The theme of "Andean culture" is what links
Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.
Indigenous culture - as a US American from the state of
Illinois (where little more than vaguely understood place names
stand as monuments to displaced local native cultures) I look to
understand current native culture's strengths and challenges around
the globe. As I am beginning to understand.. EVERY country on this
planet has its marginalized native peoples. One of my goals is to
connect with local community leaders to learn from them and see if I
can help in any way with cultural or economic struggles. I visit not
as an observer, exploiter, theif or missionary: but rather as a
student & friend.
This equation is a lot more simple in the Americas where there is generally A dominant mainstream culture (that for me is relatively easy for me to grasp) and several minority indigenous (and sometimes oddly placed African diaspora) communities whose culture is richly different and difficult to comprehend. In the Americas I dived into the minority cultures but as I entered Asia and the middle east even the mainstream culture was so different than my own, so challenging to comprehend that I often did not have lots of time or energy left over to plunge into the remotest regions of the land to find the minority (and sometimes nomadic cultures). Exceptional minority cultures I found were the Hmong of Laos, Bai, Dai, Naxi, and eastern Tibetans of Yunnan, countless minority cultures in Nepal's backcountry (each falling somewhere different on the X-Y axis of Hindu-Animist-Bhuddist and Indo-European-Mongolian), and the Kalash of North Pakistan. Peoples I heard of but missed from a lack of time or strength (each of which I somehow regret) include the aboriginal peoples of Madhya Pradesh (who look suprisingly like Native Australians by all accounts), countless nomadic tribes in the mountains, jungles and deserts of Iran and the Cygan or Gypsy people in East Europe.
The theme of "Indo-European
culture" is what links Thailand, India, Iran, and parts of
Europe.
Because of my mother's family being from Iran this theme transformed into an exploration of the cultural links India, Pakistan, Nepal, Turkey, and Eastern Europe have to Iranian culture (and the culture of ancient Persia). In India and Pakistan I saw traditional things in practice (like the costumed water sellers holding cold water in giant cow stomaches in front of Delhi Jammeh Mosque who later in Yazd, Iran I saw statues of as an ancient historical only grandfathers as young boys had seen. Another example the long felt coats worn by older men in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province are like that of my grandfather photographed in Iran in 1910) which were only part of dim historical memory in Iran. In Bulgaria people still use Iranian words inherited through their former Ottoman Turk rulers. Nepali language had many words and even a few structural things in common with the Iranian language etc.
Mountains - I love to experience strong mountain
culture in all of its forms ... and oh, I like the mountains
too.
To use a bad pun I kind of peaked out on this passion during my journey. First in the Andes climbing to a peak of 5500 meters suffering from severe dehydration and then during almost four months (half of that hiking solo in remote mountain ranges) in Himalayas of Nepal, hiking near the border of Afghanistan and crossing the Hindu Kush and Himalayan north of Pakistan from Chitral to Gilgit and finally going in every nook and cranny of the Alborz mountains straddling the land where the desert meets the rainforest around Tehran, Iran. Overall I have found that the famous motto "mountaineering is the art of suffering" is fully true and as such there is a limit to how much time I have patience for suffering at high altitude with a pack on. I think that my explosive desire for this type of activity when I began my journey stemmed from a lot of pent up energy as I persued a career which was not where my heart was, felt trapped inside a relationship that was more harm than good, and neglected to follow my dreams. The hurts created by that kind of soul-neglect were only soothed by the balm of pure nature, solitude, physical excercise. I am still totally up for a long (even multi-week) hike to any (ideally mysterious) destination over the mountains, dont get me wrong: but this is not the same rabid hunger it used to be. I just as much enjoy lovely day hikes with the joy of a hot shower at the end.
MY INTERESTS AS OF MAY 2003
New interests that arose during the journey and my personal fermentation are:
- Disciplne. I have realized that many things I would like to grow inside myself and materially outside myself require that I have an established routine that I faithfully stick to. All the parts of the day: yoga, meditation, sleep, how and what is eaten, work, even going to the toilet are key parts of the day and the success of each is fully interdependent.
- Fixing and improving machines and household fixtures. For me improvement means making the fixtures work better in a way that is quieter and uses less energy, if possible making them somehow more ecological. I could also express this new interest as "finding ecological solutions to household problems."
- An interest in Ecological communities where people have left following the mainstream modern or traditional cultures of their land and have redesigned their life according to concious principles and objectives (often cheif among which are communal living and reduced consumption). This may manifest itself later in trying to found such a community, join such a community or less radically, just work conciously to improve my own life system to be more communal and consume less).
- Starting my own business or NGO. This may arrive as creating non-for-profit business like AfroParAsian Designs which pay me an income but after four years of success are majority owned by the microcredit partners. I have also thought about creating a sort of mini-industry shop, B&B conference center with strong Ecological, holistic medicine, self-development and world culture leanings. Any such idea requires investors and a solid business plan. This is baking in my mental oven now.
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