A plastic menagerie welcomes you to the Caswell home.

First you get a warning. Two plastic geese flank the doorway, one dressed like a pilgrim in a top-hat and buckled shoes, the other dressed like an Indian, with two black braids and a beaded suede dress. Thanksgiving is just three weeks away, after all. As they do every season, gnomes lead you up the driveway, and plastic beavers and squirrels welcome you throughout the lawn.

However, you still have no clue what is about to greet you on the other side of the door, for it is a surprise every time.

Your mother opens the door. Seeing you, she lets out a shriek of joy, breaks into a huge smile, and throws open her arms to hug you. You lower yourself to hug her and notice the orange lipstick on her teeth. You feel rotten for noticing orange lipstick on the teeth of a woman who has spent her whole life loving you.  

Behind her, domestic Disneyland awaits.  It is a full-on assault of the senses. A cursory inventory reveals: five monkey Beanie Babies, each wearing a hat; dozens of photos of you and your siblings dating from 1968 to the present; commemorative plates of Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe, and the cast of Little House on the Prairie; cookie jars in the form of a cow, a goose, a pig, and a fat chef, which, when opened, moo, quack, oink, and belch, respectively; a framed photo of you at age four on a pony at Busch Gardens next to a framed photo of you at age 30 on an elephant in Thailand; fake flowers draping nearly everything, including candlesticks, the window valance, and dining room hutch; your late grandmother’s ash tray that is shaped like a toilet and says, “rest your tired ash;” a toy train that runs around an elaborate village that includes, among its buildings, a replica of Graceland; a clock that has, instead of numbers, birds that chirp every hour on the hour; a clock that has trains, again instead of numbers, that whistle in a similar fashion; and, last but not least, a life-size statue of the backside of a child in the corner, arms raised over eyes as if counting in a game of hide-and-seek.

A goose wears a pilgrim’s clothing.  

You are in a mecca of misplaced apostrophes. Your brother’s first woodshop project hangs above the door: “The Caswell’s, Welcome to Our Home.” A statue of an Italian pizza chef holds a chalkboard where tonight’s menu is written: “hamburger’s.” Holding up your third grade class picture on the fridge, a magnet confirms: “If mommy says no, ask the grandparent’s.” There is no grammar here, only love, only the efforts of your mother to make every inch of this house feel like home.

A bevy of signs implores you to join in the sentiment. “Bless this home,” one sign demands, addressing no one in particular. “Spread some smile, trade some cheer, let’s be happy while we’re here,” commands another.

You recall how, when you lived here, you were completely miserable — despite the pleas on the wall, despite your mother’s best efforts.

The writer on an elephant at age 30, on a pony at age four.

In the bathroom, the tone is different, less demanding. “Be a sweetie and wipe the seatie,” politely requests the sign above the toilet. Next to the sink, fancy bars of soap in various shapes and colors collect dust. One of them your mother saved from the Waldorf Astoria, where six years ago you treated your parents to a room when they came to visit you in New York. Your mother hated the city, but gleefully declared, “I can’t believe this is my life!” when she caught a first glimpse of the hotel lobby.

Back in the kitchen, your mother tries to feed you but, to her dismay, there is nothing she can give you that you would want to eat. Her cupboard food arsenal is stocked with giant containers of Oreos, Doritos, and marshmallows bought in bulk at a discount food club. You open her freezer to find “family-size” trays of taquitos, gallons of Neopolitan ice cream, and boxes of pepperoni pizza rolls. You remember how, as a child, your friends would come over to gorge on what they called “junk food,” but you just thought that this was how everyone ate.  

You wonder how you ever got any nutrition and conclude that you owe at least one full inch of your 5’5” frame to Fruit Loops.  

Declining your mother’s best attempt at getting you a diet “pop,” you ask for water instead. Your mother hands you the water in a glass marked “Hard Rock Café, Savannah Georgia, New Years 2000.” Your mother has never been to Savannah, Georgia, or a Hard Rock Café anywhere, but bought the glass for 99 cents at a discount closeout store.

There is no grammar at our home, only love.

You survey the situation, its stockpile of stuffed animals, photos of you and your siblings, and value-size bags of potato chips. You wonder where all this stuff came from and whether your mother is an unwitting poster child for the global economy. The house really does appear to have enough to keep an entire Chinese village occupied in sweatshop labor year-round. If you were to find the worker who sewed the tiny cowboy hat your mother lovingly placed on her fifth Beanie Baby monkey and told him the final destination of the fruit of his labor, he would not believe you. He might even get mad at the injustice of it all — that someone would spend an entire U.S. dollar on something as frivolous as a toy monkey’s hat that he made while sewing in some sweaty factory 12 hours a day, seven days a week, on a $17 monthly salary.  But then, if he met your mother — met her and hugged her and saw the orange lipstick on her teeth — he couldn’t stay mad for very long.

Michelle L Caswell

Lou Dobbs is right. So is that cartoon engineer Dilbert: We have to do something about the trend of American jobs going overseas. I realized this as I was inspecting the new data center in New Delhi for my U.S. company, Insituform Technologies, Inc.

With 2,500 employees, Insituform Technologies may not be the largest company in America, but we clean water in 40 countries using dozens of currencies and 80 pieces of intellectual property. The demands on our information technology are intense.

In addition to paying all the taxes, adhering to local regulations, and monitoring currency fluctuations, we have to track equipment, materials, and labor from our 100 crews that measure productivity and daily costs around the world.

As demand for clean water has grown throughout the globe, so has our business. Last year in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency reported 73,000 sewer leaks. Many more go undiscovered and therefore unreported.

As our business grows, so do the needs of our data management operations.

When we learned we needed a better system, our first choice was to develop and run it here in America, but that didn’t last long. We discovered that transferring our data operations to India would not only give us the same capability for less money, but we would also have resources left to upgrade our system’s sophistication, reliability, redundancy, and security.

So we replaced the nine employees in our information technology department with highly educated professionals half a world away that make $9 an hour.

It was not a popular decision in or outside of our company. From Dilbert to Dobbs, many critics see outsourcing as proof positive that corporate greed is ruining the country; transforming America into a nation that does nothing but “take in the world’s laundry.”

For us it is not about profits, but survival: Either we slash costs and improve productivity, or our customers will either have to eat the higher prices, or find someone else who offers services at a lower cost.

As I walked through our data center, I saw not only a possible future of America, but also its past.

The people working for us are highly educated and highly motivated. For many, it is the best job anyone in his or her village has ever had. They all dream of having more responsibilities, more skills, more money—and they all have a fierce desire to do what it takes to get them.

The combination of work ethic and entrepreneurship struck me as what Americans must have been like 100 years ago. The world seemed open, bright and full of opportunity for those with the desire to take it.

This is the spirit that made America the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. The attitude Indians learned from us and embrace with enthusiasm now seem to frighten many in this country.

It is ironic that 25 years ago, the Indians embarked on this course by discarding socialism, lowering taxes, and encouraging trade. They learned this from us too. Now we must learn it all over again from them.

Not being competitive is not an option for our company—or our country. In our company’s case, we may be laying off nine employees, but we are hiring at least 30 more.

In India we are not just transferring work, but finding new customers. We spent time talking to the water authorities there about cleaning up the holiest yet dirtiest river in the world, the Ganges. And we held similar talks with customers and suppliers in Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, and other parts of Asia.

As these countries grow, so does their demand for goods and services that we in America can provide better than anyone else in the world. But this will remain true only if we are willing to recognize what our value is and, above all, if we are willing to become fiercely competitive in order to provide them.

No one can make guarantees to any American company, at home or abroad, other than this: If we do not compete and make our products and services better, faster, and less expensive, we can and we will lose.

When President Kennedy met Prime Minister Nehru, he told him about the educational benefits the Peace Corps will have in India. Nehru replied, “Yes, I’m sure your young people will learn a lot.”

Those young people are now running the country. And it is time we start learning. Dilbert and Dobbs are right. We have to do something.

And that something is get better.

In The Fray Contributor

On a trip with Mehdi to Asilah, a small town known for its arts and culture festival which occurs during the summer each year.

Nearly every afternoon I stumble out of the stifling Moroccan heat into the cool lobby of Residence Tarik, take the elevator up five floors, and ring the doorbell of apartment number 38. And nearly every afternoon I am greeted by the smiling face of my surrogate mother, Fatima*, and exclamations of “I missed you!” and “Where were you?” before being ushered inside for a cozy chat over a sumptuous lunch.

Though I’ve been in Morocco for only a year, this ritual of three-hour lunches with Fatima and her family now seems like something I’ve been doing my whole life.

