The oldest fear in the book

I just told my sister to "be safe." I don't usually say things like this to her. I wonder if I sounded like an annoying, know-it-all, older-sister. She's in Kenya and is on her way to the West Bank in a few days. So I told her to be careful. And when I think about it, I am not sure what I mean. I think that I actually do not mean for her to be careful. What is she going to do? Go on a safari and try to pet some lion cubs? Or is she going to walk up to a security checkpoint between Israel and Palestine and insult an Israeli army officer? Pick up some stones? I don't think so. What I mean is that I hope that if someone is robbed, knifed, or hurt in anyway, well, I don't want it to be my sister. But it would sound bad if I said, hey Shannon, I hope that no one steals from you and that you are not stabbed. I know that she is as interested in avoiding those things as I am, so I'm sure she'll take "care" to avoid them.

Since I began traveling last August, I've received countless e-mails and Facebook posts telling me to be careful. Many friends and relatives are telling me to be safe in Tunisia. I think that they mean what I meant above to Shannon. I think they are saying, "I hope that you have good luck and that it's other people who get robbed or worse." We never seem to say these things to each other when we're at home.

I have been robbed twice in my life, and two of these two times occurred in Boston. The first, most unfortunately, occurred on my 22nd, i.e. golden, birthday. No one likes bad things happening to them on their birthdays, me especially because I revel in the day as if I were royalty and this day my coronation. Well on this particular birthday, I was out at a bar, dancing away, having consumed no more than 3 beers (I am legendary for my ability to dance like a fool while sober), and some asshole got my wallet out of my purse and exited the building before I noticed a thing. I lost all of 12 dollars in cash (ha ha sucker, take a closer look at your victim's clothes next time!) and promptly canceled all my credit cards. But I was far more upset about all the missing funeral cards, fortune cookie fortunes saying that I would cross many oceans in my lifetime, and a shamrock smashed between laminate from my aunt and uncle. Hey thief, you clearly don't give a shit about that stuff so once you've enjoyed the happy meal with my cash, have the decency to put the wallet with the memorabilia in a mailbox. The other insulting consequence of this was that from the end of September to Thanksgiving I was not allowed into one single bar in Boston. Having no license and an expired passport, I had to wait until I could get a new license back in Minnesota to prove that I was 22. All so that ass could have 12 dollars.

The second time I was robbed occurred only months later. Some horrible idiot held the door of my apartment building open for two individuals who did not live there, and who then proceeded to kick down our apartment door, and steal all things electronic (phones, computers, cameras), my eye glasses and every single piece of jewelry I owed, and my roommates Jina's underwear (hard to know if we should have been offended that only Jina's underwear was worthy of stealing). Then in a final act of assholishness, the fucker walked all over my bed with his nasty, dirty shoes leaving big-ass man footprints on my comforter. Being robbed is a rotten experience. You feel helpless and angry, and there's no outlet for your anger. I was brokenhearted about the loss of jewelry that was priceless to me. Betsy was a wreck over the loss of considerable work on her senior thesis. Jina was grossed out about the underwear. The police arrive, they try to help, and everyone knows you'll never see the stuff again.

When you are robbed while traveling, these feelings of anger and helplessness are exacerbated. You lose a wallet or a cell phone and you have to struggle to explain what happened to the police, you may be lost, confused and angry and it's difficult to deal with the issues in another language and cultural norms. Well, I am guessing that being robbed abroad is worse, I wouldn't know, because it's never happened to me. (Which it will now, because now that I've written this I am clearly tempting fate! Wait for next week's update when I bitch about losing all my pictures.) Well, for now, I've never been picket-pocked in Europe. In Syria, my sister and I just left our bags in restaurants, at the bus stations and walked about the town. People don't steal in Syria. Throughout three countries in West Africa, no attempt at a purse snatching. Same story in Central America...zip, nothing, nada. This could be due to my cautiousness when traveling. I always have extra copies of my credit cards, my passport, I leave travel itineraries (well, when I know them!) with loved ones. I memorized my passport number. But, really, I know that it's been mostly luck. Just like it was bad luck that the assholes robbed our apartment and no one else in the building.

There have been very few times when I've been genuinely afraid while traveling. On the most disastrous vacation known to man, my sisters and I were in Venezuela. At one point we were traveling by bus from Caracas to another town in hopes of arriving at a beach and rescuing a few pleasant days out of this catastrophe of a trip. Thanks to the nightmare that is bus travel in Venezuela, compounded by a monsoon-like storm, what should have been a 2 hour trip took more than 12. While on the interminable bus ride, we met a lovely middle-aged woman. We chatted about our families, homes. During the conversation she said to me, "You are the first North American I've ever talked to." "What do you think?" I asked. "Oh you and your sisters are wonderful." By the time we arrived in Maracay at 1 a.m the pension had given away our room, leaving us with nowhere to stay. So we found ourselves, three 20 something year old blond girls in an open-air bus station, with creepy flickering, greenish lights, and men crawling about. Our friend from the bus offered to let us stay with her. All sorts of ideas crossed my mind as I stood there deciding what to do. This nice woman could have been a person who sells organs on the black market. I looked at Shannon, she at me, and we shrugged, agreeing wordlessly to trust her. And it was a risk. But I went with my instincts. My gut said to trust her. Her son picked us up at the station and he drove all of us to the family's very modest house. We woke up her twin, 19-year old daughters, and evicted them from their own bedroom and gave the room to us for the night. We sat up that late into the night talking, drinking Pepsi and eating peanuts. I had a bag of granola, so I shared and they loved it. I slept lightly that night, listening to dogs fighting in the streets and trying to listen for anything....well that I should "be careful about." In the morning our host made arrepas, corn tortillas filled with cheese. Delicious. We sat at the kitchen table with the neighbor drinking coffee and discussed Hugo Chavez. It wasn't the beach that saved the trip. It was this nice Venezuelan woman and her family.

If you want to be depressed about the dangers of travel, there is no shortage of ugly stories. Mexico has become a dangerous place for American tourists. A Spanish couple was recently robbed and killed in Morocco. They had been traveling to Morocco for years, weren't at all novices to the region at all, spoke the language. They were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. I don't think that they failed "to be careful." In other terrible news, there have been a string of stabbings at schools in China, various incidents have been reported of mentally unwell Chinese men entering Chinese schools and stabbing children and teachers. Random, horrible crimes can happen anywhere. Careful or not.

Just last year a young boy was killed right across the street from my best friend's apartment. And we lived in the same neighborhood. Yet, no one was telling me to be careful in Boston. If something should happen to me while I am in North Africa, will people at home blame it on the place? Thinking that, well, she's somewhere unfamiliar and therefore dangerous. I hope not. They say that statistically the most dangerous place for a woman is her own home. So far, only Boston has failed to keep me safe. And I don't love it any less.