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LYA: You had a rough time when you took your first solo trip to Mexico. RG: I was terrified! I’d never done anything like that before. I was 46 years old at the time, and I’d never even had dinner in a restaurant alone. I always had friends and family and a husband to do everything with, and suddenly I was on my own. I was able to do daytime things, but when it came to going out to dinner, I had to really learn. I’m still not crazy about eating alone in a restaurant. I’d rather pick up people to go to dinner. LYA: When you stayed in a native village for the first time, the people weren’t friendly at all. What stopped you from leaving? RG: I said to myself, “I’m going to do it. This is what I’m here for. I spent four years studying anthropology, and if I can’t come into a village and make it work, what a waste of my time.” I was determined to stay there no matter what happened. LYA: A lot of times you connected with the women in the culture through cooking, why cooking? RG: People who offer you food are offering you love, a gift. And they’re proud of how they cook. I would ask, “Can I watch? Can I cut the onions? Can I learn how you make it? It’s delicious.” They’re honored. And I’m reinforcing them as people and setting up a bonding process. I speak Spanish, but I’m not fluent, so it’s always easier not having to make serious conversation. I taste something and say how wonderful it is, or smell something and say, “Eww, that’s awful!” and wrinkle my nose. And they laugh. When I do things wrong it’s also a wonderful bonding thing. It sets up a teacher-student situation. They’re teaching me how to balance a basket on my head and it falls, and everybody laughs at me. And I laugh at myself. And suddenly I’m no longer the rich, brilliant, powerful American, I’m this person who can’t even balance a basket on her head. LYA: I understand you’re working on a cookbook. RG: I write a lot about food in the book, and people kept writing to me and asking me if I was going to do a cookbook. All I could think was, “Oh God. I don’t want to do a cookbook, I have to do all that measuring.” Then I was talking to Lars, my chef friend in France. He said, “You don’t have to have measuring in a cookbook, and why don’t you do it with stories, too.” I didn’t have enough stories to fill a cookbook, so I decided to invite everyone to send me their stories. I’m asking for stories about connections between people. I think I have almost enough now. LYA: How challenging was it to write a travelogue after having written so many children’s books? RG: Thirty-two pages is one thing, 300 some-odd pages is very different. Also, my ex-husband is a very very private person, and I couldn’t start the book without talking about the marriage and divorce. We didn’t have a horrible divorce, we were still talking. I just didn’t discuss it with him. Then one day I was having a lunch with a friend who had been a friend in the marriage, and she said, “Rita, why aren’t you writing a book?” And I said, “You know Steve, he’s such a private person, how could I do that to him?” And she said, “Rita, you’ve been divorced for 15 years— is he still controlling you?” The next day I started the book. But I was very careful not to get into stuff. That wasn’t the point of the book. LYA: Did you ever worry about physical danger on the road, about being attacked? RG: I was 47 going on 48 when I started traveling. I think if I had been 24 it might have been more of a problem. But at 48, they’re not chasing after me down the street [laughs]. I think it’s a positive thing! And I’ve warned people asking me that question who are young and nubile that they’re going to have more trouble than I did. LYA:
So what advice would you give women who want to travel alone?
