A Walker in the Suburbs

The work trips I take are often battles between mind and body. The mind, freed of routine, takes in hundreds of sights, sounds and smells. It thrills to foreign tongues and customs. The tang of chili pepper and crispy noodles, the roar of traffic in a Phnom Penh alleyway.

The body does its best to keep up. Sleep-deprived, stomach-jostled, it does its best to stay awake and alert and well. There are practical steps to take, of course — getting rest, eating sensibly, drinking bottled water — but there is only so much you can do. At a certain point, the mind just prays that the body will be up to the task.

Luckily, there are plenty of prayer opportunities in Cambodia, little shrines like this one in the front yard-driveway of a family we interviewed Monday. And they’re ready for you, rain or shine.

We had three meetings yesterday, which kept us zipping through Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. Zipping is perhaps an exaggeration, since we traveled in an SUV, complete with five people and a load of camera equipment.

I’ve seen very little of the country so far. An airport, a baggage claim, the visa and immigration counters and then, Phnom Penh at night seen from the back of a car taking us to the hotel.

It was after 11 p.m. and we’d been traveling for more than 24 hours by the time we saw the lights of the city. Though it was only from the car windows, it was a start, a taste of what is to come.

To the left a square,  a long square, a pagoda, trees all lit up. To the right, small cafes with outdoor seating.

Old colonial buildings in the shadows, some with modern stores on the ground floors.

I have a lot to learn and a lot to see … and my first meeting is in two hours. It will be more than 12 hours until I can see Phnom Penh at night again.

My bags are packed and my pre-trip to-do list is almost all checked off (“write blog post” being one of the final items), and now comes that part of travel which both unnerves and restores — that would be putting my fate almost entirely in the hands of others.

This is probably something human beings need to do from time to time, and travelers do it whenever they board a plane or choose a lodge. The kind of travel I’m about to experience — bopping around the countryside to small villages to interview survivors of human trafficking — does it more than most.

The itinerary is drawn up to showcase the work we do, and I’m there to capture as much of it as I can. The pace can be frantic, the days long.

But the rewards are great, these glimpses of lives that others live. Not just passing glances, either, but actual conversations with people I would never otherwise meet. These trips always broaden my perspective, and I’m so grateful I get to take them.

So it’s off to Cambodia, to its rice paddies and temples, its mountains and lakes, to a world I can only begin to imagine but will, God willing, soon see.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

It’s no secret that I love to travel. What’s becoming increasingly clear to me, though, is travel’s long-term dividends. Even trips that seem difficult at the time pay off in the strangest of ways.

I’m thinking of my first trip for Winrock, an around-the-world extravaganza with a prima donna videographer. Even though there were moments I’d like to forget — being told we’d not be let into Indonesia unless we ponied over $5,000 U.S., for instance, a “fee” that the prima donna videographer negotiated down from $1,500 (proving that prima donna videographers are good for something, besides shooting beautiful videos).

What I remember from Indonesia, though, is the beauty of Sumba, the smiles of the schoolchildren there, the bumpy road to Kataka School and a late-night swim in a humongous Jakarta hotel pool.

These details are all wrapped up with the sights and sounds and smells of that country, with its crazy traffic and its friendly people. They are a part of me now, just as the red clay roads and rocky peaks and singing school children of Malawi are.

I’m one grateful lady.

Rainy seasons have been arriving later in Malawi. I was prepared for torrents, but apart from a couple of downpours (one with hail and thunder), it was sunny and beautiful the whole time I was there. This was good for traveling but not so good for the crops that Malawians need to stay alive.

My one-week trip to Malawi was so packed with experiences that some of them are bound to overflow into the week that follows … and beyond. So as I sit here in front of the Christmas tree with Copper curled beside me, I think about the walk I took on the beach Saturday.

Lake Malawi is ocean-like in its long beaches, and I walked as far down as I could in one direction and almost as far as I could in the other. It was a “working beach” with only a few tourists. I saw fishermen mending their nets and women washing their clothes. I saw children carrying bowls of silvery sardines for sale. I’m squeamish about dead fish but these were beauties.

This hour-long walk Saturday was some of the only free daylight time I had during the trip, not counting the lovely hours staring out the car window at scenery as we drove from village to village. But it was so full of sights and sounds and activity that it sent me home with (almost!) a skip in my step.

I leave Malawi today after a quick and jammed-pack trip. During the last five days I’ve interviewed school children, teachers and a village chief.  I’ve listened as staff members outlined their programs and families shared their dreams.

I’ve seen women knead clay and shape it into cookstoves that will provide them an income for the first time in their lives. … children act out the perils of child labor with plays and dance … tender new corn and tobacco plants in red soil with craggy mountains in the background … and everywhere the energy and drive of a country full of young people.

I’m ending this trip on the humid shores of Lake Malawi, which consumes more than a third of the country’s area. Tomorrow we drive back to the airport in the capital city of Lilongwe.

I’ll take home what I often do from these travels — the knowledge that the world is a big place and there is more under the sun that we can possibly imagine. It’s heartening to me, this knowledge. It brightens my days.

I haven’t walked much in Malawi. There hasn’t been time. But as I’ve bumped along unpaved roads and zoomed along paved ones (in one memorable trip catching up with the Malawian president’s motorcade and pretending we were part of it), I’ve seen many people walking.

Walking in Malawi isn’t done for one’s health. It is done simply to get from one place to another. It’s riding shank’s mare, using one’s legs for transport.

Not to in any way glamorize the poverty here, nor go back to a time when most travel was foot travel, it still does my heart good to see these peopled roads. They aren’t just ribbons of vacant asphalt as far as the eye can see; they are alive and vibrant.

Today we drove through some of the most dramatic scenery I’ve ever seen, the southern end of the Riff Valley, with majestic views that went on forever. But the best moments were when we strolled down the road from a cookstove demonstration to see a woman’s poultry business.  It was just a few steps, but it made me feel, for a moment, like a walker in Malawi.