Cesano, Italy
May 16, 1984

Dear Folks,

Gone are the wind-brushed fields, the darting lizards, and the sun-splashed towns of south Italy. In their places I now have fog-shrouded forests, fat snails, misty breaths, and...rain. And more rain. So much so that the Adriatic Sea I've been camped alongside the past nine days no longer whispers but roars.

It's a good time to be shut inside and to let nature get over its growing pains. In my case, that has also meant being away from all the howling, 18-wheeled hurricanes splooshing to and from the factories in Florence and Bologna.

Thus, I have found myself conversing with the villagers in nearby Cesano, primarily over countertops and with cursory glaces by me to puddled sidewalks and dripping window panes. When I've not been busy chasing down more via aerea envelopes or loaves of pane, I've usually been in my tent whittling away at my usual backlog of tardy correspondence.

This railroad track-hugging resort town, with its merchants staring wistfully toward winter-weary Germany, and my little poplar forest with its woundup cuckoo birds have been perfect places to coax thoughts and memories from my head to a pen to paper. While the front pages of the La Republica and the Corriere Adriattco (one doesn't read just one newspaper on days like these) report that Rome is being torn apart by soccer fans, the closest I've come to seeing a dispute here was when a portly housewife disagreed with the grocer's tabulation. He thought her small sack of groceries was worth 15 lire; she thought 14,840 was more accurate ( a difference of about 10 cents). She, of course, was right, and the grocer had little choice but to go back to watching the northern horizon and wondering where all the German tourists were.

However, lest you think I'm lonely, what with little more than tent fabric and empty beaches to stare at on some days, let me remind you of my writing chores. Much of it has been updates of the first one-third of the worldwalk for several newspapers in the States. Therefore I've been revisiting mentally many of the worldwalk's personalities, many of whom have caused me to laugh out loud or to shake my head and marvel at the the numbers of those who've "answered" my mental "knock." As you might guess, there are many persons I haven't shared with you thus far in these letters.

Some I had considered perhaps a little too odd. For instance there was "Baldy," an extemely meditative Buddhist monk I encountered while walking through the dark along Boston's Commonwealth Avenue. I first spied him and his saffron-colored robes through the huge picture window of a Victorian home. No way could I resist sneaking from the sidewalk to the window and peering from the bushes below the window at the meditating monk inside . For at least 20 minutes I marveled at how he never moved a muscle, at how he sat so still and perfectly erect on the floor in the center of the living room. Not even the occasional disciples tiptoeing up to him and placing flowers and food at his sides elicited any kind of stirring or opening of his eyes. Such discipline! Such mental and bodily control! His focus was astounding!

Not until two of the disciples suddenly discovered my presence in the bushes, and informed me that I'd been staring at a life-sized statue all that time, did I realize just how otherwordly indeed was the meditative monk. Still, so impressed were the two disciples with my own patience that they invited me inside. And from that evening came one of the most delicious vegetarian meals anyone could ever experience, as well as a contact for a temple in London's Soho District where, in a few weeks, I would meet wildly-gyrating Krishna worshipers, glaze-eyed bums, blue-coated Bobbies chasing a burglar, and a mental institution escapee who ate flower petals off the temple's floor.

Other characters of the worldwalk I have yet to share with you were perhaps a bit too sweet, like dear Mrs. Heasley, a 78-year-old oasis of roses and hot water bottles and quilted bedspreads in the midst of a warring Belfast. Some have been a bit mysterious, like the aged millionairess who materialized from the Nottingham fog in a long Rolls Royce to tearfully share her realization that beauty is as temporal for the rich as it is for the rest of us. And then there have been many of the youth, like Xavier, an 11-year-old French schoolboy with an intense curiosity of the behemoth sports gladiators and dazzling technology of America. His passion for exploring life helped me to overcome my language difficulties.

There have, of course, been the idealistic. How can I ever forget Guy and Isabelle,with whom I spent several days in their rambling south France home that reverberated with the energies of three small children and ten young men successfully overcoming past drug addictions. In addition, I have met some who saddened me, such as the Spanish school teacher Rosa, whose teen students I helped to learn the words to the song Fame. Dark-eyed and pretty, Rosa lived on her own in a cliff-hugging fishing village that had had a tragic past and whose mostly elderly residents scorned individualism and new ideas. There, much to Rosa's frustration, the ignorance of the past still reached out to blind the innocent.

And, then, there was Ricky. He was a lame, long-bearded recluse who lived in a cavish tunnel beneath a roadway in southern Spain that was lined with millionaires' condos. I had stumbled onto him, as I scampered into the tunnel to escape a sudden downpour. All of Ricky's possessions I could count on both hands. Oddly, they included a ragged textbook titled Middle Ages Europe Economics, which he had read over and over in the three years that he'd been hiding in that tunnel from a society he no longer understood.

As the homeless man's first "guest" in all those years, he honored me with his favorite meal: rice-and-mayonaise stew, served in a crusty and soot-blackened tin can. It actually was tasty, especially when added to an evening of conversation beside a crackling wood fire.

So much diversity in the people of this world. So much love. So much wisdom being unwittingly imparted to me.

Now, if could only figure out to use all that wisdom I've acquired thus far to make this rain go away, before I start sounding like all those cuckoo birds in the forest around me.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pescara, Italy
April 29, 1984

Dear Folks,

After 5,200 miles and 13 months of walking, I'm beginning to suspect that I'm not directing the worldwalk's path as much as it is directing me. In a way it's uncanny, as if the trip has taken on a mind of its own.

Normally I'm not inclined to be led by another, and yet perhaps this is one time I might be wise to the quiet "follower." I'm finding that oftentimes my best adventures and learning experiences come in places I never intended to visit in the first place.

