black house cat but with sharp claws, a desire for raw meat and a vicious is squeaky little growl for the time being. The final table top residents are also our two newest animals: two baby owls that came by boat yesterday.

When I was a kid, my mother used to collect owl figurines. I think mothers do this to give their kids an easy gift idea—and it worked like a charm for my brothers and me. Virtually every Mother’s Day and Christmas, all three of us dutifully (and cheapily) handed over the big-eyed goods until she had a display case aviary of over one hundred specimens. Having seen so many garish, cartoonish replicas, I wasn’t prepared for how much more garish and cartoonish owls are in real life: huge staring eyes, odd panting beaks and funky ghetto girl head bobs as if they’re always saying: “Whatcho lookin’ at? Hmmmm?” Anyway, in honor of my Mom’s interest in and devotion to all things owl, we named one of these intense little fluff balls Esther.

Since my last monkey bite, I have decided to make the remainder of my stay a Monkey Free Zone. It’s much safer but a little pathetic. Each morning I stay in my cage/bedroom until breakfast. Then Traca takes Sweetie for a walk down the beach. When the coast is clear, Jack or Logan give me the signal and I run like hell to my next cage/kitchen. After that, I just repeat the process every time I need to go anywhere all day. No jungle paths. No out in the open. No monkey contact of any kind. Period. The sad thing is, from where I sit at the head of the table facing out at the ocean...this arrangement seems to be working much better for everyone. I’ve been in my self-imposed isolation for three days now and there is no disharmony in the troop; no fighting, biting or otherwise bleeding. And while it sucks to be essentially another animal in a cage, there are so many good things happening in the free world, I am content for the moment to let Traca and the kids have all the fun.

Logan had a jungle lesson with Pincho the other day—all in Spanish—about new spots for the camera traps. They traipsed through the bush, wielded machetes, traced agoutis to their den, drank with leaves from a mountain stream and generally acted the way real men of danger are supposed to act.

Meanwhile, Jackson is loving her time with the monkeys. She plays this game with Winkie which is pure comedy. I’m not sure why or how it works but it goes like this. Jack will corner Winkie and make the typical monkey greeting face; squinty eyes, chin out, kissy lips. And for some reason, Winkie reacts like a silent movie comedian. She falls back, stumbles, throws her arms up, staggers, backs into the wall, desperately lunges for the window wire then flops to the floor, crawls like a snake and on and on. Jack laughs through the whole performance and so does her monkey friend.

And Traca is practically family with these little hairy children, if not a mother than definitely a favorite aunt. In the exact opposite way that Sweetie enjoys chewing my extremities, she absolutely adores Traca. They fall asleep together after they do yoga. They share the same shirt at time; a human and a monkey head out the same neck opening like some two-headed science experiment gone wrong. They cuddle. They coo. They’re practically dating.

And that’s the thing. There’s no fear or hiding or scariness for any of them. It’s just fun and a once in a lifetime opportunity. So what do I do? I wait.

If nothing else, this experience is giving me a complete and thorough understanding of why Carol and Earl work so hard to release animals back into the wild. Bottom line, as Esther the Owl is my witness: It’s more fun on the other side of the cage.

Monkey Bite 3

2010-03-21T15:33:00.014-04:00

What’s that old saying? Bite me once, shame on you. Bite me twice, shame on me. Bite me a third time…I clearly have no sense of self-preservation.

Here’s the thing about monkeys. They are not humans. They look like little versions of us. Their eyes sparkle with intelligence. They are playful, emotional. They communicate. They’re extremely social. But they are also unpredictable. Concepts like “territory” and “dominance” are the stuff monkey life is built on. So to play house with them is to play by their rules, even when those rules are undefined, mercurial or—at least to my human mind—downright arbitrary.

Since the second bite, Sweetie has been acting very possessive towards me and it usually starts first thing in the morning. My routine is to leave our cabin and walk straight to the beach. I don’t look over at the Human Kitchen. I just hoof it to the sand and b-line for the Sanctuary. If Earl sees me passing, he’ll distract Sweetie with some food, trying to buy me enough time to make the walk in peace. If the tide is low, I cut across the rocks. If the tide is high, I take the jungle path.

Both routes are high-speed scrambles to navigate either the steep, up and down, root-covered trail or the slippery, uneven, oceanside rocks. In my crappy leather sandals. Whether Sweetie is actually coming or not, it always feels like I’m being chased and I’m happy every time I reach the flat solid ground without a small, black hand reaching up for mine.

But the other day, as I cleared the tricky footing part of my route and was walking on a raised, flat-plank path that leads into the Sanctuary, Sweetie came tearing around the corner at top speed. In one bound, she leaped up to the hand railing, grabbed my shirt and stopped. It was a little scary. She was completely out of breath, panting like a track star and she was covered with sweat. I might be putting a human spin on her behavior, but as I thought of her sprinting after me, pushing her little 15 pound body to exhaustion in the desire to hold my shirt again, I started to feel more like an obsession than anything even remotely resembling a friend.

Being a rational human being, I’ve talked at length with Earl about all the scenarios to watch out for, triggers that might set my little Fatal Attraction off again. Jealousy is one, as with the first bite. You play with another monkey or another human shows you some affection or touches you in any way—get ready for the nibblin’. Sudden shocks are another, as with the second bite. Slip on the rocks, conk your head, accidentally sit on a tail. One overweight male visitor had a plastic deck chair collapse while he was holding Sweetie. And though his bites would eventually heal, their relationship never recovered. My biggest concerns now were things out of my control. What if a hawk flies overhead and spooks her? Or a snake slithers past? Or a wasp stings her? Or me?

This morning started out normally. 6AM. Straight for the beach. High tide. Jungle trail. Up the steep slope, root by root. Quick look back. No Sweetie. Around the first corner. Out of sight. Home free—

Ten steps later, I heard her feet scrambling up the path. By the time I turned around she was right behind me. I welcomed her as I always do; hand out, come on up. We chirped and she climbed on my head. No big deal. All I needed to do was navigate back down the slope, maybe scratch her for a bit, then call for Earl and get back to work.

“I’m going as carefully as I can,” I said sweetly, holding trees for support, stepping as gently as possible. “We’re just going down to the beach. Nice and easy.” Another step. Another step. Sweetie had her soft hands resting on my temples, which was not unusual, but she also hopped up and down a few times and seemed agitated about something.

When I reached the ground, I stepped onto the black sand with a huge sigh of relief. I was planning to walk around to the patio, a typically safe neutral zone—but the tide was really high. Looking back at that moment, I should have walked right into the water. I would have had wet sandals and wet pants but that would have been the end of it. Instead, like a dip shit, I decided to walk directly to the Human Kitchen. I didn’t trip. There was no danger. I was speaking as you might speak to a baby. “Let’s go find Earl. OK?” I said. “He’ll have some raisins. Would you like that?” I took one step towards the kitchen, Sweetie’s most beloved territory, and she bit me.

