A Travel Junkie's Diary

by Dina Bennett

  On the field’s periphery are bundles of hay. We put up over a thousand tons of hay each summer on our ranch. When I say “we” I mean it literally. Many summers I’ve helped our hay crew, driving a tractor pulling a big circular rake or a hay baler out of whose rear portal plop seventy-five-pound, three-string bales of premium horse hay. It’s a job that sounds tedious but in truth is wondrous, starting always in mid-afternoon when the freshly cut meadow has had a chance to dry in the summer sun and breeze. For hours I sit on the slow bouncing tractor, squinting from under my broad-brimmed hat at the long rows of hay striping one three-hundred-acre meadow. In the peak of summer, it stays light late and I keep chugging along, swigging ice water from my thermos, staving off dinner pangs with an energy bar. As the sun sinks a coyote trots out from the willows and hawks swoop down to perch on finished bales, both hoping to snatch the mice which recently were snuggly hidden under a lofty swath of sweet-smelling dry grass. Here at the Dimeka market, we each heft a local bale and agree they weigh about fifty pounds, about the weight of one of the sacks of oats I heft into our horses’ feed room. It’s light by our standards, incredibly heavy if you have to carry it through the bush. If you’re skeptical, put six gallon-jugs of water in a pack and go for a twelve-mile walk in your neighborhood park. Then come talk to me.

  The market has drawn from villages of Hamar, Karo, Bena, Arbore. Though loathe to be judgmental, my personal vote on attractiveness goes to the Hamar, a good-looking people, with coppery skin, sharp noses, full lips. They’re easy to identify, what with their signature glistening ochre bangs and ringlets, strands of chunky yellow, green, blue, and white beads ringing their necks, steel and copper bangles tight around wrists and biceps, a supple goatskin decorated with cowry shells and beads draped from their waist.

  There is lots of inspecting going on and not just by me. A girl, glowing with what I imagine is the first flush of married life, hefts one glossy black and bronze chicken after another. Elsewhere, a woman with an infant suspended in a cozy back sling eyes a pot of honey, then strides on to sniff the neighbor’s butter. A waft of sweet herbalness drifts from a tarp, where an elderly woman is offering a smoky example of her bush potpourri. A shrewd cattle baron pokes a bale of hay. We buy twenty thumb-sized bananas for twenty cents. Our purchase wipes out the seller’s supply. She appears stunned, not sure whether to sit out the day in front of her empty tarp or start walking home.

  From the market we move on to visit the Mursi tribe, who live within the boundaries of Mago National Park near Jinka in the Omo’s northern sector. The dirt road to their village is rough and unimproved, with sharp rocks that I fear might be the end of our Land Rover’s abused tires. Two park guards, foisted on us at the park entrance as protection, perch cross-legged on the Landie’s roof, loaded rifle on lap. Their comradely laughter and shouts drift into my open window along with cigarette smoke and the sour smell of sweat-soaked uniforms. At a fork in the road, one of them leans over the windshield and slashes his hand to the left to tell us where to go. There’s nothing for them to shoot at. They say there’s wildlife somewhere in the park, lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, but I have my doubts. More reliable word has it that wildlife in these parts has been poached to extinction.

  Each Omo Valley tribe has its particular type of beautification, created to enhance female appeal and also to indicate that a girl is ready for marriage. For the Mursi it’s a lip plate, which transforms the lower lip into a small platter. The Mursi women have their lip plates off when we arrive, as we’re the first foreigners of the day. It’s like we’ve surprised an old showgirl in her dressing room before she’s put on her curly wig and penciled in her eyebrows, and it’s not a pretty sight. A flaccid loop of skin hangs down to their chin, looking like a thin, wrinkly brown sausage. Developing this lip loop is a rite of passage that begins when a girl is nine. To make it, a slit is cut at the base of the lower lip and a small plug inserted. Over time, the opening is stretched by inserting progressively larger plugs, until it can accommodate a clay disk that is four inches in diameter and a half-inch thick.

