Baboons for Lunch
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Pilots would stand by the boarding door to personally greet each passenger and welcome them on board. To this small boy, the pilots and stewardesses were like gods from another world, a Hollywood fantasy come to life in 3D and to have them speak to you was like a Papal audience. Attendants were called stewardesses and one particular airline dressed them in a bubble space helmet with go-go boots and miniskirt. Once on board, these “Hostesses” as they were referred to, did a slow-motion strip tease until wearing only a slinky top and skirt. Imagine that happening today.
Smoking was permitted in the front half of the plane and terminated in the middle by a small sign as if that would keep the smoke contained in one place, and those old fabric seats each had a built in ash tray on the back. Stewardess walked the aisles with a tray filled with tobacco products announcing, “Cigars, cigarettes, cigars, cigarettes.” If you wanted to meet the pilot or see the cockpit, all you had to do was ask. Food and drinks were free if not very tasty, and little guys like me always got a free set of plastic pilot wings pinned on by a very pretty girl in uniform. Flying used to be cool. But the good old’ days aside, I really don’t mind the countless security checks and standing in line because I see that as the price of my continuing education. I travel to learn, whether for business or pleasure, and consider the act itself to be the finest classroom on Earth.
I have never tired of seeing new places or meeting new people because all of it is information and knowledge, and the more knowledge we have, the less likely we are to be captives of self-inflicted prejudices. If increased security is the price I pay for that, it is a bargain. The comparison of multiple cultures allows us to pick and choose the very best from all of them while showing ourselves to the rest of the world. Travel allows one to be both teacher and student simultaneously.
Traveling within the comfort of one’s home, with information gathered electronically and disseminated on a screen, is a gift of knowledge only recently available to much of the world, but convenience aside, actually venturing into a remote village and walking up to a stranger with outstretched hand is a far more rewarding experience. It is the sights and smells, the tactile reality and nuances of everyday life that when personally experienced, offer insight to the collective consciousness of man.
For me, travel has been the great equalizer, between the reality of the world at large and the consumer-oriented lifestyle of my own country. It has taught me that while a man may be clothed in rags he may still be a poet, a philosopher, or perhaps even one who can truly change the world. Seeing how others live makes me appreciate my own life more, not that it is any better or worse, but simply for its differences.
Travel has humbled me and taught me not to judge because the true essence of a person is often hidden behind skin pigment or wardrobe. It has taught me to expect wisdom from the most unlikely people. While I live in a nice house, I have visited countless people who live in mud shacks and grass huts but have never met anyone who would want to change places with me, nor I with them, because travel has taught me there really is no place like home, wherever that may be.
At a time when violence around the world is making international travel more difficult and sometimes, downright scary, perhaps it is the very act of travel that is necessary to help stop the violence. Travel will never stop wars or keep people from hating, but it will introduce us to our global neighbors, and it is far more difficult to strike a neighbor than a stranger.
But still, that is easier said than done. Over a century and a half ago, Mark Twain wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. During Twains’ own reign, the philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
After so many years, it would seem we still have a lot to learn.
Layla
Travels with Layla
Thirteen years ago I fell in love with a white ball of Labrador fur that came into my life by chance from behind the bars of a city pound. I knew she would change my life, but had no idea how she would affect my career.
Straight away she taught me two things; when you bring a dog into your life, one day it will break your heart, and the journey that takes you to that point is more than worth it. Layla journeyed more than most dogs.
I was about to leave a steady job to follow my dream of being a travel writer, a potentially disastrous idea compounded by adding another mouth to feed and care for over extended periods that I would be gone, but I never gave it a second thought. She had me at the first wag.
Layla quickly made the connection between my bags spread across the bed and my leaving, and was adept at conveying her displeasure through body language. She followed me from drawer to bag with tail tucked and ears down as I ferried quick-dry underwear and socks, sometimes sitting in the bag so I could not pack it. Negotiations did me no good, but she could sometimes be bought off with a peanut butter cookie long enough for me to finish the job.
When I returned from my trips we would continue the ritual of my spreading the bags’ contents across the patio for her to roll in, and revel in the exotic aromas of far-away places mixed with my own travel stench. Soon, her depression at my leaving was more than compensated by our reunions.