Coming here was one of the biggest decisions I’ve ever made. Though I’d traveled a bit by myself, and had the support of my parents, choosing to move 3,000 miles from my beloved New England home—where I’d spent most of my life—was not easy. I wasn’t so much afraid of what I’d find upon arriving, but of what I could be giving up by not staying in Vermont. Nevertheless, I decided to pursue my ultimate adventure.

What I’d been most anxious about was making friends. I’d spent a few months studying Arabic in Morocco earlier and had no real trouble meeting people, but that was at a progressive, English-language university in the mountain village of Ifrane, where the students spend their weekends much like American college kids. Meknes—where I’d be teaching English at the American Language Center—was a totally different cultural environment. Located in the heart of the Middle Atlas Mountains with a population of 650,000, it’s a city full of tradition and paternalism. And unlike its big sisters Rabat and Casablanca, there isn’t much of a foreign community.

Fatima’s main salon where the family gathers for food and conversation as well as television watching and larger  events.

An invitation home

In the beginning, though, making friends was easy. I’d meet someone while exploring the city and quickly receive an invitation to coffee or Friday couscous. It all seemed simple enough, but after a while I noticed that many of these “friends” were more interested in either showing off their newfound American acquaintance or trying to turn me into a Moroccan, rather than enjoying me for who I was.

By the time the holy month of Ramadan rolled around, I was trying to decide between the many invitations I’d received from my female students with trepidition. Ramadan, the month of sawm (or fasting), is one of the five critical pillars of Islam and carries with it important traditions in Morocco. Each day at the sound of the muezzin, families gather to pray, and then break the fast that they’ve been observing all day. Piles of dates, glasses of fresh milk, harira soup and plenty of other goodies are laid out, with the choicest picks placed in front of guests. As the new young American teacher, all my students wanted the distinction of my visiting their homes for lftour, the “break-fast.”

I was still weighing my options when Mehdi, one of my male students, invited me to his family’s home for this special event. He was the first boy to do so. Intrigued, I said yes. And that was how I first met Fatima.

Posing for a photograph with Mehdi on a trip to the coast of Tangier, a major port of Morocco and the country’s closest link to Europe.

Breaking the fast

On the Sunday of my rendezvous with Mehdi, I was nervous.

In a country where the unemployment rate lingers at around 20 percent, many young Moroccan men have a habit of “chasing after passports,” so to speak. And though Mehdi wasn’t one of my best students, he was a charming one. He would often make off-color jokes during class using vocabulary my other students didn’t yet know––generally words I would never dream of teaching them—providing me with a bit of inside laughter during a difficult first semester dealing with teenagers more interested in flirting than learning English.

Searching through my closet for nearly thirty minutes, I finally decided on jeans and a pink sweater. After all, I wanted to be myself, and dressing up wasn’t going to win me any true friendships. I tied my hair back and wrapped a pink scarf over the front of my hair like a headband. At four o’clock in the afternoon, I headed out the door to meet Mehdi near the school.

When I found him leaning against an old Volkswagen, dressed head to toe in Adidas sportswear, I breathed a small sigh of relief that I’d chosen casual clothes. He greeted me with a kiss on each cheek, the traditional Moroccan greeting usually reserved for same-sex friends, but adopted by the younger, more Westernized generation as a greeting for all friends, regardless of gender. I let out another breath.

Mehdi and I spent the next couple of hours driving through parts of historic Meknes: the giant faux lake built by the tyrannical eighteenth century king Moulay Ismail, the dungeon where that same king kept his prisoners. Time passed quickly without any lingering awkwardness on my part, and soon I was being led to the door of his family’s fifth-floor apartment building in the French-built ville nouvelle of Meknes.

Upon entering, I drew in a quick breath. Most Moroccan homes I’d seen were decorated with plastic flowers, imported Chinese fabrics, and little glass trinkets and baubles. This one was quite different (which would later become a metaphor for the family itself). The rugs were luxurious, the lighting sublime. One section of the salon was furnished traditionally with oak banquettes and plush silk-covered cushions; the other section was a modern adaptation of a traditional Moroccan salon, with saffron-colored couches and a low round table. It had an airy yet cozy feel to it, as though it would be the perfect place to relax with a book. I was led into a smaller living room, more simply furnished, where Mehdi’s father was watching television. I was introduced and told to sit while we waited for the call to prayer that would signal the end of the day’s fast.

At the call, Mehdi, his brother and father excused themselves to go pray in the large salon while I waited alone. When the prayer ended after a few minutes, Mehdi returned and showed me to the kitchen where he introduced me to his mother, Fatima.

Fatima dressed me for a party in one of her finest caftans. Moroccan caftans are worn by women at weddings and other special ceremonies.

“You must eat!”

She was young-looking and plump, with rosy cheeks that gave her a sort of jolliness and betrayed her age (43). Her long hair was tied back and she wore an apron over her casual jeans and collared shirt. After kissing me warmly on both cheeks and uttering the requisite marhaba (welcome), she shuffled me to my seat, where she proceeded to pile my plate high with tiny pizzas, boiled eggs, traditional sweets, dates, and fruit.

I don’t know if it was the presence of Fatima or Mehdi, or the fact that this was the only Moroccan family I’d met that ate in their kitchen at a regular table and on chairs (as opposed to a salon of banquettes and a low, round table against which I’d always bump my knees), but I suddenly felt strangely at home, even as Fatima shouted “Eat! Eat!” and piled endless amounts of food onto my plate. I learned that she spoke English, but hadn’t practiced much since finishing her baccalaureate studies ten years earlier. She worked outside of the home as a French teacher in one of the poorest areas of Meknes, where I later learned she had spent the early years of her marriage.

After Ramadan ended and winter came around, I began spending more time with Fatima, and therefore more time at her home. At first, I found myself being invited to Friday couscous. Then, Tuesday paella. Soon, it was every day, whatever was being served, and I’d better have an excuse if I couldn’t make it. If I didn’t come, the next time I visited I’d be bombarded with questions from Mehdi’s father and brother, as well as Fatima, of course.

It wasn’t very long at all before lunch was just an excuse for having conversations with Fatima. I would come over before the meal, before her sons had returned home from school and her husband from work, and we would seat ourselves in the small living room, sometimes in front of the television, sometimes not. At first, our conversations centered around innocuous subjects—celebrities, music, Morocco, Arabic language—but it wasn’t long before we were discussing marriage, her children, and the subject I dreaded most: religion.

A Moroccan woman in hijab (traditional head covering worn by many Muslim women worldwide) and djellaba, a hooded Moroccan garment worn by both men and women, takes an afternoon stroll past Bab Mansour.

Home at last

During my time in Meknes, I have learned that many Moroccans—the older ones in particular—are fond of trying to make non-Muslim friends feel guilty about not converting to Islam. Even though Morocco is 99 percent Muslim, the government is fairly secular and there are bars aplenty, but most Moroccans still feel strongly about their religion and its traditions.

The parents of some of my students, my neighbors, even my co-workers, have lectured me on different aspects of Islam. I’m often asked why I don’t pray and how I can believe in God but not ascribe to one faith. I’ve even been told outright that I should just convert. I find it frustrating to be treated so patronizingly. I have read the Quran and have made a conscious decision about Islam rather than avoid it as I did Christianity in my youth.
Raised by two hippie parents who chose to reject their families’ Protestant faith, I spent most of my years growing up blissfully unaware of religion. Though I later found faith in God, I am secure in that faith alone rather than in any organized religion, and feel no need to join a formal practice.

I hated to admit it, but the idea that Fatima might try to convert me was often at the forefront of my mind during our initial months of getting to know each other. She was indeed devout, observing the five-times-a-day call to prayer and wearing the hijab. Although its necessity is a source of debate, the hijab is the headscarf worn by Muslimahs the world over in order to fulfill Islamic dress code, which states that only a woman’s hands and face should be visible. Fatima’s hijab—worn only outside the home and around male strangers—was stylishly tied under her chin and secured with a pin. During those first few months, I observed her wearing a variety of multicolored scarves, from leopard prints to orange silk.

One afternoon I was excitedly telling Fatima about an American Muslimah I’d met at a hip hop show the week before. I described how she wore her dress loose and comfortable, and her hijab loosely wrapped halfway back on her head, but fully covering her chest. I would often watch young Moroccan women, many of them walking around in tight jeans and tops, their faces covered in makeup, but hair and neck wrapped in a tight hijab, and shake my head at their hypocrisy.

