I mean, what would it take for you to leave paradise when your next hotel is reserved and your flight out is booked and...?
I was sitting there in Belize, and I had entered complete survival mode.
Naturally I started my solo adventure in a small town far to the north that tourists rarely visit. After a bus ride that took two hours longer than expected, and a customs line that was similarly delayed, I got to my hotel at 9pm and there was no one to let me in. My throat was almost swollen shut again after my fourteen-hours travel day or taxi, plane, plane, taxi, bus, walk, and our mountain climbing in Peru. And of course I was going on maybe four hours of sleep, because we never budgeted time for sleep in Peru. I stood there rattling the locked front gate, pushing on the entrance buzzer with increasing desperation and exhaustion. Looking ahead, the lights were off in reception. And there was a sign that said "Closed" and another that said "No Vacancy." Right day, right? Right hotel, right?
As I'm trying to recount my steps from the bus stop and make my best guess of where I could find a place to sleep, another guest lets me in the main gate. Soon, I am shamelessly knocking on every door I can find. The other guests don't know where the owners are. They don't have a number besides the one for reception. Also, their Spanish is very fast and it's a new accent for me, and I'm just standing there, mere feet away from a bed that was meant for me but which I can't quite get to. They don't have the wifi password (which makes sense because according to my phone, there is no wifi). I look around at the darkness. Fucked. Once again, I debate walking back the way I came to find another hotel. But I hadn't seen any. Not a tourist town. I take another look around.
There is one hotel room door with no lights on. I go up the stairs to it, and I pause. I turn the door knob. I am nearly paralyzed as the door opens. I tip-toe in, uncertain if I'm walking in on a sleeping person.
It is empty, and I sigh, because, I have a place for the night. But the sigh catches in my throat.
The place is dingy as all hell. I mean, ok, the wifi doesn't work in my room at all. There is no AC. The green floor tiles were maybe once aqua and are all worn away at every corner and edge and the grout is brown and either sticky or dusty, depending on where you look. The yellow tiles in the shower have a grey film from years of other people's feet, and the fan is really the only object I have decided to make friends with, because the bed feels like it's stabbing me no matter how gently I sit on it. I want to be hardcore, but really I want to cry. Then I encourage myself to do so, because it seems appropriate. I can't manage such an exertion however.
I curl up on top of the lumps, with the fan pointed at my stomach and I wait for morning.
When the second day hits, I tip toe out of my room to find the owner... "Do you work here?" I ask the first man I see. Then a fat, shirtless, barefoot Dane, scratching his stomach walks in from the kitchen. "I waited up so late for you!" he exclaims. (I learn later that this means 8pm). "As long as you're safe. That's the important thing," he says, writing in his check-in book. "I just let myself in," I say quietly. It takes me hours to process that this man could have left me a note or something...
The fact that breakfast doesn't sit well isn't really news at this point. I mean, I'd eaten crackers for dinner. I get wifi access and respond to all of the messages asking if I'd made it. My throat is swollen half-shut now. An improvement! I'd spent the night, startling at every noise, because I'd discovered my dead bolt only worked if the door opened in the opposite direction that it actually opens. And since I already had cramps, and discovered Peruvian tampons cost approximately one full American dollar apiece, I had long-since resigned myself to some level of discomfort in the jungle heat.
So, I decided to go walking. I'm by the other ocean. Lima then Corozal. What a thing, huh? But I walk out the hotel gate with some trepidation since I couldn't even walk past the police station without getting hit on the night before. "Good evening miss." (I naively think it's reasonable and safe, because, surely, well, they are the police, after all, standing out in front of the station). "Good evening." And then they all start like a chorus of bloated bull frogs belching out "hey baby's" and "nice night in Belize, huh?" as I hurry past, chastened. Stupid. They are men. They are not here for your safety or comfort. They are here for theirs.
I tell myself daylight might be better. But somewhere between the man driving the beat up jalopy yelling out the window that he's a taxi driver and that he can give me a ride, and the group of men chortling in the street as I walk past --"welcome to Belize" one shouts and they titter like school girls, not realizing I understand their Spanish too-- I realize, once again, I am only telling myself lies about daylight being better or cops being on duty because actually, I am desperately terrified of the entire situation. And probably should be. Because only one of these guys has to not be harmless for it to all go to shit. They can see that I'm alone.
I ask myself if I sound paranoid. I confirm that I do. I angrily imagine how it feels to be a man traveling alone.
