travel connections

i wrote this a couple weeks ago, so apologies for the belated info in the intro here. the rest is of course still relevant. happy new years ya’ll! i’m committing to getting a couple more posts up this week.

as the year comes to a close facebook and various other platforms are bombarding us with facts about 2017. one of them that popped up on my newsfeed recently was letting me know that i made over 150 new friends this year. now usually i just scroll past these sorts of clickbait crap but this one really struck me, & has stuck with me. the majority of those connections were made during my travels. from friends of friends from my road trip to members of the finca tierra permacult who feel more like family, to people i did ayahuasca ceremony with at florestal, to folks from my first hostel & camel trek in morocco. 150 people. & i am still meeting more.

what also astounds me is the range of my new found network, from california to new zealand to the italian alps. last year i road tripped around the US and stay nearly exclusively with friends, at this point i think i could pull off a similar trip around the world. it astounds me.

also on my trip last year i experienced a few serendipitous moments where i bumped into friends i hadn’t been expecting to see, in south carolina, new orleans, austin, & LA—sometimes running into the same people more than once. this theme is similarly carrying itself into my travels this year. so far i have 3 moments & connections that have really floored me.

when i was in florida this fall i mentioned my full itinerary to my trainer dee, & she lit up when i mentioned barcelona. one of her other clients & dear friends had just moved there.

i had met pam some 10 years before, within the first year of working with dee. pam had also just begun her journey into this style of horsemanship, & i tagged along to watch one of her lessons.

throughout the years, with my permission, pam was one of the only students who was ever allowed the privilege of riding & learning from my wise old horse, cruiser. everything i heard about their relationship was fabulous, filled with laughter and patience and excitement over the small victories he helped her accomplish.

an exceptional artist with an eccentric, colorful style that fills dee’s house, i have admired pam’s work throughout the years. i had no idea until this fall that she was raised in barcelona, or that she had moved back there this past year.

we connected on facebook & arranged to meet when i was in the city, which unfolded from a lunch into a full afternoon of laughter, story swapping, and critter chat. we barely knew each other, had only met that once over a decade ago, & yet through mutual friendships & interests turned out to have a fantastic time together—over 6,000 miles from where our paths originally crossed.

my second chance encounter also took place in barcelona, with a lovely lady i am now happy to call a friend, fatima.

one of my last days in fez, moroccco i got a message on instagram from fatima. she said that she had been having a conversation with her ex about wanting to explore morocco but that she was hesitant to travel there as a woman alone. turns out that he is from martha’s vineyard & that he follows my blog. he told her there was an islander there now & gave her my instagram information to contact me.

we chatted for a while & i told her that i had actually just booked a flight to leave the beautiful but brutal country in the following couple days. we talked more about safety, culture, hostels, & traveling throughout the country. she mentioned off hand how easy it was for her to hop down from spain, where she was currently living. where in spain? i asked, mentioning how i would be in barcelona the following week to catch my flight to kenya. yep. she was in the exact city i was going to shorty.

i was only there for 3 nights but i set one aside for us to meet and chat. turns out she has been living on martha’s vineyard year round for the past 7 years, & considers it her second home from her native brazil. she had been in barcelona for about two months for a coding course.

we went out to a fantastic dinner at a restaurant she had been curious to try but wanted to enjoy with company. now, typically i’m rather shy & an introvert. i’m not a huge fan of first dates, platonic, romantic, or otherwise. i enjoy my own company above nearly all else & was feeling particularly drained & worn down, plus was fighting off a cold. on top of it all, i had nothing remotely nice to wear.

when i travel though, i tend to become somebody else entirely. traveling alone really pushes me out of my shell & forces me to connect with people. i shy away from my introverted tendencies and find myself opening up to new experiences and opportunities i would likely avoid or blow off back home.

i am so incredibly glad that i felt such a strong connection & calling to meet up with fatima. our reservation was at 730 & i ended up back home after midnight. the entire evening was packed with amazing conversation, laughter, and a shocking amount of similarities. by the time we walked out of the restaurant to go to a roof deck with some of the best views of the barcelona skyline, she felt like a close friend.

