female travel

Songs for the Road No. 14: Discovering Afro-Brazil Through Banda Didá, An All Female Drumming Ensemble

by Ekua on November 8, 2011 · 6 comments in Brazil,female travel,inspiring adventurous people,movies with movement,race/culture/identity,songs for the road,why i travel

When I look back at the time I spent volunteering in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil in 2006, it seems so natural, so inevitable that I would end up in there at some point in my life. I often forget about what drew me to it in the first place: Banda Didá, an all female drumming ensemble that is based there. Before learning about that group, I hadn’t even heard of Salvador, an Afro-Brazilian city in the northeastern part of the country.

Music as it pertains to social movements or social justice has always been a topic of interest for me. When I came across a documentary called Girl Beat: Power of the Drum, I was automatically drawn by the synopsis. It highlighted the Banda Didá organization and the work it did to empower females of African descent in Salvador.

Banda Didá was powerful. I couldn’t believe this group of women whose hands and arms pounded out the rage of the remnants of European enslavement to the beats of West Africa. At the same time, their bodies moved fluidly and rhythmically and their faces beamed with pride in their heritage.

The documentary revealed another world, one that I had not yet been privy to, but in which I felt I likely belonged: Afro-Latin culture. In mainstream grade school education in the United States, the fact that Africans were enslaved in many other parts of the Americas is often ignored. The vivacious modern cultures of Latin America and the African influence on many of them is often overlooked. At that point in my life, I was vaguely aware of Afro-Latin America, but that was the first time I’d seen it so tangibly.

As the daughter of immigrants from a small West African country, I’d grown up on the periphery of belonging. I’d accepted that position at that point. But Salvador da Bahia seemed like a place where the distinct mix of cultures that went into my creation was very much the norm in a very visible way. And sure enough, it was.

There’s a bit of drumming at the beginning of this, but skip to 1:00 for the good stuff. Those drums are heavy, and these women make dancing with one attached to your hips look easy.

I saw Banda Didá for the first time in person just a few days after I arrived in Brazil. Every Tuesday night from August until Carnival, they have a big party in Pelourinho, Salvador’s historic center. They call it a “rehearsal” for Carnival and it’s an insanely fun night of government sanctioned partying. There are concerts, street food and drinks, and baterias (drumming ensembles) marching down the cobblestone streets.

A drum circle with an intrinsic sense of spirit and all kinds of soul.

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A Break From Regularly Scheduled Travel Blogging to Bring You This Birthday Post

by Ekua on September 10, 2011 · 14 comments in female travel,inspiring adventurous people,musings

Earlier this week, I was flipping through the San Francisco Chronicle on my lunch break when an obituary caught my eye. Why am I talking about death in the week when I’m celebrating my birth? Well, hear me out.

This woman who’d died exactly a week after her 95th birthday was described as a “lifelong progressive, feminist and world traveler” — she sounded like a person I could’ve been friends with and a person who’d lived her life with purpose. Intrigued, I continued reading.

The obituary went on to say that after 40 years of homemaking and after her husband passed away, she started to fulfill her lifelong dream to travel the world. “At age 72, she she began a series of adventures around the globe, visiting 17 European countries, Mexico, South Africa, New Zealand, Argentina and both poles, and nearly two dozen states in 19 years.”

While I personally take a “travel while you’re young” approach, I love to hear about and know women who are a testament to the fact that age doesn’t have to prevent you from doing what you want to do.

My own mother is one of those women. At the age of 56, she has very recently begun a Peace Corps assignment in Namibia. A few people I talked to about it assumed that the Peace Corps was only for straight out of college young people. It’s not. To me, in a time when people haphazardly sign up to volunteer abroad, she is an ideal candidate — someone who had a Peace Corps teacher as a child, someone who grew up in an African country, and most importantly, someone who has lived.

A couple days ago, I entered the last year of my twenties. Amongst females I know who are around the same age, there seems to be a bit of a divide between those who’ve hit the 30 mark and those for whom it is rapidly approaching. Those who’ve reached 30 and beyond have told me they’ve realized it’s not as bad as they feared it would be and in a few cases, it turned out to be exactly the transition that they needed. With a few exceptions, the women I know who are under 30 are fearful about entering their next decade.

It’s such a big part of female culture in the United States to look at age beyond the 20s as just an ending rather than a transition that contains both endings and beginnings. And those beginnings and endings can be both good and bad. Sure, as we age, unwelcome changes begin to happen to our appearances. But also with living, truly living, you can acquire the perspective and self assurance that is required to feel good about yourself despite what you think others think about you.

And that is a major gift of living fully and getting older — the increased ability to know yourself and grow into yourself and love yourself as you are. This gift is available to everyone, but not everyone receives it. In order to receive it, you have to be open to it, be aware of it, want it, take the initiative to find it.

