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Bus Burrow

March 29, 2019 by byerswithoutborders Leave a Comment

Living five people in a 250 square foot bus, it is safe to say Byers Without Borders is not taking up too much room. In fact, it often feels like we’re training the kids for a future in the submarine corps or as the next occupants of the space station. They even refer to their bunks as sleep pods. Hey NASA how about a couple of space camp scholarships? Or some T-shirts? Just none of that flavored styrofoam you’re calling dehydrated ice cream, please.

What’s it like living like this? If you look to the internet to understand life in a skoolie you’ll mostly find Kondo-inspired posts shaming you out of your collection of concert T’s or countless blogs devoted to making your tiny home look like an IKEA fallout shelter. According to the web, living in a bus will make your life a series #nofilter-moments taking you ever closer to parental nirvana.

The truth is you’ll likely arrive at every destination reeking of exhaust, there will always be a line of people at the shoe cabinet, during winter the walls will weep with condensation and during the summer you’ll roast in your tin-box house. These websites never mention that “free-wifi” means sharing a trickle of bandwidth with foil-hat alien enthusiasts trying to upload their latest online seminar about the panspermic roots of octopus intelligence.

The blogs never mention that your sex life will revert back all the way to high school and those hushed, under-the-blanket encounters when your pants acted as a pair of ankle cuffs. With little headroom and no stabilizers, skoolie sex is like a diabetic dessert, a reminder of how much you miss the real thing.

Life in a skoolie is hard!

But it is also one of our most fun and exciting adventure-experiments yet. The tiny space can be a source of frustration, but oddly it is also one of the bonuses of the bus. Our bus has become a cozy little burrow. Maybe its an evolutionary remnant buried in our limbic systems. But don’t we feel more at ease, comfortable and safe in small cozy spaces? Has there ever been a refrigerator box that didn’t spend the week of glory as a kids plaything? Animals make dens, kids build forts, and Byers Without Borders burrow in a bus.  

Watch a typical Saturday morning on the bus.

https://youtu.be/G7xo8kGOLXw

Filed Under: Adventure, Bus Life, bus life, nomad life, skoolie, Uncategorized Tagged With: adventure, family adventure, happybus, living with less to live with more, nomad life, skoolie life

Kigali Transport

November 29, 2018 by byerswithoutborders 1 Comment

Kigali is a city of 1 million spread out over a handful of steep hills. Unlike some of our other homes abroad, it is not feasible to navigate the city on foot. As such we’ve been forced to educate ourselves on the varied modes of Kigali city transport.

At 5000 Rwandan Francs (RWF) for a cross-town ride, taxis occupy the top spot in the food chain of transport. No real difference from those at home, assuming your stateside taxi has mirrors held on by zip ties and worn springs that bottom the car out on every bump. Jen normally takes the front seat because of her superior French, however, most of the drivers only speak Kinyarwanda, so the ride often devolves into frustrated pointing at a phone map.

If 5000 RWF is too much the moto-taxi is an exhilarating option. For 1000 RWF (helmet included) you can hop on the back of one of these motorcycle taxis and zip across town, weaving in and out of traffic, in an affront to local traffic laws and every nuanced clause of your travel insurance policy. Arriving at your destination vibrating from adrenaline and itching from the community helmet are just part of the experience.

Cheap, scenic and likely a bit more safe than Moto-taxis are the bicycle taxis. It’s just what it sounds like, a padded seat behind your driver pumping the pedals. By far these are my favorite because no one can look serious riding shotgun on the back of a bike, legs held out to the sides in a tin-man pose. It’s like trying to look mad while sipping out of a straw.

Finally, there is the city bus. At 100-200 RWF, this is the cheapest way to get across town. Overcrowded, smelly, with cryptic routes and stops that change like the stairs of Hogwarts, the kids refuse to take the bus with me. The rugby scrum getting on and off is intimidating.

 

Plus, a family motorcycle race across town is loads more fun.

Filed Under: Adventure, transportation, Travel, travel with kids, Uncategorized, Volunteer Tagged With: getting around, getting around kigali, health volunteers overseas, transportation, travel overseas, traveling, traveling with kids, volunteer, volunteer overseas

Asian Aftertaste

June 7, 2018 by byerswithoutborders Leave a Comment

Imagine you’re lucky enough to snag a table at The French Laundry, the chef’s tasting menu, multiple courses with wine pairings, ingredients locally sourced and Michelin-level prepared by Thomas Keller himself, and after swallowing the last morsel of dessert perfection you pop up and rush to the restroom to brush your teeth. Unthinkable! No! An experience like that warrants time on the palate, time for savoring. Those exquisite and complex flavors need a chance to imprint themselves. They should be allowed to fade slowly.

