A New
Generation of Nomad or Simply an Escape Artist?
According to the Oxford
Dictionary of English, a nomad is a member of a people that travels from place
to place to find fresh pasture for its animals and has no permanent home; a
person who does not stay long in the same place, a wanderer. As I get older, I feel the need to move on to
new places more frequently. After a
time, I start to feel like I do not belong in a specific place anymore and feel
compelled to embark on another journey.
Nomadism for me has become a sort of lifestyle that I find harder and
harder to resist the more I move around.
Not only am I nomadic when it comes to living environment, but also
linguistically. I love to learn about
different cultures and the histories of distant peoples and try to do so by
learning new languages. The more I
travel, the more bits and pieces of languages I pick up, but with all the
moving around and all the new interests that come along with that, I no longer
dedicate time to actually mastering them.
As for the Oxford Dictionary's definition, I seem to only fit into the
secondary definition since whatever pets I have had in Toronto or overseas have not accompanied me in my
travels.
I honestly do not know
where it came from, my desire to travel the world. I was very young when I traveled on my own
for the first time, just fifteen years old, and I knew nothing about the
world. I do not think that it was even a
curiosity about experiencing new cultures and visiting places unknown to me
that drew me, I think it was the sense of freedom. No pressures from anyone and no
obligations. I was finally going to
experience something totally new and on my own terms. This first trip took me to
Weimar, Germany. I had
been studying German in high school and there was an opportunity to take an
immersion course during the summer and somehow I had convinced my parents to
let me go. Two things stand out to me
when I think back on that experience.
One was that I met the very first friend I ever truly loved. It seems an odd concept, even to me, but I
think part of it was that we met under circumstances wholly built on my own
terms. I had not known her since before
I could remember, I did not meet her at the church my family went to, nor the
school I was enrolled in and this to me was new and refreshing. She was the first person I truly felt like
myself with. And the second thing that I
remember about that trip was having my first life experience where I felt like
I stood out (in a negative way) because of my skin. Even though back home, the majority of the
kids I went to school with and to church with were white, there were still
speckles of other colours around. I
remember standing at the bus stop in the centre of Weimar and being stared at from afar. I shrugged it off, but the moment that really
impressed this awkward feeling on me was when I met a black student who had
been studying in Weimar for some time and he immediately began to speak to me and he spoke to
me in English. And every time I saw him
or his friends around town, they always used to say hello to me. We did not really know each other, but we had
formed a sort of silent solidarity.
The next summer I
traveled to India with my parents. I had been to India twice before, first at the age of three and
again when I was ten, but this was trip marked the time in my life when I
finally started to pay attention to and appreciate my Indian heritage. My parents are not the story-telling type, so
if there was anything I wanted to know about our family background, it was like
pulling teeth to get information from them (not much has changed). This was a phenomenal milestone for me
because this was when I fell in love with Indian food! I could not stand it before. But more importantly, I witnessed what my
life would have been like if my parents had not immigrated to Canada. I met
a lot of family members that I never knew before and enjoyed the beauty of that
tropical environment.
Then when I was in my
final year of high school, another opportunity arose for me to explore the
world on my own. I participated in an
international co-op program which took me to Paraguay in South America. I worked in the southern city of
Pilar as an English teacher for four months at an
elementary school. This trip definitely
had a huge impact on my life. Prior to
leaving for Paraguay, I had zero interest in learning Spanish at
all. I had been studying French and
German and I thought that that was enough for me. But of course, before we left, we received some
basic language training. What I did not
expect was that once I got to Paraguay, that I would pick up the language so quickly
and that I would fall in love with it.
This was the moment that I realized that I had been translating my whole
life. There was another foreign student
working in Pilar and I was often called on to help her communicate with her
host family or the teachers at the school.
It was then that I realized that during my whole life I had been
"translating" conversations between my parents or between my parents
and others. My experience in Pilar
caused me to change my course of study in university the following fall from
International Relations to French Language and Linguistics.
During my third year of
university, in 2002, my aunt started working in Afghanistan as a part of the relief efforts there post
9/11. She planted a seed in my mind at
the time that would lead me to Kabul after graduation. She had mentioned that I should consider
going out there to see what the world of development was like and once I
graduated, I was eager to go. So once I
saved up enough money for a plane ticket, I was on my way. When I arrived in Kabul, I immediately met a group of amazing and
like-minded young people who were there to try and make a difference. I immediately hired a Dari (the Afghan
dialect of Farsi) teacher to make good use of my time while I was looking for
work. After a few weeks I started
working at a UN agency as a Programme Support Officer in the big UN compound on
the east-end of the city. But I longed
to do something more hands on and eventually gained a post as Communications
Officer on a Customs and Trade project.
This position took me to a small office within the Ministry of Finance
working on communications initiatives for the Afghan Customs Department. This was definitely an eye-opening
experience. It was rewarding and
frustrating all at the same time. It was
an honour to be a part of rebuilding a country, doing my small part, but also
frustrating to see how the constant politicking within the ministry and also
between the government and the development agencies caused work to progress at
such a slow pace. And although Afghanistan may not seem like a romantic place, I met my life
partner there. But after a year and a
half of living and working in Kabul, I was ready to come home. Or so I thought.
The first six months I
spent back in Toronto, back "at home" were awful. I went from working 12-14 hour days, six days
a week, to sitting around at my parents' home in the suburbs with no means of
escape. No car, no internet, no
connection to the outside world. I was
living on what I called Dawson Island. I had experienced what is
called reverse culture shock before, but never so badly as this. To be honest, I do not think I have recovered
from it yet, more than a year later.
What keeps me here and what keeps me going is the goal I have set for
myself in completing my graduate degree.
Working in Afghanistan created in me a deep interest in the history
of Asia and Asian cultures in general. And having had the opportunity to travel
extensively in the region while working there only deepened that interest for
me. And so I am already making plans for
my next move. I am hoping to do some
research work in Indonesia next year; this is where my partner is
currently working. And with the cold
weather invading Toronto now, I am drawn to that equatorial country on the other side of the
globe. I look forward to the new
experiences and the things that I will learn and the new relationships that
will form across languages and cultures.
What comforts me is that I already have a plane ticket booked and so all
I have to do is count down the days until I will take off again. Just knowing that my nomadic journey will
continue puts me at peace and it makes me feel like myself.
The
Kuchi Nomads of Afghanistan
The Kuchi people of Afghanistan are a nomadic people. The majority of Kuchi belong to either the
Pashtun or Baluch tribes. Due to 30
years of war, followed by severe drought, these people and their way of life
are in danger of disappearing. Today you
can see Kuchi tents set up on the outskirts of Kabul. For
many, the few livestock they have are not enough to sustain them monetarily or
physically and so they camp near the capital city in hopes of finding some
temporary work that will pay for their journey to their summer pastures.
