Because my journey to Afghanistan was so long, this will be a post in three parts: Someplace Altogether New, The Excursion, and Things Change and Are the Same.
I knew I was going to deploy with my unit to Afghanistan for nearly three years before it actually happened. We had been delayed so many times that there were several who didn't believe we were actually going anywhere. There were several who were actually surprised (and disappointed) when we all finally came together for the final train-up before shipping out. I had been working on orders, helping with the preparations for the deployment, so I was not surprised. However, I did find it amusing seeing the reactions of other people.
When we finally stepped off the plane, even my mental preparations of the years previous and the studying I had done did not fully ready me for the vast difference I would see. In that village in Panama, I had lived in an austere environment, and I thought that this would be no different, just longer. I was wrong.
We were in a war zone, and there were concrete T-Walls everywhere, barbed wire-topped fences and giant military vehicles adding to a near constant smog. I saw all of this on the bus taking us to the small camp where we would be living for the next nine months. Cramped in that repurposed school bus in full armor, squished by a team-mate much larger than my tiny 5'2" frame, I wasn't sure what to think. On the one hand, I knew that this trip was not for fun and games. Despite knowing that we almost as safe as possible in the middle of a war torn country, this was not a vacation nor a trip for fun and games. I was genuinely shocked at the lack of trees or grass or any evidence of living, growing things besides that odd bird here and there. Everywhere was dirt, and rocks, and buildings the same color as the dirt and rocks.
I stuffed away my expectations and disappointments as we left the bus and scrambled to get keys to our rooms and find our bags in the pile of identical luggage. One person, a Chief Warrant Officer aptly named Knight, helped me carry duffel bag to my room, which was several rows away from the unloading point. He remarked at how heavy my bag was and asked whether I had brought the kitchen sink, laughing until I told him that all of my stuff was in the one bag except for a few pieces of spare gear and my carry-on bag. I couldn't hide the smugness as I explained my tendency to travel light.
I was first to my room and had the privilege of choice of beds. However, I felt like an ass as I immediately thought of taking the bed at the back of the room and took the less preferred bed by the door as penance. Little by little, as I unpacked, I changed my perspective on this new place I had found myself in. I realized that it was nothing like anywhere I had seen before, and that, in itself, was cool. Free gym access, free meals and a free bed were nice, too. Somehow, without really trying, I managed to turn the drab, dusty Camp Sabalu-Harrison into a place shining with newness and possibility. I managed to start my deployment off right, and that helped keep me going when things got rocky later. (Pun only sort of intended.)
Sure, I was in a war zone, and there were hundreds of people outside the gate who would have liked to see our temporary home (and we with it) wiped out of the valley. Sure, I was in a place that could stressful from the monotony alone, and I worked hours that I would, at one time, have considered insane. But that hardly mattered. I had good people with me, and a ridiculous determination to remain as chipper and cheery as possible.
The first lesson Afghanistan taught me, before I had been there fully a week, is that anywhere you go can be a good place. It depends entirely on how you look at it.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
The Things You Learn
Of course, Panama had more to teach than just how to play with kids and that there's little funnier than an entire village and a group of 25 U.S. teenagers gathering to help interpret a single conversation.
On the one hand, even though we had not quite left the North American continent, the surroundings were vastly different than anything I had ever seen. As I said before, we were on the edge of the Kona jungle, and massive trees grew up everywhere. A few of them were so wide that three of the group's biggest members could wrap their collective arms around it. The hills were tall as some of the mountains I had seen, and breaking above the mostly uniform green canopy great tall trees rose above. They were far enough away that their trunks appeared like slender twigs with giant pom-poms on top.
At one point, some of the villagers decided to take us out with them to hunt monkeys. (They never told us what they planned to DO with the monkeys they were hunting, but we could guess.) It turned out that we never caught any, although we saw a few small troups up in the canopy. That excited the kids, who scrambled up the trees like little monkeys themselves, but it was to no avail. It turned out that taking a bunch of noisy and unskilled teenagers on a hunt wasn't conducive to success and when one of our group leaders tried to apologize for our ruining their hunt, the man who had led the hunt just laughed. They had never expected to catch anything with us along, but they thought we might like the trip anyways. Of course, they were more than right.
