the border crossers

When I saw him on the platform, dressed in five different shades of green, I guessed that he was Tibetan and that he didn’t have a confirmed seat on the train. As I watched him negotiate his way onto our car I found myself hoping there was a seat for him, surprised to feel behind my sternum that rumbling anticipation of meeting someone important.

By the time the sun set, he had been bumped from the neighboring compartment into ours, bearing gifts of Tibetan empanadas, a twinkling smile and stories of his trek from Tibet five years ago. On his first attempt his group of forty was apprehended by Chinese border police and thrown in jail, all their money and possessions confiscated. As soon as he was released he set out again with two Tibetan monks, barefoot, south through the snowy Himalayas. They all reached Kathmandu alive, though seriously frostbitten and recovering from a debilitating bout of altitude sickness. When we ran into him he was on his way back to Dharamshala, where he studies English and a few other subjects in Tibetan. His luggage contained his own handmade paper books, rosary beads from the Dalai Lama himself, beautiful Tibetan rugs to sleep on, and warm woolen pants and jackets to replace his Hawaiian shorts and olive-green T-shirt. His name is Choekyi and he is 27 years old.

I didn’t know what to say to him or what questions to ask, so virtually everything I know about him I learned through eavesdropping or mooching off his conversations with other members of our party. Mostly we just stared out the window at the passing Indian landscape. But Choekyi understood silence. I was satisfied with only his warm, twinkling smile, and he seemed satisfied with my returning startled grin. I understood with an ache how much he loves and misses his beautiful, rich and peaceful homeland. But he is Here Now, and by the end of the two-day trip he had crossed another border – into Us.

I remembered listening to the stories and local wisdom of our Tibetan taxi driver Gyatso in Leh Ladakh a year and a half ago. He had crossed into Leh from Tibet in 1961 and lived in a refugee village until he could settle into his new life as a Ladakhi. He had an 8-year-old daughter and a ready smile, and a contagious passion for the land and for life.

-- RESPECT THE RIGHT OF PEDESTRIANS ON ZEBRA CROSSING --

Every year the multicultural orgs invite a Latino spoken word group from the Twin Cities to perform at St. Olaf. They call themselves Palabristas, word-slingers, and they speak out of anger and love for their families and their countries and themselves. They speak with a passion for identity that I know very well.

Every year I go and sit in the corner and I wait for That Piece, the most poignant and most true, a piece by a Peruvian man who married a Guatemalan woman and loves his American daughters more than life itself. He stands on the small, intimate stage and struggles through his identity crisis for all of us to feel. “I am a border crosser,” he begins in even tones, and by the end he is shouting: “I AM A BORDER CROSSER! YO. CRUZO. FRONTERAS!” And my heart is beating fast and I am fighting tears and gripping the plastic booth with white knuckles. Because the Border Crosser is the truest label I have ever heard.

President Rafael Correa of Peru’s Andean neighbor speaks for his people: “Todos somos migrantes” – we all are migrants. To date some 1.5 million Ecuadoreans live abroad, primarily in the U.S. and Spain, and remittances constitute the third highest source of national income. The amassed resources of a migrant population attract thousands of Chinese and African migrants in transit to other countries. My teachers this summer swore that every single Ecuadorean has at least one family member in another country, and parts of Cuenca consist of beautiful mansions being built from abroad – all empty.

I am an immigrant. I understand the feeling of straddling an expanding fault line, a rising barbed wire fence. I have spent much of my life struggling to force-fit pieces of different puzzles together to try and get a glimpse of my true identity. When people ask me where I’m from I wish to be a snail, carrying my home on my back so the answer becomes immediately and uncomplicatedly evident.

For Choekyi, the relevant question is not “Where are you from?” but “Where are you going?” Perhaps it is more important to ask, “Where are you now?” And that has an easy answer: I AM HERE. I have come this far and because of that I know I can go on. But I am here, in my body, and I have a lot to offer.

James Doyle claimed his body as his home. When I mentioned that to my dad, he said, “Well, that sure gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘Home is where the heart is.’” “Or ‘state of mind,’” added my brother.