The first bite was on my head, just below my hairline above my left eye. Right away there was blood or scalp or brains (I think I was in shock) obscuring my vision and everything sort of slowed down. Sweetie moved to my elbow, chewed up the back of my left triceps and reopened my old elbow bite since she was in the neighborhood. Then, to complete the triptych, she launched onto my back, though she didn’t have much luck with my shirt and my bony spine. At this point I think I must have been shouting because Earl came running and his instructions were crystal clear. “RUN!” he said. “RUN!” That got my attention.

All of us animals have two options when being attacked. If we don’t know them instinctively, we learn them in elementary school science class. Two words: Fight or Flight; we either stand our ground or we run like hell. This is the natural order of things. When you're a human living as part of a monkey troop, however, you’re not supposed to show any aggression or fear; an extremely unnatural response that might be called the “Let ‘em Bite and Sit Tight” strategy. The problem is: This goes against everything your body is telling you to do. No one wants to stand there and let a monkey gnaw on their forehead. (Trust me on this one.) So when Earl gave me the green light to flee, three weeks of pent up instinct suddenly ignited in my body like a grease fire and my legs were instantly charging forward.

I wish someone had been filming my dash for freedom because I’m sure it was a Scooby-Doo moment. My legs probably wind milled in the air for a few seconds...my entire body had great intentions of sprinting to the beach...but I lost my balance almost instantly, launched into mid air and landed face first in a muddy drainage ditch. Wet, bleeding, heart racing, thumb sprained, jacked on adrenaline, I looked up to find Sweetie. She was standing safely on the ground, not far from my head with a look on her face that seemed to say: “What the hell are you doing?”

I hate to admit it but I really don’t think I can take another bite. I’ll talk it over with Traca and the kids later but from where I sit, back in isolation behind bars again, Sweetie and I—like a bad summer romance—are through.

Or to paraphrase The Doors hit song: “Bite me three times…I’m goin’ away.”

The Last Parakeet

2010-03-20T15:35:00.006-04:00

It may not be a deep revelation to you, but being here in Costa Rica reminds me daily that life is both incredibly fragile and amazingly resilient.

Traca continues to live this truth hour by hour in her epic mothering mission with the baby parakeets. Since the last update, two more of the little peepers have died, leaving only two of the initial seven: Little and Big. The thing is: Traca dotes on these guys all day long. Every few hours she’s mixing fresh food, cooing to them, washing their mangy young feathers, soaking their green poop-encrusted feet. Without a doubt, no birds ever, in the wild or captivity, have been as loved and honored as Traca’s little brood. Yet still they die.

I held one of the fading members of the flock in my hands the other night as Traca changed out their bedding. And while it was technically alive, it was barely clinging to its perch here on Earth—eyes closed, breathing labored, fragile as rice paper in the rain. With the least force I could manage, I supported its head with a finger tip and tried to will it to live. I could feel the heat, the energy streaming from my body and I imagined it was a miracle I was sending to this little creature…but nothing I or Traca could do could keep him alive till morning.

The thing is, all around us, life bursts forth in amazing abundance, variety and power. Drop a mango seed in a bucket of mango seeds and leave it by the sink for a few days and you’ll have a baby tree, six inches high reaching for the sun. Hothouse temperatures, high humidity, lots of rain; conditions for fecundity are perfect.

Logan and I went for a walk in the jungle today. We’ve taken on a project placing camera traps in the forest in the hopes of catching a puma in the act of cattin’ around. Puma numbers are critically low so finding proof of one could spell some additional research funding. So far, we’ve photographed many night shots of nothing, one wild kinkajou, a bunch of agoutis (like sleek hamsters on steroids) and one picture of Pincho with his shirt off. Still, it’s fun to venture out into the thick of the rain forest and see what we can rustle up.

Today we went further than we’ve ever gone before, following an overgrown jungle creek for an hour or so, climbing deeper and deeper into the untouched forest. At times we walked over massive fallen trees that were so decomposed, we feared they would crumble beneath us. And we inched through narrow rock passes, hands on one side, feet on the other, lunging for horizontal limbs growing out from the banks, all reaching, looking, hungry for sun. It was slow going. And it was hot. Logan handled it without much effort, but I created a new colloquial expression for extreme perspiration, as in: sweating like a pig; sweating like a river; sweating like John in the Jungle.

Step by step, drip by drip, we found ourselves back in time. Add in a few massive lizards thundering through the distance and I suspect this is the way things have always looked here; a million shades of green, each more vibrant and alive than any plant I have ever watered. Trees towered over us, 200 feet or more into the canopy. Giant Golden Orb spiders set traps for the hummingbirds that filled the air. Iridescent whip-tailed lizards ran from our stumbling feet. We know there are bushmaster snakes here. And vipers. And one jaguar that people know of. But we saw none of that. We were left to pass undisturbed, just two more bits of life in this teaming tangle of life.

In retrospect, even Sweetie’s bites have been a literal life lesson for me. Though I am tired of being treated like a Rottweiler’s play toy, Sweetie has reminded me that I am alive. Simple as that. There is blood in this sheath of skin I call home. And it hurts when you rip it open. And it heals by itself after you clean yourself up. Like the jungle, it wants to live but it will not live forever. So for today, we explore, we sweat, we move a little further up the stream, reaching, looking hungry for the light.

Today, as I write this, more lessons to learn. Traca opened her cage this morning and found Little lying dead on a soft blanket. She held it in her hands and smiled a sad smile, her eyes brimming. “You tried so hard,” she said by way of eulogy and then she cried large tears onto his small green lifeless head. And so did I.

“Are you crying, Dad?” Jackson asked. Then: “Oh, great. Now I’m going to cry.”

It may sound trite but here it feels very real; a colloquial expression for the things that matter most...

Precious as this life we live.
Precious as our time together.
Precious as the last parakeet in the cage.

Monkey Bite 2

2010-03-16T16:09:00.007-04:00

The thing about your second monkey bite is: it’s a lot like your second child. With the first one, there’s lots of fanfare; everyone comes to see, you take a lot of pictures, everything it does is cause for a discussion. But by the time your second rolls around, it’s old hat. You wash it by your self. You’re lucky to get a single picture. Your daughter doesn’t faint. Life goes on.

I was heading over to the Sanctuary to start the day, got maybe 100 yards down the beach when I turned around. I was thinking maybe Logan would be there—he was running a little late this morning—but Sweetie was there instead. When she saw me, she stopped and we just looked at each other. On the wide expanse of sand, she looked tiny, like a kid at the beach looking for her mom. But after a few seconds, she headed back toward the Human Kitchen and disappeared into the trees. I turned and continued on my way.

Thirty seconds later, as I walked carefully over damp rocks in my sandals (a path we use at high tide), Sweetie appeared out of no where and climbed up on my chest. This is a typical greeting: I extend my hand, she takes it, swings herself up, and puts her face a few inches from mine. Her expression looks fierce, as if she’s pissed off; she squints her eyes, sticks out her lower lip and juts her chin forward. But she’s just saying “hello”.

