Monday, February 27, 2012

Timbuktu or Texas?

I was in Mombasa, Kenya when I received word that five travelers had been kidnapped and one of them killed. 

Although these were people I’d never met, and the abductions took place thousands of miles away, they happened in Timubuktu, the very place I was headed in about 6 weeks.  All foreigners were being evacuated and embassies from every country were discouraging travelers from venturing into the region.

I had signed up to volunteer at a three day music festival in Mali in northwest Africa and had been looking forward to the adventure...sleeping in a tent in the desert with local Tuareg people who are nomads of the Sahara.

Immediately following the kidnappings, the volunteer coordinator sent each of us an email stating that while they would do everything to guarantee our safety, the organizers of the event wanted each of us to make a fully informed decision.

My plan was to visit Zanzibar, Madagascar, Mauritius and Mozambique before boarding the long flight to Bamako, the capital city of Mali.  There, I’d  take a 14 hour bus ride to Timbuktu where the festival was be held. There’s a reason why the word “Timbuktu” is synonymous with “the middle of nowhere”.

I weighed my options. Should I head to the desert for a big adventure (potentially a life-threatening one) or should I reconsider?  These kinds of events tend to be exaggerated in the Western media.  I had just come from Nairobi where two bombings had occurred and it wasn’t even a topic of conversation amongst the folks who live there.  

The volunteers began to email each other and everyone was in high spirits…eager to attend the festival as planned and not be dissuaded by these randoms act of terrorism.  The messages were inspiring…we would converge on the town of Timbuktu in a spirit of unity and solidarity.  To do otherwise would be giving in to violence and hatred.

But then one of the volunteers sent an email saying that he had attended the festival a few years earlier, was still in touch with friends who lived in Timbuktu and that they were telling him not to come…that it wasn’t safe.


After Mali, my plan was to continue traveling for another year and a half. The life of a professional vagabond may seem like a permanent vacation, but I’d already been on the road for 16 months non-stop. 19 countries. 15 languages. Staying in a different place every 3 or 4 nights. Solo. I was road weary.  And lonesome.

And then it occurred to me…I could still visit most of the countries I’d planned to go to prior to Mali, and make it it back to Austin, Texas in time for Christmas and surprise all my friends who weren’t planning to see me for another year and a half. 

Three weeks later, I felt elated and excited to be going “home” to the place where I no longer owned my house, car, furniture, clothing or photography studio.  But as I boarded the 16 hour flight from Dubai to Houston and discovered that I was seated in the centre of an equilateral triangle formed by three screaming babies, I came very close to changing my mind.

There was never more than a five minute break in the constant wailing, crying and screeching.  I played every mind game I could think of to reframe my situation.  


“This isn’t nearly as bad as being on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic for three months” I told myself. Or “I’ve got it easy compared to the Jews on the freezing railroad cars being shipped to the concentration camps”, or even “what if these babies grow up to be Grammy award winners and they’re just practicing until they can get in front of a microphone?”  When I disembarked, I was ready to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital.  

To make things worse, my right foot was infected and swollen. I had ignored a blister caused by an ill-fitting scuba fin I had worn for four days in a row and now I was paying the price. The lesion was inflamed and red and painful, and sitting for 16 hours wasn’t helping matters.  I arrived in Austin with my nerves frayed and my foot throbbing.

Within a few days of my arrival, I felt much better as the result of keeping my leg elevated and taking some leftover antibiotics I had purchased over the counter in Cambodia several months earlier to get rid of a self-diagnosed intestinal parasite.


And then, out of nowhere, I received an email from a former client wanting to know when I’d be returning to Austin because he wanted to shoot some new photos for his website.

A few days later, another email arrived from the marketing manager of a company needing some executive headshots.  And then a third email, this time from a motivational speaker needing some promo photos.  None of these people knew I was in Austin. Serendipity-Do-Da! I even rented my former studio for one of photo shoots and had to turn down three other jobs! 

The income from those gigs enabled me to pay for my trip from Africa, as well as having my camera and computer repaired, getting my teeth cleaned and a cracked filling replaced, visiting the doctor for a check up, buying some new socks and underwear and replacing an expensive pair of glasses that I had somehow managed to lose since my arrival back in Austin.

In addition, I was able to wash my clothes in a washing machine and dry them in a dryer, take as many hot showers as I wanted and eat as many calories as I could get my hands on.  I’d lost about 15 pounds during my 16 months of travel and my jeans were so loose I could take them off without unbuttoning them!

I fully recharged my “friendship batteries” with loved ones whom I’d sorely missed since I’d been gone.  They wined and dined me so much that in just 8 weeks I gained back all the weight I’d lost during the preceding year and a half!

There were so many friends I wanted to catch up with that many days I had to schedule breakfast, mid-morning coffee, lunch, afternoon coffee, happy hour and dinner!

I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and affection and generosity I received, and by the number of people who thanked me for writing this blog and posting my travel photos on facebook and my website.  Apparently a lot of folks like to travel vicariously.

I seem to live a charmed life. I always have.  In a year and a half of traveling nothing bad has happened to me.  I've never been robbed or had anything stolen from my room or felt unsafe. 


Sure, I've had my share of unwanted gastro-intestinal passengers, and I've been in a few situations where I thought "I hope this episode has a happy ending!"...but that's to be expected.


And...I've gotten much better at listening to my intuition and paying attention to my internal compass. When I do, it usually points me in the right direction, even when my destination ends up being ten thousand miles from where I thought I was going.