Seven Days of Silence

Dipabhavan

The seven day Dipabhavan Meditation Retreat on Koh Samui allows individuals to isolate themselves in silence to explore the inner workings of one's own mind. Students stay in dorms on the forested retreat grounds and maintain a rigorous schedule. In the mornings, students rise before dawn at 4:30AM, listen to meditation readings, practice yoga, sit in meditation, and then eat breakfast. After breakfast, students reconvene for Dhamma talks and walking, sitting, and standing meditation. At 11:30AM, students eat the final meal of the day. After lunch, students receive meditation instruction, practice sitting and walking meditation, chanting, and loving kindness meditation. Students break for tea and then practice more sitting and walking meditation by candlelight until 9:00PM. Lights go out in the dorms at 9:30PM. During breaks, students may bathe, wash clothes, do chores, and rest, but no reading, writing, or talking is permitted. Only vegetarian food is served.

If we were allowed to write during the retreat, we might have written the journal entries that follow.

Night 1. Awake on a Pillow of Thoughts

The first night, I laid in a giant dorm room in a human-sized three-sided plywood box with no mattress or sleeping mat. I felt the weight of my body press my bones into the wood. I forwent the monk-style wooden pillow in favor of a standard one, and my head, at least, luxuriated softly. But sleep did not come.

Instead, I laid on my back for seven hours listening to the sounds of the night, including my voice circling and chattering loudly in my head. My mind was louder than the fire-alarm bugs in the jungle. I journeyed back and forth in time, remembering, anticipating, and planning. Many of my thoughts were mundane and repetitive. Others brought feelings, ranging from pleasure to boredom to yearning. Sometimes I drifted into dream thoughts. Other times I analyzed the noises in the night - the jungle sounds, the rooster crowing, the cat crying, someone wailing, someone snoring. That night permitted no peace.

As I listened to my voice and observed my thoughts, I marveled at how they never stopped. Where did this chatter come from? Whose thoughts were these? Did I make these thoughts? Am I these thoughts? Who's listening to these thoughts? Why don't they stop? I feared for a moment that I was self-inducing madness. But could one really become mad simply by listening to one's own thoughts? From time to time, I tried to make the thoughts stop. But they wouldn't stop. Not even for two breaths. The week promised to be grueling.

Day 1. Trying to Meditate

In the morning, I sat on the cushion and tried to meditate. In mediation, one attempts to silence the mind by focusing on the breath. The cushion, posture, and focus should help the thoughts stop, I thought. But they didn't. As it turned out, 1 1/2 days passed before the thoughts stopped for more than two breaths at a time.

Day 2. Devilish Thought Tapes

I watched my repetitive thoughts from a distance. Many were joyful, most were neutral, and some were devilish little tormentors.

I witnessed the scourge of self-consciousness as I skipped chores for an extra cup of tea. My hyper-critical thought-tapes looped loudly when our apparently autistic instructor taught yoga in monotone. And impatience! Out of 10 hours of meditation, 9.5 were filled with impatience.

Gradually, I was coming to understand these nasty little mental habits. Slowly, I was learning to let them go.

Day 3. The Super-Mundane

As my mind began to calm, it felt like watching a really really long, slow movie. The longest and slowest movie in the world. An excerpt:

"in breath, out breath, in breath, out breath, tired knees, sore quads, focus on the breath, fill the lungs with air, exhale, fill the lungs with air, exhale, the floor boards are brown, there are two dark ones and two light ones, focus on the breath, in breath, out. . . "

I was reaching a state that the golden-robed, emaciated, super-heroes of meditation call the super-mundane.

". . . in breath, out breath, in breath, out breath. . . "

The mundane isn't just a consequence of meditation, but a goal. It is only through the super-mundane that we can train our minds. When we can focus on the most ordinary of all things, our own breath, then we can focus on anything. Many people say that their "meditation" is running, rock climbing, programming spreadsheets, showering, litigating, or another engaging activity. While these focus the mind, they do not train the mind. In meditation, we practice clearing the mind in the most challenging of circumstances: when we sit and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

" . . . in breath, out breath, good God what drudgery!. . . "

Finally, I dove so deep into the ordinary, that the extra-ordinary resulted.

Day 4. Realizing the Minority

The humans around me had become zombies, eerily disconnected from one another. But incredible hoards of insects crowded me, so I never felt alone. As I became more and more aware of the insects, I, and not the insects, began to seem puny and insignificant.

