Honor and Experience

I love to travel. I like hearing different languages being spoken, tasting different foods and working out different kinds of money. I like seeing how different countries have solved the same idiotic problems we have, like window locks, or electricity outlets. Traveling opens your eyes, expands your horizons and helps to make you more broad minded.

Ok, I'll stop with the cliches.

I caught the travel bug in 1992. I was invited to participate in a youth conference being held in Brazil. Some 600 students and young adults from around the world were given the onerous task of solving the world's problems in 10 days or less. To do that, we were taken on an "exposure." I'm thinking the purpose of this exposure was to underline the more obvious problems, poverty, environment, education, with the challenges of holding onto culture.

My group shacked up for 12 days with the Kura-Bakairi. A tribe of Indians native to Brazil. They've been there since the beginning of time and have a highly complex culture which is both harsh and gentle at the same time. I found them to be accepting and caring, easy to get along with. Their ways were familiar some how, but then, I am myself a Native American.

The Kura-Bakairi start their days with a morning ritual that includes, for lack of a better term, prayer. Their shaman goes from house to house to see that everything went well through the night and to accept offerings of food and drink for the Gods. A short ceremony brings the community together to discuss the days events and tasks before the village separates into individuality to get on with the complexities of living in the Amazon rain forest. The food that was offered to the Gods in ceremony is then distributed to families and friends who might not be as well off as some of the others, thereby addressing and helping the poorer members of the community without degrading their humanity.

I found it an elegant solution to a problem a lot of communities have. When I got to the conference proper, I tried to include ways to deal with desperate situations with dignity in our discussions. No one likes asking for handouts and giving them can be just as embarrassing. Why not find a simple way to help people get what they need while granting them their own humanity?

The Kura-Bakairi were curious about me also, which surprised me. They found out that I am a Native American and specifically asked if I could be included in the delegation assigned to them. It was an honor I was not expecting and still am not sure how to express that honor some 13 years later. I was moved by their invitation and tried my best to do my own people proud. I offered them a medicine wheel. A religious symbol my own people use to remind them "who's boss in these here parts." I was privileged to a unique ceremony the Bakairi performed to introduce the new symbol to their own spiritual forces.

There are times when words miss the point. "Honor" no longer had the strength to hold up the experience.

I was hooked, addicted to travel in a way most people miss. It isn't just about seeing the world. It's about mixing with the people and getting to know their way of life. Attitudes change when you travel, and you have to allow the experiences change you, shape your beliefs. If you're not willing to change, you can't enjoy the experience.