by Fein, Judith
To make matters worse, there was nowhere to drive. The streets were blocked off because of flooding, and cars were half-submerged in water laced with huge, dirty palm fronds. We sat inside, huddled around the minuscule heater, trying to crank up the physical and psychic energy to disengage from our contract, find another place to rent, and, if all else failed, drag our weary carcasses onto a plane headed for somewhere warm . . . like sub-Saharan Africa.
When the streets finally cleared, all we could think of was shopping for fleece, fluffy, warm bathrobes, and industrial sprays to mask dog smell. We were devoid of energy, imagination, and life force.
We couldn’t believe this had happened to us. Normally, you could drop us in the middle of the desert and we’d realize the fascination of sand. Once, at a resort, when we were awakened in the middle of the night because flames were leaping toward our cabin and we had to leave behind all our belongings and run to safety, we turned disaster into discovery as we spent hours interviewing the other survivors. But there we were in spectacular coastal California, bummed out, burned out, shivering and, for the first time in our travel lives, bored. The dismal little cottage had a huge TV, and we torpidly watched actors, athletes, and advertisers prance, parade, run, walk, slither, leap, sell, fall in love, and jockey for power on the screen.
One day the skies cleared, the sun emerged, and we were sitting in a restaurant, sinking our forks into breakfast burritos the size of our thighs. I was perusing a throwaway paper that I had picked up at a rack near the entry door, when I saw a small notice about Hmong New Year in a nearby public park in Kearney Mesa. I began to feel a stirring, a frisson of interest and curiosity.
I had known about the Hmong (pronounced “Mong”) mountain people for decades. In the sixties, the U.S. recruited ethnic Hmong soldiers to fight on our side in the Vietnam War and help us conduct a protracted secret war in Laos. This resulted, of course, in thousands of deaths and casualties and, when the war was over, there were terrible reprisals in Laos against the Hmong. Many fled to refugee camps in Thailand and the U.S. promised to resettle them, but the process has been difficult, controversial, wrought with duplicity, and painfully slow. Today, there are almost a quarter of a million Hmong in the U.S.
I asked a few people I knew in San Diego if they wanted to go with us to the exotic New Year celebration. They declined, adding that the Hmong aren’t friendly and it was probably a small, immigrant event that wouldn’t be of much interest.
We went anyway. The section of the park reserved for the festivities was ablaze with the dazzling traditional clothing of the hundreds of Hmong who came from all over the country for the celebration. Paul and I were the only non-Hmong there. I didn’t know what to explore first: booths with native food and drink; stands laden with intricate embroidery, accessories, and clothes for sale; a lion dance; or a potluck with huge casseroles of food prepared and offered for free by Hmong women.
I was juggling a platter of pickled and spicy vegetables, green papaya salad, sausage, chicken, and a sweet drink with tapioca when something caught my eye: a row of teenage or twenty-something Hmong men gently throwing tennis balls to a row of young women of about the same age. I watched until my food started to get cold, and then I wandered over to a wooden table to eat. As I was savoring the little-known Southeast Asian delicacies, I looked up and saw another row of boys tossing tennis balls to a line of girls opposite them.
“Excuse me,” I said to a middle-aged couple at my table. “Can you tell me what that game is?”
“It’s how our young people meet each other,” the man said.
“They come from Wisconsin, Sacramento, everywhere to maybe find a Hmong husband or wife,” the woman added, grinning.
Other Hmong joined in the conversation.
“While they throw the ball back and forth, they talk,” said a stunning woman decked out in a long black dress trimmed with red embroidery. “Maybe a girl asks how old a boy is or they exchange names. If they find out the other person is from the same family, it’s not a suitable partner.”
“Is there ever love at first throw?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” said my beautiful interlocutor, laughing. “And if a boy likes a girl, he will begin to sing to tell her about her wonderful qualities.”
“He literally sings?” I asked.
The woman nodded. “Singing to express love is very important in our culture.”