(It was roughly about that time that I realized, of the two things on my bucket list - hiking in a jungle and skydiving - I had completed one item. My bucket list was halfway done, and I wasn't even 17. I have since rectified this, and I'm not sure I could complete all the items on it now if I lived to be 150.)
One of the biggest things I learned, though, was that there is one thing that everyone understands, despite the difference of backgrounds, languages, and everything else. There is one thing that connected us to the Wagandians almost immediately, and that was play. (From here, I will let out some of my inner hippie.)
I can't tell you how many times I sat with a girl about my age, stringing together beaded bracelets, or listened to enthusiastic stories from young Roberto or had tickle fights in the rain with more young boys than I could count. We hardly spoke each other's language, but we did all of these things and enjoyed each other's company nonetheless. On one day, when we were playing a soccer game in a field beside the road, strangers driving or riding along pulled in and stopped whatever they were doing to come and play, too. We were even more strangers to them than to the Wagandians, but they joined our game anyways. Play and fun was something that we could all understand. In learning about each other, we always turned it into a game. There was never any tense situations or misunderstandings because nobody took anything too seriously. While there certainly are times to be sober and thoughtful, it is just as important, perhaps more so, to know when to laugh and have a little fun.
By the end of the trip, there was not a dry eye in either group. It had been just over one week that we stayed in Wagandi, but we had felt so much at home there. No one was ready or willing for it to end, but end it must, as all things do. Perhaps, one day, I might go back there, as a Globex group leader or in some other way. After six years, I'd love to see how things have changed or stayed the same in the little village. I'd love to see those friends I made, despite the barriers we faced.
Maybe one day, but for now the rest of the world still waits for me to come and see what else it has to offer. It may mean that my life will always be chaotic and I'll never find a place to settle down, but there is so much still to see and do and learn, and I cannot stop for one moment or I might miss it.
On the one hand, even though we had not quite left the North American continent, the surroundings were vastly different than anything I had ever seen. As I said before, we were on the edge of the Kona jungle, and massive trees grew up everywhere. A few of them were so wide that three of the group's biggest members could wrap their collective arms around it. The hills were tall as some of the mountains I had seen, and breaking above the mostly uniform green canopy great tall trees rose above. They were far enough away that their trunks appeared like slender twigs with giant pom-poms on top.
At one point, some of the villagers decided to take us out with them to hunt monkeys. (They never told us what they planned to DO with the monkeys they were hunting, but we could guess.) It turned out that we never caught any, although we saw a few small troups up in the canopy. That excited the kids, who scrambled up the trees like little monkeys themselves, but it was to no avail. It turned out that taking a bunch of noisy and unskilled teenagers on a hunt wasn't conducive to success and when one of our group leaders tried to apologize for our ruining their hunt, the man who had led the hunt just laughed. They had never expected to catch anything with us along, but they thought we might like the trip anyways. Of course, they were more than right.
(It was roughly about that time that I realized, of the two things on my bucket list - hiking in a jungle and skydiving - I had completed one item. My bucket list was halfway done, and I wasn't even 17. I have since rectified this, and I'm not sure I could complete all the items on it now if I lived to be 150.)
One of the biggest things I learned, though, was that there is one thing that everyone understands, despite the difference of backgrounds, languages, and everything else. There is one thing that connected us to the Wagandians almost immediately, and that was play. (From here, I will let out some of my inner hippie.)
I can't tell you how many times I sat with a girl about my age, stringing together beaded bracelets, or listened to enthusiastic stories from young Roberto or had tickle fights in the rain with more young boys than I could count. We hardly spoke each other's language, but we did all of these things and enjoyed each other's company nonetheless. On one day, when we were playing a soccer game in a field beside the road, strangers driving or riding along pulled in and stopped whatever they were doing to come and play, too. We were even more strangers to them than to the Wagandians, but they joined our game anyways. Play and fun was something that we could all understand. In learning about each other, we always turned it into a game. There was never any tense situations or misunderstandings because nobody took anything too seriously. While there certainly are times to be sober and thoughtful, it is just as important, perhaps more so, to know when to laugh and have a little fun.
