We have a hanging basket on our front porch in front of one of the windows. We hung it when a couple of doves insisted that they wanted to lay eggs in my plants, a disaster for many reasons, especially since I need to water the plants daily in the summer. Everything we did to discourage them failed. They wanted our porch. We bought a plain basket, metal with a sphagnum insert, hung it, and waited.
The man crept down the long hall. Passing doors, he tried not to look in, knowing how much he guarded what little privacy he had. The hospital in Los Angeles was too far away from his home in Georgia for any of his friends and most of his family to ever come visit. This was one of the largest military hospitals in the country and, in 1944, was full of combat injuries or mental problems. He knew he was getting the best of care and wondered if it would be enough.
“Ma’am, pull in here and I’ll watch your car.” A young boy, maybe ten or eleven years old, was dressed in clothes a size too large for his skinny body. He was barefoot, like most of the young people in Africa. We were in South Africa, not too far from Cape Town. If they do have shoes, they are either what we know as flip flops or rubber Crocs.
While traveling around the world from 1998 to 2008, we visited fifty-seven countries, and five continents. Because we started out in an RV through Central America, used an RV in Europe and Western Europe, and used local transportation to do China, Southeastern Asia, and some of the hundreds of Islands that make up Indonesia and Malaysia, we were able to see more holidays and other religious ceremonies than we even knew existed. We were in for some real surprises.
Before we started traveling, I read every article about traveling and safety. I ordered catalogs offering bags with hidden pockets, belts with hiding places for extra cash, wires and little padlocks to tie all luggage together, shoes with hollow soles, underwear that could be washed out at night and dry by the morning, Tilly hats that would float if dropped in water, etc. There were more and more little things I could buy to be safe and most of what I bought was abandoned as we traveled.
While living in Mexico, I struggled with the language. We lived in a Mexican neighborhood and the kids all knew me as “‘The American Lady.” I was invited to join in all street events and into one home where they spoke a little English. One day, as I was working outside in the small garden, two little boys ran up to my gate. “Lady, lady, bla bla bla” That’s what I understood but their agitation and their pointing down the street, made me want to find out what was so important. I walked down the street and the boys continued trying to tell me something.
Now, one would think that crossing the street would be the same all over the world. Well we learned that is far from the truth.
After Costa Rica we flew to Europe. The first country we stopped at was Holland. Our hotel was on the commuter train route that would take us into Amsterdam. We rode the train to town with our little dog, Sherman, in my lap and began walking. We needed to cross a small street that was one way.
INDIA. The name alone brings up ideas of exotic animals, women in colorful saris and men on elephants. Ever since I read any of Kipling’s books, I was hooked. Then I got there. It was nothing like I had imagined. A billion and a half people means that everything and every place is crowded. We didn’t even try using the metro system as each car was literally packed full. The line for the bus snaked around the block and even walking meant avoiding the children who lived in the cardboard boxes packed on the sidewalk tight up against the buildings, that were home to whole villages.
I had never heard of it before March, 2020. First, the talk was all about coronavirus. I looked it up on Google and found that most influenzas were coronaviruses. Well, I don’t get any flu easily so I didn’t worry. Then, they found that this is a new virus, one that no one has any immunity for.
The train was slowing, and as I looked out the window, I couldn’t see why. There were no galloping giraffes, no wildebeest or gazelle, nothing. A few thin women with pitiful offerings of a tomato or a couple of potatoes on a hub cap or woven plate, a few thin and raggedly dressed children running along the side of the train. The train pulled into what seemed to us like the middle of the African Continent of NOTHING. A chain-like fence kept Africans away from the train and kept the tourists (like us) from leaving the train.