Thus, I now find myself ambling about the rolling grassy countryside and aged village streets of rural Italy with the devil-may-care freedom of some hobo king: One hour I will be firmly in control, well on my way to Yugoslavia (still hundreds of kilometers away), and then the next hour I'll be wandering about aimlessly, as if hopelessly absent-minded. That's when I know the walk is "doing it again to me," and it's best if I keep my knobby walking stick tapping onward, for surely some enchanting surprise must be awaiting me.

And, oh, what delightful treats I've sampled these past few weeks in the haunting tranquility of southeast Italy's sparsely-populated lands--again, a place I hadn''t originally intended to walk through. Before reaching Italy, I had planned to head up the more direct, warmer Mediterranean coast to Rome, but along the way a range of wispy mountains to my right had proved to be irresistable. And so, up and up and up I was to go, for over 25 kilometers, completely undisturbed, save for the sweet notes of innumerable songbirds and spring-fed brooks, and an old hermit who waved me into his goat-filled hut for a few hours of homemade wine and hunter's sausage.

To my surprise, but perhaps not to the spirit of the worldwalk, my size 12 boots were to lead me down, down, down the other side of the mountain range, the eastern side, from which I was to never return to the honking traffic and peeling, sterile condominiums that characterized the road to Rome. What I was to descend into, on the Adriatic side of Italy, was the Italy I'd been searching for all along: a kindly, peaceful land of gray stone-walled olive groves, breeze-kissed meadows of margarine-tinted daisies and blood-red poppies, oceans of deep wavy grass, and misty cool beaches of glistening dark rocks.

Thanks to the greater wisdom of the walk's spirits, I now had something far better...something called magic. For how else can I describe the excitement that rushed through me one overcast afternoon, when I ventured upon the cliff top shell of a lonesome castle ruin guarding an abandoned earthquake-shattered seaside lane? Or what of later that evening, when I huddled very close to a driftwood campfire on the tiny beach that hugged the castle ruin's foundation. I was so sure that more than mere enchantment was peering down at me from the darkening castle's hulk.

Then several nights later, there was to be the Sassi. When I first gazed wide-eyed into the enormous spotlighted bowl of low hills near Matera that contained the abandoned ancient city called the sassi (rock), I could not believe what I was seeing. It was as if I was gazing into Time's window. Glaring back at me were the ashen walls and hollowed windows of not one ruined building but those of an entire city! I stared at the mortared ghosts like some mesmerized Huck Finn, impatient for the light of dawn so that I could begin my exploration of the 500-year-old relics.

The next thing to betwitch my senses was the Adriatic Sea. Across one vineyard, then another, then another I would walk to reach the distant surf where I could just make out groups of fishermen tossing long nets into the waves. What creatures might those fishermen be trapping, I had wondered excitedly. The sea is a place of endless fascination to me. Having been raised in a land of cornfields and maple forests, I can't help marveling child-like at the squiggly, scaly, saucer-eyed things that that liquid universe of the sea is always divving up.

When, at long last, I reached the sea and watched as the men, after several minutes of grunting and straining, pulled their nets onto the beach pebbles, and the nets' cords were pulled apart, piles of shimmering glass-like fish the size of my fingers spilled out.

"What are these?" I asked the red faces smiling above the glittering sea jewels.

"Sardines!" one of the men shouted, as he scooped a handful into his bearded mouth.

He offered me a handful, as he chewed the live fish heartily I hestitated, for the fish looked too precious to eat. And yet the adventurous part of me couldn't resist the temptation. I tossed three or four of the fish past my lips. A smile creased my face: Like everything else in southeast Italy that was meant for the stomach, or the soul, the fish tasted...heavenly.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 1:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matera, Italy
April 17, 1984

Dear Folks,

There are some aspects of my life before the worldwalk I used to consider so mundane that I would go out of my way to avoid them. One such thing was what I often referred to as "kitchen table chatter." You know what I mean: Dad moaning about the grass turning brown; the brother-in-law telling for the umpteenth time of the water pipes freezing last winter; Sis jealously rambling on about the other girls in her high school class.

I remember so vividly how I'd squirm in my seat at the kitchen table during breakfast or dinner and try my best, as the "wiser older brother," to let it all go in one ear and out the other. All the while of course I'd smile or nod at appropriate intervals. And all the time there'd be a tiny voice somewhere in the back of my mind groaning, How boring! The world's on the verge of all-out destruction and another Great Depression, and all they can talk about is that?

Ah, but now? Now I'd give anything to be seated again at that wobbly old wooden table and to be listening to such golden words. Yes, that's right...golden. Golden because now I realize those oftentimes silly bits of chit-chat are the "language" of family and close friends--persons I haven't laid eyes on for over a year now.

Oh I've had many conversations around many kitchen tables since departing from home. But it's not quite the same "quality" of drivel. For one thing, their relatives have wierd names like Franco and Fatima, and they are too unknown for me to truly appreciate their eccentricities. And, most of the time, the others at the table want to do all the talking, for it is their curiosity of the USA that initially attracted them into inviting me into their homes.

Or, or worse, because I'm a journalist they seem to think that I'd prefer not to discuss anything beneath the level of politics or nuclear proliferation. It's all I can do to keep from asking--begging!--them to tell me something more homey, like how the neighbor's wife filed for divorce again, or how little Bruno's school marks unquestionably hint at his being the next Einstein.

Oh for a big bowl of cornflakes, a steaming cup of cofee, and an earful of good ol' dumb gossip. For, you see, if there is one thing all my observations of various families in this world is teaching me, it's that life is mostly a succession of little and seemingly insignificant events. And those who don't learn to find such tiny events interesting and enjoyable--who live only for the "important" things--are denying themselves a lot of joy.