I didn’t really want Sweetie at the Sanctuary—she can be a bit of a playful pest over there—so, for everyone’s sake, I decided to carry her home. Back over the slippery rocks, step by step, letting Sweetie use my right arm as a perch.

What happened next is entirely my fault. My sandals are made of leather and they are not ideal rock climbing gear. So as I was concentrating on my feet, I didn’t see an overhanging branch that grows across the path. I hit it so hard with my head that I lost my footing and, when I lurched forward to keep from falling, Sweetie got scared. She bit me first on the left forearm and—in violation of all monkey codes—I pushed her off.

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” I shouted. But Sweetie wasn’t done. She dove back on my arm and bit my elbow twice more, opening a nice stream of blood that dripped onto the rocks.

Unlike the first bite, I was all alone for this one. When she was done, Sweetie sat down and looked at me; she wanted to climb back up, but my legs were shaking and I didn’t trust them to carry me, and her, safely to the sand. “Stay! No! Give me a minute,” I said. And she did. But if Sweetie really wanted to climb up, I couldn’t stop her. If she wanted to lick my bleeding arm…

Pincho arrived at the perfect moment. Pincho is one of the Sanctuary workers and he’s amazing with the animals.

He walks into cages where I would be shredded, cuddles carnivores like pets, and can wrangle the monkeys without consequences. He’s a small man with dark skin, a think black moustache and a smile that lights up his whole face all day long. He likes Kenny Rogers and Celine Dion music, so I sing a few bars of “The Gambler” as we work side by side and he laughs. But he was not laughing now. When he saw my arm and sized up the situation, he grabbed Sweetie at the base of her tail and hauled her away.

After the clean up, it’s not really so bad. The bites are not as deep this time around; my arms are much tougher than my lower legs. And like all your children, from the first to the last, there’s really just one big question you need to ask:

All fingers and toes accounted for?

So far, I am proud to report, they are.

Seibo

2010-03-16T16:05:00.008-04:00

If this Monkey Story we are living in were a movie, the villain would not be Sweetie, it would be Seibo. In Mayan mythology, Seibo is the Supreme God, the creator and destroyer of the world—but for the purposes of our story, Seibo is a huge mantled Howler monkey.

Howler monkeys are the most common monkeys in Costa Rica. They eat leaves, have black fur and make a deep villainous howl that can be heard up to two miles away. Under ordinary circumstances, Howler monkeys would have no reason to bother us here at the Sanctuary. But Seibo is no ordinary monkey. Those in a position to know say he is the largest Howler you will ever see; a big male with huge teeth and a massive, bright pink scrotum he swaggers around with. And like all the best movie villains, he is much more than his frightening exterior.

He came to the Sanctuary when he was two days old; his mother had just been shot by a poacher and some missionaries bought him by the side of the road. Carol and Earl did their best to raise him as part of their fledgling Spider monkey troop but he never really fit in. As a leaf eater, he was slower than his fruit-eating sisters. And Sweetie and Poppy were often cruel. They would hold him by his tail twenty feet in the air and drop him to the ground. They would shake him like a Costa Rican margarita. Sweetie even once swung from his ponderous testicles, back and forth, as a wicked sisterly prank. He was released at age four and has found a troop of his own. But there appears to be unfinished business for Seibo back here with us.

We awoke the other day to the sound of fierce shouting. “HAAAA! AHHHHH!” The Alpha Cry. It was Carol and clearly something was wrong. The jungle was not awake yet, it was before 5AM but Traca and I were up, sitting in bed, on alert. “EARRRRL! EARRRRL!” Carol called. “I’m coming!” Earl responded, not far from our cabin. Then Seibo roared. To hear Howler monkeys in the distance is creepy and loud enough. But to have one on your property is like standing in front of the Devil’s train whistle. Roaring, shouting, monkey barking, sunrise. A little something we like to call Friday morning.

I asked Carol later if she ever gets scared and she shrugged. “No, not really,” she said. “But this morning with Seibo…I was a little worried.”

Turns out, Carol had more than enough reason for alarm. She had a large male Spider monkey named Guapo in her arms that Seibo was trying to attack. Guapo was rescued near the Panamanian boarder wearing a leather collar and a chain around his neck. He is a strong, wild animal that they keep on a long leash here at the Sanctuary, allowing him to be as free as possible and stay out of a cage. Most days, Guapo climbs a giant strangler fig, protecting his territory. But Friday morning, Guapo was literally at the end of his rope. Carol held him as he snarled and gnashed his teeth, backed into a corner with nowhere else to go. Seibo moved closer, huge teeth flashing in the predawn light, roaring like a T-rex with Carol shouting: “HAAAAA! AHHHHH! EARRRRL!”

All we could do was say: “Kids. It’s time to get up.”

Since the first few days of monkey bites and scorpion surprises, we’ve settled into a nice routine that leaves room for jungle hi-jinx while keeping the fear factor to a bare minimum.

Like when Logan and I raked the long jungle trail that connects the Human Kitchen side of things with the Sanctuary. The jungle sheds leaves the same way that I sweat down here (re: profusely) so the path was covered. And since terceopelas like to hide in piles of leaves, Logan and I volunteered—like mine sweepers—to go and rake up some snakes. None of which ever appeared.

And like when we went up river to release four smelly opossums. True to their “No creature left behind” philosophy, Carol and Earl raised these nasty, black-eyed beasts from demanding, hairless 80 grams pouch dwellers to the vicious, sharp-toothed mega-rats they are today. “Wildlife is wildlife,” Carol says of her menagerie and for that, the possums should be thankful. We released them in a beautiful area where a ten foot crocodile has been known to live. And while the bald-tailed varmints slipped peacefully off into the jungle, the massive croc did not—I’m happy to report—make an appearance.

So jungle life goes on. We assist with tours, rake and clean cages with the staff, prep animal food for their daily feedings, and spend lots of time with the monkeys. In fact, the most difficult creature we have to contend with these days is probably—no: most definitely—the mosquito.

I just took an informal survey around the table, the question being: How many mosquito bites do you think you have? Logan said 50 and almost immediately adjusted down to 40. Jackson said 120. Traca said 3,000—which is probably just a little high. And I say 200, but two really stand out. On my left leg, my monkey bite leg, I have two prize bites; one on the outside of my leg above the ankle, the other six inches higher. As I laid in bed a few nights ago, mosquito net in place, head lamps on for reading, I started to itch these bites. Not directly on them, of course. That only makes them worse. I itched around them; with two fingers, stiff and hooked like a garden tool, one on each side of the bite, up and down, over and over again. I can’t begin to describe the supreme bliss I was in as I repeated this motion. Up until then, I’d been utterly zen about my bites, preaching a “No Scratch” policy to all the scratch junkies around me. But in the dark, in that sublime fall from restraint, I unleashed all my pent up desire on the moist, virgin skin around those two dots. The only problem is, when I awoke in the morning, I found I had worn away the first few layers of skin, as if I’d been attacked by a two-toed sloth. Now, instead of two fading mosquito bites, I had four, painful, hideous strips of raw red flesh; self-inflicted reminders of what unchecked gratification can do.

