Leave the Path

T-minus 2 days ’til my first trip in 2 years!  Tickets, passports, bags packed, ready to go!  We’re heading back to Ankara for a 6-week visit.  Aslan (the world’s cutest 18 month-old) and Nurten (my mother-in-law) will be flying out with me early Monday afternoon and 18 hours later Aslan will be meeting the rest of his family in Turkey.  Emre, unfortunately, won’t be coming with us just yet.  He’ll join us a couple weeks later (and believe me we’ll be counting down).

Planning for this trip is so much more complicated than any before.  Traveling with a toddler (or doing ANYTHING with a toddler for that matter) takes more patience and attention to detail.  20 hours worth of diapers and baby food takes our whole carry-on bag and where in my pre-Mom days I would have worried how much sleep I’d get on the airplane, I’ll count myself extremely lucky if we get through the whole trans-Atlantic flight without a prolonged screaming tantrum.

This is also the first time in 5 years I’ve flown without Emre.  He’s a good travel companion, reliable and easy-going, and he’s got a knack for making me laugh when I am anxious (which I’m likely to most of that long day with the sleep-deprivation and scared baby).  Nurten will be a huge help with Aslan (she’s basically his third parent) but I’m going to miss Emre terribly and I know he’ll miss us too.

And then there’s my plans for what to do once we (insallah) arrive safely and happily on the other side:  I’m going to spend a few weeks working with doctors at Hacettepe Children’s Hospital.  I had the incredibly good fortune to meet some people with connections at both UNC and Hacettepe (one of the best teaching hospitals in Turkey) and I intend to make the best of it.  I’m nearing the end of my third year at UNC, meaning I’ve spent many hundreds of hours participating in clinical activities here in the states.  I am really excited for the clinical exposure to another hospital in another culture with different epidemiology and treatment protocols.  With the current discussion of the future of the American health care “system” so much at the forefront I’ll also be watching for differences, subtle and not, in the way children’s health is approached on a population level.

This will be the first time I’ve been expected to use my Turkish in any kind of professional situation and I’m honestly a little nervous.  Being around Nurten has improved my fluency and vocabulary tremendously, but I still don’t understand everything I hear and I make many, many mistakes when I speak.  Hacettepe does much of its teaching in English and I expect I can communicate in English with most professionals.  Most patients, however, will speak Turkish.   In my experience most Turks are charmed by the novelty of hearing foreigner speak any Turkish, but I’ll get more out of the experience and be less frustrated if I can upgrade my language skills in a hurry.

So there’s the challenge:  keep Aslan happy through jet lag and foreign home, get by without Emre for the first time in years, learn some medical Turkish, and get something meaningful from time at the hospital. Luckily we have a whole wonderful extended family in Ankara.  (Aslan will even have his own tour guide — his 3-year-old cousin is anxiously awaiting the chance to show him the ropes.)  I expect the first couple weeks will be stressful, but then Aslan’ll be adjusted and I’ll know the folks I need at the hospital; by the time Emre joins us we’ll be relaxed and having fun.

This is going to be great!  Or at least that’s what I’ll be telling myself on hour 8 of the long flight.

This morning I took my last EVER undergraduate exam.  (It went okay, but could have been better.)  This afternoon we bought all of the gifts for Emre’s family, save one.  And I started organizing them into suit cases.  We’re almost there! 

I am, of course, planning out the final details of the trip, making lists of things to do before we go.  Emre keeps telling me to calm down.  I almost wish he were more anxious.  He’s been leaping about like an enthusiastic puppy.  He’s excited about seeing his family again, which is fine (they are awesome, and I’m excited too), but he doesn’t seem too concerned about how we’re going to get there.  He hasn’t packed any of his clothes, we lost our second suit-case, and I’m not really sure how we’ll be getting from Istanbul to Ankara (though it is entirely possible that Emre’s planned that already.) 

Oof.  The bad news is that tomorrow will be very busy and I probably won’t get a chance to do all 1 million of my things on the list, much less write, but the good news is that two days from now, I’ll be sitting on the plane, doing my sudoku puzzles and enjoying the in-flight beverages in those cute tiny cans.  And I’ll be relatively relaxed, because (*knock on wood*) I will have prepared for any likely problems.

Not tomorrow, nor the next day, or the day after that, but the very next day, we’re flying to Turkey!  We’ll be on a plane for something like 12 hours strait.  Needless to say I’ve been thinking, and talking -frequently- about air travel.  I think that for many, the trip, in a plane, is scarier than the actual destination.  (I even have a wave of “this could be the last” every time I step onto a plane, and generally I like traveling.)  I’ve tried to think this through, and here are the top three reasons why, despite the well-known fact that flying is, statistically, very safe, many people still find it terrifying:

1) Like a submarine or space shuttle, the environment outside the window of a plane is completely inhospitable to humans.  In a train or car, you figure that as long as you survive getting out, you’ll be fine.  In a plane, if you get out, you’re in a low-oxygen environment, and very shortly you’ll be plummeting to your death, possibly into the ocean.  You can’t just get out and walk.  So, if anything goes wrong at 30,000 feet, half way accross the ocean, you’ve got a long wait to reach hospitable conditions. Luckily things go wrong very infrequently.

