Maps.

About traveling, our small place in the world, and the brilliance of education. A bit long, but I think the best thing I've ever written.

So big.  So small.

 

Moments in time.  We are always in the now.  We experience it and continue in it, in this, in this moment.  And while the moment never changes, our experience of it does.  Our cells change, the moment does not.  Simply our position in the space time continuum.  Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity on our tiny planetary home, we make sense of this existence by grasping onto memory.  Trying to remember, recall, remember, something in the past.  So there is no past there is just the now.  And you’re in the now but in you’re mind you’re not.  And what is memory, this fragment of moments that we have collected and can recall, is that you?  Because if you forget everything you know, you’re hit in the head smack or a nail goes into your brain while you’re wokin on the railroad (all your live long day) thud and you forget everything -

Are you still you?

Memory.

 

So you blink and you open your eyes and your head is throbbing and you roll over and there’s another woman next to you.  Who?  Who knows.  F**k.  So you stagger back to the bar, pour yourself a cup of coffee and try to calm the pounding in your head.  Wait for the caffeine to sink in and you look across the bar and there’s Shay.  Staring at you and rubbing his face too and saying "f**k mate.  I know me too.  Again?  Haha, which one?  Mate, that’s incredible.

-When are we going to be too old for this?  We decide 28.  I’m going to call you Shay.  I’m going to call you and we better be done with this s**t.

And that’s the point where you decide you have to leave.  Even for a day or two.  You have to get away and hit reset because when the nights blur into one and lines and women come and go and you’re still not forgetting, you have to get away.  And when you can’t get her out of your mind and you cannot forget the sound of his betrayal, you have to get away.  When your recipe for forgetting isn’t working, you have to get away.

So I got away.

And here’s how.  F**k Lonely Planet.  If you want to show up in a “remote location” that’s you and 40 other white people holding the exact same book as you, go for it.  Throw away your travel books, throw away your hand sanitizer and live.  Don’t be a tourist or a traveler, but an adventurer.  Someone who is simply alive, and in awe of the moment and along for the ride and says yes to the moment.  So I pick one person and I ask her "can you tell me a cool place where I won’t see any other white people?

She dictates the instructions as I scribble them down on a napkin.  In between her scrubbing the floor and wiping the sweat from her brow, she describes a beach near a town called Dibulla (say it with me gringo D-boo-ya) and how to get there.  Go on this bus for this long, get off at that town, get on this other bus for this long, get off on this town, try to catch a ferry, get a motorcycle to take you this way, ask for this landmark, etc, etc.  And then just go, and go alone, for the purest way to travel is by yourself.  What better way to know yourself than to fling yourself into a situation where anything can happen?

Know thyself.  Revel in the random.

The examined life shakes the hand of the unexpected.

And you’re off.  Then you fall asleep on the bus because your body is still trying desperately to wash out all the s**t you’ve been drinking and smoking and snorting.  And you wake up and bounce along the road.  You nod off again.  The next time you come to there is a woman sitting next to you clutching an infant.  The bus must be full because I’m the last person they sit next to.  Next to the woman are two other children, a girl of maybe 5 holding her brother of maybe 2 on her lap.  Trying to hold her brother on her lap, her little hands barely reach around to hold him over the bumpy road.  Yet she clutches him with the fierce and unquestioning determination that only family can inspire. One little brown hand in a fist, the other grasping her wrist, her brother secure between.  As the bus rolls on, the conductor comes back.

-Where are you going?

And she tells him the town.  He looks at her and then at the children.

-You need to pay 4 tickets.

And she stares at the floor, head still down in shame she mutters "but I don’t have that.

-F*****g indios.  You f*****g indians.  Every time he says, looking at me and shaking his head.  -F*****g Indians.  He directs his glare back at her "you knew you needed to pay 4 fairs.  They barter on a price and finally the noise settles back down.  Just the bus bouncing along now, the hum of mosquitos, the grinding of gears.

Then you bounce along until suddenly you hit a big pothole and boom, the boy goes smack onto the floor of the bus.  He starts crying, the little sister starts crying, the woman is staring, still clutching the infant, looking.  Just looking.

-Senora, I can help.  I’m a teacher, I have many brothers and sisters.  It helps to tell people this so they can trust you.  They do so much more quickly in these cultures by the way.  Also in these cultures, babies are still passed from one awing adult to the next with trust and acceptance.  What have we become where we isolate our children and tell them Halloween is unsafe?  No hand sanitized childhoods here.

She speaks to the child on the floor of the bus, the little boy.  "Go with him.  And she nods my way.  He looks at her, and he looks at me, and he looks back at her.  "Go.