I walked over to the lines of potential mates, trying to guess where the tennis balls might lead to a match ending in love, musing that if I were single I would much prefer casually tossing words and tennis balls to hooking up with someone in a bar or fidgeting at a singles’ event. I would have happily stood there watching for hours, but my attention was drawn by a crowd gathered in front of a booth that sold CDs and DVDs. The man who ran the booth slipped a documentary film into a DVD player.
On a small screen, a young Hmong girl in the mountains of Laos was singing and sobbing. Opposite her, an older man looked on with compassion. The girl’s voice was hypnotic and the sounds seemed to come from her soul.
I inquired of a man standing next to me, “Could you tell me, please, what the girl is saying?”
The man turned his face to me, and I could see that he was crying too. Tears pooled in his big, brown eyes and then trickled down his chin onto his neatly-pressed white shirt. He seemed to have no embarrassment about weeping in front of a stranger.
“She is an orphan and she is telling the story of how she has suffered. She is alone in the world. Her family is dead and she has no one. That man says he wants to help her. He is too old to marry her, but she can come and stay at his house for as long as she wants.”
“But why is she singing?” I asked.
“In our culture, we sing our sorrows,” he answered. He wiped his tears with his hand and added, “I am crying because her story is my story too. I am also an orphan. I had nobody to help me. I suffered the way she is suffering. I endured what she had to endure.”
“I am so sorry,” I muttered. “Thank you for telling me. Thank you for teaching me.”
The man handed me his card. “If you go to visit the Hmong people in Laos, I can accompany you and show you around. I will introduce you to our people. I am so happy you came here to share our New Year with us.”
It was a sentiment that was repeated. All day, Hmong people kept thanking me for coming and for being interested in their culture.
Of course I was interested! In one day, I had gotten to learn about people who sing their sorrows and joys, take pride in their national dress, and find love in a simple, sweet ball game. I had sampled Southeast Asian cuisine I knew nothing about, heard the Hmong language, experienced the power of a man weeping in public, listened to music I didn’t know, bought an embroidered and tasseled indigenous hat. And I didn’t have to crank up enormous energy, buy a plane ticket, plan an itinerary, or spend much money. All I had to do was drive for twenty minutes to soak up a bit of faraway Laos in San Diego.
For days, I had been mired in depression, disengagement, and listlessness. How extraordinary that one state of being had so rapidly morphed into another. I marveled at how other cultures drew me out of myself, into a world that was larger and infinitely more interesting than the malaise inside of me. I was filled with admiration for the Hmong, who had overcome such adversity. I was grateful that, once again, I was excited by learning, by contact with people whose life experiences and culture were so different from my own.
When Paul and I returned to the creepy cottage that evening, we rediscovered our mojo. We simply refused to be unhappy. We moved to a charming place where we could sleep soundly, put our clothes in drawers, turn on a wall heater, and walk along the Strand in Pacific Beach, and Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach; a place where we could appreciate the seemingly effortless grace of surfers, sip margaritas, smile at the sun and feel grateful for every droplet of our lives.
Travel is a balm for my soul, but I don’t always need to go far to experience it. When
we returned home, I tuned into the different ethnicities and customs all around me. Paul and I went to an Aztec ceremony at El Museo Cultural De Santa Fe, where gloriously-attired dancers honored Cuahtemoc, whom they call the first defender of the Americas, and celebrated what they described as the first direction for Nuestro Señor del Sacremontes. The drumming was loud and exciting, and the dancers, many with rattles around their ankles, leapt, twirled, and stepped with intention and devotion. During a break in the dancing, we stood silently in front of an altar contemplating the tall white candles and the offerings of flowers, musical instruments, photos, and food.
On Chinese New Year, we dined at a local restaurant where there were four dancing lions—including a huge black one. We stuffed money into red envelopes and plunged them into a lion’s mouth to ensure prosperity and good fortune. And we ate Middle Eastern food while we watched the sinuous stomach muscles of belly dancers.
Finding these events was easy. All I had to do was look at bulletin boards, magazines, newspapers, and websites. With minimal expense of effort, I was rewarded with new connections, instant learning, expansion of my horizons, and a richer, more textured and deliciously varied life.
