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Uganda

How to make a dream come true

May 11, 2020

First: Make a list of things to do before you die. Realize that you are always inching toward death and still haven’t done a single thing on that list. This is the same thing your mom did; she put things off until it was too late.

Decide to do something about it.

Quit your job. Leave home. Book some flights.

Tell yourself, “If I make it to Ha Long Bay, this trip will be a success.”

Go to Peru. Go to Bolivia. Go to Argentina. Check some things off the list.

Meet a couple of Americans and drive around South Africa with them. Live in a village. Learn to carry buckets of water on your head. Go to Uganda. Ride across the country in a minibus with 24 people and a pregnant goat. Find work as a country-western DJ for the local radio station. Learn to harvest rice.

Go to Rwanda. Spend your days teaching English to genocide survivors. Cry. Teach them to play bingo. Laugh.

Fly to Egypt and immerse yourself in ruins. Find out your grandmother died. Find out your mom is dying, really dying. Fall down a tunnel of darkness. Hole up in a yoga camp on the Red Sea.

Go to your mother’s funeral. Wrap yourself in grief. Return to Egypt on the day a revolution begins. Feel yourself unraveling.

Take a boat to Jordan. Leave when protests begin. Go to Bahrain. Leave when protests begin. Get the nagging feeling that you are creating a trail of destruction around the world.

Go to Ethiopia, an extraordinary country, and plod your way through it. Feel like you’re something less than human.

Go to India, where something in your soul clicks. Love it. Embrace it. Drink in every hot day, every fragrant spice, every bit of eye-popping color. Move into an ashram. Pray.

Go to Thailand. Work with elephants. Meet a friend from home in Bangkok. Travel with her to Cambodia. Stay with more friends. Say goodbye.

Take a bus to Vietnam. Battle Saigon’s scooter-clogged streets and get a feel for the city. Slurp down bowls of noodles. Take a bus north. When the bus breaks down for 12 hours, sleep at a bus station. When the bus works again, it’s the hottest part of the day and the air-conditioning is now broken. Sweat. Make an unplanned stop in a beach town just because you desperately need a shower.

Take more buses. Take a train. Sleep in a dirty train car on soiled sheets. Arrive in Hanoi. Ride on the back of a motorcycle with a man even sweatier than you.

Schedule a boat tour. Pack up. Get picked up at 7 a.m.

Go to Ha Long Bay.

Wake up on a boat in a bay where everything is still. Everything is perfect.

Write that story.

Go to grad school to really dig into it.

Write that story again and again, edit it, excavate it. Work on it in scraps of time between your day job, when you stay up late, when you rise at 4 a.m. to have 20 quiet minutes before the baby wakes.

Sell it.

Have the perfect editor push you where you need it. He makes you laugh, he makes you cry, but most importantly, he makes you better. He reminds you to slow down where it hurts.

And then one day, poof. You have a book.

Your story, between two covers.

It comes out tomorrow.

Enjoy.

#GivingTuesday

December 2, 2014

It’s Giving Tuesday, which is apparently a thing that follows Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.

If you still have any money left after all those shopping days, here are my favorite ways to get rid of it:

 

Landmine Relief Fund

Beautiful young lady in Cambodia.

Beautiful young lady in Cambodia

 

The Landmine Relief Fund was started in 2004 by Bill and Jill Morse — two people I’m lucky to call friends — who were moved to action when they saw how many Cambodians live with the threat of dismemberment and death from landmines. Their NGO supports the work of Cambodian Self Help Demining, which employs a number of Cambodians and makes land safe and usable again. They also created a rural school program to give children in remote areas access to education.

In a country still suffering from the ravages of genocide and war, people shouldn’t have to live on land that literally kills them. That’s why the Landmine Relief Fund matters. It’s one of those rare instances where every dollar truly makes a lasting impact.

Donate here.

 

Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation

At the nursing home.

My mom, a few years before her death.

