the most radical thing

Atop my bicycle bag is a bumper sticker that reads, "The most radical thing we can do is introduce people to one another."  I see this as a theme for the hope of my journey.  I will go away, learn, collect stories from foreign nations and return home to introduce you to everyone.  
I watch the world tearing at the seams by war and climate uproar and I think now is the time for us to become more intimate with our neighbors.  We're all in this together.

The journey begins on a plane, already a count against the journey, a journey about power and our misuse of it.  Next time, Dear Climate, I promise to take a boat.  A bicycle-powered boat.

I sit between two crying babies and watch Jules Verne's 80 Days Around the World.
When I arrive in  Jordan  I first find my bicycle and see the box has been ripped apart like an angry trapped cat escaped and blue tape across it saying it was chosen for inspection.
But it is there.
I walk out to a sea of strange faces and find one familiar, a blonde scruffy beard of a smiling Norwegian I met in New York city at a party and, in blind faith he invites me to his family's home in Amman.  On the drive over, he regales me with tales of his adventures throughout the Middle East, finding employment for Iraqis who have been injured by landmines, walking across Jericho, working in Palestinian refugee camps. He told me he someday would like to make a book of tattoos he has seen in  refugee camps.  A lot of them have to do with electricity.  A socket. a television.  so they have their own power source on them whenever they want.  One guy had the image of his girlfriend inked and yet it wasn't very flattering and made her look like she was in a wheelchair so she dumped him.

Early the next morning I meet my friends for coffee, a Syrian theater director and a Palestinian puppeteer, and we rap about revolution, the massacre of the Syrian people, the fear of where Egypt is heading, the not knowing of the Jordanian people for what they want keeping them paralyzed.   A sobering conversation.   And then we're off to the red dusty desert of Wadi Rum where camels race and bedouins camp under the stars.

Husam invites me to co-teach a storytelling workshop at the Women's Association in Disa.
The Association was created because of the serious lack of employment and activities for women in the region.  They are trained in ceramics which get sold to tourists in Aqaba and a beauty salon and, also now storytelling and theater.  Husam is teaching them how to tell personal stories as well collecting stories of elders in their community.   We begin with physical and vocal warm-ups and I have to think fast on my feet for how to adjust exercises for a group who have clothing and movement restrictions.  and though the girls giggle at some of the actions, they jump in bravely and one of the most physically expressive and comical girls is in a full hejab and veil.   They tell stories of death, bus incidents and mistaken identity.  One girl tells a funny story of how a young man mistook her for his aunt because of her veil and kissed her on the head.   Later on, when I was taking a moment to draw portraits of the girls, the same girl told me to draw her because it would be easy; just her eyes.   They break into song and dance in the middle of games and drill me about football, which they all follow ravenously.  They love Barcelona.  An older Bedouin man visits to tell stories and play a string instrument he built with horse tail, an old x-ray and wood.  Every 30 seconds on cue, the string pops out of its holder, striking the instrument with a big THWAP which makes us all jump and he has to readjust over and over, with a smile and only hint of frustration.   He's like a Bedouin Harpo Marx.  He says he's a hunter and has just returned from the hunt.  When we ask what, he goes out and returns with a beautiful green and red bird tied to a string.  It flies frantically in circles around the room.  He caught it so it will eat bees in his tent.   As he played, Husam secretly wandered off to set it free.

The founder of the association takes me out to dinner at a Bedouin camp and a group of local girls drag me into belly dancing around the fire pit.  The head of the camp comes to visit us and tells me how he invites Dutch companies to stay there for leadership training, climbing mountains, riding camels, building tents together.  But I find this a little ironic that he is using the ancient Bedouin lifestyle to assist corporations to be better capitalists so they can generate work which is most likely contributing to the destruction of cultures like his own.
The next day of workshop was better than the last.  I have more chances to play with the girls.  We improvise on our feet generating stories out of physical exercises and tableaux.  Fight and struggle keeps cropping up again and again in their work.   They strike poses with their fists in the air.

After the weekend workshop, I head back to Amman and the next day I bicycle out to Shuna to visit a permaculture site, the first in Jordan.  The Dead Sea is more and more living up to its name and losing water by the minute.    When Palestinian refugees immigrated into the surrounding area and began farming, they quickly adopted western ways and introduced pesticides, GMOs; monoculture.   Big, colorful, flawless crops- full of chemicals that soak up so much water the area can't sustain it.   The permaculture site, Greening the Desert project, began by Australian agriculturalist, Geoff Lawton, is only 3 years old and moves much more slowly than the Monsanto style model.
I biked through the devastatingly beautiful mountains, sailing down through waves of repressive heat and horrendous pollution but the visuals made up for my decreasing lung power.   I arrived at the site in the midday blazing sun to be met by a young Frenchman with a pile of dreadlocks stuffed back with a dirty bandana.  He is currently leading the expedition.  He had been building a haystack house all day long in preparation for the world Permaculture convention in September.   He gave me the full tour of their small plot of land, trying to bite his tongue on his frustrations with the problems in the design of the site which is really meant to be a demonstration site.   He is an anarchist and said once he learned about permaculture, he saw that was the perfect way to construct the revolution.  Plants working together to sustain life on earth, and humans just assisting nature in doing what it already knows how to do brilliantly.   He said slowly but surely it is having an effect.  Local farmers come around and see the permaculture crops survived even in the heat of summer and they see how cool and effective the straw houses are.  It takes time.  Real solid change takes time.

I biked on to the Dead Sea with children running alongside me shouting, "Barcelona!"
I found an isolated beach to take a dip and while floating perfectly in the salty bath, gazing at Palestine a few miles away, feeling totally alone, a group of six men suddenly appear from over the ridge.  They must have seen my bicycle.  
One jumps in the water and wades over to me.   I get out and start putting my clothes on over my bathing suit, they come closer to me and I clap my hands together, "HALLAS!  Yella!"  Stop!    They go together to confer and decide to walk off in a huff and leave me in peace.  I walk quickly in the other direction with a clay mask all over my face and arms and white residue of salt covering my body.
 It all seemed too perfect so far.  Something a little dangerous had to happen to ground me again.

just the first few days....