Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter Eight
“If there were no schools to take the children away from home
part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with moth-
ers.”
—Edgar W. Howe
I
have a confession to make, admittedly it is over twenty years late, but as they say, better
late than never: I hated school. Almost every minute I was forced to sit at that desk, listening
to teachers, was pure, unadulterated hell. And I had the grades to prove it. At one point, I
scored 18% on a chemistry exam. And the fact that I got 18% of the questions correct was
a near miracle. No, unfortunately, memorizing facts and being tested on them was just two
rungs up from Chinese water torture. I didn't realize it until much later, but the reason for
that was that facts and figures and chemistry didn't speak to me. Other people's stories did.
Although my schooling wasn't much of a success, I found another way of learning. It was
by fantasizing about walking on the moon that I became interested in astronomy. It was by
wondering where the hell Antarctica was that I pulled out my first map. It was by dreaming
that I would ride a motorcycle across the world that one day . . . Well, you know the rest.
And yet without the education I received, I don't know that I would have ever been open
to those lessons. It was because I understood the context of the countries that I was visiting,
that I was also better able to understand their people . . . and ultimately myself. I walked
through India with my English accent, keenly aware of the role my country had played in
the history of this modern nation. I quickly saw how my Queen's English and my white skin
affected the dynamics between me and the people I met. I could feel the weight of history as
though it were riding next to me in Kindness One's sidecar. But I knew that in dropping the
mask, the mask of my accent, and that of the horrendous baggage of our mutual past, that in
some way, the dynamic might be shifted yet again.
No school could teach the lessons of India. It seemed that all the crises of the
world—poverty, inequality, spirituality, and a glut of technology—were playing out on the