Worth mentioning that by this point, sure enough, there are no white people around.  The coastal people of Colombia are black mixed with the indigenous natives.  Much darker than the interior people.  They say that the blacks were told to go to the coast when the Spaniards left because there would be boats to bring them back to their countries.  The boats never came.  The blacks made a new home.  The coast.

This child is dark, the mother is dark, every person on this bus is dark, and then there’s me.  Black Indians, whatever they are I am not their color.  He looks at me again, and I smile "ven aqui ninito.  And I hoist him up.  The first thing that strikes me is how thin he is.  Maybe he’s 2, maybe 3 or 4 hard to tell but he’s skin and bones and not much else besides two eyes that stare at me with a piercing yearning that is trying figure this out.  To figure out maybe what I look like, or why I’m holding him, or whatever it was.  He stared at me for perhaps an hour, never once looking away, never once crying or smiling or laughing.  Just staring, not looking, staring.

Then he falls asleep.  Every time he woke up, he stared.  Never out the window.  Never upset or afraid but deeply puzzled.  He was thinking.  By the time the family gets off and I hand back the kid I begin to think did I go too far?  The bus is practically empty.  The bus driver promised he would tell me when we got to such and such town, but did he forget?  She said the town was like 2, 3 hours but what does that mean in these cultures?  2 hours could mean an hour and a half it could mean five hours or anything in between.  Has it been two hours or longer?  How long were you asleep?  The sun is pretty low.  Ask the bus driver.

-Oh, oh no.  It’s like 2 hours back that way.

-We passed it?

-We passed it.

F**k.

-If I were you, I’d get off, go to the other side of the road, catch the bus going back that way.

-How often do they come?

-At this time of day.  Not very often, it’s getting late and he points out the window at the sun closer to the horizon.

It is getting late, and as I cross the road, the highway, a two lane bumpy road littered with pot holes, and sit back down on the other side, shoo away the dogs and begin to think.  In this country it is not a good idea to arrive in a place you don’t know at night.  Terrible idea.  I left giving myself enough time to get there with plenty of sunlight to find the beach, set up camp, cook, etc.  I even gave myself an hour or so extra, just in case.  The sun is dipping, and if this place really is hours back, I am not going to make it with any daylight.

And that when the bus rolls up.

It rolls to a stop and I climb aboard.  The bus heading out (towards nowhere land) had been practically empty, this one is packed.  I head to the back of the bus, twisting around sleeping people, bulky packages, backpack bumping into people "aye perdon, puzzled stares.  At the back there is stack of coffee bags.  That will be my seat.  A woman, husband and their young family sitting on one side of me, an elderly man and woman on the other side.   For the second time that day, the woman hands me one of the many children climbing on her.  She didn’t even say anything, she just looked at me and hands me her baby, freeing her to do something to one of her other kids.  I’m holding a baby and ask.

-Excuse me, how far is it to Dibulla?

Several people turn around.  For a moment, no one says anything.  The old man speaks,

-Why do you want to go that town?

The emphasis is on why.  He’s looking at me like I’m crazy.

-To camp at a beach near the town.

He pauses, thinking over his response.  "It’s too late to get there now.

-You think so?

He nods, as do several rows of listeners who are now looking back at the crazy white man on top of coffee bags, holding a baby, toting a backpack, and asking about sleeping outside.

-It’s not a safe town at night.  The beach is far.

The back few rows are nodding in approval, repeating his instructions, whispering amongst themselves.  "oh yes.  "Don’t go there.  "It’s too late.  "Why does he want to go to that town?  I’m perched on top of several coffee bags, holding a black child that is not mine, watching the sunlight (my best chance at safety) dissipate into the evening and watching several eyes staring at me with grave concern and somber reflection.  This town must be one of those towns they call a bad one.  This part of the country is still guerilla heavy and this must not be a safe town.  I’m just realizing I’m not safe, this was a bad idea.  They know I’m not safe and they’re looking at me with eyes that wonder how the hell did you end up here?  As I bounce up and down on a bus that smells like coffee and sweat and the malnourished child that is laying in my arms like a sleeping child.  I’m wondering the same.

-Here’s an idea. The old man says.  You can stay with me and my wife.  We will give you dinner, in the morning I am headed towards Dibulla, you can come with me.  I am going that way in the morning.  Then you will get there during the day, much more safe.

-What town are you in?

-The next one down.

People are nodding in approval.  This is a good plan their eyes tell me, the panic and concern in their faces calmed for a moment.

