Comments on: Strangerness

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:49:32 +0000

Excellent my friend. There is a book in you and it should not stay there! Reflective colour from beginning to end.

By: theresa

theresa — Sun, 09 May 2010 22:02:53 +0000

im guessing this is your personal narrative (its my job as your stalker to know these things :)
i REALLY like it. id say its my favorite post so far.
im delighted to see a very normal, not particularly extravagant photo. unless the non extravagance is smybolic. which i suspect it is. damn you!
excited to see ur police story :)

By: Simone Gorrindo

Simone Gorrindo — Fri, 07 May 2010 18:54:04 +0000

I’m so happy you stumbled upon my blog so I could find yours! You’re a tremendous travel writer. Will be following. Love the coined term ‘strangerness.’

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 05 May 2010 21:56:04 +0000

@Russ – I don’t think that anyone bore any ill will. It was more just a deep sense of awkwardness. They are not Iraqi insurgents and I am not an American soldier stationed in the country. Yet there is still a strange cultural pressure that we should fit into boxes that have nothing at all to do with us. Sitting there in that small town in the middle of the desert, those roles couldn’t be further from us, except that the television brought them pouring in.

By: Russ

Russ — Wed, 05 May 2010 20:39:24 +0000

Great post Richard! Interesting how they assumed you were American. I wonder what they were hoping for, whether it was just being friendly and making conversation, or if they were having politically motivated anti-American thoughts…

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:36:29 +0000

@Brooke – Absolutely. It was strange to feel, for a second, what it must be like. I had expected a lot more flack traveling in Africa being from South Africa than I ever saw. But for the most part, nobody even checked where I was from unless I volunteered it.

@Marie – Travel nostalgia is so bittersweet. Every time i go back to my journey notes and write out scenes, I find myself intensely wistful by the end of it.

@Jenna – What you say about passports is all-too-true. I had originally written the story to make a wholly different point, then realised by the end that the most obvious message really was exactly that. That little green book was essentially my only guarantee of identity in the places I was traveling. In many instances, people would have simply not believed my account of who I was without it.

By: Jenna

Jenna — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:42:37 +0000

really enjoyed reading this post, strangerness in sudan must be such an incredible experience.

it is funny that such a small green book can be the key to your identity, and that the way you look can be such a false indicator of nationality.

i also remember the disappointment on people’s faces in south america when i told them i was south african too. like they just had no idea how to categorize me, or predict my behaviour and attitude.

also loved the vivid descriptions of sudanese life, the donkey in rolling around the sand would have cracked me up too!

By: Marie

Marie — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:07:04 +0000

“I don’t so much wake up as have the sleep evaporated from me.” I could have stopped reading here and been happy. It’s a wonderful sentence. But, of course, I really enjoyed the rest of this tale. Being in a place you did not intend to be in and watching how things work while waiting for your exit, only having a handful of words to use as tools; these are the situations that only happen when venturing out into the world. It felt like being there (sorry for the cliche, but it’s true!)and being grounded at home for the present time, an escape was needed. Thank you for writing this.

By: Brooke vs. the World

Brooke vs. the World — Sun, 02 May 2010 23:24:42 +0000

Oh wow, interesting post here. Great writing, too :) You got the best of both worlds here – being an American in weird places can make you like a rockstar… other times, it can make you want to call yourself Canadian.