Luckily, every so often I manage to meet someone on this side of the globe who comes darn close to being a worthy "kitchen table chatterer." The basic requirement, of course, is that he/she must be a fellow American, and indeed some of the best chats I've had recently around a kitchen table were with such persons as the Jaquiths in Marrakech and the marine guards at our embassy in Algiers. The marines in particular were a super bunch. They shared their rambling old house with me for two days and nights, while I haggled with Algerian officials about getting a one-month visa extension. (Compared to all the other places I stayed in Africa, the marines' residence was like a place in some fantasy novel: a happy-go-lucky Scot cook whose brownies could have gotten him elected president; recently videotaped American sitcoms and movies being shown on a large color television; cupboards and a refrigerator!stuffed with food; and, best of all, a hot shower--the only one I had in the entire 1,200 miles across Northwest Africa.

However, the best kitchen table chatterer I've met, since leaving the USA, has been a Navy cook from Lawrence, Kansas. I met him this past week, when I arrived in Rome by train to pick up money and mail from home. The cook, Brian McCanon, and his Witchita-raised wife, Brenda, had me stay overnight at their modern apartment as I was on my way back to Matera (about where the heel of Italy's "boot" is joined to its sole), where I then resumed my walking.

Like myself, Brian had been a restless wanderer in his teens and early 20's. and he had frequently hitchhiked across the USA's vast midwest, usually with hardly any money in his pockets. As a result of our chats, we quickly discovered that we had had many of the same kinds of adventures.

Like longtime buddies, we talked for hours in the apartment's kitchen, laughing dellightfully at our "the time I got stuck with all the wierdos in Austin, Texas," kinds of stories and other similar nearly-forgotten tales that probably wouldn't have met much to those who've never hitchhiked.

The same sort of talk that used to make me groan was now providing me some of the best moments of my life, and I couldn't help thinking that not only do the best things in life come in little packages but perhaps, too, in little stories.

On the morning that Brian drove me to the train station, I asked him what he missed the most in the seven years he and Brenda had been living away from the USA.

He parked his old Alfa Romeo and thought for a moment.

"I miss not being able to just jump in the car and driving over to a relative's or a friend's house to talk," he said slowly. "Phone calls here are too expensive, and I'm not much of a letter writer."

He sighed.

"Yep, I guess that'd be the biggest complaint I got...not being able to just start talking with the family, when I feel like I need to."

I stared silently at the waiting train.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cantinella, Italy
April 7, 1984

Dear Folks,

Some wore rags, some dressed in silk. Some talked my sunburnt ears silly, others could only gesture timidly with their dark eyes and dark hands. Yet, there was something all of them--American, Anglo-Saxon, French, Spanish, Arab, and Italian--shared in common, no matter how awkward our speech: That "something" was motherly care and compassion, perhaps one of the greatest morale boosters any one kid so far from home could wish for.

Mom, you and I have been unable, for over a year, to share any time together. Believe me, it hasn't been the same without your sparkling eyes, encouraging words, and endless smile. Being so far from home, and all alone at that, has been one of the most painful sacrifices I've had to make for the sake of this trek.

Luckily, though, my days have been blessed with the compassion of so many other mothers, who somehow have found yet more love in their overworked hearts for one more gangly kid with a big stomach and a sore body and spirit. Of course it''s not the same as you, Mom, but still I don't think I'd have made it this far around the world without all the fussing and care of my "moms away from Mom."

I don't know why I've been blessed with so much love and warmth every time the worldwalk has reached its roughest stages. Maybe I'm just luckier than I give myself credit for, or maybe the world's mothers have seen something in me of their own children who've since grown into adults and parted to other regions to live.

I've become certain of one thing, though, as a result of all the kindnes shown me by my new moms: Without mothers, and their seemingly depthless reservoirs of love, this world would be much less beautiful.

How can I ever forget, or even begin to thank, all the moms of the worldwalk? Moms llike Ella, the very first, who treated me to a huge home-cooked steak dinner, even though she'd been laid off from her Cincinnati auto assembly job for over a year and was nearly broke. Or Linda, who had had to heat my bath water in a big pail on the wood-burning stove in her Appalachian cabin. Or Estaline who, with her bright blue eyes and tiny elderly frame, made me sit down on the porch of her Virginia cottage and eat breakfast, because she had thought I might be an angel sent by God to test her charitableness. She wasn't about to let me pass and thus cause her to lose her chance at going to Heaven!

Or what of Jodie, who didn't think her elegant large Washington, D.C., home was too fancy for my hobo-like figure to stay a week? Or Caitlin, with her fiery Irish temper and always-crowded pub on the banks of the River Boyne? Or 78-year-old Connie and her gut-busting Northern Ireland soda bread and potato cakes? Or Therese and Danielle, two mothers of huge French Catholic farm families who found room for one more hungry lad in their tiny poor homes? Or Rina and her Kansas-style hospitality and Bible lectures deep in a hostile Morocco? Or Fatima, who insisted on feeding me the Algerian specialty of couscous, even though it meant she had to squat on a dirt floor for hours to grind by hand the wheat grains?

So many loving moms on this big planet...so many along my "solitary" path.

Perhaps the best way I can think to tell them--as well as you, Mom--how much all of you have meant to me in the first one-third of the worldwalk is to say those three simple words I suspect you never hear enough: I love you.

Thanks, Moms. May each of you have a very special Mother's Day.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nicastro, Italy
April 3, 1984

Dear Folks,

Imagine Yonkers, Southern California, and the casts of about one hundred bad Hollywood movies thrown together into one small area of terraced brown mountains and old gray towns, and you'll have a good idea of what my ten days of walking across Sicily were like. If I had any notion that I was going to stroll across some quiet Mediterranean island of vineyards and sleepy fishing villages, that was quickly dispelled in Palermo, my first large city after disembarking at the port of Trapani.

First on my agenda, upon entering Palermo, was a quick stop at the post office. What it turned out to be was like a scene from a bizzare play. It was a good hint at what lay in store for me on that 220-mile-long island.