I’m thinking. He says "just think about it.  He smiles.  He is an old black man, gray hair, skin wrinkled like a raisin.  The wife is nodding in approval, also inviting me though she does not speak or even look at me. She is dressed in indigenous clothes, hair twisted into one long braid.

The old man stands up and digs something out of his bag.  He nudges his way to the front of the bus.  There is a movie playing on a small screen up there, some absurd action movie dubbed in Spanish.  No one is really watching it, it’s just on.  White, electronic noise.  Steven Sagal is kicking somebody’s a*s and he’s talking in Spanish.  The old man looks at the TV quizzically and bellows out in a thundering voice that reaches the back of the bus.

-My brothers and sisters, allow me to share some words.  The end is coming my brothers and sisters, but fear not for christ welcomes you!   Through his blood you can be saved, only through his blood.  The world is full of sin, the gays are marrying!  The gays!  Marrying!  This is the end my brothers and sisters!  It has been foretold.  But there is hope!  There is salvation through the blood of jesus!  I want you to clap your hands together if you a brother or sister in christ!

And the crowd goes wild, f*****g crazy, I mean thundering applause.  He has won their attention, captivated them.  Everyone is clapping, cheering.  I pull the child closer to me, leaning him or her against me so that I too can clap.  Why not?

-Now my brothers and sisters, I am pastor of the church of the blood of christ.  We run a treatment center, a rehabilitation center for those who have fallen into the clutch of the devil and his drugs.  To run this center, we sell soap! He digs through his briefcase and holds a bar up in the air with the same power and enthusiasm that captivated the attention of a packed bus.  Eureka.

He proceeds with his sales pitch about soap.  Going on and on about its qualities and the great sale price, etc.  I had been wondering what to do, but by the time he returned to his seat, my mind is set.

-Sir, I would like to stay with you tonight.

He simply nods his head, the wife does the same, and we continue to bounce along the road.  The only sound is the movie, coughs and sniffles, occasionally someone crying, the occasional slam of a pothole, the buzz of mosquitos, the grinding of gears and the soft hum of tires on the highway.  It’s now night.

 

 

And we arrive in his town.  It’s pitch black.  There are no streetlights.  As the bus pull away and we gather our things, he motions me to follow him.  His wife carries a bundle on her head, he holds nothing, they walk quickly.  Left turn, right turn, down one alley and another.  We pass a house that has one electric light strung up.  The only light on this particular stretch of houses.  There are a few children naked playing.  They stop and gasp and do not say a word or move as we walk past them.  Piles of trash.  Sewer wells.  Dirt roads.  I have no idea where I am, no idea where I am going, and I am huffing and puffing behind a black man and his indigenous wife who wordlessly and effortlessly dodge the puddles of s**t and walk past the barking strays.

And we arrive at his house.  As he pulls out his keys I look up, a big wooden sign says “Blood of Christ.”  He opens the door and I’m looking at a large room, perhaps 10 yards by 10 yards.  In the corner there are a few pieces of wood that block off the view to a bedroom.  That’s their room.  The main area is devoted to the stage, altar, whatever you want to call this thing.  I’m scanning the room and I do not see my bed.

-You can relax, we are home.  Put down your backpack.

I do, and I sit down on one of the plastic chairs that looks at the altar.  A plain wooden lectern with an inscription that reads “we are only saved through the blood of christ” is basically the only thing on the bare but elevated stage.  I don’t quite know what to do.  I look over and see the woman preparing food.  The man brings it over.  "Your dinner.

-Thank you.

He walks back to his section of the house and the door of the church opens.  A young boy, maybe 10, and a young woman, 14 I learned later, and another young man, about 18 walk in.  They stop when they see me.  They stop talking.  They sit in other plastic chairs at a comfortable distance.

The door opens again.  And again.  And again.  And now there are now about 10 people in the room.  Quietly talking amongst themselves but staying far away from me.  The old man walks back out.  I go up to him.

-Excuse me, do you have a service tonight?

He nods.

-Oh, then I am honored to be here.  Please allow me to change.

He nods and motions with his head towards the other corner where there is more wood set up.  The bathroom.  A plain toilet on the ground.  "And if you need to flush.  And he points to the buckets of rainwater next to the toilet.

So the next time your toilet doesn’t work, remember it’s a rather simple engineering contraption.  It’s just a bowl that you fill with your s**t and then flush by a rush of water.   In America, our water comes from the shiny white rectangular part that is the back of the toilet.  For those of you who have had to open one up, you know that on the inside there is what looks like an oil pumper thing attached to a rubber ball thing that floats.  Thing is the technical term. But overseas, usually you just dump water into the toilet.  We flush our s**t with cleaner water than these people drink.  It goes down all the same.