while she’s moving to seattle after wrapping up her course in spain, i have no doubt we will see each other again back on the island. again, here i was meeting someone nearly 6,000 miles away from where we had shared a small island and community together for years. the odds of it all astonished me, as did the power of connectivity available through social media, & my decision to start this blog.

the final recent connection was entirely organic, no mutual friends or blogging involved.

i was sitting in the airport in casablanca, morocco, where my flights from barcelona to nairobi connected. i’ve spent a fair amount of time in airports around the world, big & small, & this one really takes the cake for the biggest shithole. hundreds of people were crammed into a small awkward basement room that smelled like stale cigarette smoke (despite the no smoking signs people in morocco often smoke inside…everything) and was severely lacking in seating. people lined the stairs and slumped against the walls, collapsing into the dirty floor. i typically have no problem plopping onto the ground but this was too gross for me, even by my fairly low standards.

i managed to find a chair at the very front of the room near the doors where you walk out to buses that bring you to your plane on the tarmac. i was chatting with another woman sitting nearby when i saw a man carrying his young son, fumbling with his bags, and talking to one of the people are the airline desk. he seemed rather stressed & i offered him my seat. i moved my bags and stood as the other woman & i continued talking, & included him in our conversation.

he explained that he & his very pregnant wife had landed a few days ago. she fainted and was taken to the hospital but since he was without a visa (as is required if you have a kenyan passport) he had been locked inside the airport for three days, unable to see or speak to her. it was his understanding that she had given birth to their second child but he had no further information, not even the sex of their baby.

despite his situation he was bright & lovely, & when i told him about my travel plans he began telling me about his childhood growing up in rural kenya—passing lions on his walk to school, and standing guard over the family’s animals at night.

he also explained that he had been repeatedly assured his wife would be on this plane back to nairobi with their newborn. he was bursting with excitement to see them both, & meet his new child. sleeping in his arms was miles, an adorable three year old boy who wanted nothing more than to be nestled in his father’s arms, sleeping.

as they began boarding our flight, i offered to help him with his bags, and we walked out to the shuttle bus together. we ended up sitting nearby but not directly next to each other. i started zoning out and he began chatting with a woman who was closer to him. i overheard him repeating some of the same snippets of his story that i knew, & i fidgeted with my phone, desperately trying to get a message out to my family that i had made my connection over the shitty wifi.

the shuttle bus was crammed & when it released us onto the tarmac it was an absolute cluster. never before have i experienced people quite so aggressively trying to get on board transportation—honestly rush hour on the subway in nyc seemed docile in comparison. we were only a few people apart when i heard him say to the woman from the shuttle “you farm too? that’s what she’s here to do!” he gestured over the crowd to me. i shuffled my way closer to her & she asked about what i was going to be doing, “permaculture, on a farm south of kisumu.” typically the word “permaculture” is either met with glazed eyes and questions, or acknowledgement and commonality. “that’s what i do, i’m an urban farmer in detroit.”

no. fucking. shit. i had already caught a glimpse of her kenyan passport on the shuttle bus so i knew she was from there but honestly, what were the odds of us bumping into each other? in casablanca, an american farmer coming to study permaculture in kenya, & a kenyan farmer who had put down roots in detroit.

she asked about the name of the farm & didn’t recognize it but said she wanted to check it out. she offered her information to me, and i passed her my phone as we both got jostled by the crowd. “we should stay in touch, i’d like to hear more about what you end up doing & where,” she said. i nearly had to yell over the crowd, which was good because it made me seem like it as just trying to communicate over noise, not exploding with excitement.

she wrote down her name & email & we were quickly separated in the rush. after i got onto the plane & put my bags up, i ran into her on my way to the bathroom. “where are you sitting?” i asked, “29A,” she replied. “i’m 29B!!” i practically squealed, and she lit up. we agreed that we couldn’t wait to talk.