At the door of the post office a short and balding middle-aged man, screaming rapidly at me in Italian and laughing hysterically at the same time, lunged at me. If that and his clutching at my neck weren't enough to give me a heart attack, you can be sure that his bloody mouth and wide eyes did the trick. Try as I might to squeeze myself and my backpack and the raving lunatic clinging to me through the narrow Posta doorway, it just couldn't be done. I had no choice but, after casting a look of helplessness at the startled passersby, to take a deep breath, grab him by the neck, and heave him several feet down the sidewalk.

Even at that I barely tumbled into the lobby before the crazy man, still screaming at his invisible demons, was back at the door. Several persons in the lobby expressed a sign language unmistakable in any culture--a finger pointed at their head. I nodded and set my backpack against the wall. I naively assumed that life was back to normal.

Wrong.

I guess that for a place like Italy that had just been the "opening act." For just then two young national policemen--Carabinieri--burst through the same vexed doorway, their long hair ruffled and hatless, their boyish red faces flushed with excitement. Swinging from their hands, their fingers pressed against the triggers, were short military-style submachine guns. They waved the guns through the air like half-drunken cowboys.

I crouched as I handed the clerk my letters: If either of the guns had a hair trigger, that would certainly have been my last trip to any post office.

Incredibly, the others in the post office barely took notice of the policemen. My heart was beating wildly, my common sense was telling me to lie on the floor, and yet everyone else was calmly haggling over postage. Could they have been that accustomed to such utter recklessness from their unifomed civil servants? I felt sure that had any police in the USA acted in such a way, the outcries would have been immediate.

However, as I nervously awaited my change from the clerk, something happened that made me realize there were still some Sicilians who knew when things were a bit too abnormal. One of the older women clerks, a tiny lady with gray-streaked red hair, listened patiently to the policemen for about a minute and then decided she'd had about all she could of their rudeness. Rising calmly from her stool behind the counter, she marched out into the lobby and stared tight-lipped at the still-shouting men.

When the men continued to shout at the other clerks, still waving their weapons about as if toys, the old lady clerk put her left hand on her hip and then, with her right hand, shoved one of the husky men into the other. The policemen stared at her in disbelief, and the lobby became deathly silent...but not for long. For then it was the woman's turn to do the shouting. Like a mother would to an unruly child, she scolded the policemen in a sharp, stern voice that rose higher and higher in pitch. And all the while she pushed her finger into the wide-eyed men's chests. Slowly and red-faced the men backed clumsily towards the entrance door.

I couldn't understand a word, but it was quite obvious the lady clerk was letting the men know she'd had about all of she could take of guns, rudeness, and them treating her as less than an intelligent being. Embarrassed, the men finally apologized, as she continued waving her finger in their faces. But she was not to be satisfied until they turned and retreated back out onto the congested, noisy street. As the men left, I almost expected her to reach up and tweak their ears for good measure. Applause erupted from the others in the lobby. I clapped, too.

Since entering Spain last fall, it seems that machine guns and uniforms have become a part of daily life. How wonderful it was to see someone--even if it was an old lady!--show the establishment that armed intrusion and uniformed thuggary do not have to be forced onto anyone and everyone.

The rest of the walk along Sicily's north coastline of rich beachfront villas and traffic-congested towns of concrete buildings and innumerable small businesses was not to reach such a state of craziness again. But, still, I was to meet more than enough braggarts, drunkards, and strange-acting persons to keep me on my toes. And, of course, where tourism is as heavy as it is Sicily, there were the usual petty thieves and bungling con artists.

It appears Italy is going to be anything but ordinary. Indeed, it may resemble a circus at times, if Sicily is any indication. I guess you might say it's all enough to kind of make one wish they had a certain old red-haired lady along for protection.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Aboard an Arab ship on the Mediterranean Sea March 10, 1984 Dear Folks, In some ways it was a blessing that the current animosities between the United States and Libya prevented me from continuing the worldwalk across North Africa. Though the North African Arabs had, in their homes, been perhaps the gentlest people yet, the prevalent poverty and oppressiveness of their societies had been so disheartening. There was an instability to their militaristic governments that offended my democratric ideals and left me wondering if at any minute I might be swept up into another of their frequent violent revolutions. Even as I boarded the ship that was to take me back to Europe, the images of soldiers and guns were still dominating my thoughts of the 1,202 miles I'd walked across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The city I am now sailing from, Tunis, had hundreds of thousands of homeless Palestinian refugees living in shocking squalor on its edges. Only a week before my arrival, the city had been ablaze with anti-American riots, while just a few hundred miles away our own navy had been bombing Beruit at the same time. How utterly mad I would have looked to any of my fellow Americans, had they seen my lone vulnerable figure coursing its way so calmly through those wretched Palestinian refugee camps and the chaos of those last few miles in Africa.

Impressive aquaduct still being used to bring water from mountains to lowlands. One of the many pictures in the photo gallery

As I leaned my elbows onto the railing at the ship's stern, I stared at the Dark Continent sinking into the froth of a stormy Mediterranean. I could feel all those dark eyes of Africa still burning into my mind, especially those of a grim-faced soldier I'd passed on the way to the docks. Standing guard before a large warehouse marked GRAIN STORAGE, he had had such intensity in his eyes. The firm grip on his automatic rifle had left no doubt danger was very much a part of his life. Lurking throughout all the confusion of ugliness and hospitality that is Africa will always be the beasts of deperation and frustration, waiting to spring at those foolish enough to show their fears.

Such a paradise North Africa could be, if only another race of beings--ones who didn't know war, or jealousy, or religion--had settled there. So blessed by nature was it, with its eternal sun and fertile soil, that that part of the world should have been the perfect bride for any man's or woman's imagination. It should not be this generation's latest Hell. What a crime, indeed, that I experienced amongst those scenic treasures such dark episodes as former French colonists' cemeteries desecrated beyond repair and an ex-freedom fighter still, 20 years later, wearing the torture marks given to him by his French captors.

