Moms

I have two mothers.  Two mothers, one sister, one female dog and one female cat.  There’s a lot of estrogen and that’s the way I like it.  I never really noticed that I grew up in a “nontraditional” family.  It was never a thing.  My parents were proud but not loud.  Generally. 

I grew up in Brooklyn.  Coney Island then Park Slope then Red Hook.  These days, Brooklyn is almost oppressively liberal.  If you’re not seeing through rainbow glasses you are shunned as close minded and obsolete and worst of all, unhip.  As it should be.  But growing up in the nineties, there were still a few kinks to be worked out.

My kindergarten teacher in P.S. 321 was Trudy.  Trudy had a beehive grey haircut and smoked like a chimney.  She liked yelling at us and telling us the raunchy parts of Greek mythology.  I was 4.  We had to share a picture of our family.  I drew one with three cats, one curly haired mommy and one blonde mommy. 

“Where’s your dad?” She rasped.

“I don’t have a daddy, I have two mommies.”

“That’s impossible. You’re a liar.”

I went home and told my two lesbian mothers.

They came in the next day, in their nineties high rise jeans and cowboy boots, and went straight up to Trudy in the middle of the classroom. 

“Hi.  We’re Chelsea’s moms. She has no dad.  Don’t ever fucking call her a liar again.”

Generally not loud.

In the 6^th grade I learned how to make the genetic predictor tool: Punnett squares.  My mother has blue eyes, I was told my sperm donor had blue eyes, and I have brown eyes.  I worked and reworked my Punnett squares.  This can’t be right, could it?  Two blue eyes and a brown eyed child?

I AM A MEDICAL MIRACLE.

I went home and told my mom.

“Eh, maybe he had brown eyes.  I don’t really remember.  But I know he was a doctor.”

Growing up with two moms was never a thing because they never made it a thing.  But being a doctor was a thing.  Is still a thing even though I’m not a doctor.

“Chel, I have this rash.  Take a look at it and tell me what to do.  You’re the doctor.”

My mom gets naked.

“Ma, the rash is on your arm, why are you naked?!  Also, I’m not a doctor.”

It’s cool, I can be their daughter who is a doctor in Africa.  As long as I keep getting hip points for having lesbian mothers.

You’re a queer, Sudanese refugee who speaks 5 languages and has her own urban garden?

I have two mommies.

BOOYA.

Climbing Luwazi Rock

I carried a Jansport with my sleeping bag, tent and climbing gear dangling from the bag with carabineers, one arm supporting a grocery bag with beans and booze, and the other a gallon of water and a large saucepan on my head.

I hiked with 9 other people knee deep through rice paddies, through the weedy farmland and up onto Luwazi Rock.  The famous Ugandan rock is higher than anything else around it for as far as the eye can see.  The sides are scraggly and jut out into deliciously shady and climbable overhangs.  The top is smooth and clear except for the few collected raindrop puddles.  I’m with a group called the Mountain Climbing Club of Uganda: young, fit, stupidly attractive men and women from all over the world.

The sun was scorching and slapped me silly.  We pitched our tents toward the center of the rock—so as not to roll off in the middle of the night.  With nothing to directly stake the tents, we piled our bags into them and hoped they wouldn’t fly away.

After a few bites from a hunk of cheese and loaf of bread (when I’m camping, the only thing that satisfies me is to eat like a peasant), we set up our climb.  Those more experienced, knotted the ropes around the bolts in the rock.  I leaned over and tested my bravery.  I put on my harness, grabbed the rope, and literally stepped off the cliff, repelling down.  So. Much. Fun.  Once down, the point was to climb back up.  Village kids came to watch us and think “only white people.”

I love rock climbing.  It’s adrenaline inducing.  It’s a riddle to try to figure out where to place your weight, your foot, your hand.  At the bottom of the rock all the beautiful people are cheering you on, then at the top they get bored, and you’re alone with your heartbeat and the sun. 

I climbed up a few times but couldn’t climb up the hard one.  “The Crack.”  Kept swinging off the rock when I jumped to reach this one grip.  I’m going to go back and I’m going to climb it.  Might need to beef up a bit first though.

We climbed until the sun set.  We set up a big roaring bonfire and I cooked my signature: beans and bacon stirred with an oversized spoon in an oversized pot directly nestled in the fire.  We drank whiskey and beer.  The kids stole our speakers so we had to dance to the frog croaks.  I snuck away to quiet spot of the mountain, laid out my sleeping bag on the rock, under the stars, and fell asleep.

At 3am I awoke to a crack of thunder.  All the late night dancers peeled themselves from the rock around the fire and ran to find shelter in the tents.  There were far more tents than people so we crammed in.  The sky was dark green.  I picked up some friends who were too drunk to make it into a tent.  I was afraid they would walk right off the cliff in the night.

“Come with me!” I screamed in way of nurse during wartime battle.

The thunder got louder and the people in my tent started to count the thunder from the lightning. 

“It’s getting closer,” said my German friend in a doomsday voice.

