essays

Story Time

we all have one

Sophy, Koudekerke, Netherlands · 2017

Ours is a big world to see, and bigger still at the age of 19. With nothing on her shoulders but a backpack, Sophy set out to discover her world, and what better place to start than 10,000 miles away from home? Australia was right up Sophy’s alley even if, or exactly because, it’s so different from the familiar alleys of her Dutch hometown Koudekerke, which is as tiny a place as the name suggests. Now Sophy is back in the Netherlands with a whole lot of moments turned long-term memories. When she takes out these emotional keepsakes and looks at all the immaterial currency she’s saved up, Sophy misses the road; but what better time to look ahead than being a student? Whenever Sophy is home from university, she rents out a room in her dad’s house – it’s money for her studies and a dose of travel at home.

All of us have arrived at this moment by traveling a different story. Our narratives have been full of forks, twists and turns, shortcuts and detours, but here we are to intersect with each other in the now. How we got here isn’t just a tale though. It is the very world we live in, inside our head. And as much as we can let others in, they will always see it with a different set of eyes, coming in from another angle. None of our life stories are mundane, for none are alike. Each single one is told for the very first and the very last time.

Priya, Paris / France · 2021

An introvert on the outside, an extrovert on the inside, Priya says things like: “Screwing on your oranges backwards is the state of being completely confuzzled.” And sometimes she feels “flubbidy.” Make of that what you will.

Eun-Jin, Seoul / South Korea · 2016

As the daughter of melon farmers, and the subordinate of big-city bosses in Seoul, Eun-Jin has a dual understanding of hard work, commitment, and responsibility. Nothing about her is hard though. Jin is sweet as melon juice, well, with a twist of gin, which is, incidentally, how you pronounce her name.

Angel, Pelileo / Ecuador · 2013

Angel, the sage, the lover. One of the greatest people that ever lived without anybody noticing. A studied anthropologist, Angel has done most of his research hands on – on life, on real-life subjects – as a friend, a father, a hardworking helper. He has learned everything of importance, every thing one can know without knowing everything. When he digs into your mind to get to the bottom of it, it doesn’t hurt. And he listens with a hyper-presence that warms you. Angel doesn’t seem to worry about his worries and his soul distills 127 liquid ounces of beauty from every gallon of pain.

Mongi, Windhoek / Namibia · 2017

Mongi graduated from life at an early age (summa cum laude) and has homes all over: Zimbabwe, Germany, Namibia, South Africa. Her mother tongues are isiNdebele and English (the latter “by virtue of Colonialism,” she says), but she also speaks German, isiZulu, isiXhosa, chiShona, and understands and speaks a little Afrikaans, Mandarin, seTshwana, seSotho, and sePedi. In short, she’s speaking in tongues a lot, or speaks a lot of tongues, potayto, potahto. Mongi can also tie you to a chair with just the soundwaves of her spellbinding singing voice and infect you with laughter that takes flight deep inside her lungs.

Sly & Alyssa, Chimanimani / Zimbabwe · 2017

The newlyweds Alyssa and Sly. It was something on first sight. I won’t say love, because that’s one dense-ass feeling to jump from eye to eye (it can only bounce from heart tissue to heart tissue, using it as a trampoline), but it was something on first sight. Car rental owner and driver Sly turned around in his driver’s seat to find Peace Corps volunteer Alyssa in his backseat, and when their eyes met, a spark hopped from one to the other and back, and back, and back, and right now Alyssa is expecting Sly’s child.

Adriana, Salasaka / Ecuador · 2012

There is mischief in every nook and cranny of Adriana’s face and the mastermind behind it, and with the power of wit and innocence, she has brought her art to perfection. Her catch phrase is "sabes que?" to which people reply "que?" which the brilliant prankster answers with "nada."