Nature, too, had shown me plenty of boogeymen. In a setting as rugged as Africa's, it was not uncommon for me to have my heart tested unexpectedly. Take, for instance, the wild dog attack in Morocco that I earlier wrote of, or the monkeys that beaned me on the head with rocks as I walked along the sea cliffs, or the time I was sleeping on the dirt floor of a shack with 13 others and a huge spider on my face awakened me. There I was, merrily dreaming of a fair maiden kissing my mustache, only to discover that a spider as large as a trantula was pawing at what it must have thought was a caterpillar between my nostrils and lips! I didn't stop jumping and hollering for two minutes.

However, as big and fanged and ornery as that spider may have been, it would have had to pack on quite a few more pounds to match the bulk of the 13 wild pigs that chased me through the snows of an Algerian mountain pass many nights ago. As long as my own legs are, it was all I could do to stay just out of reach of their teeth and tusks and make it to the nearest tree limbs. In a country where the Muslim religion prohibits the eating or touching of pork, those oversized swine evidentally had forgotten that there are some humans who would just as soon kill and eat them as be chased into trees.

Fortunately pigs are not particularly well-mannered, and in no time they became too occupied with arguing amongst themselves as to who would get to chomp on me, should I fall from the tree limbs. After sunrise, it must have occurred to them that perhaps the service might be better somewhere else, and they would waddle off in a mass of black bristles and grumpy grunts. From my perch in the tree I wearily watched them disappear into the forest, to wherever it is that boogeymen go to wait until nightfall returns.

I smiled, as I remembered dropping from the tree's limbs. The stiffness in my joints was painful enough to qualify me for old age benefits. But at least I was alive and in one piece...which, as usual, was all the encouragement I needed to shuffle on to the next adventure.

Now, the next adventure is to be the Italian island of Sicily. There I will be far away from the dangers of Africa... though not necessarily from its spell.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 1:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tunis, Tunisia
March 8, 1984

Dear Folks,

In eastern Algeria I was to discover unwittingly that police surveillance is very much a part of life in Third World societies. Twice my camera landed me in a police station for questioning by the "inspector." (Every police inspector I met in North Arica looked to be from the same mold--thin, trench-coated, mustachioed, and always holding a cigarette with a cocked wrist. Not surprisingly, they reminded me so much of actors in a bad Hollywood film, except that they always had a grumpy disposition.)

The first incident was in Azzaba. While eating lunch, I snapped two photos of a mosque that had orginally been a Catholic church. Within minutes, plainclothesmen and a uniformed officer were escorting me to the police station. After about 45 minutes of questioning, I was told to hand over the roll of film. However, I somehow managed to convince the police that I'd been photographing children in front of the moque, not the building itself. (The truth was that I'd suspected all along that photographing the mosque would be illegal, and so I'd purposefully had a group of schoolchildren "pose" for my camera in front of the building. Ever so slightly I'd raised the camera, so that the mosque filled most of the viewfinder. But, so closely were the police watching me that it was for naught.)

The second incident was in El Kala. Very naively I'd photographed a picturesque harbor that (unknown to me) had two small military patrol boats docked in it. The plainclothesman who arrested me had been at my side the past hour, telling me all about his job as a local "hotel manager" and how he wanted to be my friend.

My frequent brushes with the ever-present (and ever-suspicious) Algerian police authorities also had their lighter moments. Some would ask to see my "national identity card," in addition to my passport. When I'd explain that, unlike in Algeria, we in the USA don't have such a thing as a national identity card, the police would always cast doubtful looks at me. So, to satisfy the more skeptical of them, I would "sheepishly" produce my Ohio driver's license. Since the police couldn't read English, they'd always be so sure that the very official-looking license, with its snapshot of my head, was the national identification card I'd said America lacked.

My most unusual encounter with the police was when, in El Kala, a police officer at the station demanded to know what I was writing all the time in my notebooks. It was all I could do not to smile: It just so happened that I'd been making notes about police surveillance! Of course I didn't tell him that.

Later that same day, at the Algeria-Tunisia border area, the Algerian border officials nearly flipped when they found 60 rolls of film in my backpack. It was demanded that I turn over to them any film I'd shot back in El Kala. I knew better than to argue, for they could just as easily confiscate all 60 rolls if I angered them enough.

The roll of film I handed to them was taken to a back room, where the officers talked with someone out of my sight. As luck would have it, a television news crew from France just happened to arrive at the post at the same time, and when I told them of the film being taken away from me, the reporter instructed his cameraman to start filiming as he asked the officers why I was under suspicion. Surprisingly, the roll of film was quickly returned to me. Perhaps the officers thought their jobs were more important than appearing on television as harassers of some odd American traveler.

After all the dangers of Morocco and the perplexities of unforgettable Algeria, Tunisia was to seem like a playground. This tiny nation of windswept meadows and pine-covered hills allowed me some peace in the eight days it took me to cross its width. While also poor, Tunisia has nevertheless been much cleaner, quieter, and more modern than the other two nations. Only when I reached the capital, Tunis, on March 8, did I again find stark poverty.

Even though the Tunisians are perhaps the most westernized of the Arabs I've met in northwest Africa, they are also some of the harshest critics of America that I've met on the worldwalk thus far. Most of the young who've come up to me haven't wanted so much to ask questions as to preach about Islam. All thought of the United States as a racist country currently on some anti-Arab, anti-Islam campaign. There has been a fundamentalist tone to their exhortations. The "pro-Islam, anti-American government" theme was voiced by all of the many Tunisians I had long talks with. They have included all kinds of Tunisians, from the old caretaker of a British war cemetery with whom I shared a pot of tea to the many schoolchildren who followed in my footsteps each day.

