The People You Meet, Things You See - The Red Bike Rides in Bretagne, Pt. 7

07/08                                     16:32                                     Train to Rennes

Distance biked since last checked: 109 km (45 km Friday, 7 km Saturday, 30 km Sunday, 27 km Tuesday)

Today marks my first directly eastward journey on the trip. The meaning is clear: I’m almost home.

A portside Rozd in Brest

When it comes to traveling, I find the back half of a trip or the last few days more relaxing. With the return home closer, I feel less bad about thinking ahead to arrival and forgetting to enjoy today. Paradoxically, I find it easier to focus on the trip at hand when there’s less of it to think about. My last two days are all but planned, I have only one more bike ride in front of me, and no tight time constraints except to get up on time for my train home Thursday. This sense of comfort with endings contrasts with how I enjoy books. In reading a good book, my favorite moment is the halfway mark, when I know there’s as much joy ahead of me as that I’ve already uncovered. After that, bittersweetness fills a reading that I know too soon will end, even as desire to finish compels me to continue without undue delay. Perhaps the physical effort that goes into traveling and the mental effort required to plan and manage the trip blunts that bittersweetness, or maybe for all my supposed adventurousness I am just a boring homebody who would be happy reading, writing, and eating peanut butter all day without leaving the house. One can rule nothing out.

In any case, I am on my way home, with room for one last big detour. My trip as realized fell reasonably far from the details I imagined, even as of two days ago. The structure of plans and reality matched, mostly.: head west on the southern shore of Bretagne, then loop back east on the Northern side, but instead of going to a festival on a peninsula that would have required a 40 km bike trip each way with no sure thing on tickets or lodging, I went to Lorient and the FIL for a couple hours; instead of working my way through the northern shore of Bretagne over 2-3 days, I took a train to Dol-de-Bretagne, whence I will make my one stop tomorrow; instead of visiting St. Malo I stayed two nights on l’île d’Ouessant (I realized only in the Rennes train station I could have just as easily stayed in St. Malo tonight. Ah well, save something for next time).

Anyway, I’m happy with how this has turned out. And now for a few anecdotes about people I’ve met or seen along the way.

I’ve spent more time in bars on this trip than I might usually. Actually, in Europe there are few cafes as we Americans think of them, ala the local coffee shop or Starbucks. Of course there are Starbucks, but not many. Otherwise, when waiting for a train, a travel partner, or a muse to roll on through, I’m sitting in a bar cum salon de thé cum brasserie.

(The one main exception I can think of: Ghent, Belgium, where they have cupcake shops. It should come as no shock that I like Ghent).

In Auray, a town of little note for me except its position on two train lines, I had a beer and waited for my train to Lorient. Behind the bad a woman with chestnut-brown hair and the wrinkles of the late 40s worked. A man with a large backpack, a large dog, and both a grizzled voice and a grizzled face stood at the bar and had a drink. A couple of old men sat at the right of the bar. A couple of not quite as old women sat at a table to the left. I sat at a table in the middle, against the wall facing the bar. Across perched on a stool a girl with short dark hair and a turquoise shirt, cute, more or less my age.

In to the bar came two men who sidled up next to the girl. The one, older, bigger, with a bandana over his hair, exchanged kisses with her. The other, wiry build and wired energy, talked with the barmaid about what beers were available. His choices were not. His voice rose. He said something choice to either the girl or the barmaid. His companion asked him to go wait outside. This appeared to be a ritual for the duo.

The older of the two men continued to talk with the girl, standing. The other recurred at the door, anger still on his breath and voice. His only pause was to love up on the dog. The dog, at least, did not get upset at him. The rest of us continued our activities as if all was well. The train of life approached.

The man made a last sally to the bar. The diatribe renewed in his tongue, he uttered a choice word at the barmaid (I missed it). A man working at the bar appeared, furious, yelled at the man, it was about time to stop talking and start punching.

Calmer heads prevailed. The older man banished his companion again. The barman cooled off. I caught the eye of the barmaid, drying a glass and shaking her head. “He was looking for it,” she said.

In a bar on Ouessant, a similar tale.  I sat at the bar and drank a Belle Kriek beer (cherry, Belgian), reading my Polish book and watching the TV, the latter more successfully. Around the curve of the bar to my right, a local drunk stood. A green sweatshirt, shorts, thin graying hair, and a half-conscious, eerie smile on his lips. A box of Kinder Bueno bars rested on the bar next to him. A couple of kids came into the bar, about 14 years old, asking for fruit drinks (earlier, walking, I heard the boys bragging about all this alcohol they had on them – vodka, whisky, etc.). The drunk tut-tutted them but with no authority, unheeded. Instead, he tried offering everyone within reach a candy – me, the kids, and so on. Also to no avail.

Another man joined the first at the bar. This had wild gray hair and a stubbled, attractive face. His yes held a spark and his look was, as yet, sober. He ordered a drink and fell into banter with the first man. The two rearranged chairs in the room, possibly with intentions of emulating the 3000 meter steeplechase shown on the screen behind them but most likely out of the first’s impetuous inebriation). The second joined in the Kinder Bueno game, buying one and putting it on his tab – he had a golden credit card with a company name on it. Again, I turned down an offered candy bar.

The energy finally went sour as the bar staff decided the first had to step outside (they may have picked up on the annoyed looks from me and others at the bar). The second, after asking if he too had to leave and hearing he didn’t, turned his liberated attention elsewhere. He was impressed with my Kriek beer and asked, several times, for the name so he could order one. He asked me about my reading before backing off when he either heard my French or decided he might disturb me. After I moved to a table (in part to avoid the first drunk) he again pointed to my book or my beer and offered to buy me another, flashing his credit card. “Vous êtes très gentil,” I told him, “but I’m leaving after the race.”

Outside, a yell and a tumbling piece of furniture clattered among the din. One of the hotel/bar staff ran outside. A few bar patrons joined. I did not go and rubberneck. The second stayed at the bar, craning his neck towards the door and perhaps finding his beer a little sweeter. A man with a notepad entered a few minutes later.

Usain Bolt won the race, of course. I stepped out, thinking of humanity’s highs and lows.

Outside of the bar, the train is a good place to catch sight of our curious habits. On one train, from Lorient to Quimper, I sat in the entry area with my bike. Across the entry way, a white-haired woman sat next to the bathroom. Perhaps an inappropriate place.

A man in the car behind her came to use the bathroom. He was bald and dressed in a Picasso-striped shirt. He tried the bathroom door. It didn’t give. Once or twice more he tried before leaving, perplexed. The woman said nothing.

A minute later a man left the bathroom; I had not been sure someone was in there. A minute later, a young woman staggered into the bathroom, looking not all there. Our striped-shirt man tried the door again another minute after, again with no luck. He tried once more, then looked at the woman. Only then did she tell him the bathroom was occupied.

Passons… the man, without ever changing his strategy by actually waiting for the bathroom, finally got in. A young woman tried the door, found it locked, and waited. The man left. She entered, did her bit, and exited. She left the door half-open. The woman, not one to speak, stared at the girl with annoyance for a few seconds, then rose from her seat and shut the door.

On a different train, from Brest to Rennes, a man struck up a conversation with me about my bike. As with Jeff, it was another of those French-English foreign conversations. This man congratulated me on my journey.

The Picture I took

In between trains in Quimper, before stopping in the African bar, I walked around looking for an internet café (I traveled on this trip like it was 2005). As I crossed over a bridge a couple blocks from the train station, I stopped to take a picture. A black man with dreads approached me and asked if I was Italian. He had a few teeth missing and a beer in his hand (it was a little after noon). My answer that I was American excited him. He told me he was from South Africa, where the last World Cup was, did I go? My negative response did not dissuade him from giving me a big handshake as we parted.

