Censorship; or, Celebrity ____ likes to smoke ____!

Anthony Bourdain was in Tangier. That’s an interesting city, and from what I’ve seen of him, an interesting man, so I put my book away to listen. But in this boarding area in San Francisco International Airport, the speakers were well behind the TV, giving you the choice of either audio or video, you can’t eat your cake too.

Bourdain was eating couscous, not cake, but you get the idea.

I opted for visual, since Tangier’s...uglyprettyinteresting. He talked to young people, he talked to old people, he talked about Paul Bowles. Then he talked about hash. Or at least, that’s what the dimly heard audio whispered about, in sibilant syllables of illicit cannabis (the video avoided anything too overt). But it was the subtitles that caught my attention.

Subtitles always run a little behind, but they were doing a pretty good job. Until the hash. Then they paused. Froze. Stopped. AndAllOfASudden blasted through, the words regarding hash flying past, nearly too fast to read.

Hmm.

At another point in the episode, again mentioning hash, the same thing happened. A subtitle pause followed by a gushing. I think the same thing happened when he mentioned sexuality.

Was this CNN’s semi-censorship? They couldn’t block the topic completely, but they could muffle it, smother it, push it to the side. Or was it just coincidence?

Censorship.

I was on my way to Venezuela. What censorship would I (not) see there?

In my 4th of July post, I briefly mentioned USAID and its connection with the CIA, but thought it prudent not to expound at length on the issue, given that I was bound for a nation that many claim is the current site of a CIA-sponsored opposition movement intent on toppling the democratically elected government. So I self-censored, a little, the product of an environment and notoriety whose veracity I could not verify.

What would I be able to verify once I got there? Is the opposition movement authentically (there’s that word again) Venezuelan, or fostered from abroad? Would it be a propaganda download? Toe the party line? Toe the opposition party line? Any agenda forced on me?

And would I even be able to tell?

What does "authentic" mean? And pupusas!

I was still in love with El Cielito Lindo, but on my last day in Ataco I had to obey the part of my Traveler’s Creed that demands to try as many new things and places as possible, so when I found another pupuseria tucked into the porch/courtyard of a house on the other edge of town, I waited until their single table was free, then went in.

A typical pupuseria I went to in San
Salvador. The yellow bowl is curtido.

This place was a contrast to El Cielito. Instead of the solid wood furniture topped with a local burlap sack, they had the sort of one-piece plastic table-and-bench with a chipped yellow plastic top that you’d find in the bargain taqueria/burger/Chinese/kebab/noodle shop across from the bus station.

There was no menu, the large woman with the spatula just asked if I wanted cheese or pork, and the beverage options were coke or beer. She turned to the table opposite the grill, lifted a fly-speckled towel, and continued hacking apart a chicken for her family’s almuerzo. When she finished the bird, she reached down with shiny fingers and grabbed my coke.

An old dog slept under the grill, a toddler wandered around without pants on, and an older man was spreading grout with a trowel for the heavy paving stones stacked next to my table.

This place wouldn’t make it into the guidebooks.

But the people who’d been at the table before me were pure Salvadoreños, two men on their way home who leaned their well-worn machetes against the wall while they ate. Cielito had enough tables to accommodate an entire busload of visitors, while this place had one table next to the grill.

It was scrupulously clean (other than the salmonella) and without any detail or decoration that might smack of deliberate “Salvadoranness”. Suddenly the burlap tablecloths in El Cielito looked a tad contrived. Still local, still recycled/repurposed, and still aesthetically pleasing, but contrived.

“Authentic” is a problematic word. We all go looking for it, but what does it mean? The horchata I had at Cielito is a traditional drink of this area, specific to the region, and beloved of the populace...who normally drink coke.

So which drink is more “authentic”?

Hint: if the menu has "typical Salvadoran food" on it,
for $11 (when the table-groaning load of food in the
first pic was about $2.50) it's probably not authentic

Cielito’s ample menu of options was impressive, and spanned a variety of ingredients that are absolutely used every day by Salvadoran people...but most places offer the Big Three, only. Which is more authentic?

