An Important Question

Anyone who has travelled with me will not be surprised to know that I have a perpetual packing list. I'm still not at all comfortable travelling, and I have to be prepared for every eventuality in order to minimise my anxiety when I leave home. This is known to the rest of the world as "over-packing." Mock if you want, but the other option is to stay home where I know all my stuff is. So I accept my over-packing and I get out of my rut and I go. Call it a coping mechanism.


My roommate for the 2006 build in India, Tammy has travelled with me on many occasions now, and is the only person I know with whom I can travel for a week and still have something to talk about on the way to the airport to go home. One day I'm going to make her a trophy for that talent.


In 2008, neither of us were able to make the Carter Work Project, so she asked me to go on a mission trip with her church to build a dental clinic in Guatemala instead. (This was actually the trip that got me over my white-knuckle fear of flying, from which I graduated to just being very, very bad at flying.) We roomed together on the trip, which required a GREAT deal of patience on her part. I felt I made up for being a pain in the ass a little bit because whenever she needed something she hadn't packed, I was able to accommodate her from my enormous array of luggage. It's a long story, but I even had a soccer ball and a slinky.


One day, she asked if I had a comb. "A comb? You didn't even pack a comb?" Tammy unapologetically explained her strategy: "I knew I didn't have to pack much, since you'd have everything." Huh. Not just a hat rack.


So, on this perpetual packing list, I've collected some quotes and poems and one joke that I like to review when I'm travelling to alleviate my anxiety. (To take some of the suspense out of it, I now e-mail my packing list du voyage to Tammy shortly before we go anywhere together. Now it's over-packing for the good of the many.) The joke is from Reader's Digest, the back-issues of which I read voraciously all summer long as a child, which may explain my digest-sized attention span now. As I'm getting ready for a Carter-cation today, I reread the joke, and it put me in mind of last year's Haiti build. And, for no other reason than that, I'm sharing it here...

IN A REMOTE VILLAGE in Sierra Leone, West Africa, I befriended Alpha, one of the local men on our building crew.

Alpha was impressed with my tool set and was amazed to find a woman working in construction. He'd bring extra rice and greens for lunch and we'd sit and talk. He asked about my husband, and I told him I wasn't married.

Alpha said he wanted sons and that he would marry soon. He wondered whether I'd stay in his country, and then surprised me by saying he had an important question for me. 

I was nervous about his impending marriage proposal, and the next day Alpha was solemn as he asked if I was ready to answer his question. I nodded. "When you go back to America," he said, "may I have your trowel? "  

— "All In a Day's Work"

The best thing about ECMC…

When I was going to India in 2006, I was told to get my shots first. Which shots? Well, the ones they recommend. They who?


Fortunately a search for “travel shots” brought up a whole aspect of life I hadn’t considered (since I was still terrified of flying at that point): travel clinics. The people who have the shots to give you and tell you what shots you need. And where is ours? Just behind the Emergency Room at Erie County Medical Center. Who knew?


I’ve been back since, getting my shots for Guatemala in 2008. And then today, to get my shots for Haiti. Did you know, if you get vaccinated against Hepatitis A, and then you get a booster shot 6-12 months later, it’s good for 10 years? They told me that in 2006, but I never managed to go back to get it in time. But in 2008 after Guatemala, I, um, didn’t go either. So today, they mocked me. Mocked me for having to spend a hundred bucks again for a Hep A shot, when I could have just been halfway through the term of the shots from 2006 if I had only made that appointment… “Time for the Hep A shot – you seem to love those!” “Side effects can be similar to flu symptoms, but your body should be used to Hep A by now from all those shots.” “You know, you don’t get a free Hep A shot if you buy five.”


In a world where others are often called upon to save me from myself, they made me make an appointment for the booster in February before I could leave. I love those guys.

Mwen antrene Creole! (I’m a-learnin’ Creole!)

I think it’s rude to travel to a country and not learn a bit of the language. Sure, lots of people in lots of places speak English, but shouldn’t we try to learn something of our host’s language? Granted, if you try to speak French in Paris, they look offended at what you’ve done to their language and answer you in English… and they don’t yet realise that’s exactly what we were trying to get them to do in the first place… shhhh…

When I went to India in 2006, I learned something — almost everyone there speaks English, but they speak English that they learned from non-native speakers, who learned it from non-native speakers themselves. And so on. They call it Hinglish. Even when we were all speaking English, there was not a lot of communicating going on. And while you’re asking for something, they start the Indian head-bob, which appears to indicate assent, but I believe was actually a signal that they had stopped listening to you entirely and had already decided to do whatever they wanted to about the situation.