  Everyone is happy to see us because we represent money. The Mursi, like all the other Omo tribes, have learned they can charge for their photo. And they do. They’re not shy about this, as I would be, nor are they fierce. They present themselves like so much cabbage or boxes of cereal. We pay for every photo taken and to every person in that photo. Children are discounted 50 percent, an indication that in Mursi society children aren’t worth much. I can understand that; who can be certain which children will survive to become photogenic, procreating adults? Still, if they asked me to be their financial adviser I’d suggest an inverted scale, charging more the younger they get. Top scale would go to the babies. They’re the cutest.

  Many Mursi women have had their front teeth pulled out, top and bottom. I puzzle through whether this is done for extra allure. Then those same women pop their lip plates in, hoping to create a photo op, and I can see that the largest plates intrude into the mouth, where those front teeth otherwise would be. Women aren’t the only ones going through painful procedures in pursuit of comeliness. Men have intricate scarification patterns on their chest, twin rows of welts starting on their pectorals, curling around their nipples, and running down the center of their chest to the navel. The welts are raised by rubbing a butter-charcoal mix into the incision. Next time I squeeze my feet into too-tight high heels, I’ll pause to remember what real pain is all about.

  Mursi existence is even more mobile than that of an air force family. They move every half-year, following the river as it slowly dries. The huts in this village, made of thatch and river reed culled from the surrounding bush, are the smallest and lowest we’ve seen. The river is their Home Depot, with ample new building materials available 24–7 whenever they need it. They don’t seem to invest much in making their huts into a home. Nor are they concerned about taking those huts with them, as the old materials wear out quickly. When I was six, I made shelters this size out of blankets and chairs, in which to play with my dolls. Now I’d have to crawl in on my knees to get through the three-foot-high portal, if anyone were to invite me to enter. No one does.

  The Mursi have made clear by their posturing that we and our money are welcome. Still, the welcome feels exclusionary, as the Mursi have learned to protect themselves from repeated intrusions by displaying only a select few picturesque aspects of their life. More than anywhere else I’ve been I sense that our being here is wrong, that our presence has created a living diorama as artificial as any stuffed animal display in a museum. Squatting down in front of one hut, I see a young girl inside holding a tiny baby on her lap. She smiles up at me, not yet sporting even the smallest of lip plates, which means she is not yet of child-bearing age. From the way she gestures to the right, I gather the baby’s mother is the one near me outside the hut, grinding millet; it’s the same stone, same grinder as used by the Arbore wife, despite no connection between the tribes. The babysitter uses five fingers of one hand and two of the other to tell me the baby is seven months old. If I were to judge age solely by his size—and I know he’s a he, not a she, because he is naked—he’d be no more than half that. I don’t say this to imply the Mursi are malnourished. Far from it. Besides millet, the Mursi have cows for meat and milk, which is a veritable banquet compared to what other tribes have. Everyone looks robust and healthy, unless it’s only the healthy ones who are still alive. I can’t find out whether the baby was born premature, as no Mursi wants to interact with us apart from posing for photos.

  The more we wander around this cluster of ten huts, the sadder I feel and the more I sense we have wronged these people by our intense curiosity about their customs and lives. Looking for something, anything, I can connect with, I focus on what the women are doing. Everywhere I’ve traveled, it’s the women who have been willing to open their circle so I can step inside and sit with the local sisterhood. So when I notice a woman lying on her side, very still, her head nestled in an old woma
n’s lap, I stop. The old woman seems to be doctoring her eye. Several other women squat in front, silently observing the operation. As always, I have packed my medical kit full of controlled substances left over from various joint operations and one bout with doggy bone cancer. If there’s pain somewhere, I can lessen it with one judiciously chosen pill. I look around for signs that I am in a Mursi medical clinic, but no one seems hurt or sick. It’s puzzling and I don’t want to stare, because my mother taught me how rude that is and Bernard always reminds me so. But I do want to stare, because I want to know what’s going on. And when I realize what’s being done on the ground, I also realize why I didn’t get it. It’s because there’s no incense, no bowl of polished apples, no whispery New Age music to define where I am: the Mursi spa. The old one is the beautician, the young the client. And the treatment? Having her eyelashes plucked out. I don’t know whether to wince or applaud. I do know not to make an appointment. And so it’s with more than ordinary relief that I climb back into our car, relieved to depart from where I now feel I should never have been in the first place.