In each of the four homes I stayed in while crossing Tunisia, I was constantly told how holy Islam is, and how evil such a permissive society as America's is. The young were anxious to know my feelings about the Islamic upheavel in Iran. Curiously, none of the families had a television, even though they were upper class.

Still, there was that unmistakable fascination with the individual American. As in Morocco and Algeria, I sensed a desire to be close to the American people, but they couldn't quite bring themselves to trust such a "liberal" society.

In many ways, their questions revealed the sort of things they have, unfortunately, been taught about our society. Thay had questions like: Is Chicago still a place of constant Al Capone-like mafia gangster shoot-outs? How many bottles of whiskey do I drink every day? Do we believe in God? Why is the U.S. government so intent on killing all the Indians? Are we Americans trying to make Lebanon into a colony? Was it true that poor people in America are starving to death? Why are we so racist?

Perhaps an experience I had near the village of Tebaba sums up vividly the feelings the northwest Africa Arabs seem to have towards us. And, for that matter, perhaps it sums up, too, the Africa part of my worldwalk:

Kalad, a bright and curious 11-year-old boy, took me by the hand and led me from the "Garde Nationale" police post, where I'd just been through another interrogation session, to the enormous farm of his grandfather, in whose house Kalad's family also lived.

The main home of the farm was squat and concrete and straddled a large hill that was pockmarked with the smokey, cave-like stick-and-rock shacks of the farm's serfs. (Yes, serfdom is still practiced in parts of Africa.)

As it turned out, the grandfather was not only a large landholder but was also a member of the National Assembly and quite powerful politically. His name was Abdelaziz El Bahri.

As with many other times in Africa I was led unannounced to the home by the child, and yet the large family welcomed me inside without hesitation and treated me as an equal. All that rainy day, and into the evening, I was fed and entertained. I was even allowed to sit in on a fascinating Koran prayer chant session done in loud and rapid voices by four Muslim holy men.

However, the next morning, as I heaved my gift-heavy pack onto my back, one of the men relatives came to me and handed me my hunting knife. The others watched knowingly, and smiled. I hadn't realized anyone had been into the pack and taken the knife out. As each member of the family stepped forward to plant the customary kiss on my cheeks, the message of the knife flashed all too clearly through my mind: As close as they and the other North Africans had tried to be to me in these past three months, there was no denying that our pasts lie in totally different worlds.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

El Kala, Algeria
February 28, 1984

Dear Folks,

Once past the suspicious border post officers in the Algerian Sahara, my nerves were able to relax--for a minute. Then the confoundedness that is Africa came roaring back in enough shapes and sizes to drive any man into a fidgety wreck.

For starters, another sandstorm blew along. Then I couldn't connect with any buses heading back to the north, where I planned to resume my walking on the Algerian side of the border post that originally had turned me away. Finally, after two days of digging out under sand drifts and chasing after tootling buses that had no intention of stopping for me, I decided to brave the heat and hitchhike.

By the time I arrived back near the coastline and was done with my 800-kilometer "detour," I not only was ready to get back to walking as soon as possible but also ready to be done with any and all North Africans for the rest of my life. If ever there were a people who get a man's senses more twisted than a pretzel, it was definitely the Arabs of the Mediterranean. Their lives are such a tumbled mixture of contrasts that I am never really quite sure if at any moment I am safe or in danger. Take, for instance, the unusual experience I had this time a week ago in a rotting former French resort town beside the sea.

I had already set up camp in the forest near the city of Cherchell, when, under the threat of a rainstorm, I walked to the city's bustling open market to purchase a broiled chicken and some vegetables for dinner. As is so often the case in the towns I've passed through these last two and one-half weeks, the crumbling concrete row houses and old colonial-styled lamp posts watched over every step I took. Plastered all over them were campaign posters bearing the stern gaze of this socialist country's white-haired "President-for-Life," Chadli. His dark eyes were of the kind that follow you everywhere.

A little further into the market, however, was a very different sort of face studying my approach. Set atop a grimy brown trenchcoat and nearly hidden in the recess of a seedy hotel's doorway, this face had a horrible scar across its left cheek and the coniving gaze of a hungry fox. To my dismay, that face came towards me in a cloud of cigarette smoke and asked me, in French, if I was from France.

It would have been nice to have quickly replied No! and moved on. But such curtness in a setting as rough as Algeria did not strike me as a wise move. Since I am so different looking and since foreigners, especially Americans, are so rare in the areas I travel, I am under constant scrutiny by the hordes of idle men and boys milling about every tea house and cafe. Though they never try to harm me, and they ask nothing of me other than information about America, the fact that there are so many hundreds of their hard eyes staring directly into my own is unnerving beyond description. Where my eyes look, their eyes look--as if my very thoughts are exposed for all to see.

So, I knew I could not allow my fear of the scar-faced stranger show. That might cause me to lose respect in the others' eyes. And, rightly or wrongly, I have always felt it is the respect the other males feel towards me that has been my best amulet against harm. Therefore, I took the time to not only talk to the stranger but to also accept his invitation of a steak dinner inside the hotel, whose manager he seemed to know quite well.

As the dinner's steak was embellished with still another steak and a couple of bottles of locally-grown wine, I allowed myself to relax considerably. I even chose not to let the fact that the man was drinking wine bother me very much, even though drinking alcohol is normally taboo for a Muslim. However, when the man pulled from his trenchcoat a fist-sized lump of dinar bills to pay for our dinner, I did find myself shifting uneasily in my seat. For where did a person as rough as him get such a large sum of money? Still, I allowed myself to fall under the spell of my insatiable curiosity, and I accepted his invitation to accompany him to what he assured me would be a very interesting "private club." Oh if I had only known...