Travel is a Zen activity that can lift me out of my inner life into engagement with the world around me. There is so much happening—new people, ideas, food, customs, language, sounds, smells—that it literally yanks me from inward to outward focus. No longer trekking through the muck of the past or anticipating an uncertain future, I am plunked right into the present, where healing, happiness, and renewal take place.
From the first time I heard about it, I had a burning desire to go. I wanted to be a pilgrim, stripped down to whatever I could carry on my back, trekking five hundred miles from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port in southern France to the final destination of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, which purportedly contains the tomb of St. James. I pictured myself turning inward, timing my footsteps to my breath, meditating, unplugged from news, my computer, phone, fax and, most of all, social chitchat. Inane conversation about weather, whether or not to buy this or that, rehashing of TV shows, and minute dissections of who said what to whom grind my soul to ash. I wanted the simplicity of the medieval pilgrims who walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela (a collection of pilgrimage routes also known as the Way of St. James). I yearned for a month-long spiritual undertaking, over hill and dale, pasture and plain, carrying the iconic scallop shell which signifies to others that you are, quite literally, walking the walk.
Twenty-five years ago, a few thousand devoted pilgrims followed the Way of St. James every year; today estimates are in the 100,000 to 200,000 range. The pilgrims come on foot, bike, and horseback. A few even bring donkeys. Some do the whole walk and others complete a section, hopping on a train or bus for part of the pilgrimage. They are young and old, fit and unfit, short, tall, fat, thin, bearded, shaven, rich, poor, educated, unschooled, religious, non-believers and the just plain curious. They are easy to spot; they carry walking sticks and huge backpacks. A few months ago, I set my feet on the Camino for the first time.
At a public hostel for pilgrims, I met a buoyant young man from London who was standing patiently in line, waiting to get his pilgrim’s credential booklet stamped. When he got to Santiago, the stamps would serve as proof that he had walked the Camino, or at least the last sixty-two miles of it, and this would qualify him for a pilgrim’s certificate.
“How far did you walk today?” I asked him.
“About twenty-five miles,” he replied.
“May I lift your backpack to see how heavy it is?”
“Sure,” he answered, with the good humor that was characteristic of most pilgrims I met.
I bent over and raised it up; more accurately, I tried to lift it. It weighed more than fifty pounds. The young man was grinning and I was mortified. My back ached before I had taken one step on the Camino. What was I thinking? I hated carrying anything. Some days, my handbag was too much for me. I loved being unencumbered, physically free.
I peered inside the hostel; beds were lined up in a gymnasium-sized room. Each had a blanket, but no sheets. There was zero privacy. A gaggle of walkers waited to take cold showers because there was no hot water. In a small courtyard next to the hostel, people were soaking their blisters and icing their tendonitis-inflamed legs. One pallid woman said she was so exhausted she didn’t know if she could go on the next day. It was then I knew that I would never be a pilgrim. It was fine for others. But for me it was a fantasy. A dream. A demented delusion.
Why, I wondered, did anyone walk the Camino? I began to ask the pilgrims I met. In a municipal pilgrims’ albergue, or hostel, three young men were cooking eggs for dinner in the small kitchen area. They devoured them with mounds of tortellini and cheese sauce. One of them said he was walking the Camino before he started engineering school. A second had been laid off and decided to make a pilgrimage before going back to work.
“I’m not sure why I’m doing it,” said the third. “But I can tell you that the socializing at night is the best part. You drink beer or wine and you meet people. The three of us didn’t know each other before.”
I stopped at a private albergue, which offered separate rooms with baths for pilgrims who wanted more comfort.
“I just went through a divorce,” said a middle-aged woman, sitting in a lounge chair nursing a beer. “It’s very meaningful for me to be here, with no contact from my ex, away from my familiar surroundings, thinking about who I am besides a wife.”
Ahh, I said to myself, maybe if I stayed at a place like this, I could bear the walk. Whom was I kidding? I learned that last year there was a plague of bedbugs in both the municipal and private hostels. And some of the private albergues were as basic as the public ones.
