Baru Island

You know those few times in your life when you feel you´ve actually lived a cliche? When everything is so perfectly fitted together that the time seems like part of an imagined tale whipped up by your brain because of pictures you´ve seen in magazines and movies? Well, neither had I....until this weekend.

After the Islas of Rosario enjoyed a morning breakfast of rain, rain, and more rain, (while we, of course, sat sipping fresh maracuya juice under the palm trees as the songs of raindrops pounded out our visions of sunbathing), the weather decided to cheer up just enough so that when our tiny cruiser finally pulled into the Isla de Baru, the beautiful afternoon sun cut through the menacing clouds to kiss our shoulders and cheeks with some much-needed rosy hellos. My traveling companions and I (being Laura and Neil from England, Neil´s Colombian girlfriend Joanna, and me) hiked to our picnic of ensalada con mayo, patacones (fried, squished green bananas), pescado hornado (baked fish butt), arroz con coco (coconut-basted rice), and limonada (lemonade), and watched as the dark-skinned natives knitted necklaces of natural pearls and the pelanqueras (women with baskets of fruit on their heads) walked with the ultimate poise. All of a sudden, it was not Colombia that we were in; it was more like an African village, complete with all the trimmings.

However, the strange thing about Baru island (two hours off the coast of Colombia towards Ecuador), is its stark taste of serenity as opposed to the literal insanity of the city beaches of Bocagrande and Crespo in Cartagena; where relaxing is instead batting off hundreds of massage offers, baked fish, sunglasses, souvenir shirts, mangoes, and juices, among a million other services for sale. Aside from when we exited the boat and the eight men with necklaces and seashells actually lined up along the dock, grabbed our arms and shoulders and shoved shells in our faces, yelling ¨Promocion! Promocion para ti!¨, the beaches were perfect. After we made the long, strenuous, sweat-drenched hike to our hostel, La Sirena, (recommended by our travel agent as one of the best), we waited an hour to check into our hammocks while Carmen, the ownder, drank on Aguila beer and chatted with her amigos; but after finally droppìng our bags into the cabana where we´d be sleeping, we stood face to face with the most enchanting, most perfectly cliche Caribbean beach I´ve ever seen.

The water was unexplainable--crystal clear does not describe the lucidity of its beauty. I imagine it was indeed drawn from a Corona commercial or other tropical paradise, but I can´t be sure. The colors of the sea are not colors of water but of surreal sunsets, as the turquiose recedes into green as the tide washes in. Huge palm trees lined the pure white sandy shore, with bunches of ripe green coconuts hanging in tranquility from long, perfect branches...coconut shells, mangoes, trees of all shapes and sizes, running along the rolling hills surrounding the shore. Wood-frame huts thatched with dried, beige palm branches cooled the natives as they lazily passed the day in their sarongs, their bare feet lounding in hammocks while sipping on coconuts. We buried our watches and spent the late afternoon swimming, bathing, sun-soaking, sleeping, and practicing Spanish, all the while chatting with each street seller who passed by with the hopes that three white people and a Colombian would buy their products. Of course, two women surprised Laura and I by sneaking up behind us and dumping coconut oil on our backs with the intention of giving us massages (I tell you, it´s so popular here it´s bizarre!), and though my persistant refusals did nothing but allow her more room to jump in with cheap offers, we accidentally fell under the spell of a tropical massage on a Caribbean beach, and for $2.50 for a half-hour, it actually seemed kind of worth it.

After sunset, which, naturally, lasted all of six minutes, we collected our things and hiked back up the hill to our hammocks, where we found that rustic camping is not rustic camping at all--but merely the lives of the people who live here. This was our ¨hostel¨: hammocks dispersed through a green field, hung between palm trees. Heavy mosquito netting under which guests slept so as to avoid painful bug bites by gigantic local insects. Grass huts under which old ping-pong tables became dinner tables. To shower, I followed a man to a large tub of cold water (complete with bugs who had floated in to their untimely death, leaves, dirt, and other debris that had wafted in with the wind), filled an old paint bucket with what he called "Agua Dulce!" (aka, sweet water!), and dragged it, sloshing water over everything, to a wooden stall at the back of the campsite. There, I picked out an appropriate coconut shell and, shall we say, went to work with the coconut shell, pale of water, and soap. Needless to say, with all the showers I´ve had since arriving in Colombia, it always seems that the majority happen without the luxury of indoor plumbing.

