I left New York in October. I thought it would never happen. You see, when you go from surviving to living and almost thriving in a place as hard and beautiful as New York it is almost impossible to leave.  But I did, after eleven years. I also left the job that took me around the world (literally).  I have to be honest, the idea hasn’t fully settled yet, but I also feel proud of myself. This seems to have been one of the biggest detachment exercises in my life. It’s now four months since we arrived in Mexico City and it doesn’t feel as bad as I expected. Mexico City is quite a vibrant city, full of contrasts but also inspiring. We’ve managed to land in the neighborhood where most of our friends live, we bike everywhere, architecture is amazing and we get lots of sunshine in our apartment.  I miss New York, being a New Yorker, and being Programs Director (my former job title), but it also feels good to strip yourself from any labels and concentrate on what is left – yourself.

Some people think my life is glamourous, but traveling around the world is not only left for jet-setters, it  also includes missionaries, doctors, theatre troupes, backpackers and regular people like me.  It has been a week since I came back from Liberia and my body is slowly catching up. Cold sores, a sinus infection, cramps and now one of my molars is fractured, as it seems I’ve been grinding my teeth at night out of stress. “I don’t understand how you do it?” Alex asks, “You go to these places and listen to these stories. How can you come back to your reality and not feel affected?” Truth is, I sometimes do. I still remember the story of the man who witnessed the killing of his son by armed guerillas some years ago. “They opened his chest with a knife, took out his heart and eat it. They believed my son’s heart would make them powerful.” This story kept me awake for a few nights. I also got to see the other part of the story where people are rebuilding a country and children are being raised without images of war.  It’s funny how you can feel emphatic and at the same time, it is hard to relate. I have never been at war, but I certainly understand resilience; I am from a country currently fighting a war, but I know that violence is not the only thing that exists. “I will never buy a house or invest outside Liberia,” Shadrach mentioned during one of our conversations, “I’ll go to Cambridge and get my pHd but I want to live here.”  My friends emphasize that we take certain things for granted, electricity, Sunday brunch, public libraries, street jazz, transportation systems and nail polish. What is that which is taken for granted in the places I visit? Possibly cassava leaves, spicy food, children raised by entire communities, festive funerals and drumbeats.

Night out in Sekondi, Ghana

I try to absorb in as much of Africa as I can while drinking Star beer at the makeshift bar on the street in Sekondi. We’ve been working in Ghana for four days, but we haven’t seen much besides the office and our hotel. The Veivaag Hotel, built with Norwegian investment, hosts mostly European engineers working on the oilrigs offshore. After drinking a couple of bottles of South African wine my colleagues; contrary to gender stereotypes, shared their love stories.  Will and his wife managed to get married after contradicting Indonesian traditions; Glenn met his wife at age 5, and Ali, who is getting married in a month, is planning for a Muslim wedding under the Ghanaian tradition. “Will I ever get married, again?” I wandered as I took pictures of young well-dressed men dancing to high-life on the street. There are so many pieces of my life-puzzle to get resolved; the challenge is both scary and exciting. I love my life, even when it is reign by ambiguity. A dog sits on the middle of the street to eat a piece of fish, flower-printed curtains decorate the surrounding houses, loudspeakers play African Pop and women on our neighboring table start circling their hips to the music. The weather is just perfect, warm and slightly humid. We are heading back to New York tomorrow and as a glass of Amarula is brought to our table I breathe in as much of Africa as I can. “Are you sad?” I ask Ali. “Yes, because I do not know if I’m ever going to see you again,” he replies. “Are you ever coming back to Ghana?”  I hope so. Breath-out.

The white light gets me tired. It could also be effect of the malaria pills. It may be the fact that after a 24-hour flight delay, we got to Ghana and start working from the onset; or that I’ve been eating too much rice, afraid of getting sick by eating fresh salads. I’m resting in bed sleepless and upset that the only options on television are a Steven Segal movie or a Nigerian soap opera. I got Leonera with me, an Argentinean movie that I’ve been meaning to watch for a long time. One of those items that remain in my suitcase, trip after trip and yet to be used, along the ciprofloxacin and a small bottle of St. John’s Wart. “It is funny how you get used to the landscape”, I tell Will as we drive by fishing communities along the coastline close to Ivory Coast. I feel no longer surprised at the sight of women carrying heavy loads of all kinds of materials over their heads, ovens made of mud to smoke fish, barber shops filled with men and mosques across from grocery stores named after biblical passages.  I guess that is a good sign; when the different becomes part of the regular. 

