by Braun, Adam
In Beijing, I asked a girl near the entrance to the Forbidden Temple what she most wanted in the world, and she said, “A book.”
“Really? You can have anything,” I urged.
“A book.”
Her mother explained that the girl loved school, but didn’t have any books of her own. This child’s dream was to have something I took for granted every single day.
In Kowloon, Hong Kong, I asked a young boy what he wanted. His older brother translated my question, then translated the response: “Magic.”
Alongside the Mekong River in Vietnam I asked a shy six-year-old girl what she would want most. She spoke in a quiet voice as she stared at the muddy, brown soil below. “I want my mom to be healthy. She is sick in bed all day, and I just want her to hold my hand when I walk to school.”
Thirty days after we began the trip, I awoke to a blazing red sun rising over the port of Chennai, India. My mind was on getting to Varanasi.
The Ganges River in Varanasi is one of the dirtiest rivers in the world—heavily polluted with industrial and human waste—but is also the most sacred. I’d wanted to walk along its banks ever since I saw that scene in Baraka, and the experience with the Wave only heightened my desire. During those long hours when it seemed unclear whether we would survive, I prayed more than I ever had before. The feeling that I had more to do—a purpose—only became more powerful. Now, I just had to find out what exactly it was. I thought I might find some answers at the Ganges, the holiest body of water in Hinduism and one of the most spiritually devout places in the world.
* * *
My first night in India, I came down with a terrible fever. By the time we arrived at the airport the next morning, I was covered in a cold sweat and running a 103-degree temperature. I let everyone pass through the security checkpoint while I gathered my strength, afraid that if others knew how sick I was, they wouldn’t let me go on the trip. With a heavy backpack on my shoulders, I struggled to see straight, and when it was my turn to walk through the metal detector, I looked down to see my feet zigzagging.
The next thing I knew, I was on my back, looking up at Indian security guards shouting. I had fainted. Two guards each grabbed one of my arms and lifted me. Delirious, I thought they were taking me to prison. Instead they removed my backpack, placed it on the X-ray belt, and walked me through the metal detector. On the other side, they strapped the backpack to my shoulders and pointed me to a boarding gate ahead.
When I arrived at the gate, another student came over and shouted, “Where were you? The whole group was looking everywhere for you! And what’s up with your face? You look like a ghost. You’re sweating through your shirt.”
I told him I had just fainted. “Don’t tell anyone,” I pleaded. Nothing was going to stop me from getting to Varanasi. Because I was so sick, I decided I would cleanse myself in the Ganges when we got there. I figured I couldn’t feel any worse, so the holy waters could only help.
In the days that followed, my fever abated. At night we went to the train station outside the city of Agra, where I witnessed something I had never before seen in my life: hordes of barefoot children, covered in dirt from head to toe, begging for money and food. They were so incredibly young to be alone. I saw four-year-olds begging with six-month-olds in their arms. The pain on their faces was devastating.
We were forewarned that giving child beggars money makes them effective workers for the gang lords that put them on the streets and perpetuates the cycle that keeps them there. Some of us bought the children food to eat, but we still felt helpless and dejected. I didn’t know how to help. I stayed up the entire night thinking about what I’d seen.
The next morning we went to Agra Fort, a stunning red temple within view of the Taj Mahal. But I couldn’t pay attention to the architecture around me. My mind kept returning to thoughts about the children begging on the street, and I decided that I would ask one of them my question. They had absolutely nothing. If they could have anything, what would they want most?
I strayed away from my group and found a young boy with big brown eyes who was previously begging, but now sat alone. As I approached him to talk, a man came over to translate. I explained that I had a question for the boy. I was asking one child per country, if the child could have anything in the world, what would it be? I wanted to know, what would the boy want if he could have any one thing? He thought about it for a few seconds, then responded confidently:
“A pencil.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. He had no family, nothing, yet his request was so basic.
More men came over and started chiming in. They prodded him, “You can have anything. He might give it to you!”
The boy remained constant with his wish: “A pencil.”
I had a No. 2 yellow pencil in my backpack. I pulled it out and handed it to him.
As it passed from my hand to his, his face lit up. He looked at it as if it were a diamond. The men explained that the boy had never been to school, but he had seen other children writing with pencils. It shocked me that he had never once been to school. It then started to settle in that this was the reality for many children across the world. Could something as small as a pencil, the foundation of an education, unlock a child’s potential?
For me that pencil was a writing utensil, but for him it was a key. It was a symbol. It was a portal to creativity, curiosity, and possibility. Every great inventor, architect, scientist, and mathematician began as a child holding nothing more than a pencil. That single stick of wood and graphite could enable him to explore worlds within that he would never otherwise access.
Up until that point, I had always thought that I was too young to make a difference. I had been told that without the ability to make a large donation to a charity, I couldn’t help change someone’s life. But through the small act of giving one child one pencil, that belief was shattered. I realized that even big waves start with small ripples. This is my thing, I thought. Rather than offering money or nothing at all, I’m going to give kids pencils and pens as I travel.
