Browsing Category

Musings

Destinations, Musings, Photography, Zanzibar

Sandy Beaches Sell Postcards and Plane Tickets

November 6, 2012

We haggle over an hour long bus ride, will it be five thousand shillings or three?

We dicker, we hand over crinkled bills, we ride.

On a daladala, normal shifts.

Boxes and bags and bodies cram together in a metal shell unfit for road use by any and all US standards. Smells of sweat and burning oil mingle. Window glass balanced in rubber seals rattles as we ride, framing views of an island changing shape before our eyes.

“Computer training center” one sign says, before we pass another mud brick house with leaky thatch roof.

Bikes and cattle share the pavement. Coconut palms and banana trees lean away from us and toward the afternoon sun.

Between shores, the heart of the island beats.

Generations long since used to alien visitors seeking spice and spice of life watch another load of tourist overtake a load of produce. Dollars and cents.

Crossing from one coast to another, I wonder.

Who pays for paradise?

Whose normal is this, anyway? Continue Reading…

Destinations, Food, Musings, Zanzibar

Cardamom Spice Tea: Bitter and Sweet on a Spice Tour in Zanzibar

October 31, 2012

“Zany Zebras Zoom Through Zanzibar!”

Alphabet cassette tapes of the 1980s pained a wild and colorful picture of a place in my childhood mind. Twenty years later, I heard Lynn Rosetto Casper’s voice through my iPod headphones. She was chatting with a Splendid Table listener who had recently returned from Zanzibar, and my imagination again filled with scenes of spice plantations and market stalls. I could almost smell the coconut and cinnamon and cardamom spice as Lynn rattled off recipes, and I was smitten by the sounds of such an exotic trip…

I remember Ted and I sharing travel planning dates at Townshend’s Tea in NE Portland, drinking alternating pots of highland, kashmiri, and masala chai…plotting our great escape. When we pinned down our travel route and sorted flights, this Tanzanian island off the eastern coast of Africa moved from fantasy to reality, and I could barely contain my excitement at the thought of tracking my favorite spices back to their origins.

My highest hopes:

1) Seeing my kitchen pantry spices growing in fertile soil under tropical sun

2) Bringing my cookbook-world to life by learning a recipe or two from someone living on the island

Like most visions of the unknown, reality came in different shades. Continue Reading…

Destinations, Landscape Architecture, Musings, Zanzibar

Descending into Dar es Salaam…

October 26, 2012

Outside the plane window stretched a vast expanse of blackness punctured by glowing pinpricks of yellow and orange. Not twinkling stars in the sky: backyard and street-front fires.

We arrived in Tanzania after sunset, after nature’s light-switch flipped.

Descending into the Dar es Salaam airport seemed surreal. On the approach, I could make out suburbs entirely void of electrical streetlights or floodlights or illuminated windows. Instead, flames licked toward the dark sky from old barrels and brush piles.

It felt like another world. Continue Reading…

Cambodia, Destinations, Musings, Travel Plans

Weekend Update: Death of a King in Cambodia

October 21, 2012

Hello, friends!

A little real-time note for you on this October Sunday.

This past week in Phnom Penh: Cambodians mourning the death of Former-King Sihanouk

Ted and I are in the middle of our five week circuit in Southeast Asia, and I’ve been fumbling around behind the scenes with the tail end of South Africa posts and the next stretch of updates from Zanzibar, Thailand, Laos, and now Cambodia. Continue Reading…

Destinations, Food, Lebanon, Musings

Flavors, Friendships, and Top Meals in Lebanon: A Visit in Review

September 3, 2012

It’s fair to say that our Lebanon experience was shaped by two main factors: the overwhelming kindness of friends, new and old, and the mouthwatering flavors of Lebanese food (and drink!).

This is one of those posts entirely dedicated to fellow foodies and free spirits: to Jodi and Wade and Megan for taking us to t-marbouta on our first night in Beirut, to Lindsay and Samantha for hosting us for a rooftop dinner high above the frantic city, and especially to Jimmy and Madeleine for leading us directly to their favorite spots and top meals in Lebanon: some in plain sight, others hidden away where we’d never have found them on our own… In town, in the countryside, in restaurants and around kitchen tables, Lebanon won our taste buds and our hearts.

Small Town Lunch in Rural Lebanon
Massaad
Zahlé Blvd, Zahleh, Lebanon
“Perfection in a chicken sandwich” from the Daily Travel Journal notes. Freshly grilled chicken, a mouthwatering combination of seasonings and spices, homemade pickles (see the crazy purple color below!), perfectly wrapped pita with sesame seeds, and chefs with killer-sharp knife skills.

Continue Reading…

Destinations, Lebanon, Musings

(Chaos Is.) Beirut, Lebanon

August 9, 2012

“Unfinished business. Loose ends. Broken sidewalks.” Notes scribbled in my little Moleskine notebook, under the heading “Chaos Is.”

Welcome to Beirut.


The rallying point at Martyr’s Square; The Grand Mosque behind.

