1. Travel Story

As the train door opened, a bitter chill rushed through air, rapidly nipping at my already tomato-red nose. Had my mom not dressed me in layers upon layers of clothing, I was sure that I would turn into an ice sculpture. I looked at the virgin snow. I was amazed at how pristine its condition was, seeming completely untouched when moments before the iron giant in which I had yet to move from, had come roaring through. I could faintly hear the sounds of people behind me, anxiously getting up from their seats as their snow pants swished together and their voices intertwined. My head felt clogged and my ears were throbbing, not even a change in atmospheric pressure could drown out the shrill sound of my sister’s voice.  “Kristen, GO!”

I stepped out onto the earth, my sheltered feet slowly sinking into the cotton-white ground.  My sister ran to an empty space and fell back in bliss, as if she was falling into a comfortable bed after a long day of play. I joined her and smiled as my mom sifted through her bag and pulled out her camera, ready to capture any moment that would be worth remembering. Around us, children were making snow angels and having snow ball fights with their dads; making forts fit for young kings and huddling close to one another to hold on to the feeling of life in their small bodies.

I could sense that my sister wanted to play, but I couldn’t find the urge. It’s not that I was too cold or anything– I wanted to take in my surroundings, breathe the pure air, and fall into the fantasy of a winter wonderland that I was currently living. I laid down a looked up at the grey sky. I could still taste the last bit of hot chocolate that I had been savoring from breakfast. I couldn’t wait to go home and tell my friends that I had been drinking real hot chocolate in Switzerland. It doesn’t get more genuine than that.

As the snowflakes gently landed on my seven year old body, I could see families starting to gather again, getting ready to board the train for the descent down the mountain. I quickly closed my eyes, hoping that I would become invisible. I heard my father laugh as he knelt down beside me. “Kristen, it’s time to go,” he said. I didn’t respond. After a moment had passed, he lifted up my padded body, draping me over his shoulder, and carried me back towards the train.

I felt a wave of warm air as the lights from inside tried to lure open my unwilling eyelids. I felt my body collapse into the cushioned seats, as I laid my head against the cool window. A chill ran through my body.  Without opening my eyes I shook my head like a snow globe, hoping that I would once again feel the snow fall around me. I laughed to myself, realizing how foolish I was being. It was just snow, after all; the kind of snow you feel when your hundreds of feet in the air, in a different country, an ocean away from home. Plus, I’d always have the pictures.

Two summers ago I spent a week visiting Zumaia, a coastal city in the Basque region of Northern Spain. We stayed in an old cottage about 500 yards from a gigantic lighthouse and about five miles outside of the nearest town. The cottage, situated on a bluff a few yards from the rocky coast, was constructed mainly of stone and seemed so rustic and unstable that it could plunge at any moment off the cliff and into the sea. The picturesque scenery was definitely a change from the flat midwestern landscapes that I had been used to at home, but I couldn't really enjoy the trip in full without an internet connection. Like food and water before it, the internet is now an essential survival tool, it's like an instantaneous plane ticket back home at any moment. Like Huxley, I agree that traveling is a vice, so I try to justify my excursions by always being connected to the internet, that way I can be as productive as I am at home all while enjoying whatever new and delightful experiences I can afford to indulge in. Traveling is an easy escape from daily reality and it makes me feel guilty. Like Huxley, I like to feel purposeful, but leisurely traveling is enticing because it's easier than tackling "programmes of useful serious reading" or "systematic tours through the history of art and civilization". Even if I were to travel with a purpose, my life would still seem vacuous and unfulfilled because to feel purposeful I need to be productive, which is hard to do while travelling, expecially in Zumaia without wi-fi.

I am a warrior for enduring the eight-hour flight, engines roaring, with the occasional turbulence.

My refusal to pay anything more than the bear minimum lands me in a seat tucked nicely against a window, a stranger, and another stranger. Conversation floats between travel and the stuffiness of the cabin, but all I want is a minute of silence so I can quickly assemble my earphones and proceed with the long journey ahead of me. Pretzels, peanuts, or cookies are the last bits of information I can recall before drifting into a peaceful state of Ambien-induced sleep. 

