The Khmer Rouge were gone but the damage had been done. Pan listened to the monk’s litany of atrocities all day as humanity flowed slowly back into his body. At the end of the monk’s tale, he fell asleep, and the next morning, he woke up under a roof, on a cot, for the first time in months, if not years.
When he revealed his identity, he was called to the capitol of Phnom Penh where he was received as a revered elder and met a delegation of Theravada monks from Vietnam who had come to help re-establish the religion. Only then did he realize the extent of the genocide, the monasteries destroyed, the sacred texts burned, countless brother monks slaughtered, and for the only time in our conversations, I saw a single tear roll down his cheek.
Two subsequent visits with Pan were deliberately kept light-hearted and fun and I learned that he loved shaved ice, and to laugh, but it is more of a sustained giggle that spares no part of his face. His joy in all that surrounds him is like a small child’s and though I could not see it, I often felt his aura. This was man; descended into animal, and returned as a saint, for what else could I possibly call him?
When I left Cambodia, Pan was in great demand, traveling around to various monasteries, imparting the old ways, “The Teaching of the Elders” to a new generation of monks who now used the internet, had cellphones and iPads, and ride motorbikes, but this did not seem to bother him in the least. It was karma.
His goal had always been to spend his life in meditation and I am sure that since our time together he has merged with the cosmos. I have allowed myself the fantasy to think he may have been looking over my shoulder as I wrote this and would know that his story had been told, one more time, for the last time.
Today there are close to 60,000 Theravada monks in Cambodia and almost 5,000 monasteries, all because men like Pan refused to give up their faith, and though he would laugh and shake his head at the thought, he is one who made a difference.
Maasai coming to see us
My Maasai Night
Travel does not always begin with the boarding of an airplane, but rather at the moment one opens the mind to new possibilities. That is why I was quite surprised when the gentleman I had engaged in dinner conversation at a party in Los Angeles told me he was an elder of the Maasai nation, one of Africa’s most ancient warrior societies.
Moses was in America to study theology at a local seminary, a contradiction for the traditional Maasai who, as animists, shun Western-style education. When finished, he would be only the sixth Maasai known to receive a Ph.D. Today, years later, besides having created a foundation that drills water wells and builds schools, he has become an executive at World Vision.
After a year of invitations, my wife and I found ourselves on a hot, dusty, African savannah, and the culture shock was complete when I saw Moses, normally clad in blue jeans and a blazer, in his brilliant red shuka, (Maasai robe) with a long spear. The only familiar connection was his brilliant smile as I saw my old friend for the first time in his natural state; a man of power and respect, within his own element.
We spent that first afternoon walking through his valley while Moses spun tales of growing up with wild animals for companions, and not hearing a mechanical sound until he was almost ten years old. Two young warriors followed us carrying their spears. I did not take much notice of this until Moses pointed at a tree and there, in the crook of a large branch, I saw a leopard watching us with intense curiosity. Moses told me there were many leopards about and spoke of how the Maasai feared them more than lions. It seems a lion will make a kill and drag it away to eat it while a leopard will kill every living thing in sight before settling down for a meal. I spent the rest of our walk looking back over my shoulder.
The Maasai have a connection to the earth that is beyond the comprehension of those of us who dwell in cities; it is their mother and the cradle of their ancestors. The literature and oral histories of Judeo-Christianity have taught their followers that a person’s essence, or soul “goes to heaven,” an unseen place somewhere away from the earth, as the body disappears. Indigenous societies in Africa have no such concept. They believe their ancestors sleep in the ground below their feet and they are only separated by a few inches of dirt. This creates a very personal connection through ceremony. While Westerners do not talk directly to their ancestors, many Africans do.
The Maasai also have little concept of time, and why should they? Nature is their clock, and as nomads, they wander like the wind. However, when they occasionally run afoul of the laws of the land because of marks on paper they do not always understand, and are put in jails, they usually die, unable to imagine ever being free again.
They live accordingly as stewards of the earth. Moses told us how to track an animal, how to read its scat, and know its sex by the depth of its print in the dirt. He showed us how to follow a trail by the bend of a leaf, and I realized that while in Africa, he occupied a separate reality than I did, and I marveled at how he transitioned from one to the other with ease.
He spoke of how as traditional nomads, he was never sure where his family would be whenever he returned to Africa. He would simply go to the last place their village existed and wander until he found them. I asked how the Maasai navigate in the bush and Moses just smiled and said, “A Maasai may not always know where he is, but he is never lost.” He was the first person I had ever met who was at home wherever he was.
When we returned to the village, he invited us inside his hut and became very serious, asking if we wanted to know about hunting lions. Lion hunting has long been central to Maasai culture. In olden days, before a Maasai boy could be considered a man, he had to participate in a lion hunt using only a spear and buffalo hide shield. The first lion hunt was the paramount point in the life of a Maasai youth, and nothing he did for the rest of his life would equal its importance.
Even though this practice was outlawed by the Kenyan government long ago, the Maasai still practice it covertly, and Moses was being unusually candid by his willingness to share such intimate information.
