> tapioca world tour

Most Memorable Moments With The Band on Block Island, 2006:

1. Getting woken up at 4.30a by Ry, crashing into the room, standing over my bed, yelling, “Bon! Bon! There is NO FIRE! Don’t worry, nothing is on fire!” — then running out, giggling hysterically.

2. Racing mopeds (backwoods motor scooter, actually) around a rented house of three inebriated fans at three in the morning. Ry won. Between the wet grass and the crochet paraphanalia in the yard, I was too scared of wiping out to go as insanely fast as he went. Afterwards, we both laughed at discovering our mutual thought, while racing, had been what our mothers would say if/when they found out how we severed a limb in an effort to pass eachother on a curve, full speed.

3. Driving the mopeds through the woods a little after three in the morning, through potholes on a dirt road with Mattie. We picked up D. and C. and revved back into the black night, two to a vehicle, Mattie shaking visably, me reciting the 91st Psalm into the darkness.

4. D., overwhelmingly stoned (etc.), asking me, in the middle of a too-loud set, about God and sin and Jesus and Truth and, in essence, explaining why I don’t drink or eat their pot cookies. Every five minutes he’d walk away, then emerge from the soundboard a few minutes later with another question about spiritual consciousness, or karma, or what life is about. This was a random, serene, oddly fun moment, in the midst of drums and guitars and wailing.

5. The Czech, Polish and Ukranian 20-somethings who were living in the same boarding house for the summer, serving bagels to tourists and learning English and blaring Eastern European TV shows long into the night, as I lay on the other side of the wall, fanatically reading and loathing Lolita.

6. The sun coming out just as we were leaving, the temperature rising 20 degrees overnight, and all of us getting horribly sunburnt (ok, just me; everyone else got butter-brown tans) on the ferry back, with our faces to the wind and the wind on the sea and the sun on everything.

…but fortunately, I bought a sweatshirt and longer pants the second we got here. It’s been raining on and off, like a distracted weeping child.

Block Island has been interesting…I naively forgot the myriad subtleties of the groupy band scene, all of which I notoriously loathe: the distribution of too many weed-laced pastries, drunk boys, late nights, a complete lack of itinerary, bleached-haired girls. I also forgot that Ry and I are different variations of the same person, and we get mad in the same inflammatory, annoying way; and we hold silent grudges of defensiveness until the other person apologizes for their inflammatory conduct, and by that time it’s late afternoon and we really haven’t done much with the day.

Ry is upset that his band isn’t hanging out altogether; rather, it’s become “every man for himself,” as he says, so he’s been pouting, justifiably so, as we each go off in groups of ones and twos to get sand in our toes and loiter too long in Java & Juice. We managed to make a day of it, though, and despite the cold air and grey clouds, I ran in the choppy ocean (mostly because I really had to pee and there was no bathroom, save the waves) and we threw a frisbee and picked up rocks and got lost driving and ate free bar food and, I dunno, people now are wandering around somewhere before the second show begins.

They sell salt water taffy here, which reminds me desperately of Philadelphia summers with my grandmother.

I’m reading Lolita, which, in all of its painstaking awfulness, I can’t disgard until I’ve finished.

Block Island, despite its hecatombs of loud blonde children from Somewhere Else, is beautiful. Weaving between the rolling hills and the bluffs, the 50-foot cliffed drop to the sea, I vowed to come back here someday, but not until I can afford to. Presently, I remain all too grateful for the unglamorous but free accomodations (an extra twin bed in Ry’s comped boarding room, no free soap) and for the coffee, which is excellent.

Ta.

I finally published some flash photogalleries of my trip:

INDONESIA

THAILAND

Knock yourself out!