Before capping this ramble, I’d like to mention something about crêperies that I’ve observed after eating crepes an average of once a day since arriving in Bretagne. That is: one cannot order two crepes at once. The waiters worry that either the second crepe or your appetite will cool off too much for it to be worth it. So one crepe at a time does one progress through one’s meal. Also, when one switches from salty, buckwheat crepes (known as galettes) to sweet white flour dessert crepes, the wait staff changes one’s silverware. This does not (usually) happen going from galette to galette. This makes sense but still amuses me.

On Sunday, I rode my bike to Le Conquet from Brest to catch the ferry to Ouessant. Many dark clouds blew over the city, and the sky was clear enough in its cloudy way that one could see the wind at work. Having a fair amount of time to make my boat, and still tense from the night prior (of the Aching Jaw), I decided to wait out the rain when I could (I avoided the two bigger of the three rainclouds that passed over my head).

It was while waiting out the first, still in Brest, perched under a bus stop with my legs folded under to evade the windblown drops, that a woman joined. She had gray-brown hair to match a gray suit, and a faint blond mustache that was all the same quite visible, and in 15 minutes or so, she told me much about her life.

She has a cousin in the Bay Area who she learned about well into adulthood; the cousin’s father left France before the war and, despite aiding the war effort in the U.S., would have been tried as a deserter if he returned. She lived in interior Bretagne before moving to Brest when she was young and the city not yet rebuilt from the war. She finds native Brest folk (Brestians?) standoffish and unhelpful, making it two people I met who moved to another place in Bretagne and disliked the locals. She similarly dislikes people from Luxembourg and that part of Germany, finding them cold, unlike Germans from Munich. She also dislikes Russians and their difficult literature.

I learned that Mongols fought for Napoleon and then stayed in France after the war, helping to build the Nantes-Brest canal. This woman had Scottish and, she thought, Mongol blood in her. Almost every time she made a reference to Mongols, she pulled her eyes thin.

Such are the people I’ve met and the interactions I’ve seen on this trip.

2010 Travel Outtakes

Among the countless stories that happen in life, especially on the road, and the many times I have been on the "road" this year, there are a few stories that inevitably don't get quite told. I thought I'd take some of my free time to tell some of those stories. At least two of them.

Trabzon Terror and Turkey's North Coast

Turkey is an interesting place, and I'd love to spend more time there. Their political situation is interesting (even if not always the most encouraging), their culture a strange blend underneath a constructed form of nationalism, and the role Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal, the founder of modern Turkey who forged the nation to his desired form in the interwar period) played fascinating, especially as the current government shifts away from certain aspects of Ataturk's Turkey. Yes, I like Turkey, and hope to go back someday and either live or visit thoroughly.

That said, looking back on it nine months later, I'm not sure what I was doing in Trabzon.

Trabzon is a city on the north coast of Turkey, along the Black Sea. It is the capital of the province of Trabzon. There is a football team in Trabzon, Trabzonspor, that is generally in the top 5 of the Turkish Super Lig table every year; this year, they currently lead the table at the halfway mark. By virtue of being so far east, Trabzon, a few hours away from the Georgia border, apparently boasts a Russian-speaking minority, one I didn't come into contact with in my very brief stay. Either my guidebook or something on the internet also suggested that Trabzon might be a port involved with either human trafficking or with former Soviet women coming over on their way west; they were, apparently, derisively termed "Natashas." I didn't come into contact with this either, exactly, but I hope you'll see that this isn't a completely gratuitous pair of sentences.

Those who have talked with me over the past year, especially anyone who studied with me in Israel, would have figured out why I was actually in Trabzon, i.e. what my reason for being there was: I was going to Georgia. It was the Passover spring break, and I wanted to visit Georgia for reasons of personal and academic interest. Professionally, I had led a Model United Nations trip to Ankara, receiving a free ticket to Turkey, as it were. I put the pieces together and decided that the best way to get from Ankara to Georgia would be via Trabzon. And though I originally conceived of a plan to go to Trabzon by bus, an overnight deal that could be nothing but miserable, I was convinced by my hosts at the MUN conference to fly there. For $45 (59 Turkish Lira), I had a one-way ticket to Trabzon, from where I would catch a bus to the Georgia border. So that's why I was in Trabzon.

I arrived on my plane and caught a bus to the center. Having been in Turkey by then for about five days, I had picked up maybe 10 words or phrases - I'm one of those jerks who loves to learn a few words and then flaunt it, as seen in my Rwanda posts. That said, I was out of my depth here - "hello" and "thank you" doesn't get you on a bus to the center easily. I found that bus and got off at more or less the right spot. "Goodbye" and "Ataturk" doesn't get you a place in a hotel. I walked around, generally heading downward, in this case north, towards the water. It was already dark, about 7:00 pm, and I was dragging around a backpack on wheels while wearing another backpack on my shoulders, and a bit of paranoia came upon me as I walked the streets. I tried to stay on well-lit streets, of which there were several, and away from alleys. Unfortunately, nice hotels are the only ones on well-lit streets, and cheap hotels are generally only in alleys in Trabzon, from what I could tell, and so after not managing to score a room at a nice place for cheap, I ducked in to a short alley and walked into the Otel Ufuk.

The Ol' Ufuk was as much a dive as could be. Two guys eventually came down to the reception desk on the second floor to greet me. After some linguistic confusion and some problems putting in my passport number correctly, they accepted my money and showed me to my room on the floor above. My bed was covered in dingy blue sheets and had a scratchy blanket that looked like it just came out of a cat's throat. The light bulb flickered above and the dresser creaked more than was worth thinking about or testing. Outside of my room, there was no toilet but just a hole to relieve oneself in. There was no shower, either, really; on the floor above mine out of the sink came a longer water tube, but I had to just stand there and wash while hoping the run-off would go down the drain appropriately. The only saving grace was a very nice painting of a soft maiden outside my room.

Now, if she was the one knocking on my door, maybe I would have been a tad more agreeable...

But whatever. I was only passing through, I'm cheap, I'm tough, I can deal with it. Not everywhere is a 1st world 5-star experience (actually, that's just what I had in Ankara for the first few nights - it's nice traveling on "business"). I put my stuff down, went out to an internet cafe and to buy some chocolate, walked along the streets as roars came from various houses with groups of people, mostly men, gathered around TVs - Trabzonspor was playing that night and would go on to a 1-0 defeat. I felt better. I had heard good things about Trabzon from my Ankara hosts, descriptions of the more colorful head coverings I would see on the women there, demands that I should go see the nearby Sumela Monastery, and so on. I was open to the experience.

Then I went to bed.

I went to sleep around 10pm, more or less. Though the mattress was hard and the blanket scratchy, I fell asleep after not too much time. I must have slept for about an hour or two without any real problems. This sleep may have lasted had I not been woken by noise coming from the "common room" a room or two down the hall. There, somebody had the TV on too loud and there was also conversation going on between two voices, one male and one female. The conversation was episodic, interjecting and overshadowing the steady buzz of TV sound at unpredictable but frequent intervals. This woke me up.

As long as I was awake, I figured I might get up and go pee. So I did. I put on my jeans and a shirt so that I wouldn't be inviting any unwanted attention. Alas.

Coming out of the bathroom, I encountered a short woman. She had her black hair pulled back tight in a pony tail. She was not slim, and not especially attractive, especially at that time of hour. She was of undetermined nationality, presumably a Turk at some point, and not Russian or former Soviet by any means.