My mom is behind me, and my shoulder is poked and prodded multiple times before I regain consciousness to see what she wants. We have arrived, and I can quit feigning deafness in the hopes of avoiding small talk with the man to my left.

After exiting the aircraft and entering the Athens airport, I have suddenly forgotten all about the cons of travel: the cramped flight, the stingy selection of snacks, the smell of stale nothingness. As I avert my attention to the many signs welcoming me to Greece, I no longer care about my luggage or security, all I’m concerned with is finding customs and receiving the one thing that makes travel worth it: a stamp in my passport.

Some airports neglect to acknowledge this crucial step in travel, while other use it as a seal of approval: you’ve paid for your flight, you’ve sat through it’s dullness, and now I grant you permissions to experience our country. For me, the stamp means much more than that.  I use my passport as a collection of my travels, and if one of the countries I’ve visited goes unmarked, it’s as if I’ve never even been there. Sure, I will be taking hundreds of pictures and acquiring countless memories of Souvlaki feasts and ancient ruins, but it’s not enough. I need that stamp. Nothing is more pathetic than a blank passport, with it’s stark pages conveying cultural ignorance. I’m not culturally ignorant! I’m traveling to Greece, damn it!

I take a few quick strides away from our gate and into the airport’s abyss, a sea of unfamiliar faces. When we reach customs, I fill out the necessary forms and shuffle through the line as quickly as possible. My parents and sisters take the lead, while I pull up the rear.  The security officer takes their passports, briefly looks through them and stamps, stamps, stamps, stamps. Suddenly it’s my turn to hand over the small blue book. I try to steady my hand but it drops on the floor regardless. I pick it up, and pass it too him. He looks through it and hands it back to me. No stamp? I question. I’m out of ink, he says. 

I’ve been the horrible tourist Huxley so accurately describes.  I cried through trips to Paris and Rome.  In Paris, outside of Sacre Coeur, I think I got one of my first travel wake up calls.  For most of our time there, I had been very rude to the Parisian pigeons.  As we walked in front of Sacre Coeur a dollop bounded down from the sky to land on my arm.  What could this strange object be?  It was straight up pigeon poop.  In retrospect, I see how this frankly disgusting occurrence was a sign.  I was not “alive” (Iyer, pg. 2) in Paris at age eight.  I wasn’t going through the “hardship” (Iyer, pg. 1) that is vital to travel.  My homesickness wasn’t “hardship”; it was just a severe case of ignorance.  I was crass and crude to Paris.

In Rome three years later I felt like I was in A Room with a View or another story where a young person is given “The Grand Tour” of Europe.  One night my mom and I went to a tearoom that was in business for the purpose of making British travelers feel more at home back in the olden days.  This tearoom was basically a “society of their fellow-tourists” (Huxley, pg. 10), “a little oasis of home in the foreign wilderness” (Huxley, pg.10). My mom and I were, and still are obsessed with England so this was a logical place for us to have dinner, but still something was off.  I feel like I had something along the lines of Welsh rarebit, a strange English delicacy.  I also have a feeling that it wasn’t very good.  After reading Huxley and Iyer, I’m starting to look back on this dinner in horror.  I wasn’t “alive” here either (Iyer, pg. 2).  I was an American who loves England, a country not known for its delicious food, eating in an English restaurant in Rome, crazy, weird Rome.  I was nuts.  Let’s not even get into the night we went to the Hard Rock Café.

I have since returned to both cities and both have respectively made me feel “alive” (Iyer, pg. 2).  Rome heralded its presence with the sight of the Pope, a woman angrily berating her dog, and trips to the grocery store across from the convent where we were staying.  Paris made me find everyone attractive and have a form of sensory overload.  I’m a sucker for cobblestone streets and classy looking apartment buildings.  Paris caused me to fall into a woman’s lap on the subway and gave me the courage to be able to laugh it off in the way Santayana says travel “’fosters humor’” (Iyer, Santayana, pg. 6).  I knew how to properly react to this moment when it happened.  This was no pigeon poop.  This was that “je ne sais quoi”.  I know knew how to treat Paris.

