People travel in different ways and for different reasons. If you are African, and in the Congo, and you are poor-- the chances are that you travel by barge. The barges are there to move cargo but the owners usually let anyone who wants to camp out on top. It is a long ride. From Kinshasa (formerly Leopoldville) to Mbandaka halfway up the river can take a month. The river itself is intimidating. A labyrinth of gnarled roots and frightening vegetation extend from each bank, making escape if one accidentally falls in the water seem almost impossible. Then there are the crocodiles and yet everyone is friendly. We are all in it to survive and here we need each other more than anywhere else. We tied our pirogue to the side of the barge. You had to be careful because people were constantly throwing garbage or even defecating over the side. Climbing onto the barge, I was approached by a man in his mid-thirties, dressed only in a tee shirt, boxer shorts and shower clogs. He spoke impeccable French and was clearly well-educated. “I am the financial director for the province of Equatoria,” he told me. He explained that his wife had recently died and he had gone to Kinshasa to bring his dozen children back to Mbandaka with him. “We have been on this barge for a month,” he said. “I have no money.” I believed him. No one on that barge had anything of value and yet it thrived and they and the barge moved forward. Africa was alive, vibrant and human. People have nothing, but they have each other and in the end that is worth more than one can imagine.
Distance provides objectivity. An advantage of travel is that plunging into an alien environment gives us distance from where we have just been--in other words from those patterns in our lives that are so routine that we no longer notice them. The tourists/travelers in this pedicab/bicycle-driven rickshaw working its way through the streets of Dakkah, Bangladesh, are attempting to absorb/digest their surroundings which they probably find overwhelming. The girl is simply there, maintaining herself in chaotic surroundings. The guy had hoped to take photographs to show what his adventure has accomplished, and possibly shoot a video starring himself as a knowledgeable world traveler. The man providing the pedal power driving the rickshaw is obscured, he might not really exist except as the engine driving the pedicab forward. Behind the rickshaw, another rickshaw is occupied by a local. For him, this is all routine. He no longer notices. His prime goal is to arrive at his destination. The signs, written in the Bengali alphabet derived from the Brahmi alphabet which is used more commonly in India, compete for your attention, but there are so many that they are lost in visual cacophony. The white truck to the right of the photo proclaims in English that it was proudly manufactured by Mitsubishi, a Japanese company that knows that if you want to be recognized it makes sense to do it in English. The common trademark, however, is crowned by Bengali script. We are, in fact, immersed in the shards of global diversity. Pieces of recognition scrambled against an unfamiliar background.
Not all travel is voluntary. These women are rolling yellow plastic barrels filled with drinking water across the Kenyan desert. They are Somali nomads, forced to escape a civil war in their own country that is ostensibly being fought over questions of religious purity as interpreted by fanatical murderers. In this case, travel literally means life. Kenya, nervous that hundreds of thousands of Somalis streaming into the country might overrun the capital, Nairobi, has decreed that they can stay in the desert, but move no further. Without water, that would constitute a death sentence. Instead, Western NGOs provide tanker trucks at central access points to provide free drinking water. The catch is that a woman must walk an hour or more each day across blazing hot sand just to keep her family alive. Still, no one denies that it is better than the alternatives.
Not all travel makes logical sense. Sometimes it is just a matter of follow the crowd. Some people climb mountains “because they are there.” These tourists—many of whom are Mexican-- are climbing an ancient pyramid an hour's drive from Mexico City for who knows what reason. They already know what to expect when they reach the top. Nothing except an even more difficult and dangerous climb back down. You do it, because it’s there, and maybe because after you’ve done it, you can say that you did it. I was there. I was in touch with a past that is hundreds of years old, and which I can barely understand and about which I know next to nothing, yet in climbing these rocky stairs, I am somehow connected to those people whom I do not know and yet were probably my ancestors. You are connected because you stepped on the same rocky steps, felt the same exhaustion and for a few moments shared the same piece of ground, even if your timing was centuries apart. It is a very human story.
How much do we really understand of what we are looking at when we travel? This photo has intrigued me ever since I took it on a trip to China. The creature is a baby Fu dog. The claws of its parent pin it to the ground. Why? What is the message here? The location is the Forbidden City, the ancient residence of the emperors of China. The dogs are positioned on either side of the stairs leading to the palace.
Fu dogs resemble lions more than dogs. They are an echo of the lion statues that traditionally protected Buddhist temples in India before Buddhism finally reached China. The protection is intended not only against human invaders but also against dangerous influences. Normally, the claws of the Fu dog rest on a spherical ball. But here the claws pin a ferocious infant to the ground. Is this a warning against youth challenging the wisdom of an older generation, or is it a symbol of the readiness of the senior mandarins in service to the emperor to sacrifice their own children in service of the state and master, an expression of the absolutism that briefly holds empires together? Is this about terror, loyalty, or obedience? Or is the message that all three are bound together? The truth is that since we cannot talk with the craftsman who created this centuries ago, we are unlikely to ever know what he really intended. Travel exposes us to old/new notions about life, the depths of which we may never fully understand or realize, yet the journey is worth the effort.