After showering, I couldn´t find a dry mosquito net to tie up over my hammock (only finding tangled nets in damp piles near the beach), and so decided to instead lather my entire body in smelly bug repellent. Laura, Neil, Johanna and I picked out a cabana to have dinner under, and we clicked on the lonely lightbulb that hung from the palm fronds above us. (Power only works after dark, and let me tell you, there isn´t much of it anyway!) We dined on arepas (fried corn cakes with cheese--totally healthy), and talked with the employees who had left their pueblos and given up their poverty-stricken lives to work for 5.000 pesos a day at La Sirena (that´s close to $2.40) Imagine my sadness, thinking about how much we complain at home to receive less than $10 and hour and how much more we always desire.

Shortly after finished our dinner (baked by the owner herself over an open fire!), we met the other backpackers and figured out how each of us had come to this point in our lives. Around us were other travelers rocking in their hammocks, reading books with their bare, sandy feet draped over the sides. We sipped on our freshly-squeezed maracuya and milk juice (which is a bitter fruit that tastes a little like a lemon), and slept early, under the stars. In the morning, one of the men brought each one of us a large coconut with a spout chopped out, so that we could smell the Caribbean and sip on its sweetest natural juices.

It is moments like these, weekends like these, that remind me I´m alive, and very much so.

El Espejo (Mirrors)

It´s a funny thing when you start to realize that the world is looking at you through a different mirror, an espejo, a window that you´ve never gazed through before. It´s almost like the awkwardness you feel around everyone becomes a constant comfort and part of your new personality, that your attraction lies in the exotic history untold. Every history, as we all know, is exotic to someone, even if to us it is the most mundane in the world. I started to think about this as I passed from class to class today, my bookbag filled with English grammar books and my mind full of anxiety and apprehension. My Cartagenean experience is forming, is gaining durability and a stable ground, as each day passes and each new vocabulary work solidifies. Each day I use a new phraze, a new verb, a new expression; like a pyramid of cards, it´s empty inside but outside are the first inclinations of a skeleton. Each new word I gain the ability to use properly becomes another part of me, the person inside, the Kristin who has millions of thoughts, expressions, histories, and experiences, the Kristin who sometimes stumbles through her words and cuts her thoughts short when she can´t figure out how to say them. For me, someone who relies solely on her use of babbling in awkward situations, this change is incredible: for the first time in my life, my mouth actually clamps shut when I´m nervous rather than hanging open like a hinge unhooked, the words spilling on everybody´s shoes.

My new residence, down on Calle Real in the Manga barrio (aptly named, of course, for its lush mango trees lining the streets) is sweet, quiet, and residential. I am no longer in the pueblo, living the Peace Corps life--instead, I am living with a bed, television set, computer desk, plastic chair, tough, squirty shower, and big fan. Trust me, the comforts I crave only come to me in dreams. My ¨family¨is an older couple, Senora Ofelia and Senor Marcos, whose grandchildren often come to play in the evenings and whose other rooms are rented out to fellow travellers like myself. Next to me is Adriana, who, in fact, I have apparantly been living with for a week but whom I haven´t actually seen yet. (Yes, it´s kind of weird to have a roommate who you´ve never actually met) Across the hall is Claudia, a mother of two displaced from her husband and family by an angry corporation who dragged her from Bogota to Cartagena for business six months ago. We have a cramped kitchen, a totally irritating door lock (that, may I add, took me exactly 45 minutes, one doorman, two Colombians, and three desperate phone calls to Ofelia, to open...) and a comfortable living room.

Most nights I lie awake wondering what the rest of the world is doing, while I am here, sleeping, in Colombia, amidst the crickets, whirring fan, humidity, and mosquitos. Sometimes when I wake up I´ve forgotten I´m here, and I imagine I´m waking up next to the people I love. But then, as I wipe the sleep from my eyes, I realize that it´s actually 5 a.m., that I am in someone else´s apartment in someone else´s country, that I´m all alone, that I´m dripping wet with sweat from last night, and that I must catch the bus to school in one hour. Sometimes, I reach for comfort, until I realize that my comforts are now all in my mind.

I´m culturally aware, yes, and excited, nervous, cautious, and thrilled to be immersed in this South American world, but I´ve never been the easiest with change.

Like Dreams

Bienvenidos! (Greetings!)