Walking from the dorm to meditation, I realized that the metal handrails alongside the steep, winding stairs leading up to the meditation pavilion served the insects and not me. These elevated superhighways enabled ants, geckos, and spiders to zip uphill, bypassing mountains of tangled foliage. The tiny criss-crossers also owned the stairs and pathways, but, unlike the handrails, they shared these, mercifully, with me.

My heightened awareness of insects led me, for the first time in my life, to make eye contact with a bug. When an erratic little flapper dove towards my face while I was meditating, I sat motionless and looked directly into bug eyes. We locked eyes for an instant before she darted abruptly away. Making eye contact with that bug, who I recognized to be a member of the dominant group, made me feel strangely validated.

At night in my bed, I hid under my bug net and listened to the sounds of insects buzzing around light bulbs, slamming and clacking themselves against deceptive surfaces, and screaming in the jungle. Beetles overturned onto their hard shell backs spun in circles trying to flip themselves over. Listening to the insect cacophony, I drifted off to sleep.

Day 5. A Rhythmical Sermon of Nonsense

The sanga sat in silent meditation, waiting for our abbot to give the daily sermon. The 78 year-old monk shuffled in barefoot and bow-legged in his golden robe and big glasses. Slowly, mindfully, he assumed the lotus position at the head of the hall, rang a wonderful bell three times, and adjusted the microphone.

We sat cross-legged in rapt concentration, but the sermon was still a rhythmically-delivered string of non-sense with a bunch of Buddhist catch-phrases thrown in:
"Non-sense non-sense non-sense impermanence non-sense non-sense suffering cessation of suffering non-sense non-sense non-sense in and out in and out non-sense non-sense selfishness non-sense non-sense non-sense impermanence non-sense non-sense non-sense suffering cessation of suffering non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense non-sense in and out in and out"

His English was mostly unintelligible. But after this long undecipherable monologue of unknown content, peaceful meditation followed.

Day 6. Doing it Right

When the thoughts actually stopped, I felt shocked. I dabbled briefly in marveling over the shock of silence, which limited the initial silence to a few breaths at a time. Quickly, though, the silence expanded. I sat now for minutes at a time, feeling an internal quiet. My mind frequently interrupted this stillness with questions such as, "What is this stillness?" and "Is this the peace that proceeds death?" The thoughts never stayed away for long, but as the days passed, the frequency and duration of the silence increased. During some silent moments, I seemed to have lost myself. I became this fabled "oneness": I was the screaming jungle; I was the crystalline birdsong. For fleeting moments, there really seemed to be no "I," no "my."

The Buddhists say that meditation works irrespective of race or religious beliefs. Once achieved, meditative silence brings to some feelings of transcendence. While achieving silence feels gratifying, the silence itself is not the "goal." Thoughts invariably return. As one observes one's thought patterns and the feelings that come with them, one comes to know oneself better. The process of observing thoughts and returning to the breath is mediation.

Day 7. Loving Kindness

We broke from focused, sustained, mind-clearing to perform the Loving Kindness Meditation. In this meditation, we widen the circle of compassion by showering ourselves, our family and friends, strangers, and enemies with good will. I started generating loving kindness by picturing a little happy baby smiling. Then I pictured the sun rising in the morning, beaming brilliant radiance on verdant hills. Then I became that sun.

I shined my loving heat energy at people in my life. First, I shined at a picture of myself, because if you can't love yourself, then you can't love others. Next, I shined loving energy at my lover. Just before reaching ecstasy, I began to shine on family and friends. The official loving kindness script is, "May you be happy and well, may you find inner peace, may you avoid suffering. . . " and other dry Buddhist ideas. I preferred to improvise. I focused on peace and wisdom, but I also hoped that people would tell funny jokes, eat good food, make lovely art, make lots of money, or whatever seemed right for the individual. By this time, I was smiling from ear to ear and beaming with energy.

Next, I widened the circle of compassion, shining loving energy at acquaintances, new friends, co-workers, fellow meditators, and grocery store clerks. Finally, the hard part, I attempted to shine loving kindness to annoying pissants and mosquitoes.

The bell rang. With a wide smile, I meditatively strolled to tea.

Day 8: The Glorious Release of Friendliness

After seven silent days of pretending that our fellow mediators did not exist, we were free to look at each other and even to speak. In no time flat, fast, loud, exuberant talking overwhelmed the familiar sounds of the crowing rooster, crying kitten, and screaming jungle critters. Curiosity now unleashed, we probed and extracted each other's stories and scrambled to catch up on days of lost speaking before we dispersed.