As I explained to Fatima how the American wore her hijab, she told me that in her interpretation of the Quran, it is more important for the hijab to cover the chest (or “bosom”, as it is often translated from Arabic) and not so much the entire head. I was surprised to hear this, given the way it’s most frequently worn in Morocco, but she confessed that the manner in which the scarves are worn here is more cultural than religious. She informed me that despite the pressure many women place on each other to begin wearing the hijab at a young age, she didn’t start wearing one until recently. In other words, it had been an entirely personal decision. This, along with her opinion on how it should be worn, revealed her open-mindedness to me. And hearing those words from a Moroccan helped validate my own thoughts on the subject.

Another day, the television was tuned to Histoire, France’s answer to the History Channel. Fatima and I were watching a program on Israel. While I was trying to comprehend exactly what was being said—my French being almost nonexistent—Fatima began to talk about Israel and Palestine, a topic considered taboo in many circles and potentially controversial when discussed between a pious Muslim and a detached American agnostic.

But as she spoke, I soon began to realize once again that we had more in common than I had previously thought. Fatima told me that she disagreed with both sides of the dispute, and while I vigorously nodded my head, she added, “It is a land for everyone.”
It was an argument that was idealistic, utopian, and something I wholly believed in, but I had never found anyone—even during my liberal New York college days—who concurred with me in that belief.

These moments of harmony became more and more frequent. I would relate some piece of trivia or another, and we would share a laugh, or sometimes even a tear or two. In my life outside Fatima’s home, I still felt like an outsider—stared at on the street and shown off to people as “my friend the American.” But in Fatima’s house, I was now an insider. She began to teach me how to cook, asked me to help her with household tasks, and took me shopping. I was no longer a guest in the house, but a member of the family—complete with the familial duties of picking up after myself and coming home every day for lunch. Fatima even asked me to call her “mamati,” a word of affection which literally means “my mother” in Moroccan Arabic.

I also began to realize that my belief in God and my respect for her religion were enough for Fatima. She didn’t want to change me, to make me Moroccan or Muslim. She was satisfied with me being myself.

I still can’t say that I’m totally at home in Morocco. I still can’t get used to the way people drive. I find hypocrisy nearly everywhere; the fact that people sit around in cafés for hours complaining that the government isn’t doing anything to help blows my mind. But when I walk the two blocks every afternoon to Fatima’s house, take the elevator to the fifth floor and knock on her apartment door, I know that I am entering a sanctuary where I won’t be judged for what I do, say, think, or feel. And so it is that in a country where I am a distinct minority—ethnically, religiously, linguistically—I have found a family (and most importantly, a friend) that accepts me for exactly who I am.

*All names in this story have been changed at the request of those involved.

Jillian York

The intersection of Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way on the edge of the campus at the University of California at Berkeley.

At the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft sits a guy, cross-legged, as if he is meditating the countless pedestrians that rush by on their way to the University of California at Berkeley campus. The man has a dirty face, a scraggly beard, and tattered clothes. He is homeless; he needs a good bath, and a nice warm meal.

Yet none of the passersby seems to notice him, even though his life is just as sacred as that of the success-bound college students with their Cal–emblazoned gear and khaki shorts. If you listen carefully, you can hear this man utter a greeting and a “God bless you,” at times sounding more heartfelt than the President of the United States during the state of the union address. There may be wars being waged on other political and social fronts throughout the world, but here, there is none against homelessness and poverty.

When I came to this country eleven years ago, I was shocked by the sight of homeless people on the streets. In the Netherlands, few people are homeless, and those you do see lingering in the streets at night are probably homeless by choice. So coming here, I couldn’t help staring at homeless people out of fascination. Why were they living under bridges and in the corners of monumental buildings?

Hanging out outside Crepes-A-Go-Go in Berkeley.

“Look away, don’t make eye contact”

That was the usual advice, since the last thing you want to do is provoke a homeless man. He could be mentally ill, after all. “Don’t mess with homeless people,” was the mantra of indifference rooted in the perception that homeless people were probably there for a reason. So I looked away, and lived out the American dream in a quaint suburban house with an American husband and two blond cherubs, my Dutch-American children. On our trips into the city, I no longer stared at the toothless faces and the grimy hands that extended towards us from below on the sidewalks. I even told my children to look away and ignore the problem.

Homelessness was as far removed from our quiet middle-class lives as the moon is from the sun.

But then, on a glorious suburban day, our polished world caved in during the dot-com crash. Within months, we saw our reserves dwindle. Paying the bills became increasingly difficult. And after two and a half years of unemployment, scraping by on menial jobs and macaroni and cheese, I realized how easy it was to lose everything. Homelessness was not exclusive to the losers, the outcasts and the mentally ill. Homelessness could happen to boring suburbanites who hit a patch of bad karma.

People like us.

Seeing again

We still had a roof over our heads, but the future of our house and our health insurance were the demons that kept us awake. We anticipated the abyss, an abyss I had become all too familiar while helping out in a soup kitchen.

At first I was too busy helping out with the cooking and serving, but as these tasks became more routine, I had time to observe the haunted souls who dropped in. For the first time in years, I did not look away, but stared and registered.

There was a single mother with three children who should have been in school at that hour. They were all coughing, and although they were probably living out of their car or sleeping in a flee-infested shelter, the mother insisted on manners – the manners of a society that had completely abandoned them.

“Johnny, put your hand in front of your mouth when you cough.”

“Ellen, darling, use your napkin.”

“Paul, say ‘thank you.’ Now listen, let’s pray and thank the Lord for this
food.”

The children put their dirty hands over the white paper plates, closed their eyes and surrendered to the tranquil moment ordered by their mother. My eyes wandered off to a boy my son’s age who walked in alone. I filled his plate and asked whether his parents would be coming. He looked at me, both suspicious and afraid. The staff had instructed us not to ask questions.

The boy was silent, so I did not press him for an answer as to why he was there. I was curious though, and bringing a second dessert, I sat down with him and asked him about school.

“Don’t go to school much anymore,” he grumbled. “Both my parents work, but there is little food in the house, and my mother thinks it more important to come here. This is my first hot meal this week.”

At the end of the meal, I looked up as a woman walked in, impeccably dressed in a pearl necklace and high heels – the kind of woman one might expect to see in a bistro downtown. I shot a glance at our staff leader for the day, a Vietnam vet whose stories could fill the pages of a novel, although he never talks about the war. When the woman walked away to find a private corner – some of which carry a urine scent so heavy it made me gag, the staffer told me, “You know, we’re not here to judge. We’re here to feed. God knows where she’s at.”

“Maybe she lost her job and has to pay her parents’ nursing home bills, while also having to provide for her own family,” he added. “Judging is easy, feeding is a whole lot harder.”

As he said this, a man scraped the food off his plate into a plastic bag under his table and returned to fill up again. That was against the rules, but I didn’t report it, for that would have been a form of judging too. If the bag of food would tide him over for the rest of the day, I didn’t care about rules.

I struck up a conversation with a couple holding a newborn baby in their arms. They lived on the streets, but were remarkably upbeat for people who were raising a baby in the elements.

“We’re okay, really,” said the 19-year-old woman, whose eyes were bloodshot.

“The worst part is that people in the streets don’t look at us anymore,” she said. “They look away as if we’re dirty, or worse, as if we’re air. The baby attracts more attention, but as soon as we catch someone’s eye, they look away again. We might as well be dead.”

An elderly woman thanked us for the meal as she walked out. Her mouth had holes where her teeth should be. Her hair is a tangled web. And her T-shirt proclaims: “Proud to be an American.”

“Interesting T-shirt you’ve got there,” I said, unable to resist in this basement of America’s downtrodden. She caught my irony and said, “Honey, I never bought it. Got it second-hand. Don’t care much for the text, but I like the colors. God bless you.”

A month later my husband landed a job with a software company. We have slowly been able to crawl away from the snake pit of potential homelessness and hunger.

Now, I make eye contact with every homeless person I see.

And if I happen to be carrying food, I give some to the man who’s sitting at the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph.

He is always grateful and has the grace to acknowledge me. He does so even when I don’t give him anything at all.

He’s just homeless, and still human.

In The Fray Contributor

The Saturday market along the main road through tiny Fatehpur Sikri brings the whole town out in search of clothes, toys, supplies for the home, and more.

On the January night when I flew into Delhi, my ride didn’t show up at the airport. I flagged  down a cabbie who tried to get me as drunk as he was, and who tried to get me to switch accommodations to his choice of hotels. My arrival in Delhi was pretty typical — the stuff of many a travel story set in India. In the end, it wasn’t the nightmare it could have been.