 

I hate it when I donate to an organization, then receive a bunch of fancy mailers, stickers, calendars, and booklets from them with pleas for more money. I realize I haven’t really helped the cause at all — I’ve just paid for a bunch of garbage to annoy me.

That’s why I like the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation. A minimal amount goes toward fundraising and administrative expenses, with the bulk of every donation going directly to research. They work with internationally renowned scientists, and they’ve made a number of discoveries to significantly advance treatment and understanding of Alzheimer’s.

And since I lost my mom to Alzheimer’s, I’m all for anything that helps us prevent, treat or cure this horrific disease.

Donate here.

 

Kiva

uganda

Most recently I funded a textile business in Kampala, Uganda.

 

It’s really simple: Choose a borrower, make a microloan for as little as $25 and create an opportunity for someone. You even get repaid and can use that money to help someone else!

I became a believer in Kiva when I was backpacking around Rwanda and met Kiva field partners, the people who work with potential borrowers and help them get the financial services they need. I saw firsthand how very small loans can empower people, lift them out of poverty, and help entire communities. I tend to support women-owned businesses in underbanked areas, but you can fund young entrepreneurs, green businesses, people in conflict zones, anything you want.

Make a loan here.

 

 

Travel, ‘The Way’ & talking politics on a Ugandan street corner

August 11, 2012

 

“Your George Bush had it right,” said John. His voice was deep and dark as blackstrap molasses.

“Whoa,” I said. “He is not my George Bush.”

John was a stranger. Just someone who offered to sit with me for a soda.

The table between us was flimsy red plastic, bleached pink by the sun. A nearby vendor sold sachets of drinking water. Salespeople squatted near sacks of potatoes. The air trembled from the sound of voices, feet, traffic.

 

“I mean to say, the George Bush of your country knows how to be a leader.”

“Oh?”

The concrete sidewalks were packed so thick with orange dust, you’d think they were dirt. A constant stream of scooters flowed down the street.

“Yes, George W. Bush knows the quickest way to make people happy and safe is to take away freedom,” John said. “He gives the people no choices.”

“I like having choices.”

“You Americans,” he shook his head. “The problem is that you have too much freedom.”

John tilted his chair, balanced on the two back legs. He lifted a glass bottle to his mouth and took a mighty swig of Coca-Cola. He swallowed audibly, then let out a long, “Ahhhh …”

I laughed. A Ugandan man giving me his take on America’s problems, pausing to take a big gulp from the most American of drinks. It couldn’t have been scripted better.

 

It was one of those moments that makes traveling worthwhile. The intersection of two human lives. An honest conversation over a plastic table. Looking at my own world from a dramatically different perspective.

John really did make me examine my thoughts about George W. Bush. He made me wonder how someone could come to this conclusion — that removing choice is an efficient way of keeping people happy — and see that as a positive thing. I struggled to understand John’s point of view, and he made an effort to understand mine. It led to a richer, layered and ultimately memorable conversation about what happened in our lives to shape our belief systems.

The other day I watched “The Way,” a movie written and directed by Emilio Estevez, who is also the center of the film. He plays a backpacker who dies on El Camino de Santiago, an 800-kilometer pilgrimage route through France and Spain. His father (Martin Sheen, appropriately) ends up making the trek his son never completed. Along the way he meets an unusual cast of characters. An overweight, jovial Dutchman. An Irish writer in search of a cure for writer’s block. A secretive and brash Canadian. The hikers quickly become friends, because that’s what travel does to people — it’s a unifier. It tosses strangers together and turns them into friends. It pushes the fast-forward button on relationships.

Being wildly out of place makes everyone vulnerable. And that vulnerable spot is exactly where the transitions occur.

 

Travel breaks down language into the most simple terms. There is no pretense, nothing to hide and nothing to lose. It is popping open a vein and letting the truth spill out because the very next day you could be 3,000 miles away. It is everything the internet is supposed to be and often is not.

