• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Byers Without Borders

My WordPress Blog

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Blog

Travel

Smell Ya Later

October 4, 2019 by byerswithoutborders 2 Comments

I guess I never really thought much about what the southwest would smell like. Certainly if asked prior to our time here, I would not have expected there to be a varied palate in that specific sense department. Pictures of dry arroyos, sun-baked adobe and gravel yards adorned with cacti did not prepare me for the exquisite experience of standing in a field of sage after a September thunderstorm. Or the almost boozy vanilla scent when you dare to put your nose to the bark of a ponderosa pine. The familiar Christmas smell of the spruce-fir forests higher up the mountains was really no surprise, but who knew spring in town would bring a sticky-sweet perfume as apricot trees bloomed ripened and dropped their fruit all along my bike route to work. And now as summer segues into fall, the smell of roasting chilis dominates. It is as exotic to me as my first whiff of fish sauce or sandalwood. A mixed smell of brushfire and grilled veg, it is a dark odor that nibbles the back of the throat. 

Twenty-pound sacks of fresh green chilis are available at the grocery, and roasting vendors are set up in parking lots throughout the city. So much for the SW being barren. 

Supposedly smell is the oldest sense and the one most likely to trigger memories. As we head east, away from Santa Fe, I’m happy to think back on the many unique and new smells here, and the memories waiting to be triggered. 

Smell you later, Santa Fe. 

Filed Under: Travel, Uncategorized Tagged With: chilis, land of enchantment, smells of Santa Fe

Hope in Rwanda

January 27, 2019 by byerswithoutborders 1 Comment

Unmarked grave

In the spring of 1994, over the course of 100 days, one million Rwandans were murdered. 10,000 people a day were killed by militias encouraged and supported by the government. Most North Americans only know this story through a handful of news reports and Don Cheadle’s movie. So it is understandable that our plan to travel to Rwanda was met with much disbelief and concern from our friends and family. Why on earth would we choose to take our young family to such a horrific place?

The history is indeed horrific. One in eight Rwandans were slaughtered that spring. There is a grave in Kigali that holds the remains of 250,000 victims. Toddlers were bludgeoned to death. Churches were bulldozed while victims sought shelter within. Machete wielding militias left corpses littering the streets. The history is horrific.

But the place, the country is not. Rwanda is not the genocide. Rwanda is a survivor of the genocide. The entire country is a victim of trauma, and to witness how it has chosen to heal is inspiring.

How these people can overcome the desire for revenge astonishes me. I doubt I could. When questioned on the topic our safari driver (who was made an orphan at the 10 by the militias) responded “We have no choice, we can not tolerate more killings, more death”.

Every April there is a week of national mourning, citizens attend Kwibuka sessions in their villages where they discuss and share their genocide stories, trying to heal. Tribal identity is no longer recognized; no Tutsi, no Hutu only Rwandans.

We did not take the kids into the memorial. Because of the graphic nature of the exhibits, children under 12 are not admitted. But of course they had questions, “What does genocide mean? How does something like that happen”?

Genocide is the horrible end of an ethos of “the other”. The mindset of Us versus Them. The scapegoating of all of your problems on a marginalized group. Of slowly demonizing that group until they’re not even human, then trying to get rid of them with the hope that your problems will go away too. It’s so much easier to hate a disenfranchised group than a broken system. Rwanda’s genocide is a lesson in how this mindset fails everyone and Rwanda’s recovery is a lesson in how unity is the only real hope.

That’s why we took our kids to Rwanda. I hope they learned the lesson. I hope we all can.

Filed Under: Africa, Hope, Rwanda, Travel, Uncategorized, Volunteer Tagged With: genocide, hope, peace, rwanda, travelafrica, travelrwanda

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

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

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

Mindful Walking

April 19, 2018 by byerswithoutborders Leave a Comment

Our family just spent 2 months in the country of Bhutan.  If you are unfamiliar with our wanderings you can check us out at Byers Without Borders and if your geography needs help, you can find this little gem of a country nestled between India and China. You may also know Bhutan as the happiest country in the world, famous for placing Gross National Happiness (GNH) ahead of Gross National Product. This beautiful Himalayan country is heavily steeped in culture and tradition, reflecting a predominantly Vajaryana Buddhist influence.

 

One way this influence manifests is through the activities witnessed at Thimphu’s National

Thimphu’s Memorial Chorten

Memorial Chorten.  It’s a prominent landmark in the heart of the city center with tinkling bells, engraved Buddhas and a large golden spire.  A Chorten (Tibetan translation) or Stupa is a structure that contains buddhist relics, and is used as a place of contemplation/meditation.  In the himalaya Buddhists traditionally perform clockwise circuits around chortens while gently chanting, praying or reflecting. Thimphu’s National Memorial Chorten is one of the biggest in the country and is dedicated to their third king, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck.  At nearly every hour of the day you can find devotees circumambulating this impressive structure. It is a large part of everyone’s daily practice, so naturally it became the focus of our daily mindful-walking practice. Over the 2 months we lived in Thimphu we set the goal to make 108 koras (circles) around the chorten.  A sacred number in many eastern religions including Buddhism.

 

Daily we practised mindful walking, making koras around the chorten. We practiced being mindful of each step, feeling the support of the earth beneath the foot, the micro-pause that leads to the flowing shift of the body’s weight into the next step. When our monkey minds wandered we gently brought focus back to the present, to that very step, to that snapshot in the kora.