The next day we headed to Varanasi with the dozens of other students on the five-day tour, and several chaperoning professors in their fifties and sixties. We arrived in Varanasi during Shivratri, the festival that celebrates the Hindu deity Shiva, “the Transformer.” Hundreds of thousands had descended on the city for this holy event. We planned to take a sunset tour first, then a sunrise tour the next morning, during which we would see people burning bodies on the Ganges. Our guide, Vanay, was extremely spiritual, and during the sunset tour he explained that cremation on the banks of the Ganges allowed direct access to nirvana in the afterlife. But riverside cremation was expensive, and most could not afford the full ceremony—the poor often wrapped their dead loved ones in cloth and floated them down the river. We would see all of this the following morning.
The group that had visited the day before had sent us beautiful pictures from the banks of the river illuminated by glowing candles, but I didn’t want to experience it just behind the lens of a camera. I wanted to submerge myself in it. I wanted to bathe in the water as the locals did.
I asked Vanay, “How dirty is it?”
“Biologically, it is very dirty,” he said. “But if it is holy, and I believe this is the water of G-d, why would G-d hurt me?”
Vanay then reached down, scooped the river water into his hands, and drank a mouthful. Jaws dropped all around the boat. Inside, I was beaming. I had found a kindred spirit.
At dinner that night, I quietly told a few friends that I was going into the Ganges the next morning during our sunrise tour. Word spread quickly, and one of the chaperones approached me. “We will not allow it,” he said. “You will get extremely ill if you go in the water and possibly catch a parasite that will kill you. You absolutely cannot go in.”
I told him I respected his advice, but would make the decision for myself.
The next morning I woke up and got dressed with shorts under my jeans so I could jump into th
e river at the appropriate moment. I saw the chaperone again, and he reminded me, “If you go in, I will not let you back on the bus.” His wife, also a professor, chimed in, “This is dangerous. If you get sick from the water, which you will, we’re going to leave you behind.”
“I don’t want to be rude, but you are not my parents,” I said forcefully.
Before we boarded the bus, Vanay approached me. “Many people are concerned. I hear you want to go in the water. Why?”
“It’s the holiest body of water on earth,” I replied, feeling a bit like a broken record. “I want to say my prayers and meditations in one of the places that I believe is closest to G-d. I might not be a Hindu, but any place that others pray to so fervently, in my mind, is sacred.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “This is very good. But don’t just jump in. . . . I will show you where to enter after the tour.”
My heart leapt. I had an ally.
During the sunrise tour we saw people of all ages bathing in the river. One man did a floating meditation, another taught his children the morning rituals.
When we arrived back on the shore, as the group took pictures of the surrounding buildings, Vanay nodded toward me and pointed at a few steps that led into the water. I discreetly walked to the side and stripped down to my shorts. I walked down to the bank and into the river. I dunked my whole body, and without thinking about it, I submerged my head and opened my mouth, letting the water rush in the way I usually do in a bathtub or pool. I rose to the top and spit it out without even thinking about the mistake I may have made taking in the world’s holiest—and biologically dirtiest—water. No turning back now.
Once I was shoulder deep in the water, I closed my eyes and said my prayers. As I emerged from the water ten minutes later, an elderly shaman with a saffron robe and orange turban filled with a cascade of white hair called out to me, “Why go in the Ganga?”
I told him why and he took my hand in his. He pulled out a ball of bright red and yellow string and looped the string twice around my wrist. He closed his eyes and recited a prayer of protection and goodwill, then told me this was a holy string of Varanasi.
A small crowd of Indian boys gathered around us. We walked together for a few blocks, but before they departed, they asked me for some money to help them. Instead, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a few pencils. I gave one to each of the boys. The change in them was immediate. They began drawing on pieces of paper a shop owner gave them and practiced their letters for others to see. They had a new sense of freedom, a new independence. I was moved by how such a small act could open up a sense of possibility, wonder, and connection in those who had so little. Ideas began to percolate in my mind, but I forced myself not to get too excited. No matter how hard I tried, though, I couldn’t get the image of that boy holding that pencil out of my head.
Mantra 5
DO THE SMALL THINGS THAT MAKE OTHERS FEEL BIG
After India we traveled the open plains of the Kenyan Masai Mara, spent time in the townships of South Africa, and explored the overgrown favelas of Brazil. Rather than pursuing guided tours at historic sites, I developed a habit of befriending locals who were my age and asking if I could spend time in their home villages. This simple request took me far off the beaten path and enabled me to gain an inside glimpse into how rural communities functioned. I became obsessed with learning how other people lived and was consumed by a newfound passion to help. By the time Semester at Sea came to a close, we had circled the globe and I felt like a man on fire.
When we arrived at the docks in Ft. Lauderdale where our families awaited us, I was immediately struck by how much bigger Americans were than the people I’d met abroad. It was so rare to see an overweight person in the developing world, yet more than half of the people waving from the Floridian shores seemed enormous. As Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Although I had been worried about experiencing culture shock in foreign countries throughout the trip, the greatest culture shock was about to occur back home.