& talk we did. the flight was delayed by over an hour leaving casablanca (our friend with miles had to deplane because his wife & newborn never made it, without any explanation, despite them continuously assuring him they would be there) and was then over 10 hours. it was a red eye but we barely slept a wink.

she told me about her experiences as a black farmer in detroit, about her & her husband’s struggles to buy vacant lots near their house despite their multiple attempts, comprehensive plans to turn them into productive farming plots, & the land being well within their means (as most people know, property in detroit is unfathomably cheap. she said her mother-in-law bought a house in decent condition for $300). “you might have an easier time if you tried though,” she remarked, speaking to my skin color. she explained how the city either wants to sell entire blocks all together to developers, or how they’re even more willing to sell to young white urban farmers than black ones. despite not being surprised, i asked lots of questions about the politics of the city and their issues with abandoned land, all of which she answered with patience.

she sits on a board for food in the city, the name of which i now cannot remember, is a forager in the city (yes, forager. in the city.) and chef who does pop-up locally grown & foraged foods. she is working on a documentary looking at her journey as an urban farmer in detroit, her connections to kenya, and her mission to engage more black folks in earth work.

“slavery has left a stigma when it comes to black people working the land,” she said, something she seeks to change through empowerment, education, and community engagement. she brings kenyan seeds back to detroit & introduces african americans there to african foods they may have never heard of, looking to stretch the definitions of black food beyond collard greens & beans to various root vegetables & greens from her homeland. when she come home she brings seeds native to the north central US to share with her family, in this way building connections between her two homes.

we talked about loss, each of us having suffered devastating losses in the past year (mine, my little brother, hers is not mine to share). she told me that part of her reason for coming home was to heal, to reconnect, & more specifically, to seek out some elders she has never met & to try to connect with some of their/her ancestral knowledge.

she said sometimes her family gives her shit, for being college educated, for being so incredibly smart (she was the highest achieving girl in her grade in kenya and was given a scholarship to a college-prep school in south africa before going to michigan for undergrad) and for choosing to farm & homestead.

“but i think that this work is sacred & important, & that it deserves some of the brightest minds to be devoted to it,” she expressed. i told her i understood some of what that feels like, having also graduated at the top of my class with my family’s law-school dreams riding on my coattails. “that is why this movement has us,” she concluded, as chills ran down my arms.

i shared my book with her (unbowed: a memoir, by wangari maathai) and she shared clips of her upcoming film with me. she jokingly (but somewhat seriously) encouraged me to come to detroit. i jokingly, but quite seriously, replied that detroit doesn’t need anymore white middle class wanna-be urban farms. “plus, i did four winters in vermont,” i told her, “& i’m done with that shit.”

we talked about witchy things, about communing with plants, about using sacred plant medicines to connect with ourselves & the greater universe. we talked about our dreams, our ideas, our beliefs, the things that shaped us & put us on this path, the things that stood in our way, the things we had overcome, the things we still had to overcome, the ways in which we have grown, learned, & triumphed.

by the time we got off the plane, she felt like an old friend. so much of her & all she taught & gave me has stuck thick to my bones. i think about her often, & hope she has found some of the healing, growth, ancestral knowledge, and both earthly & spiritual connections she was seeking. i very much so look forward to visiting her farm in detroit sometime this year.

we both agreed that we felt brought together for some important reasons, & as i will explain in a later blog post, for me some of those reasons have already shone through.

the universe works in mysterious ways, ways that sometimes become clear quickly, and other times take a long time & intense reflection to find. almost always though, if you listen and look with an open and loving mind & heart, you can find the ways in which magic has happened with, for, through, & in you.

my many travel connections have given me so much love, knowledge, support, & light. the friendships i have forged along the way continue to shape and carry me every day. so to the 150 people & counting who have bumped into my body on these travels during this lifetime (& possibly in many others) thank you. for all you have given & continue to give me. my life, heart, soul, & mind are better for knowing you, & my travels are certainly more colorful, interesting, & full of laughter for it too.