For a week during the summer of 2008 my family and I traveled to Cappadocia, Turkey. On our third day my parents signed us up to go on a hot-air-balloon ride over the sandy terrain. As was to be expected, the balloon ride was incredible. We arrived at a relatively flat, grassy area at four o’clock in the morning. The weather was crisp and my brother and I still had sleep in our eyes. From the air we watched the sun rise over the crooked, sand formations below us. As beautiful as this experience was however, what really stuck in my mind was what happened right after we landed.

The balloon basket bumped the ground several times before it came to a complete stop. My family climbed out along with the six other tourists that had been on the ride with us. They were from all over the world. The ten of us stood in a field in the early morning sunlight and discussed what we had just experienced.

Suddenly Mustafa, our pilot clapped his hands twice and shouted, “time to pack up the balloon!” The other tourists and I made nervous eye contact. Mustafa showed each of us where to stand and showed each of us how to roll the balloon together. We were all confused now because it was getting hot, the balloon was heavy and we didn’t understand why we were being forced to do hard work along with the crew. But as we continued to work together, we realized that the work we were doing now was just as much a part of this experience as the balloon ride itself had been. We took off our sweaters and rolled up our jeans. I put up my hair as did the other girls that had been in the balloon with me. We laughed as we worked and brushed the dust off of each other’s clothes. We all became sweatier and dirtier until we almost fit in with the Turkish crew.

After the balloon had been all rolled up and packed loosely into its bag, Mustafa showed us how to pick up the bag and push the balloon in tighter. Suddenly I felt one of the Turkish crewmembers pick me up. Before I could even ask what he was doing or protest, he threw me into the bag on top of the balloon. Two other unsuspecting girls were thrown into the bag as well. The crewmembers laughed and suddenly everybody else was laughing too. The crewmembers were using me and the two other girls as weights to stuff the balloon into its case.

Long after I climbed out of that bag and eventually went home to Boston, I continued to think back on this memory. I will never forget the way that something so odd suddenly became so fun. The togetherness I felt while packing away that hot air balloon remains with me to this day. 

    

Wandering the back streets of Florence completely lost, with no interest in getting found, we stumbled upon a cute little restaurant. It looked the like the label sticker for a bottle of expensive Italian wine; from the cobblestone streets to the paint chipped shutters, everything about it fulfilled my cliche mental image of Italy. We stepped inside, and it quickly became clear we were the only ones in the establishment who spoke English. We ordered glasses of wine by pointing at the menu and smiling, then leaned back in our seats to enjoy an authentic Italian experience.

Tables were crammed into every open area of the small space, and chairs had been squeezed around every table to allow for more people. The place was packed, and waiters dodged small children as they slid between tables and chairs to deliver trays of homemade pasta and fresh veal. A small TV hanging over the bar played music videos quietly in the corner, barely audible over the murmurs of the patrons. Upbeat jazz with creamy Italian vocals over a slideshow of pictures of wine country completed the atmosphere, and we did nothing but sip our wine and listen as a different table erupted into laughter every few seconds.

As the jazz song faded away and ended, we were snapped out of fantasy Italy and into 21st Century Italy: Beyonce's "Single Ladies" began to blare out of the TV. I looked around expecting confusion, as I was quite confused myself. They couldn't listen to Beyonce in Italy, she sang in English! I listened to Beyonce with my friends at home, not in a small restaurant in Florence! But to my even greater astonishment, several of the tables began to sing along when the chorus came around and someone yelled something in Italian to the bartender I took to mean as a request for the volume to be raised. At first, I was heartbroken that my perfect Italy had been destroyed. But when the bartender put the song on full blast and one of the tipsy middle-aged men stood up and began to dance as everyone watched, I couldn't help but smile. And then I pulled out the iPhone that I had forgotten was in my pocket and took a video. So maybe Italy wasn't the "authentic" wonderland I had pictured in my head; instead I have an "authentic" video of a chubby Italian man doing the single ladies' dance.