Jacky, Maun / Botswana · 2017

Jacky’s jagged and autobiographical poetry is painfully beautiful, and hearing it is like being cut with silk. It tells of a woman who has been through life. Born and raised in Malawi, Jacqueline moved to Maun, Botswana in search of softer times with ampler job opportunities. Currently, she is working her way up the career ladder in tourism. Her job has Jacky leading somewhat of a double life, traveling forth and back between her desk and some of the finest lodges in the Okavango Delta and Kalahari Desert, where lions and elephants pay friendly visits to her porch. It’s an experience that can alleviate tourist wallets of several thousand dollars a night, but a casual Tuesday for Jacky. Her neighbors Yaone and Khan can relate – both are Cessna pilots (like almost every other guy living on the compound) who drop off tourists at the lodges or fly them around for bird’s eye views of the delta. What’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most, is business as usual for them.

Rafael, Panama City / Panama · 2014

Rafael lives right on the border of Casco Viejo, Panama City’s gorgeous old town, and El Chorillo, a neighborhood so troubled that even the police steer clear of it. There had been another murder some days prior to my stay with Rafael, who hosts Couchsurfers semi-permanently. Rafael lives humbly but shares generously. He likes taking pictures of his guests, which he collects in an actual photo album that is yellowed enough to tell a few stories. This time he ended up on the other side of the lens though.

Sneha & Danny, Tamil Nadu / India · 2018

Sneha and Danny arrived at the same nonprofit from completely different directions: one studied English Literature, the other Engineering. They do have great dance skills in common though, and even greater friend skills: thoughtful, invested, giving.

Jordi, Windhoek / Namibia · 2017

Capturing people and places beyond the mainstream meridian, filmmaker Jordi from Barcelona knows the road less traveled like the back of his hand. From the eagle hunters in Mongolia to the San hunter-gatherers in Namibia, Jordi gets up close to film the everyday lives between the lines that our narratives of exoticism impose on ancestral and remote sub-worlds. His work is a bridge that lets us backtrack to the naturalistic ways we have become removed from, without making them seem strangely far away or misplaced in our day. Right now, Jordi is driving a car from his home in Berlin to Uganda via Western and Central Africa, documenting the lesser-known stories of African refugees on their harrowing journey towards Europe.

Akuna, East London / South Africa · 2016

Akuna is the latest and youngest arrival to Greensleeves Children’s Home in East London, South Africa, but she runs the show now. An angel whenever her every demand is met, Akuna’s tears burn like Napalm and she’s not afraid to use that weapon. Watch out, here she comes! Let’s not get on her bad side! I didn’t say anything.

Evalyn, Kitende / Uganda · 2017

Being a single mom is not easy. Neither is being raised by a single mom. Evalyn knows that because she was that child. With her Kampala-based nonprofit she helps others who go through the same to make their experience a little softer.

Aida & Ainam, Astana / Kazakhstan · 2018

Aida (right) and Ainam (left) are being silly. Very silly even, considering that one just laid out a serious business plan and the other detailed her high-profile job with a prestigious brand in Prague. Must have been the horsemeat. It did have a funny aftertaste to it, sure enough, albeit of a purely ethical flavor, and only in my Western mouth. Grandma was happy with it. Outside, a sub-b-b-b-b-zero snowstorm is going around the block in relentless circles.

Aniela, Montreal / Canada · 2016

“3:15: sitting on the couch,” reads Aniela’s latest journal entry, describing the moment before I take this shot. Absolutely nothing escapes the meticulous record because everything is worth remembering if you can’t remember. Aniela’s long-term memory is fine, so she can talk in great detail of how she moved from Germany to Montreal in 67 to work at the Expo and never left, and how she almost got killed in a severe car accident not long after that. But when Aniela woke from her coma, something had changed and never really changed back. Her husband Steve from Texas calls her lovingly “a little crazy” when he looks at the boxes of journals piling up in their downtown apartment. Aniela’s journal-journal is a sober, factual record, but other journals are filled with entire landscapes of her surrealist poetry. I hope one day she will allow the world to see it, because that world is missing out on something.

Namfom, Luang Prabang / Laos · 2015

Namfom is half Thai, half Lao, half fashion designer, half English student, but doesn’t pursue anything half-heartedly. That’s why she’s also an ace at her local bowling alley in Luang Prabang.