We returned to Lamai beach, near the spa, with our new meditation friend, Nicky, and reunited with Armand. Over the next four days, we feasted on plate after plate of superb and healthy spa food while laughing endlessly. Through our tamed minds and fresh eyes, the world seemed new and captivatingly nuanced. People appeared exceedingly witty and beautiful, and nature's smallest hiccup gave us reason to pause.

Our minds felt crisp and relaxed. Normal annoyances dissipated, normal pleasures amplified. Trusting our intuition, we decided to follow our visions of wool sweaters and prayer flags. We found cheap tickets to Kathmandu from a Sikh travel agent tucked in an alleyway in Bangkok. We leave this afternoon. Himalaya here we come.

Love,

Brunksocki

Magic on Poo Island

Greg laid on the bed overwhelmed by nausea, contemplating that threshold moment between monitoring a spinning stomach and rushing to the toilet. Luckily, the nausea subsided and Cindy entered the room with two buckets and large-mouthed Wysocki smile. If you have a strong stomach, like Cindy, then this blog entry is for you. If the word "entrails" leaves you queasy, then you may want to skip this entry.

What brought us to Poo Island (aka Koh Samui) is the allure of health. Spa Samui is a magical place which Cindy discovered five years ago while in the throes of a chronic ailment. A 69 year-old elf-like retired psychologist, Armand, brought her here from Poland. Armand, angelic advocate, has been traveling the world for 25 years, helping people with whatever needs, problems, or issues they have in the present moment. Five years ago, Cindy's problem was a bad case of candida, and Armand's solution: Poo Island. Her stint on Poo Island transformed her health and spirit. We returned 5 years later, not seeking transformation, but to boost our health and experience the magic of the place.

Most people would not call the 7 day detox program "magical." Many would consider it sadistic, disgusting, and fit only for new age fruits. The program is a fast, but we are constantly imbibing in some way. Five times a day, we take a detox drink, a suspension of psyillium and bentonite clay, which must be chugged before it thickens. This drink fills us up and flushes us out. We take hand fulls of herbs and drink tons of water. As a luxury, we sip two vegetable broths, 2 coconut waters, and 2 carrot juices per day. We also take coffee, but unfortunately not in our mouths. We self-administer colemas twice a day.

Why are we punishing ourselves like this? The theory is that three square meals a day keep the body very busy. These meals sustain us and entertain us, but they eventually get in the way of other tasks, such as doing away with that five-year-old undigestible pork-chop gristle caught in a fold of the colon. During the detox, the body checks the boxes of that long forgotten to-do list.

On the first day of the detox, it was the pale-faced, antiseptic, staff drone and his introduction to the colema procedure that wretched Greg's stomach. Cindy's familiarity with the tubes, bucket, clips, lube, reclining colema board, and poo-catching basket immunized her against the sterile presentation. Cindy completed the first colema like a whizz in 30 minutes and walked out of the bathroom smiling. Greg, on the other hand, toiled for over 90 minutes and emerged cursing.

As the detox days passed, Skinny Bones felt drained and remarkably less motivated compared to five years ago now that she no longer struggled with a chronic malady. On the fifth day, upon stepping on the scale and finding the number more slight than when she started, Mrs. Bones decided to call it quits, leaving Mr. Bone to perservere alone.

Meanwhile, Greg was full of energy and without hunger. His gait perked, his face thinned, and his eyes cleared. However, his outward healthy appearence belied a typhoon of toxic reactions. Headaches, sewer mouth, pains, and strange odors riddled him. The colema board became a nemesis; the twice daily enemas became epic battles. But the evidence in the poo basket suggested that radical emmissions were giving way to improved gastrointestinal fitness.

"My goodness! Let me look at you! You must have lost four inches on your waist!" Cindy would comment chipperly as Greg emerged from the War Room. He would collapse on the bed, moan, mutter a derogatory comment about the Spa, and wait out the nausea.

We write this on the ninth day and zucchini has never brought such pleasure. A piece of raw, unrefined, organic chocolate pie sent us into spasms of delight. We left the Spa jogging through the surf in the night. In the end, the detox program boosted our spirits and perhaps our health, too. Cindy had her overall state of health validated. Despite breaking many of her strict dietary rules in Africa, her health is the best it has been in years. Greg leaves the Spa knowing that he extricated several small aliens from his colon, and that he added at least 10 minutes on to the end of his life.
We came to Koh Samui seeking not only health, but also magic. On the second day of our fast, magic flutterd in in the form of our spry elfin friend, Armand. Serendipitously, after spending eight months in India, Armand's return to Spa Samui coincided with our visit. After a joyous reunion over bowls of vegetable broth, he has been fluttering about the Spa, into people's lives to help them in any way he can. Tonight, we will celebrate with him around a table of solid food.

