I leaned against the cool plaster wall, tugging impatiently at my headscarf. I landed in Hargeisa, Somaliland two hours ago, and now found myself lounging in a sprawling cement house in the outskirts of the city. I sat cross-legged on a mattress in the corner of the room, surrounded by a circle of new friends – five young women from the Somali diaspora, sporting the latest hijab styles and perfectly manicured nails.
“New York – that’s so cool that you’ve lived there before. I’d love to go.” The girls passed around a jar of cold mango juice sweating from condensation in the afternoon heat. “But isn’t it dangerous? Gun violence? I don’t want to be shot.”
That was my first conversation in Somalia.
*****
Travel is fatal to prejudice, said Mark Twain. Travel is the one thing you can buy that makes you richer, says every wanderlusting Instagram account. If all these news articles can be trusted, it seems that millenials are quitting jobs in droves and taking to the road like never before – spending dollars on experiences instead of material items, finding themselves on a yoga retreat in the jungles of Bali instead of working the age-old 9-to-5. Life is beautiful and in high-definition – and aggressively, competitively so, thanks to the advent of an entire gamut of full-frame mirrorless cameras.
I grew up bouncing from country to country with my parents, changing schools every single year until I reached the age of fifteen. Even though we were not wealthy by society standards at the time, my father believed that the greatest investment he could make was my education – both inside and outside the classroom. No matter which country we were living in at the time, he would make a point to take my mother and me on an annual “cultural immersion” trip overseas. I lived my entire childhood out of XL cardboard moving boxes and battered suitcases with broken wheels – and said goodbye to friends I had just made at the conclusion of each year – but that was the only life I knew. A life for which, now with hindsight, I am extremely thankful.
Munching into fried drumsticks that turned out to be frog legs, age five in Taipei. Discovering anchovies for the first time on a pizza, age seven in Naples. Walking into gift shops stuffed floor to ceiling with plush Totoros (i.e. Asian girl heaven), age nine in Tokyo. Spending New Year on the banks of a river (stream, to be exact) sharing fried plantains with three generations of the same family, playing along that we were card-carrying members of their Chinese communist brethren – age seventeen in Cuba.
I am so, so, so incredibly lucky. Travel is a privilege, one that some people are able to enjoy much more easily than others. Travel is not the be all and end all, and it certainly is not the “meaning to life”. But my passion is story-telling, and travel allows me to experience places and people with unfiltered, raw stories that would never be picked up by a news channel or journalist carrying a press pass. I don’t have family right now that depend on me financially, everyone around me is in decently good health, and I am able-bodied and young.
Almost every single travel blog I come across offers “Best Of” lists – tacos in Tulum, brunch in London, beaches in the Caribbean – or advice on how to make your trip as easy and as photogenic as possible. “Here is my tried and true way of getting the best tourist-free shot at Angkor Wat,” I read, but wait – where is the cluster of kids begging on the roadside and tugging on your shirt sleeves as you try to haggle for the tuk tuk price? What about the sacrosanct cloak of dappled light – the tourist-free silence more precious than an Instagram shot of sunrise?
Let’s be honest. At some point my “Top 20 Things To Do” lists will make its way on here – I do live in 2018, where blog visitor counts and social media presence define audience viewership. And if you know me offline, you know I have also have a habit of vacationing in Paris hotel suites, getting drunk off Champagne and wandering into shoe stores to buy the latest season of heels. But I also love the road – dusty tracks, cobblestoned paths, or sewage-clogged back alleys with stray dogs nonchalantly digging through trash. I have made the airport my home – not the club lounges with made-to-order guacamole or delicate finger sandwiches – but the uncomfortable cracked leather seats in which I have finally managed to find a comfortable curling position for napping. Jetlag is a close friend, Pepto-Bismol is manna, and a linen headscarf (not chiffon – it slips easily) is probably the most versatile piece of clothing you could have in a backpack.
“Strangers on this road we are on,” croon The Kinks, “we are not two, we are one.” Travelling strips you naked – sometimes you have to expose your own most private, secret self before you can expect the same from the people you meet. You end up blabbing about your recent breakup in rudimentary Spanish to the sympathetic Uber driver in Miami, or talking about your childhood traumas with the chef behind the sushi counter. You grab anyone who is willing to listen to you – your neighbor in a train car in rural France, your Couchsurfing host cracking open the fifth bottle of Corona. You give, you give, you give. But you receive even more in return when for the briefest moment you lock eyes and you know that your new friend sees you – really sees you – with the same common thread of humanity in which you thought you were starting to lose hope.
I didn’t get the name of the man in the picture at the end of this post. I met him as I was wandering through the market in Harar, eastern Ethiopia. Knowing no Amharic, I had to get my guide for the day to translate for me.
“He wants you to take his picture. He says he will never be able to visit America or Europe, but if you take his picture, at least his picture can get there.”
There, sir, it’s done. I only wish I bought you a cup of coffee (with a sprig of rue) so you could tell me your story.
In the meantime, dear online friends and readers, watch this space – first Travel post will be up in the next two weeks.