I put on my shirt and jeans (the only pants I have) and walk back out.  The ceremony begins and it follows this pattern " someone gets up and rants about jesus for any given time.  Long rants, 10 " 20 minutes at a time.  They talk about how they were struggling or sinning and how jesus has saved them.  After they talk, the woman sings in a loud voice in a language I do not understand.  It’s a native language.

That’s all pretty familiar, and then it starts happening.  It’s the person directly next to me who was the first to go and at first I thought he was having a seizure.  I heard a babbling, incoherent next to me.  I turn my head to look at him and his eyes are rolled back in his head.  He begins to shake.  Faster he shakes, louder he moans.  He falls onto the floor.

Then another.  Then another.  They take turns, usually about two at a time are down, twitching on the floor like a fish out of water.  Muttering and spitting and coughing and saying incoherent things.  They speak in tongues.  The voice in my head asks,

What am I doing here?

As the service ends, literally over two hours later (not a Colombian two hours, a for real two hours), the chairs are formed into a semicircle with one chair facing them.  The old man motions for me to sit in the chair facing the semicircle.  I sit.  They sit.  At first they just stare.  And they ask "sooo, who are you?

I begin.  And the boy cuts me off.

-Wait so how did you get here?

-On an airplane.

-Wow.  An airplane!  I always look into the sky just to see an airplane.

-Well, keep looking. One day you might see one.  I was about to say and then one day you might fly on an airplane but I realize that would be a lie.  The pastor busy is fixing the flip flop of the 14 year old girl with a nail.  Their clothes are in tatters.  She is pregnant, and I have learned that the young man who walked in with her is the father.

-We were sinners.  She had told me.  And they both nodded.  "But we were saved by the blood of christ.  Our baby will be saved too.  She pats her tummy.  The young father nods.

The crowd trickes out, their curiosity satisfied.  The old man brings out a hammock.  There is no mosquito net.  He hands it to me and points to two hooks.  He walks back into his room and shuts the doors.

 

The next morning, covered with mosquito bites that make me look like I’m fighting chicken pox, we head to Dibulla.  When we arrive I see the town is much like the last.  They were right.  Had I arrived in this town at night I would have been chingada (fucked).

A motorcycle taxi ride later and I’m at the beach that is outside of Dibulla.  She had described it as a beautiful, perfect desolate beach.  Desolate yes, beautiful, well, minus the trash everywhere.  Minus the smell of s**t mixed with oil.  There are men fishing with nets in the shallow waves.  There are children playing at the far end of the shore.  I shrug my shoulders, sit down, and begin to draw.

What I like about drawing is this: it forces you to look more closely at the world.  You pay proper attention to life, to the collections of atoms that populate the biosphere.  You dwell on how things are shaped.  By dwelling on them, by contemplating them, by fully focusing on them with each ounce of your attention, you are loving them.  You are giving each thing the attention it deserves.  Your undivided attention. 

It’s the opposite of when a flight attendant is giving you instructions on how to exit the plane in the event case of…

Is your tray table up?  Are you going to remember this?  500 million people have downloaded angry birds.  Do you call that existence?  Celebrate the human experience.  Lost on a tiny planet somewhere immensity and eternity.

Fully focused, lost in thoughts and music, I finally feel it.  A stare.  I turn around and there is a crowd of children gathered.  They are startled, I am startled.  Black children with sun died hair, covered in sand.  Wearing shorts.  About 6 or 7 of them, ages 5 through maybe 10.  It’s the group that had been playing way over there.  After the initial jump and gasp when we all acknowledged one another, they stare until one boy finally begins to cautiously edge around in front of me.  He’s not the oldest, but the other children follow his lead.  He’s wearing red shorts, his hair is short and curly and has more sand than anyone else’s.  His eyes are brilliant, jumping, energetic.

They sit down.  Another semi-circle facing me.  And they ask "sooo, what are you?

Not who, what.  I begin.  I start simple.  I’m a teacher.  My mom is Colombian, my dad is white.

The boy with the brilliant eyes proudly proclaims "we saw two people from Italy once.  They came to this beach.

The group nods, confirming the story.  This little beach spot is far into the northern region of Colombia.  Dibulla was a couple hundred people, but this spot is far way from there.  Along the coast there are maybe 20 shacks.  All the people fishing are black.  All these children are black.  I am the third white person they have ever seen.  (Worth mentioning that by the time you read this, probably hundreds of white people touting backpacks have found this place.  I’m not saying I’m special, but it was a right place, right time moment.)