  If It Floats

  PUERTO MONTT, CHILE, 2008

  With a coastline of 2,653 miles, Chile’s length is over three times that of California. If we’re to gain a remotely rounded idea of the country, it behooves us to take to the sea. Cars, of course, do not do well in water. Sometimes being on a road trip means being willing to get out of the car and continue on your way by other means entirely. I’m talking boats, one of which awaits us in Puerto Montt, the Chilean port midway down that svelte coastline and gateway to the Patagonian south.

  The ferry Evangelistas, plyer of coastal waters, sits placidly at dock, painted like someone gone mad with a Crayola crayon box. She’s not what I expect. I had pictured a ship of modest, but pleasing proportions, elegant like a private yacht, but of course larger. And like a yacht, painted white or else a handsome midnight blue. What I see instead is a small tanker. Thanks to someone’s madcap idea, or else the local painter’s limited selection, she is painted an incongruous cherry red, lemon yellow, and navy blue. The effect is like garish makeup on an old lady, a vain attempt to bestow cheeriness on an otherwise lumpen exterior. In her present incarnation, this former fuel transport ship can carry two hundred forty passengers in more or less comfort, depending on what level of accommodation one purchases. The ship is utilitarian, designed to carry a cargo of trucks, goods, and fuel, with the crew tower retrofitted to hold those paying passengers who aren’t chickens, horses, or cows.

  Parking our rental Suzuki amid the hulking big rigs below deck, we feel a momentary sensation of betrayal. After all, this is supposed to be a driving trip, not a sailing trip. There’s a fleeting thought that we’re breaking faith with the definition of our journey. Even when we put Roxanne on a truck during the P2P, we did so only because she had broken down, or was about to. And we stayed with her. Apart from that, Bernard drove us every inch of the 7,800 miles between Beijing and Paris. This flicker of P2P rigidity dismays me but doesn’t surprise me. The P2P race ended barely six months ago and, being my first ever extended road trip, has permeated my views of what a road trip should be. I swallow daily reminders to remain casual as if they’re multivitamins during cold season. Just like a scratchy throat can inspire me to up my regimen of homeopathies, so the occasional relapse into regimented standards of procedure is a prod for the kinder, milder me to reassert herself. On this trip, happily, we’re free to do what we want. If I could have kicked up my heels while mounting the steep stairs to the upper deck, without crashing ignominiously to the cargo deck below, I would have.

  For the three-day journey to Puerto Natales, we treat ourselves to one of ten AAA cabins, the best the Evangelistas has to offer. This entitles us to a narrow, private room containing one set of bunk beds, a small desk, a locker, a three-foot-long porthole seat dressed up in green vinyl, and a private bathroom with shower, all in the space of a cell at the Colorado State Penitentiary and probably painted a similar dingy oatmeal color.

  Our cabin status entitles us to three squares a day. Unlike someone in the slammer, though, we are fed in the captain’s mess. This is royal treatment indeed, and a perk for which I am earnestly grateful, as otherwise we would have had to eat in the cafeteria with the other two hundred passengers. I don’t dislike other people. It’s just that I don’t manage well when they are in front of me. Sadly, the one aspect of my character that was impervious to the otherwise fully destructive effects of the P2P was my impatience. It’s still in full force, causing me to fidget uncontrollably, as ill-humored as a polar bear in Hawaii, whenever I have to wait for anything. I can’t fault Bernard when he doesn’t hesitate to remind me that whatever line we’re currently in surely is not the last one we will ever stand in, and if I can’t find some semblance of patience in me I should just go home. This is why standing for an hour in line holding an empty tray, waiting for someone to spoon some sludge into its various depressions, was too Oliver Twist to contemplate. I could feel the barbs of hostile glares that would rain down on me in the days to come, after I had cut in front, flushed with my overwhelming inability to wait as others are fed before me.