From the start, when I sat to write my stories, she would jump on the daybed next to my desk and curl up into a ball where I expected her to sleep most of the day while I worked, but that was rarely the case. She was immediately attentive and I noticed her ears would prick and move about like antennas in rhythm with what I was typing. While I know dogs do not see the same images we do, she always appeared to be watching my computer screen.
Before I realized it, we were having extended conversations about where I had been and what I had seen, her bright eyes zeroed in on me with that curious little skin flap that made her appear slightly cross-eyed. I sensed intelligence in her beyond the norm and soon we were conversing in the nuanced non-verbal language that develops between two intelligent creatures synched in harmony; speaking to and understanding each other as only animals and those who love them can.
I would read what I wrote to her and she would cock her head or wag her tail in dissent or agreement, sometimes offering a verbal “woof” for emphasis. If I totally missed the mark, she would turn her back and begin to clean a paw, a subtle suggestion that I rewrite. Of course she could not understand the essence of what I was saying, but she responded to the tone of my voice, and listening to myself read my own words out loud added clarity and focused me on the topic at hand. Assigning her a voice in this process turned my work into pure joy. She became the vehicle through which I would self-edit and push the story to the next level. She became my muse and most diligent critic. Imposing her reactions into my work made me delve deeper, always telling myself that she thought I could do better. I used her to dig deep in my stories the way she would for a bone.
Friends and colleagues knew of this process and were quick to poke fun at me, asking what Layla had been working on or sending me articles for her opinion, and before long, there was a story about Layla in an international newspaper, and she had written a guest column for a local paper. Both articles brought her fan mail. The first one was a hilarious story about how Layla was the entourage leader of her friend Heidi, a Hollywood canine actor. Friends brought her toys from around the world, and she wore a custom made collar from Africa. She had become an international dog.
Telling her my stories took me back to those places in my mind, where I relived minor details that make a quiet story soar, details that get lost in the larger telling, but are, in themselves, tiny gems of vignettes that separate the mundane from exceptional. Together, we circled the globe, from Africa to Asia, Alaska to South America. She was always there with me in my heart.
During these travels people invariably as
ked about my family, oftentimes wondering why I would be traveling alone. To many rural tribal people, the thought of leaving one’s family unless absolutely necessary is unthinkable. Well, I never felt alone as I always carried a small leather locket with a photo of my wife, Irene, and one of Layla. Wherever I slept that night, the open locket was what I saw in the morning.
Needless to say, my family photos brought me many great stories on the road and the further off the beaten path we traveled, the more the photos became a story for those I was meeting.
In most cases, I simply got a friendly laugh followed by a willingness to open up to this crazy writer with his dog photo, and more than once I found myself surrounded by strangers in a bar for whom a couple of drinks unleashed their own memories of canine friendships. Dog people always understood. Since the first wolf slunk out of the forest and hunkered down next to early man’s cave-side fire, there has been an unbreakable bond between man and dog that is unequaled and undefinable. Layla and I had the strongest version of that bond.
Today, I am a travel writer, and I believe much of it is due to that chance encounter in a dog pound so long ago. I am also nursing a broken heart because my friend of thirteen years is gone. Just as it has for me, time and travel took their toll on her. We grew old together, and as old friends do, we spent our final days reminiscing about where we had been. I do not regret a single journey and wish there had been more.
It does not matter if she ever understood a word I said or that she never left our home. She traveled all over the world with me, and she always will.
Until the Next Journey
About the Author
James Michael Dorsey is an award-winning author and explorer who has traveled in 48 countries to visit remote cultures before they vanish.
He has written for Lonely Planet, BBC Travel, BBC Wildlife, Geographic Expeditions, Panorama, and is a frequent contributor to United Airlines and Perceptive Travel. He has also written for Colliers, The Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, Wend, Natural History, and GoNomad. He writes for numerous African magazines, and is a travel consultant to Brown & Hudson of London, and correspondent for Camerapix International of Nairobi.
His last book, Vanishing Tales from Ancient Trails, is available from all major booksellers. His stories have appeared in 18 anthologies, including The Best Travel Writing (Volumes 10, and 11) from Travelers' Tales, plus the 2016 Lonely Planet Travel Anthology. He has won the grand prize for best travel writing from Solas Awards, Transitions Abroad, and Nowhere Magazine.
He is a fellow of the Explorers Club and former director of the Adventurers Club.