I must be in a dream, because everything I see and everything I feel is like I´m swimming inside an irreal world that doesn´t actually exist in this twenty-first century that we believe to be modern. I am a spectacle, truly a spectacle, a celebrity, a weirdo of the strangest kind! I walk down the streets to the faces of tiny children dropping their toys and literally staring, following me, with their big brown eyes, down the horizon until I disappear. I enter the market to a small, dark world of morenos (dark-haired people) and am literally buzzed upon like bees on honey. Greetings like "Mi amor!" "Linda!" "Mi vida!" "Mi amorcita!" "Gringa!" "Rubia!" attack me like ants on a picnic and fuzz my Spanish from a confident slur into an uncomfortable ¨no, no gracias..." as I awkwardly push away the candies, cooked fish, tropical fruits, jewelry, and chocolates. I no longer eat apples, grapefruits, and pears, but instead feast on mayacuya, frijoles, coroza, guanabana, guaya, avena, yuca, mango, pina, arroz con coco, leche de vaca, y cafe, and a million other fruits, freshly picked from the trees all around me. I´ve been ripped off by a taxi driver who accused me of being too rich for my own good and I´ve been called a "gringa ignorante" by street vendors whose products I will not buy. The buses are loud, crowded, washed in vibrant colors, decorated in shawls, instruments, birds in cages, and screaming children; and the wheels are so rickety that each time I sit by the window my head consistently bangs into the glass. I watch the burros meandering by toting flatbeds full of milk jugs, fruits, vegetables, and a dark man behind the reins. I come home to my pueblo on the outskirts of Cartagena, my body exhausted, my feet aching, my forehead sweating, my deodorant failing, and I step into the outside bathroom, toss my towel over the door, fill up my pitcher of cold water from the bucket, and dump in over my hair. I scrub quickly, squeeze a bit of shampoo onto my hair, and watch the goosebumps travel up my cool skin as the water trickles from the top of my head down to my toes. When I use the bathroom, I take a bucket of water and literally shove the water into the bowl so that gravity flushes the debris away. I speak no English, and my head aches in Spanish verbs, vocabulary, and conjugations I haven´t used since high school. I am a professor, no longer a student, and I have a million eyes and questions following me wherever I go. I am scared, alone, and exotic--and I have never, ever been treated so kindly, so generously, by so many genuine people, in all my life.

I must be in a dream, a Latin-American dream, for where could this possibly be a reality?

Welcome!

Welcome, my friends, to my world: a place that never sits still, a place that is always looking towards the mysterious and the exotic, a place that never sleeps. And though I know that my world may be small, my passion lies in the knowledge that each and every one of us has only one tiny world--one tiny world to mold, to shape, and to make shine. I believe in the power of travel, of international influence and the awareness that culture, language, and art bring, and so I dedicate this site to my third international voyage thus far in my young life of 22 years.

Three summers ago, I began with Valencia, Spain, a place of blue roses, street mimes, colorful trees, friendly people, and delicate history. I was to study Spanish at the Universitat di Valencia, and found myself traveling throughout the Andalusian countryside in a state of constant pertenencia (or, belonging). I fell into a deep world of understanding and appreciation like I had not found in Atlanta, my home, and I decided that my destiny lies in uncovering the secrets hidden within our human experience. I would go on to live in Sliema, Malta, where I would be a foreign group leader at an English summer school to multinational students and have the international experience of a lifetime. In between, I traveled the chain of islands that make up the Maltese archipelago, climbed Mount Etna, tasted Sicilian wine, and toasted to life in London.

I spent my last year feverishly engaged in my last year at the University of Georgia, studying courses in both Spanish and Comparative Literature (the root of my wanderlust at its best!) After graduating, I stayed for the summer to spend time with those important to me, and took on two jobs in order to save money. But come August, I will be again leaving the United States of America, in search of something interesting and worthy. I will be going to Cartagena, Colombia, a port city on the Caribbean coast, to teach English at the Universidad Tecnologica de Bolivar. This will be my space, dedicated to my family, (especially my mother, who gave me my wings!) and to those both here and abroad, that have helped me realize my dreams.

To mom, dad, Elizabeth, Chris, Rachel, Nicole, Mary, Melissa, the 2004 Maltese group leaders who taught me to love what is unique, Lindsey (and Becky!) for opening my mind to the life of adventure and challenge, and of course, to my two crazy cats, Bailey and Bluey. May we all find the personal truths we are searching for.