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Retching Record

December 2, 2018 by byerswithoutborders 2 Comments

We’ve been doing this sort of thing for decades, Jen and I. We’ve negotiated transport and driver countless times. You think by now we would have learned to ask if the road is paved the entire way. I guess we’re slow learners.

This weekend’s excursion was to Rwanda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Unlike the flat savannahs of the east, western Rwanda is mountainous. So our five hour, partially-paved trip was overflowing with twists, switchbacks, and hairpin turns. Stella beat her Bhutan record and threw up four times during the ride. What a trooper, she collects airsickness bags from all our flights, knowing that we’re likely going to force some nausea inducing adventure on her.

Not helping matters was our driver’s aggressive acceleration-braking, characteristic of those who drive with two feet. Perhaps a technique for our zealous driver to more effectively overtake and pass every bicycle, car, minibus, and lorry that had the affrontery to occupy the road ahead of us. Through a complex semaphore of horn-honking and turn-signal flashing, he would communicate to the other motorists his desire to pass at the next convenient blind curve. Fatalistic drivers like this one always earn me a seat as shotgun. Jen knows that my life insurance has the higher payout. So instead of watching our driver attempt to squeeze three abreast, between an endless succession of buses and oncoming dump trucks, I focused out the side window, at the passing mountains of western Rwanda.

Around 5000 feet, the topography of western Rwanda reminds me a lot of Appalachia. However, being situated on the equator the curvature of these hills are clothed in a very different flora. In place of the mixed temperate forests of NC or VA, these mountains play host to a more tropical variety. Immediately outside of the capital, the land is parceled in an endless quiltwork of gardens, and small subsistence farms. Broad leaved-banana trees surround homes and run up to plots of corn, peas, sweet potato, melons, cassava. There are stands of bamboo, avocado trees, passion fruit vines. The valley floors are all sectioned into rectangled rice paddies. If any naked earth shows it is the red dirt of my childhood in GA. Shades of green and red are the dominant palate of these hills.

After a while I notice something missing. I’ve not seen any draft animals in Rwanda. There are no oxen tilling those paddies, no donkeys pulling carts of produce. I guess it makes sense. Rwanda is Africa’s most densely populated country. Labor here is cheap. We’re constantly passing bicycles laden down with small mountains of plantains, sweating men and boys pushing them to market.

Tea Plantation

As we get closer to our destination, the patchwork of gardens gives way to industrial-scale tea plantations. The waist high shrubs are so tightly packed, they make entire hillsides into bright green topiary. The only break, the occasional blue-grey stand of eucalyptus, identifiable by its scent as much as its silvery leaves. The plantations are community co-ops. In addition to a source of local income, these fields form natural barriers around Nyungwe Forest National Park.

Colobus Monkey

Nyungwe is Rwanda’s most important area of biodiversity. 1000 plant species, 13 species of primates including chimpanzee and colobus monkeys, 275 species of birds, 120 different types of butterfly. When we cross into the park we enter a world of nature left to its own business. Now the hills are obscured by curtains of green wild rainforest jungle. Blue monkeys eye us from the roadside and hornbills glide along the valleys. There is so much green it makes a racket for the eyes.

Rwandan soldiers also watch us from the roadside. In body armor, with an impressive array of machine guns, they are a reminder that we are on the border of the DRC. From our hotel room, we can look across Lake Kivu and into that no man’s land of civil war and Ebola. It’s like looking into North Korea, Syria, South Sudan, Yemen. Like standing at the edge of the grand canyon or the top of the Sears tower. It gives you the willies. Some travelers (with a poor sense of self-preservation) actually cross that border tracking gorilla, looking for adventure, hits of adrenalin.

For Byers Without Borders, the hotel buffet was adventure enough. Lily and I spent the majority of Monday prostrate on the cool tile floor of our bathroom in Kigali.

Filed Under: Family, Health Volunteers Overseas, Medical Volunteers Overseas, Travel, travel with kids, Uncategorized, Volunteer Tagged With: adventure, africa, family adventure, family travel, happy life, health volunteers overseas, Medical Mission, rwanda, travel, travel with kids, volunteer oveseas

Nearly Nested

August 20, 2018 by byerswithoutborders 2 Comments

 

Barn swallows build nests from mud and dirt. Robins use bits of dried grass and twigs. Penguins make little stone circles while an ostrich is content with a shallow dusty hole. Apparently, the nesting material of choice for Byers Without Borders is spraypainted sheet metal. Introducing Fiona! Our 1997 Bluebird Schoolbus, turned mobile command center.

When we sold our house last year we had the vague notion that an RV would be a good option for our new life. It took nearly a year of searching craigslist, dealerships, and RV shows. Airstreams, fifth-wheels, class-A’s with slide outs, we looked at and entertained every option. But consistently they were either too pricey (new Airstreams start at $100,000) or too heavy in motifs of ducks-in-flight, faux-Tuscan or wood-paneling (Jen’s style is best described as Himalayan-IKEA).

Beyond price and aesthetics, few RV manufacturers were able to meet our number one requirement, three separate bunks for the girls. We wanted each kid to have a private space on the RV. A spot that was all their own, a spot for privacy, a spot to nest into, a spot of consistency in our rolling-fluid lifestyle. We did not want to be forced to convert Stella’s bed daily into a kitchen table or sofa.

And then we spotted Fiona on craigslist/Jacksonville. Born a school bus in South Carolina, she spent a short time as a church bus before being converted into an RV by a family of five. They had been living in her, full time, for over a year, traveling to surf competitions up and down the east coast.

We found Fiona with her creators in a campground just south of St. Augustine. The better part of a weekend was spent with them, learning their story, and the story of the bus. Stella and their daughter Piper played Barbies. The big kids all went to a chalk-art contest together. In between bus questions, we discussed everything from homeschooling strategies to instapot recipes. We really got to know this sweet family, so it was with a slight sense of guilt that I drove off with their house Sunday afternoon, leaving them with all of their belongings, in a pile, at their empty campsite.

The kids have quickly claimed their bunks, dubbing them “sleep pods”. Presently they’re in deep design mode, planning how to personalize these pods. Jen is mapping out counter space and storage allowances, while I scour google earth images of our friends’ driveways. Be on alert if yours is 35 feet plus, you might be our next stop.

 

For those friends and followers who can’t make it to the “open bus” this Saturday, Isabelle and Lily put together a video tour of our #HappyBus.

 

Filed Under: Family, Travel, travel with kids, Uncategorized Tagged With: byerswithoutborders, happybus, open bus

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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