The Monkey Story we are living in is only half over and, like any good movie, we have absolutely no idea how it’s going to end. Seibo came back last night and slashed the hand of Felicia, another Spider monkey on a long leash. There was screaming, crying, and drama out there in the distance. And like rapt movie goers, Traca, Logan, Jackson and I looked up at the blank screen of night watching, wondering: What will happen next?

If you read this far, feel free to leave a comment. It's always fun to hear from you.

Life and Death

2010-03-12T19:42:00.008-05:00

As we pass into our second week here in the jungle, it feels like we’ve been here for a REALLY long time. And I realized: It’s because everything we do we takes absolute, 100% full and total attention. For instance…

At home, when I want to go outside, I open the door and leave. I might as well be unconscious for all the awareness I put into this utterly inconsequential act. But here…

Every time you want to enter or exit a door, you need to be on guard. The monkeys love to get into the kitchen or your bedroom and, if they’re around, even if they look like they aren’t paying attention, they’re looking for a crack to slip through. So you pause at the doorway, eyes scanning the perimeter, fingers ready at the latch. Then, quick as you can, you slip out, close the door and seal the latch behind you. If the monkeys get in, they will reek holy havoc on diner plates, food supplies and laptops…so this is a maneuver best performed with speed and military precision.

And the same is true for nearly every other aspect of daily living. Want to take a walk down the path? Keep your eyes sharp for pinchy lines of Leaf-Cutting ants and the serpentine buttress roots of the surrounding trees. Rake out the Macaw cage? Stay clear of those beaks. They can exert more snapping power than a pit bull. Forget your book up at the cabin? Be on the look out for snakes—as Jackson learned a few nights ago.

She was walking back at twilight and we heard her before we saw her. “I JUST STEPPED ON A GIANT SNAKE!” she screamed, high stepping back to the human kitchen. Earl ran up with a machete, chopped its head off, brought it back and placed it coiling and looping on a kitchen cutting board. The snake in question was a terciopelo or the Fer-de-lance; “…the most feared and dangerous of the Central American snakes”—at least according to Les Beletsky in his Traveler’s Wildlife series on Costa Rica. Jackson, I’m proud to report, was amazingly calm for a 14 year old jungle girl, though she was eager to feed the remains of the snake to the Tayra (a tropical weasel and voracious eater) the next day on the tour.

Time also slows down because there is literal life and death drama unfolding around us all the time. For example: Logan’s bed continues to be the hub of all scorpion activity here on the Osa. The other night, he found another one lurking behind a board just off to the right of his pillow. Working by headlamps in an otherwise pitch dark room, Logan flushed it from below with a book cover and I skewered it from above with my pocket knife, pinning it to the wall. As we suspected, this creature has no soul because it simply would not die. No matter how much I twisted the knife or sweated onto Logan’s bed, the scorpion continued to strike the knife handle with its barbed tail, eventually working itself free to fall beneath the bed. We found it (after much girlish shrieking) and splatted it with a shoe. But Logan gets his own high marks for going to sleep that night without too much fuss—after we duct taped his scorpion den shut for good, of course.

On the “life” side of the equation, Traca has taken on the baby parakeet job and woke up a few days back to find her little nestlings peck-peck-pecking on Heaven’s door. We started with seven, lost a few of the weaker ones… Now this morning, another was dead and the rest had a bad case of crop sour (which basically means: food going in was just sitting in their gizzards, rotting, hardening and killing them). Carol believed none of the birds would make it—but Traca was determined. She sat and massaged their crops, no doubt pouring all the love and reiki energy she could into her little blanket-covered colander of dimming life…and did not leave them, not for one banana-picking minute, until Carol proclaimed, with a fellow nurturer’s respect, that they just might have turned the corner. Today, I’m proud to report, there are four more parakeets in this beautiful world of ours and they are set to be released on April 4th. Yeah, Traca.

As for Sweetie…

Three days after The Bite, I walked out of our cabin to see what would happen. My plan was to go straight to the water and dive in if I had to; with 1% body weight to fat, Spider monkeys sink like hairy stones. Sweetie was no where in sight at first…but then Traca called my name and I turned to find Sweetie tearing across the lawn. Earl later told me she was high in a tree when she saw me. Like a frantic fireman, she zipped down a vine and hit the ground running. As contact was imminent, all I could do was extend my hand and…SHE BIT IT OFF!

Luckily, it was nothing so dramatic. Sweetie climbed up, hitched a ride to the water and we sat down. Since then, as with all things here, I am ever vigilant around Sweetie. She’s been nothing but sweet to me but still I am on guard. Where is Winkie? What will my escape route be? It’s not constant fear, just a heightened sense of awareness, an animal sense of my surroundings.

Which is a pretty good description of our trip so far. We are like four animals, released back into wild, waking up day by day to the beauty and the danger all around us.

If you read this, feel free to leave a comment, here or on Facebook or a cowlimp@hotmail.com. We love to see who’s following us around and look forward to hearing from you.

The Monkey Bite

2010-03-09T09:08:00.014-05:00

OK. The first thing I want to say is: I’m alright.

Most white men who come to the Sanctuary for any length of time get bitten. It’s sort of your “Welcome to the Monkey Club” badge/scar of honor. And “Why, in the name of Hanuman the Monkey Faced God, would anyone sign up for this?” you might well ask. Because—and this is coming from someone with two gaping holes in my left leg—it is a rare, rare privilege to be here.

In a very real sense, we are living as part of a Spider monkey troop, an opportunity that is available no where else on Earth. This is not a zoo. Sweetie, Winkie (the youngest) and Poppy (the oldest) are free. They go where they want, eat what they want, do pretty much what they want—unless Carol or Earl decides otherwise. (They can’t go into our cabin or the clinic or the Human or Animal Kitchens, but other than that, they have the run of the place and for the most part this is a harmonious arrangement.)

But I got cocky. After my initial relief that Sweetie accepted me, I started to think we were pals. She hitched a ride with me where ever I went. She even stopped riding on my head and held tight to my chest, a less dominant posture for her and a much cooler accessory to wear around this place for me. She would let me set her down when I wanted to, even slightly push her away at times—which is a huge MAUUN-key no-no. By day three, I could even retrieve her from the jungle when another female volunteer could not, filling me with an unwarranted sense of pride and lulling me into a false sense of security.

It got to the point where I was actually seeking her out because honestly…it’s fun to hang out with her. The whole family loves her.

She’s affectionate, engaging, clearly intelligent. Being welcomed by any of the monkeys is a feeling few humans will ever experience. And I must confess to a certain completely unwarranted Ego boost as well. Where most men needed to cower, I: The Great Monkey Whisperer, could walk up to the Human Kitchen with Sweetie in my arms, swing her to the ground and enter her most territorial space without batting an eye. At least such was the baloney I was feeding myself yesterday afternoon before the attack.