Late night thoughts in Sierra Leone

We crossed the river at night, the eventual lightning from the coming storm illuminated our way into the island, where we disembarked and lead our way to the camp using torches. It has been already a long day, riding for almost 7 hours from Freetown. I’m in a room lit by a candle and I can hear the storm and the bugs creeping outside. Will, Alex and Denilda are all in their rooms across from mine.  There is no running water and there is a big rat sitting immobile by the toilet.  I drink cognac and smoke a cigar trying to conceal the heat. We have no access to internet, no cell phone reception and we do not know precisely where we are. Chimpanzees and pigmy hippos live in this island, along with black mambas and a British researcher that spends her days observing chimp behavior. Being under these circumstances, adds to the feeling that there is a certain something that makes Sierra Leone really interesting. I’m not sure if it is the lack of infrastructure and electricity, the fact that candles are more common than light bulbs, the spicy food, the calypso music, the white sands, diamond mines, or the war-deteriorated buildings along the road. It feels vibrant and alive, crude and raw. Opportunities are rising from the ashes, as it continues to be a hot spot for foreign exploitation.  I’m sweating, the candle is consuming fast and noises from unidentified animals are coming from the bushes. This is going to be a long night.

I can hear my Mom singing to a Janis Joplin song through Skype. “Are you listening?” she asks. “My generation was blessed with great music.” I call her often and we sometimes leave the speaker on as each of us do our stuff; I guess it is a way to keep ourselves company.  “I use to steal my father’s radio every day from 8:00 to 9:00 pm to listen to the Creedence Program,” she says remembering her teenage years as she plays Have you ever seen the rain? There is a nostalgic feeling to this song. My uncle Andres carried a Creedence tape in his car and played this song every time he dropped me at the airport when my summer vacation in Mexico City was over. “Do you like Home Sweet Alabama?” my Mother asks. I can’t reply, I’m ready to go to bed and for all I know she will stay awake until very late searching for old songs on YouTube.  Nostalgia and internet are a powerful combination.

Some of us have steady jobs, some of us have dead-end jobs, some of us have inspiring dream-like jobs, some of us are jobless. Some of us have children, some of us don’t. Some of us are married at 24, 34, 44, some of us are not, some of us are desperately seeking for a partner, some of us are gay, some of us wish to be single.  Some of us know our mission in life, some of us don’t, some of us don’t care, some of us walk endlessly to find it. Some of us blame the others for our bad decisions, some of us take responsibility to change the patterns. In life and personal decisions, no rules apply; inspiration does. There are many ways to milk a cow, to crack a nut, to write a poem, but there are many more ways to lead your life. We learn by observation, but again, there are many ways to observe, so we select what to get inspired by. The key, I guess, is to make sure you get exposed to as many different examples of paths to select your own. For the first time in a very long time, I feel finally walking on the right direction. Where am I walking to is still uncertain, but I don’t care about it anymore. “What happened to Brenda in Africa?” people have been asking continuously and I can only answer that I let go. “I imagined being naked, metaphorically,” I clarify as I share the Africa epiphany,“and all my belongings and attachments are taken away from me. What would I rescue? What would I keep with me?” The answer is nothing, I have myself. “Am I ever going to have full clarity on what I want?” Arloinne asks as we walk down Alvaro Obregon from Roma to Condesa in Mexico City, “I came back from Europe expecting Mexico to bring back the possibilities, and now I miss Berlin and my life there.” According to my mother questioning hasn’t ended even at 60. My recent words of wisdom: It is what it is, so keep walking and make the best out of it.

I listen to Norteñas as we fly from Lagos to Calabar, close to the Cameroon border. I'm so tired that the line between dreams and thoughts has become blurry. The music takes me to Sinaloa and images of man wearing Texan boots and cowboy sombreros get mixed with storylines of hunters and gorillas in the forest. We just spent two weeks in Sierra Leone working with partners to develop the initial story for a drama on chimpanzee conservation; tomorrow we'll sit down with scriptwriters from Nigeria and Cameroon to agree on the story for gorilla conservation in the border between both countries. I sometimes wonder how I ended up working in all these parts of the world, a question that probably many people wouldn't - or can't afford to - ask themselves. I'm lucky. Life has provided me with enough content to write a book, which makes me feel a sense of guilt for not even trying. Dream and reality remains blurry until the stewardess hands me a plate with chicken and yam. Next to me a Nigerian 20-something man plays with his iPad impatiently; he is returning home for the May 1st holidays. The cheap pink toilet paper in the restroom reminds me that this airline not only tries to cut any possible costs, but that is not really reliable. I rather go back to the dreamy state I was before. As we prepare to land, the Norteño playlist is coming to an end and for a moment I wish I was landing in Mexico. Why I did decide to leave in the first place?