Now that our physical cleanse is over, our mental cleanse begins. From March 20-27, we will be meditating at an austere retreat, also located on Koh Samui. This promises to be another challenging and fascinating experience. We'll be back on-line after the 27th.


Peace and love,

The World Wise Arrive in Bangkok

We left the dust, macro fauna, and con-artists of East Africa for clean, polite, smiling Bangkok. We arrived in the super modern Bangkok airport, and to our surprise, our bags had arrived and official tourist information directed us to a bus which took us exactly where we wanted to go! Thailand is made for traveling.

We found a clean, basic $10 hotel room in the tourist section of town. Everywhere in the streets vendors sold delicious foods and colorful clothing. We were surprised to find that we could shop at these stands without being accosted by desperate sellers. What a luxury to our tired minds! We bought some much needed new clothes and set out to see the city. Bangkok is child's play to a person who just traveled in Africa.

We walked in the humid morning air toward a series of large Buddhist temples. We talked constantly about Africa, which we were only starting to process. A smiling and unimposing Thai student greeted us. He was curious about us and informative as well. He told us that the large temple in front of us was closed to tourists due to a police holiday. Serendipity was in the air. He suggested some other temples to visit and even drew a numbered itinerary for us on our map. "Did you watch TV last night?" he asked. Of course we hadn't. "Well you must also go to Thai Silk." We assented. He found us a tuk-tuk and even haggled the tuk-tuk driver down for us. With smiles, we embarked on our tour.

First, we went to a stunning temple in northern Bangkok. The grounds had several temples, each one ornately painted, with shining gems inlaid into spiked roof edges that resemble flames. Inside the main temple was a large, serene, smiling, golden, shining Buddha sitting in Lotus position. We made customary bows and entered. All around the temple paintings depicted impermanence: a tiger eating human flesh, vultures hovering above a carcass, a meditator next to white human bones.

When we returned to the tuk-tuk, it was parked in the shade next to a rotund Thai man reclining with a cigarette. As the tuk-tuk driver went to the restroom, the man informed us that he was actually a lawyer in London. He was in Bangkok visiting his family. Cindy and he talked law a bit, and finally the conversation got around to Thai Silk. He was animated. "Did you watch TV last night?" Apparently we had really missed something special. The man described how he has all his suits shipped to England from Thailand, and that once they have your size, they can always make you a cheap, new suit. When the tuk-tuk driver returned, the rotund man wished us well on our travels. In Bangkok, everyone looks out for everyone else.

From there, we arrived at Thai Silk. "You are lucky!" the salesperson burst out, as he showed us luxurious fabrics. As we had already learned from the overweight lawyer, this was a one time deal for tourists; normally, only the Thai are allowed in the shop. "We normally do wholesale, but with the slump economy, we are opening this deal up to tourists." They brought us water and we looked at the cheap and good quality suits. Ultimately, we realized that this was not the time for suit shopping. As we left, the classy salesman transformed into a hawker, and tried to sell us herbal soap.

That was a sign of strange things to come. The tuk-tuk driver informed us that we had to go into a jewelery shop for him to get free gas. We obliged, shopping for 2 minutes and then returning. Next, he took us to another suit store, where he informed us that we needed to spend at least 10 minutes for him to get the free gas. We did. The suit sellers brought us coffee and we pretended to covet Armani.

Next, the driver dropped us off on a busy street and told us to walk up a narrow alleyway. The alleyway opened up to a crowded temple, ornate buildings, food vendors, a court for playing something like hackey-sack basketball, preachers, and a towering 50 foot Buddha facing east.

When we returned to find the driver, he was gone. We looked for him; we hadn't paid. He was nowhere. Strange. We still had three stops on our tour. We had no other option but ask strangers where we were.

Slowly, as we walked back to our hotel, we began to unravel the true nature of the events of the afternoon. We were abandoned mid-tour, shortly after hitting three shops. We had met two extremely friendly men, both of whom had hyped Thai silk, and both had used the curious phrase, "Did you watch TV last night?"

Duped! The whole "tour" was a scam. We had spent the day ensnarled in the vast suit-seller's conspiracy, whose agents lurk in the shadowy corners of temples all over Bangkok. Our tuk-tuk driver abandoning us had elucidated the true nature of this path of seemingly benign strangers.