My driver was an eager conversationalist despite his slurred, broken English. After assuring him repeatedly that I did not want a swig of the whiskey he’d received from a German tourist, and that I did not want to go to a different hotel, he went out of his way to find the correct address amidst the narrow lanes of Delhi’s Paharganj neighborhood. We parted cordially outside my hotel, wishing each other a happy new year. The experience typified what I both love and hate about India — the often threatening unfamiliarity and superficial chaos of the place; that friendliness could be either genuine or concocted to take advantage of me, a gullible foreigner; the allure of new sights, sounds, and smells; the joy that is often found once the inconveniences are overcome.

This was my third visit to India. My first trip had been thirteen years earlier, when I visited Chennai with my family. While Mom and Dad handled the travel arrangements, that brief trip whetted my appetite for all things Indian. After growing up in Washington, D.C. and small Wyoming and Iowa towns, it was my very first trip abroad. Without a doubt, it left a lasting impression. My next trip was five years later, as part of a semester-long college Buddhist Studies program. We spent the duration of our stay in the small town of Bodh Gaya in the northeastern state of Bihar. There, I was able to experience India on a deeper level than many travelers are afforded, although I was still granted the security of belonging to a large group of students and professors.

I could tell that this third trip was going to be different. Graduate school had offered two years of intensive reading, writing, and researching. In pursuit of my M.A. in South Asian Studies, I debated and discussed Indian history, contemporary politics, media, religious beliefs, social movements, literature, and cultural practices. After three years of Hindi language classes and dozens of Bollywood movies, I had set off to India as someone who no longer a tourist. I was newly aware of the preconceptions and ignorance I had carried with me on my earlier trips, and I was finally ready to see a new side of India.

I would also be on my own in a country viewed with awe and wariness even by seasoned globetrotters. Prior to my arrival in India, I had been visiting my brother in Vietnam. On a touristy boat ride in Ha Long Bay, a middle-aged American man who had lived for extended periods in the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam commented, “I’ve always wanted to go to India, but it seems like it would be so hard!” A Canadian couple told me, “We’d like to do some traveling in other places before we go to India.” A twenty-something Australian woman, halfway through a year of solo traveling, said she was impressed that I would be going to India on my own.

Having been there before, however, I felt I knew what to anticipate. I had even half-expected to be stood up at Delhi airport, but I still didn’t like it.

It was a warm winter day in Nawalgarh, Rajasthan. On a narrow side street, a group of boys played marbles. When I was asked to join them, I couldn’t say no.

The unfamiliar and the familiar

Every traveler to India has an “India-is-so-crazy” story (“There were people riding on top of the train!”). Just as many have an “India-is-so-enlightening” story (“Their way of life is so spiritual and real!”). There are numerous “India-is-so-poor” stories (“Begging children followed me for 20 minutes!”), and “Indian-culture-is-so-old” stories (“The temple is the same as it was a 1,000 years ago!”). Learning about India showed me the flaws and limitations of accepted Western understandings of this country. Perhaps it is no different than China, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria or any other country with a complex, vast or long-lived civilization. Even so, India stands apart in my mind.

I imagine our knowledge of India has not changed much since the days of European colonialism. The idea that the country is somehow timeless has created equally timeless stereotypes. India calls to mind images of poverty, exotic wild animals, destructive natural disasters, kings and extravagant palaces, religious fanatics, oppressed women, idyllic rural farm life, the horrifying slums of its megalopolises, and superstitious, uneducated masses trapped by the caste system. The failure of the Western imagination to evolve in this regard has resulted in the all-too-common tendency of travelers and writers to present an India that is exotic and alien. At the same time, it is easy to see why countless negative stereotypes of India persist in the Western mind. After all, stereotypes are inherently simplistic and superficial. In general, these things do characterize most foreigners’ experiences there, mine included.

As I dutifully traveled between the major tourist destinations described in my guidebook — Delhi to Rishikesh to Nainital to Agra to Jaipur — it was difficult to see the deeper aspects of Indian society. Instead, the glaring differences between Indian life and U.S. culture jumped out at me. In India, there were cows and monkeys and piles of garbage on the streets. I was regularly surrounded by noisy crowds unused to the concept of personal space. Shops, cars, trains, temples, and homes often appeared to be in disrepair. Temples and mosques and their openly religious followers were everywhere. Tenacious rickshaw wallahs, shop owners, and begging children confronted me every day.

Even after my previous visits and all my studying, and despite my love for the country, it was hard to feel fully at ease. I was acutely aware that my white face and red cheeks, brown hair, and blue eyes made me stand out in a sea of brown skin and black hair. I knew that I was ridiculously privileged, and that no matter what I did it would be impossible to see “the real India” — that tantalizing myth of the extreme travelogue. Street kids called me tomater, Hindi for tomato. I was cursed out for the United States’ treatment of Cuba. I was forever being overcharged for anything I bought. Sometimes I thought I might be better off ignorant of India’s history, languages, politics, cultural beliefs, and religious practices. My knowledge did not prevent me from enjoying myself, but it did make me realize that seeing India through the filter of stereotypes provides some comfort and assurance about the world, and one’s place in the world, that I was sorely missing.

New ways of seeing

A conversation with an amiable rickshaw driver towards the end of my trip proved to be a wake-up call. I was walking through the fabled Pink City of Jaipur in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, in search of lunch on a sunny and pleasantly warm day. Outside the magnificent City Palace, standing by his black and yellow rickshaw, was a stocky young man wearing a dark green button-down shirt. He watched me approach and we made eye contact.

“Excuse me,” he said in English. “Maybe you can tell me. Why are foreigners always so rude to Indians?”

Now, that was a good question.

I don’t know why I had a hard time answering him. Some foreigners feel like they’re often taken advantage of when they get into conversations with Indians during their travels, that something unpleasant — usually a sacrifice of their time or money — will be required. Did I feel some need to feign ignorance to avoid offending him, or was I thrown by his assumption that all foreigners (myself included) were rude? Before I could stammer an answer, he went on to tell me that one day, in a coffee shop, he had seen a foreign traveler sitting at a table with a thick guidebook. He approached the foreigner and offered his advice about where to go in the city. He was a native of Jaipur, had driven a rickshaw for years, knew all the sights, and was eager to speak with pride about his city. He had no intention to coerce the man into his rickshaw, he told me. It was his day off, after all.

Instead of thanking him for his suggestions, the foreigner flew into a rage. “Leave me the fuck alone!” he shouted at the rickshaw driver. “I don’t need your help! Get away from me!”

The rickshaw driver went on to describe many other occasions when his offers were rudely rebuffed by foreign travelers. “How would that make you feel,” he asked me. As I thought back to the times I had snapped at rickshaw drivers or pushy street vendors, I answered, truthfully, that it made me feel terrible. “Yes, it is terrible,” he agreed, insisting that rejecting a rickshaw ride could be done politely, with a smile and a bit of humanity.

And he was right. I had been consciously taking an even-handed approach with rickshaw wallahs, shop owners, pesky kids. They were all fellow human beings who didn’t deserve to be treated like servants or pets. But this conversation got me thinking seriously about how I appeared through the eyes of these people. I saw them every day. Even if I thought I was treating them respectfully, was I seen as just another bossy, tightfisted, standoffish, white foreigner with pockets full of money?

When I was the one bearing the brunt of a negative stereotype, it became easy to see the folly in thinking in terms of over-generalizations, no matter how convenient it might seem. People, and certainly entire countries, cannot be explained in such simplistic terms.

Everyday life in everyday stories

Now that I’ve returned home, I’ve changed the way I view and understand India, as well as the way I talk about it. I am much more conscious that the experiences I’ve had are minute tiles in a vast and ever-changing mosaic — that India is more than my shallow experience there. I make an effort to address the inevitable questions about its poverty, the caste system, and Hinduism, while also telling them something new about India that they’ve probably never heard before. Instead, I tell them something that is more familiar to their American lives. During my visit, I sat in a coffee shop in Lucknow with a crowd of locals watching India-Pakistan cricket matches — the biggest sports event in the country, and the equivalent of Superbowl Sunday in the States. I talk about going to the movies at Jaipur’s Raj Mandir Cinema, packed with locals for the opening weekend of the latest Bollywood hit Rang de Basanti. I relate how I spent many a morning in parks and restaurants reading the newspaper alongside Indian men, discussing the latest political news or sports scores. I talk about staying in a small town in the deserts of Rajasthan with a welcoming family whose 10-year-old son taught me to fly the small paper kites I saw over towns all across northern India. I reminisce about sitting around evening fires all along my journey, late into the cold night, discussing religion, friendship, marriage, family, and the mundane aspects of everyday life.