25 Tamuz, 5768:

I sit in Tel Aviv’s Independence Hall where David Ben-Gurion declared Israel as an independent state in 1948, waiting for an information session to start. Like many other Jewish high schoolers, I was on a summer program to Israel. Out of all the groups that went, mine was a bit different; instead of being four weeks long like most other trips, ours was almost seven and included an academic component to help bond us as a group and to help us better understand the history and present struggles of Israel. Our teachers and counselors always told us how our program was different from other summer programs to Israel in that we wouldn’t just be tourists, but we would also ultimately feel like citizens of the country and treat it as our home.

The tour was a regular tour; it wasn’t a special event, just one of the multiple tours offered in one day at Independence Hall. I’m sure the leader of the session felt it to be rather monotonous, for she probably had led other ones right before ours. She opened up the information session with basic remarks about Israel and its independence, then proceeded to play a recording of “Hatikvah”, the national anthem, that was sung right after independence was proclaimed. In addition to it being a pretty song and very moving, the passion and emotion I heard in the people’s voices got to me. In everyday life, like in class, knowing that people were fighting for their freedom and what they believed in would have interested me, but it never would have moved me to the extent that this particular recording did. It inspired me and from that moment I no longer felt like a tourist, but instead a resident.

In the following weeks, I made sure to make the most of my time. At Jerusalem’s major cemetery, I saw all the graves of soldiers killed in the many wars Israel has dealt with since its inception and I was truly thankful for all of them. Although Aldus Huxley claimed that travel was such a big industry because people felt like they had to brag about their journeys and one-up their neighbors, I honestly felt an Israeli pride; something that could have never come from simply going to a country because one felt the need to do so. 

Only three days?

I was initially a bit disappointed when I found I would only get three days to taste and explore Montreal. I wanted to go early August when the festivals would be bring together thousands of Montrealers and tourists from all over the world to the second largest francophone city after Paris.
My parents both had business trips scheduled and they were firm about not allowing me to go for ten days by myself. Mom, especially, insisted that it was too dangerous for a girl to go to a foreign place by herself even if she was old to drink in the destination city or knew how to speak one of its official languages.  My brother would accompany me, which meant I had to wait for his summer school to end later in the month. The slight disappointment I felt initially just disappeared into the air at the thought of leaving my home, my usual dull summer days in the suburbs just north of Boston. I would have a blast no matter what in Montreal and be surrounded with a sense of freedom and adventure.

The night before departure after packing, I surfed the Internet for “must-go-see” attractions and made a rough itinerary for the three days.  There were so many things to do and see! Notre Dame Basilica, the Old Montreal, the Botanical Gardens, Jean-Talon Market, Museum of Fine Arts, Pointe-a-Calliere Museum, Mount Royal… etc…

We arrived on a late afternoon and after we checked-in, we strolled around to the Old Montreal and did a walking tour of Vieux Montreal. My favorite was Notre Dame Basilica, the beauty and grandeur of its interior which mesmerized  me entirely the moment I stepped in.
On the second day, we got on a red double-decker bus for a sightseeing of Montreal. The tour guide, a typical native, beautifully switched between English and French while giving us interesting historical and cultural facts about the building we passed by. When we were roaming around the narrow European cobblestoned streets of Old Montreal, I realized most people out in the street going in and out of the European buildings were tourists. I was informed that only 1% of the locals lived in Old Montreal, around 4%in downtown, and 95% outside of the city. If we wanted to see a real Montreal local, we would have to attack the lunch hours on a business day.

Usually when I visit a city I have not been before, on top of doing all the tourist activities- visiting monumental sites and shopping for souvenirs- I try to feel what it is like to be a local. It helped when I had a native friend who would take me to the places where the locals would go and teach me some simple phrases in the language. Since I didn’t know anyone native on this trip, I was satisfied just to try some “real” Montreal food.