The "student" initiated the sale. With a simple lie and polite interest, he got us into the tuk-tuk. He began to grease the gears by mentioning Thai Silk.

The "lawyer" poured butter on the roast. He won our trust, and then became the hype-man in the parking lot of an obscure Buddhist temple.

The tuk-tuk driver abandoned us because we were not buying cashmere suits or jewelery. Once he had collected his handouts from the stores for bringing us in, he no longer needed us. He dumped us on the side of the road at the closest temple.

We found our way back to our hotel and thought about our day. We realized that this was the best scam possible! We toured around in a tuk-tuk, saw some amazing temples, drank complimentary beverages, and woke up to our own naivetee in a benign way. We felt lucky as we walked into the humid night air to feast on delightful and spicy Thai food.

"Teacher, the baboon stole our bread!"

As we practiced the African art of waiting in the back office of Hell's Gate National Park, we felt like school children waiting in the principal's office after tattling on a bully. "Teacher, the baboon stole our bread!" We weren't sure if our tattling was merited, but like children who lacked skillful means, we didn't know what else to do. We waited and waited that afternoon, as clouds rolled in taming the ferocious sun and park rangers told us baboon tales.

The park rangers claimed that baboons target white skinned people; that they fear blacks; and that they fear in particular black skinned people wearing national park uniforms. The rangers, who were both amused by and empathetic to our plight, assured us that the baboons only want our food; they do not want to hurt us. They may show us their sharp teeth, inflame their red butts, rip our bags from our hands, tear open our tents, and poo on our non-edibles. Scaring us and maligning our belongings are simply means to consoling their deep pitiful hunger, so the rangers said. We mused over these tales feeling a smidge incredulous that the big baboon was really hungry and not simply mean and too lazy to find his own food.

Hell's Gate National Park is an awesome reserve full of beasts, all of whom appear to be feasting virtually nonstop. How dry, dusty canyon lands with red walls and pillars of columnar basalt sustain such great herds of eaters mystifies the untrained observer. Regardless, the park authorities permit visitors to cycle through the park unescorted, witnessing giraffes, buffaloes, zebras, gazelles, ostriches, warthogs, and bushbuck feeding across the savanna.

On the morning of our baboon encounter, we had cycled three kilometers into the park and up a sandy road to Naiburta Camp on a cliff overlooking the savanna. We selected the perfect campsite, set up our tent, and settled into the shade to eat and wait out the high sun hours.

We had eaten our fill and settled into the lazy heat when the thief, a large, lumbering baboon, appeared at our campsite. Cindy scampered into the sun, gathered rocks, and began hurling them at the beast, leaving Greg alone with the food. The baboon nary broke stride for the rocks, instead becoming ever larger and running directly towards Greg, or more precisely the food. The charging baboon puffed up his hair, flashed his gigantic canines and juicy pink gums, growled, maximized the muscles of his barrel chest, and Greg reacted by banging furiously on a pot. Without hesitation, the baboon ran right past Greg, plucked our bread from our belongings, and strutted over to a tree ten meters away where he plopped onto his red swollen behind and gorged himself, eyeing us smugly all the while.

With hot fear in our veins, we grabbed our remaining food and loose belongings, left the tent, and peddled back to the entrance where we tattled on the bad baboon. Ultimately, three armed rangers informed us that the punishment for stealing our bread would be "elimination." The rangers wrapped in shawls to disguise their national park uniforms, drove us in a nonregulation vehicle (the baboons recognize the park vehicles, too, the rangers said), and brought us with our bikes back to the campsite. When we arrived at the campsite, a safari tour, including four African guides, had set up camp and the baboon was nowhere in sight. The park rangers encouraged us to befriend the guides and continue our stay, which we did.

In the low sun of the late afternoon, we biked past giraffes, buffalo, warthogs, and gazelles out to a gorge at the north end of the park. We declined an English speaking park guide and instead ended up with a self-appointed non-English speaking Masai guide. Our old, jovial, happy-go-lucky, skinny as a rail guide led us limberly through a maze of rock walls, steaming hot springs, and florescent green moss. Down we hopped, with old skinny bones gesticulating the way, tasting bitter salts and splashing through hot waterfalls. We finished the tour and biked in the gloaming back to camp.

In a corner of our new African friends' campsite, we huddled around our stove. The park rangers had told us that the baboons go to sleep around 5 or 6PM, so we need not worry about them until morning. In the morning, the rangers would come back to check on us.