2)  The few plane accidents that happen every year make big news and usually include graphic images.  Acts of terrorism involving planes have made even bigger news, and have left something of a scar on the minds of Americans.  It is very easy to visualize a mid-air catastrophy; the backdrops are all filled in, and the resulting tragedy is vivid.

3)  You are, as we all know, statistically more likely to die in a car than in a plane.  Some other risky behaviours, like riding a motorcycle without protective gear, heavy drug use, or swimming while drunk, have indisputably higher chances of resulting in immediate death, but many people take these risks much more often, and without as much fear, as they approach flying.  The primary difference, I think, is that most of the dangerous activities one undertakes are, for better or for worse, of one’s own control.  A truck driver who hasn’t slept in two days, driving 80 at night, still feels as though he has the ability to make the decisions to save or lose his life.  But in a plane, the pilot is making those decisions.  You can’t help him.  He doesn’t need you to look at the map.  You can’t check the oil of the plane ahead of time.  You can’t do anything in particular to be sure that he’s awake and alert.  In fact, you can’t even look at the pilot; you know nothing more about him than a name and a voice on the intercom, and you’re trusting him with your life.

What’s more, as a passanger, you relinquish control not only of the flight safety itself, but also of what you’ll be eating and when, who you sit next to, and what movie you see.  For those of us who like to make all of our own decisions, the necessity of such absolute and complete trust in a time of percieved (though unlikely) danger is uncomfortable.

But, then, I do love going abroad, and I love looking out the window at the world in miniature, and, in a way, it’s fun to get a little worked up about something and then have it turn out fine.

Okay, that’s my schpeil about airplanes.  Don’t worry about me, and I promise not to worry too much about myself.  Or at least not about that — We’ve still got a million things to do in 3 days, that’s what I’ll be thinking about.

In less than a week, we’ll be out of town for over a month. Of course, that takes some planning. I’ve been making lists. Lots of lists. And packing some of the things we’ll be taking. And worrying. Some of my worries are, I think, legit. (For example: we are supposed to check our luggage for the trans-continental flight 3 hours in advance, but that’s going to be physically impossible with the connecting flight we were sold as part of the same ticket. Will we be allowed to board? Should we change the flight? I really don’t fancy waiting an extra 2 or 3 hours, somewhere in New York, just before a 13 hour flight, but anything’s better than being turned away at the ticket desk when you go to check your bags. Need to call the travel agency.) By contrast, some of my worries are silly, even to me. What happens if the apartment building burns down while we’re gone? What if the US declares war on Turkey because of this Iraq-invading thing? What if Emre isn’t allowed back into the US for some reason, and I have to decide whether to stay with him or come back for school? What if our plane gets hijacked and flown to Cuba? Really, honestly, none of these things are likely to happen. And if they do, the chances that I prepared for the right one and came up with a decent plan are nil. Probably the worst consequences of this trip will be that I’ll get grumpy after being on a plane so long and start an argument with Emre, and then be in a bad mood when we get to Ankara. Or we’ll get sunburnt. Or maybe our luggage will get misplaced. Again. I could live with that.

We’ll be carrying some interesting items in our bags. Not only will we have our own clothes, toothbrushes, etc, but we’ll be carrying the American football stuff that Hakan ordered in February, but didn’t recieve before he left, including two helmets and one of those big, scary shoulder-pad contraptions. We’ll also have quilting stuff for Nurten, various surprise gifts for the whole family, some electronic bits for Emre’s friends, and several boxes of cheesecake mix and biscuit supplies. And some mini-mashmellows for Fiona. (Maybe those should go in carry-on. What happens to marshmellows in low pressure?) Luckily none of this even remotely resembles a bomb. I’d hate for the security people to have to re-pack it. It’d be a pretty silly scene: “No, sir. I believe that the cheesecake mix was inside the vase, which was tucked in the helmet, and the 100% cotton fabric was wrapped around the outside, with the little shiny packages worked in, and then carefully padded with the marshmellows. No? Oh, forget it. Just cram it all in there. They won’t care if we break stuff; they’re obviously insane.”