This is how most monkey bites happen. In the wild, biting is a routine part of daily life. Someone steps or swings out of line—BAM, you bite ‘em to say: know your place, kid! Someone takes your mango or rubs your pendulous clitoris the wrong way—BAM, you bite ‘em to show ‘em who’s boss. The thing is, monkey skin is very elastic and covered with hair. Plus the bitee can react with equal speed and strength to minimize any damage. Humans, with our nearly bald, tight, completely vulnerable skin and our slow, frail defenses are not—I’m sad to report—so lucky.

It was about 4 PM, a tricky time in Monkey Land (or so they told me as I was bleeding into the sink); the monkeys are tired, less patient, less predictable in the early evening. I hadn’t seen Sweetie very much that day and in truth I was missing her. I also really had to go to the bathroom. For men, this is an action taken anywhere on the grounds so my plan was: quick pee break, long Sweetie break. The only trouble was, Sweetie found me right away. She climbed up on my chest, we hugged, chirped, the usual “hello”. But this was not going to work and Carol, who was watching, knew it.

“DON’T GO IN FRONT OF SWEETIE,” she reminded me. “SHE’LL BE VERY CURIOUS!”

Coming to my rescue, Carol lured Sweetie away, leaving me free to accomplish the first item on my checklist. When that bit of business was complete, I came back up from the beach and right away I could tell something was wrong. Sweetie was sitting on the ground eating Gummi Bears, her favorite things—and no, these are not naturally occurring here, Carol had given them to her. I called to Sweetie, extended my arm. But she was in a happy Gummi trance. Right then, Winkie came around the corner. And Poppy was not far behind. I knew this was too many monkeys in one place. One on one, they’re fine. But they do get jealous. With all three right in front of me, even my long dormant instincts told me to get away. The door to the Human Kitchen was maybe 20 feet to my right. Ten big steps. It’s latched and takes a few seconds to safely open—but if I walked fast…

Winkie was the first to catch me. Only three years old, Winkie is very playful. She ran between my legs, looked up my shorts and then put her teeth on my ankle. It was not to hurt me. She does this in play. But Sweetie did not like it at all. She ran at me and—before I could react—slammed her eye tooth into the flesh above my ankle. Then, in rapid succession, made a smaller bite on my right leg and a third gash on my lower left calf. (Monkey bites always come in threes.) When the guts settled and the requisite number of bites had been administered, Sweetie and Winkie sat on the ground looking at my leg and I did the same. I have never seen my own blood pouring out of my body. With huge veins in my lower legs and feet, Sweetie’s first bite had punctured a big one and I was gushing like a horror movie extra. Carol called for me to COME INSIDE and I did. I walked across the kitchen floor leaving bloody footprints on the terra cotta tiles and hopped up on the sink for the clean up.

Often when Sweetie bites, she will continue to run at her “victim”, shaking the bars of the kitchen, reaching for more, agitated, stroking her tail, clearly not finished with the altercation. But as Carol sterilized my wounds and wrapped me up, Sweetie just hung on the bars beside me, watching, curious, even chirping the Spider monkey happy sound like an abuser with amnesia.

Jackson had the hardest time with this incident. She was feeding her baby kinkajou at the time and she nearly fainted. She said later her lips and finger tips were tingling and she described it in a letter to a friend this way: “This is possibly the most dramatic, scary, petrifying, dangerous, full of tears day of my life!” Traca was in full mothering mode that night, alternating between me and the kids, doing a thorough scorpion search before bed, just protecting her own troop from further damage.

I’ve spent the last few days in solitary, leg up, monkey free. It’s really not so bad. I’m healing up nicely, no infection, nothing but a curious prehensile nub poking out of my lower back. Hope it’s a tail and not a pendulous clitoris…which is a bit of Monkey Bite Humor.

Sweetie came to visit me in my room today. She sat on the free side of the bars, showing me her wounded leg and gently pulling my hands toward her injury with her soft black fingers. “Rub here,” she was saying. And I did. I also showed her my own wounded leg and kept it safely clear of her curious grip. “See what you did?” I said to her. She chirped and pulled my fingers a little closer.

Truth is, and this may sound insane but…I miss her. My plan is to meet up with her tomorrow and apologize for whatever I did. I’ll get some raisins, carry her on my head, even hum “The Bitch is Back” if it will help. For now, I’m on my side of the cage and she’s on hers, both of our wounds elevated, chirping away.

In the Jungle

2010-03-06T08:35:00.009-05:00

Day three in the jungle and our lives are filled with wonder. So much has happened since my first meeting with Sweetie it feels like we’ve been here for weeks. Around every corner, from hour to hour, we see, do, feel, say, hear, taste and smell experiences that none of us have ever dreamed of before. And it starts the very first thing in the morning.

Each day at 5 AM, the Howler monkeys start howling. These monkeys are wild, somewhere in the dense canopy that surrounds us, and they sound like all the demons of Hell…in a cool sort of way. Biologically, Howler monkeys are capable of making the loudest animal noise on the planet and when a dozen—or a hundred, it’s hard to tell—begin their deep voiced howl all at once, it builds and rolls, sweeping through the darkness like a frightening Devil wind. Very similar, in fact, to the typical T-Rex roar that screams out of most movie jungles, only deeper, louder and more layered; Satan’s choir in full voice or, to us: our alarm clock.

We’re to be at work at 6 AM, so we tie up our mosquito nets, check our shoes for scorpions and lock our possessions in our Contico trunks. Like the human kitchen, our cabin is a Monkey Free Zone; heavy duty bars grid the large window opening, keeping Sweetie and Company out, but allowing everything else that can squeeze through a 3x3 inch square to come in We are tucked up on a hill overlooking the crashing waves of the Gulf, nestled into the intense overgrowth and surrounded at all times by a cacophony of clicks, chirps, rustles, squawks, and buzzes. Wild Toucans rub their yellow beaks on the branches outside our windows. Scarlet Macaws—always in pairs—shriek like the showoffs that they are as they glide through our view. It’s our little teak home in the rainforest complete with queen-sized bed and two single beds, cold outdoor shower (that feels incredible in the constant heat and humidity), and a chest full of termites we’ve been instructed NEVER to open.

Throughout the day, we all have jobs to do, all of them performed at a very leisurely pace. Jackson’s main responsibility is taking care of the new kinkajou. A kinkajou is a long-limbed marsupial with a long tail and a really long tongue. When fully grown, they can open a coconut with their kinka-claws—but Jackson’s little guys is just a baby and looks like a brown, furry alien. She named him Kaylor (after her two best friends Kali and Taylor) and she is completely responsible for his care. She bathes him, changes his cage and feeds him mashed up bananas, Pedialite and milk four times a day. Carol inspected Kaylor the other day and was glad to report he was positively thriving in his new mama’s care.

Logan has new parental responsibilities as well; the attentive father to seven baby parakeets. These birds look nothing like the resplendent adults they will grow up to be. Their feathers are tiny, their bones are thin as paper and they peep like the bald orphan beggars they are. Like his sister, Logan is handy with the feeding tool—in his case: an eye dropper—that fills and shuts these little buggers up.

