Tales of a Female Nomad (42 page)

I talk to the woman and tell Fon that I will make the woman’s lunch. I put together a salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, scallions, celery, onions, and cabbage. I flavor it with vinegar, oil, lime juice, salt, sugar, and lightly chopped chilies. The woman loves it. The next day I make her a western breakfast.

“Lita no go New Zealand,” says Fon. “Stay Lim Haad. Cook Amelican.”

The next night Fon and Manit make me a good-bye party. The kids are wonderfully solicitous, filling my Pepsi glass, giving me bits of meat that is cooking at the table, serving me every time a new dish comes out. Obviously, they are sorry to see me go. We didn’t have a language in common, but there was plenty of communication . . . through cooking, English classes, my computer, and hugs.

The next morning, five kids and Fon are up at 6:30 to get me to the bus. We arrive a few minutes early and Fon hands me a gift-wrapped package.

“Should I open it?” I charade. She nods.

It’s a box with five beautiful pens.

“Write book,” says Fon.

I kiss her, I hug the kids, and I tell them I’m going to miss them. I doubt that they know the words, but I’m sure they understand.

United States

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A JOURNEY STILL IN PROCESS

It’s a cool day in December and I have just returned to New Zealand from Thailand. Judy stopped by two hours ago to say that some of the neighbors were getting together for a beach cleanup.

It’s a funny little beach, just down the hill from Marian’s house, probably twenty-five by fifteen feet, set off from the water by a stone wall and a hill. Every spring the town council fills the area with sand for the summer, and every winter heavy tides surge over the stone wall and wash away the sand, leaving a tangled mess of debris, a gift from the ocean.

Summer is coming and it’s time to clean up. Marian and I are raking leaves and grass into piles with heavy, short-toothed rakes, separating the rocks from the driftwood and vines that will go into the fire. Judy and Arn are pulling weeds. Several other neighbors are tossing rocks and tending the fire, which is spiking yellow smoke from the wet grasses and salty driftwood. This is a community that cares. I feel lucky to be a part of it.

For the next month, I write, play, go to the gym, and welcome in the millennium with fireworks, friends, and food. I am leaving soon; I have no choice. My visa is up in mid-February.

Packing is easy. I don’t have very much. But I have to decide what to do with Old Blue. I paid five hundred U.S. dollars for her and I’ve gotten more than my money’s worth.

I call up Ray and ask him if he’d like her back.

“No, thank you,” he says. “Give her to someone who can’t afford to buy a car.”

I’m still thinking when Ray calls back. “Let’s both give the car to Manaia School. They can auction it and use the money for whatever they want.”

“Great idea,” I say. “But I don’t want the money to go for desks or furniture or stuff like that. I think there should be strings, Ray. You’re a literary agent and I’m a writer. Why don’t we ask that the money go for books.”

I can hear his smile through the phone.

Vicki, the principal, and I work it out. On the day I leave, Marian follows me to Manaia School. The door to the playground has been left open so Old Blue can enter. I drive her in slowly and stop on the play area right outside the office.

“Hi, Rita,” call the kids when I get out of the car, the same as they do when they see me in town.

I go into the office and sign the transfer papers. Meanwhile, the kids assemble outside. They sing me a song in the Maori language, present me with a pair of carved bone earrings (a Maori craft) and a silver fern pin (the symbol of New Zealand). I say goodbye to Vicki, to the teachers, to the kids, and to Old Blue, who served me well. I am thrilled that she will be turned into books. Like Old Blue, the robin, she too will make her contribution to the community.

The kids follow us out of the playground, waving and calling as Marian and I drive away in her car toward the airport.

And soon, I’m off. To Seattle to visit Jan. To Atlanta, where Mitch and Melissa have recently moved. And finally, to New York, where I have sublet a furnished apartment for a year while I work on my book.

And when the book is finished? Then what? I have no idea. I’m not thinking about the future. While I’m here, wherever that may be (at the moment, it’s the library in New York), I want to be 100 percent here. One of the most important things I have learned during the last fifteen years is how to enjoy and savor the present. When I am writing, I am inside the sound and meaning of the words, playing with them, curving them around each other. When I am eating, I luxuriate in the taste and texture of every bite. When I am alone, I listen to and communicate with the silence within me and the noises and messages of the world around me.

And when I am with people, I am really with them. After fifteen years of moving through the world, people are still my passion. I love the constantly budding and blossoming friendships that define my life. Like the rice plants in Bali that are always in all stages of growth (to keep the giant from eating the children “after the harvest”), my friendships with people all over the world are also in all stages of development. I have old friends, new friends, evolving friends, serial friends.

I use the word
friend
loosely, to refer to people I connect with. Wherever I am and whatever the length of our relationship, connection is what I seek. Whether we share a language or simply a shape, I reach out to each individual with love and trust, with a smile, and 100 percent of my attention. Communication is not difficult because we all share the sensations of human emotions, the need to affirm our sameness, and the universal capacity to laugh.

