Category Archives: Travel
Some hilarious anecdotes from Amanda Read, posted in response to the water story. When you’re done, check out her blog, it’s legit.
She wrote…
Oh goodness, I have water stories too…I think some are written in my childhood journal.
As a five year old I fantasized about making an elaborate escape out of the doctor’s office when we had to get immunizations before going to Uzbekistan – but I ended up getting the blasted typhoid shot and so forth anyway.
In Tashkent, we had to drink filtered water I’m sure. But I still remember being sick for at least a few days. Then I naively insulted our Russian babysitter, telling her their water was nasty and I could never drink it. “Our water isn’t dirty; our water is clean,” she protested. I then pointed to some muddy brew coming out of an outdoor drainage pipe as evidence of my point, much to her horror (“We don’t drink that!”).
We had an above ground swimming pool in our backyard/courtyard, but the water wasn’t treated or chlorinated at all, so the pool had to be periodically drained and refilled (like a fish tank). One night while acting like a disobedient idiot I fell into the drainage cesspool, getting my feet tangled up in the pipes. In retrospect, I must have been a more troublesome kid than I realized.
It seems there was some rumor circulating about somebody dying from eating a watermelon, so we planned to avoid watermelons. The next thing I knew, one of our maids came home from the market with a watermelon, and we ate it anyway. Nothing bad happened.
I’ve heard Dad recall some story about some Russians who, upon realizing that American soldiers couldn’t drink the water, offered them Kool-Aid instead. It was a nice gesture, until everybody started getting sick at once because it turns out that the Kool-Aid was made with the water. Hahaha…
As for anti-tourism…well, as a military child I had some odd form of anti-tourist sentiment because I thought tourists were just cushy people goofing off while *I*, on the other hand, only went to foreign countries for *important* things. Shame on me for my arrogance!
~ Amanda
A Note on Water
I have another piece of travel writing for you, pals! That weird flesh-eating virus I got on my elbow in Nicaragua came back in a big way, and it made me think of this little essay. There’s a cartoon at the end.
*ahem*
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When I was 16, I learned that it was not with an apple that Adam and Eve brought sin into the world, but a glass of water.
I was leaving the country for the first time. The good folks of Foothills Community Church and I were going to spend two weeks in Thailand building a school, and as far I was concerned, that meant I was heading straight for the Heart of Darkness.
In the Fellowship Hall,dim so we could see the projector screen, gone was the usual talk of new REI backpacks and Camel Back bladders. No one chatted about how their visas were coming along or what trinkets they bought at Sam’s Club to give to the Thai children.
None of us said anything. This was the safety briefing.
The team leader was going to tell us how to survive out there. He would teach us to walk the leprosy-scourged streets of the Third World and live to blog about it. He was the grizzled sergeant that would point with a three-fingered hand and say, “Remember your training, and you will come back alive!”
But after the team leader had finished with money belts, shower shoes, and typhoid vaccinations, when he had warned against every variety of pickpocket, swindler, kidnapper and cutthroat, his PowerPoint went black and his voice dropped to a growl.
It was time to talk about water.
Don’t drink it – that went without saying. But had we thought about ice? Water changes its shape. Fresh fruit? Water comes in a Trojan horse. Dishes? They’ve been washed, and can’t be trusted. And lettuce? Don’t get him started about lettuce.
Water was everywhere. It lurked in every bathroom and restaurant, every cup of tea and bottle of Coke, waiting for my first careless moment to strike with dysentery, E. coli, hepatitis A, and, as far as I was concerned, AIDS, Ebola, and the plague. But the specific affliction didn’t matter. No, by the time you let water get inside of you, it would already be…
And mosquitoes?…Ha!
I haven’t posted in a while! Most of that is because I’ve spent the last time in places like the one I’m about to talk about. But I’m back in the United States!
I’ve written for you a story about Nicaragua. Its a something for you readers. I made it entirely out of words and it’s long. But don’t let it bog you down! Cartoons to come. Anyway…
When they land on a person, mosquitoes withdraw a small portion of blood, and, in its place, inject a tiny amount of pure, refined unhappiness. Most of it stays in the area around the bite, making a welt. The rest enters the bloodstream, spreading, throughout the body, a whisper of despair.
We go way back, mosquitoes and me. They remember when I first showed up to the jungle, their turf, with my bottles of 100% Deet, and they laughed at me.
But I got experience, and they got more vicious. I spent untold nights in Uganda sitting up, still, watching, trying to locate and destroy the ones that had slipped under my mosquito net. In a hammock in Guatemala, I covered up every inch of skin save my nostrils and lips, but they weren’t picky. They even gave me a bout with malaria, the bastards.
Mosquitoes eventually come to respect you, and with each new country, I proved myself. But with each new country, the war began afresh.
These were Nicaraguan coastal mosquitoes, hatched in the dens of vipers, raised on scorpions, and hardened by the salt air.
I didn’t even bring repellent this time, and they laughed at me.
Click to read the rest of the story!