The good thing, the bad thing, the entertaining and eternally interesting thing, is that it’s up to every individual to decide, every individual time they do any individual act. One day, Cielito’s wide breadth of native ingredients might sing true, while the next, only a familiar three-option pupuseria will do.

Where would you like to eat tonight?

A beautiful little heaven. And pupusas!

A Beautiful Little Heaven… What could be better? How about when it has delicious food and drinks.

I spend a disturbingly large portion of my time abroad searching for my next meal. Maybe it’s a consequence of growing up in the bizarre food surplus of the Bay Area (quote from last night: “What, they’re closed? But it’s not even 10:30 yet, and I want gelato! Fine, let’s go to the 24-hour artisanal doughnut shop around the corner.”) or one too many dinners of squished granola bar dug out of the bottom of my bag, but when I find a good place to eat in a foreign town, it tends to anchor my mental map of the place.

So as far as I was concerned, El Cielito Lindo was the hub of Ataco, a small town of whitewash and vivid murals where women carried trays of fresh bread on their heads, in the highlands of El Salvador.

As in much of Latin America, much of the world really, lunch is the main meal in El Salvador, while breakfast and dinner are simpler and smaller. I know that’s healthier, and I know I need to adapt to the culture of the location, but...my day just doesn’t feel complete without a warm dinner. So when I walked the absurdly clean stone streets of Ataco and found the colorful pupuseria, I had to try it, even though it was a little late in the day, the sky already given over to violet and the last bars of birdsong.

The national food of El Salvador, pupusas are kind of a cornmeal pancake/tortilla filled with a variety of ingredients, the most common of which are cheese, refried beans, and shredded pork. They are similar to Colombia’s arepas, except while those use ordinary corn dough (and don’t always have filling), pupusas use nixtamal, which is cornmeal treated with an alkaline solution that helps peel the grains, accessing additional nutrients.

Not impressed yet? That process has been going on in this area for thousands of years. In Joya de Cerén, a village of the Pipil people that was buried by volcanic ash 2,000 years ago, they found the implements for making pupusas. Pompei didn’t have pupusas. I’m just saying.

No, it's not normal to have that many options.

I sat at a solid wood table covered with the burlap sack of a local coffee grower and looked up at Cielito’s menu. Cheese, beans, and pork may be the normal fillings, but Cielito doesn’t stop there. They had every permutation of the three classics, plus jalapeño, prawn, and three things I’d never heard of.

I ordered one each of the unknowns, plus an horchata.

I’ve been drinking horchata for over twenty years, and love the sweet flavor of vanilla and cinnamon, but that was not what arrived in a tall glass. Every horchata I’d ever seen was white, unsurprising since it was made from rice. But this? This was brown. And the flavor…

I am not good at identifying ingredients, comically bad in fact, but something in this drink’s ancestry made sweet love with brown sugar. There was none of the starchy smoothness of rice, instead a deeper, nuttier flavor, with a subtle current of something almost...fruity?

But just like (what I now think of as) “Mexican” horchata, this Salvadoran stuff hit the tongue with so much sweetness you thought you wouldn’t want more. But then a second later...gimme more!

Then the pupusas arrived. The matron of the place, Mauda, left her telenovela to bring me a plate of steaming nixtamal pupusas with queso de loroco, ayote, and papelío. I tried to wait until they wouldn’t burn my fingers, but couldn’t hold back.

Loroco is an edible flower, and the cheese made with it had a much stronger flavor than most of the savory white cheeses of Latin America. Kinda like a gamey feta? It made for an interesting change of pace.

Ayote is a type of squash similar to a pumpkin, and they use the whole plant: flowers, stems, and shoots in addition to the fruit. It was a fairly subtle flavor, which I prefered to the loroco.

My hands were full of food, not camera
 but this dude I met in Guatemala
could have been his brother.

Papelío. I had no idea what this was, and l’internet now informs me that it’s a type of butterfly. Odds I ate butterfly? Not good, I’m guessing it’s a more poetic naming, but I have no idea what it was. But it was, unsurprisingly, delicious.