It means that a light conversation over a shared soda can transform into the deep, unsettling questions that actually matter: Who are you? What do you believe? What made you that way? Where do you belong? Somehow, some way, a sun-bleached plastic table is found to meet in the space in between.

It’s what I miss most about backpacking, and it makes me yearn to get back on the road. Had John posted these thoughts on Facebook, I wouldn’t hesitate to unfriend him. But in front of me, he was a challenging and interesting composite. I didn’t agree with his views, but I respected them and I took time to try to understand them. I don’t think I do that now with people in my own country, and it’s something I’m working hard to change.

 

 

Fancy-schmancy amenities on a backpacker budget

April 17, 2012

I read this article about the world’s most outrageous hotel amenities. They include all kinds of super-posh services that cater to one’s every whim and desire. Like a tanning butler. A fragrance sommelier. A soap concierge — you know, for all those moments when you really want to get clean, but you also need options.

It got me to thinking about my round-the-world trip. I didn’t get any of that fancy stuff! Nobody coddled me, wiped me or sprayed anything on me. At least, not on purpose. But that doesn’t mean my trip was amenity-free either.

None of these things included a sommelier, concierge or butler, but they were amenities all the same:

The Adventure Brew Hostel in La Paz, Bolivia.

Price pre night: $7

Amenities: CARBS! Microbrewed beers, a pancake buffet.

 

After a month of downing watery Bolivian brew, a free beer with actual flavor seemed like the most novel thing ever. And Saya beer is brewed on site by good people who know what they’re doing.

So what if the hostel showers were tepid and the beds were hard? I drank beer — REAL BEER — all night long. And in the morning, there was a free, all-you-can-eat pancake buffet waiting to sop up my hangover.

***

Ecolodge Sol y Luna in Coroico, Bolivia

Price per night: $14

Amenity: Hot tub. But it’s not what you think.

 

Backpacking is dirty business. Filthy, actually. One time in Bolivia I found a twig stuck to the back of my knee, and I had no idea how long it had been there. So when my friend and I saw an advertisement for Sol y Luna, it only took two little words to convince us to stray from our planned itinerary: Hot. Tub.

We traveled many, many hours out of our way. When we arrived, we discovered that the ecolodge had a very different idea of hot tub than what we imagined. It was a stone tub, situated outside in the garden. And it was filled by hand, one kettle of boiling water at a time.

But you know what? It was perfectly lovely. It would have been great anyway, but it was especially memorable since I hadn’t felt hot water on my skin in almost two months. The dirt floated away, the heat turned my bones into butter and I was clean for the first time in ages.

***

Hostel Estoril in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Price per night: $15

Amenities: Rooftop bar, free walking tours of the city, social events at night.

 

I made friends, I socialized, I felt safe. And I don’t know if there’s a more beautiful spot in Buenos Aires than this rooftop bar.

***

Red Chilli Hideaway in Kampala, Uganda.

Price per night: $6

Amenity: A pig as big as a sofa.

 

Why did they have a pig as big as a sofa? I have no idea.

Why did I find a three-legged cat on my pillow every night? I can’t answer that either.

***

Bodhi Villa in Kampot, Cambodia

Price per night: $4

Amenities: Movies, chill room, floating bar, bioluminescent plankton, illicit activity.

 

Bodhi Villa almost feels like something I conjured up in a fever dream. There were beaches, crabs, rope swings and Billie Holiday. A sprawling bar opened into a river dock. The scenery was slightly too bright and sharp and unreal, like looking through the wrong lens at the optometrist’s office. At some point, a chubby Cambodian man named James Brown put me on the back of his yellow Vespa and drove me through acres of pepper plantations.

Days were drowsy and often spent in the “chill room,” but the nights exploded with raucous live music. A group of strangers became my closest friends in the world. We drank together. We sang loudly and off-tune. We jumped off the dock and marveled over the neon clouds of bioluminescent plankton that swirled around our limbs.