The night after the India build, I flew to Varanasi to stay with the friend of a friend on his beautiful estate. The flight was delayed, and the drive from the airport was long, and I arrived in my very awesome and palatial 5-bedroom bungalow at 2 a.m. local time (something like 4.17 p.m. EST… never figured out the time difference). I had some sort of fever which made for a bit of delirium, and when two house servants approached me before I went to bed, I wasn’t prepared for their questions. They wanted to know what I wanted for breakfast, looking at each other first in some sort of rock-paper-scissors mime, the loser of which had to pose the next question. “Poached eggs toast, Mum?” I’d gotten safely through India with poached eggs and toast so far, so that was a yes. “Mum would like papaya?” We had driven in through a grove of fruit trees, so papaya would also be safe. “Would Mum like bacon?” Boy, would mum ever like some bacon. But what do they consider “bacon” in India? In a predominantly vegetarian society, I hadn’t had any luck with meat products so far. Chicken never looked like chicken, beef was of course nonexistent, and, well, let’s just say I never got brave enough to try the hot dogs they sold at the Mumbai airport. (Strangely enough, the very first time I tried caviar was on a Kingfisher Air flight from Delhi…) Just because the word “bacon” was the same as ours, didn’t mean the product “bacon” was the same as ours. When I awoke that morning, I was not hopeful. My host, it turns out, was quite British, and had special products shipped in from Delhi every week that appealed to his non-Indian tastes. Including bacon. Real bacon. Real Delhi bacon…

OK, so maybe that wasn't a perfect example of the language barrier, but it's been a long time since I talked about bacon, and I had to work it in.

Before I went to Guatemala with the Lovely Lane Methodist Church of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I actually tried to learn Central American Spanish. I started learning French when I was 3 years old and majored in French Lit in college, so I was pretty entrenched in the Language of Love/The Olympic Games. Many words were similar, but they say the worst Spanish accents come from French speakers, and I’d have to agree. And the homonyms weren’t helpful — when you say ‘notebook’ in French, you’re saying ‘street’ in Spanish. I’d ask for directions and I kept thinking they wanted to write them down.

I used Rosetta Stone, which was fabulous, and teaches using a method that mimics how you learn language as a child. They show you a picture of a horse running, and the sentence, “The horse can run.” They show you a picture of a fish, and the sentence, “The fish can swim.” This is how I ultimately came to learn the sentence, “The fish can’t run.” The fish. Can’t run. El pez no peude correr. I learned enough Spanish to be able to communicate in Guatemala — more importantly, to be able to know what was going on — and we tried to work “El pez no puede correr” into every conversation we could. We left them thinking that, quite possibly, in America, the fish CAN run…

For Haiti, I wanted to learn Creole. Building with us on each site will be Haitian construction workers and the Haitian homeowners, who may or may not speak some English, or even French as I learned it. There are translators on the build sites, but you have to wait for them, which wastes valuable time, and you can’t monopolise them to have a conversation with the homeowners. It wasn’t until the third or fourth day of the build in Thailand that we found out our homeowner wasn’t with us – it was the wife’s brother working with us, because the homeowners were with their child in the hospital the whole time. I’d like to be able to make conversation with our homeowners, and communicate somewhat with our trades — I think it’s respectful, and I want to know cool swear words in Creole for everyday use.

I found a computer application that teaches Creole (Rosetta Stone doesn’t have a Creole version, so to get my point across about the fish not running, I believe we’re back to mime). This program does not exactly have construction terms, but I have learned to say build (bati) and paint (pentire, pronounced almost exactly like panty-raid). I can also say hike, climb, ice skate, and accordian, which I expect to come in handy. I can set the table, make the bed, and try something on. I can call somebody, talk to somebody, love somebody, and hate somebody. I can drive, swim, sail, and ride a horse. I can count to a hundred (which I apparently could do in French when I was five, so I’m feeling a lack of progress here), but there had better not be any fractions involved in the build. And I can also say, “Nou jwe kèk oke sou glas!”* I’m still waiting for the chapter where I mix mortar, tie rebar, and set blocks.

Here’s the beauty of Creole: for the most part, it’s lazy, phonetic French. No articles, no conjugation. Voyager? Vwayaje. Fixer? Fikse. Every letter is pronounced, just like in Spanish. Dix? Dis. Treize? Trèz. And I’m amazed at how much French I remember, considering I haven’t had a conversation in French in years. I can pull the odd sentence out when Montreal fans come to town and need directions, but it’s not really come up a lot otherwise. La ville? Lavil. À demain? A demen. It’s a language of 99% French cognates! I am loving this! I pretty much just have to forget a little French to make this work… and then figure out fractions, and metric, and “plumb” and “flush,” and I’m good to go!

I actually have a friend moving to Haiti soon, so I’m hoping to practice some Creole with her on Facebook. And the receptionist at my spa is from Haiti, and is incredibly helpful in reassuring me that I already know all this. Anyone else? Nenpòt moun ki?

I’m hoping to avoid the scene in Bangkok in 2009 where we were all learning Thai on the fly, and practiced phrases together… until the day we realized we had just walked through the lobby of the Marriott as a group loudly repeating, “Thank you, thank you, thank you…” over and over. It’s too late for the Thais, but we’d like the good people of Haiti not to think we’re insane. Who wants insane people building their house?