The private club turned out to be a speakeasy at the end of innumerable, dusky, entwining alleyways. Once there, he tapped a code onto the grimy planks of the door, and only then were we allowed to enter. Inside, my nostrils were nearly overpowered by the stench of whisky and tobacco, as well as sweat and intrigue. Lit only by smokey oil lamps that were set on the ends of long wooden tables, the sunken pit-like room had a small army of shouting ruffians whose faces were dark with whiskers and dirt and the grease of broiled chicken. Just behind my rib cage I had a sinking feeling: I belonged in such a place about as much as a mouse does in a den of cobras.

Before I could grow any more disheartened, I was rousted from the doorway by a mob of drunken soldiers. They noisily annointed as their guest-of-honor. Obviously perturbed at the sudden appearance of the soldiers, Scarface angrily pushed his way to the other side of the room and sat gloomily onto the room's only empty chair. Even with all the haze in the room, his bitter gaze was as visible to me as the gold teeth of many of the soldiers who were jostling for my attention.

"Are you with that man?" asked a stern voice to my left. I turned toward the liquored voice and saw that the question had come from a sergeant who was built like a pit bull. The worried look in his bulging eyes left no doubt I was in some kind of exceptional trouble.

I replied that indeed I was with the scar-faced man, and he had treated me to dinner in just the past hour.

The sergeant seemed quite horrified and at once gripped my arm tightly, as his men seemingly formed a wall between me and the rest of the club's occupants.

"He is no good--a very bad person!" the sergeant cautioned. And then, in a lower voice, he added, "We have heard that maybe in the years before he has killed two or three people from other countries with light hair like you. You know--tourists!"

Death flashed before my eyes in the memory of the big wad of money, the jaggedness of the scar on the man's face, his enjoyment of the wine, his friendliness with the hotel staff, the way he always stared at me, the knife he'd used on his steak... So deeply buried in such a strange setting and amongst such different people, what chance did I stand?

The sergeant decided he and his men would help me. To help me escape, he and his men would work their way, in a friendly manner, to the other side of the room and block the killer's view. Once that happened, I was to bolt for the door and quickly dash out into the night.

When the time came, I did as they instructed. At the door I paused just long enough to make sure the killer hadn't been able to see me escape. It apeared he hadn't. I dashed out the door, into a driving rain that tore at me like thousands of unseen icy claws.

I had a feeling the killer would quickly sense what the soldiers were up to. Surely his knife's blade would be at my throat in no time. Soaked and frightened by all the ghostly images leaping at me with each explosion of lightning, I eventually ducked into a cold and dimly-lit tea house. As always, the men inside crowded around my seated figure. Soon after, in the brillance of a lightning flash, I saw the killer's scarred face thrust its furious eyes through the doorway. A sharp crack! rumbled through the heavens, as if some giant's spine had been savegely snapped. I dug my nails into the table, my heart pounded. I was certain he would spy my pale face amongst the bodies of the crowd around me.

Fortunately he didn't. And, eventually, I found inside myself enough courage to push on through the rain and the darkness to my campsite. I fully expected to meet my foe once more. But, of course, I never did.

Thank God.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jijel (Djidjelli), Algeria
February 17, 1984

Dear Folks,

Monkeys screeching from dark grottos high atop red cliffs...snarling long-tusked boars charging through deep snow...deserted stretches of jagged coast littered with wrecked ships... What an adventure the scenery alone in Algeria has turned out to be!

More and more, as I weave my way further east along this nation's serpentine-shaped coastline, I traverse natural settings that won't allow my imagination to rest. Gnarled bare-limbed trees reaching for a painfully blue Mediterranean Sea...panoramic quilts of breeze-kissed meadows of clover...yellow flowers...sunny skies...misty, snow-capped mountains flaunting skirts of long eucalyptus trees...

Does the beauy ever stop? One day I'm dipping in and out of lush fairy tale-like forests of tall thundering waterfalls and cone-covered pines; the next day I'm shivering myself over Himalayan-like peaks. Or perhaps I might even be cautiously stepping my way along some cliff-hugging road that drops away on one side to a thundering surf of boulders and foam hundreds of feet below.

In the past two weeks my feet have taken my imagination past dilapidated seaside resorts filled with rough, chiseled faces whose eyes hint at evil, past lonely old French cemeteries with large clumps of unmarked graves and--a testimony to a time when the French and the Algerians were bitter foes--no gravestones left intact, past tiny villages of mud and barefooted childen crowded around water wells, past stooped-back women with everything from babies to firewood on their backs, past dark-faced men whose twitching eyes speak of the unspent energy burning inside them. Surely I couldn't have picked a longer and more rugged way to cross north Algeria than its coastline.

I know my body has suffered greatly, because of the times I have been burnt, frozen, and soaked in the past 26 days and 550 miles that have passed since I resumed my worldwalk. But I don't really care so much about all that, for this is the stuff of which realadventure is made. This is learning in the best way, in a classroom that knows no limits save those of my imagination.

Unlike the coastlines of places such as the USA and Spain, that of Algeria is virtually undeveloped and sparsely populated. Here nature still rules mightily, and the twisting narrow roads have led me--at one time or another--through the like of Nepal, the Pacific Northwest, Norway, China, Central America, and even Ireland. All that on just a tiny piece of African coast! Just think of how many other natural jewels must exist on this continent. I suspect there are more than enough to fill any explorer's, or writer's, or dreamer's treasure chest.

For me, the lands of Homer's Ulysses, Robert Louis Stevenson's Robinson Crusoe, Frederick Forsyth's soldier mercenaries, and James Michener's hero-warriors are no longer fiction but a part of my everyday life. They have gone from being words in a book to being the dirt under my nails, the rain soaked into my sleeping bag, and the reason for the blisters on my toes and the cold in my sinuses.