I’d like to end this post with a video I came across the other day about some fearlessly fashionable older women in New York who display their personalities and creativity through their outfits:

“Young women, you’re going to be an old woman some day. Don’t worry about it. Don’t sweat it. Don’t worry about getting older. Every era… it builds character.”

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Songs for the Road No. 7: Inspiration for Solo Travel

by Ekua on October 17, 2010 · 6 comments in female travel,solo travel,songs for the road

Traveling solo now feels normal to me, but there are those rare occasions when loneliness consumes me on the road. The day I arrived in Oaxaca which I wrote about in my previous entry is one example. I sometimes fight the solitude rather than reveling in it and understanding that it’s only temporary. Sometimes I forget about all the people I’ll meet and the observations I am able to make because of the openness and quietness being alone provides.

My friend shared this video with me yesterday about learning how to be alone and making the best of solitude. It mostly refers to one’s regular environment, but it can all apply to traveling solo as well. If I’d had this video when I arrived in Oaxaca, it would’ve been the perfect antidote to the way I felt then. Of course, time and a change of attitude had the same effect. But I’m sure it won’t be last time I feel that way on a trip, looking back at the comfort and fun times of a group rather than looking forward to possibilities that await. When those times come, hopefully I’ll remember some of the words in this video, especially the most simple ones at the beginning of it, “be patient.”

Maybe this poem doesn’t really qualify as a song, but it’s close enough and it’s a beautiful little video:

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A Hair Journey

by Ekua on July 21, 2010 · 14 comments in Brazil,etcetera,female travel,race/culture/identity

This post is a month and a day late, something I intended to write on June 20th, but couldn’t because I was caught up in travel moments and in coming and going. June 20th is an anniversary that passes without fanfare, but holds much meaning for me internally and externally.

I can’t remember why I chose that day in 2007. The idea had been 9 months in the making and on that day, it must have felt right. Either that, or inspiration had come and I’d wanted to do it while I had the courage.

For some women, hair is something that is simply to be dealt with. For others, it is something that can be played with—chopped, dyed, maneuvered into a symbol of self-expression. But for most women I know, hair is a symbol of beauty. And for many black women who grow up feeling substandard next to an unattainable standard of Western beauty, hair is a huge albatross.

Written in every relaxed strand, in the glue and stitches of every weave, in the coils of every afro, in the braids of every extension, in the matting of every dreadlock of any black woman in America and many elsewhere is a story of a lack of self-acceptance… sometimes sustained, sometimes overcome, sometimes wavering between the two.

In September 2006, right before I left to volunteer in Brazil, I relaxed my hair for the last time. It was the usual—the tingle, then the burn, then the running into the shower to rinse my hair of the white cream that made my scalp feel like it was on fire.

I’d already known for over a year that I didn’t want to do it anymore. But that day, my heart and mind told me that really had to be the last time.

Brazil aided me in finalizing that decision. I was in Salvador da Bahia, a place where African origin is embraced. Where mothers fashion their daughters’ hair into elaborate arrangements of afro puffs. Where women’s afros bob as they bang drums to rhythms brought over by slaves hundreds of years ago. Where women with a darker skin tone than me lay out on the beach to get sun and get darker.

After experiencing Bahia, I knew that regardless of where I was, I would always know that places where African beauty is embraced do exist. That there were places where African appearance is not seen as something that needs to be lightened or straightened out. Getting to know one of these places helped me.

So in the wee hours of the morning on June 20, I brought the scissors up to my hair to disconnect the straightened strands from the small afro that had begun to sprout from my scalp.  Aside from my earliest years when I was too young to remember, it was the first time I’d ever seen my hair in its natural state. Imagine that.

My relaxed strands were in the trash, but still, my ideas of beauty did not go with them. My tightly coiled nappy as can be hair was not the stuff afro dreams are made of. And my hair was shorter than it had ever been. I wondered if I looked like a boy. I didn’t want to leave the house.

I know this all may sound terribly vain and superficial, but there’s no denying that even when you try to deny the magnitude of outer appearance, it will creep up on you in one way or another. It can take years for a woman of any race to walk proudly with herself as she is knowing that she encompasses and defines her own beauty. Many never get there.

Now three years after the Big Chop, the  tightly curled mass on my head has become normal to me. I have accepted it, but I have yet to fully own it. There are times when I don’t see the beauty in it in, especially when I am surrounded by long flowy hair that looks the length it is and has more options.

Wearing my hair this way means that I will be asked assumptive questions about why I don’t want long hair which will be followed by my wondering whether or not I should take the time to explain my hair story to someone who doesn’t fucking get it. It means that when I see articles for “great summer hairdos” and such, I know that they will be written without even a hint of consideration for my hair type. It means that when I see people in afro wigs, I wonder if I should take it personally that people think the style of hair I was born with is a funny costume.