Elle & Vikki, Kudumbigala rock monastery / Sri Lanka · 2015

Elle is a Dutch model and Vikky a Singaporean business lady. Very different from head to toe and heart to mind, they might not share much more than their hotel room in Sri Lanka, but that’s enough sometimes. Travel makes unlikely friends likely. Elle had arrived to Arugam Bay by hitching a free Rikshaw ride halfway across the country (literally), while Vikky got there by I don’t remember. I met them at a restaurant one night, and another night we met with their neighbors Sanne and Bob (who would become a survivor of the Bataclan terrorist attack that same year) at another restaurant, and there was a guy who was an actual minesweeper (not an office drone sweeping MS Windows mines), and someone else with a less memorable occupation. It all seems like a dreamish haze now. As so many before and after them, the group went from strangers to friend-ish friends and back to strange-ish strangers, the way travelers so often do.

Robert, Salasaka / Ecuador · 2012

How do you start talking about someone whose every character trait, anecdote, and accomplishment would merit introducing them? Robert lived a lot of lives. He was never afraid to follow his own broken compass that never showed due north. He lived what he loved, and loved what he lived, and he loved a lot of things, and lived them fiercely. Robert who was too smart and restless to finish high school. Navy Robert. Robert the advertising genius. Robert the author. Robert the entrepreneur. Robert who was bankrupt three times but not once intimidated. Robert who drove an RV across the States. Robert who worked at a club and ended up on a Learjet to Vegas, borrowing swim shorts from a celebrity. Robert the father. Arizona Robert who lived in Mexico for 30 years. I met Robert in 2012 during his last life, when he was an 80-year-old philanthropist. He used his small pension fund to support a Montessori-style school in the Ecuadorian Andes, aimed at maintaining the local indigenous heritage, and built a nonprofit organization around it. Robert had arrived to Salasaka in his early seventies with nothing but a small suitcase and the expectation to stay for two weeks, but he never left. His last, arbitrary love was a place and occupation as likely or unlikely as any. Becoming an important member of the community and sharing his house with volunteers from all over the world, Robert inspired hundreds of lives with contagious enthusiasm, praised and unpraised generosity, and the rare combination of being a dreamer and a doer. Robert didn’t do what he didn’t want to do, and went his way undisturbed by the voices around him, unapologetic and unwavering. He would tell me: “If I wake up one morning and don’t want to do this anymore, I’ll do something else.” It was that commitment to himself that made him so great at everything he touched. It was never a statement, let alone a rebellion, against the status quo of well-defined pathways through careers and societal norms. Just somebody living the lives he willed. Robert used to say that he was just getting happier with every day he grew older, and if you were lucky enough to hear him sing his signature tune while cooking oatmeal in the morning – You Fill Up My Senses by John Denver – you knew it was true. Robert the American who is buried in Salasaka but lives on in small particles all over the world.

Rebecca, Casa del Arbol, Baños / Ecuador · 2012

The day I met Becca we had to improvise dinner and I think she liked our mashed potatoes with mustard (enough). What she doesn’t like is the color orange (I believe it has something to do with her home state Tennessee, but I can’t be sure) and she cringes at lambs because they have weird tails. As a solo traveler she has a proven track record of not staying solo for long, connecting with all the right people in all the right places to create memorable off-the-beaten track experiences – like working at the grassroots in an indigenous Andean community. Becca is an exceptional conversationalist, and her devotion to Christianity paired with an openness and curiosity for all things worldly, make her the perfect target to throw life’s bigger question marks at. In this photo she is very much being Becca, swinging over an abyss in front of an active volcano.

Muzi, Kamhlushwa / South Africa · 2017

Muzi is a student at Imagine Scholar, a unique community enrichment program in rural South Africa. Combining a calm-breeze demeanor with adolescent mischievousness, and friendly generosity with determined grit, Muzi isn’t made from off-the-rack cloth. He’ll take over from here: “I have a lot of aspirations and passions; before I started Imagine Scholar I told myself that I wanted to be a teacher and at some point a nature conservationist. But then, there was a year when Corey started a business club, which helped me a lot to realize my passion for business; since then I feel like I’ve grown a lot in my passion for it. That is why I am also aspiring to grow up and start a lot of businesses, so that I can build more orphanage homes, because that’s one of my dreams. I can tell you it was very hard to start a business. But, because I was passionate and still am, I was able to persevere as that is one of the character traits we learn at Imagine Scholar. There came a time when I was having financial troubles; but then I was able to stand and just push and here I am now – I own small businesses and hopefully I am going to own bigger ones in the future. I do not really have a life outside of Imagine Scholar, because I’m in grade 12 now (chuckles). So, if I’m not at Imagine Scholar, I’m at school and if I’m not at school, I’m at home. I use most of my time for studying. However, at some point, when I get time, I do go to church or play chess with my friends.