Anyway, she said something to me. "Sorry, no Turkish," I said back in Turkish. She repeated herself and made the gesture of putting her hand over her fist. I made the gesture of shrugging my shoulders, hoping that my gesture was more universally understood than hers. She repeated the gesture and pointed at my fly, which I had left unzipped. I, still groggy and confused, continued to try to express that confusion. She repeated it one more time with a broad, salacious smile. Ahh. I was being propositioned. I said no thanks, waved my arms in a no gesture - hand going over hand, akin to a declining gesture, or how wrestlers defer choice in the second period - smiled, and went back to my room. Hey, I'm a white male who probably looks like he has money to spend on those things. It happens.

I returned to my bed, hoping to fall asleep. The TV seems louder, if anything, and the interlocutors outside are laughing more frequently, and it appeared my hopes would go as fulfilled as all my high school date requests (or college date requests). Which is to say, I wasn't falling asleep.

I can get riled up, for sure, and demand things every now and then. But for the most part, I try to be pretty easygoing and to avoid confrontation. It's not in my interest, as I see it. I try to train myself to deal with just about anything. So my natural inclination is to just suck it up and wait it out. And again, from the vantage point of nine months later, I think that still might have been the most reasonable response. I was on vacation, I had nothing important to do until I arrived in Tbilisi two days later, I had no absolute need of rest. I could have just turned on the light, pulled out War and Peace, and kept plugging away.

But, for the eternal desire to rest and turn off, I got up, put on my jeans and t-shirt again, and walked over to the TV room. There, I said please and made the universal gestures of "turn it down, mofo," (right thumb and index finger held a centimeter apart and twisting counter-clockwise as if a volume knob were between my fingers) and "I'm sleeping, come on now, this noise is too much," (pointing to my ears, tilting my head sideways to the right, placing my hands under my head as if for angelic sleep). The guy there, by the way, was one of the guys from reception. Not a great sign for the ol' Ufuk. That said, he seemed amenable.

And nothing changed. I continued to toss and turn, and to not sleep. I got out a little later to pee again and, in lieu of my other gestures, held my arms up and made a beleaguered face - yes, that's right, I pulled out the flying dolphin. My man showed a touch of sympathy and reassurance on his face, but otherwise, the results went unchanged. I stayed awake. And then came the insult atop my injured nighttime.

A banging came on my door. Fortunately, my door was locked, and so it could not be opened. Unfortunately, this did nothing about the banging, which continued. After the first couple of phrases, presumably in Turkish, my friendly Turkish woman of the night started a conversation with me in guttural Russian, which I will present to you in Russian, transliterated Russian, and then translated English:

Проститутка - Ты спишь? Ты спишь?
Уставший мужщина - Я сплю.
Несимпатичная Проститутка - Зачем?
Сердитий человек - Поздно!
Проститутка которая не знает когда перестать - Ставай, на хуй! Ставай на хуй!

Her - Tii spish? Tii spish?
Me - Ya splyu.
Her - Zachem?
Me - Pozdno!
Her - Stavai, na khui! Stavai, na khui!


Lady of ill-repute - Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?
Embattled gentleman - I'm sleeping.
Not so nice prostitute - What for?
Angry person - It's late!
Prostitute who doesn't know when to stop - Stand up, fucker! Stand up, fucker!*

*Loose translation, as she literally said "on a cock", which can be translated in a number of ways, many of them unknown to me. If I had to guess, she knew the phrase "idi na khui", which means "go on a cock", or "go fuck yourself."

All this happened while she continued banging (on the door, I mean). After a few more knocks, she gave up and went away. Sometime after this, I gave up and turned on the light to read. I kept reading until I heard the muezzin's morning call, and shortly after that heard them leave.

So while I don't know what I was doing in Trabzon, I can reassure you that it certainly wasn't her.

*** Postscript to Trabzon:

After blundering around that morning, I found my way to the bus station. At the time, I was still keeping open the option of visiting the Sumela Monastery. Instead, when I got to the station, I got sort of railroaded into getting on the bus to Batumi (or more accurately, Sarp, the border crossing town for Turkey-Georgia). I didn't get any clear indication of how long any of these trips would take. In all likelihood, I wouldn't have been able to go to Sumela and then make it to Batumi in time to catch the overnight train to Tbilisi that would have had me there in time for an appointment I had scheduled the next day. Still, I would have liked to have made a better informed choice.


The bus trip itself was beautiful and strange. We went right along the Black Sea, the road winding in between the coast and hills to our right, not more than 50 meters from either most of the time (That morning I had dipped my toes into the water, touching for the first and only time the sea my family used to vacation to back in the old country). That part of the Turkish coastline, at least, holds that quality we often call "rugged beauty" - rocky cliffs to our right, the flat sea to our left, and houses or port towns of varying size and stature on both sides. 

About midway through the journey, those continuing to Sarp were ushered off the bus. They then escorted us into a white van, cramming us in nice and tight. I sat next to a few jovial fellows in the back row, some with gold or missing teeth, all laughing and telling jokes eagerly that I couldn't understand but laughed along with as necessary. The van took something of a local route, taking stops to drop everyone in a preferred stop, leaving me in that location I continually find myself in, a state of confusion. At last they dropped us off at the border, the crossing its own state of chaos with line cuts, vague directions of where to go, and Georgian border officials who were very happy to see my American passport.


My Long Walk in Los Angeles

As you might have read, I took a long trip around the U.S. of A. a couple months ago. The trip concluded in California with a day and a half in San Diego, a day in LA, and a few days in San Francisco. I intended to write about all this on this blog, and didn't. At this point, I don't feel like digging up too much out of my memories and observations, as I don't think they were that unique, for the most part. I liked San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles were laid out weird and I didn't have enough time to grasp them, people are different, etc. Any East Coaster going out West can tell you these things. Instead, allow me a couple quick anecdotes I compiled and then a story about an LA feat that I think with reasonable confidence that only I am stupid enough to undertake. In many ways, this feat was a microcosm of my greater U.S. trip as a whole.

- First anecdote comes from my train ride from San Diego to Los Angeles. This was, as mentioned, my only intercity travel on something other than a bus. And without meaning to sound like one of those pompous, "trains are awesome and we should put them everywhere so as to be green and cool and European and keeping up with China" people, well, trains are awesome, and train travel is definitely the best way to travel. After all, I am one of those people.

So anyway, I get to the train station, show my necessary identification, get a ticket, and go down to the platform. As I stand there waiting, a woman starts talking. It's not clear if it's to me or to anybody else. She's talking about an issue she's having. At last she looks over to me, and I respond. We have a brief conversation. I found this indicative of California from my whopping 6 days there - people are very willing to share their conversations with you or to jump into your conversations. It comes from a collective personality trait somewhere between friendly and self-absorbed. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but it's different.

This train anecdote isn't about that. It's about being on the train, enjoying the view of seaside tombs and morning moons in a nearly empty coach (I guess San Diego to LA at 7:50 on a Sunday morning isn't a super busy time, huh). It's about our cheery conductor, who was all business whenever she walked into the cabin to check tickets or make sure things were in order, but was all chirpiness when on the mike announcing the stops. It's about what she said as we pulled into Anaheim:

"We are now arriving in Anaheim, for the Magic Kingdom, home of Disneyland, the Angels, and the Mighty Ducks. Welcome to Anaheim." Pause. "QUACK!"