He stared into the fire for a long time before speaking, and I knew this story would be a rare gift to me as a friend. The word “friend” carries greater meaning to the Maasai, much more than in Western society. To them it is more like being a brother, and when Moses applied it to me, it touched my soul.
Moses was about 13 when he was picked for his first lion hunt, determined to prove himself and gain great face, but he admitted to such fear that he could not sleep the night before the hunt. On the actual morning, while his face was being painted as a warrior for the first time, he felt everyone could hear his heart pounding, and was sure all would notice the spear shaking in his hand. As the warriors gathered in the morning mist, his knees almost buckled. He was told to lead the way into the bush.
The Maasai hunt a lion by forming a circle around it and then slowly walk forward, tightening that circle. Eventually the lion will feel cornered and spring at one man who is supposed to drop to the ground, cover himself with his shield, and hope his fellow warriors kill the lion before it kills him. It is an archaic and honored part of their culture. On that day, Moses took his place in the circle, facing one of the top predators of the animal world with only a spear.
He paused briefly as though the words were hard to come by and I took the moment to imagine myself in his position, but, I could not.
Suddenly, and with a great flare, Moses reached down and pulled up his shuka, revealing a long jagged scar running for several inches along his lower leg. He stared at the scar for several seconds before saying in a very soft voice, “From my first lion hunt!”
I was stunned and blurted out, “The lion did that to you?”
Moses looked me square in the eye and said, “No, I was so scared I speared myself in the leg, and the lion got away!” and with that he threw his head back and laughed. To this day, Moses has never killed a lion, but he certainly ambushed me. I should add here that storytelling is a much-honored Maasai talent.
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nbsp; As rare guests we dined on goat that evening while a chorus of cicadas announced the coming of the African night, and I pondered how my Western girth would fit inside one of their tiny huts whose sleeping compartments resemble those of a working man’s hotel in Tokyo, much like sliding into a beehive.
When I expressed this concern to Moses he pointed just outside the acacia bush wall that surrounds the village where two of his nephews were wrestling with a nylon tent. He was way ahead of me.
Grateful as I was for this comfort, I was terrified by the thought of sleeping outside the thorn wall with the image of a leopard dragging my bloody carcass into a tree to munch on at a later date.
Noting my apprehension, Moses told us that if the leopard should come, we need only yell and a dozen warriors would come running with spears, then he put his hand on my shoulder and said with gravity not to worry as the leopard would not like our smell, and with that he walked off, secure in his pronouncement. His words alone carried enough comfort for us to sleep outside.
No sooner were Irene and I in the tent than most of the village surrounded us, pulling the zipper up and down while running their hands over the strange new sensation of nylon. Most of them had never seen a tent before, and they called it a “fast hut.”
A full moon was rising over the tree line, turning the silhouettes of our curious visitors into a shadow-puppet show crawling on our tent walls. Surreal patterns glided over the nylon as tiny fingers poked and prodded and old hands ran up and down. After a few minutes we became concerned about being such an oddity, having no wish to offend our guests by disrupting village life, and that is just what we were doing. At first we stayed inside hoping to minimize our impact, but this only fed the people’s curiosity, and rather than winding down, more and more people were arriving. I finally stepped outside to see just how many there were.
Perhaps a dozen people surrounded the tent while a line of Maasai snaked through the forest and disappeared far down into the valley. The jungle telegraph was humming that night. It looked as though the entire valley was migrating toward our “fast hut.” Hundreds of red shukas, turned purple by the moonlight, ambled up the hill like so many giant chess pieces, and that sight is now forever imbedded in my memory.
Irene stepped outside to greet our visitors. Most shook our hands while others simply wanted to touch us. For some, we would be the only outsiders they would ever see. No one spoke and there was no need for words. In that magical evening we were all simply people, coming together to meet each other for the first and only time, frozen by a human touch that instantly passed into memory.
I have no idea how long we stood there, but such a gift encounter turned the event into an endless night. There would be no sleep and we did not care. No festival, ceremony, or dance, could have been more entertaining or enlightened us more. All future days should strive to approximate this one.
As I said earlier, despite having no written language, the Maasai have become master storytellers. Stories quickly become both history and legend and tend to grow with each telling as they take on the flavor of the individual narrator.
I like to think that on that evening we became one of their stories.
The overnight bus
My Mexican Bus
We all have a special place for solace and introspection; mine is a southbound bus in Baja Mexico.
I only take this ride once a year to visit friends, but it has become both a pilgrimage and a ritual that occupies my thoughts for a far greater time. I seem to have an inbred need for this repetitive ride that would not have the same value should I do it more often. For me, the journey has always been as important as the destination, but in this case, they are both the same.
It begins in the Tijuana bus terminal, an aging, cavernous building and a time portal for my entree to old Mexico. When I step through those doors I have entered another era as well as a place. The concrete-and-glass blockhouse is a utilitarian monument to 1950’s Mexican architecture and a reminder of how slowly time passes here. Inside, the smell of tortillas and mole mingles with the aroma of ammonia on linoleum floors. A feeling washes over me that does not translate easily into words, a feeling finely honed and nuanced over many years, somewhere between coming home and simple tranquility.
