Archive for April, 2010

This is a story about the people you meet when you travel. Their faces etched in photographs vainly attempting to capture one moment forever. A desperate attempt to hold on to people and places that you will likely never see again. They are fleeting moments and encounters — a glimpse when all is set and done.

When we travel, we run into memories that we hope to remember when we’re old and done with life. We hope to remember the people who were kind to us, who loved us despite not knowing why they shouldn’t.

Amidst the poverty, I have seen no despair. I’m afraid to lose the stories about the people I have met. I’m afraid to forget the faces, the words.

Mrs. Margaret was an older lady who worked at the Whim Plantation. Her hair was tightly wrapped in a tall, white scarf. The scalding heat of midday prompted me to walk inside the plantation house after a tour and ask if there was anywhere I could get water — maybe there was a water fountain inside. Free water, because I have been spoiled by first-world conveniences, I suppose.

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Mother Cramer. She speaks to you!

Hello there, still alive and having breakfast in Samana, Dominican Republic.

I’ve been living in another world. Seriously. It´s hard to explain how different life on board a moving ship can be. The rules are all different, from how you eat, to how you speak (it´s another language), to how you sleep, walk, shower, everything is done differently. And it’s easy to constantly feel like a total idiot.

But as you stumble on deck for night watch, and you look up at the starry sky. A sky so full of stars, that you cannot help but to stop for several minutes and wonder how you ever lived without experiencing it.

And then you have bow watch, which is an hour of standing at the very forward part of the boat, by yourself, communing with the wind and maybe God if you choose.

Those are the quiet moments in between taking down sails, often in the middle of the night, with nothing but a net separating you and the deep, black ocean.

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