- As for the other anecdote, it was upon arrival in LA's Union Station. I mentioned in the last post the roundabout and wasteful way I went about getting the necessary change to make a pay phone call. Once I had the $2.00 needed, I purchased a 3-minute phone call. I was calling a friend who had just moved out to LA from the East Coast. Our conversation:

Me: Hey, how's it going? Where do you want to meet?
She: Dan, good to hear from you! Hold on a second, I'm just checking something, I just want to check where I'll be.
Me: Ok, I should be in wherever in about 20 minutes, I just have to take the subway.
She: I don't know where to meet, hmm...
Me: (counting the seconds) I can go wherever, just tell me which stop to go to and I can get off there.
She: Well, we could meet somewhere on Hollywood, somewhere on Vermont, let me check on my computer.
Me: You have a car, right?
She: (humming as she searches, presumably) Huh? Yeah, I have my car.
Me: Then just meet me somewhere, it doesn't matter.
She: I don't know where, though, hold on.
Me: WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!!

Eventually, we settled on Vermont/Sunset. Where, while waiting for her, I walked around with my leather jacket over my shoulder, stroking my beard, waiting to be discovered. Anyway, the anecdote was more about how environment affects us: the same girl who was a high-powered hipster living in Brooklyn and an popped-collar douchebag when I saw her in Nantucket this summer (kidding!) was little Miss Languid Los Angeles after her move out west. There's a reason the airport abbreviation is LAX, I guess.

On the phone with my agent. What can I say, it worked.

- Now, to the big story.

The thing about Southern California (again, speaking from a whole two days of experience), is that there are hills everywhere, the ocean is right there, but the cities are more sprawled out than a tired USC student after their post-finals drinking binge. There is a downtown area for both San Diego and Los Angeles, but I spent time in neither of them; there's no action in the downtown areas, and yet the other areas don't feel like cities anymore than, say, my Boston suburb hometown of Burlington does. So not very.

I've been spoiled, I concede. I've lived in Tel Aviv for a year, a city of near perfect size; walkable, bikeable, and easily navigable, but not so tiny to feel unimportant. I do most of my traveling in Europe, where walking, bike-riding, and metro systems are the best ways to get around and sufficient to see a city. In the states, I have spent most of my time in the cities of Boston and New York, again two cities that one can walk or ride the rails around in attractive fashion. I love to go walking when I visit cities; on this trip, I uncorked a couple good walks before getting to California, including a trek from Union Square area to MOMA and back, and one from Vanderbilt's campus down to the river in Nashville and back.

In LA, though, nobody walks. "You can't walk to get around," I heard. "It's just how it is," they said. "Go back to cowtown, man!" they told me. (Ok, no they didn't). As evidenced on the whole of this trip and in many other ways in life, there's nothing I like more than doing something (stupid) when I'm told I can't. Something like taking a long walk in LA, for example...

My Israel wrestling teammate (and former UNC Tar Heel) Dusty dropped me off at Hollywood, right near all the attractions, the famous theaters and what not, within eyesight of the Hollywood sign. It was about 4:00 pm. I had scheduled to meet with someone at 8:30 down at Union Station, where I had left my things. I had time. It was a nice day out. I was relatively unburdened, carrying only the clothes on my back, my camera, a slim book (Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction), and a slim notebook. I couldn't do it. I started walking downtown.

I started about 6900 Hollywood Boulevard. I quickly figured out that LA was gridded, and that I probably had to get down to somewhere near zero. Union Station's address is 800. So 61 blocks. What's 61 blocks? I only had to go one way.

I walked down Hollywood Boulevard until the glitz disappeared and I was back in post-urban suburbia. So I walked over Sunset Boulevard, right through Little Armenia. The blocks were longer than I had expected, even knowing how long this would take, and so when I returned to the familiar Vermont/Sunset intersection, I figured I should throw in the towel. They were right, I thought. You really can't walk in LA.

I went into a tea shop on Vermont just off that intersection. I drank tea, ate a cookie, and read the LA Times. I recuperated and refocused. I watched as a light drizzle began outside. I considered. I returned outside. I went to the subway station and looked at the map. I noticed the Red Line went right under Sunset Boulevard. I noticed Sunset Boulevard led straight into downtown and Union Station. I thought about how many sentences i could write consecutively that began with "I". I looked at the stairway down to the subway station with dismissive disdain, put my hands in my pockets, and kept walking.

The drizzle came on and off, not quite enough to threaten my jacket. I walked as it grew towards dusk. I quickly got confused at the intersection of Sunset and Hollywood, and ended up wandering in a residential neighborhood up on some hills (right around Sunset Drive - see the second point in the map below), and had to ask my way back to Sunset Boulevard.


View Larger Map Of One Man's Ridiculous Journey

Los Angeles has many facets to its wider reputation, the one that reaches a naive young man from the Boston 'burbs. I had already checked that my route wasn't going through any neighborhoods like "the Wood", Compton, Long Beach, or Snoop Dogg's house. Nevertheless, a new sense of paranoia crept into my mind as the dusk slid over me. I figured out a way to walk with my hands in my pocket and through my pocket holding my camera, so that no one could readily see that I was carrying a camera. I got concerned about my 500 shekel jacket. I kept my head up and my path in the light as much as possible, my pace brisk. I began muttering to myself about my stupidity.

Wouldn't this make you paranoid?

At the same time, I realized that I was walking through a lot of famous neighborhoods. Echo Park came and went like an Elliot Smith warble; Silver Lake showed up, the hip neighborhood that I had visited earlier that day with a friend to check out an apartment; Angelino Heights struck me as significant even as I cursed its poorly lit sidewalks; though I never saw Dodger Stadium, I knew that the signs pointing me to it meant I was reasonably close. There was something cool about all of this, even amidst my paranoia.

My first encounter came a little before Echo Park, as I ran into a group of dirty looking kids my age or a little younger walking a dog. They asked me for change to buy some dog food. I asked them if they could tell me how far away downtown was. They couldn't. I think I gave 'em a quarter.

Then I walked past a short, wide lady in her 40s or 50s. She had frizzy light brown hair, and freaked out a little when I walked by her. Understandable: she might have felt the same LA paranoia that I did, especially walking in the dark. But then she said something about a black beard. I stopped to scratch my beard.

"A very black beard, like the ultra orthodox."
"That's what I look like," I said. She kept rambling about the ultra Orthodox.
"I don't have a hat," I said with a smile.
"See this coat?" she said, showing me the white coat over her bag. "This coat and bag, I got it for $3.50, that's a very good price. The Jews like money, so if I got it from them, that's a good deal, I did good," and she kept ranting. I walked away, confused.

The Hollywood Sign is in there, somewhere.

Not long after that, wondering when if ever I would arrive downtown (I stopped in CVS, 7/11, and a gas station in hopes of finding a map to get a sense of how long it would be, I asked for directions at a Burger King and was just pointed to keep going), I popped into a record store. I had already visited the gigantic and famous Amoeba Music on this walk, shortly after I left Hollywood Boulevard, hours ago as it was. This time, I noticed there was a gig going on. I got to hear a couple songs from the electro-funk stylings of Globes On Remote (I can't say I dug it all that much, but it was still cool).

Digging the show (just not so much).

I continued along the road as it turned into Cesar E Chavez Avenue over the 110. I knew by this point that I was close. A little ease seeped into my soul. I spotted a touristy spot and decided to detour through it for a few minutes. I had stumbled on the famed Olvera Street, a little pedestrian alley of shops and food stands, mostly Mexican in nature. I can't say I saw too much of it, but I did notice it was going to get closed down sometime soon.

This Chinatown dragon was also a sign I was almost there.