Helena, Mostar / Bosnia and Herzegovina · 2017

A refugee of the Bosnian war, Helena had to leave her home country, but it never left her. Throughout all those years in Finland, and the more recent chapter in Croatia’s Zagreb, she missed the heartiness that runs deep in Bosnian culture and people. And matters of the heart matter, more than others. That’s why Helena moved back. Leveraging the capital of her business background, she now runs a hostel with her friend Vecca who shares the same itinerary of displacement. The two women go way back and make the perfect match going forward with this endeavor – Helena lighting up the place with her mischievous ways, and Vecca holding it together and down-to-earth.

Chandra, Tamil Nadu / India · 2018

Chandra Ma’am gets up at 4am every morning to start her long days at the Chennai-based nonprofit AID India. Initially, she owed that rhythm to her newborn daughter’s sleep patterns. Her kid has long since given up the early mornings.

Niko, Lake Victoria / Uganda · 2017

Niko used to sleep in a tent in his parents’ garage. That came out wrong. Let me start over. Niko likes to ride bikes. Better. Now, how did he end up in the garage? Niko likes riding bikes so much that he rode one all the way from Austria to China. One and a half years on roads less traveled through the Stan-countries, Iran, deserts and mountains, are one and a half years of being out there, inside yourself, learning a new belonging. How do you put that in words back home? You don’t. But the walls of Nico’s tent were doused in all the stories he had confided in them, back when it was just them. So, when sleeping in a bed in a home got too weird, Nico pitched his tent in the garage, approximating his learned place of belonging. By now, Nico has harmonized the discrepancies of the worlds he encountered outside and inside. Here he is at Lake Victoria, on his way from Rwanda to Uganda – a quick six-weeks trip before going back to being one badass high school teacher.

Corey, Kamhlushwa / South Africa · 2017

Corey is the founder of an extraordinary community enrichment program in rural South Africa. I’ll let him do the talking: “I ended up in South Africa by happenstance. I met someone and they offered to send me here for three months and that became seven years now. I was living in an orphanage and met a kid who was just incredibly motivated and it lit a spark where I said: “this kid is doing everything right but nobody is working with him.” The initial challenge was mostly that I had no idea what I was doing. My background is in business and any time you come into a new industry there is a lot of learning, but I think that was also an advantage. I didn’t come in with all the answers, so there was much listening and we really built the program with the students. The first successes weren’t the huge things happening recently; it was just watching students start to believe in the concept and take ownership in the process. I think at Imagine Scholar everybody is going through the process together – all of the facilitators and students are growing. I have to challenge myself daily and that’s a big credit for the students. They are pushing themselves so hard, they are a reminder of what growth looks like. The progress of the students is very individual. We aren’t just a general curriculum; it really is 70 individual stories. The biggest growth, I would say though, is in taking ownership and agency in your life. It’s watching them say: “Here’s my goals, here’s what I have to do,” and then actually doing it. Imagine Scholar is a student-led program and I know that’s said a lot. But our students set the rules, decide how many classes they have, select the new students and that all works into Imagine Scholar’s long term vision. The biggest single difference is how much the students are invested. You know, this really is their program. We’re seven years in now; in three years our entire staff will be university graduates from the program.“

Family Portrait, Marseille / France · 2015

Since I started my slow and messy voyage around the world, it's been difficult to assemble a family portrait (not that we ever did before I left). Home hasn’t seen me in more than five years and our moments together are few and short. Fortunately, they visit me out here whenever they can. They know it's my love for the world that made me set out, but that it will be my love for them bringing me back around in the end. No matter how long the detour, I’ll always be homebound.