Pop Up Communities
One of the strangest and most magical parts of being so transient is that the communities you have are all temporary. But we have discovered that temporary does not mean any less real.
One of my favorite humans, Ben Kostrezwa, has been conducting "The Portrait Project" in which he asks people "what is the most impotent lesson you have learned in your life" and takes their picture.
We are nowhere near that focused or disciplined, but we do often ask the people we encounter about themselves, their communities, their life histories, their families, and their dreams. In the process, these little webs of connection are created.
Malgar, the Filipino young man who kept our wooden stove hot and drove me in his motorcycle to find internet, talked about his plans to open a resort of his own (only serving Filipinos because foreigners demand too much). His wife, LuvLuv, showed us the home she grew up in, complete with pigs, puppies, and fighting cocks - as well as talked about how the extension of the power grid this year would enable them to watch TV not on their phones.
Therese and Cedric at the Sheraton in Manila spent hours with us when they weren’t busy talking about their struggles during COVID and their dreams as things re-open.
The three American college students from Miami we met on a train in Peru talked about the anxieties of high performers who have jumped through all the hoops held out for them, but are wondering if they are the hoops leading them to the lives they want to live? They could not believe people in their 40s (ie. impossibly old) were traveling the same way they were.
Vasilli and Douglass pass time with us on the in Fiji river talking about how their families emigrated from villages like the one we passed through to the "big city" of Suva (200,000). Douglass played Rugby in Australia for a while, but raft guiding lets him balance the traditional life he respects with the modern life he has come to love. Vasilli points out his uncle’s cava fields, carved into the side of the mountain, as we pass.
A four-hour line at the airport gives lots of opportunities for our kids to play games with the 8 and 10-year-olds emigrating to Australia with their father. They are trying rebuild after the mega-typhoon last year forced them to hide under a mattress in their bathroom as their home was destroyed around them. The kids have no memory of Australia, and the dad is worried they will be bullied for their brown skin (which we watched play out on the plane).
Normal tag got them yelled at by the Manila airport police (who had big guns). One-legged tag got them “you-got-us” laughs from the family friendly Philippino guards.
Our SCUBA instructors in Thailand become friends who we hosted for dinner at our AirBnB and then went on a double-date with later in the week. Their decision to abandon corporate life in the UK to buy a SCUBA shop has given them a totally different set of challenges and experiences that our kids absorbed along with SCUBA skills.
Our kids also spend a few hours with the children of my friend Denis ana Emira and foundations of a friendship are laid (on top of the foundation for the adults, who after several hours and some wine/whisky, already began planning a US trip).
And there are one million small interactions with people from the hot-dog vendor who abandoned a career as an architect to my dear friend Jaca who celebrated American Thanksgiving with us in Germany, to Stretch the Dane who was potentially (actually) taller than me, to the Thai Tuk-Tuk drivers who took us into a local temple and showed us how to pray, to our Peruvian cousins who travlled hours to meet us and show us around Lima. Even the brief encounters who strangers who mock/marvel at my height or who we help with bags, or share an experience with end up as a part of this crazy journey, as we end up a part of theirs.