My guess is that the teddy bear was given to them by a Westerner, assuming that this will allow them to collect more money. In any case, they are not only beautiful, but after a long trip and while waiting for the ferry in the coast across from Freetown the least thing you would expect is to see two cute children smiling on the beach. We sit across from the Chinese and British that work for African Minerals, or so we assume as vans are bringing them in small groups from the airpot. It seems that every flight coming into Sierra Leone is bringing loads of mining workers, from engineers to security forcers. "Do  you think they are miners or mercenaries?" I texted some of my friends from the plane, as we waited in Conkary on our way to Freetown from Paris. For a moment I'm puzzled, the sight looks like this: men in their forties, all with deep Southern accents, covered in tattoos, wearing Harley Davidson t-shirts and John Deere caps and some even toothless. This may sound like prejudice, but this is definitely not the usual group of people I imagine traveling to anywhere in Africa. I get texts back asking me to stay away from them and a "please be careful". I assume my friends think I'll be snapping pictures at them - which by no means is a bad idea.  Victor texts right before departure to remind me that some kind of coup d' etat is happening in Guinea-Bissau. Sierra Leone's civil war ended 9 years ago. Seems so far and yet it is so close. In the meantime we wait under a palm tree for our ferry to arrive. It will take almost two hours to arrive into Freetown and I'm so hungry that I can only think on the promised "pepper-chicken" and a good glass of beer. 

Life is happening everywhere at this very moment. Wherever you go you'll find people making transactions at the local market, laughing on each other, having a beer in the afternoon, playing soccer, or flirting at the corner. To an extent, I believe that creating beauty around us is a manifestation of "life happening".  Taxi and truck drivers add stickers and hang decorations to their vehicles in Asia and South America, flowers are displayed outside homes in flowerpots or empty tomato cans in Spain, Colombia and Nigeria,  Indian temples are covered in colorful dust, men in Rwanda wear golden watches matching their golden teeth, women wear lipstick and high heels to ride motorbikes in the mountain highways of Laos or to cross the Tijuana-San Diego border. Beauty dispels fear; it unifies and humanizes. A few years ago, at the peak of the Iraq war, a different image was shown during the morning (French) news, an old man was sweeping dust outside his grocery store in preparation to sell cardboard hearts and bonbons to celebrate Valentine's Day. When you think about this you might feel there is no place you wouldn't go. The biggest risk, as my friend Mario says, is that life could happen regardless of your involvement, and passes you by.

I tend to forget that (genocide) everything involves regular people...

We were stopped by the DRC border patrol officer today for taking a picture at the border. "It is strictly forbidden to take pictures here. What if I go to your country and do the same?" he scorned us while holding my camera trying to delete the pictures. A few minutes later, after being released, we were laughing. "Come on Brenda, you should know better by now," Will said in his usual sarcastic tone. I'm sure I'll tell an exaggerated version of this episode one day, even when the real version already sounds scary. We've been working all day, so we haven't seen much of Rusizi yet. We walked along the river that divides the two countries and let the night fall as we stood outside Hotel Du Lac getting French and Kinyarwanda lessons from the training participants.  It might be that this is a border town, or that Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa, but there is always people in the streets. They all seem to be going somewhere and most of them carry loads of things, from eggs to wood. To my surprise, we don't get a lot of attention here, as compared to other countries in Africa. Only a few children yelled "Musungus!" at us with excitement, and that was kind of cute.

"If you look to your right you'll be able to see baby volcanoes," Will says as we are driving along a buffer zone of the Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda.  We arrived last night to Kigali and today we drove seven hours to Rusizi in the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are here to train local NGOs and radio producers on how to produce a radio drama and a communication strategy that will promote the protection of chimpanzees in this part of the world. This was a beautiful ride as the landscape changed from rice to tea plantations, misty mountains and villages built in adobe; people walked all along the highway carrying all sorts of things on top of their heads.  I'm now sitting on my bed covered by a net and trying to prepare for tomorrow's first training session. I've done this all over the world, but I still get a little nervous the night before it starts. A block away militaries guard the border between Rwanda and the DRC.  "Do you think we can cross to the DRC without a visa?" Katie asked - to my surprise - sincerely excited.  I rather not. "We are staying at a hotel run by nuns, so there won't be any beer," I exclaimed a little worried. "By day two we must have figured out where to get it," Will replied reassuringly.  