Such familiar activities are part of many travelers’ experiences, but they seem to fall through the cracks in favor of wowing friends and family with stories of wild adventures and foreign drama. Their stories further the myth that life abroad is utterly alien. Instead, the tall tales I tell are about how normal India can be.

In The Fray Contributor

Shortly before eight o’clock in the morning, marathoners get ready for the start of the race. (Elizabeth Yuan)

“Hot and hilly. And amazing.” When people ask, that’s how I sum up the International  Peace Marathon of Kigali that I ran on May 14, 2006.

When Liz’s alarm went off, I groaned and slowly sat up. “How ya feelin’?” Liz asked.  “Completely exhausted and depleted,” I answered. I had been sick with stomach problems the day before and wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to run the race. I took some Cipro, tried to rest and rehydrate, but I still wasn’t feeling well.

Two of our Rwandese friends, Robert and Banga, met us and our two American friends, Hunter and Alice, and we all six piled into the car for Amahoro Stadium, where the race would begin and end. I had just finished a small bottle of Gatorade and was clutching another bottle of water and an energy bar. Robert was behind the wheel wearing his cool white rasta cap, and his car was booming to hip-hop music, which immediately gave me a mental lift.

The idea behind the marathon is peace, and it was the brainchild of a Luxembourg woman, Bettina Scholl-Sabbatini, who has been to Rwanda nearly 20 times and loved it. Her group, Soroptimist International of Europe, undertakes projects geared towards women in developing countries, and the marathon was conceived under a program called “Women Building Peace.” The inaugural race last year was so successful that organizers wanted to make this event an annual one.

At the starting line, Liz and I met a few of the other foreigners, among them Simone Kayser, winner of the Marathon des Sables, the weeklong 155-mile (250 kilometer) ultra marathon across the Moroccan Sahara. Most of the runners around us were Africans, mainly Rwandese.

I lined up at the back of the pack. The race began and the overall pace was F-A-S-T. I was the last one out of the stadium, and I had to remind myself for the first few kilometers not to worry about trying to keep up.

The fastest of the half-marathoners, many of them running in bare feet, stampede past the rest of the crowd about a half-mile into the race. (Elizabeth Yuan)

About five minutes later, the half-marathon started. The runners approaching from behind sounded like they were part of a stampede. I glanced over my shoulder and then quickly faced forward. They were upon me. Arms brushed mine as legs flew by, jarring me slightly out of rhythm. For a moment, I really thought I’d get trampled.

The equatorial sun beat down hard. By 8:30 a.m., it was already 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) and very humid. I love heat!  But running 26.2 miles (42 kilometers) in that temperature with the sun bathing my head for at least the first half was taxing. Runners soon poured water on their heads and in their mouths and then back on their heads. I did the same.

Sometimes I was carrying two water bottles at once. Whenever that happened, I soon lost one to a thirsty runner along the route. “Give me water,” the runner would plea, with an outstretched hand and a rapid pace.

Melanie Wallentine, in white shirt and white cap, runs several yards past a sign indicating hills. (Elizabeth Yuan)

Rwanda is known as the “land of a thousand hills.” I’d say there are 10,000. Before I left Utah, a friend said, “I imagine you’ll hit at least 30 of them in the marathon!” I don’t know how many there were, but it was hilly!

And it was a four-lap course. So, by the third lap, I had those hills memorized. And, I knew I still had one more lap.

Early on, cheers from the side of the road sounded initially to me like, “C-rash! C-rash!”  And they seemed to contradict the kindness and gentleness I had experienced up until then in Rwanda. I was stunned. But, after about the 20th time, I realized the spectators and runners were shouting, “Cour-age! Cour-age!” and were offering full support.

Also early on, several young runners, primarily half-marathoners, grabbed my hand, shouting, “Quickly, quickly,” and pulled me along at their pace. I actually felt lighter, as if they were carrying a part of me. I don’t remember the last time I ran that fast in a long distance race. (Ok, never.) But, for a few minutes, I did feel like a deer prancing along in the woods. Still, even the lightness couldn’t counteract the reality that my breath was becoming labored. After a few minutes, I patted the person on the back, said, “Thank you,” and dropped back to my pace. But the gesture of support was endearing.

A few kilometers later, a young girl in pink began running with me at my pace. Her name was Lucy, and she was 15 or 16. We ran side by side for many kilometers. We talked a little, and I thoroughly enjoyed her company. At one point, someone in the crowd playfully taunted her, yelling in Kinyarwanda, “Hey, that white person is beating you! Hurry up!” Later, she seemed to get dizzy or disoriented. She muttered, “I’m … tired.” I handed her one of my gels and said, “Take this.”  It seemed to help, and I was happy I brought extras.

Melanie gives fellow marathoner Gaspard Nsengamungu, a native Rwandan, a little sponge help over the head. (Alice Hou)

Then out of nowhere appeared two or three of Lucy’s friends who were also running the half, or the “semi,” as they called it. They scrambled around me, so that I was in the middle, and we all ran together for a while, elbow to elbow. Another priceless experience.

There were constant shouts of “Umuzungu!” which means, “White person!” in Kinyarwanda. One time I turned to one of the shouters, pointed to myself, nodded my head and acknowledged, “Yes, Umuzungu …” That drew a few chuckles.

As I was completing the half, the stadium crowd began to roar. They could NOT be cheering for me, I thought. And then, the epiphany occurred. The first place marathoner must be right behind me. I looked back to see a Kenyan plowing towards me. I scurried across the finish line, so that I wouldn’t get run over. Yup, a Kenyan had won — and I still had two laps to go.

In my first three marathons, I still felt good when I reached the halfway point. In this marathon, I felt awful and wanted the race to be done. The third lap was mentally and physically the toughest. I was running out of gas and beginning to feel a bit nauseous. I told myself I wouldn’t quit unless it was medically necessary, so I’d better work on a strategy. “Carbs, water, and keep moving” became my mantra. I pulled out my SHOT BLOKS that my friend Edwin had given me before I left, and said, “Ok, these had better work.” Soon the nausea went away.

I was still tired but feeling a little more functional. I also thought of everyone who had supported me during my training. And I sent a silent Mother’s Day wish to Mom and Grandma. I thought of my late brother, Victor, and felt him near. And I thought of the people of Rwanda and knew they’d been through so much more pain than I could ever feel on a marathon.

Somewhere in that second half, a Rwandese guy started running with me. We ran side by side for much of the second half. I’m not sure which was more limited, his English or my Kinyarwanda, but it didn’t matter. We communicated just fine. When his energy reserves began to deplete, I shared my SHOT BLOKS with him, and we kept going. With about 7 or 8 kilometers (4 to 5 miles) to go, he began to hang back, but I kept my pace.

Melanie and the girl who joined her in the final kilometers of the marathon head down the homestretch toward the finish line in Amahoro Stadium. (Hunter Pape)

Just as I was feeling my own energy deplete with about 5 kilometers (3 miles) to go, a smiling little girl in sandals and a multi-colored dress started running with me from the side of the road. I thought she would just run a few steps, laugh, and then go back home. But, she kept running – and – running – and – running – and – running. Arms swinging hard, she took two to three steps for every one of mine. But she kept up with my pace. I looked down. She looked up. I smiled. She smiled. We ran.

We glanced at each other from time to time, and I was spurred on by her determination and enthusiasm — and her luminous smile.

As we entered the stadium, I took her hand, and we ran the final lap around the stadium. Some cheers rang out from the few remaining in the crowd. After we crossed the finish line, I picked her up and swung her around. She wasn’t out of breath at all. I gave her my last SHOT BLOK and some water. Through a friend, I asked the girl’s name and age and “Is your family worried about you?”

With stoic confidence and poise, the seven-year-old responded, “No. I told them where I was going.”

Out of 253 people, 96 finished. I came in at around 5:08 with a small handful of people behind me. Trust me, I was just happy to finish. It was my most difficult marathon so far.

What a thrill to run a marathon in Rwanda! I would encourage any runner who truly wants an exhilarating running experience to run a marathon with Africans — in Africa.  There’s nothing like it.

Melanie’s roommate was InTheFray Contributing Editor Elizabeth Yuan, who was among the majority of runners who did not finish the race.