The short and sweet stay in Montreal was full of excitement, adventure, and learning. I was just jolly and happy for the entire time I was there, just for being in a different city.
 

Life, up until this particular crevice of time the universe lured me into, had been an amalgam of tangled stories and stardusted illusions of ancestors. And now, as the taxi careened its way through the sinuous curves of the Montes de Malaga, I felt as if the secrets of my bloodline were embedded in Andalusian soil. The midnight air seemed pregnant with the romance of my heritage, the palpability of my origins quickening my pulse. Six years after this voyage, I can recall so clearly the primal connection forged with the hips of mountains as I rode through shadows. What elation, To hear the taxi driver croon words of my mother tongue, the language that was sung to me as a child and the language that forever bound my heart! What passion dripped off of every word, every syllable that escaped his native mouth. I stuck my head outside the window of the car to feel the wind beat against my face, the wind that was woven with the whispers of those who came before me. I thought of how before setting foot on this soil, my heritage had simply been an abstraction that somehow leaped inside my soul like a caged canary, unsatisfied. I spoke the language, I ate the food, I heard the stories, and yet, it was all so illusory, tales of a bygone people and land that lived only in the memories of the elder. And now, I was thrust into the crux of it all. My mother sat beside me, and I felt a particular sort of bond with her. We were both in this together, this country that had borne our predecessors, the roots of our identities. My father sat in the front seat, entranced by the scenery but with a certain degree of removal- this was not the country of his origin, but just another beautiful place he had been. My brother was asleep on my mother’s shoulder, in a dreamless slumber unaware of our history passing him by. We continued down the rustic Andalusia road, and within moments my pipe dream ended: our taxi pulled up to our resort, my mother gave him a tip with the condescension of an American, the doors were opened for us, in we stepped into our golden residence teeming with starry eyed foreigners. I unearthed my roots and dismembered them on the same evening.

It was as if no other moment existed. To be suspended in mid-air with only a thin rope of support on which to rely. I glanced at the world through pre-Columbian eyes and saw a flat, smooth earth speckled with mansions the size of dollhouses and humans invisible from so high up in the air.
 
After pounds of peer pressure, I had set my mind on parasailing. As a near acrophobic, I had barely had enough courage to climb a tree in recent years, let alone allow myself to be lifted above the ocean by a fast-moving boat. Curiously, the day had begun with a leisurely trip to the stunning rocky beaches of Nice, France.
 
A far cry from the popular metropolis of Paris, Nice emanated a clear relaxation that I planned on taking advantage of during one sun-soaked, June day. As we arrived to the beach early that morning, the first parasailing trips were underway. My immediate thought was, I would never do that. Soon, however, a short while lounging and people watching on the beach had taken its toll on our ever-racing minds; my friends and I were up for something more entertaining. A stroll down the beach later and it was no time before I found myself strapped into a harness with my best friend, someone I would consider exponentially more adventurous than myself, literally attached to my hip. 
 
The engine revved on the boat just yards ahead of me and my stomach dropped. But instantly France dissolved beneath me and I flew. Not a fast, airplane-like rush, but first a rough lurch, then silence. I became an untouched cloud on an overcast day, floating easily above the Mediterranean. To my left was the sea merging with the sky, creating an image only ever discovered by those few people who ditched the boat and chose to throw themselves into the atmosphere. To the right was a landscape I attributed to the work of Renoir. The vibrant blues and forest greens of Nice, the water, and the mountains beyond further induced the reality of this nonsensical sky voyage.
 
Freedom always seemed, to me, like an idea. It could be reached, even if temporarily, through hard work or visits to unknown places. It was all in the mind, or so I thought. This new physical freedom made the other version appear intangible. I now had a presence and an experience to put with an idea. So I drifted, more slowly than I expected, and watched the boats and large fish below as if a film was being recorded in my mind. Something so unreal became my reality in a matter of seconds and while I was in the air, the weightlessness of the breeze was my ground. I stood there, simply remembering. This was a feeling I could not allow to be erased no matter how many other adventures were to ensue in my life.
 