That was basically the end of my journey, except for the laughter when I told my friends at dinner that night. As much fun as it is to do stupid things people say I can't do, the best part is when I tell them about it afterward. Even if they're laughing at me, it's a good time.

And by the way, you really can't walk in LA. I think my story is mere proof of that.

The Long, Hard, and Stupid of It

A1: I'm a stubborn person.

Sure, I can be easy going. I don't seek conflict. I find it easier to agree with someone on topics that are not near and dear to my heart, or even topics that are, than to argue with them in situations where there's nothing to gain by arguing. I consider myself, all in all, kind of a softie. And a nice guy too, I hope.

That said, when somebody tells me I can't do something I don't want to do, or when someone tells me I'm an idiot for trying a certain path rather than another, easier path, or when I set my mind on a cool plan that is less than practical, well, it'll take a hell of a lot of persuasion, browbeating, and good logic to dissuade me from sticking to my plan. Actually, it will take clever, quiet diplomacy; the browbeating is only going to make me all the more likely to keep to my foolishness.

Qs: Dan, why did you decide to take the bus across the United States instead of flying? Why did you do this without a phone? Why do you make things so difficult? Why do we grow old? What's it all for?

Other possible answers:

A2: I was struck with a two week fear of cell phone signals and flying.

A3: My time in Rwanda inspired me to do more with less - this is also the reason I ate nothing but rice, beans, and potatoes (occasionally garnished with rabbit) on the trip and why I slept four to a room every night, which boy let me tell you created some weird situations.

A4: I did not have a bicycle, nor a unicycle suitable to such a journey.

A5: I thought it would be a good way to get a quick catch-up course on the country, the most practical way to visit the people I wanted to visit scattered across this great land, and an interesting story full of peculiar anachronistic circumstances that might say something about where I am in the 21st century, if not anybody else on a broader scale.

A6:


(As always, take Answer 6)

Whatever the case may be, I took the second half of October and traveled across the U.S.A., following the following likely route: Burlington MA-Boston MA-New York City-Washington D.C.-Durham N.C.- Nashville-San Diego-Los Angeles-San Francisco. The longest stop was a four day conclusion in San Francisco. I was blessed enough to have people to visit in all those cities (well, I guess I wouldn't have stopped by Nashville if I didn't), seeing 16 people in all from various phases of my life, not including assorted spouses, partners, friends, roommates and hangers on who welcomed me just as well as the people I visited. I traveled on this route without a phone (but with a Skype-equipped laptop), on a bus (except for a morning cruise up the California coast from San Diego to Los Angeles), and with no urgent priorities in my life except to get to the next place and to let the people who care know that I was still crazy.

As I hope you can imagine, there were interesting things that happened to me, and interesting things I noticed about our country and various people contained therein on the trip. I would like to share these things. Without further ado and no specific order, some of the notable occurrences:

- Arriving in downtown Washington, DC on a Saturday night in the middle of October is a cold experience, a collection of wide, empty streets deserted for the weekend, a surprising jolt after the bustle of New York. An ill omen perhaps for a city I may someday soon work in.

 Cold D.C. Street.

- In Nashville, on Broadway downtown, on a warm Wednesday afternoon around 3, you can find almost every single bar, country-themed of course, hosting a musician hopeful of finding a career in music city, strumming out a tune on their acoustic guitar; some of the musicians had somebody else to accompany them, some of the musicians had nice voices: none of the musicians had an audience of more than three or four people, including the bartender. There was something about this that was both depressing and life-affirming.

 - The Colorado River is dry at the border of Arizona and California. I believe I read about this before. I don't know that it's a good thing.

- Also in Arizona-related observations: in that fine state there exists a town called Gila Bend.

- One way to stand out as a weirdo in New York, no small feat, is to walk around the city with your towel wrapped around the handle of your suitcase. Even if this is a perfectly reasonable way to air out and dry your towel before putting it in your suitcase without it stinking up your suitcase, people will look at you strangely. Or at least, your NYC implanted cousin will.

- The bus system in Winston-Salem, NC carries ads for Rush Radio 94.5, featuring Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity.

- The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has free entrance on Fridays, sponsored by Target. The line stretched down 53rd, up 6th, and back up 54th. A bakery gave out free food, their girls dressed in a zebra-striped outfit with orphan Annie red hair. Also, Max Beckmann's Family Picture was the only painting name I wrote down in my notebook besides the classic, hallmark works (Picasso's Les Mademoiselles D'Avignon, Chagall's I and the Village, Van Gogh's Starry Night).

Here's a set of observations specifically tied to riding the bus. For those interested, I rode Fung Wah to NYC, Megabus to DC, then Greyhound the rest of the way (except, as mentioned above, the Amtrak train from SD to LA):

- The Fung Wah stopped after the exit leaving the Mass Pike. The driver pulled us over to the right side of the road. I read my book. He pulled us over to median. I continued reading my book. A din of confused voices rose around me as we sat on the median for two, three, four minutes. I looked up and noticed our driver running back to our bus from the other side of the highway, where there was another Fung Wah bus. He entered our bus, shook himself off and took off his jacket, and returned the bus to the road. The Fung Wah.

- I rode with this guy from Durham to Nashville. He was probably about 5'10'', and had a pretty solid frame with a little extra layering. He was probably about my age, wore his brown hair in a pony tail, and wore a wispy goatee to go with it. He wore just a wife beater most of the time, unless he went outside and it was on the colder side, in which case he added a sweatshirt. He offered me fish which he had brought for his three day journey from coast to coast. Boasted of the healthy nature of his fish, too, and how he used to bodybuild, but that these days he just lifted a few weights that were in his yard every day.

  This is not the guy I'm talking about. Just a funny sign in Waynesville.    

This guy was an interesting one, and very much displayed some of the common behaviors and attitudes of Greyhound customers. He kept his bag splayed out on the seat next to him in hopes of dissuading anybody from sitting next to him: they would have to ask him for the seat, and his imposing stature and affected scowl would prevent that. Except that somewhere between Asheville and Knoxville, the bus filled up, making it impossible for him to achieve his objective of no neighbor. When somebody did sit down with him at last, a young man, he was nothing less than courteous in conversation and in offering his treats to his new neighbor. In fact, for all his stature and intimidating looks, he was bursting to talk, looking around with his big brown eyes to find anybody he could open up to about his trip to Phoenix, or the fact that his half-brother died somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains, or about what he thought about things. To wit: "TV brainwashes people, it brainwashes you, I don't watch any of it."

He also told me, upon seeing me reading, that, "I read books. I got a stack of 'em."

You don't get that on the plane, I tell you what.

- You also don't get cologne on sale in the men's bathroom on the plane. You do get this in the men's bathroom of a rest stop gas station somewhere in eastern Oklahoma.

- On my first Greyhound leg, from D.C. to Durham, I paid $3 to a vending machine to get a Nestle Crunch bar. That is, I paid $1.50 for a bar, received no bar as the ring in front of the selection was empty, which I did not recognize beforehand, and so I paid another $1.50. Needless to say, the candy bar was worth it.

- On that same trip, we had a last stop before Durham in Raleigh. I needed to use a phone, so I got off the bus. My ticket suggested we might change buses, so I went to the driver to make sure that I didn't have to get my suitcase or anything, leading to this beatific statement: "It's going to Durham." He said it with a laugh, with an incredulous smile, as if he told me that I would be getting a Christmas turkey after all. "You don't have to change buses, it's going to Dur-ham." I thought I saw his wizened head bathed in light.