Ma was eager to take me to her golf club in Boca Lago and fill me with heaping plates of brisket, meatballs, gefilte fish, sushi, and chicken-noodle soup—delicacies after months on the ship eating stale rolls and soggy salad. I wanted to enjoy it, but as we scraped the excess into the trash, all I could think about was how many people went to sleep hungry in the places I’d just visited.
That night my brother, Scott, who had become the top nightclub promoter in Atlanta, insisted that we go clubbing in South Beach to celebrate my return. I hadn’t even been back on US soil for more than ten hours, but we went to the Miami hot spot Skybar. Beautiful, scantily dressed women waved sparklers and danced around carrying enormous $5,000 bottles of Dom Pérignon. Their performance eerily resembled the religious ceremonies I had seen over the past few months, but in the Candomblé ceremonies of Brazil and Cao Dai temples of Vietnam, people were celebrating life, not bottles of alcohol. I could feel myself judging those around me, which wasn’t fair because they hadn’t seen what I’d seen, nor had I lived a day in their shoes.
No matter how hard I tried, though, I knew that this feeling wouldn’t go away until I traveled again. I had grown so much in my time abroad, but it seemed as if life at home had pretty much stayed the same. It felt as if I were back in my childhood bedroom; I knew everything so well that I could find the light switch in the dark, but I no longer fit in the surroundings once everything was illuminated. My parents had always told me that when it came to travel “we’ll support you, just not financially,” so I hatched a plan to get back on the open road.
* * *
After working multiple jobs through May and June, I had enough money to backpack on a shoestring budget through July and August. With my friend Luke, I started in Europe, where we lived on cheap sandwiches in well-traveled tourist hot spots like Paris, Vienna, and Prague. But we also visited more remote cities like Bratislava, Slovakia, and Split, Croatia, just to chase adventures off the beaten path. In these distant locations we often met the kindest people, who took us into their homes. In Dubrovnik, Croatia, we stayed with an elderly couple we met at the bus station. After telling them how much we missed homemade breakfasts, they placed warm bread, scrambled eggs, and fresh-squeezed juice in the kitchen for us each morning. These treats lifted our spirits and reminded us that even on the road you can find strangers who can make you feel like family. The food was certainly delicious, but the gesture showed us that kindness cannot be evaluated in dollars and cents. The only way to measure it is in the weight of compassion that the act itself carries forward into the life of another.
Following my time in Europe, I spent the rest of the summer backpacking through Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia with my SAS friend Dennis and his college roommate, Zach. The futuristic feel of Singapore and gorgeous beaches of Thailand did not disappoint. In Cambodia, we were hosted by Scott Neeson, a tough-willed Australian and a former film executive who oversaw the release of some of the top movies of all time, including Titanic and X-Men.
A few years before, Scott had visited Steung Meanchey, a notorious garbage dump in Phnom Penh, where several thousand of the region’s poorest kids were living in squalor. After recognizing that his help wasn’t doing enough from afar, Scott walked away from his life in Hollywood. He sold his house and Porsche and moved alone to Cambodia to create the Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF), which provides housing, education, food, and life-skills training for kids in the most impoverished communities.
The organization was small, nimble, and run by someone I deeply connected with. On several occasions I walked with Scott through Steung Meanchey. The smells of garbage were overwhelming, but everyone seemed to know him, and he chatted with multiple families about the need to bring their children to the CCF for medical attention. The services he provided were to children who desperately needed help, and he had a personal relationship with those he looked to support.
He explained that he had a staff of local Cambodians, which was best for the children they supported, but he needed help raising funds back in the States. I immediately agreed to become the Cambodian Children’s Fund’s first fundraising coordinator and vowed to devote my senior year of college to helping the organization educate more children.
Since I was born on Halloween, I planned out the costume party I had always hosted for my birthday, but this time I asked for a $10 donation at the door in lieu of gifts. The party raised several thousand dollars and would be the first of many events I’d host to support the CCF.
Although the first party was a success, I ran into a roadblock when planning the next event. I had no proof that I was affiliated with the CCF, so I couldn’t get nonprofit discounts on venues I tried to rent. When I asked Scott for a way to acknowledge my association, he mailed me my own two-sided business cards. On one side it listed my name and “Fundraising Coordinator” in English, and on the other side it was translated into Khmer, the native language of Cambodia.
It was such a small thing, but those business cards were the best gift I’d ever received. I felt that I belonged. I felt that I mattered. The $20 investment it took to produce those business cards gave me a sense of value and enabled me to raise thousands of dollars for the CCF over the next few years. I suddenly had an identity that I could be proud of, and all it took was a piece of paper.
* * *
Although I had a sharper sense of purpose than ever before, I still had this lingering feeling that no one understood me. I’d gone through such a rapid and profound transformation over my four years of college, and sometimes I felt as though my life was trailing far behind where my mind was taking me. When I hatched plans to launch a nonprofit after graduation, my parents, professors, and peers all tried to dissuade me. I’d worked hard to complete a triple major in economics, sociology, and public and private sector organizations, and they didn’t want me to squander it. “You should go work at the highest levels in business,” they said. “This way you can make as much money as possible and then use those dollars in your forties or fifties to fund something that will better the world.”