Really, we could add some sillier stuff. We get an allowence of more than 140 lbs each (2 checked bags at 50 lbs each, one carry on of 40 lbs, plus a “personal item” and a shopping bag from the duty-free). I could, therefore, theoretically carry my body weight in inanimate objects onto this plane. I’ve already packed my clothes, and all together they weigh 10 lbs. Toilettries might be another 2 lbs. I might pack another 10-15 of books, documents, cameras, etc. What, then, is the other 115 pounds of luggage for? Sporting equiptment? Furniture? Rods of heavy metals? Even with all of the stuff that we’ll be bringing along for friends and relatives, I doubt that Emre and I will be able to use half of our nearly 300 lb joint luggage allowance. I’m starting to wonder what other travellers might have in their bags. 30 oz bulk bottles of sunscreen? Lots and lots of unnecessary clothing? An entire encyclopedia? Mummified bodies? Bricks? Or maybe almost no one ever uses the whole allowance. After all, who can lift their body weight in huge canvas luggages, anyway?

I’ve read that the airlines, up until recently, used an estimation of their average traveller weighing something like 165 lbs (175 for men, 150 for women). You’d be hard-pressed to find a group of Americans anywhere that averaged 165 lbs, today. And airlines have progressively increased the amount of luggage allowed (bigger people need bigger pants?) Additionally, and unfortunately, the price of fuel is one of the most commonly cited reasons that the American airlines can’t seem to stay out of bankruptcy court. Maybe they should make all of the in-flight literature pertain to dieting and simplistic living. That 13 hours of monotany would be a great opportunity for brain washing, and really, anything is preferable to those horrible Sky-Mall catalogues.

[This is a page from my trusty paper planner.]

Liz visited last night and went to the 80’s dance with us. She got back from New Zealand yesterday and one of the first things she said to me was along the lines of “Geez it’s great to be back. Traveling alone was a great. I got to do what I wanted and think some things through, but it gets lonely not having old friends around.”

Personally, I find it difficult to imagine Liz being lonely. She seems to find and befriend people everywhere she goes. Nonetheless, I understand her complaint (or so I think.) At first it’s very liberating to be around people who don’t know your back story, who don’t have assumptions about you. But after a while, you get sick of having to explain yourself. You start to miss the continuity of having people re-enforce who you think you are. And of being able to tell a story without having to explain every character and previous incident of note. Or, for example, that a “biscuit” is not the same as a “cookie” if you’re from the US.

Despite this one drawback about being alone, it seems that Liz had a great time traveling. She stopped off in Tahiti to get a sunburn, spelunked, picked fruit, sailed, lived with other travellers, and generally had an exciting and eye-opening experience. I must admit that I’m a little jealous. I certainly haven’t been free to do all of those things these past two years. It’s great to hear stories, though. Not quite as good as being there, but it’s great.

I also started reading Stacey’s honors thesis about her trip to Mali last year. I’ve only read the first quarter (it is, after all, 132 pages) but so far I am loving it. I’ve heard many of these stories, privately, over tea, but it is completely different to read them in a polished, professional format. This is a paper. It won highest honors (props to Stacey and her departement for recognizing good work) at a well-reputed university. This is the future of acedemic thought. And, excitingly enough, there are ideas represented and validated that correspond to my own. Despite my habitually cynical nature, that seems to be cause for a little hope. At least the things that seem important to me aren’t being entirely ignored by everyone. My own interests still lie in medicine and pure science, but I do appreciate all the sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and linguists who are trying to figure out how it is that we, as humans, relate to one another, and how to avoid future (and sometimes current) mistakes. After all, hate and war kill just as effectively as disease, and often with more unpleasant fallout.

Stacey’s paper is also, in my opinion, beautifully written. I sincerely enjoyed her travologue-update emails and, in many ways, they were an inspiration for this website. She has carefully noted many facinating details and reported not only what she saw, but also her reactions, in a way that seems honest and forthright. I feel like she’s shared a shadow of a rare and powerful experience. Stacey went with a program that saw to her safety and comfort, and yet it was very challanging, physically and emotionally. It would be harder, and less safe, to go on my own. Mali may be a place that I unfortunately never go. But it seems like a facinating place. Her stories paint Bambara as an exotic place, in the sense that old assumptions do not necessarily hold true, and yet a familiar one, in the way that, for many, it is a mundane and practical place to live.

It’s crazy to me that places connected to my own home(s) by the magic of globalization can be so completely and totally different. Malians and Americans exchange money and ideas, but the values the average Malian are sometimes incompatable with those of a normal American. They may differ more than the values of a Turk and a Frenchman, or an American and a Korean, or at least in different ways. I never cease to be amazed how people, biologically similar and culturally connected, can be so different in critical aspects. I’m very happy to have stories from people I trust about places and societies that I, myself, may never see. And I can only hope that some of my stories share some of the same power. (I will openly apologize in advance for all of the ones that are boring or excessively self-indulgent. Really. I’m sorry. Skip those.)

As of now, I should get to bed. Sleep, irregardless of it’s many patterns, is a universal requirement. And I do have an exam tomorrow morning.