By the end of the trip, there was not a dry eye in either group. It had been just over one week that we stayed in Wagandi, but we had felt so much at home there. No one was ready or willing for it to end, but end it must, as all things do. Perhaps, one day, I might go back there, as a Globex group leader or in some other way. After six years, I'd love to see how things have changed or stayed the same in the little village. I'd love to see those friends I made, despite the barriers we faced.
Maybe one day, but for now the rest of the world still waits for me to come and see what else it has to offer. It may mean that my life will always be chaotic and I'll never find a place to settle down, but there is so much still to see and do and learn, and I cannot stop for one moment or I might miss it.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Welcome to the World!
My name is Olivia Louise Ross. Perhaps it isn't the most exciting name in the universe, but that's okay. It's my name, and it works for me. I am a traveler, and I have been since I was sixteen, and that little adventure is where this blog begins.
Sixteen was a rough year for me, as it is for most teenagers. I was just learning how big and strange and wonderful and terrible being a grown up is. After graduating high school, I had a lot of decisions before me, and I was still mired in the angst and confusion of pre-adulthood. I was also living with my family is a tiny southern Missouri town with no opportunities for anyone who wasn't born there. (I wasn't born there.) To say I was moody would be a gross understatement. Well, I had the good fortune to have a mentor who recognized my restlessness, and she recommended I take a trip. She told me about a youth mission organization called Global Expeditions that organized mission trips all over the world.
Lights sparkled, thunder boomed, and the angelic choir sang. Immediately, I poured research into the organization, picked out the trip I wanted, a two-weeker to Panama, and set about saving up and raising money to go. There's a whole long story about the struggle to make up the couple thousand dollars I would need, but I'll skip all that since you're probably more interested in the trip itself. After all, this is a travel blog!
Well, money raised, bags packed and a head full of dreams, I set out with a group of fifty like-minded teenagers. That was the first plane ride I was old enough to remember, and I'll never forget the way the ocean looked as we traveled over it, or the sensation of going up through the clouds. We had a small layover in Belize, and I was about to go out of my head with excitement. I was in another country! Just that small taste in a foreign airport was enough to get me addicted, and my trip hadn't even really started.
We got to Panama City late that night, stayed a few days at a sort of children's camp in its off season while the trip leaders coordinated. We would break into two groups, and each group would go to a different village. You see, we weren't there for the big city. We would be visiting to small villages in the Kona Jungle where several of the residents didn't even speak Spanish but Kona, a similar language but not the same. That was also when we discovered that the we had no interpreters being that someone had the impression we already had fluent Spanish speakers in the group. We had two fluent speakers, and four or five who had done well in their high school Spanish classes. I had a Spanish dictionary and the ability to pick up languages fairly quickly, so they counted me as an asset as well.
So, our first huge hiccup discovered and several laughs had, and a day of rocking out with ipods hooked up to the one large speaker in the camp, we broke into our groups, loaded up onto busses and were off.
That day was when I discovered that drivers in other countries are terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. There was many a swerve, traffic weaving and going faster that we thought a bus ought to be able to go. We did make it safely, however, and there were several people waiting for us as our bus pulled in. We were in Wagandi.
Everyone was a little confused initially, as the village was both exactly what we had imagined, and nothing like it. The village was small, with just over a hundred people living there, and the houses were roughly constructed wooden building with leaf thatched roofs. The Kona Jungle loomed nearby, and the trees were thick over the rolling hills. All of that fell perfectly in line with what we imagined, but an asphalt road, fairly will kept with painted lines (which all drivers ignored anyways) ran not fifty feet from the village edge. Cars and trucks (and some horseback riders) traveled up an down it.