- On the leg from Oklahoma City to Albuquerque, there at some point coalesced an earnest group of young men who had a serious discussion about just what the pot laws were in different states, and what implications those laws had for their lives.

 

- I also sat next to a guy from Flagstaff to Phoenix who told me quite a bit about his life as a pot farmer. He reported that, living in California and growing weed on six prescriptions, his life would not change either way with the coming referendum on marijuana laws in CA. He said that he had been a bricklayer in Arizona ("That place has ridiculous laws,") but that he lost his job after 7 years to illegal immigrants, and this was the best option left to him. "I don't like society too much," he said, "I try to keep to myself as much as I can." He was thoughtful and well-spoken.

- For one short stretch, I think from Knoxville to Nashville but I could be remembering wrong, I found myself without a seat and had to ask a guy if I could sit next to him.

"Shit, I was waiting for a pretty woman,"

Seeing as there were not really any other seats available, all I could think to say was, "Well, I can smile nice, if that helps." He ended up being nice enough to me, anyway.

- There was another afternoon stretch where I was sitting alone when a young mother joined me. Here four year old or so boy sat across the aisle from her. They were clearly a Hispanic family, so I stewed in my seat, thinking of how to ask her in Spanish whether or not she'd like to sit with her child. I finally stammer, "Quiere sedir...do you want to sit with your child?" She said yes, gladly.

Somehow, the burn I felt for my cultural patronization equaled out whatever good feelings I had for my deed for a while. It's strange to be back in a land where English is the language, I guess.

- One has to get used to waves of smells passing over one's breathing space. Most of these smells are unpleasant. Such is life in the bus.



- The Ft. Smith, Arkansas Greyhound station was probably the cutest I saw on the trip, adorned with paintings depicting the consequences of and reasons against drinking and driving.

- In the southwest (Texas and beyond), each state has a border office. It feels like you're entering a new country, to a degree. In response, I presume, to frequent drug trafficking and illegal immigration, these states set up inspection booths and have border guards on patrol. In California, two border guards actually got on our bus and checked passports; I said I was from the U.S. and they trusted me, meaning I didn't need to flash my passport. Little did they know...

                                                                An illegal immigrant in Calexico.

- The one incident that led to trouble on my long trip happened on the first day, before we entered Tennessee. One man of pickled complexion and wearing bad cowboy-style attire (a yellow button-down shirt with red lines and cactus tree designs that screamed the southwest, and big ol' boots) had a bottle of wine and a little stereo. He allegedly improperly touched the teenage girl he sat next to. A few other, bigger passengers stepped in to encourage him to sit at the front of the bus, alone. We stayed a little bit longer than planned at our next stop in Waynesville, and he found himself confronted by a police officer at the front of the bus.

He stayed in Waynesville.

Some 30 hours later, I saw the same man in the bus station in Memphis, holding the same stereo, dressed in the same clothes. He had caught the same bus schedule a day later. While he didn't necessarily look any more sober, he looked glummer, in the least.

- Speaking of the Southwest, apparently Albuquerque is a major depot for drug trafficking. Our merry bus driver warned everybody that the bus would be searched during our layover there. "If anybody has anything they don't want found, better give 'em to me!" he said. All joking aside, several of my companions on the bus were quite unnerved. We passed through Albuquerque without incident, however.

- The scariest thing I heard came right before Nashville. Sitting behind me were two kids who were in either high school or college and appeared reasonably intelligent.

They were discussing Microsoft Office 2010, and specifically some of the new features on Word.

"Yeah, when I write my papers on Word, now," one said, "I can just copy-paste into the document, and then you go and you right-click on it, and you can paraphrase!"

"Oh, dude, that's sweet!" the other replied.

I shed a couple tears in my seat for my educator friends and my student days.

- In my whole time on the bus, logging something like 80 hours total including the final leg to San Francisco, I only peed on a moving bus twice. The first time was in New York, where my cousin rushed me to the bus after deciding that we didn't have time to stop somewhere. The other time was a cheapie in Gallup, New Mexico; the bus driver had earlier announced a stop, scheduled for about 2:20 am, but at the station itself we made an in and out two-minute quickie stop, hardly enough time to pee legally.

I figured we weren't going to get a chance, so I lodged myself in the bathroom, did what I had to do, and ambled back out to my seat...just in time to get up as we stopped at a KFC/McDonalds gas station site. Ahh, sigh.

- Between Memphis and Little Rock overnight, one woman in her 30s or 40s, black, full-bodied, and pretty, spoke to a younger girl straddling the ages of 18 and 22, skinny, less pretty, also black, about finding God and getting out of her troubles. There was something in her speech about the various plagues of lesbians and homeless youth. Eventually, when either one got off the bus or when one of them decided to go to sleep, the older woman pledged to continue the conversation on Facebook.

- The one bit of funny business I had to pull was getting on the bus in Nashville. I arrived just 15 minutes before the scheduled departure, and waited in line behind a minor who needed permission to buy a ticket, its own mess, pushing me dangerously close to being late for my bus.

At last, he finished his business and the attendant at the counter was ready for me. After printing my boarding ticket, she insisted I weigh my bag to make sure it met the 50 lb. limit. Despite my efforts to play with the weight, ultimately it was 6 pounds over. With no time to make it go run laps, I took out a few books and put them in my backpack until I made the weight. She printed my info and I was on my way to San Diego.

Except that I had enough time to go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and conveniently switch back all the books I had just added to my backpack. No problems for the rest of the trip.

- I was late for one bus all trip: the last one, from LA to San Francisco. No one's perfect.

- I should mention that Megabus has wi-fi on their buses. This felt like a big deal at the time.


View Directions to 797 Cole Street, San Francisco, CA in a larger map

- On that Megabus from NYC to DC, I was lucky enough to sit next to a one Miss Shania. Shania was probably about 4 years old, a cheery little girl who taught me how to draw. Specifically, she shared with me her technique for the Pollock-esque masterpieces she churned out page after page: grab the pen (in light blue, pink, or green for boys), and go like this (bring the pen up and down the page in varying thicknesses and no discernible pattern, just an endless sprawl of lines) and you can do it. She was considerably prouder of having taught me to draw that than she was to have learned to draw a heart from me.

- And as a subset of interesting bus events, here are all the things I had to do to make phone calls without a cell phone:

1. Buy a pretzel from a street vendor across the street from the New York Public Library to get the change needed to call my cousin from a pay phone.

2. Call from Skype numerous times, most memorably using the wi-fi of the Megabus.

3. As DC's streets were void of pay phones as well as people, I ended up having to ask my cab driver for a phone to call my friend. This turned out well, as my cab driver wasn't sure how to get to my friend's house.

4. Using pay phones along the road at various times, with mixed success. Many of the pay phones in Greyhound stations are a little bit more expensive. Many more do not offer a long-distance coin option; you can only call locally or collect. You cannot call cell phones collect. I was mostly calling cell phones. This caused problems.

5. In one of those tricky situations, I ended up borrowing a fellow traveler's phone, after asking a few other fellow travelers for phones who didn't happen to have one.

6. It goes without saying that I borrowed my friends' phones very frequently on the trip.

7. In LA's Union Station, I had the microcosmic phone experience that summed up my macrocosmic trip. I needed change, so instead of asking someone for change, I bought something. Since I needed at least 40 cents to make it to a dollar, I bought gum, even though I don't chew gum. I thought it would be an ok sacrifice. I went to the pay phone, now with about $1.10 of change.

The pay phone required $2.00. I only found this out after I tried the first two of four payphones, which did not have a dialtone, and the third payphone, which did not accept coins, and then at last put my dollar in the fourth payphone. The return didn't work.

