almostfearless.com

Posted: 19 Sep 2011 09:52 PM PDT

Drew here. The papers I am clutching tightly are getting damp in my clammy hand as I make my way via Songthaew to my last hope for finding yellow fever vaccinations in Chiang Mai. After looking at the note written in Thai I hand him, he nodded for me to get in and headed off towards my last chance.

I was freaking out, man. Getting into Rwanda would work itself out, but I was petrified I might not make it back into Thailand.

Great news! They had the vax. Crap news: they didn’t have any more vaccination booklet forms, and could I maybe come back tomorrow when they might have more?

Umm, no. You see, I am a jerk who likes to leave everything to the last possible second. Duh. It’s as if we just met! I was freaking out, man.

An hour later and I have someone’s castoff booklet, my name is on the front, written over the previous owner’s name which has been whited out. It would have to do.

Less than 24 hours later and I am waiting for my connecting flight to Kigali from Ethiopia. There is no money changer, I have only US 100$ bills and The woman I am trying to buy sodas from informs me she can’t change my $100 dollar bill.

And I am coming down with a fever. I’m freaking out, man.

I spend the next 60 hours or so in and out of a pretty nasty fever, all by myself with my support team of one (Christine) off visiting friends in Penang. I get a room at St Paul’s Hostel, a dingy budget place run by nuns, a place that I would never get if I had the family in tow, but there’s something almost romantic in the effort of trying to fight off a fever under a dirty mosquito net using Tylenol, cold bottles of water and a wet towel. When I woke up on the third morning with no fever, I barely remembered what it felt like to be normal. It was time to get a better look at Kigali, and I have a job to do here.

So how is Kigali? It’s pretty, but like Chiang Mai, it can be difficult to find an unfettered view of something interesting. Everything is obscured by something, either a billboard, power lines, a fence. And it’s hilly here. I haven’t seen a flat patch of land since landing on the airport runway. The entire city seems to be under construction, skyscrapers of varying degrees of completion exist all over the city. The term “developing nation” was never so apt than it is in Kigali.

The people here are pleasant, it seems. Beggars can be persistent and street touts always want to sell me a 32GB USB stick, or barring that, a map of Rwanda, but a smile and a “no thank you I don’t need it.” usually moves them along. People stare at the foreigners here, similar to stares I received in India, though I often feel like I am being challenged as I walk down the street. The stares I get here are often distrusting looks. And if I have the camera out, forgetaboutit. I was told early on that Rwandan’s do not like to have their pictures taken, and if I did take someone’s picture, expect to be hassled to pay the subject some amount of money for having done so.

Since I am here to shoot documentary footage, this has been incredibly stressful. Setting up a tripod anywhere attracts small crowds of people behind me to watch what I am shooting. The looks I get when the camera is out in the open go from distrusting to downright hostel. Any time I am somewhere I might want to snap a photo I have to look around to make sure there’s no one in my camera’s path. I whip out my iPhone, snap a quick photo and shove the phone back in my pocket, bouncing along on my merry way.

I am freaking out, man.

The thing is, I discovered after arriving here that if you don’t have your vaccination when you arrive in Thailand, you just pay $20 to get the shot in the airport. The lack of vaccination booklets? I just waited it out for the people working at the clinic to figure out what they could do for me. The fever? Just a common reaction to the vaccine. It just needed time to work it’s way out.

I have come a long way as a traveler over the years. In Madrid, where we started, my world was contained to an area from Plaza Olavide to a bakery down the main strip. I shrunk my world in order to process it. Since then I squirmed my way through Central America, stomped around the UK, sweated my way through Colombia then Asia, culminating in a trip around India which challenged every boundary I think I had. I would not call myself a reluctant traveler by any means, but somehow, impossibly, I am often still a nervous one.

It’s a very hard thing to admit, even harder to talk about, because I feel as though admitting to getting worked up over these small things makes me less of a traveler than so many people I have come to call friends over the years. And it’s true, I am not a natural when it comes to packing up and going to the next place. My comfort zone is constantly being challenged, I am forcing myself to grow with every destination, and sometimes, for me, that growth is extremely hard

The thing is, I am starting to like the me that I have become over the last year. Much more so than the wage slave version of me from a couple of years ago, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Three years ago just getting from the plane back to our apartment in Chiang Mai by myself would have been daunting (yes, it’s okay to pity past-Drew. I pity him too). Now, I am in Africa on my own, carrying around ridiculously expensive gear, wrapping up shooting our documentary and my main concern is not pissing off any locals by taking my camera where it doesn’t belong.

I’ve come a long way, so if it’s all the same to you, I am going to keep on traveling, raw nerves and all.

I want to travel

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

almostfearless.com

almostfearless.com

No comments:

Post a Comment

Followers