It's raining heavily in La Paz, the noise of thunder blends with Cerati's Te Para Tres on the radio. Sylvia is still asleep and Johnny has already set the breakfast on the table. It's 1:00 pm and Radio Deseo plays a concert by Fito Paez and Luis Alberto Spinetta.  Argentina has been the main provider to Latin America with an alternative soundtrack and identity to that coming from Hollywood.  In comparison to Mexico, South America feels so independent of the United States and mostly relaying on what the region produces.  A few days ago I met Mamerto Betanzos who was the producer of "Teatro de los Andes" for 19 years. "I travelled around the world preparing the ground for our theatre troupe to perform," Mamerto said, "so I lived a few months in Padua, Prague or New York setting the stage, promoting the show and selling all the tickets in advance." Now, back in Sucre, he assured me that there is nothing like Latin America, "we believe in community and our lives aren't centered in our jobs, but in enjoying time with our families." After a few seconds he confessed, "I chose work over family, I've dedicated all my life to theatre, and the troupe was my family." As I write, Johnny appears from his bedroom. "How did you guys sleep?" he asks, reminding me that as Mamerto, for the past years my life has centered around my job, and my colleagues and friends around the world have become my family. You learn to feel at home almost everywhere and love the people you spend time with; you give yourself openly in a need to establish meaningful connections. "It's a good life, you learn and grow enormously, but you need to know when to stop and settle," Mamerto said before saying goodbye.  I think I could settle in Latin America. I've been daydreaming for quite some time of moving to a place like Uruguay for a year and just let life happen, without looking for it. Sylvia is awake now and Johnny invites us to the table to have breakfast: coffee and bread with cheese. Radio Deseo starts playing Mariposa Technicolor, giving me the perfect lyrics to finish this post.  Todo al fin se sucedió, sólo que el tiempo no los esperó, la melancolía de morir en este mundo y de vivir sin una estupida razón. 

I’m freezing. The landlord hasn’t been turning on the heat lately. My guess is that Polina is watching Russian films in her room; she got back a few days ago and is still carrying with her the nostalgia of the other place. I’m about to sleep but for a moment stare at the stack of half-read books on my desk. The sight is daunting. When I was a little girl I tried really hard to start the new school cycle with an organized backpack and neat notebooks. To my eternal disappointment at the end of each school year my backpack was a mess, stained with ink and pencil, and the notebooks, missing a few pages, had notes in blue, black and sometimes even green ink.  I tried really hard to be someone that I wasn’t and failed year after year. So, in that spirit and considering that today is the Chinese New Year, I have made up my New Year’s resolution: stop worrying about all the half-read, half-done, half-thought, half-everything.  “Be kind to yourself”, I pronounce loudly as I type, “and come to terms with the fact that it might be fine to leave the bed unmade sometimes.”

Note to self: Get over the fact that this is who you are. 

Today is Christmas. We are driving through foggy-mountain highways crossing La Sierra Madre towards Xalapa.  We drive quietly listening to some country music. Enrique, my Mom’s partner, stops to buy a bag of pig-shaped sugar cookies that people sell on the side of the road in this part of the country.  “Do you remember the time we went to Veracruz for the holidays?” Pepe asks as I nod trying to remember a trip that happened more than 20 years ago.  It’s hard to imagine how we pictured ourselves as grown-ups back then. “What is it next for you?” I ask as we take pictures of the cookies against the foggy backdrop.  “I’m not sure.” He shrugs his shoulders. For the past two years he has been teaching at the School of Architecture in Mexico City, after living in Venice, Barcelona and New York.  He has a love for knowledge that is only proportional to his lack of interest for a relationship. “I’m still interested in urban planning,” he says, and I know he hasn’t found his place int he world yet.  Two days ago I was interrogated by some other members of our family, the usual questions intended to make you feel you’ve been driving in the wrong direction for the past 33 years.  “It is terrible that cities are built around cars and not human interaction,” Pepe asks interrupting my thoughts and making me feel relieved that I have a cousin that even when he doesn’t know where he is going, he knows what he stands for. At 35 he doesn’t know nor is interested in learning how to drive.