The pupusas were, of course, served with curtido, the customary tangy cabbage slaw made with vinegar and chili peppers, that is lightly fermented. Pupusas steaming on the plate, horchata in hand, I was smiling when the youngster walked by, saw me, and stopped mid-sentence to stare at me, somehow shyly.

I wasn’t the first tourist he’d seen, not by a longshot, but there are still not so many of us there as to be boring, and he giggled when I made a face at him and winked.

Delicious pupusas burning my fingers, new drink cooling my tongue, telenovelas and animated conversations bouncing around my ears, beautiful Salvadoran town to explore, and now this little dude’s laughter to top it all off?

This is why I love travel.

How short (and long) a year can be.

It's hard to believe it was a year ago I was playing with pincers on my birthday. I'm curious to see what sort of day will start the next year...

Last year's beginning:
http://vagabondurges.com/2013/07/25/is-that-a-good-start-or-a-bad-one-jungle-birthday-part-2/

Welcome to my wayeb'

I think...and I’m not sure about this, it’s just a hunch...but I may be a Mayan. Or part, at least.

How can I be this old and not have my own Mayan
calendar pic? Thank you, shutterstock.

The Haab’ is the structure of the Maya calendar analogous to the modern year, but better. It has eighteen month-like periods, each with twenty days, then an extra period of five “nameless days” that belonged to no month to bring the year to 365. (They knew about that extra sliver of a day and noted it, but didn’t add leap years into their calendar.)

It’s those five nameless days, the Wayeb’, that interest me. They seem so...right. You spend the whole year working, trying, screwing up, learning, marking and forgetting birthdays, washing dishes, planting corn, taking care of the ak’wal and making sure they get to school on time, and then BAM!, you get drunk one night and the next morning you’ve already started the new year while you were sleeping.

Y’all Indo-Europeans are brutal, man. Wham, bam, thank you...year.

The old house, with dogs

I woke up this morning and realized that wham, bam, thank you Sam, I’ve already started a new era too. When I arrived in the Rockridge house, I assumed my departure from it would be to cross an ocean, not just to the other side of Oakland, but that home served as a place of transition from Vagabond to Traveler, and in its rooms I learned the difference.

Rockridge was a runway to touch down on, an immigration office where I could register to receive mail, and quarantine quarters where I could acclimatize to having a home. It was a place of new conversations with old friends, and foundations laid for new ones.

A house is more than a place to hang your hat...
but I have that too.

All that (and more) in just ten months for me, while for my roommate it was the setting for even greater evolution, not a runway but a home base, where careers and relationships flourished and expired as the years passed. A lot of living in that house, and then wham, one weekend we turned around and the rooms echoed, empty of the stuff that reflected the lives being lived there. Tumbleweeds of dog hair blew among the dunes of sandbag leakage, and a couple seconds clicked in the stillness.

Then bam, onward and outward; new environs, new situations, and change of address forms. With help from my brother, my lady, and my roommate friend, I moved. I woke in one house, and went to sleep in another. That don’t mean squat when it’s a hotel, but these places...they are more than that. They matter.

And my very first couch, under travel pics on the wall.

I needed a Wayeb’. Some sort of intermediary phase, that belongs to neither the era before nor the era to come, where all things abide in limbo, and you don’t have to wash your hair.

(The Mayans didn’t wash their hair during Wayeb’ as one of the defenses against the evil spirits who could easily escape the underworld during those five days, when the portals between realms were left open… But I’ll allow shampoo in my Wayeb’.)

Maybe that’s what the phase of possession accrual was. I arrived ten months ago with a backpack, and left with just a handful of boxes, so the first week of my new residency included trips to the hardware and discount stores, where I piled crappy carts full of mugs, shower curtains, and a kitchen clock to imitate the passage of time, in a room that will not echo.

I haven’t put the battery in yet… But I think it’s time. The Wayeb’ is over. Thank you to the old year, and welcome to the new one.

I think it’s going to be good.

Where I'm going tomorrow, and a Travel Tip to save 60% on airfare.

When this was taken in March, there were daily peaceful
protests, only a few remaining for violence afterwards
which was well (overly?) publicized by the media.

“Why would you want to go to Venezuela? Haven’t you heard how dangerous it is?” That’s the question asked by my friend, Nonspecific Character.

There are the reasons I listed a few posts back but one of the main ones I didn’t go into is that Venezuela is just...different. It’s a different model of government, a different model of society, a different history and a different present. And an unpredictable future, hinging on a crucial period right now.

I’m not going to get into my political views, because at this point, with regards to Venezuela, I’m trying not to have any. Preconceptions and prejudgments (ie prejudices) are blinders for the brain, mental cataracts. But I have another example of how Venezuela is just...different. And a Travel Tip, to boot.

Stunning Mount Roraima...which I will not see this trip.

Searching airfare to Venezuela from San Francisco gave me two initial options: nightmarish 35+ hour itineraries for about $2000, or a reasonable itinerary (11 hours) for about $3000.

Both of those are rubbish; I don’t want to pay twice as much for the flight as I did for the trip.

A bit more clicking, and I found roundtrip flights to Bogota or Panama City were under $700, then a second roundtrip from there to Caracas was $500. Result: by splitting the ticket I saved 60%.

Image searches for Venezuela give you a lot like this...

Why? Well...it’s hard to talk about Venezuela right now without getting political, but suffice to say, several airlines have pulled out of the country, though I can’t imagine that’s the whole story, since clearly the tickets are there; I found them, so why couldn’t the search sites?

That’s one of the more minor questions I’m taking with my to Venezuela, though it blends with a hundred similar queries to form a coalition asking “Why is Venezuela so...different?”

though I suspect most protests are more like this.

I’ll let you know if I find any answers. I leave tomorrow.

(I’ll try to have blogs posting every three days or so while I’m gone, as I did when in Cuba, but don’t expect to be online again until the last couple days of the month. Happy July!)

Weirdos in the woods....gotta love 'em.

From the files

What is it about redwood trees? “Tree hugger” used to be a term of mockery, perhaps still is in certain misguided areas, but anyone who spends enough time around redwood trees will see nothing silly in the idea of grabbing one for a good hug. I didn’t feel an urge to grab one at the moment, but was definitely feeling the love as I walked in among them on Saturday, the air almost as warm as my lady’s hand held in mine.

When I had told her I was going to be in Venezuela for my birthday, she’d scowled at me, then said “Fine, but I reserve the weekend before you leave!” So here we were, heading out for a picnic for two among the redwoods.

I didn’t appreciate the character of a redwood forest until I spent time in tropical rainforests. In the latter, you have to hack every footstep through biting ants and slicing vines. It’s a different form of beauty, still stunning, but the dense undergrowth pushes in on you as aggressively as the traffic of the city, Bangkok, Bhaktapur, Bogota, and every breath pushes in and out of you with the urgency of competition.

Peace signs and prayer flags?
Yeah, redwood have that effect on people. (file)

But in a redwood forest? The ground between the trees is shaded by the benevolent canopy above, and the earth is soft with duff and dust, clover and moss. Nothing in the undergrowth wants to bite you or bleed you. You can see the swells of the landscape, the architectural foundation for the cathedral of trees rising above, and the air is amiable and easy. You’ve found a sanctuary, everything is happy you came, and the greens soak rejuvenation into your soul.

We meandered into the trees, avoided a cluster of tables decorated with princess party paraphernalia, then swung again around a cluster of trees where a family seemed to be ducking down among the sprouts. People are weird. But I assumed they had a reason, probably letting some kid pee or something, so I nodded vaguely without looking closely in a polite gesture to say “I see you there, being weird, but that's okay, carry on.”

Then we came around the tree and the people stood up and approached us. Was this going to be a problem? Hadn't they seen my nod of live-and-let-weirdos-live?

Then I noticed something else: I knew these people. All of them. Childhood friends and new ones, a brother a sister a newly-met cousin, my parents for god's sake. All smiling, all wearing goofy glasses and tiara's saying “Happy Birthday!” with silver sparkles.

Oh.

No time for photos, I grabbed two on my way back
from the bathroom, and went back to the party

Oh my.

Surprise party? For me? In the redwoods?

...speechless...

I confessed in a previous post that I’m not always comfortable with accepting love, but here was a group of people from various avenues of my life, making sure I knew they’d come for me. It… I…

I appreciate it. I felt it. I accepted it.

“Happy birthday!” they said, and meant it. “Were you really surprised? But you looked right at me....and nodded!”

“I thought you were peeing!”

Veggie burgers and tri-tip on the grill, delicious homebrew beer, card games, football flying, dogs wagging their tails, humans telling their tales, and family, friends, and loved ones all spent a few hours among the trees.

Wherever I am in Venezuela on the formal date of my birthday, I'll be able to smile at the gift I was already given, a little pocket of redwood tree time of love and friendship that weighs nothing, but anchors me anyway.

Good birthday.

6 Ways to be Better at my Secret Aspiration

Want to know a secret? I’d love to try being a tour guide. Sssh! Don’t tell!

My prior experience with tour guides was when they would glower at me, suspecting me of eavesdropping on their spiel about the Coliseum/temple/painting, or of being poised to purloin the pockets, purses, and possessions of their flock. As fun as it is to play Spy, I’d politely move away.

But that role, stockpiling information about a place, managing the distracted peregrinations of a population, and hopefully, somehow enhancing their travel experience? That looked...worthwhile. Challenging. Fun.

Had to dig deep into the files for this one.

I’ve fallen into something similar a couple times in the past, most memorably in Morocco, when I made travel arrangements for a dozen British university students who wanted to come with me into the Sahara, but didn’t know how to go about it.

Maybe it’s my WASPy, Victorian English-American upbringing, that yearns for connection but doesn’t always know how to get there, but I enjoy the finite closeness of a group of people bonded to me by some external factor. When I was a property manager, I felt I was just the right level of friends with most of my tenants, and in that accidental guide position, I felt a similar ease; these people needed me for something, which I was able to provide, and if they happened to like me..? .That’s what I call job satisfaction

Mint tea within sight of
the Algerian border

As the sun set into the Saharan dunes where laughing Liverpudlians sand-boarded, I took satisfaction in their shouts, and the words of thanks when we parted ways in Marrakech were even sweeter than the mint tea.

Cuba was the first time I've been in a formal flock, and our shepherd was an encyclopedia with legs and a fedora named Joel. I periodically pulled my attention from the sights, tastes, culture and culos of Cuba to watch how he did it.

For example, when we found ourselves with an extra hour, Jeff, Joel’s US counterpart, suggested an old cemetery on the edge of town. “No problem” said Joel, “I know the place, let's go.”

Inside the grand arch

Moments after walking under the grand arch, Jeff got a dubious look on his face. “This isn't the place I meant.” With no time to head to the other cemetery, what do we do? Get back on the bus in defeat?

“This cemetery is veerrry important” Joel assured us, and started the tour. Cuban leaders, businessmen, and landowners occupied places of honor near the entrance...and when Joel saw our eyes glazing over at the unfamiliar names, he moved right along.

“That big monument there, those are troops who died in South Africa fighting against....how do you say 'apartheid' in English?” We all nodded, murmuring “I had no idea Cubans fought against apartheid” and soberly read the names.

“Joel, what's the deal with these tiny tombstones?”

“In Cuba, people are usually buried, but after a couple years, when most of the body is gone, the bones are removed and cremated, and these are placed on the family tomb. Why? Because there is just not enough space for everybody.”

Direct sun turned markers into pizza stones, but under the pines and palms the air had the dry warmth that feels like falling asleep on an old book on an August afternoon. It's a comfortable feeling...a sleepy feeling...

“Did I ever tell you about the two lifelong friends?” Joel asked as our steps started to slog. “They were friends from childhood, playing baseball in the street of their barrio. As they got older, they made a deal: whoever died first would come back to tell the other one what heaven was like.

“So one day, one of them, he died. The other was very sad, he missed his friend, but that night, you know what? His friend came back to tell him about heaven. 'What is it like?' he asked him.