Should we pack the tent and run off the rock?  We were in structures with metal poles, on the top of a rock, in a lightning storm. 

But I was too tired.   Eh, if I die, I die, but at least I’ll be well rested.

We woke up at 6am.  I hadn’t been drinking heavily the night before and was too chipper for some people’s liking.  I’M ALIVE!!  I made some bonfire coffee, my fave, and went to a secluded part of the rock to look out on the villages’ own fires starting up and dotting the green farms far below us.

We spent another day climbing on the cooled down rock.  On the way home we stopped at a village to share a warm beer from a bar without power.

Death

One of my supervisors in the field was using a car with a driver to go into the field to help collect data for our study.  The driver hit a boda (motorcycle) that had a mother and her two children on the back.  4 people on one motorcycle.  The mother died and one of her children is in critical condition.  Our supervisor is a physician and she stayed with the family in the hospital for days.  I feel sick.

Travel tips for solo female travelers

I have been traveling alone since I was 19.  I love it.  I feel it’s the best way to actually see and experience where you are.  That being said, being a solo female traveler can be risky and tricky.  I’d like to share a few tips that I’ve learned over the years:

1)      Carry a roll of toilet paper.  Because drip drying is the worst.

2)      Bring a fake wedding ring.  This is a really god trick to avoid unnecessary attention.  I usually just switch over my thumb ring I always wear.

3)      Be compact and sensible.  Don’t carry a big sloppy purse.  Carry a little messenger bag that latches, an organized wallet, a watch, minimal jewelry, shoes you can run in, hair pulled out of your face.

4)      Always wear a scarf.  The perfect lady companion.  To cover your head if in a mosque, to cough into, to dry your hands, to cover your boobies, to crumple up into a pillow.

5)      Don’t give away money.  The kids are cute.  And they have no arms.  And that’s sad.  But don’t give away money.  The act of taking out your wallet in public is always a bad idea.  Even if the kids are harmless, look at the periphery, they are often being watched and so are you.

6)      If you are taking public transportation and you are in a car with only men, get out and switch transportation.

7)      Don’t hook up when you’re traveling.  You don’t want to be in that kind of vulnerable position and you don’t know what kind of creepy crawlies he/she has. Thas nasty.

8)      Protect yourself physically.  Mace, alarm, self-defense.  Personally I’m afraid to carry mace or a knife because knowing me I’d fuck it up and spray myself.  But I do carry a rape alarm with me at all times and in my hands when in a scary situation and I plan on taking a self defense course.

9)      Don’t drink past tipsy, don’t do any drugs.  Watch your drinks and always have enough cash for a lengthy cab ride home.

10)   Ask for help.  It’s ok to rely on the kindness of strangers.  I think it’s inevitable.  But don’t be simpering.  Power stance, clear voice, directive.  Always be gracious.

11)   Don’t pack a bag too big for you to carry.  Even if that means you have to buff up a bit for travel.  I have actually done this for this reason.

12)   Mosquito repellent, wet wipes, sunscreen, fluconazole. 

13)   Always let someone know where you are at all times.  Email your itinerary, give numbers of your friends.  I called my parents before following a new friend into the red light district in Bangkok.  They had his phone number, place of work, and his medical history.   

14)   It’s ok to be pushy.  Don’t be worried about people perceiving you as a bitch.  Fuck them.  It’s ok to speak up and push back for what you want, especially if you feel uncomfortable.  Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for putting them out.  Guilt is a wasted emotion and often acts as permission for unwanted situations.

15)   It’s ok to be nice.  Be friendly, be polite, be kind, make friends.  Just because you’re cautious doesn’t mean you have to be cut off.  That being said, men, just because woman is nice to you doesn’t mean she wants to sleep with you/give you a green card.  Doesn’t mean you can follow her and doesn’t mean she owes you a phone number/email/Facebook.

Enjoy. Write. Take pictures.  Try everything.  Open your eyes, mind and heart. You’re going to end up taking shelter in a hut with five men, one armed with a rifle, no cell reception, in the middle of nowhere.  This is not a controlled environment.  It’s probably the farthest thing from it.  This is the adventure.  This is living.  Scary shit happens, gender based and otherwise, so protect yourself where you can.  And then just wing it.  It also helps to have a family who would cross the world to cut someone for messing with you. 

I’d rather be out here than in there, wouldn’t you?

The Volcano

I ate a breakfast of fir fir: Injera from the night before, tossed in spices and a sauce, then eaten with more Injera with Injera.  With injera with injera. 

We drove deep into the desert and the sand became black lava rocks.  For 3 hours we bumped and drove our way over huge lava rocks.  My neck couldn’t move by the end of it.  I became very close with my German carmates.  Then we stopped at a herd of camels.  Got out, loaded our sleeping bags and water onto the camels and ate dinner on the rocks until the stars came out.  Then we put on our flashlights, and walked the rest of the 3 hours up to the volcano.  The stars were brilliant and even though I was stumbling over the big rocks, I was still able to look up and appreciate the expanse.  As we got closer to the volcano, the rocks became glasslike and shattered beneath our feet.   We started to smell sulfur and could see the glowing red get bigger and the heat get stronger. 