In Rabanal, I met Abraham from the Canary Islands, Francisco from Tenerife, and José Luis from Salamanca. The three new friends sat under a tree nursing their tired feet. For them, the Camino was an inexpensive vacation; they could explore a region of Spain they didn’t know, and it would give them a sense of accomplishment to finish it.
A Korean woman said she had learned about the Camino on television, and then she read an inspiring book by a Korean writer about the pilgrimage walk. It sealed the deal.
Alexander from Vienna quit his job as a banker because it didn’t suit him. He was walking to ponder what he would do next.
“I’m not talking to other pilgrims about it,” he said. “It’s more about me and my own thoughts. I’m an athlete and I don’t find the walk hard or tiring.”
Two young Spanish girls said, “We walk by day and we ice at night. Our objective is to get to Santiago. We don’t know why we are doing it, but we’re really happy.”
Judy Magee from Toronto was nervous about hauling her backpack. “Mom, don’t worry about the weight of your backpack,” her daughter Kaitlin had counseled her. “It weighs less than the to-do list you make every day.” Judy said, “That thought is with me all the time. I’m learning to let go, and not to plan for every contingency.”
Kellie, from Wales, said with a laugh that quite a few happily married couples met while walking the Camino. She wasn’t exactly looking for a mate, but she wasn’t ruling it out either.
The more pilgrims I spoke to, the more diverse reasons I heard for doing the walk. Some wanted fresh air and an active, outdoorsy experience. Others were intrigued by the churches and art and great Spanish food along the way. The varied landscape drew some, and the challenge called to others. There were devout Catholics, atheists, Jews, Bahai’s and Buddhists. For some, it was a spiritual quest, a long prayer of gratitude, a meaningful way to mark a life transition. And more than a few were repeat pilgrims; they had done the Camino once or several times before.
I began to feel the discomfort of the outsider. They were all walking and I was watching. They were making sacrifices, and I was sleeping in hotels, driving in a car, and dining on regional foods that burst on my joyous palate.
> “Maybe I’m helping the pilgrims by writing about them,” I joked to one woman, and she nodded and said, quite seriously, that there is a whole tradition of people serving the Camino.
What does that mean? How do you serve a route? I wondered. So off I went, to find out about non-walking pilgrims who are somehow engaged in service to people, a path, or something else I didn’t understand.
On the outskirts of Sahagún, I met loquacious, vivacious, eighty-two-year-old Paca Luna Tovar at the Virgen del Puente hermitage. Every day, Paca walks over a mile from town to the hermitage and adorns the altar with flowers and candles that are dedicated to the Virgin. She carries with her galletas de hierro (a regional cookie) and fiery, alcoholic aguardiente for the pilgrims who come inside. While I was there, she spontaneously broke into song; the lyrics were about the patron saint of the town, the Camino, the hermitage, and two local churches.
“My ancestors welcomed the pilgrims here,” she said proudly. “When my aunts were alive, they brought me here to greet the pilgrims, and when they died, I took over. I am the fourth generation. I come to be with the pilgrims. No matter what language they speak, I understand them all, although I am not sure how this happens. The government is planning to do restoration at the hermitage, but even during the work, I will walk here every day to meet the pilgrims. If I stop my daily walk to the hermitage, it will be the end of me.”
Little do the pilgrims suspect that when they drop by the hermitage and munch on cookies or accept a shot of firewater, they are helping to keep an octogenarian dynamo alive.
At a hostel in Rabanal del Camino, which is run by the Confraternity of St. James in Britain, I met Martin Singleton, who had come from London to volunteer as a hospitalero for two and a half weeks. He was probably in his late sixties to mid seventies, and his jobs included making breakfast and keeping the rooms clean.
Singleton’s relationship with the Camino began after his wife completed a pilgrimage. “I had never walked farther than my house to the car,” he said, “but I put my boots on, got an old rucksack, and went back with my wife the next year and walked 120 miles. I had no physical problems walking. It affected me spiritually. It changed me. I made a promise to come back and complete the entire Camino. I did it last year.”