* Let’s... play... some... HOCKEY!

Whaaat? No Bath & Body Works Orange Ginger??

When I did the CWP in Lonavala, India in 2006, we stayed at Velvett Country (life is cheap in India; spelling is cheaper). Velvett Country is a resort, with meditation paths and tennis courts and a masseuse on-staff. Of course, we left before 6 every morning and returned after dinner every night, so we partook of none of that, but there was a lovely deck around the pool large enough to accommodate all of the volunteers as we reviewed the day’s events after sunset. I could catch Sabres highlights on CNN World Sports in my room.

For the CWP in Los Angeles in 2007, we stayed at the LAX Marriott. There were 6 pillows on my bed, and I still use Bath & Body Works Orange Ginger products after using the samples we got as toiletries every day. There was a Starbucks in the lobby and Wifi all around.

In 2008, I went instead on a mission trip with the Lovely Lane Methodist Church, to build a dental clinic in San Juan La Laguna, Guatemala. We stayed in lovely cabins right on the lake, and had homemade dinners with a family who lived nearby every night. The hot water setup was questionable, but the view was fabulous. A little boy I sponsor in Guatemala draws me a picture of the mountain we were looking at with every letter he sends.

The CWP in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2009 involved a long bus ride to the site, which gave us a chance to wake up before arriving at the build site, marking our time in the sun’s rise over the pictures of the King which were affixed everywhere along the route. The hotel had in-room internet so I could argue with my publisher, beautiful teak wood everywhere, and, well, a mall attached, which also included a Starbucks and was showing “2012.” Massages were $11. Hot oil massages were $13.

Haiti is going to be different. Muuuuuch, much different.

My friend Karen Haycox works for Habitat for Humanity International, and has posted a bit on Facebook about the conditions there. First and foremost: security. Karen wrote about how she was always met at the airport by someone to take her where she was going. It wasn’t the royal treatment – it was a necessity. Whereas on all my other trips I have gone early to see the country (and acclimate to the heat before the build), there’s no traveling alone in Haiti. The volunteers will meet in Atlanta first for the Opening Ceremonies, then take charter planes to Haiti and be shuttled directly to the campus together. No shopping, no wandering into town for a beer after a hard day. We’ll only know we’re in Haiti because we won’t actually get to see Haiti (nightly entertainment brought to the campus aside).

Second: pillows. We may or may not get pillows, but we certainly won’t get six of them. Or maid service. Or Starbucks. We will be sleeping in 6-person tents, which I expect are actually a lot nicer than the tents our homeowners were living in before they were accepted to the project. Now, I’ve had powerful good luck with roommates on these builds (Tammy Stines three times, solo once), but Tammy puts up with me being a slob and there’s no guarantee that the other four people will. And six people sweating all day in the hot sun sleeping in an enclosed area with a single fan… well, that brings up…

Three: water. In India the hot water lasted for about 45 seconds and in Guatemala the hot water heater controls were suspended inside the shower, held up only by bare, live wires. Thailand had no hot water problems, and LA of course had Orange Ginger bath products. Haiti will have — a bucket. Portajohns, to be sure, but no running water. We will each get a bucket of water every day for bathing. Not my preferred form of hygiene to begin with, but after a day of working on a build in the hot sun, crusted with mortar or paint flecks, covered with several layers of sunblock and sweat… I may pack a scrub brush. Certainly we’ll all be in the same boat, and will all smell equally bad, but the problem comes on the trip home. After we take charter planes back to Atlanta, people are going to get on connecting flights. And sit next to perfectly innocent, bathing people who are not going to like this one bit. I’m planning on asking my friend Sue to pick me up in Atlanta (after covering her car seats in garbage bags) and let me spend a couple of hours in her shower before I’m fit for sitting next to anyone.

Four: Wifi. This was kind of a surprise. Turns out you can’t go anywhere without Wifi. This is a blitz build let by a former US President, with a couple more brave celebrities backing him up, and great publicity for Habitat for Humanity International. There won’t be as many members of the media present as there were in, say, Los Angeles, but media will be there, and they’ll need the internet. So there will be a computer tent (I expect, along with the First Aid tent, one of the few air conditioned places to be found). And we’ll have some power strips for charging iPhones and iPads. So, if I can bear to touch my favourite electronics with my grimy hands, I get to blog from the site. And maybe even catch some Sabres highlights online.

This is going to be a challenging build, reminiscent of the early days of Habitat when volunteers would be put up in churches and schools for the builds, but without the convenient plumbing that those facilities proudly boast. Given the fundraising requirement (India’s registration was $800; Haiti volunteers need to raise $5000), only the most committed volunteers will be there. The challenges are what make this build so enticing: pushing myself to physical extremes; bonding with a new house crew and tent-mates; learning enough Creole to converse with the homeowners and learn about their experiences with the earthquake (note to self: learn “earthquake” in Creole, or this could get confusing); packing what I’ll need without overpacking like an idiot. Only four more months to work on that packing list…