Traca has her helping hands in just about everything, often working in the Animal Kitchen, chopping veggies and fruit, cleaning dishes and chatting happily in Spanish with her female Costa Rican workers. There is a lot of mothering energy in this place and Traca, being Mother Supreme, fits right in like a natural part of the ecosystem. Unfortunately, her sweet nature has attracted the local mosquito populations who have made her a must stop on their nightly feeding tours. This morning, in a very quick look, I counted 75 bites between her knee and the middle of her leg. One leg. One side. Four days. 75 bites.

I’ve been working with the Sanctuary helpers, raking, watering and feeding the animals. My favorites are the sloths: alert but basically motionless creatures who typically live far removed from humans, high in the trees, upside down, as still as the trees around them. I did a lousy oral report in 8th grade on sloths, even carved one in woodworking class back then, and have been a fan ever since. Seeing them up close is pretty cool. The sloths sit in hammocks or hang from branches like grey, hairy, stoned-out dudes. Their eyes are like brown, rotten grapes—I’m sure their vision is terrible; but when you feed them a thin slice of melon, they open up and chomp in slow motion. I don’t know why but it’s a wonderfully intimate connection for me, like having lunch with one of your junior high school heroes after all these years.

Once the tours are finished for the day and the animals have been fed and watered for the second time, the day is ours to enjoy. Snorkeling, playing with the monkeys, reading, exploring. Basically, our days have been a series of sentences that none of us have ever said before. Things like: “I need a long sleeve shirt. I’m going to feed the anteater.” And: “Come up to the cabin. I think there’s a scorpion in my bed.” (Which there was.)

And: “Can you get that, Dad? There's a crab under the table?” And the hits just keep on coming.

Logan and Jackson went swimming at sunset last night. Not so unusual, I suppose. But they were swimming in the middle of a huge Costa Rican thunderstorm. And they were jumping off a fallen palm tree stump that acted as a diving board. And they had Winkie, a three-year-old Spider monkey, laughing along with them from a palm frond over head, hanging by her tail, spinning like a top. Traca and I stood at the Human Kitchen watching this little scene and taking it all in. And I couldn’t help thinking…monkeys, mosquitoes, scorpions and all…life is pretty good.

The Osa Wildlife Sanctuary

2010-03-05T14:01:00.007-05:00

Did you hear the one about the man who went on vacation to stay with monkeys? This is how it goes.

As promised, we were met promptly at 8 AM by Carol Crew, the female half of the husband/wife team that founded and run the Osa Wildlife Sanctuary. Carol is 62 and has lived on the Osa for 15 years. She used to be a lumber trader in another life and an Army brat in another. She wears her hair short, talks loud and forcefully, wears a bra only in town, and does not suffer fools easily. How should I put this? To meet Carol is to be…dominated by her—and I say this with as much love and respect as I can muster after just two days of knowing someone. In a word, she is direct, She says what she wants and, so far as I can see, she usually gets it. She is a powerhouse, a force of nature. In Puerto Jiminez, she bulled through the streets, saying “Buenos dias” to everyone like the mayor, leaving me to occasionally trot just to keep up with her. Though she was educated as a business major, Carol is also a top notch biologist and runs the Wildlife Sanctuary like an animated and kindly drill sergeant. Most importantly, in the monkey troop, she is Alpha—so she is the one I need on my side. This is us, learning the Alpha Roar!

After gathering a few supplies, we headed for the dock, piled aboard a rented boat, and motored out across the Gulfo Dulce; the Sweet Gulf. With the small boat engine whining around us, Carol literally screamed the following instructions. For the record, she always pronounces “monkey” like MAUUN-kay!

“OK. MONKEY RULE NUMBER ONE: NEVER HOLD A MONKEY! LET THEM HOLD YOU! NOTHING HOLDS A MONKEY UNLESS IT’S GOING TO EAT IT! MONKEY RULE NUMBER TWO: IF A MONKEY WANTS SOMETHING OF YOURS, GIVE IT TO HER. IF THEY WANT TO CLIMB ON YOU, LET THEM. MONKEY RULE NUMBER THREE: DO NOT TOUCH OR REACH FOR A PERSON HOLDING A MONKEY. MONKEYS GET JEALOUS AND WILL BITE THE PERSON THEY ARE SITTING ON. MONKEY RULE NUBER FOUR: IF A MONKEY GETS INTO YOUR ROOM OF THE HUMAN KITCHEN, BLOW A WHISTLE OR CALL FOR HELP. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PULL THEM OR STOP THEM. AND MONKEY RULE NUMBER FIVE: DO NOT SHOW FEAR. IF YOU SHOW FEAR, IT’S ALL OVER.”

Now. Allowing, holding, calling…these are all things within my control. But “fearing”? When I was a kid, I had an irrational fear of dogs. Not just big scary dogs but all dogs. Even Golden Retrievers could get my heart racing in a panic. And when Carol dropped rule number five on me, I had that same childhood reaction, sort of like when I try to speak Spanish: heart pumping, sweat flowing, good old instinctual fear.

As we approached the shore, towering palms curved gracefully along the black sand beach, mountain cliffs rose green and verdant in all directions, not a manmade structure in sight. We stepped off onto land, all of our eyes wide with wonder. “Welcome to Jurassic Park,” Logan said.

The monkeys were on a tour as we landed so we had safe passage to the human kitchen. This kitchen is really a cage, a cage for humans, with heavy mesh bars on the large window openings. It acts as dining area and general command central for all Sanctuary operations. It’s also the place where the Spider monkeys are the most territorial and before long, three of these amazing primates showed up, climbed up on the bars and looked in like hairy visitors at the human zoo.

Spider monkeys weigh about 15 pounds but can easily lift five times their weight or more. Hang a monkey only by his tail and he can pick up a 60 pound bag and swing it playfully around. One Spider monkey at the Sanctuary once broke into a bathroom, ripped the 90 pound toilet off its bolts and threw it out the door! So they’re strong. Physically, they have long arms, wickedly prehensile tails that act like a fifth limb and, for the females (which includes all the monkeys we would be interacting with at the Sanctuary), a curious pink appendage, not unlike a penis, that is poetically called a pendulous clitoris. (As one additional rule, Carol warned Logan and I not to shower naked outdoors with a MAUUNKAY around. Apparently they will be infinitely curious about our own “pendulous clitorises” and eager to inspect them thoroughly.

“OK. TIME TO MEET THE MAUUNKAYS!” Carol said as she opened the Human Kitchen door.” And out we went.

I wish I could say I had no fear as we opened the door…but I did. I also had my family around me like a human shield and we were all heading toward the ocean, a place the monkeys weren’t crazy about. Right away, Sweetie, the most possessive of the troop jumped off the bars, landed lightly on her two hind legs and made a direct line—walking like a drunken sailor—to me. Then, without teeth or force or any effort at all, Sweetie climbed up my body and perched around my head; feet on my shoulders, hands resting on my forehead.