After one of our Spanish speakers confirmed with the village chief, a short, friendly-but-skeptical man in a red Hawaiian shirt that we were still welcome in Wagandi. After the formalities were taken care of, we piled off the bus and began to introduce ourselves. It was a little awkward at first, what with the language barrier and cultural differences, but everyone noticed the looks I got as soon as I got off the bus. I was different from the others for the simple fact that I carried a soccer ball. All of the children immediately directed their attention to me, or rather my ball. That was when a few of us decided that the best way to break the ice was to start a game. I gathered a few people that I had gotten to know over the travel then I kicked the ball towards the group of kids. A huge game broke out, and we were immediately welcomed.
The men in the village cleared out the meeting hall and set up hammocks there for all of the women from out group. The men were settled in the church building. We also discovered that the village cook was an English speaker, and the pastor of that small church could speak and understand a little English. The conversation initially with several of the people were hilarious as everyone, whether we U.S. teenagers or the Wagandians, would often end up speaking our languages louder and trying to use accents. Someone started a motto of "If you speak with an accent, they'll understand."
The kids were the most welcoming initially. After we played a game with them, and a few of us were always ready for another, which was sometimes soccer, sometimes tag, and sometimes tickle-fights, they followed us around like a cloud. We never had a quiet moment, and I've never had such fun in my life. After a bit, when I was sitting in a corner of the church at midday, writing in a travel journal my mother had given to me, three of the little boys burst in and immediately wanted to know what I was doing. I showed them, and explained as well as I could in my broken Spanish. Of course, they couldn't let me have all the fun with the book, and using my lap as a table top, they began drawing pictures. The oldest began to point at them, and telling me, in Spanish what they were called. The game "Como se dice" (Spanish for How do you say?) was born. For hours each day, I would sit with them and we would trade words. They'd draw a picture, and point to it and say "Como se dice en ingles?" I'd tell them, and they'd practice for a bit, then I'd ask "Como se dice en Espanol?" It might sound boring, but it was hard not to catch their enthusiasm. I still have all of those drawings in that book, and I still laugh when I look at them.
Every morning, one of those little boys, who was named Roberto, would serenade us awake. It was possibly the funniest thing we had ever encountered. As soon as the sun rose, he would sit outside our door with his puppy and sing as loud as he possibly could. He didn't sing any song in particular, preferring to make up his own lyrics and give them the tune he thought best. More than one, it was about his puppy or wondering when we would get up. If anyone was upset about being woken up at dawn every day, they never said a thing. Not one of us really wanted him to stop. It was loud, horrible, and very off key and one of the fondest memories I have of that trip, and there are several.
I'll admit, I had planned for my Panama trip to be recounted in one blog post, but as I write, there is more and more that I remember that I don't want to leave out. I will post up a second one reliving the rest of my Panamanian journey next week.
Sixteen was a rough year for me, as it is for most teenagers. I was just learning how big and strange and wonderful and terrible being a grown up is. After graduating high school, I had a lot of decisions before me, and I was still mired in the angst and confusion of pre-adulthood. I was also living with my family is a tiny southern Missouri town with no opportunities for anyone who wasn't born there. (I wasn't born there.) To say I was moody would be a gross understatement. Well, I had the good fortune to have a mentor who recognized my restlessness, and she recommended I take a trip. She told me about a youth mission organization called Global Expeditions that organized mission trips all over the world.
Lights sparkled, thunder boomed, and the angelic choir sang. Immediately, I poured research into the organization, picked out the trip I wanted, a two-weeker to Panama, and set about saving up and raising money to go. There's a whole long story about the struggle to make up the couple thousand dollars I would need, but I'll skip all that since you're probably more interested in the trip itself. After all, this is a travel blog!
Well, money raised, bags packed and a head full of dreams, I set out with a group of fifty like-minded teenagers. That was the first plane ride I was old enough to remember, and I'll never forget the way the ocean looked as we traveled over it, or the sensation of going up through the clouds. We had a small layover in Belize, and I was about to go out of my head with excitement. I was in another country! Just that small taste in a foreign airport was enough to get me addicted, and my trip hadn't even really started.