I was there for days? Weeks? Whatever it was, it was much longer than expected. One morning I woke up and realized I might end up at Bodhi forever if I didn’t get out. I immediately booked a bus bound for Ho Chi Minh City, about 10-12 hours away.

Before I departed, a new friend handed me a sandwich and a joint the size of a lipstick tube.

I politely declined, “Oh, thanks, but I don’t think I want to bring any drugs across borders today.”

“What? You got big plans for the bus?” he said. “Just take it and remember Bodhi … If you can.”

***

Ringo’s Foyer in Malacca, Malaysia

Price per night: $4

Amenity: Bike tour of Malacca.

 

Almost every night, the owner of this hostel takes all his guests on a bike tour of beautiful Malacca.

It became one of my favorite memories of Malaysia. We carried bikes down skinny stairwells. The hostel owner strapped a radio to his handlebars and blasted Lady Gaga from the tinny speakers. And then we pedaled off into the night, through downtown, down ribbons of waterfront, all the way to a local restaurant that didn’t have a name or a real address. The excursion forged a camaraderie between all of us guests, and I saw things I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

***

Lazy Bird Guesthouse in Incheon, South Korea

Price per night: $19

Amenity: Love.

 

I arrived in Seoul around midnight. I was too tired to travel an hour all the way into the city, so I booked a night at a guesthouse that is located close to the airport. Everything about this place was marvelous. The owner’s husband, Jackie, picked me up at the airport. My bed was ridiculously comfortable. The shower was hot and strong. The wifi was fast. The coffee was brewed first thing in the morning. There were games, DVDs, a Wii, even traditional Korean costumes for dressing up. And I am not exaggerating when I say this was the cleanest place I’ve ever stayed. It was SPOTLESS.

The hospitality went above and beyond what I expect at a hostel/guesthouse. The owner, Liz, and I had long conversations about our travels and our favorite places around the world. We exchanged e-mail addresses. They took my photo for the guest wall. And then Liz and Jackie practically had to kick me out.

“We can drop you off the train station …”

“Thanks. Maybe in an hour or so.”

After some time passed, they tried again.

“Don’t you want to get into the city …?”

“Uh, yeah. Maybe later.”

Finally, they said I should probably go unless I was going to stay for another night. It actually made me ache to leave. The place felt just like home — only a nicer, cleaner version of it.

A few days later, I received a follow-up e-mail from Liz. She wanted to see how my travels were going, make sure I was safe and see if I needed anything. “Yes!” I was tempted to respond. “I want to pack you up and and take you with me!”

The ethics of what you share

November 3, 2011

This morning there were five images of starving Africans in my Facebook news feed, and it really bugged me.

I realize that the people who shared these images had the best intentions. I know they’re trying to put things in perspective. I even agree with a lot of the sentiment. This isn’t a personal attack on any of my friends.

I just don’t like it when people are used to further a political agenda. It dehumanizes them. It exploits them. And it’s irresponsible, because such photos often misrepresent the entirety of the population. Africa is not all distended bellies and children covered in flies.

Most importantly, it does nothing to help the very complex issue of hunger in developing countries. Why not use a different kind of image to achieve the same goal and serve that community? Why not show a farmer who achieved success thanks to a microloan? Why not depict a family getting fed? (Along those lines, when’s the last time you saw a photo of a successful African, besides a dictator or Charlize Theron?)

I’d like to think images of suffering aren’t the only things that motivate us to help others.

Also, it still nags at me, this idea of sharing an image of someone because it makes you feel better about your own life. It’s like saying, “At least I’m not THAT guy.” It’s misery porn.

 


 

 

 

 

These photos also perpetuate the myths that all Africans are starving, all poor people are black, and all poor people are miserable. And that’s simply not the case.

Just as a gentle reminder, there’s a lot of happiness out there in this world.

 

There’s a lot of beauty.

 

And there’s a whole lotta fun.