And as I, Choekyi, and the border-crossing Palabrista have found, when we are at home in our hearts we can go anywhere, cross any number of fronteras, and be no farther away than when we started.

healing kisses

“I don’t WANNA go to the beach!” I’d cry. “I have a cut on my hand and it hurts in the water!”

“It stings? That means it’s healing,” Mama would say. “Salt water is good for cuts and bruises. That’s what my mom always told me.” A list of other painful things that are good for cuts and bruises includes: alcohol wipes, antibacterial soap, hydrogen peroxide, and, contrary to popular belief, kisses during lacrosse season.

***

I was in the zone. I had a project and I could think of nothing else until I’d seen it through. The task? A 63-square-foot sandcastle with a moat, a huge palace in the middle that stood 3 feet high, sunken roads and a crowded village full of houses with shell roofing, pillars, wells, and rooftop gardens. The only way in was over a driftwood drawbridge that led down a set of steps into the village. We worked from noon to dusk, building and repairing cave-ins with coconut shells, rusty metal pipes and sand toys donated by onlookers. A European man asked his guide if it was Jaisalmer; Thomas dubbed it Mussel Valley. I thought of it as my very own Roxaboxen. There has been nothing like it in the history of the world – though, even if there had, there would be no lingering evidence to prove it.

The night wore on and we watched with bated breath as the tide came in. We stood and watched the first waves fill the moat, and sometime around midnight my dad and my brother watched the high tide erase every last trace of the day’s efforts. In the morning there was nothing to show for our sunburnt backs, aching thigh muscles and raw fingertips. Displaced crabs and oysters had already settled back into their underground homes. It was like watching history happen in fast forward, watching time wear away the desperate exertions of human civilization. From high tide to high tide, we came, we conquered, we left and were replaced by sand too smooth to have ever been a castle.

***

Kenyon and I walked up the beach to look for lunch and parasailing. We met hordes of people who tried to sell us their wares – first engaging us in conversation, asking where we are from and how long we are staying in Goa. One guy jogged up beside me and asked, “Are you my friend?” Taken aback, I exclaimed, “No!” It was his turn to look surprised. “No?! Why not?” “I don’t even know you!” I replied. “But you’re talking to me,” he said. The concept of friendship, at least for a second, blurred around the edges and I wondered if anyone ever answers him yes.

The hawkers assumed that we are English. “You are very white,” they told us. Laughing, I pointed out Kenyon’s hot pink sunburn. “She's pink!” They charged us English prices, which are considerably less than Russian prices (or so they say) but still considerably higher than they should be. When we turned them down to continue on our course toward lunch, they made us to promise to stop on our way back. I hesitated just long enough for Kenyon to shake on it. On our way back we devised elaborate schemes to avoid them, but they caught on to our detours and disguises and accused us of not keeping our promises. We learned quickly to only make a promise if we really mean it.

In Spanish, the word for “engagement” is the same as the word for “compromise.” I wonder if someone’s trying to tell us something…

***

All the Colva Beach dogs are neutered; Mutti says it was a genius investment for some rich businessman. On the road to Colva town one billboard encourages HIV testing for engaged couples. And Thom says nobody dies of malaria anymore (although that’s not to say it doesn’t cause a lot of misery in life – leave it to my cousin Maya to figure that out first-hand).

South India is famous for, among other things, its ancient ayurvedic healing practices. In one Ayurveda shop I found enriching eyeliner made with almond oil and a hangover prevention pill. (Both would have cost me about $6.50.) In the backwaters every plant, fruit and spice has a purpose – some leaves, when chewed or steeped as tea, combat upset stomach, respiratory issues, heat exhaustion, and any number of other ailments from the everyday variety to the life-threatening. And Kerala, specifically, is famous for massages, healing programs, and a traditional martial arts form called Kalarippayat. Taken patiently over a certain time span, all of these methods improve mental, physical and emotional health exponentially. The key is moderation and self-discipline… and faith.

When I get tan I can see the scar on the inside of my elbow where the dog bit me through the fence when I was three. His snarling black jaws permanently damaged my favorite sweater and my regard for the canine species, but the actual white scar only shows up in the sun’s rays. Other things that appear in the sun are some freckles on my cheeks; a glow in my skin and a sort of peace that comes out in a smile. In the pallid middle of winter I look for that scar but I can never see it.