Our re-entry to the west is always like this. It takes us a few weeks to allow the recent experience to fade. Time to process, to reorient, to recalibrate to this cultural baseline.

Our last port of call in Asia was Singapore. We had the good fortune to stay with our friends Kim and Tom. Not only did they store a mountain of cold-weather gear for us, while we played in Indonesia, they acted as wonderful hosts and guides in a town that now ranks in our personal top 3 Asian cities.

Everyone has heard how clean Singapore is (yes, it is against the law to chew gum in public) but really, it is insanely clean. My mother’s housekeeping standards are based on the magazine layouts of Southern Living. As a kid she made me vacuum my way backward out of rooms so I wouldn’t walk over the sweeper lines in the carpet’s nap. Even she would be impressed with Singapore. Add in its tropical flora, and it’s understandable why the kids kept saying “I feel like we’re at Busch Gardens”.

Somehow Singapore has found a way to blend English, Chinese, South Indian, and Maylay cultures without watering down any one of them. The best place to see this is in the food hawker centers. Tiny mom and pop owned food stalls specialize in the authentic cuisine of the owner’s heritage. By picking multiple stalls our mealtimes often resembled a buffet at the U.N.  Satay and coconut rice, saag paneer and tandoori baked naan, chili crab and buns, even a toasted ham and cheese sandwich, all laid out on long communal tables and washed down with bottles of Tiger Beer.

Singapore is famous among foodies and was even featured on an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. The celebrity chef called Singapore the most food-centric place on the planet, and our host Kim made sure it lived up to the hype. I had a religious experience with soup dumplings, Jen spent an afternoon sipping authentic Singapore Slings, and the kids discovered the little-known Singaporean Ice Cream Sandwich.

Even food expert Bourdain missed that one. An inch thick slab of ice cream slapped on a slice of psychedelic colored sandwich bread, eaten taco style. It

sounds ridiculous, but the lines at these carts attest that it is ridiculously good. The texture of the bread makes the whole encounter reminiscent of a strawberry shortcake.

Savoring Ice Cream Sandwiches with friends

 

 

 

 

 

 

The food, the mix of cultures, the clean streets, a crime rate that is conducive to 10 year olds taking the subway unaccompanied, Singapore left a taste we wanted to savor.

Even departing Singapore was pleasant. Smiling immigration officers stuffed the kid’s pockets with candy. In contrast, their kevlar-clad U.S. counterparts welcomed us home with scowls and the news of the latest school shooting.

Culture shock makes sense. You’re in a foreign environment, so obviously you should feel a bit off balance. But reverse culture shock, the struggle to feel at home when you’re at home, is much more distressing. You’re in an environment that should feel comfortable and normal, and yet things still feel alien. There are too many cereals to pick from at the grocery store and not enough smiles to help soothe your indecision.

Rob & Sharon’s pet bear/dog Hagrid

For the past month, this has been our little struggle. We’ve felt out of step and misunderstood. Fortunately, we returned to New Haven for another month of work at Yale. Hearing Arabic or Russian on the bus is nothing special in New Haven, and 90% of the kid’s friends here have passports. Also, we have been able to connect with some of our HVO-Bhutan-volunteer buddies. We had

Having fun with Hagrid

dinner in Avon with surgeons Rob and Sharon, and their giant Newfie Hagrid. Charlie and Carolyn had us over for cocktails in Branford. And

Sunset on the beach with the Mizes.

Jen and the kids spent the better part of a week in Maine at Betsy and Randall’s camp. Spending time with these people, friends who understand why we go and how we feel when returning, has helped pull our heads out of the sand. We’re all feeling a bit more at ease. The kids no longer balk at brushing their teeth with tap water.

With Betsy at her and Randy’s camp in Maine.

So we’re back to normal. Or at least as normal as Byerswithoutborders can ever be, which means… moving day!

My month-long contract at Yale is over. It’s time to hit the road again.

”We’re like birds. Wherever we land we build a nest” Given

 

Filed Under: Adventure, Family, Travel, Volunteer Tagged With: adventure, culture shock, Family, family travel, friends, ice cream, Singapore, travel overseas, volunteer

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