I went to a ticket counter, where I received a polite $2.00 in change. Change I could have received at step 1. Not my best traveling moment.

- But despite the bumps, and despite the moments where I spent more than I might have - a flight purchased in advance between almost any of my destinations, and certainly for the long distance ones would have been cheaper than the bus fare - the trip had a sense to it, and a reason. Beyond seeing the soft dew hovering above the grass on the side of the road in the Arkansas morning, and beyond realizing that Texas's skinniest part is 170 miles across, and beyond having the time to read and write or not have to fly on a plane or have the freedom to eat just peanut butter sandwiches, bananas, and the occasional candy bar for two days on a bus.

I can't imagine doing this same trip eastwards. It could be that I am an easterner, and any journey that way would feel like going home, which one does not want to do on a bus. It could be that going west gave me a chance to open a new world, to experience new places in a way that going east would not have.

The trip, the bus trip, hit its logic after Texas. There was our descent into the sunset, a sense of oneness descending back onto me. After Phoenix, crossing through the desert in the morning, ripping through a new barren scenery that was not so distant from Jordan or Israel, for example, but still new; and then entering California and seeing how the landscape slowly grew gray and then green as the road emptied out to the valley before San Diego and the sun falling in front of us; there made itself felt every justification for taking the long way, the hard way, the stupid way.

Here's to the Long Way.

Here's to the Hard Way.

Here's to the Stupid Way.

Mzingus Making Moves

This may come as no surprise, but I'll say it anyway: I've never felt like the "white man" like I did in Rwanda.

Come on, I bet you can barely tell which one is me.

Again, no shocker. Besides anything else, much of my traveling experience has been in the western world, namely the U.S. and Europe. There was a foray to Morocco, wherein I freaked out at the attention I drew in the Marrakesh souk but otherwise shrugged off the strangeness, blending in with plenty of other tourists in my own la-la land besides the Atlantic Ocean. There was last year's trip to Guatemala, but that country's proximity to the U.S. and its own racial makeup that includes plenty of European heritage makes white skin either something to ignore or something to resent.

The closest I've come to the reaction we received on this trip came from a trip I took after 8th grade to Japan with a group of kids from school. A cherished trip for me, our 8 days in Hokkaido saw our group take the lead in many of the "art camp" activities that we took part of. Vibrant, brash, and a little flamboyant, we got a little bit of a taste for the life of a rock star, as many of the Japanese kids followed us eagerly while we sang "New York, New York" and "Puttin' on the Ritz." (Did I mention we were flamboyant?)

This kid is the best.

In many ways, that trip was the travel experience I most recalled in seeking a comparison for the Rwanda trip: the school-related group trip, the assortment of activities that was loosely related to academics, and the way the group bonded to create a shared energy that one could not anticipate or predict. But I'm writing about being the white man, so let me return to that.

I've already written about the "mzingu", so let me further detail what it was like to be a mzingu. Kigali is a growing city, and may be ahead of many African cities in development and standard of living. At the same time, Rwanda remains remote, and the presence of a foreigner is still significant to many people. As such, seeing the "white man" is a new experience.

Children are most obvious in the way they acted around mzingus. Four of us went for a walk in the valley near our hostel early on in our trip. As we walked by people and waved, we could see parents indicating to their children that, "look, those are mzingus!" Subsequently, packs of children started chasing after us, shouting, "Mzingu, mzingu!" Once they reached us they were less sure of what to do, most of them standing there shyly and putting their hands out when we offered ours. We never shook hands, instead lightly touching palms. The bolder among our group would hug children.

Hot on the trail of the mzingus.

I mentioned also that there are different types of mzingus; in our group of 4 was a girl of half-Asian descent, her mother being from Malaysia. To her the children came running and shouting an extra word amidst their "Mzingu" calls. It took FGL Sara to interpret for us; they were shouting, "Mzingu nihao! Mzingu nihao!" The same girl later drew greetings of "konichiwa," as older Rwandans showed more cultural dexterity if not sensitivity.

That valley experience was not unique. After a morning of visiting genocide sites, we walked around a village that held several different schools with children getting out for lunch break and recess, which led to several iterations of hugging, throwing children around, taking pictures, and embracing mzinguness. In my trip to the market, I walked by a family in a corner. The adults were pointing at me and telling their 3-year old boy that, hey, look, that's a mzingu, a real live one. I turned the corner so that my back was to them, and a few seconds later I heard a little patter of feet; the little boy had run up to me. He put his hand on my pocket, as if to confirm I existed, and then quickly ran back.

"Look at how well the mzingu dresses!"

This curiosity tinged with reverence was not limited to children. We went to paint a house one morning, and on the way, we stopped to buy the paint, rollers, and masks needed. As our van stood in the street, and I sat in the van, behind one of the girls in our group, a man came up to the window. The man, in a ratty long-sleeved shirt and plain pants, was probably a little older than me. He shook my hand through the window and then proceeded to ask how he could make friends with white people.

"It would be very good to have white friends," he said in decent English. I stammered a few answers. "I would very much like to have a white girlfriend," he said. "That would be very good." He then indicated the girl in front of me. "Is she your sister?"
"No, she's too pretty to be my sister," I said, awkwardly. He did not respond directly. "Is she your girlfriend?" No, I said.
"She is very beautiful." She giggled nervously at the attention.
The man repeated how much he'd like to have a white girlfriend. The other members of our van started to pile in as we at last had the necessary paint and rollers. "I would very much like to meet your sister," the man said as we prepared to leave, "I am sure she would be beautiful like you." It was my turn to giggle nervously. And off we drove, I wishing him well in his quest.

These positive feelings for visitors was a surprise to me, though it shouldn't have been. We were briefed that Rwandans were liable to be closed and suspicious of others, an understandable mode to adopt for citizens of a country 15 years away from civil war and genocide. Furthermore, we might have expected raw feelings over the way that the international community ignored the genocide. At first, I thought that there was a spectrum that spanned two main forms of response to our presence - there were Rwandans who waved eagerly at us, such as the gardener at our hostel who gave us a two handed wave just about every time he saw us for two weeks, and there were Rwandans who eyed us with a bit of distrust. But I later found that whenever we waved at a Rwandan, they waved back eagerly; whenever we spoke to or greeted a Rwandan, they responded with a happy tone; whenever we engaged in a conversation, we found an appreciative conversationalist to join us. They may not have been spilling out their whole life story, but everyone was happy to see us.

My guess is that people make simple associations. The foreigners they run into in Kigali are generally there to help out; whether they help successfully or not is a different issue. Nobody ties foreigners specifically to the international community - if anything, we make up for the past failure. And yes, the "mzingus" tend to have more money, which is viewed not as a threat or even an opportunity - some kids and people begged for money, but on a much lower scale than you would expect. I think more people asked me for money in New York this weekend than they did in my time in Kigali (to be fair, I didn't understand that "falanga" meant cash the first couple times I heard it in Kigali. Also, to be fair, New York City has about as many people as Rwanda).

Keepaway from the mzingus. A typical scene.

