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While a brilliant sun sparkles over the spectacular city of Asmara, Eritrea, my sister and I are lounging in the semi-dark living room of my grandmother’s house whining to whoever wanted to hear, “There’s nothing to do!” A dazzling array of shops and cafes line the manicured avenues of downtown Asmara. Historic cathedrals built by the Italians, grand mosques constructed by the Ottomans, and palm-lined city parks offer weeks of entertainment for the cultured adult tourist. For two American girls brought up on Nickelodeon and Nintendo, “culture” would never do. So, again, we are bored. Yohana leans against the arm of the couch fiddling with the useless remote control while I, leaning against the other arm, wrack my big brain for ways to entertain ourselves. Since my grandmother and her daughters, my mother and aunts, are by the courtyard in the kitchen, playing with the rooster was currently not an option. One of my aunts has a wedding in a week, and they are all busily chopping garlic and onions in preparation for the million and one dishes they would have to make. Whatever I decide to do, I would have to be careful not to let them see me. Not only would I be at risk of getting in trouble—they seem to think everything we kids thought fun counts as “trouble”—but, even worse, they might force me to help with the cooking. Armed with my twelve-year-old wisdom, I made sure my plans for entertainment would keep me far away from the kitchen.

What could we do? What could we do? The lack of familiar options seriously bugs me. In America I could think of a thousand fun things to do, but here… I turn to Ramon and ask him for ideas. Eritrean-born, I figure he would be able to come up with some kind of exciting diversion. Friendly, smart, and the same age as Yohana, Ramon easily fit into many of our adventures.

“I don’t know,” he says, sounding as frustrated and bored as I am.

“Monkey!” I swear, using “monkey” to make it adult-proof.

“Tartar sauce!” Yohana punches a couch pillow.

“Sheeeet!” wails Ramon in his Eritrean accent. His accent totally botches the “i” sound into a prolonged “ee” that makes all of us laugh. Ramon, like all Eritreans, learned how to swear in English way before he learned most other English words. When a hero or heroine swears in a movie, you know what they mean regardless of what language they’re speaking. Ramon could swear without mispronunciations, but he botches them anyways just to get us to laugh. It totally works, and I feel a surge of hope that we would indeed find something fun and exciting to do that day.

My mind slips back into creative mode, carefully assessing all the possibilities. Thinking about the ways I could avoid cooking for the wedding reminds me of the bull in the backyard. My uncle and his friends had brought the bull there the day before, and there it would stand for a few more days until it eventually joined the pots of garlic and onion.

“Hey!” I call out, startling Yohana and Ramon. “We could go see the bull! I mean, all the cartoons say cows don’t like red, so we should find out if it’s true or not. It’ll be like a scientific experiment! And if mommy says anything, we’ll just tell her it’s educational.”

“What, what?” Ramon isn’t following my English. I have to clarify.

I stand up and point to the other side of the room, “Over there, bull,” I say in broken Tigrinya. I point to where I am standing, “Me, here.” I grab a sweater off the couch and wave it energetically, “Torro! Torro!”

“Aha! Yes!” Ramon leaps off his chair and heads for the door.

“Wait!” I call after him. “We need something red!” Just to make sure he understands, I point to the sweater and say the Tigrinya word for red.

“Oh, OK, where can we get something red?” asks Ramon.

“In the bedroom!” I race out into the hall and turn left into our bedroom. Ramon and Yohana are close behind. The luggage my sister and I share is kept under the twin bed, so I have to lift up the bed a little to pull it out. Within minutes of searching I rise victorious with a shirt completely red except for some writing on the front.

“That’s my shirt!” Yohana protests.

“I know, but we’re just going to hold it. It’ll be fine.” She crosses her arms and says nothing, and I proceed with the plan. We leave the bedroom, cross the hall, and enter another bedroom. The bull is tied up to a tree about four feet beyond the bedroom wall, which places him almost right under the bedroom window. Carefully, Ramon and I pull open the window and peak over the edge. I see a big dark form that must be the bull.