 

At times we adopted local traditions as aids to keep us mindful. Mantra, mala, and prayer wheels are tools that many Buddhists use to keep the mind present. Mantras are short phrases, sometimes as short as a single word, chanted aloud or simply repeated mentally. They give the mind an anchor in the present, when you catch yourself wondering what’s for dinner. Om mani padme hum, the mantra of Avalokiteshvara, is the most common mantra throughout the Himilaya and is the one we adopted. Mala are strings of prayer beads (108) similar to western rosaries. They are used to count mantras recited, koras walked, prostations performed, or simply breaths taken. Prayer wheels are cylinders whose interior contains

spinning the prayer wheel

rolls of paper printed with a repeating mantra, and whose exterior is embossed with a mantra. Rotating on a central axis, the act of spinning a prayer wheel invokes its mantra. We found the physical act of maintaining its spin a useful aid in staying present.

 

Mindful Walking simply means walking while being aware of each step, each breath; it means intentionally engaging with each present moment.  It can be practiced anywhere. You can mindfully walk alone in nature, on your way to school, in a crowded city or in another country.

 

In this video you can see us mindfully walking around Thimphu’s National Memorial Chorten.  Stella is using mantra, Isabelle mala, and Lily the prayer wheel.

Watch the video HERE.

Filed Under: Bhutan, kids yoga, Kids Yoga & Mindfulness, Travel, travel with kids Tagged With: Mindful Walking

How Do You Spend 27 hours on a Plane with 3 Kids and Not Lose Your Mind

February 14, 2018 by byerswithoutborders Leave a Comment

As many of you know we left the comforts of home to travel to the other side of the world to do volunteer work with the organization Health Volunteers Overseas  in the country of Bhutan. My wonderfully talented husband, Bill, has been writing (his true passion) about our adventures and experiences on our blog Byers Without Borders (you can follow us there too) and I thought I would add a few tips and tricks here and there as well.

How do you spend 27 hours on a plane with 3 kids and not lose your mind?

#1 Bring along an empty spill-proof water bottle. Those little clear plastic cups you get are inevitably going to get spilled either all over your kid, their sibling, another passenger or all over you.

#2 Foldable Headphones. Earbuds never seem to fit little ears. Plus there is a lot of white noise from the plane. Most planes, especially overseas flight, have in flight entertainment built into the seat that you can plug your headphones into but their also helpful when playing games on the iPad.

Spill Proof Water Bottle

http://amzn.to/2F2SZIT
Kids Headphones by noot

#3 Fear of Flying. It’s normal for some to have a fear of flying and our Lily (10) has anxiety over the takeoff and landing.  Her go to reprieve is something she learned in her YoPlay classes with me.  It’s called Peace Begins With Me.  You tap each finger to your thumb while simultaneously saying a word to each corresponding finger.  For example, tap your index finger to your thumb and say ‘peace’, then your middle finger to your thumb and say ‘begins’, ring finger to your thumb and say ‘with’ and finally your pinky finger to your thumb and say ‘me’.  You can change the words to suit you best, other examples are Confidence Begins With Me, Kindness Begins With Me, Love Begins With Me etc…..  This along with following her breath helps her get through the takeoff and landings.

#4 Change of Clothes.  This is a no-brainer for kids 6 and under but when flying with bigger kids 6-10 like mine, it’s a good idea for you to have a change of clothes.  Last year we were on our flight from Seoul, Korea to Thailand , we had already been traveling for nearly 20 hours at this point so I was asleep when Isabelle shook me awake to then vomit all over me.  Or a new friend , another HVO volunteer shared with us recently his 5 year old vomited all over him soaking his jeans all the way through.  He abandoned them in the bathroom garbage and then wrapped himself in an airplane blanket for the remainder of the flight until reaching the next airport to then purchase the most expensive pair of sweatpants ever at an airport boutique.  Pack your extra pair of clothes in this awesome carry on back pack.

ebags Mother Lode Weekender

#5  Have a Sense of Humor.  It’s important during these long flights that you find things that make you laugh.

Here is a list of some great things to bring along.

Filed Under: Bhutan, For Parents, Health Volunteers Overseas, kids yoga, Kids Yoga & Mindfulness, Medical Volunteers Overseas, Mom Blog, Travel, travel with kids, Uncategorized Tagged With: travel with kids

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

DOWNtime

May 1, 2020 By byerswithoutborders Leave a Comment

COVID Response Team

April 25, 2020 By byerswithoutborders 24 Comments

Luang Prabang

December 3, 2019 By byerswithoutborders Leave a Comment

Train Trials

October 25, 2019 By byerswithoutborders Leave a Comment

Airport Schooling

October 15, 2019 By byerswithoutborders 3 Comments

Categories

  • Adventure
  • Africa
  • Bhutan
  • bus life
  • Bus Life
  • COVID-19 Response
  • Events
  • Family
  • For Parents
  • Health Volunteers Overseas
  • Hope
  • kids yoga
  • Kids Yoga & Mindfulness
  • Medical Volunteers Overseas
  • Mom Blog
  • nomad life
  • Rwanda
  • skoolie
  • transportation
  • Travel
  • travel with kids
  • Uncategorized
  • Volunteer

Archives

Footer

Latest Posts

DOWNtime

COVID Response Team

Luang Prabang

Train Trials

Airport Schooling

Follow Our Adventure

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

© 2023 Byers Without Borders · Developed by Renaissance Web Solutions