The bad baboon, however, stayed up late that night prowling the cliff side above the campsite well past 6PM. He eyed us haughtily from afar until he saw our sling-shot wielding African friend and sulked off into the darkness.

Before retiring to our tent, we secured our food and belongings in the safari van. Upon closing her eyes, Cindy was out like a light and slept like a rock.

Greg, on the other hand, riveted by his duty to protect his slumbering wife, spent the night consumed by baboon thoughts. He plotted about what he would do upon seeing a large canine or claw come through the tent. As he worked in his mind through the contingencies of a baboon attack, he held his wife with one arm and a large wooden stake with the other. He imagined beating the baboon with the wooden stake and handing Cindy his belt so she could simultaneously whip the beast. He worried that the smell of food lingered on our clothes and sleeping mats on which we had used the stove. He pondered the rangers' contradictory claims that the baboons would not hurt us, but that they are very dangerous. He envisioned the baboon chasing us from our tent and plotted how we could most quickly exit. He feared the worst: what if the baboon returned with one of his big male buddies and they attacked us together from both sides? Above all, Greg was certain that the baboon would be back at sunrise; he could not risk sleeping through sunrise since we must not be in the tent when the baboon arrived. Dreams of baboon canines filled the small spaces where Greg drifted out of plotting.

At last morning glow diluted the blackness and the day verged on sunrise. Greg shot upright, ready to get out of the tent and find the baboon. Cindy awoke deeply drowsy, beseeched Greg to stay in the tent, and slow like molasses began to get dressed.

In those long pre-dawn moments, the noises began: clearly the baboon was awake. This spurred us both out of the tent and over to our African neighbors' campsite. Waiting for the baboon to decimate our tent, we watched the colorful sunrise through the marbled clouds. Once the sun rose and the day became bright yellow, we saw the baboon in the distance. Shortly thereafter, an armed ranger arrived.

"The baboon will be eliminated," he assured us.

That morning we packed up camp and biked the Buffalo Circuit, a 14 kilometer loop, mostly uphill through rocks and soft sand, utterly unsuitable for biking. At times, we both walked a single bike up the road, as Cindy's strength sufficed only to overcome gravity's backward pull on the bike and pack and keep the bike upright. For Cindy, any forward movement came with excruciating effort. With one person pushing the bike from behind and the other balancing the bike in front, the task became manageable. In this manner, we leap-frogged the bikes up the most severe parts of the mountain.

The reward for our efforts was bliss: panoramas of pastoral Masai villages; the glassy shining Lake Naivasha; Mount Logonot's jagged crater silhouette; light playing on savanna and red columnar basalt; fields of grazing mammals; the feeling of exhaustion through exertion; breezing down the mountain; and biking out of the park to eat a meal far away from the big bad baboon.

Spider Video Coach: Border Crossing at Midnight

Spider Video Coach is an international bus providing service between Tanzania and Kenya. It's vaguely Spiderman themed (not to worry intellectual property rights hawks - it's only blue and red with spiderweb patterns and spider decorations). We highly don't recommend it - they drove off while Cindy was using the toilet (with poor Greg left on the bus frantically flipping through a Swahili dictionary for the words "wife" and "shitter") and then stuffed her in a taxi with four others to meet the bus beyond the police check point since we were over the legal weight limit. Here's an open letter to the driver who tried to abandon us around midnight at the Kenyan border:

Dear Driver of the Spider Video Coach,

What were you thinking?

We did everything right. We obediently lined up at customs on the Tanzanian side, we filled out the those little blue forms, we helped those without the writing skills to complete their paperwork, we walked through the leaches lurking in the shadows between the two borders who tried to take our money and steal our passports, we filled out identical paperwork on the Kenyan side, we paid money for visas, we bought snacks and sodas, and we smoked cigarettes while leaning against dim light poles. In short, we did everything that a busload of border-crossers should do. We asked only that you complete your duty, as our coach driver, to pick us back up on the Kenyan side and finish this long journey.

But instead, you turned off the lights in the coach, tilted your seat back as far as it would go, and took a nap! When we finally went back to get you, you said that we wouldn't go until morning! You made us bring you to the police station as if we were an angry mob! We were not angry, we were only tired, but we played our roles impeccably. The angry fat woman was loud. The bulky intimidator had toothpick in his mouth. The incredulous young woman shook her head and laughed. Mr. Rational gesticulated vigorously. The token muzungus were mute and observant.

When you finally put the coach in gear and creeped through the dim border crossing, we could only wonder, what is going on in your head?

Sincerely,

The 6:30 am from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi, Feb 20, 2009