As I reflect on the last fifteen years, I am sitting in the autumn sun a few feet from the lions in front of the New York Public Library. I have been a hermit in Manhattan for the last eight months, living alone, writing in the Allen Room (a wonderful room for writers in the library), and rarely seeing or talking to anyone.

I have intentionally stayed away from friends and family, knowing that I needed to reenter the places I was writing about and interact once again with the people who were such an important part of my nomadic life. And I did. I laughed again at my ragged tortillas and wailed with the woman who was holding her dead baby. I sang in the mountains, fell in the mud, and blew bubbles with a little boy and his mother in the middle of New Guinea. I ate green mussels and gloried in
ho mok
and whizzed through Bali on the back of Wayan’s motorcycle. And I communed with Tu Aji’s spirit.

When the final words are written, I will think about my next destination. I have no idea where it will be. Probably someplace where they speak Spanish or Indonesian . . . or English. Maybe I will buy a van and fill it with books and zigzag my way around the United States, a national nomad, staying with families, talking to clubs, visiting bookstores and schools, reading from and signing my book. Hopefully I will find homes to stay in and people to connect with.

I will make myself alert once more to the kinds of chance encounters that are always out there. I turned them off when I began writing; soon I will pay attention to them again and see where they lead me.

I am already taking notes for a web page (
www.ritagoldengelman.com
) where I will fill in gaps (like a list of my kids’ books) and a couple of useful addresses. I’m hoping to keep an ongoing account on the site of where I am and what I’m doing. I’ll put in a section of anecdotes that were cut from the book and another of countries that didn’t make it. I’ll also offer some practicalities of my kind of travel, such as, be sure to take itch cream and plastic bags and arrange automatic payment plans for your bills.

I have already set up an e-mail address ([email protected]) so my readers can reach me and I can connect with them. My editor is worried. Suppose I get millions of e-mails? I’ll deal with it when it happens. If there are millions of e-mails, I’ll have enough money to hire a helper.

It’s exciting to think that all over the world, new and old friends will be reading my book and “talking” to me via e-mail.

I can’t wait to hear from you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The paradox of my independent, liberated life is that I could not live it without the help and support of many, many people. I am, in fact, extremely dependent on the generosity of others. During the past fifteen years, people all over the world have opened their homes and their hearts; they have shared their families, their meals, their fires, their ceremonies. They are too numerous to list. Thank you all.

Special thanks to Bob and Elaine Friedman, Susan Lechner, Debby Barr, Susan and Joel Buxbaum, Mickie Friedman, Irv Golden, Nancy and Morris Zaslavsky, June and Jay Zorn, Marianne Vecsey, Judy Sanders, Barbara and Ray Richards, Bron Richards, John Henderson, Jip Chitnarong, Judy and Arn Piesse, Jean Wells, Christine Leov-Leland, Jocelyn Davey, Vicki Sephton, Tu Biang, Dayu Biang, Jero Made, Ida Ayu Mayuni, Ida Ayu Raka, Wayan Sukerta, Scott Drinkwater, Gera and Andres Todeschini, Edith and Leo Quiroga, Carmen Natale, Asunta Natale, Amparo Jaramillo, Lisa Kramer, Lars Johansson, Nirina Rakoto, Yafa Kfir, Batsheva and Gabi Barshi, Claudia Joenck, Diana Estrin, María Esther de la Rosa Duque, Lily You, Lisa Rifkin, Michael Franzblau, Chou Chou Grant, Howard Lefkowitz, Nancy Lamb, Mary Anne Stewart, Sue Yung, and Stephen Selder.

I feel very fortunate to have fallen into the able hands and sharp mind of my editor, Emily Loose, my amazingly talented and available agent, Elaine Markson, and their assistants who never said no, Caroline Sincerbeaux and Gary Johnson.

Without the security of knowing that my brother Dick, and his family, Margaret, Danielle, and Michelle (Kelly) were there for my parents, I could never have disappeared for such long stretches of time. My thanks to them.

And to Melissa, who came into our family and made it better.

And finally, my deepest thanks and gratitude to Jan and Mitch, who took care of my mail, my bills, my books; who always welcomed me, dirty laundry and all; and who gave up their mom so I could live this extraordinary life. I love you.

A FINAL NOTE TO THE READER:

The people, places, events, and adventures that I write about are all real. But for many different reasons, I have changed quite a few of the names. Occasionally I have avoided identifying places as well. And from time to time I have taken liberty with the chronology, sometimes for narrative reasons, sometimes so that I could compress several trips into one, and sometimes because I can’t remember the exact order of the various ceremonies, events, or meals.

There are passages in the Nicaragua chapter that have previously appeared in my book
Inside Nicaragua: Young People’s Dreams and Fears
(which is out of print).