I got to the top.  I looked over into the big circle of fire.  Magma was bubbling up through the black layer of cooled lava floating on the top.  The magma exploded up and splashed the sides like a Jackson Pollock painting.  And I thought “Oh my god.”  Over and over.  Like a mantra.  “Oh my god.”  It was pulsing and scary and comforting.  I am the goddess of fire and light.  I couldn’t turn away, it was too powerful.  I stayed staring into the pit for at once 2 minutes and 3 hours.  We threw water bottles into the crater to watch them catch fire and sink into the lava.

I am the goddess of fire and light

At 1am, we grabbed our sleeping bags off the camels and laid them far enough away from the volcano so that the sulfur smoke didn’t kill us but close enough so we could still hear the volcano bubbling and crashing.  Like an ocean’s lapping in hell.  I woke up at 5 am, sooty, hair standing up on its own accord held together by dirt, ash and sand, and went to the volcano again.  A few people already had that idea and were there when I got there.  I spent 1 more precious hour with the volcano before hiking again, driving again, taking a plane again, and preparing to leave the country the next morning.  I slept in a plush bed but didn't, have never, slept as deeply as I had next to the living volcano.

Volcano at 6am

Sulfur Lakes

I woke up a little sandy, drank coffee out of a plastic cup, had a quick wet wipe wash, and jumped into our jeep again for another day of salt seeing.  Our cars passed desert, got to the salt lake, AND KEPT GOING.  INTO THE WATER.  It was amazing.  I kept being scared that we would break through the crackly salt beneath us.  Then this guy did.  We had to get onto the back of the truck and jump around until our weight lifted the front end out of the cracked salt.

We parked our cars at the salt mountains.  Pillars of salt and rock reflected off the salty water beneath it.  The pillars looked like gnarled humans looking back to watch their city burn.  Or something.  There were twisty caves beneath the pillars but were flooded and we were warned not to explore them.  So I didn’t.  But some boys with underdeveloped frontal lobes did.  They said it was cool.

Back in the Jeeps we drove until the water disappeared beneath us and we were in a dryland with white salt as far as the eye could see.  Men bent over in the sizzling heat prying the salt up from the ground and hacking at them with machetes until the crystalline structures fell away in perfect lines to form salt blocks.  The salt blocks were loaded onto the back of the camels and sold for $1 a brick.  They could sell about 200 bricks a day split among 11 people.  The men had fading eyes from the reflection of the white salt.  The camels were all “fuck this, it’s too hot.”  The tourists took pictures and tasted the salt.  “It tastes like salt!”  Has to be the hardest job in the world.

Next we went to the sulfur lakes, one of the lowest points in the world.  Green, yellow, orange, magenta, painted the sky into a Martian landscape. Sulfur bubbled up from the green lakes and created little vertical poops.  I bent down to touch one non-acidic area and it felt like oil.  I rubbed it into my skin because it’s supposed to make you look youthful and beautiful.  I just kind of looked oily.

We slept in a little room, on the floor, and played cards.  I took a welcomed bucket bath (fill bucket with water, use cup to splash all over yourself), ate injera for dinner, and went to sleep very (very) close to my new friends.

Salt Caravans

One hotel change (mold, leaking walls, dirty sheets, non-locking door), one room change (roaches), and one sad little phone call to my mom later, I gave up and checked into a room which could be a dirty tomb and got drunk at the bar downstairs. 

I woke up early in the morning, a little dirtier than when I went to sleep, and met up with my car going to Danakil.  My co-travelers now included an older man from China, Shong, and two German students, Phillip and Christoff.  We took a car down, down, deep into the valley’s of the earth.  The green mountains and mules were replaced with sand and camels.  The weather became oppressively hot.  Do you remember that Twilight Zone episode where the man wakes up from a coma in which he was dreaming about the world becoming so cold that everyone died to find that the world was moving closer to the sun and everyone was going to boil to death?  Moving from the icy rain in the Simien Mountains to the Sulfur lakes in the hot valleys of Danakil felt like that. 

Danakil

We stopped for a lunch of pasta and mango juice in a little village in the middle of nowhere.  25 other travelers met up with us, most from Israel.  The kids asked for money and water bottles.  Then they showed us how Ronaldo was soooo much better than Messi.  Soccer is the language of the people.  And I’m a mute.

Village

Soccer Talk 

We boarded our 9 cars and caravanned deep into the Danakil desert.  We stopped at what looked like a large lake and were told that underneath the very shallow lake was salt, as far as the eye could see and as deep as several miles.  Salt was loaded onto camel and mule caravans to be taken back into the city.  I waded out onto the salt and was surprised to feel it smooth and completely flat beneath my feet.  I watched the camels bring the salt back as the sun set.

Salt Caravan

Salt Caravan

Salt on the back of a camel

We drank tea and ate rice and greens for dinner in an even smaller, hotter village.  We slept on extremely comfortable straw cots in the open air and let the dessert breeze drift us to sleep.

Straw Cots

Where we slept