So when lunch doesn't sit well either, I mean, I don't even know anymore. I just think I'm hot. And tired. And scared. And in a shitty hotel, in a shitty situation.
When I feel ill just looking at dinner and realize I can't eat a bite of it, I realize perhaps this is not because of my period or climbing mountains on no sleep, or the pit in my stomach as I walk past men who have become viney with their years of drug use. Perhaps I am actually sick.
The next morning I am dizzy when I sit up. I am covered in sweat. But again. This is Belize. It is summer. Be reasonable. After I shower in ice water and am sitting in a towel a foot in front of the fan and realize I am covered in a sheen of sweat again within seconds, I consider the very real possibility that I actually have a fever. I spend the next two hours packing up my tiny backpack. Two objects at a time. A shirt and a sock. Good job. Resting in between sets. Cheering myself on.
Soon I manage to make it downstairs. I find out a taxi will cost $35 more than the bus to my next town. I weigh this. It is hard to make decisions because I realize my brain only talks in fuzziness now. My tank top and skirt are soaked all over again as I teeter on the edge of a moldy easy chair. I finally tell the owner yes, please, I would like a taxi. But the first one doesn't come. I've waited an hour, and he calls another. My stomach churns. I teeter. My sheen begins to drip. I wait.
The man picks me up, charges me $10 more than the first guy would have, but I am too tired to argue. And anyway, the first guy didn't show up. On the way, he picks up a toothless friend who shuffles into the front seat of the car. "This is my friend," he says. "He is a teacher." And we all three ride together, as I wait to discover why his friend who is a teacher is just riding along to Orange Walk or if he's going somewhere too. They speak to each other in Spanish. And then soon we are all staring out the windows with the wind coming in. I am so relieved. I have taken my first dose of antibiotics, at a loss for what else I can do, and I have not gotten sick in the car.
When I arrive, I am three hours before check-in and the room won't be ready for an hour. I thank all things holy for a reception desk that is open and has air conditioning. They tell me places to go to lunch. I casually ask if they have a restroom before heading out into the street to kill an hour. Then I trundle along, dizzily telling myself to watch my feet so I don't fall. I tell myself an hour will pass in no time. I tell myself my room will have AC. I gag at the stagnant water in the open sewers by the road, and wipe away the sheen on my forehead. I find a grocery store, and load up on water and orange juice. I force myself down the food aisle. I make myself read the labels. I make myself buy crackers even as the pictures of chocolate and fruits on plastic wrappers makes my stomach grumble angrily. I have eaten two meals across three days. I know there is a good chance I won't make it out again for dinner.
After the store, I slowly work my way back around another block so I am passing different men on the street. I wouldn't want the first ones to notice me coming back like I have no where to be. No, I throw them off by walking in a wide arc, so they don't see my return. Again, I ask myself if I sound paranoid. I confirm that I do, as I mentally count the closeness of the steps of the man I know is behind me and try to measure if he is quickening his pace.
Of course, the whole situation is set up to make me feel like the crazy person, when actually, the fact that I don't feel safe is only the most natural thing to be expected, considering. I can only imagine I look like the sickly deer at the edge of the herd, given my solitude and my shaky steps and the unhealthy pallor underneath my wet skin. But I still have thirty minutes. I've already tried the one restaurant they hotel said was good. It is supposed to open at eleven, but it is just a mess of metal gates like at the mall, shut down with a little bit of pink wall peeking out. And anyway, I'm not sure I can handle the smell of food. I find a spot on the grass between the restaurant and the river, on a hill, so the people in the street can't see me and the people in the river maybe can't either. It is the one place no one talks to me. No one catcalls to me. I can almost relax into the prickly grass.
I play a game where I see if there are actually things crawling on me where it feels like there are. Sometimes it is a beetle.
When I finally get into my room, I sleep for four hours solid. I discover my wifi doesn't work well in my room here either. I realize I need to make some kind of plan. The air conditioner is my salvation, in theory, but since I remain covered in sweat regardless of the temperature, I also curse it, because I am feverish and shivering all at once.
I have been on worse trips. By far.
I mean, I am just sick. And it will pass.
But the sick is also the sickness in my stomach at how hard it is to walk down the street. At how much I have to pay attention to whether or not I am being followed, and for how long, and how close I am to my destination. My fear is about ending up in another budget hotel where the owner just decides to go home early while I wander around the streets of a strange town at night. Perhaps an adventure to someone who feels safe. Why not sleep in a park by the ocean? Wouldn't that be nice?