In The Fray Contributor

(www.sxc.hu)

Open all the borders, close all the schools. A radical thought. Perhaps even so radical as to be dismissed either as mockery or incendiarism. And yet when a friend offers this as the solution to war, to strife, to the struggle so many have accepted as an intrinsic part of life, it seems so obvious. Here we sit, all of us, at every location in the globe, isolated by imaginary lines drawn by mapmakers of old or plotted using state-of-the-art GPS technology. We allow these arbitrary divisions to cause death and destruction by clinging ever so tightly to the identity formed by them. I won’t let go, I won’t. I belong to this portion of the globe. This line distinguishes me from you. We are not the same. I am here. You are there. We create obstacles to traversing these boundaries. We sneak around them. We have things stamped upon entry. We believe so firmly that borders exist, we do not question them. I am American; I live within these meridians and therefore it makes me so. Where does this fervent desire to identify oneself with a region come from?  

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America … ” And so begins the inculcation. Even before our children can critically interpret information, our schools are molding future Americans. Curriculums create boundaries. Graduation from high school after 13 years of schooling, including kindergarten, prepares you to be an American, but how about to be an inquisitive, compassionate, engaged human being?

My remedy?  Close the schools. Do we need to know Shakespeare? Chemistry?  Should everyone be required to read the same books and do the same number of math problems?  As if there exists one standard body of knowledge, which any successful being must attain. That certainly depends on your definition of success, but for now, please, do not think for yourself until you’ve been properly fed.  

We must stifle individuality, creativity, expression. If we don’t stay on task and check off these many bullet points from the list of topics to be covered — it’s hard to remember who exactly provided them, probably God? — these children will suffer. They will not integrate well into American culture. Gasp.  Requiring each student to learn the same information, in the same order, at the same rate, seems preposterous. We are not all the same, even within the confines of the United States. But managing education in such a way is efficient. In doing so, we set the stage for individuals not only to expect but to crave homogeneity. With a system that demands sameness, whether in interpreting historical documents or reading renaissance poetry, students are shown that this is good, easy, and correct.

I know you have questions and interests, but we can’t address those here. You see, it’s just not in the curriculum, and if we focus attention on you, the rest will suffer. We are taught time and again to capitulate to the greater good, even though our individual selves may not feel that such acquiescence accomplishes good.

(www.sxc.hu)

Sprinkle all these lessons with a few nationalistic underpinnings, like honoring our flag and raising and lowering it during special occasions, and we have ourselves a sovereign state. Yeehaaw. We must now secure the borders and wage war with any who threatens us. This war occasionally escalates to a physical battle but generally manifests itself as the desire to keep others out when not to our benefit.  

The U.S. House of Representatives recently introduced tough immigration legislation, which triggered rallies across the country in support of immigrant rights. On the National Mall, thousands of people gathered — Peruvians, Mexicans, Senegalese, Eritreans, Indians, Koreans … it would seem as though every nationality were represented. But there persists a mindset that we must find a superficial way to distinguish residents — the residents from the alien intruders. You there can claim a stake to this fraction of the globe, but you sir, who also live and work here, may not. You who lack the necessary paperwork — dated, signed, and notarized — YOU are NOT American.  

What is American? Is it the strongest military in the world, the most robust economy, the highest standard of living — or is it that looming body of knowledge we all acquired at the same rate, in the same order, to the same end? From what are we hiding behind these borders? The thought of losing all that, the thought that being American comes with it a sense of security not conferred elsewhere and therefore we must deny entry by some bureaucratic decree to those not deemed worthy?

Is there something within these borders that makes us unique? The Rocky Mountains? The Chicago Bulls? We are America. We are strong, we are free.  

So open the borders. What would become of the people, the cultures? Would nationalities blur, and is that wrong? Do we need these nationalities? What are they providing us, aside from a sense of security in being part of one — and a wall to keep out the others?

Clinging to these border distinctions provides us with enough anonymity to carry out horrific acts of greed, fear, revenge, or just plain evil, and to evade any personal responsibility for them. After all, it’s for the good of the country.

Let’s do away with borders. Erase every last one of them from them maps and destroy the curriculums that embed them. Perhaps then we can realize that being an American means nothing, and we’ll stop trying to boss others around, take their stuff, and keep them out. “I want that. You need to do this. And get off my property you mongrel!” Yeah, that’s pretty much what we’re doing. Who knew we were so ridiculous.  

Brigid Moriarty

The reception after the memorial service took place in a part of Lagos known as Mile 2, a large sub-division undergoing a sprucing up. We set up in a grassy area between two rows of buildings. Those pictured on the right still reflect years of neglect.

I smelled Lagos before I saw it, before I even stepped off the plane. That first inhalation of the city and each subsequent breath overwhelmed me like flood waters spilling over a river’s muddy banks.

It was the effect — I would soon discover — of imbibing through my nose the reality of Third World urban living: too much heat, too much carbon dioxide, and too many heaps of roadside trash. This was my first trip to my parents’ homeland, to attend a service commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of my grandmother’s death, and over the next couple of weeks, there would be much more for my senses to absorb.

For the moment, however, I was hours away from stepping out into any of it. I still had to get through the long customs line, which comes before baggage claim in Lagos. Probably because the customs agents know the baggage handlers nab any valuable contraband we passengers might have hidden in our suitcases. Two hours of waiting under epileptic fluorescent lights while baggage handlers presumably ransacked my bags gave me plenty of time to try and decipher the olfactory puzzle that is Lagos.

Of course, I couldn’t. The American-born-and-raised nose cannot isolate the sweet, unctuous aroma of thousands of diesel generators revved up after the electricity has gone out. Again.

A family friend adjusts my headdress made of stiff gold damask, the latest trend, which my inexperienced hands cannot maneuver. In the background, my mother works on her identical headpiece.

On-the-ground realities

A lifetime of Western media exposure had prepared me for the worst this geographically small but socially and economically substantial country — home to a sixth of Africa’s population — could offer. The months before my December visit, the headlines from Nigeria were filled with words like corruption, AIDS, death toll, malaria, Internet scam, ethnic violence, poverty.

Around the time of my trip, The New York Times ran an article, “Blood Flows with Oil in Poor Nigerian Villages.”

The story covered the Niger Delta region around Port Harcourt that is constantly — literally — aflame as militants burn oil pipelines in an attempt to pressure the government and multinational oil companies to share more petro-profits with natives. They’re fighting for more than just a few kobo, Nigerian coins made obsolete by rampant inflation. Nigeria is the tenth-largest crude oil producer in the world and the fifth-largest supplier to the United States. The stakes rise as hostages’ lives are increasingly brought to the table as bargaining chips.

Life for most Nigerians, however, precludes international intrigue. In Lagos in particular, the daily business of survival is more than stressful enough for the poor and middle class.

In the hazy morning light of my first full day, what I had assumed the night before were several new building projects on the road from the airport revealed themselves to be ancient high-rise developments. The unpainted cement buildings seemed on the verge of collapse, having received little cosmetic attention since being built four decades earlier. Despite their dilapidated state, people lived in them. Many left laundry drying on the balconies while they camped in their regular spots on the roadside below, selling anything that could be grown or manufactured in mass quantities: clothing, produce, and various housewares made from wood, plastic, and cheap metals like tin and aluminum.

On day-long vigils lasting well into the night, thousands of Lagosians lined the streets, shoulder to shoulder, stall to stall. Drivers trapped in the traffic jumble of the city’s narrow streets often rolled down their car windows to buy bottled drinks or long-distance calling cards from the hawkers who weaved between the bumper-to-bumper traffic trying to make a sale.

Two days into my trip, I bought a handkerchief while sitting with my mother and aunt in the backseat of a car, on the way to pick up outfits for the memorial ceremony. The salesman looked about 15. Traffic began rolling again before he could collect his money, so he ran between the moving vehicles to catch up with us. His job was dangerous for sure, but he was lucky to have made any money at all. He competed with countless others: older men, boys from the country, and immigrants from all over Africa working the streets.

As I wiped sweat and grime from my face, browning my cheap white handkerchief, I tried to ignore the incessant honking and black exhaust plumes from the cars around us. Sedated by the heat, I felt like yawning but tried hard not to: the filthy haze in the air made me fearful of taking deep breaths. It struck me then that my family and the people of Lagos breathed this air daily. The thought chilled me despite the energy-sapping heat. It had never occurred to me that just getting sufficient oxygen might be one of the daily struggles Nigerians faced, smiling all the while.

Considering their determination to overcome difficult circumstances, I tried not to fret over the next day’s memorial service. But I continued to view the ceremony with my American mind, one that finds dealing with death awkward and depressing. At the very least, I saw it as a chore: attending the funeral of someone I hardly knew largely out of a sense of obligation.  

Finding the silver lining

But, to Nigerians, death can be cause for a celebration. Many things are.

Despite their unrelenting social, economic, and environmental woes, Nigerians express a relentless optimism and sincere exuberance. They see through the suffocating smog that blankets their capital to the fecund (if fast-disappearing) tropical forests in the rest of the country. They hear over the constant commotion of traffic the drumbeat of a rich musical history that includes the internationally influential Afrobeat and the lively Fuji — a hybrid of traditional beats and an ’80s synthesizer aesthetic — named so by a musician who was inspired by the famous volcano in Japan. They read between the headlines that daily spell out political doom, finding instead an opportunity for change and constructive leadership.

Faced with the tumult of the world around them, most Nigerians hold fast to religion — be it Christianity, Islam, tribal beliefs, or some sort of fusion faith — focusing not on death, but on the celebration of a life well-lived and a wonderful afterlife to follow. As a result, the Nigerians I encountered were truly a joyful people.

For me, the day of my grandmother’s memorial service was an interface of all aspects of this diverse culture. The Catholic church service was solemn and prompt, but the day ended the way many things seem to end in Nigeria: with a party.

More people attended the reception than the church service. As we early birds sat outside under a large tent, waiting to be served, I looked at everyone’s attire, which seemed like an attempt to showcase every color imaginable.

It was the third party that week for one of my aunts, a 50-year-old school headmistress. Four parties a week is not unusual for her, so she has a stack of colorful outfits, nearly as tall as I am, to wear for such occasions. In that stack are iro and gele, wrap-around skirts with matching headdresses worn with a buba, a blouse that might match or contrast the color of the skirt.

Nearly every woman at the party wore one of these traditional outfits. Someone wore white with a blue diamond pattern; another wore gold with wine-red flowers. Someone else had on a black buba with gold polka dots and green French-script swirls. Both men and women donned ornately embroidered materials, and members of the same family usually wore matching outfits. In this way, clothing was an expression of two important sources of Nigerian happiness: strong family ties and an impeccable sense of style.

The clothing in all of its scintillating intricacy — and downright costliness in some cases — called to mind another Nigerian value: wealth. Everyone at our party had his or her best foot forward, likely encased in a brand new, flashy shoe. Likewise, wrists, necks, fingers, and ears displayed the most expensive (or most expensive-looking) jewelry people owned. Anything less is barely better than turning up in jeans and a T-shirt to Nigerians. Real gold is precious and treated like a family heirloom. Those of us who could not afford the real thing — and I believe that included a good portion of the attendees — proudly sported inexpensive knock-offs.

The food, when it arrived, was some of the finest (if basic) Nigerian cuisine, cooked by paid women who had been peeling, boiling, and stirring outdoors since the night before. Bits of roasted goat meat and vegetables decorated jolof rice made red by cooking in a tomato sauce. Side dishes included moyin moyin, or bean cake, a soft mound of ground beans mixed with water and steamed inside banana leaves, and egusi, a spicy spinach dish with shrimp and meat. Sweet fried plantain, another staple, barely left room for even the thought of dessert. Everything was served hot — cool food is blasphemy in Nigeria — with a soul-lifting combination of tastes, textures, and colors.

The various elements of the party seemed designed to appeal to all five senses. After the guests had eaten their fill, the music started and partygoers of all ages let loose. There was not only dancing, but also “spraying,” a local custom in which dancers place cash on one another’s faces, necks, and shoulders, all the while moving to that irresistible beat. At times, perhaps at a wedding reception where a new bride is the focus of spraying, Nigeria’s multicolored bills actually float in the air, and it’s easy to see where the custom might have gotten its name.

Why they dance

In some ways, the vigorous Nigerian social life is a response to the country’s downtrodden condition. Certainly, it’s a great way to deal with the day’s frustrations and release energy that seems futilely directed elsewhere, say, at environmental protection.

But there’s something more, I think.

Nigerians hold on to what cannot be quashed by the turbulence of the modern world. They have music, ever present, with instruments such as the talking drum, which for centuries has perfectly mimicked the intonations of the Yoruba language. And they have each other, revered elders and cherished children. And for these things, they are truly grateful.

It’s right there in the language. When one person asks another in Yoruba, “How are you?” the second responds “Mo dupe,” or “I give thanks.”  It’s not just senseless giddiness that keeps them smiling and laughing.

At my grandmother’s party, the most unique elements of Nigerian culture came together like a talented jazz ensemble, playing off one another, giving the best of what they had well into the night and then a little while longer. Friends conversing would suddenly break into a popular song. We younger ones danced to before-our-time favorites that morphed seamlessly, in the middle of a long music set, into Christian praise hymns.

And although the invitation had expressly said “no night party” in red letters, by 9 p.m. the dancing had only just begun.

This idyllic atmosphere did not unfold in a vacuum. The cost of the service, along with the choir, cooks, photographer, and caterers, proved to be a financial strain, despite the combined resources of family and friends. And for all the enthusiasm displayed, illness or death kept some seats conspicuously empty. But this was taken as all the more reason to dance harder, laugh louder, chat longer.

It was death that had brought us together that evening, but I was hard-pressed to remember it when I looked at the jubilant faces of my grandmother’s children and siblings. Perhaps they would save their sadness for another day. But even so, I’m sure it would soon dissolve into the bliss of another long night of festivities.

jennifero

Reticulated Giraffe running. There are three subspecies of giraffes that live in East Africa: the Reticulated, whose spots are very clearly and cleanly marked; the Maasai, who are the tallest (up to 18 feet), darkest in color, and with spots going all the way down their legs; and the Rothschild, who are slightly smaller and lighter in color and have white “stockings.” (Marian Smith)

Matasha’s daughter squealed in delight when she saw the image of herself on my digital camera.  

The miniature screen showed her — the tallest child in the group — surrounded by almost ten other skinny, dusty, grinning children. Matasha, my Maasai guide, towered over them, tall and proud, his robes a bright pinpoint of red against the brown and tan colors of the savannah.

In the background appeared the interior of Matasha’s family compound. A massive fence of gnarled, sharp branches enclosed a cluster of round huts made from dung and sticks. The family corralled its herd of cattle in the middle of the huts each night, protecting them from the lions that roam the stretch of plains between Kenya’s Chyulu hills and the majestic Mt. Kilimanjaro.  

This was Campi ya Kanzi, 400 square miles of Maasai-owned land bordering the Tsavo West and Chyulu National Parks near the Amboseli Reserve in Kenya. Last summer, I stayed there with my boyfriend, Dan, and various members of my family, for four days at the beginning of a three-week-long safari through Kenya and Tanzania.

I squirmed the first time I saw where Matasha lived, unable to fathom why anyone would enjoy living in a hut made from dung. But at the end of my three weeks in Africa, after staying at other safari camps, I came to realize that the Maasai at Campi ya Kanzi were more than content with their traditional lifestyle and the dung huts that came with it; their culture was successfully withstanding any encroaching Westernization.

But I also realized that this fortunate state of affairs was allowed to happen only rarely. At most of the camps, ecotourism was simply a substitute word for high-priced wildlife-viewing expeditions. Locals weren’t given any stake in this version of tourism as nature conservation. At the same time, any notion of trying to preserve the local culture was practically unheard of. It was only at very few places, such as Campi ya Kanzi, that a pampered stay didn’t leave me with an uneasy conscience.

At Campi ya Kanzi, guests slept on feather pillows and Italian linens, enjoyed indoor plumbing in our canvas tents, and were supplied with soft white robes and slippers to wear at night. Each day, we woke up to a soft “Good morning” and the smell of freshly brewed coffee and sweet biscuits waiting on a tray on our private porch. During the day, we drove through endless miles of rolling bush, picnics packed in the trunk of our jeep, looking for wildlife with the help of our expert Maasai guides. And as the orange African sun began to set, we stopped on hilltops for our regular “sundowners” — wine and snacks — before heading back to camp.

The camp was the dream-come-true of Luca and Antonella Belpietro, a young couple from Brescia, in northern Italy. Ten years ago, Luca convinced Antonella to leave her chic life in Italy for the raw beauty of Kenya — the place where Luca had traveled extensively as a boy. Together, they discovered the Maasai-owned land in southern Kenya and formed a partnership with the 3,000 herdsmen living on it. With the Maasai’s help, Luca and Antonella built a main house and six cottages — with thatched roofs, rough wooden beams, and canvas sidings — for a maximum of 14 guests at any one time. They named the place Campi ya Kanzi, which means “Camp of the Hidden Treasure” in Kiswahili, and then invited people to come and see why.

Matasha, my Maasai guide, in traditional dress of red robes and beaded necklaces and bracelets. The spear in his right hand was with him always, a customary protection against wild animals when walking out in the bush. (Will Ebert)

Sustainable safari

Before I came to Campi ya Kanzi, I had been on a safari before, in the enormous Kruger National Park in South Africa almost 10 years ago.

I went with a friend’s family, and we stayed in unmemorable huts and drove ourselves around in a jeep, trying to avoid the seven-car pile-ups in which one or two cars would spot an animal and then five others would gather to form a rather — if I may say so — obnoxious crowd.  

This was no Kruger.  

For starters, there was only one other family and a honeymooning couple besides my family at Campi, and Luca and Antonella treated all of us as their personal guests. On our first day, they settled us into our tents, showed us around the grounds, and educated us on the history of the place. They also made very clear the camp’s mission — to raise money for schools and healthcare for the Maasai living anywhere within the extensive property, and to protect the wildlife.

That first day, Antonella explained that the wood for the camp’s construction came from sustainable tree plantations in nearby national forests, and that the water purifying system had been built out of the ubiquitous lava rocks of the Chyulu Hills. An organic vegetable garden provided the kitchen with its own natural produce, and the diesel generator* only ran for a few hours each day. Cards in our bathrooms told us that the little bottles of shampoos and soaps were biodegradable.

With an Italian eye for style, Antonella had decorated the lodge and the tents with local and traditional art: Beaded collars with strings of shells, ornate masks, and wooden carvings. Inside the main house, overstuffed sofas surrounded a large stone fireplace and heavy wooden chairs looked out across the open veranda to the mountains in the distance.

Most other camps lacked Campi’s rustic yet comfortable atmosphere.

Camp Kirawira in Tanzania, actively promoted its British colonial history, offering guests elaborate silver tea services laid out by local waiters wearing drab, grey uniforms and white gloves. Oriental carpets and old gramophones decorated the main house. Sure, the guides spoke flawless English and knew the Latin names of all the animals, but something didn’t feel quite right when a khaki-wearing man told us his tribe was Maasai. “Really?” I thought to myself and wondered where on the Serengeti he had bought his tan safari boots.

At Campi ya Kanzi, the Maasai were free to be themselves, red robes, spears and all. Along with the wildlife, they were the camp’s greatest assets.

Once, when we were in the bush on a game drive, Matasha called out to Stefano, our other guide and driver, to stop the jeep — he had seen an animal in the distance. I scanned the horizon eagerly, but even with binoculars glued to my face, I couldn’t see much besides trees and bushes.

Matasha said something to Stefano in Maa, the Maasai language.  

“Ah, yes,” Stefano said, looking into the distance with his own pair of binoculars. Then he translated. “A young giraffe — Maasai — born maybe three months ago.”

I continued to look, all the while silently grumbling to myself. Then, something miles away moved, and sure enough, through my binoculars, I could just make out the silhouette of a young Maasai giraffe, one of the three main subspecies that can be found in East Africa. My binoculars were no match for Matasha’s eyesight, however, so I took his word for it that the animal was three months old.

Matasha’s daughter, center, wearing my hat and sunglasses. Other children surround her, and in the background is the gnarled fence that forms the corral for the family’s cattle each night. (Will Ebert)

Conversations about conservation

At dinner time, the whole camp — all of us guests, Luca, Antonella, their three-year-old daughter Lucrezia, Stefano, and sometimes a few of the Maasai guides who spoke English — sat around the large wooden table in the main house. Animal sightings — herds of elephant, gazelles, giraffes, and zebras — were discussed at great length as was the more serious issue of introducing certain rare species back into the region.

On one such evening, Luca told us of some poachers who had hidden the skinned carcass of a hartebeest — a kind of antelope — in a large bush in the hills of the Maasai land. He guessed that the poachers came from the Wakamba, another tribe that competes for resources with the Maasai, often resulting in tension between the two tribes. Luca resolved to gather a team of Maasai to go find the men.

The fierce ownership Luca displayed that night was equal to that of the Maasai, even though Luca is essentially a guest on their land. The two parties have built an extraordinarily strong and respectful partnership, and that is what makes Campi ya Kanzi unique in my eyes. Of the $425 per person per night fee, $30 goes to a charitable foundation that supports the Maasai culture — Luca meets with representatives from the community several times a year and together they decide how to allocate funds to schools, healthcare, and social projects. The rest of the money goes to sustaining the camp and its employees, and paying the salaries of the Maasai who work there or as scouts, patrolling the land for poachers.

In this way, as the Maasai work to conserve the wildlife on the reserve, they benefit from even the smallest number of tourists. In 2000, Luca and Antonella also set up the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust that contributes specifically to wildlife adoption and to reimbursing the Maasai for any damages to their herds caused by predators.

Showing the Maasai the benefits of protecting lions in particular was difficult at first since cattle, which the lions hunt, are the Maasai’s livelihood. Dowries are given in cattle, boys are given their first cows when they formally become men, and families are considered wealthy only by the number of cows they own. But slowly the Maasai have come to realize that the more lions there are, the more consistent the stream of tourists contributing to Campi ya Kanzi’s trust which, in turn, helps preserve the Maasai culture.  

Years ago, Luca told me, a Christian missionary group tried to help the Maasai by building them a well so they would always have water. But after months of grazing their herds of cattle only on the surrounding grasses, the Maasai found that the land had become parched and the well was providing less and less water. The missionaries had meant well but their lack of cultural understanding blinded them to ways of helping that would still allow the Maasai to continue living their traditional nomadic life.

Matasha’s daughter, center, in a green dress, surrounded by other children. Behind them are two traditional huts constructed of dung, mud and sticks with a thatched roof. Inside, it is almost pitch dark and there are only a few fist-sized holes in the walls to let in light and release smoke from a small fireplace that burns in one corner. In the background is the corral’s fence, and behind that are the Chyulu Hills. (Will Ebert)

The pride of the Maasai

As guides, cooks, guards, and caretakers, the Maasai employees of the camp are not making their living by traditional means. But they do return to their villages on weekends and periodically throughout the year, and with the support of the foundation, they are all very likely living as closely as they can to their nomadic heritage.

When Matasha invited us to see his village, it became clear how respectful this reciprocal relationship between tradition and tourism can and should be. The visit with his family was not part of the tour — he was not being paid to show us a slice of Maasai life. Rather, he invited us as his guests. Matasha and his extended family live in essentially the same way his ancestors have lived for generations, and he was happy to show us the culture he was fighting to sustain.

In the dusty corral, Matasha’s wife watched over the assortment of children. By now, they had managed to extract the sunglasses and hat from my head and were gleefully chasing one another in their attempts to try them on. With his colorfully beaded wooden stick — a rungu — signifying leadership and power, Matasha motioned us toward one of the mud huts. Beaming, he told us it was his mother’s house.

Thinking about that day now, I can’t help but recall how the other safari camps spelled out in their brochures what it was like to visit a traditional village with their guides. They advertised it as an authentic experience, a unique opportunity to see where and how tribespeople had been living for generations. But when we realized that these “visits” actually entailed crowds of tourists piling into little vans to descend on these “villages,” where dollars could buy the beaded necklaces and postcards conveniently on display, we refused to sign up. It didn’t sit right, especially after Matasha had so generously invited us inside his own mother’s hut, where she slept, cooked, and lived her quiet life.

I must admit though that when I first saw Matasha’s home, it was difficult to reconcile the fact that I would be going back to a furnished, comfortable tent that night, while Matasha’s children would pile into their dung hut at bedtime. But seeing how happy they were — how proud — to live the way they did, brought home the fact that I was the only one feeling embarrassed about the disparity in our sleeping arrangements. Matasha and the other Maasai working at the camp saw the luxury of the guests’ lodgings every day, but they weren’t jealous. To them, our lifestyle was just another way of living.  

Part of the beauty of traveling is learning to look at things from a new perspective, however clichéd that sounds. For the rest of my stay at Campi ya Kanzi, I stopped feeling guilt-stricken when I returned to my tent at night. That I slept on a feather pillow was of little consequence to the Maasai at Campi. Rather, what mattered to them (and to me) was that my visit was helping sustain a traditional way of life they did not want to lose. My conscience slept easier after that.

Matasha‘s daughter, center, in a green dress, surrounded by other children. Behind them is Matasha‘s mother‘s hut, constructed from dung, mud and sticks with a thatched roof. To the left is Stefano, Luca‘s long-time friend from school in Italy, who works at Campi ya Kanzi as a guide. (Will Ebert)

Correction, April 7, 2006: This article originally misstated that Campi ya Kanzi uses a solar-powered generator for a few hours each day. In fact, the camp uses a regular diesel generator for a few hours each day when it needs to run some heavy-duty appliances. The rest of the time, it uses solar-powered electricity. (Go to the corrected text.)

In The Fray Contributor