As you can imagine, sitting on someone’s head is a form of dominance. It basically says: Look what I can do. I’m bigger than you. My tail is wrapped around your throat and my pendulous clitoris us pressed to the back of your neck. How do you like that, Tough Guy? I certainly got the message.

“OK. NOW FIND A PLACE TO SIT,” Carol said. “LET’S SEE WHAT HAPPENS.”

So I did. And shortly after that, Sweetie climbed down to my lap and extended her leg to me. It was recently injured, with a raw patch near her foot, and she pulled my hands toward the wound. Rub it, she seemed to say. So I did. We sat this way for a while, me: the subservient little leg rubber, she: the all powerful fifteen pound Queen of the Jungle. As far a first dates go, I thought it went pretty well.

Hours later, as we all set out across the gorgeous 700 acre property to see where the tours are given, Sweetie hitched a ride with me. I walked up jungle trails, down steep slopes, over plank bridges, all of it with a monkey on my head. Her body temperature runs at 104 degrees so I was totally drenched by the time I got there. But I got there. We both did.

The general impression is, if you’ll excuse the prison terminology; Sweetie has made me her bitch. I’d like to think that we are becoming friends but either way, so far, so good. And as Carol said around the dinner table, at the end of that first day: “NO BLOOD TODAY! WE’RE OFF TO A GREAT START!

Is OK!

2010-03-02T11:41:00.009-05:00

If the next six months are anything like Day One, we are royally screwed.

It started at 9 AM on Sunday. We arrived in San Jose the night before and spent a forgettable night at the Isle Verde Hotel. The next day, our hostess Veronica, arranged for a van to take us and our mountain of luggage to the bus station. (At the request of the Wildlife Sanctuary we are now traveling with 4 large and lockable Contigo trunks—to keep the monkeys out of our stuff, and a large Igloo cooler—to act as our refrigerator during our stay on the Osa. Add to this our backpacks and carry on bags and yoga mats and camera gear and we make for a formidable invading army.)

So. At the appropriate hour, we loaded our selves and our supplies into the aforementioned van, sped across town and began a journey that Jackson would describe later that night as: “The worst day of my life.”

First off, the bus station was packed. I mean REALLY packed. People were literally lined up, hundreds of them, waiting in rows of chairs like rabid concert fans. Traca, being our designated foreign language expert, launched into the crowd to see about tickets, leaving me in a sea of Spanish that made me sweat all over. This—I’m sad to report—is my natural reaction when forced to communicate in a language I have no working knowledge of. Some people say nothing or apologize. Others boldly launch in, like Traca. I, for whatever reason, just sweat and completely turn my mind off. Not the best of most useful way to make yourself understood, I can assure you.

So I stood there, utterly blank and dripping when a painfully thin man grabbed our luggage and nodded, while a young official-looking man with a gold tooth said: “Is OK. Is OK” to reassure me of something I should have probably been worried about. But no, I watched as the thin man carried two of our trunks into the mass of concert goers. In a few minutes our van was empty, our tax-van driver drove off…which was exactly when Traca arrived with the news.

“We’re at the wrong bus terminal.”

The right one, we were told, was 30 minutes away. And it left in 30 minutes. With our specially arranged van long gone, we retrieved our things, piled into two separate cabs and raced back across the city. For my part, I began sweating like Shaquille O’Neil in a sauna as I tried to converse with my cab driver but we made it all the same. With just a few minutes to spare, we got our tickets, hopped on board and set off on a bus that would soon inspire Jackson to vow: “You’ll have to put a gun to my head to ever get me back on that thing.”

What followed was 9 hours of breathtakingly beautiful countryside through switchback jungle mountains, often inching our way over one-lane bridges and crawling our way up rutted dirt hills. Jackson had to pee so badly at one point she actually burst into tears. Then it started to rain. And the humidity filled our bus like a suffocating life form. And it got dark. And my knees were killing me. And the last three hours passed like a prison sentence…

When we finally pulled into Puerto Jimenez it was absolutely pouring. Miraculously, a taxi-truck was waiting for us (“Senior Marshall. Si?) and drove us and our wet mountain of stuff the 400 yards to our hotel. Which, naturally, was closed for the night. Soaked, exhausted, hungry, dumped on the sidewalk, and standing under a leaky canopy down a random Latin American alley. This was not the way I pictured this adventure getting started. “We shouldn’t even be here?” Jackson said and was not comforted in the least when a homeless man offered her a cigarette and a swig off his bottle.

In the end, a few locals rescued us, carrying three of our trunks on a long metal pole and dropping them around the block at what I will charitably describe as the biggest shit hole of a hotel on the planet Earth. I won’t bore you with the litany of hospitality failures, but take a look at their bizarre shower contraption. Open live wires and running water. Part of the new Ralph Lauren “Abu Grabe” collection.

OK. Enough belly aching. Because that’s all in the past. “Is OK” as the saying goes. The sun rose, no one was electrocuted and I’m telling you, my next entry will blow your socks off. We are here at the Osa Wildlife Sanctuary and quite honestly, it is more than we ever hoped for.

In fact, if the next six months are anything like Day Two…we are in for the time of our lives.

Huck Another Dart at the Board

2010-02-27T22:58:00.006-05:00

Traca and I travel very differently.

For me, I like to know where I’m going. Not in some anal, micro-managed sort of way that sucks all the joy out of discovering things along the journey…but I do like to have my big logistical ducks in a row. Take today for example. In about an hour we’re going to (1) Costa Rica on Flight #1071 American Airlines and we’ll be staying one night at (2) the Hotel Isla Verde in Pavas. Tomorrow morning, we’ll catch the (3) Topical bus in San Jose at 12 noon, arriving in Puerto Jiminez on the Osa Peninsula at 8 PM. At that time, we’ll be met by (4) a pick-up truck/taxi to drive us to (5) the Hotel Oro Verde for one night before we wake, pack up and meet a (6) water taxi at the dock for a trip across the Gulf and the start of our Wildlife Sanctuary month.

It bears mentioning that each of these steps required multiple web searches, back and forth email messages, most of which were nailed down within the last few days (Welcome to “Seat Of Your Pants” Travel. Keeping you one step ahead of the next bus!) and all of which were arranged by me.

It’s not that Traca is lazy or uninvolved. Far from it. She just has no concern for any of this. She’s a gypsy. A nomad. I swear if we just showed up at the airport, hucked a dart at the departure board and hopped on the first plane that would take us, she’d be perfectly content and positively thrilled. She loves new places, visibly tingles at the possibility of speaking a new language armed only with a few dozen words, trusts most everyone and believes in a deeply spiritual way that the Universe will guide her to the places and the experiences she needs the most.

It’s probably a good mix, actually. If I was married to myself, I would definitely take fewer risks, go fewer places and rarely know the fun and rewards of coincidental travel. Traca, on the other hand, would be at risk more often than necessary, be routinely broke and probably be sublimely happy.

After a few days in Key West, complete with wild chickens, street pirates, bike rides and sunset celebrations the trip officially starts today. It’s like a marathon. 26 weeks of slow unfolding. Along the way, we will find much that we do not expect and many plans that don’t work out so well. For my part, I will do my best to create some order in the chaos and work to mirror Traca’s complete faith that everything will work out.