Whatever the reason for the reverence white people were accorded in Rwanda, or at least the reverence we were accorded with in Rwanda, it left us feeling like we were in a movie. Any movie set in Africa where the visiting do-gooding (or possibly secretly evil) white man is surrounded by eager African children who marvel at his western clothes and modern technologies: that was the sort of scene we replicated on several occasions. Western clothing is an assimilated part of the globalized Rwanda, but many children were eager to have photos taken by us or to take photos of us or to pose or whatever they could do, if just to see pictures of themselves in the viewfinder. One of our group members had been to parts of rural Ethiopia where children had never seen their own image, with no ready water supply or mirror to go all narcissistic in front of; Rwanda was not that removed from the modern day, but there was great eagerness to meet us. This can get wearying, as everybody who sees you wants a piece of you, almost literally - they want to touch you, talk to you, occasionally receive money from you, and in general bask in you (I hope this doesn't sound arrogant - there's nothing special about us or any white person that visits that merits such attention, or at least nothing special that had anything to do with our control, personal characteristics, or deeds. Rwandans, kids mostly, just appreciate what the mzingu represents). But the eagerness is generally welcoming and positive.

Especially for free plane rides are they enthusiastic.

And that eagerness for the west and modern culture was where the dancing came in. Well, that and my sweet moves.

Workin' it. Uhh. Yeah.

The first time I danced was just among our group at a bar in Kigali. Our main man Patrick took us out to a local establishment after we ate an overly mzingu meal with Israelis in the country at a Chinese restaurant (of all the combos in the world). Fueled by a devilish mixed drink I came up with - Fanta Fiesta (a new, black currant flavored Fanta that tasted like grape cough medicine if grape cough medicine tasted good; also, all soda in Rwanda used actual sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, which didn't really mean soda was any healthier there, but meant it was a lot tastier) and Ugandan waragi (a clear alcoholic drink that I was warned about but that tasted like nothing more than, well, 80 proof alcohol, for better or worse), we started to bust out moves, but only for the amusement of ourselves and a few bystanders. A couple of the guys and a couple of the girls danced, but it was mostly a warm up night, a preview of things to come.

Those in the know are aware that this move is a Dave Frisch special.

The next night we went out to Papyrus. It was a Thursday night and we had a long Friday ahead of us, so we thought we'd have a nice meal and then go dancing. So we did it. We went dancing. And to Papyrus's credit, they were bumping killer jams for a long stretch, which made it easier to dance.

As anybody who has seen me dance at either a recent wedding or in general (chances are there aren't many of you) knows, when I dance, I bring energy, quasi-rhythm, and a bunch of enthusiastic but not exactly classy moves to the floor. Lots of side to side, lots of shoulder shimmying, lots of changing levels and hitting the floor. In other words, I dance like I wrestle, except with slightly less direction and a lot more spasticism.

"Bend down, then row it. Row it. Work that back. In the rhythm! And one! And two!"

There was no telling how this would play out on the Kigali dance floors. But within a few moves to Haddaway's classic, "What is Love?", I had helped form a circle and had a few young men from the area dancing along with me, mirroring my moves. I would dip to the left and pull my arms back in a fly lift sort of pattern, they would match. I would shake my right arm down in front of me and twist my body to the right, and two guys wearing baseball caps would be right with me. I would run around on my head to "It's Raining Men" on the floor and...well, I did that move alone. And the "chasing my head with my legs as I lied prone on the ground," that move was alone. But it was popular.

"Look at that crazy mzingu! I think he's having a seizure!"

This dancing dynamic was replicated at the Kigali Business Center night club (the KBC, as it's known) on our penultimate night, where I hit the floor out of duty when the DJ fulfilled my MJ or Prince request (though "Thriller" qualifies as the bare minimum fulfillment of that request, where "Little Red Corvette" or "Wanna Be Startin' Something" qualify as maximum fulfillment), and then later somehow ended up without a shirt dancing on the floor to another song that was familiar but that I can't quite name. These dancing dalliances also met with a strong crowd response from locals, including moments where a throng of girls jumped around me, and moments where a local lady of ill-repute danced behind me and rubbed my neck. She was not ready for the proverbial jelly, as it were.

Apparently, I was really easy to pose with when on the floor.

There's one other digression merited regarding dancing in Africa that makes it a little different. I will assume that Rwanda is not a very good place to be a homosexual: that is based solely on assumption and a little bit of asking around in Rwanda and of experts, but also on the idea that neighboring Uganda recently attempted to outlaw homosexuality, with death a potential penalty for some offenders. I'm presuming that Kigali, at the very least, is not trying to win Let's Go recognition as a gay capital, if you catch my drift.

Not that there's anything wrong with digging these moves or those pits.

That said, there is a frankness to showing affection that you would not see in the U.S. for sure, and in most places in the west. As one might find men holding hands in the Arabic world, you find it in Rwanda, more than you find men holding hands with women even. Women have a very strong position in Rwandan (or at least Kigalien) society, but there are still old-fashioned charms like triple kissing when you say hello or goodbye.

"Hey, how YOU doin?" (Also, sweaty much?)

This frankness extends to the dance floor, where guys dance with other guys just like they would with women. Which is weird, at first. At Papyrus, I thought I had stumbled upon a gay enclave as men bumrushed me to dance a little too close for comfort. By the time I danced at KBC, I was an old hand, and I didn't blink whether it was man, woman, group of women, group of men, or lady of ill repute who wanted to dance close with me. All of those constituencies were represented, by the by, which is another way of saying my dancing was a big hit.

I made sure the number of photos of me dancing close with a girl double the number of me dancing close with a guy. In case you had doubts.

A final illustration of the open arms with which the mzingu and his strange habits were greeted in Rwanda could be found at a small church congregation of only 500 people or so on a Sunday morning. At this pentecostal gathering, inside a building whose inner walls and ceiling were fashioned, perhaps consciously, to look like a revival tent, we witnessed an impressive service. The service started with gospel rock offerings from a talented 5-piece band and a choir, giving the feel of a concert for 20+ minutes. Then a few quiet messages were passed and we were introduced as guests. We went on stage, gave a speech and taught a song and dance ("David Melech HaOlam") for kids to join us in, and then retreated to our seats.

"And make sure to donate to the collection basket, kids!"

A few more announcements were shared, and then the band kicked into another song. This time, the tech staff cranked up a computer and a projector and showed the words on a screen. So we could sing along, more or less. More and more, as the song went on, as it was pretty repetitive. This song in fact stretched into the epic territory, far outstripping "Freebird" or any Led Zeppelin classic in terms of length and righteousness, and at last coming to a halt somewhere in Grateful Dead noodling territory, but with less noodling.

Instead, there was a chorus line, and they were dancing. Men and women pulled out a few steps that they kept switching on and off like a new hat to try on in a store before taking it home. I, deciding to wear my kinesthetic learning hat, followed along with the steps, allowing myself to get into the groove of the service and the worship, even if my heart wasn't exactly into the worship and my thoughts, ala King Hamlet's, were not exactly rising heavenwards.

The chorus line proceeded to don a three step and kick maneuver in each direction. 1-2-3 kick, turn 1-2-3 kick, etc. I executed this maneuver dutifully from my seat, perhaps bumping into the interpreter the church seated next to me so I could understand the sermon. After a few minutes of auditioning, unwittingly, I found myself compelled to go up on the stage. Which is to say Eddy, our Rwandan friend who introduced us to this church, led me on stage. And left me there. One mzingu on the end of a Rwandan chorus line.

I couldn't find the video of me dancing, so here's the song we sang to. This song went on for over 20 minutes. I guess it made as much sense as "Hey Jude," at least.

So I continued to follow the step on stage, with great elan and exuberance, if a slight hesitation over my incongruous presence in front of everyone. And, well, it was an experience: I didn't ruin the show, but I didn't elevate it as much as fit into it. Which was fun.

Such is life being a mzingu in Rwanda: exhilarating, exhausting, exciting, and exorbitantly rewarding. At least, for a little while.

Let's slide in an epic performance of our inside joke song of the trip, "Hey, Mzingu."