LYA: What would you say was the most difficult part of your travels? RG: The most painful moment was in Guatemala. I had spent several months working with this woman on opening a home for street kids in Guatemala City. I wrote a proposal to help her get money, we renovated a house. Finally the house was ready for the opening. But the woman had her assistant tell me she didn’t want me on the project anymore. Too many gringos and not enough locals. And I never saw her again. I was expendable. I cried for a week. I locked myself in my room and didn’t come out. What I actually did that night was meet a bunch of people who were smoking pot, and I got stoned out of my mind. I wrote this in the book, but my editor wouldn’t let me put it in! She allowed the mushrooms in Mexico, but she didn’t let the marijuana through in Guatemala! LYA: What about medical care when you’re traveling? RG: Only one serious thing has ever happened to me. But I used to tell my friends in Bali, “If I’m ever so sick I can’t make decisions for myself, put me on a plane and send me to Singapore.” The medical care in Bali is not good. Depending upon where I am, I might fly back to the nearest developed country for help. But you know, it’s such a rich, exciting, and fulfilling life, that if I died of some terrible thing, it would’ve been worth it. The risks I take are in order to do something wonderful. LYA: So what advice would you give someone who’s hesitating out of fear? RG: Thinking is probably the most dangerous thing to doing anything adventurous or fulfilling a dream. There are always reasons you shouldn’t do it. Why it’s dangerous, why a single woman shouldn’t travel, or if you leave your job you won’t be able to go back at the same level… I can make up huge lists. From my point of view, giving it too much thought will stop you from doing it. Don’t think, just jump. I always feel anxiety when I start something new. But I know that if I just gulp and do it, it’s going to be great at the other end. It’s not always easy. I’m 68 and I just came back from Thailand and Laos where in a couple very remote villages we had to sleep on a floor and there were steep stairs to get to the outhouse with a squat toilet. I was scared. I don’t move as well as I did before, I don’t squat as well as I used to [laughs] and I’m not sure I’m going to go to any more places with squat toilets! I’m sort of changing my thinking. LYA: Do you think you’ll travel less, or to less remote places? RG: The latter. I’d like to take a 4-wheel drive and spend a year driving around Canada. But I hate to drive. So I’m waiting for a driver to come along. My next hope is that I’ll be in Africa in 2006. Every major city in the world has an international school that teaches in English, and a lot of them are happy to have visiting authors. I got an invitation from the American Embassy to spend two weeks at the school in New Delhi. It was a wonderful experience. So I was thinking I’d like to do this in other schools. Then two years ago I was at clown school in Minnesota. I’ve been telling people they have to get rid of their inhibitions if they want to live their dreams. I made a list of about 20 things they should do. It started simply, like wake up in the morning and brush your teeth with the other hand, spend a day without a bra. The last thing on the list was to go to clown school. If you’re having problems with your inhibitions, put on a face! So I went to Mooseburger Clown School, and I loved it. I expected to find a lot of people my age, middle-aged women with nothing else to do. But there were people of all ages— doctors, a firewoman, it was fabulous. So I was in the store where you can buy costumes and paints. I met a woman who was the principal of a school in Zambia. Turns out there are five African countries that share a guest author. I got the name of the person I apply to, and I applied! I’m excited about it. I don’t know if I’ll get accepted, but if I don’t, I think I’ll go anyway. LYA: Do you find your children’s books cross the language barrier? RG: A couple do. I have a book with a monkey called, Why Can’t I Fly? Everyone can identify with that. It’s not a little white face with blond hair, it's a monkey. She gets advice from other flying animals, like one bird says you have to have feathers, so they glue the monkey all up and roll her in feathers. Each time she gets advice, she tries it and leaps off the top of a tree saying, "I can fly, I can fly… I can flop." And I can get kids of any language to say it. And they laugh and laugh. So that is a book I never travel without. LYA: Sounds like a book adults can relate to, too, if they’re trying something new. RG: [Laughs] I tell people it’s autobiographical! At the end of the book, the monkey’s advisors tell her she has to try one more time. So up she goes, and all the advisors are holding a sheet and they carry the monkey off into the sky. It’s my favorite book of all the ones I’ve written. I wrote it before I started traveling. It was prophetic! LYA: Any final words to our readers? RG: It’s never easy. You have to listen to the voices inside yourself, not the ones from outside. You have to leap, and it’s almost impossible not to succeed. LYA: I enjoyed talking to you, thanks! RG: You’re welcome! Want more? Visit Rita Gelman's fun web site at www.ritagoldengelman.com To learn more about Servas visit www.servas.org To learn more about Mark McMahon and his Adventures, visit www.LiveYourAdventure.com The following are Mark's previous articles for the magazine:
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