“'Well, I have good news, and bad news. The good news is we have baseball!' The living friend was very happy to hear this, because being Cuban, he loved baseball. 'And the bad news?'

'You're the starting pitcher in tomorrow's game.'”

We all groaned (as you do with jokes) and shook our heads, conveniently knocking some of the sleep out, and Joel’s tour moved on.

That hour Joel demonstrated six only slightly demanding rules:

1. Know every possible destination for every possible city, and how to get there.

2. Be able to talk up a location's importance.

3. Adapt instantly and effectively.

4. If using another language, have 99.9% of your lexicon listo, only words like “apartheid” get a pass.

5. Have the answer to every question.

6. Keep an awful joke on hand to make people groan themselves awake.

That's six, anything else I need to know before you'd take my tour?

What good or bad guides have you had?

(For a great story of the latter, check out this story from Iran on the wonderful Where To Next? blog.)

I'll salute that.

Flags...confound me. To the soldier (so we’re told) they are salvation, home, the reason to put their life at risk. To politicians they are backdrops for photo ops. To fans they’re a way of identifying your tribe (good run this year, US World Cup Team).

That aversion to the flag means I have no pics of my own,
so here's this Bad Boy of Epic Awesomeness of l'web.

But they’re also the war banners of intolerance, selfishness, and a flagrant lack of compassion. Sometimes. Not all that often, but sometimes. I met a fellow who told me that the US, Israel, and brutal dictatorships are the only places you see a lot of flags, and numerous heads in hostels nodded in agreement that when they see people waving their country’s flag, it makes them nervous, suspicious of the waver.

I opted not to follow Cubanas around
photographing their posteriors, but this
gives the general idea, pobrecita flakita
that she is. Needs more ropa vieja.

In Cuba, the US flag is currently in fashion: red and white stripes with a blue and starry patch wrap over curvy Cuban culos on stretch pants that make Lululemon look like burkas.

That was certainly an eye-grabbing example, but the iconic motif shows up on shirts, belts, and backpacks all over the world. Why? I’m not going to try to explain what America means to people (but I guarantee any popularity we enjoy has nothing to do with past presidents or policies, despite how many places overseas are named after Kennedy). But I’ll tell you when I feel patriotic.

When I look out the window of a bus rumbling down some cracked highway overseas, or step down into a squawking market, or walk through a dusty town, and see, down there in the corner of a plywood sign, my country’s flag as a sponsor for a library, school, or medical clinic. That’s when I feel like saluting. It may be less than 1% of the annual US budget, but the $36 billion that we give to foreign aid can do a lot of good. (Statistics from the YouGov survey I filled out yesterday.)

USAID's $300 million power plant in Afghanistan, whose
imported diesel fuel makes the electricity unaffordable.

Of course, there are plenty of problems with US foreign aid. In particular, USAID has been (in my opinion) corrupted/tarnished by “national security” influences and our misguided attempts at nation-building. This has not only wasted massive amounts of money in futile projects, but has exposed workers to violence, and the country as a whole to suspicion and distrust. It is my hope that going forward, we can return US foreign aid to helping alleviate poverty and suffering, without any relation to/with the Department of Defense.

Call me a cynic, but I’d say the Department of Defense has no soul; that’s not what it was created for. Similarly, and tragically, our politicians seem to have misplaced theirs as well, so where is the heart of America? Same as in any country, the heart is the people.

The American People? Reality TV, styrofoam coolers, and 32 ounce sodas? No, we’re much more than that. Here’s how the most recent report from The World Giving Index begins:

“The United States has reclaimed first place in the World Giving Index

In 2012, proportionally more Americans gave in some way than in any other country. The United States has therefore risen again to first place in the rankings, a position it has traded with Australia since the World Giving Index was first published in 2010. The key reason for this rise is that a higher proportion of Americans helped a stranger than any other country in the world in 2012.”

Full report here: https://www.cafonline.org/PDF/WorldGivingIndex2013_1374AWEB.pdf

Now that is something I can stand up and salute. Happy 4th of July, America.