The sea, despite my childhood complaints, does heal my cuts and hangnails, my calloused heels and unenthusiastic hair. It exfoliates and polishes my skin on the outside, kneads out the knots in my weary muscles and flushes away my anxiety. It reminds me how to breathe and how to walk and sit and sleep in that cosmic rhythm well-known to the ayurvedic masters, and it reminds me to listen and to have faith. Scars make us interesting once we let them wear down to a tight white spot that only appears when we squint in the sun.

entering the land of fried bananas

The apocalyptic fog held up 65 trains touching North India, kept 50 flights out of Indira Gandhi International Airport for three days, hit Jaipur with record-breaking cold temperatures of 3.3ºC.  We spent far too many nights in frigid train stations, waiting for trains that were seven hours late, wrapped in everything we brought and watching the rats squeeze in and out of cracks in the doors, rustle the trash in the bins.  One of them actually jumped on my foot before I realized what was happening.

My two-dollar Walgreen’s sandals finally broke as soon as we got on the train out of Jaipur – which is the last good place to buy shoes on the entire itinerary!  I fixed the strap by sticking a safety pin through the bottom of it, but the pin came undone and impaled my poor foot as soon as I tried to walk up the platform at Kota.  I bid them farewell (not too fondly) and gave them an improper burial in the trash bin, donning in their place my dad’s ancient Velcro sandals which are nearly as old as I am.  (For as long as I remember they complemented his ridiculous vacation outfit of linen tourist hat, Galapagos T-shirt, white shorts, and clip-on sunglasses.  I have always led the efforts to shame him into stylishness, and here I am ripping him off…)

YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE LAND OF FRIED BANANAS… in your dad’s seventeen-year-old sandals.

We fell asleep on the train in bone-chilling temperatures and woke up to stifling heat.  Finally the fans came on, but the car was swimming in at least seventy-two different people’s sweat.  I nearly passed out from dehydration and was knocked flat before the fried bananas appeared through the open train windows at station platforms.  I must wait ‘til we reach Goa to taste that most favorite of all exotic delicacies.

Finally we reach the Fort Kochi waterfront strip, where the autorickshaw drivers offer to take us around town, to take us to hotels, advertising “Ferrari, madam?  Autorickshaw?”  I was unaware that Ferrari made put-puts, but I learn something new every day.

Such as the gelatinous quality of a caught, gutted and ready-to-cook octopus in a plastic bucket.

Or that the best way to eat fish is to choose your favorite raw fish (tuna? red-bellied snapper? barracuda? squid? shark?!) right off the waterfront from the fishermen’s stalls and then take it to the roadside shacks to have it cooked to order.  The stalls all have cats hovering around, and sometimes sitting right on the table by the fish, sleeping, prowling and waiting for remnants that fall in the wake of flies at the end of the day.

The Vasco Café and Homestay sits on a corner in the white house where Vasco da Gama lived when he was “viceroy” of Portuguese India.  He died on Christmas Eve in the year 1524, in that very house, of malaria, on his third journey around the Cape of Good Hope to the land of spices.  Before his final journey, he pirated and a privateered, trapped wealthy (heathen) traders inside the hulls of their ships and burned them, impersonated Muslims, took advantage of the rocky politics of the East African coast.  Gama traveled, in the same year, the opposite direction around the world from Christopher Columbus, and changed at least one city forever.

In 1965, sailor and author Robin Lee Graham touched many of the same ports, most of them African coastal towns with names starting with M.  Graham set out from his home in Southern California at the age of 16 in his 24-foot sloop with two kittens as company.  His goal was to circle the globe alone.  Until 2009, he was the youngest person ever to do so.  The trip took five years. Graham returned home a man, in body, in mind, in law.  He had seen the world and struggled with it, and struggled with himself.  And he discovered soon enough that these struggles were not nearly over.  He had been forced to find what he needed to work through them in himself.