After doing the last Christmas shopping I sat at Sofia’s to unwind; bags were already packed and there was nothing else to do but relax before flying early the next morning. Leo, the bartender, gave me a glass of their best champagne and while chilling at the bar I simmered into a million thoughts.  These last few days have been one of the few moments in which I’ve spent time with myself; a very much-needed silence between trips and with just a handful of friends in New York.  It was when Leo refilled my glass that everything was clear to me: I’m a New Yorker; my life is here; not somewhere else. I’ve been living for so long with a longing for the other place, for the ones I left behind without acknowledging what I have built for me here.   For a moment I thought about the fruit flies that appeared in our office a couple of months ago. They stand on our coffee mugs and annoyingly circulate in front of our monitors. “It feels that we’re working in Ecuador or India”, Lindsey would say trying to kill one.  My theory is that we brought them from one of our trips and for a reason they are thriving in their new environment. What is needed to survive and grow? For the flies it seems that sugar and a cozy environment suffices. This is of course considering that the metric is to survive and reproduce extensively and not to be happy, fulfilled, loved, empowered, and so many other complex definitions of success.  New York is challenging, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as lonely anywhere else and the concept of anxiety took a new dimension. At the same time it has given the opportunity to try my strength, friends have become family and it has seldom being boring.  To challenge oneself might be a good way of thriving.  Although some of us feel in the paradox of wanting to anchor and keep sailing, there is not necessarily a dichotomy as we might find people to sail with. Probably, as with the fruit flies, the wind of inspiration or a tourist will take me to a new port.

I miss Laos. I missed it since I landed in Bangkok, and I've been missing it ever since. "It is hard to pinpoint what it is precisely," I tell my mother over the phone, "but there is something about Laos that makes it a beautiful and special place. I want to go back."  It is possibly a combination of the gentle nature of its people and the accidental landscape. It is the frugality combined with a clear sense for beauty. It may be the communist - buddhist way of living. Or the sight of people riding motorbikes as they hold colorful umbrellas; or the intense green of the rice fields; or the incense burning at every temple as monks dressed in orange clothes take care of the shrines dutifully; or the spicy meals combined with tam-tam-"ing" with Beer Lao and Lao-Lao. It is probably that during this trip and work sessions I laughed more than I have laughed in months, and that our partners took great care of us during our stay. Since my return to the US I have asked everyone the same question: "Can you believe I let a stranger take my passport from Xieng Khouang to Vientiane to process my Thai visa?" I guess in Laos I learned that you can actually let go and trust that things will be alright;  my passport was there a week later waiting at the Xien Khouang airport right before our flight. How can you bring some of what you have learned into your life? Do you think that the actual experience is enough to internalize and absorb the new perspectives? "Do not underestimate how much you actually learn or grow after each trip, even when you are not able to articulate it," I repeat to myself.  One insight after this trip - that I can't yet dare to mutter - revolves around the idea that probably living the simple/frugal life is the way to embrace complexity. As I struggle to write this coherently I remember how Khamdee, Sinthone and Mr. Maus taught us how to dance to Lao music.  Actually, who cares about complexity when you can dance and bump your hips once in a while.

- Where are you from?- Khamdee asked me to inform the waiter.
- I'm from Mexico- I replied.
- Is that in America?- the waiter asked; - is it part of the United States of America?
- No- I replied. - It is the country right below the US .
- Oh! I understand - he said before continuing with his duties.

I'm watching Cartoon Network in Thai even when I should be sound asleep by now. It took us 24 hours to get to Vientiane and now we are 12 hours ahead of our circadian cycle. "It is interesting when traveling this far feels so natural," I told Sean as we boarded the plane from Bangkok to Laos. Just a few moments earlier we bumped into Will at the airport on his way to Laos from Indonesia. A few months ago we also bumped into Will in Amsterdam when we were traveling together to Nigeria. "Laos will be a very unique place, a bit untouched by modernization" I recall reading a week earlier. "We are going to get noticed, in a good way," Sean says as we find our sits on the plane. "Do you think I might pass by Laotian?" I asked knowing the answer.  "We also eat spicy food in Mexico," I told Khamdee - our host - as we ate sticky rice and spicy sauce for dinner, but the concept of a Mexican or Hispanic identity means almost nothing in this context.