They ask about the tattoos.  They touch them.  One child rubs his finger against my skin and then looks at his hand.  He rubs it again, this time over a tattoo and again he checks his hand.  I laugh "it won’t rub off.

He smiles, this seems to take away his concern.  He’ll stay black, I’ll stay white.

We talk for a while, I show them some drawings.  They show me the fish they caught earlier.  The boy with the brilliant eyes does most of the talking, asks most of the questions.  It’s clear that he is the leader of this group, it’s clear that his mind is awake and alive in a way that most peoples’ are not.  I’m talking about Medellin, America, the closest city.  These are abstract things.  Names.  It’s hard to make sense of that if you’re a kid.  And that’s when I remember I have a map.

I take it out.  It’s a map of Colombia on one side, South America on the other.  Class has begun.  The semi-circle quickly readjusts, they form again behind me.  I begin showing them.  -OK, here’s Medellin.  I point to Santa Marta.  -That’s Santa Marta.  It’s like 2 hours back that way.  (or was it five?)

-Where the hospital is.  The boy with the brilliant eyes says.

-Yes, where the hospital is.  I flip over the map.  -And so, Colombia is a part of South America.  They clamor and push each other out of the way to see more clearly.  They’re leaning against me.  I put my finger roughly on the spot where we are.  "All these other places are different countries.  Like Brazil.

-Like the soccer team.  The boy with the brilliant eyes says.

-Exactly, that soccer team is a different country.  There is a world map in the corner of the map.  "So, you see this shape?  I take both hands over South America and then move them towards the world map, shrinking them until they fit the shape there.  "This is South America and I come from this place, tap tap tap, North America.  It’s across the ocean.  It’s a different country.  And I point across the Caribbean where there’s no place like home.

We started with the familiar but in the abstract.  Names of towns and cities they knew.  Then we located it on a map, concrete.  Then we started talking about countries, continents, immense sizes, a huge intellectual leap.  If you live on a beach town and you’ve never gone to school and you’ve never seen a f*****g map and you don’t know whether or not your skin color will rub off because you’ve only seen three white people before this is a big leap.  Huge.  Don’t take your education for granted and remember these kids don’t get one.  I know that most of them won’t get this.  They won’t be able to wrap their minds around it.  We’ve covered a lot of ground in our lesson.  Most won’t get it but it’s worth a shot.

But the boy with the brilliant eyes gasps.  And he looks at me.  Eyes dripping with awe and wonder, mouth open.  He just looks right at me, and he blinks.  And he says, slowly, one word at a time.

-The world is so big.  And we are so small.  He looks back at the map, putting his finger on the town.  Putting it on the ocean.  He looks at the ocean, looks back at the group.  He says it faster this time "the world is so big and we are so small.

He jumps up and rushes to the edge of the ocean.  He screams "the world is so big!  And he points at it, and looks back at us.  His hands clutch his sandy, nappy hair, -and we are so small!  He runs up and down the beach, jumping, leaping, looking at the ocean, yelling, touching his body, grasping his hair, laughing, yelling, running, always moving and lost in the ecstasy of discovery.  Eureka.

Light bulb moments.  As a teacher, you live for them, they’re your paycheck.  They don’t happen too often, but when they do, you remember them.  This was a light bulb moment, this kid’s life fundamentally changed in that moment.  The moment he realized there is a world beyond this beach.  When it’s time to leave, I give him the drawing and a couple other little things.  Stamps, a sticker.  He clutches them in his grasp and walks with me back to the road.  We say goodbye, the group of children all jumping up and down.  "Come back and visit us.  He tells me as I climb onto a motorcycle moped thing and brace for dear life.

-Quiza hermanito, quiza.  We pull away and I know I’ll never be back.  He probably knows that too.  We won’t ever see each other again but will we remember?  I will.   Will he?  As the motorcycle swerves to dodge a pig crossing the road, my backpack falls to the ground.  We stop to pick it up, and my camera is smashed.  None of the pictures I took from that beach or from the temple of the blood of the twitching christ survived.  The video of the boy with the brilliant eyes rocking the f**k out to Loving Cup by the Rolling Stones (the only Colombian I found who liked that song) gone.  This memory is not a digital one.  It’s not in jpeg form.  It’s just up here.

Are you still you after you realize that you’re one little speck on earth or are you a fuller person?  Are you still you as you pick up the pieces of your camera and shrug your shoulders and climb back on and say "it’s OK, at least we didn’t fall.

Memory.

The world is so big.  And we are so small.

 

Dec 2011