In the hottest part of the day, we decided to do some exploring.  We walked from the Christian part of town (the part where signs on every street corner say “God’s Own Country,” the site of the Santa Cruz Basilica and St. Francis Church, where Gama was originally laid to rest) to the Muslim part of town, with temples and mosques towering above the other buildings and the palm trees.  We were blinded by the sweat running in our eyes, the sun so hot it stung our unprotected skin.  Every street crammed full of brightly-colored homes and darkened doorways looked the same.  But we crossed the canal back into the Christian part of town, the touristy part, and made it back to Napier House only 15 minutes late for our scheduled meeting time.  Everything we were looking for was within two blocks of the hotel, but we spent two hours getting lost about town, making our heading toward what we were sure was a shoreline.

After night falls it rains, the bucketing kind that sounds like snare drums on the windows.  My favorite sound to sleep to.  And in the morning when the sun rises, the egg-yolk warmth is very welcome, just like the morning after the longest night of your life.

At breakfast, Thom reads French tabloids over toast with pineapple jelly.  Apparently Hugh Jackman does yoga on vacation…?  Kenyon encourages me to get over my horrible loss of dear Vasco.  Maybe Hugh could be a good rebound man.

playing dirty

Our bodies are made to keep toxins out.  But still I can feel the dirt seeping into my pores, coating my nose and my lungs.  I can feel this heavy, ominous fog closing down on me, swirling into my head and making it ache.  I spend all day veiling my nose and mouth to keep the dust out, squinting into the gray air to try and glimpse the sun, and suddenly at night when I can't even see the tracks outside the train window, I feel intensely claustrophobic.

I am coated in the dust of many cities, mud in cloud form, heavy fog mixed with smog and dust from a dry winter.  Delhi is as busy as ever.  The city is scattered with huge signs saying "Delhi 2010" -- India is hosting the 2010 summer Commonwealth Games, which as far as I can tell is basically the regional Asian Olympics.  The people have amassed at this call to make a global impression: every hotel in Pahar Ganj is doing construction, improving their facilities.  The city suddenly surges forth to build an infrastructure from the ground up, building gutters, a metro system whose construction causes epic traffic congestion, and suddenly enforcing traffic, hospitality and cleanliness regulations.  To see an infamously dirty and disorganized city push so singlemindedly, all at once, to install the kind of infrastructure needed to host Asia, is simultaneously awesome and appalling.

Meanwhile, we sit in hordes of autorickshaws at an intersection and I am stunned by a young boy crossing the street in front of us, one hand raised in a feeble gesture: stop.  Please wait.  I once read that Indian traffic is regulated not by the government but by the simple law that bigger vehicles have the right of way over smaller ones.  Pedestrians in India understand that they are at the bottom of the traffic food chain, above only dogs.  This small gesture, backed by an uncommon faith in drivers and fellow human beings, moves me by its sheer impossibility.

I spent the first day in Delhi walking in and out of bookstores.  "The History of WHAT?" the booksellers say as I mumble the last word.  "Anarchism?"  Hardly daring to let it leave my lips.  A strange mix of reactions passes across their faces as they dismiss me before even saying, "No, we don't have that."  Heathen book, they neglect to add.  In an up-and-coming capitalist titan born from the clash between Moguls and the British Raj, "anarchism" is a dirty word.

Here the dirt comes in layers.  On the very inside, buried so deep it's supposed to be invisible, lies the remnants of the caste system, which still somehow dictates the way people treat each other and even the way we look at each other.  There is corruption of officials, confusion between different value systems: the ancient codes of community, the codes of hierarchy, the foreign hierarchies imposed over that, and Gandhi and the others' fight for freedom from it all, fight for the reign of humanity.  "Indian people don't use the dustbin," says a man in the train station, laughing as we walk our trash across the platform -- explaining the landfills lining the street.  There is the dirt from the air, and spread over it all a layer of Ponds fairness creme.  The obsession with paleness, whiteness, false perfection...  I can feel all these layers covered up in myself and it makes me feel both pervasively, inescapably dirty and free to act clean, since I am washed and pure on the outside.

We drive past a park scattered with groups of homeless, derelict bicycles and blanket-covered mounds that are hopefully merely sleeping bodies, and a business meeting of men in suits and ties, sitting on the grass, laughing.  I have hope that all these changes on the outside are a sign of impending change from within.  But even if they are not, somehow, it is beautiful.  I fill my lungs with a mix of dust and starving oxygen, take a deep breath, exhale warmth to ward off the fog, and squint out the window to watch at least the power lines pass in front of a yellow-grey midnight sky.