…except for tomorrow, when I have to leave Thailand and the Burmese people. I don’t know where to start — HRE has been so awesome. HRE president Htoo Chit is going to win the Nobel Prize someday. He’s an amazing man (student activist leader turned 12-year jungle-dwelling guerilla fighter turned human rights CEO) who’s created an incredibly well-functioning development org for other Burmese refugees here in Thailand, and his staff are young and smart and awesome and almost all undocumented. “Ever been to the US?” I asked one of them. “No,” she giggled, and then I realized why she giggled: she can’t leave Thailand. She’s not even supposed to be in Thailand. She doesn’t have a passport, or even a birth certificate. And yet she’s teaching women’s health programs to migrant worker families, and her colleagues are running nurseries, taking care of orphans, adopting other children, and offering us oranges and Fantas and homemade bracelets before we leave. I felt like a total idiot.

Tonight we were invited to a dinner with all the staff and teachers. They played games, acted things out, danced, and sang: did you know “Dust in the wind” was actually first the melody for Burma’s song for democracy? Well, it was and still is. And when they sang it tonight — twice: once because they wanted to, once because we asked them to sing it again — they raised their fists and closed their eyes and wrapped their arms around each other and I realized how powerful and terrible it must be to love your country so much but not be able to return without getting abused or killed. “Are you homesick?” someone asked one of the new staff members, recently arrived from Burma. “Yes,” he said, “But I think we are all homesick, all the time.”

“Htoo Chit should run for office,” I told M. “When Burma is free, he probably will,” she said. And then it hit me how important this whole trip is.

That said, we begin the journey home — four flights in 24 hours — tomorrow afternoon. Thailand, and Burmese, you rock.

We got off plane #3 to find two young girls waiting for us at the Phuket aiport. Turns out they’re both experienced coordinators at HRE Grassroots, the Burmese partner NGO we’ll be working with for the next two days. We jumped in their friend’s suped-up pickup and one of them, whose name I should have written down, started telling us about the issues of Burmese refugee migrant workers as well as she could in English.

And then she put her arm on my leg and her hand on my knee while she was talking. Just, you know, like it was no big deal, like we were sisters. There was something delicate about this unquestioned intimacy which made me want to cry (yeah, I know, it’s a boring recurring theme now) but this time the sentiment stemmed from my sheer love of humanity. (BB, CR, you understand.) We sped along the beautifully-paved Thai backroads which left rural Indonesia literally in the dust, and arrived at this super cute hotel place with a simple wood-based aesthetic I can’t even begin to describe. In short: I love Thailand and I’m not afraid to admit it.

Ok, so I’ve only been here a few hours. I think it’ll continue to be great, though. Tomorrow morning we meet up with the girls again for a long day visiting day care centers and schools and other programs for Burmese migrant workers and their families. The Burmese are so incredibly in trouble in Burma and out of luck here, and there’s so many human rights violations going on I can’t even begin to explain it. Maybe tomorrow.

PS: Weird bugs in Thailand. Something that looks like a flying mini-scorpion! No, I’m not kidding!

I’m in the airport. I’m on a Bangkok stopover between flights from Jakarta, Singapore, and now en route to Phuket. Thai guys have really cool haircuts, that’s for sure, and Bangkok is full of Dairy Queens and weird cell phones and tons of tourists. We’re going to Phuket to meet a new partner org that advocates for the rights of Burmese refugees. Have just gotten used to traveling, just, of course, as its end is in sight. Asia is fascinating, though. I love my life.

This is Haslah, from the village of Paya Bili, East Aceh. Her village was completely burned by the army two years ago. Since the ceasefire agreement (MoU) last August, the violence has subsided, but only 7 families out of 58 have returned here. They have nothing, but they’re starting the slash-and-burn process to begin growing crops again (watermelon, chili, soya beans, green beans). Haslah had her face kicked repeatedly when the army came. She wrapped her arms around their legs and begged them not to kill her chickens or burn her crops, but they kicked out her teeth and burned everything anyway. She really wanted her photo taken, even though she was crying telling me the story, because no one has helped this village at all. She wants the story to get out, she wants her face to be seen. Her friend Zainabon kept rubbing my skin to see if it would rub off. I was a big party favor in this little village. A very powerful visit.

In Jakarta now, feeling much better, enjoying air conditioning and showers and toilet paper and running water in general. Off to Bangkok, then Phuket, Thailand tomorrow.