And if that doesn't work, there's always the departure dart board idea.

Music to my ears

2010-02-23T22:23:00.005-05:00

One of my hopes for this trip is to break away from the usual teenage distractions; computers, facebook, IM, Skype, Hulu, TV, Videos, gossip, usually all at the same time. Is it too much to ask for a little interaction? A little imagination? Maybe play a few games? Together? Talk? Laugh? Anything except stare blankly at a screen like an internet slave.

Well, if tonight is any indicator, a mere four days into our trip, I just might get my wish. After dinner, Jackson spent an hour with me filling glasses, tuning, experimenting, clinking, laughing, just goofing around. But doing it together. Check it out.

On the Road Again

2010-02-22T17:15:00.008-05:00

Ten years ago, Traca and I took the kids for a year in Portugal. It was a reaction to the sudden death of Traca’s father Larry and—two weeks later—to the murder of my best friend Shayne. In the wake of so much loss, one simple fact was suddenly and vividly clear to us: Life is unpredictable. Or more to the point: If you’re ever going to go live in a foreign country, do it now before it’s too late. I remember the scramble to get out the door, the excitement we all felt mixed in good measure with the fear that we were making some grave miscalculation. Everyone said we were taking a big risk. Jackson was barely five years old and about as tall as my knee, the world was a big scary place, our plans were sketchy at best. And yet, in spite of our fear, we went anyway. And it was fantastic.

And so on Saturday, like a great wheel spinning back around, we were at it again, cramming, stuffing and zipping our lives into little bundles light enough to carry. We still felt the same mix of exhilaration and uncertainty and it was still a last minute scramble to catch the first plane of many…but things are different now. The kids are big—Traca is officially the shortest. And we are not running from death. We are diving into life.

We’re spending the first week in Florida, chilling with my parents in Fort Myers (because flights to Costa Rica are so much cheaper from Miami than Portland) and then stepping out. And we are intending for this trip to be much more than six months away. It's a chance for Traca and me to unplug our wonderful Facebook-addicted daughter. And present the world of possibilities to our soon-to-launch, man/boy of a son. And fulfill Traca’s lifelong dream. And inspire my own creative life. And savor our intact family for some more unhurried, unbounded time. And to reexamine the concept of marriage 20 long years after we first defined it. And to be forever changed by the concept and experience of service.

It will be different this time out. We now live in a post 9-11 world with color-coded terror alerts and increased security ushering us from plane to plane. But in spite of the unknown, as we learned from Larry and Shayne, before it's too late, we're doing it anyway.

The Definition of the word "Attack"

2010-02-16T16:35:00.006-05:00

With only four days to go before take off, it may not sound like much of a World Trip boast but...we have our first official stop all lined up, with people expecting us and everything! Yup. When we get into Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica, a boat will be waiting to ferry us across the Golfo Dolce, delivering us to the jungle's edge and the first of our volunteer partners: The Osa Wildlife Sanctuary.

The Sanctuary is 700 acres of rain forest set right on the water that acts as a little orphanage/rehab center for all kinds of animals you’ve never heard of. Kinkajous, peccaries, tyras, that kind of thing. It was founded in 1996 by Earl and Carol Crew—a big-hearted American couple who love peccaries more than Minnesota—and it will be our home for the first 30 days of our trip. There’s no electricity at the O.W.S., no hot showers, no roads. Our refrigerator will be an Igloo cooler with a block of ice and all personal items will be locked in trunks to keep the monkeys from breaking into our cabin and having a treetop party with our ipods and underwear.

The monkeys in question are two spider monkeys named Sweetie and Winkie, essentially free range pets who have not been taught to respect personal property. They're about as tall as my knee, swing through the trees like Gibbons and I’m hoping we will be fast friends, considering the note I got from Carol the other day. Along with suggestions on what to bring and descriptions of what we will be doing, she slipped in a couple lines that caught me by surprise. She said:

“Sweetie seems to be growing out of her propensity to attack white males, but Winkie seems to be the culprit now. John: There will be a few special guidelines that you will have to follow until they realize you are not a threat to The Troop."

Several words jumped out at me right away, one being "attack", the second being "white" and the third being "male", two of which describe me pretty well. Traca laughed this off, as white women on the non-attack list often do, but I have to admit I was a little freaked out. It didn't help that I read this note right after seeing the interview Oprah did with Carla Nash, the woman who had her face chewed off by a chimpanzee. And though I know spider monkeys are much smaller than chimps (especially the bull monster chimp who got Carla), I still bet they're as strong as Lou Ferrigno and perfectly capable of peeling me like a big white male bannana should the propensity arise.

When I asked Carol in a subsequent e-mail to describe the worst "attack" she'd ever seen, she wrote back and said it was a bite (to her own hand) that did not require stitches. So that's something.

For now, I guess I'll just work on being part of the troop. A totally non threatening part of the troop. Maybe I'll leave a pair of socks and some Craisins laying around our cabin for them to swipe and chew--a little peace offering from one primate to another. Or maybe I'll just wear a hockey mask. I haven't decided.

Urgent Want

2010-02-09T17:09:00.004-05:00

Renting our house has always been a bit of a long shot.

We need to find that unique person or family who is willing to move into our fully furnished home for six months and then scram in time for our late August arrival. Near as I can determine, there are only a few motivating reasons anyone would want to do this: A) They are moving to the area, want to rent before they buy, get the lay of the land, left all their stuff at home; B) They are in the middle of a messy divorce, can’t wait to get away from that bitch/bastard who wronged ‘em, don’t have any extra furniture; C) They are building a house, need a place to crash while the new digs are going up; D) They are currently in a cramped furnished apartment that they hate, would love to stretch out for the summer just for fun; E) They are deranged, masochists who love to move, can’t get enough of it, get a perverse kick out of bopping around

Sadly, the percentage of the renting population who falls into one of these niche categories could generously be described as “small”—not unlike our chances of finding one of them in the next…gulp…ten days.

CraigsList has provided us with a steady stream of temporary interest, though I suspect much of it is motivated by some kind of thinly veiled scam. I got one inquiry just the other day from a desperate woman with weak English skills that read:

“I am in urgent want for to buy your vehicle 4BR FULLY FURNISHED HOME. AVAILABLE NOW!!! This is just the model I’ve must to buy.”

I wanted to write back: “Dear Urgent Want. I don’t think our home is as mobile as you are suspecting. You’re welcome to come take it for a test drive but I’ve got to warn you, it hasn’t moved an inch since we bought it.”

Still, in spite of our inability to find the proverbial needle renter in our CraigsList hay stack, we are committed to going. I signed a letter of resignation at my job today. We have plane tickets to Costa Rica and New Zealand. We have Visas for India. We bought faux Gortex rain coats. We are going! On February 20th! There’s just one more thing...

If anyone knows any new-to-the-area, heart-broken Divorcees who are building their own home and love to move, would you please send them our way?