I pay my respects at the shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose statue stands a tearful guard next to the entrance to the public toilet. I drop a two-peso coin into the pay slot that lets me revolve the steel turnstile and open the door marked “Caballeros” over the grinning stencil of a mustachioed man giving me a thumbs up. Inside, I am pleasantly surprised to find flush toilets complete with paper but know they will probably be the last of their kind until I reach my final destination.
Outside in the main hall I walk past the “cambio” money exchange that has never been open in my presence, and then wait while the young girl behind the counter writes out my ticket by hand on a yellow legal pad with a dull pencil as she snaps her gum loudly. I am distracted by her amply filled T-shirt that reads, “Hecho en Mexico.”
Tijuana is an open city with no taxes and it is here that the braceros and agriculturos of the south come to stock up on the trappings of modern society only recently available from the large new discount stores that line the border. The waiting hall is full of people lugging big screen TVs and assorted appliances on those tiny folding luggage rollers. One ancient grandmother has three crowded shopping bags on each arm that cause her to roll like a camel as she walks. I watch a mother wrap her children in blankets on the cold steel chairs and try to make out what the PA announcement is saying, but it is mostly garbled static.
With my fellow passengers, I walk through the metal detector that beeps loudly at each of us but fails to gain the attention of the bored-looking security guard. The folding knife I forgot to take out of my pocket will ride with me tonight.
Outside, standing in line to board, the tiny grandmother clutching a canvas bag in front of me is startled when I greet her in Spanish. She is so wide that it is an effort to board, but once in her seat, she pats the one next to her when I climb on. She offers me a bite of her churro that I politely decline, then instinctively clutches my hand as the bus lurches from its stall. Her lips are moving below closed eyes and I think she is saying the Lord’s Prayer. She is a child of the old world and clearly afraid of the journey ahead in this gigantic mechanized machine. She has probably left the desert for the first time to visit a son or daughter and now must return. Her weathered face is a definitive map of the Mexican people; not Hispanic, nor Spanish, or even Mestizo, but Mexican; a distinction often overlooked by racial generalization. I assure her in Spanish that all will be well and she nervously compliments me on my pronunciation.
Baja is not like mainland Mexico. It is older and set in its ways. On the world scale it is a tiny peninsula, but its deserts rival any on Earth and its jagged mountains appear shaped by an angry God, while tucked into its most remote corners are a people whose mode of living has not changed in centuries. They are the same people whose ancestors turned back armored Spanish conquistadors with bows and arrows. Away from Highway One, horses and burros are the main mode of transport and doors of mud houses remain unlocked because there is no crime among neighbors. Cattle wander the highways with faces full of prickly Cholla cactus and cougars and wolves roam in numbers across a vast lunar landscape. It is a separate reality from my own life and part of its allure is to realize that an imaginary line on a map is all it takes to divide such diverse cultures.
The noisy diesel coughs and sputters to life and we begin to inch our way past the gaudy neon and gridlocked traffic that is the Tijuana night. From my perch high above them I wonder about the lives in the countless cars below me thinking any one of them could have been my own. What if I had been born here? How would my life be different?
A big difference is obvious when our route takes us past the high concrete wall that forms part of the border. It is covered with graffiti and seems eerily similar to
one that used to stand in Berlin. While people are not being shot for crossing this wall it still makes me think about a world where we need no barriers to separate us from our neighbors.
As we leave the city behind, grandmother releases my hand and with a timid smile of apology, falls asleep with her head on my shoulder. She is going home now and is happy. A pearl-white smiling moon slides from behind traveling clouds to reveal iridescent rolling surf just before the highway turns inland on the way to Ensenada.
In the silent cloak of night, Mexico has always been more real to me. In this predominately Catholic land, organized religion has merged with peasant superstition to create a belief system all its own, especially in the high mountains and remote desserts where I prefer to travel. This is the land of the brujo, witches, spirits, and demons, a land where people pray equally to Jesus in church and to syncretic images of Santeria in mud shacks. I have spent too much time in this place to dismiss anything metaphysical and recall a midnight encounter in a coffee shop when a stranger swathed in black warned me of the full moon and then disappeared into a brightly lit and vacant street. I have yet to meet anyone in Baja who is not related to, or had an encounter with a witch of some sort. They are ubiquitous in Baja.
South of Ensenada, we climb into the mountains of San Pedro de Martir. The temperature has fallen and I pull a fleece from my bag as the repetitive hum of the tires and familiar back and forth swaying on the switchbacked road triggers more memories.
Guillermo was on the lead horse when it reared up, and without any commands, trampled a rattlesnake to death. Its patterned skin eventually became a somewhat mutilated hat band. Later that day, while returning from a cave painted 6,000 years ago by the Cochimi people; we stopped at a rancho for beans and rice. I noticed what appeared to be a human skull on a shelf in the adobe. When I turned to ask the old patron about it, his face appeared weirdly contorted and I suddenly felt dizzy. The moment passed, and when I looked again, the skull was a chunk of obsidian and the old man was smiling benignly. That revelatory moment ended any more questions on my part. Some things are just not meant to be understood.
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