And, briefly, DOUGHERTY’S INDEX for March 2006:

Number of times a man walked in on me peeing in a baday, then screamed: 2
Number of times I’ve used the duct tape S. insisted I pack: 5
Number of power bars I’ve consumed in the past eight days: 12
Number of elephants spotted on the side of the road: 1
Number of wild monkeys: 14

“Ka! Ka!” the kids yelled to me. You, hey you…

Indonesia is hard. I’m not tough enough. I can’t endure the intense heat and humidity, the Palang food (apparently), the lack of toilets and running water. It’s just hard. If it were, I dunno, 30 degrees cooler, I think I’d be fine. But it’s like 90-something and it’s just very difficult.

After our four-hour drive, during which I saw an ELEPHANT and a MONKEY on the side of the road, I spent half of our partner visits yesterday sleeping in the back of the car with the motor running and air conditioning on. I’ve restricted my diet to power bars and Sprite. But feeling sorry for myself isn’t very satisfying, especially when I go to small rural villages and befriend swarms of Muslim children who survived the tsunami at their doorsteps last year, and who chase me through the unpaved streets until I photograph them. The older girls wanted to see their pictures on the digital camera LCD, but hesistated. I had to notice that they wanted to be photographed because they wouldn’t ask. These two were inseparable. Behind them you can see how much land was destroyed when the water came in, and the houses being (re)built to the left.

Ok, we’re in Banda Aceh now, which is the capital city of the province of Aceh, where the tsunami hit. What I’m learning is how huge the socio-political issues are — the tsunami just shined a spotlight on an already volatile situation. Aceh has seen 30 years of violence and political unrest; they’ve tried to become independent, finally winning psuedo-automonous status after a peace accord in 2003. But that also meant enforcement of Sharia law, a strict Muslim code which requires all women to wear jibabs (head scarves), no alcohol to be sold, all the cinemas to be closed down. Aceh has a matrilineal inheritence rule — women inherit family land — but now, post-tsunami, there are a lot less women and less enforcement of that rule, so many women are losing their land. Also, a lot of women aren’t present at the table when reconstruction discussions happen. Also, there’s lots of opposing political forces still here — GAM, the separatist group; militias, funded by the government; and the police. Forunately the Helsinki peace accords in August 2005 drafted a ceasefire agreement which all parties have adhered to. This makes Aceh less violent, but tons of gender discrimination issues still loom, plus all the crap that goes along with all the white Westerners who plowed in, threw lots of money at tiny grassroots NGOs to rebuild, then left. It’s a fascinating place to be right now, and I’m here, getting bitten by mosquitos without mercy.

We almost didn’t make it. The plane from Jakarta skidded to a stop seconds before ascending into the clouds — turns out the engine didn’t have enough juice — so we had to evacuate (casually) and, two hours later, board another plane. Now we’re in Banda Aceh, which, might I add, is a beautiful place, and the voltage converter has just exploded on the surge protector, which means when this laptop dies, I won’t be able to write again til we return to Jakarta late Friday night.

Tomorrow we head east to visit tiny tsunami-affected villages. More mosquitos, GAM intimidation, bottles of hot coca-cola, and all in long-sleeves and pants (I’m a woman in a Muslim country, remember?)…

This world, people, is fascinating.

Where to begin…an odd conglomeration of short sentences might suffice:

The Singapore Airport is exquisite – huge, beautiful, awesome – and Jakarta is smoggy, the air filled with the stench of petrol, mopeds, wheeled carts of steaming things. After 22+ hours in the air, we went immediately into a full day of meetings with HIVOS, our Dutch NGO human rights affiliate partner, whose staff is awesome and gave us an extremely comprehensive overview of everything. Now it’s the next day and I’m sitting in the Jakarta airport, waiting for our flight to Banda Aceh…

Driving through Jakarta at 4 in the morning was great. I might enjoy this city if I didn’t have to go outside during the day; in the nighttime, there’s less smog, there are beautiful houses and green lawns and tropical plants and empty streets. Now we’ll have one day in the city of Banda Aceh followed by two days wandering through the rural Northern Aceh countryside, doing tsunami reconstruction follow-up work. There are so many issues around political unrest, the implementation of Sharia law in Aceh and its effects on women and “sustainable livelihoods”, GAM separatist movement, militia activity, and the dynamic surrounding NGOs’ presence in the area.