We got to Panama City late that night, stayed a few days at a sort of children's camp in its off season while the trip leaders coordinated. We would break into two groups, and each group would go to a different village. You see, we weren't there for the big city. We would be visiting to small villages in the Kona Jungle where several of the residents didn't even speak Spanish but Kona, a similar language but not the same. That was also when we discovered that the we had no interpreters being that someone had the impression we already had fluent Spanish speakers in the group. We had two fluent speakers, and four or five who had done well in their high school Spanish classes. I had a Spanish dictionary and the ability to pick up languages fairly quickly, so they counted me as an asset as well.
So, our first huge hiccup discovered and several laughs had, and a day of rocking out with ipods hooked up to the one large speaker in the camp, we broke into our groups, loaded up onto busses and were off.
That day was when I discovered that drivers in other countries are terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. There was many a swerve, traffic weaving and going faster that we thought a bus ought to be able to go. We did make it safely, however, and there were several people waiting for us as our bus pulled in. We were in Wagandi.
Everyone was a little confused initially, as the village was both exactly what we had imagined, and nothing like it. The village was small, with just over a hundred people living there, and the houses were roughly constructed wooden building with leaf thatched roofs. The Kona Jungle loomed nearby, and the trees were thick over the rolling hills. All of that fell perfectly in line with what we imagined, but an asphalt road, fairly will kept with painted lines (which all drivers ignored anyways) ran not fifty feet from the village edge. Cars and trucks (and some horseback riders) traveled up an down it.
After one of our Spanish speakers confirmed with the village chief, a short, friendly-but-skeptical man in a red Hawaiian shirt that we were still welcome in Wagandi. After the formalities were taken care of, we piled off the bus and began to introduce ourselves. It was a little awkward at first, what with the language barrier and cultural differences, but everyone noticed the looks I got as soon as I got off the bus. I was different from the others for the simple fact that I carried a soccer ball. All of the children immediately directed their attention to me, or rather my ball. That was when a few of us decided that the best way to break the ice was to start a game. I gathered a few people that I had gotten to know over the travel then I kicked the ball towards the group of kids. A huge game broke out, and we were immediately welcomed.
The men in the village cleared out the meeting hall and set up hammocks there for all of the women from out group. The men were settled in the church building. We also discovered that the village cook was an English speaker, and the pastor of that small church could speak and understand a little English. The conversation initially with several of the people were hilarious as everyone, whether we U.S. teenagers or the Wagandians, would often end up speaking our languages louder and trying to use accents. Someone started a motto of "If you speak with an accent, they'll understand."
The kids were the most welcoming initially. After we played a game with them, and a few of us were always ready for another, which was sometimes soccer, sometimes tag, and sometimes tickle-fights, they followed us around like a cloud. We never had a quiet moment, and I've never had such fun in my life. After a bit, when I was sitting in a corner of the church at midday, writing in a travel journal my mother had given to me, three of the little boys burst in and immediately wanted to know what I was doing. I showed them, and explained as well as I could in my broken Spanish. Of course, they couldn't let me have all the fun with the book, and using my lap as a table top, they began drawing pictures. The oldest began to point at them, and telling me, in Spanish what they were called. The game "Como se dice" (Spanish for How do you say?) was born. For hours each day, I would sit with them and we would trade words. They'd draw a picture, and point to it and say "Como se dice en ingles?" I'd tell them, and they'd practice for a bit, then I'd ask "Como se dice en Espanol?" It might sound boring, but it was hard not to catch their enthusiasm. I still have all of those drawings in that book, and I still laugh when I look at them.
Every morning, one of those little boys, who was named Roberto, would serenade us awake. It was possibly the funniest thing we had ever encountered. As soon as the sun rose, he would sit outside our door with his puppy and sing as loud as he possibly could. He didn't sing any song in particular, preferring to make up his own lyrics and give them the tune he thought best. More than one, it was about his puppy or wondering when we would get up. If anyone was upset about being woken up at dawn every day, they never said a thing. Not one of us really wanted him to stop. It was loud, horrible, and very off key and one of the fondest memories I have of that trip, and there are several.
I'll admit, I had planned for my Panama trip to be recounted in one blog post, but as I write, there is more and more that I remember that I don't want to leave out. I will post up a second one reliving the rest of my Panamanian journey next week.
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