The flight by plane to France from the United States procured in me a desire for the future. My flight by parachute created the standard of comparison I use in order to optimize any occasion to come.
         

In a small house in Mykonos, which was used solely for celebration purposes, I sat wedged between my cousin and a distant aunt. I had been travelling with my grandparents and cousins for three weeks across Cyprus and Greece, and stopped at Mykonos to visit my grandfather’s cousin. We were at a panagiri, a large feast that occurs in July. The house was small and busy; people were crowded into every corner of the room. The entire house was one large room, though the kitchen was partially separated by sheets hanging from the ceiling. It was hot; every window and door was opened, but that did not keep the temperature down. There was too much food and more was being prepared in the kitchen—seemingly constantly.  A small band was in the center of the room; the older men were leading a kalamatianos, a traditional Greek dance.

Though it was hectic and hot, the day was tremendously enjoyable. My cousins were happy and I was happy. I had spent most of our time trying to pull them to museums and ancient sites; they wanted to relax at the beach. They could have fun, while I was able to pester my papou, my grandfather, with questions about the dialect of the islands and why the dance steps changed village. It was pleasing; it felt more intimate and real than any other experience I had that summer. I did not hear one conversation in English that entire day, only a few broken phrases thrown at me, to which I responded in similar broken Greek.

As it got later, the mood became more festive. I danced with my papou and a few of the other villagers. Everything became a blur of sounds and faces. Something changed. A pleasant sense of mindlessness came over me. It was easy not to think too much at all. There was so much movement in that room that I could simply lose myself inside it. I stopped worrying about the logistics of our travelling; I did feel the need to acquire an endless amount of facts. I could let go.

Later on, when the sky was getting dark, a third cousin led me behind the house. There was a small alcove made of stone—possibly also concrete—that was built into the ground. Inside was an altar, with an icon of the Virgin Mary, a crucifix, and a bible. The walls were painted white, but names of the family’s ancestors were carved into it. I was told their bones or ashes were fixed into the walls. I had seen many churches by then—we saw a church in almost every place we travelled—yet that small altar was easily the most beautiful and singular thing I had ever seen. I fell in love with its singularity. I still was not thinking hard about anything. I do not think I absorbed much of it. When I think back now, I largely remember that sensation of experiencing something new and authentic, of feeling relaxed and

I sit on a brown teak bench outside of a French gelato joint observing the chocolate chips embedded in the seafoam green orb. A sense of anticipation just sits in my stomach. It is not overwhelming or unpleasant at all. It just sits right there inside me. The air feels different from that of California. It’s much colder and the cold bite. I want the comfort of home, the air of home, and the people from home. You can say I’m unsatisfied. The gelato is too sweet, the crepes I can just make in my kitchen, escargot is overrated, and the grass just isn’t as green. I’ve been everywhere I’ve supposed to have been before I die including Louvre, Versailles Castle, the Arc de Triomphe and I’m sitting outside a famous gelato shop at this moment. Is France really meeting my expectations?

Here I am 6000 miles away from home and I’m not even sure whether I am excited or not. I should be excited. There is tomorrow though. I have the Paris Marathon CEP Fencing Tournament 2007 this week-end with people who have the exact same aspirations as me. It’s my first international tournament in my six year career and the best reps from France and other neighboring countries will be there. They’ll bring their respective styles with them too. It intimidates me because they’re foreign. Who wants to handle something new on the spot in a moment of competition? I want the used and familiar opponents from local tournaments where I know the fencers. I know how they work and they know me. However, three team-mates from the Massialas Foundation in San Francisco are accompanying me. If only I could run into friends going up the bracket all the way, then I’m safe knowing what will be ahead. I don’t think I even want to meet these new fencers.

There are only a few real international tournaments per year and they serve as major tests of one’s abilities on the fencing strip. I want to win. What does this trip even mean if I go home with nothing to show for it? I need a medal because a story will accompany that medal. Then I’ll have something to tell the boys at home. That motivation drives that anticipation sitting so deeply in my stomach. It feels like a sort of light adrenaline that trickles in every few seconds from a bodily drip system. It’s incessant and I won’t be able to release it until I have my time on the strip to prove myself. 