If I’ve learned one lesson so far, it’s this: Don’t ever fly to Indonesia on a human rights business trip without doing significant research into the political, religious, social and economic background and current situation of the area. You can read more about that on my work blog. Also, wear bug spray even in the airport.

Davis
My last few days in California were getting boring, so I decided to rage. I hopped a late train to Davis, home of UC-Davis, to see my old pal Daniel, a wonderful guy who trapses around the country with nothing but a backpack and a burning desire to study under all the wing-chung kung fu masters in the U.S. He used to be my neighbor in Roxbury, but returned to California to marry a girl who promptly dumped him once he got there. I haven’t seen him for three years. Now he’s pushing 30 but lives in a house full of partying undergrads and still hasn’t figured out what he wants from life, other than a wife and kids someday, plus cheeseburgers (”I’m a simple man. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.”) We walked around town after midnight in the rain discussing women and travel and the correct way to break a man’s arm if you have to. He’s a great guy and I learned alot about old school hiphop in the 20-some hours we had to catch up. The world spins so quickly, it makes me dizzy.

Sacramento
The next day, I went up to Sacramento to see friends from childhood — practically brothers to me. Nathan and I went to preschool together, and his father more or less helped raise me. I hadn’t seen Nathan since his father’s death four years ago, so it was wild to have both boys show up at the train station and take me to Thai lunch. Nathan remembered tons of things from when we were two, when we were seven, when we were nine, when we were fourteen, seventeen, twenty. Both boys were so polite and wonderful that at one point during lunch I went to the bathroom, stared in the mirror, and started talking to their father — who technically isn’t alive anymore. “You’ve done a great job with them,” I said to the mirror, my voice bouncing off the empty walls and the space on the floor where their father would have stood, had he been standing there. “Your boys are really excellent people. You should be really proud.”

Berkeley

I wanted a final hurrah with my two favorite (and crazy) sisters. They obliged, and met me for omlettes and cake in Berkeley until well after midnight. We took hundreds of phone photos, with and without my COPS shades on, and when it was time to separate at BART, I didn’t want to leave. Wait! I take it back! I’m not ready for this vacation to end!

The flight from Denver to Boston was delayed, so I spent over an hour at Terminal 5, writing the script of the new film we will shoot in Jan/Feb. I’m really excited for this. I think it might actually be something great. When we finally did get in the air, not only was I blessed with nice, normal people sitting next to me, but the flight was smooth and the sky was clear as we flew over the Rockies. Sitting in the plane as the sun set, I felt the same way I did in 1989 when my mother and I drove back to Philly from Mexico — we had everything we owned in that car; we were totally free; no one in the world knew exactly where we were; we could go anywhere, be anything — or we could just keep on going. I wanted to freeze the sunset and the plane ride and just fly and fly and fly.

Needless to say, I don’t really want to be back, so I’ve begun a short campout at Ry’s until I’m ready to go home. We went to the diner at midnight for steak and eggs. The weekend will bring a consecrated effort on my part to redesign my website, create a flash photogallery, finish writing the film script, and generally rev up my productivity level, which has been waning as of late.

Vacation is over, but other things have begun. Here’s to a whole new era.

KWID-nuhngk, (noun)
One who is curious to know everything that passes; one who knows or pretends to know all that is going on; a gossip; a busybody.

Oh my lord, it’s so freezing in Northern California. Since no one turns heat on here, or even knows where their furnaces are located, houses are even colder inside. Such is the case tonight. I’m huddled under a down comforter in the living room, wearing two shirts, one sweater and one sweatshirt. I might as well be back home. The only difference is that here, the sun is still strong enough to give you a sunburn during the day, and there’s no snow at night. But at least at home we have heat.

Today we drove up to San Jose for J.’s ice hockey game. Lots of women slamming other women into walls. It made me want to skate. Or at least pick up a stick and smack something 70 yards across a room.

I’m just about ready to go home now.

i’ve ceased being tired long ago.
now it’s just me and the midnight airplanes over this hollow house.
while everyone’s out enjoying everyone else,
i’m clutching my solitude like a long lost brother, but that’s another story.
on the floor, calm silence, thin dust.
the black dog with me dreams for both of us.

69

My gracious hosts have made the most of my last few days in Kona, despite my lack of energy resulting from food poisoning, or psychosymatic gastrointestinal problems, whatever. Yesterday C. and I went down to 69 (I don’t remember what it’s really called, but 69 refers to some aspect of the highway or mile marking) where the waves are calmer, to go swimming at sunset. It was rather awesome to float on soft waves for an hour. Made me forget my body entirely. (E., remember watching the clouds from the hill at the Arboretum in July? I noticed a spot on my retina, a black spot that followed my line of vision wherever I looked in the sky. It bothered me then, but you said I’d stop noticing after time. I did stop noticing — until now, lying face-up on the waves, watching the clouds again. It’s like having a ghost beside me all the time.)

After swimming, we climbed on these funky tree limbs while the sun set.

Then we took trippy photos with my slow-synch flash.

Babies are cool

Fast-forward to this morning. C. & G.’s nice Swedish neighbor came over, bringing her baby whom we’ve been playing with all week. She mirrored C.’s hand gestures with the concentrated effort most 5-month-olds don’t have. It was pretty cute. There are so many nice people here.

Later, we went to a sacred ground. Back in the day, if someone committed a crime, they could run for this place. If they made it without getting caught first, they’d be forgiven. If caught before reaching the sacred site, they’d probably be killed. Fun, eh? So there were lots of statues to the gods here, surrounded by hard black lava, palm trees and tidepools with black crabs that I had previously sworn were scorpions. We found a bench, on which people had placed offerings to the gods. Flowers, coconuts, palm leaves, etc.

The search for sea turtles

Next, and after much encouragement, I agreed to go snorkeling with G. — minus the snorkel. There were sea turtles in this water, and we were determined to find them. We had to leap in the water over the coral reef, so as not to kill it. G. jumped first, then I jumped.

Swimming over coral reefs was just like those double spreads in National Geographic make it out to be: pretty awesome. Lots of black and yellow fish. It was like climbing into one of those fishtanks in the lobby of your local Chinese restaurant — only cooler, because just as the sun was about to set, G. spotted a baby sea turtle on the ocean bottom. We let it swim up for air, and G. swam over to pet it. I wasn’t as bold, content enough to watch the adorable thing swim around underwater, two feet from me.

The moral of the story is Hawaii is awesome, and my friends are cooler than most other people who exist. Amen.

The waves pounded my head down against the bottom of the sea. Sand got in between every strand of my hair, every inch of my body. It took three hours to get it out of the bikini. The ocean here is a lot more powerful than anything I’ve seen before; scared of being forcibly pulled out, or under, I opted instead to stand on the beach and shoot photos of the sunset. Here’s a short video clip you can watch to get a better idea of how it looked and sounded. The guys I went swimming with are the ones at the end, getting pounded by a wave.

We went up on the volcano — G. and I, to see his hippie pals who sleep in a tent and have been hired to clear off some rich peoples’ land. The boys had made mocassins and bows and arrows; I got to shoot a few, but they never made it to the target.

“I want to be a mountain man,” G. told C. later that night. “I want to make mocassins and build stone walls and shoot bows and arrows and sleep on the ground and not use soap.” I had to admit that, minus the hygiene factor, it’s a pretty alluring lifestyle. Especially if you’re living on the side of an active volcano.

It’s another gorgeous day, and I have effectively forgotten Boston. It’s for the best. The only thing to concentrate on here is the sun and the sea and how many scones and mangos I can eat in one day. I’ve met some really cool people out here, from all over the place. Tonight C. and James and I are going swimming in a calm area of the shore enclosed by rocks. I’ve decided to wear the same skirt every day. I can understand why people are drawn to this island: the trees and sun and ocean give a perspective you can’t get in snow and freezing air. Everything here is light; that’s how I want to be.

We walked down to the beach last night. The wave swells are huge. I know nothing about waves or ocean currents so I didn’t pretend to; I just watched the water crashing into black lava rocks and thought about how the ocean is so much bigger than us, and could crush us in an instant. The undertow is so strong we can’t really swim, except in tidepools. The current would pull us out indefinitely.

C. is beautiful and chill and awesome as ever, and I’m so grateful she has let me come here. Her man G. is a philosopher/artist/scientist/carpenter, but most of all, a thinker. We stayed up til 2a discussing the algorithms that create patterns on shells, which he likes to reproduce on canvas. He busted out his cellular anatomy textbook for seashells and tried explaining it to me. Today we looked at some giant black-and-yellow spider that can probably kill you if you mess with it. I’m very happy to be here.

I’ve been so tired. We slept very little last night. Spent all day trying to sleep on the futon in the living room. I lost all motivation to get up, or go outside, or anything. I’m just so exhausted. The dogs started freaking out. They’re worried about me. “Aint no thing, dogs,” I told them, but they didn’t believe me. They yelped and jumped up on my head. I pushed them down, but they jumped up again. They started howling. I howled back. Dogs are perceptive creatures. I wish I could hang out with them all the time.

In other news, I can’t get this sappy country song of J.’s out of my head.

Something’s off today. Things are out of balance. All the trains on BART decided to break down this morning — as I was on them. I got stuck, the ride took an hour and a half. I got to the airport with 25 minutes to spare, but shockingly, they wouldn’t let me on the plane. “You’re too late,” the woman said. “You missed the plane.” “No I didn’t,” I answered, getting mad. “It doesn’t leave for another 25 minutes.” “That’s the same thing as missing it,” she said. I couldn’t believe it. I also couldn’t believe it when the man in front of me, whose plane for Boston left in 20 minutes, got rushed on with no problem. “You have to stand in that line [motions to really long line] to get a standby ticket.”

I was pissed, but consented. Maybe there’d be another plane in a few hours. No, not today. After 10 minutes standing in line #2, I got up to the same woman I had just dealt with. “I have bad news for you,” she said. “There are no more direct flights to Kona until Friday. The best I can do is to get you on a flight tomorrow, but you have to fly through LA.” What she neglected to explain is that I’ll have to travel for 10 hours straight, to a destination 5 hours away. I got really mad, but since I haven’t as of yet embraced my sense of entitlement, I just put my chin down on the counter in defeat and stared at her instead of demanding, at full volume, to be let on the bloody plane, which still hadn’t left yet.

I need to work on being assertive. I’ll never be a successful global multimedia producer if I don’t learn to boss people around.

In better news, it’s another beautiful day. It’s my friend’s birthday, but instead of partying, she’s busy designing a sustainable houseboat for her architecture class tonight, so it’s just me and the dogs, kickin it.

Yesterday I got to meet up with RR, my old companero, with whom I alienated all the elitist chics and professors at Smith College. She still smokes like a used gun and curses like a sailor; the only difference is that now she’s got a husband, a spiffy job at a law firm, and is working on getting a Harvard MBA. I’m just some shmuck on vacation from my nonprofit. We drank tea and 7-up and wondered out loud when we were ever gonna “make it”. At Smith, they teach you you will make it. You will be a CEO. You will be an international executive, an investment banker, a producer, a diplomat, a high-ranking corporate economist, a brain surgeon, a chemical engineer. There’s not a lot of emphasis on the arts, but the general Smith mantra still stands in any industry: work, work, work, don’t sleep, work more, and expect greatness. Because chances are, you’re smarter than most of your coworkers. Who are probably mostly men. Conquer! Devour! Beat them! Prevail!

Smith taught us to be vultures. I’m still learning how to tear the flesh off my prey — or at least the customer service reps for United Airlines.