But this is not a story about me hating my hair. There are days when I love that my hair grows in a circle, in the same shape of the flowers I often clip to it. I love the complexity of it and how a close examination of the twist and turns of each strand of my hair shows a bit of my personality. I love that it compliments and lets me fully display the crazy assortment of earrings I’ve picked up on my travels. I love that when I travel, people who have never seen hair like mine often show the most admiration, their minds open to different possibilities.

While I don’t always stand up strongly with my afro, I stick steadfastly to the idea that I will let my hair grow out of my scalp as it meant to and not rush to flatten it into submission. Something tells me that it will be this way until I’ve reached a point of full acceptance. And so the hair journey continues. But while the scale still wavers between self-acceptance gained and lost, three years later, the gains side is far ahead.

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Deciding Where to Go Next and How to Take the First Steps Towards Getting There

by Ekua on May 15, 2010 · 6 comments in d.i.y. travel,female travel,general travel,listastic,safe travels

Oh, the places you can go. It can be overwhelming to think about how much world there is to explore.

If you are lucky enough to be in a position where you have time and funds set aside for travel, it can be tricky to figure out how and where you should use them. And then once you’ve decided where to go, beginning the planning process can be a challenge, especially if you’re doing it yourself.

Last summer, having the opportunity to coordinate a month of independent travel helped me figure out how to go about that process in a way that allowed me to keep my anxiety level to a minimum. Here are some tips:

» Deciding Where to Go

Weather

Weather may seem like a no-brainer, but I am amazed at how often people overlook things like seasons being reversed on the other side of the equator. If you have to travel during a set period of time, consider potential natural disasters or the affect weather might have on your ability to move around the country you visit. If a place is likely to get flooded or have roads wash out during heavy rain, you don’t want to travel there during the height of their monsoon/hurricane season. Some weather situations can be tolerable, even if uncomfortable, but it doesn’t make sense to travel to a place at a time when predictable extreme weather can lead to natural disasters.

Find out if there are any serious travel warnings.

New Zealand has one of the more user-friendly and less fear-mongering travel advisory websites. It breaks down the countries in to Extreme Risk, High Risk and Some Risk and has the most recent important news on its front page. For each country, it also provides links to the travel advisory sites of Britain, U.S.A., Canada and Australia.

Figure out your travel style.

Know what kind of activities you want to partake in and the level of comfort you want in order to narrow down your potential destination list. Do you want to do adventure sports? Check out some nature and wildlife? Be a beach bum? Observe a unique culture? Which culture’s food, music, art, religion or history appeal to you the most? Are you willing to rough it or do you have higher travel standards?

How much time do you have?

If you pick a spot you want to visit, think about whether or not there is somewhere nearby you’d really like to visit as well.  If you’re itching to see a lot of places in a relatively small area (South East Asia, for example), you may want to visit when you have a large chunk of time. If you have a short amount of time, you’ll probably want to limit the amount of places to see. No matter what your travel style, jam-packing your trip can make travel stressful and take away from your overall experience.

Watch travel TV and documentaries and read travel memoirs.

I tend to get a lot of ideas about where I want to go this way. Shows and books can take you beyond the limitations of what you learned in school and beyond the well-known destinations to find out about interesting cultures, subcultures and landscapes you’ve probably never heard of.

Remember that pictures only tell part of the story.

It’s easy to look at a wonderful photo of a location and say, “I am dying to go there!” Popular destinations can often be photogenic but are not always as impressive or worth the money and effort when you see them in person. Reading recent travel blogs and articles about someone’s actual experience is great way to go instead of relying solely on pictures.

» Taking the First Steps Towards Planning Your Trip

Buy a guidebook.

I’ve started to buy guidebooks before I book trips because it helps me get acquainted with possible itineraries and get a sense of more specific locations I want to visit. Guidebooks are also great for figuring out how to get from one destination to another and finding out if the route you are planning is feasible. I spend a lot of time flipping through the “how to get there” sections and pay attention to whether or not a bus goes by where I want to go, how long it takes to get from place to place, etc.

Talk to people who have been to where you’re going.

Talking to people who know the destination has been the most helpful thing I’ve done before booking a trip. It’s even better if it’s a person who knows you well and/or someone who has a similar travel style to you. Talking to these people can be the best way to get a sense of which places to go, which places to skip, and how much time you should stay in a certain place. And both parties benefit because people are happy to help like-minded people discover the places they’ve enjoyed and they love having a chance to relive some of the moments they had there.

Keep in mind that you can’t see it all.

When I start to get a sense of all of the places I can visit in a destination, my first instinct is to start cramming my schedule. But that is not a fun way to travel, and trying to stick to a concrete schedule with limited time can drive you crazy when you’re abroad. I recommend coming up with a list of the places you’re super pumped to see and the places that you’ll logistically need to visit for flights or stopovers. Organize your schedule accordingly, leaving room for error and for visiting other places that sound interesting to you. Then leave the rest to the wind…

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