...spooky, vine-covered mansions of rich Europeans who tried, but failed, to exploit the fertile valleys and lowlands tucked between sandy beaches and sudden mountain ranges. Those former fortresses of stone and silk are now but the playgrounds of snakes and migratory songbirds...long-haired billy goats scampering up steep hills, their little girl herders scolding those goats that that can't resist taking an extra nibble...the moanful wailing of the Koran over the loudspeakers of some faraway mosque in the cold darkness of a clouded dawn...

What a shame, in my opinion, that so many people will settle for a world of words or video images, rather than take the time and effort to see and feel the real thing.

Exploring North Africa has been anything but a picnic. In fact, it's been one daily challenge after another. Everything here is so different. It's taken me nearly this long to adjust to the land and the people. But the bags under my eyes, my peeling nose, the rips and dirt in my gear and clothing have been worth it. For isn't anything that's really worth having usually gotten only after much effort? Africa is proving that the pursuit of firsthand knowledge isn't the easiest thing in the world...but when you do find it, it is usually worth every sacrifice that had to be made.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tenes, Algeria
January 31, 1984

Dear Folks,

Of all the countries on my walk, the one I knew the least about was Algeria. To me, it was a big question mark. All the travel books I'd read before my journey had simply ignored this huge North African nation, as if it didn't exist.

Basically all I knew of Algeria, by the time I'd reached its border at Oujda, Morocco, was what I'd heard from secondhand sources. And what I'd learned from those sources was hardly encouraging.

The Algerian embassy in Washington, DC, had told me I might be allowed to cross over into their nation from Morocco (with whom they are at odds), but most certainly I was not to let anyone at their visa offices know that I am a journalist.

An aristocratic French with whom I had stayed in Revel, France, and who had lived in Algeria before the Algerians gained their independence from France in 1962, had descibed the Algerians to me as being reckless, militaristic, and largely insensitive to strangers.

Then there were the American consular officails in Rabat, Morocco: They had seemed to know even less than I--except that I would have to purchase 1,000 Algerian dinars as soon as I entered that country and, again, that I was not to let anyone know I am a journalist. I might get in, they said...and I might not.

And as for the Moroccans, well, they simply desribed their neighbors to the east as racist, stupid, and just plain crazy and beligerent.

All of the above, together with what I did know of Algeria--that its government is socialist, that tourism or visits by outsiders (except to work) is highly discouraged, and that most of of the geography is desert or semi-desert--was hardly encouraging.

Ever since Day One of my walk I'd worried that the Algeria/Morocco border might be the end of my walk across North Africa. And, as events did unfold, I would hardly have been blamed for re-routing my walk's path back to south Europe.

At the grimy Algerian consular offices in Oujda I was told I could cross into Algeria, but only if I went 400 kilometers south into the Moroccan Sahara Desert, to a small Moroccan town called Figuig. There I would have to walk across the "frontier" (the border) to the tiny Algerian village of Beni-Ounif. So, even though Algeria was but 14 kilometers from Oujda, I could not cross there, not even in a bus. The only persons allowed to cross at the Oujda post were those who had their own vehicles, or who worked or lived inside Algeria.

As tempted as I was to return at once to Europe and escape all the incredible pettiness and arrogance I 'd found in my dealings with the Arab governmental personnel, I nevertheless went ahead and got my visa,and took a long, bumpy, dusty bus ride to Figuig. Quite truthfully, when I stepped off that bus in the middle of the night in bitter cold Figuig, with a sandstorm tearing at my flesh and with nowhere to sleep but in a dilapidated, cinder-blocked, spider-infested place on a dark alleyway called the "Motel Sahara," all I could think of was how quickly I might be able to run to Tunisia and catch a boat to Europe. But, of course, there was first the problem of getting past the border guards in the morning. And, as it would turn out, that was to be quite nerve wracking.

First there were the Morocco police and military. They checked through nearly every bit of my gear for anything resembling drugs, or alchohol, or weapons. And then there was the obligatory paperwork. Once we'd finished, they sent me on my way with a warning that the Algerians would be sending me back soon enough. The last I saw of Morocco, as I disappeared down a camel path that traversed the several miles of no man's land between the two countries, was of four large canvas tents billowing beside a palm tree-ringed oasis.

At the stark metal shed that was the Algeria border checkpoint, I was ordered to strip to my underwear, and both my gear and my person were thoroughly checked for any contraband. Since I knew I would be listing my profession on their entry papers as "photographic artist," I had hidden beforehand any papers that might identify me as a journalist. To my relief they didn't check closely the object into which I'd hidden those papers--my English-language dictionary.

However, the commanding officer did find in my jacket a sealed envelope which conatined a personal letter from a student in Morocco to a friend of his in Algeria. And, to my horror, the letter writer identified me as "Mr. Steven Newman, an American journalist." My heart sank, as the officer looked me in the eyes and demanded to know if the student writer was correct in saying I was a journalist. Long aware that just such a situation may come along somtime on the walk, I had a ready lie.

"No, no, no--the Moroccan student is mistaken," I replied immediately and firmly. "I am as I told you--a photographic artist." Then, nodding confidentally at my gear, I added, "Perhaps because my photography sometimes appears in journals, the student thought I am a journalist."

The officer seemed stumped by the quickness of my reply. After several awkward seconds, during which he stared blankly at me, he turned and joined the other policemen standing just outside the door. They talked amongst themselves in low voices. The sun beating on my back through the open window seemed awfully hot. Then, at long last, the officer returned and ordered me to sit on a crude wooden chair. He sat on the edge of the only other peice of furniture, a desk, and stared intently into my eyes. It was if he was searching for some hint of dishonesty in my face. I had a feeling that, if I blinked, I was doomed.

To my shock, the officer, after what seemed a short eternity, let his shoulders relax, and he simply said sofee. I recognized the word immediately. It was Arabic for "That's all." It meant he was okay with me, and I could go on into Algeria.

The letter from the student, however, was not allowed any further. That he put carefully into the desk's main drawer.

Steven

Posted by Steven Newman at 1:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)