I want to feel like a fucking adventurer. I want to roam and explore and I hate Lewis and Clark and everyone else who got to go see new things and not feel like this. I hate every man who explored the world long enough to build a road just for other men to walk on and women to be watched on. And I hate Jack Kerouac. Because I am trying to just see things that have already been seen, and I can't go anywhere without being harassed and followed. It was like the first time someone told me that Lewis & Clark took Sacajawea along for sex as much as for being a guide, and my heart sank into my stomach and I said "oh," because that was the new price of admission to this great wide earth that was owned by white men now. It didn't make any sense to me. It was too horrible to imagine. "But what if she didn't want to have sex with them?" the question died on my lips, already, at ten. I still wanted to look up to her, desperately, but, it is so hard to idolize the used.
I could have stayed. I could have stuck it out. But I couldn't think of a good reason. Except to say I wasn't wussy or hadn't given up or something. To prove to someone or myself that I could survivalist my way through. To seem like all the other women who do this and either are naive and unaware of of what is happening around them or pretend that they don't notice? But that would have been letting the whole damn patriarchy win in a way too. I could be just one more woman who goes abroad and talks about the eating and praying and loving she did, and doesn't mention the cold terror in her gut as she stumbles alone through a street at night, eyes at her feet, desperate to get home in one piece in what she thought was supposed to be a safe town.
Safe for whom?
I'm not afraid because I'm paranoid. I'm afraid because I am justifiably paranoid. Because I have traveled alone, and I know that catcalls are sometimes but not always harmless. And being followed is sometimes but not always harmless. And no amount of cutting my hair or not wearing revealing clothes protects me. I can't stop being a woman. And that is my constant liability.
***Can I say here too, that in addition to my frustration of how infrequently real women talk about the real difficulties in traveling alone (and not in a 'we're victims and let's all stay home and be safe' way), how telling it is that almost everyone who asks me about this trip assumes I am going with a man I am romantically involved with? This is how it goes: "Who are you traveling with?" "Oh, some people I don't know super well." "Yeah, yeah?" *wink, wink* elbow, elbow. "Who is he?"
It's sort of like I can't win. Because, if I go with a group of people, for safety in numbers, then I have male escorts. And if I go alone, it's like a game of hot lava, where night time and deserted streets and men could all burn me up. Game over. Except. Not a game.
Why isn't there space for "woman adventurer finds way to see world in a way that feels safe-ish to her and this is what it looks like"?
Ok, there is space. I just made it. BAM.***
So, I went home early. The trip was for me, and it stopped being for me, and it was because of Peru, not Belize that I left.
You see, I got sick in Peru too. Most of us did. The altitude and the cold and our collective failure to budget time for sleep in between climbing mountains. But the bloody noses and the shivering didn't matter. Peru was like crack for my soul. Not because I fell in love with the country or the food or anything else. But because in Peru I felt normal.
It was like everything from the last two years didn't matter anymore. It was like I was seven again. It was like I could breathe in the diesel-fumed air of Cusco and it filled my stomach with a sense of possibility.
It wasn't where I was. It was how I was.
And I am utterly without explanation for how or why it happened. I just knew in January that I needed to travel and then several trips later, I was in Peru and it was like a switch flipped, except I had no idea such a switch existed.
And then I was in Belize, and I was lying there in an uncomfortable bed sweating my brains out, delirious and dizzy and frightened, and I knew it wasn't like Peru. And I asked myself why I was there and what was the goal of traveling. And all I knew was that I wanted to do whatever I could to feel how I felt in Peru again. So I asked myself what one thing I could be excited about. And it was going home.
So I did that.
I've probably never been prouder of myself. Because in a really weird way, it was such an awesome, radical thing to do for me. To go home. Who leaves paradise for Wisconsin? Who does that?
Me.
And of course there were important practical implications, like getting immediate medical help and having a place to sleep where I felt safe, and having Bandit again, and being able to find an apartment to live in. Ok fine.
But the whole story is actually about Peru. Because who cares if I got sick in Belize and if the men were aggressive? That happens everywhere. What matters is that I had a new beginning and I wasn't ready to let it go. So I left survival mode, and set myself up to begin again.
And now Mexico starts.
So, Namaste.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment