1968-69: Really Scary

setting up the tent for the first time - near Mt Kenya



Sitting by the Rift Valley with the Masi guides



 Flying, or driving, blind into unfamiliar locales gave us a peek at the local customs and reality, sublime and weird. At times, it could be scary and uncertain. But, after years of turmoil at home, I was already a little skittish. Add charging elephants, treacherous roads, slithering reptiles, leaky boats, water parasites, leering men. In the end, we suffered no serious injuries, or arrests, as we challenged the prudence of American tourists of the 60’s.

 Boating on River Kwai

January 5th, 1969 “We hired a long, really fast boat to go up the River Kwai to a beautiful waterfall, which is a mile long, consisting of thousands of little waterfalls. We started back at 4:00; it got dark at 7:00. We already had one hole in the boat, from the trip up, and we all (the driver and his son, too) were given buckets for bailing. We were in thick jungle, Daddy kept saying ‘I’m looking for the rock I can swim to when this boat sinks.’ But I couldn’t see anything, and we were all SO scared! We didn’t get back until 9:30.”

 

Camping on the Masai-Mara

camping on the African plains - laundry and school work

February 19th, 1969 “We are camping in the wilds. It’s so cool! We’ve seen cheetahs, lots of elephants, lions, wildebeests, zebras, etc. Beautiful. Last night, we heard lions roaring nearby. We waited to hear if they were going away, but the roaring got closer, so we all jumped into the van – left the fire going. It was really scary.”

 

exhausted night-roaming lions



My mother’s note: “As we were getting ready for bed, we heard lions roar/ grunt/huff, a sound I remembered from the zoo in Mysore, and the strong menagerie smell. We had to plead Daddy to sleep in the van, which he finally did. In the morning we saw that the grass was matted down and the smell still strong. And I could still hear their sound.”

 In the end I learned to value the freedom and suffer the fear, that without one it was almost impossible to experience the other.

Me and the Samburu



1968-69: Gross!

Gross! Snakes on Daddy

Gross! Camel Breath 

     
     Beyond the cool of the adventure, "gross" was ever-present.  Traveling as we did in second class there were plenty of stinky buses, filthy hotels and scary ferries. When the teenage-girl commentary on the trip became a whinery of complaints, i.e. “gross, stupid, ugly, gnarly, weird, grody-to-the-max,” Daddy decided that he’d let us make the decisions, live with the consequences. Just a few months into the year, he divvied the family into three travel agent teams: Daddy & Sarah, Mommy & me and Dede & Betsy. Each pair would be responsible for a two week stint, making all choices: where, when, how, why and the resulting travel and hotels were their burden or pride to deal with.


Djakarta, Indonesia:


      From my mother’s diary: December 12th, 1968 “Djakarta from air: dark orange tile roofs, green palms, red earth. Nonnie and I, as travel agents, got a dump. The Transaerea Hotel: no toilet seat, tile basin with bucket for shower, hard bed, peeling walls, no ‘egg-nishner’ (AC) -- Grimsville.”

      My diary was less kind: “Disgusting, rats run amok, bugs constant, toilet hole in floor, can’t sleep. Pan-American, tower of elegance, nearby but TT (tourist trap) and expensive. Nasi Goreng good.  First morning train -2nd class- to Bandung.”

      Daddy’s idea was brilliant. I had made the call to put us in the gross hotel, so my only complaints –except between sisters in the dark with the spiders- were quietly entered into my Dear Diary.  I was quickly learning to take and hold responsibility for my actions, and stand up for my decisions.  Like it or not.



Gross!  Wadi Halfa Hilton

 Train across the Sahara – Khartoum to Wadi Halfa

      From my diary: March 8th, 1969 “The train is waiting, the time is 6:45 am, the place is Khartoum, Sudan and the Coopers are there” for an open-air, over-night cross-Sahara train trip. “The train is hot and uncomfortable but interesting. The desert stretches as far as you can see. Mirages appear and disappear. We rode along the Nile for awhile.


      The people are friendly. The sleeping was really bad, with smoke and dust coming in the windows all the time. There is a common water jug in each car, Mommy, Sarah and I dip our washcloths in there and put them on our heads.  Later, we drink from it because it's all there is!  Gross!”

1968-69: Cool!

Bali:

From my mother’s diary: “December 1968: The color of Bali is extraordinary. Religious ceremonies with all the village walking to the temple – women dressed in batik print wraps, printed tops, towering head-dresses of fruit and vegetables, intricate palm decorations and creations made without benefit of Scotch tape or staple gun, Gamelan band with gongs, drums and xylophone-type instruments. The procession sand festivals are so bright and rich and contrast with a life lived close to the earth; bathing, laundering in streams, working in hot wet paddies, carrying towering loads on heads. Religion is life. A hard god must be appeased at all times by rituals.” House blessings, night processions, monkey dancing, even a funeral, when we saw them, we joined them.

Ngorongoro crater, Serengeti, Africa:

From my mother’s diary: “February 1969: The crater is filled with wildlife living side by side in lush meadow grass with a large lake in the middle. We got a Land Rover with guide and went down into the crater at 9:00am. After a box lunch in a forest clearing, Dede had her first marriage proposal from a Masai moran (he already had one wife). Daddy offered to trade Sarah for one of their spears, but he wanted two girls for one spear.” I recall that we were lucky that the guide rushed in to interpret, resulting in a good laugh and our freedom. Imagine how a handshake and a hand-hewn spear in the African bush could have changed all our lives…

We were living in the far-flung cultures of the world, the astonishing pages of National Geographic realized. It was startling, enchanting and cool!

Fall 1968 - Yellow Submarine



Yellow Submarine

“We don’t wanna go!!” my sisters and I cried. We were furious.

“Listen,” Daddy said. “You can come with me, explore new lands (first stop Disneyland!) and see the world.. Or go to live in the poor house in Osterville. You decide.”  Tough choice.


So we went. On Labor Day weekend, we wailed goodbye to our friends at Penn Station and began our westward circumnavigation. We were really doing it.

A boy-crazy, self-absorbed and rebellious teenager, I began ninth grade in California, beach boys and surfing, Disneyland as promised, then on Hawaii, a tiny hotel on an obscure black sand beach… it all seemed pretty groovy.


Polynesian grass shack

But in a grass shack on Bora Bora, where the passing of days -ten to be exact- was distinguished only by the rattling bicycle of a Frenchman bearing baguette, papayas and fish, I realized my isolation. With and within a family of five people I hardly knew, the year to come seemed an eternity. “Groovy… but BORING” was my diary mantra, punctuated by passages of "cool," "gross" and "REALLY SCARY."