“Lebanon?” people would ask as eyebrows lifted and the telltale hint of concern or excitement danced around the word.

Depending on the inquisitor’s level of comfort with the notion of visiting the Middle East, they’d press for more logic behind the decision to add a place of such turmoil and challenge to our itinerary.

“Why Lebanon?”

The short answer: my college roommate (one of the most true and level headed women I’m blessed to know), Jodi, has been living and working in Beirut the past few years and invited us to pay a visit if her address fit into our route.

The medium answer: Ted and I were both curious about the truth behind the hazy, sandy, stark and scary, mysterious and misunderstood reputation of the Middle East and both wanted to experience a piece of that world for ourselves. And, um, truthfully: we’ve eaten so many meals at Ya Hala in our Montavilla, Portland neighborhood that we literally salivated at the thought of family-style meals of Lebanese mezze in its true place of origin.

After three weeks of new friends, banned books, challenging conversations, shared meals, glasses of Lebanese wine and bottles of local brew, hours of leisure on calm seashores, miles walking chaotic city blocks, lectures at the base of buildings bearing bruises and wounds of war, visits to lush urban oases and book stores and cinemas and veggie markets, after all this, we should be able to answer the question:

“What did you think of Lebanon?” Continue Reading…

Bosnia, Cyprus, Destinations, Kosovo, Musings

Too Fast for Photos: Bosnia, Kosovo, and Cyprus

August 2, 2012

Bosnia, Kosovo, and Cyprus: so quick were the introductions and goodbyes that we barely had time (or light) to press the button on the camera. In contrast to entire months spent in Argentina, Italy, and now South Africa, we had minimal time, mere moments really, to take in scenes and impressions and make memories.

Our three sum total pictures from Bosnia appear in the Choose Your Own Eastern European Adventure post. Kosovo passed underneath our semi-sleeping bodies during an overnight bus ride to Macedonia. Moon lit landscapes and haunting scenes filtered through a dirty window, but those pictures burned into memory live completely off the digital radar. Shutter speeds and camera shake could not be overcome on that bumpy road. Ted briefly stepped off the bus in Kosovo during a midnight stretch break, but I had the camera packed and he didn’t want to wake me.

Our couple-hour trip to Cyprus came courtesy of an overnight layover on the way to Lebanon.

The only photographic evidence? iPhone shots from the tarmac and a hazy nighttime shot by lamplight. And a one-for-the-memories fuzzy picture of a janitor in the airport.

Boarding Cyprus Airlines Plane

We boarded the late-afternoon plane from Thessaloniki planning to simply spend the night in the airport but while airborne hashed out a plan to land and go through customs for an evening out on the island. Continue Reading…

Destinations, Greece, Landscape Architecture, Musings

Landscape Architecture Footnotes: First Pier and the Thessaloniki Waterfront

July 29, 2012

Pardon me while I nerd out for a moment. I love being a landscape architect, and I love encountering places around the world where people are truly using and enjoying outdoor space.

And I love learning.

That would be me – loving the oh-so-comfy benches on Thessaloniki’s First Pier

Ahead of our one-day visit to Thessaloniki, Greece, I didn’t read up or investigate. I peeked at a map of the city when booking accommodations and otherwise walked in blind, so perhaps it was the absence of expectation or perhaps the atmosphere of pre-sunset light?

Whatever the case, when Ted and I walked down to the waterfront after dinner, I was absolutely enchanted by the First Pier of the Thessaloniki Port. It’s a little slice of urban paradise projecting out into the harbor, and I joyfully sat in the sunshine, people-watching and observing a successful night in the life of public open space. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Musings, Social Work

The Value of Being a Foreigner

July 19, 2012

This week, Ted’s Alma mater, Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon, shares his essay about the impacts of extended international travel on his understanding of the world and ability to love.

“One of the most important reasons to travel is to know what it feels like to be a foreigner.” – A. A. Gill

Not until I had been off North American soil for three months did I fully realize how much I missed home. South America was still “America;” I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect to feel so out of place, so distant, so foreign. On a daily basis, I found myself in situations where I was completely dependent on local people for the most basic necessities: food, water, transportation, communication. There was no “Spanglish” spoken here.

Thirty-one months after graduating from Multnomah, my wife and I embarked on a one-year backpacking journey around the world. We quit our jobs, mine at a local homeless shelter, hers at a landscape architecture firm, sold our stuff, and with much idealism began our journey in Lima, Peru. Today, I sit in a breezy apartment in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, reflecting on the last six months, bracing for the next half.

If there is one thing I wasn’t prepared for, it was being a foreigner in a foreign land. Sure, I’ve been places before—Europe, Mexico, Canada. But these days one can travel to all kinds of places without really having to leave the comfort and familiarity of ‘America.’ When we finally got off the beaten path, in Southern Bolivia for instance, or in Northern Lebanon, or on the undeveloped side of a Cape Verde island, we experienced a different kind of travel. We became at times guests, at times imposters, at times gawking and squawking ignorants, but always at the mercy of the land and people around us…

(Continue reading at the Multnomah University Blog)