I was at the beach, sitting on a shaded ledge and watching the people at the water. Below me were children playing, some holding balloons they had received at a friend’s party. Others were catching small clams in the water, and I wondered where they would go to cook them afterwards. The area was what the pictures in my Lonely Planet travel guide had promised. The water was clear, and the sky was equally clear. There were green mountains to the west and if one was to take a thirty-minute stroll east, he could meet the fields of rice whose neat, structured lines I thought could bring me back to a neat, structured childhood I had never experienced. And in these fields are tiny white spots – egrets that stand motionless until one begins to believe that they are some strange, foreign strand of rice.  

I spotted a group of teenagers – two colorful boys and one colorful girl together riding a surrey bike along the coastline. I continued to sit and watched them for a few minutes. Their colorful clothing momentarily transformed the beach location into a carnival, or better, a foreign comic strip that exploded with fun, something thrilling to watch but impossible to read. They quickly abandoned their surrey bike and raced each other down to the water. I felt my legs move myself closer to the edge of the shaded ledge; I wanted to run with them. I let myself imagine for a few minutes. I saw myself occupying the one empty seat on the surrey bike, racing them down to the water but letting the pretty girl win. Afterwards, I would catch clams with them and one of the boys would invite all of us to his house to steam them, and together we would watch each closed shell gradually surrender and open to reveal a tiny but precious amount of meat.

I watched until they returned and took their surrey bike back from where they had come. I sat on the ledge until the sun went down, when I stood up and followed the same road I had taken to get there. There were a few balloons tied to a tree, abandoned. I thought about the balloons as I walked back to the familiar busy road, and the thought lingered even as I got out of the cab and returned alone to the familiar room I was renting.

I worked in rural Kenya as a teacher at the Baraka School for Boys, and the irony killed me.  At this school, a select few boys travel from Baltimore, Maryland to Kenya in order to receive a better education: as Richard, my student reflected before his travels, “I’m going to Africa to be somebody.” I can proudly announce that these boys did brighten their futures, but it is just too ironic that these Americans had to come to Kenya to do so.

In Baltimore, trouble is always outside the door: the only sound that drowns out the emergency sirens is the sound of police helicopters.  Therefore when recruiters for Baraka go to Baltimore middle schools they preach the truth by saying that the probable future for these Baltimore boys is an “orange jumper and fancy bracelets.”  However, if a recruiter were to visit Kenyan schools they would truthfully preach that extreme poverty, disease and death are what threaten Kenyan boys.   In this way Africa is a “trade down” for these American boys, yet it is where they thrive.

Despite the irony, I accept that it is Kenya that catalyzes the progress that these boys make.  I know that the Baraka school succeeds thanks to something more than caring dedicated teachers; because they have caring dedicated teachers back in Baltimore.  Therefore, I am led to believe that the things that make this school work, the things that I love about Kenya are that the boys get to worry about hedgehogs.

Hedgehogs populate our school complex.  They sneak into our rooms, get in our stuff, but no matter where they are found they make a cute addition.  Everyone loves them, especially the boys from Baltimore.  In fact, the boys become protective parents for the hedgehogs.  They watch them, shelter them, play with them and will even stop fighting when they spot them (bringing a hedgehog into a room where the boys are fighting is a foolproof way to swiftly stall the conflict). 

In this way these little creatures show the beauty of Kenya.  Retreating from Baltimore to Kenya may not offer these boys a safer nor more comforting landscape.  However, this change of scenery allows the boys to seclude themselves and only worry about protecting their hedgehogs.  Therefore, I have learned that when a boy’s only worry is his hedgehog, he can grow – and traveling to Africa is exactly what this offers the boys of Baltimore. 

Quotes in the above passage are adaptations of what was recorded in Heidi Ewing's and Rachel Grady's documentary "The Boys of Baraka"