  On the first evening of our three-day journey I realize just how lucky we are, when I wander into the cafeteria looking for one of the crew members just before dinner. The large, open lounge, bound on one side by a long wall of windows, is a madcap scene of hungry travelers whom I learn from later conversations include kids on their gap year, a carpenter using his earnings to see the world, and a forty-ish woman who’s financing her travels by teaching English as a Second Language in whatever city she finds herself when she needs funds to continue her journey. The scene reminds me immediately of cattle in a feed lot when the evening grain is put out, only here it’s people jostling and shuffling. The line snakes between banks of six-foot-long Formica tables bolted securely to the floor to withstand the buffeting of high waves. Instead of the bawling of hungry cattle, there are shouts as people wave their friends to the spot they’ve saved in line, and bursts of shrieking laughter from those who have imbibed several too many pisco sours. As we tend to stay to ourselves when on the road, the sheer number of people as well as their uniformity of age threatens to crash over me like Niagara, and I scuttle back through the door to avoid the torrent.

  The captain’s mess is cordial and quiet if cramped, with three tables draped in white linen, surrounded by simple wood chairs. In one of those odd coincidences of travel, our dining companions are four French couples, traveling through Chile on vacation. We crowd around two tables and I impress myself by switching between French to Bernard’s compatriots and Spanish to the waitstaff. Only occasionally does my mouth mix up the two, uttering something that receives a blank stare. The portholes rapidly fog over as we laugh and exchange travel notes with our dinner mates. The stout captain, who’s sailed these waters for many of his seventy-six years, comes over to welcome us before our first dinner, then squeezes himself into a chair at his own table where several other people are already seated. Curious to know exactly who’s along, I turn around, introduce myself, stick out my hand and ask him if this is his family with him. “Si,” he says. “Mi esposa, mi hija, y sus niños.”

  His plump wife looks stuffed like a chile relleno, cinched tight in a black dress that’s a size too small, yet her face beams with the happiness of someone who is delighted to have these few days with a husband she adores but rarely sees, thanks to a sailing schedule that keeps him at sea instead of at home. His daughter strikes me at first as overly made up for such a simple ship, but then I recognize the important position her father holds and realize the makeup is her way of participating in that grandeur, relatively modest though it may be. I also feel amicable toward her because her son and daughter are eating their meal quietly, a display of good behavior the lack of which among my own compatriots irks me no end. The captain neglects to introduce the remaining woman at his table, who is young and dark skinned. From the way she tenderly chides t
he boy not to pick at his salad with his fingers, while their mother flirts with a waiter, I assume she is the nanny. After this brief burst of conversation, the captain turns his back and politely ignores us for the rest of the voyage. Still, I’m glad for the captain, happy that he has his family with him. I’m sure he longs for the day when he had this tiny dining saloon to himself, a privacy destroyed by some land-based COO who decided that ship finances required the addition of paying passengers to the otherwise mute or inanimate cargo.

  I soon understand why the captain fills his uniform to bursting. The chef feeds us copious amounts of nourishing food, including, much to our surprise, fresh fruit and salad, excellent mashed potatoes, and as much Chilean Carménère and merlot as we care to drink. I take it easy on the alcohol. Bernard picks up the slack, but I’m the only one I’m worried about. Aware I’ve traded the possibility of carsickness for the probability of seasickness, I’ve snagged the bottom bunk in our cabin for myself, figuring if a storm tosses us about, it’ll be a short lunge to the bathroom. No sense tempting Poseidon to have his way with me by having heavy red wine slosh in my belly like untethered ballast.

  Three days didn’t seem long when we decided to take the ferry south, but the time drags. Life onboard is constrained to three things: walking the deck, sitting in the common area, and clambering the short flight of stairs in between the two. It feels like we’re in one of those plastic snow globes you shake to get the fake flakes swirling, though ours is filled with wispy fog. We’re the couple inside designed to mimic “having fun” but who never move and around whom the scenery never changes. It’s claustrophobic and antithetical to the freedom of the road that inspires us. To combat the tedium, the crew do their best to provide entertainment options, as the threat of going crazy or drinking to excess is severe. Bartenders have their cocktail shakers in action by ten in the morning. Other than watching badly dubbed Hollywood B movies, all we can do is walk up and down the stairs numerous times, circumnavigate the deck in both directions, and squint through mist and drizzle at the veiled islands. Well before cocktail hour, I find Bernard in the lounge, feet up on a blue cushion, cheerfully nursing a pisco sour.