“He’s tied up, right?” Someone had told me earlier that the bull was tied up, but for safety’s sake I wanted further verification.

“Yes,” says Ramon. “So, are you going to do it?” Beneath his question I hear another one: So, are you brave?

I hesitate. I desperately want to prove my bravery, but my deceptive little stomach is churning with fear. He’s tied up, I remind myself. My uncles would not bring a bull to our yard that could hurt one of us, right? The bull had to be sufficiently tied up. I would not let fear stop me from having fun, or get in the way of scientific discovery. Cartoons are known to spread lies, so it is absolutely vital that I determine whether bulls really hate red. Bolstered by this noble cause, I hang the red shirt out the window, shake it, and run.

Nothing happens.

I try it again, this time holding it out longer and shaking it hard to get the bull’s attention.

Nothing happens.

I feel furious, insulted, and desperate to get a reaction out of the bull. “We have to go outside,” I tell Ramon and Yohana. Ramon nods his head and goes towards the door.

“No!” Yohana intercepts him and blocks the door. “You can’t! It’s not safe!” She is almost shouting at us, not quite, but almost.

“Yohana, don’t worry,” I assure her. “He’s tied up, he can’t do anything.”

“Yes he can! We’re going to get killed!” Her fear, however hysterical, starts spreading around the room. What if the bull gets so mad he breaks the ropes binding him and goes charging after us? What if I misjudge the length of his ropes and inadvertently get too close? Yohana’s frantic wails were beginning to sound like wise advice.

Despite my rising fear and sense of caution, I desperately needed to counteract the overwhelming sense of boredom we had experienced all afternoon. Ramon was counting on me to do this, and if I failed him he would undoubtedly call me all the nasty Tigrinya variations on the word coward. Yohana saw the issue only in terms of safety, but there was so much more at stake. My precious pride was on the line, having been humiliated by the bull in my attempts to get a reaction out of him. How dare he not even moo! Nothing bugs me more than when a person deliberately ignores me, and when a bull ignores me, that’s going too far.

Unwilling to give up my plan entirely, I offer up a compromise. “OK, how about this: you stay in here and watch us through the window. If anything happens, you can be the heroine and call for help. Me and Ramon will go outside, but we’ll be careful, I promise.”

She just stares.

“Yohana, please,” Ramon pleads, and still not saying a word, she stomps away from the door and lets us pass.

Running outside and around the house, we skid to a stop at the corner of the house right before the bull. Stepping around that corner would bring us right in the bull’s line of vision. In fact, taking that step would bring us within about six feet of the bull. Thinking about Yohana’s warning, six feet seemed too close.

I shove the bright red shirt into Ramon’s arms. “Here, you first!”

“Hey!” Stunned, he jumps back about three feet, then leaps at me with the shirt. “No, you first!”

“No you!” I try to give it back to him, but he stays well out of my reach. I suddenly realize that Yohana could hear us through the window, so I had to make up my mind: to be a coward or not to be a coward?

Taking just one step forward, I find myself face to face with the bull. Just six feet ahead of me stood the large dark form of the bull. A mere blur, but I remind myself that it is indeed a very dangerous blur. Yohana had described the bull, but somehow I am still not entirely convinced of its presence. To fully know its shape and size I would need to go right up and touch it. Only fear prohibited me from doing so. My curiosity would have to make do with the next best option: hearing a mighty moo or feeling the ground shake beneath its movements. To indulge this intense curiosity, I begin my first stint as a bullfighter.

I raise the red shirt and shake it between my two hands. Cartoon scenes of Speedy Gonzalez and others flash through my mind as I beg the bull to react. I try waving the red shirt to the side of me, in front of me, above me.

“He’s not doing anything!” I complain to Ramon. Would it be possible that the bull is blind? Ramon snatches the red shirt and takes my place in front of the bull.

“Torro!” Ramon shouts. I shiver with horror. He used The Word! Ramon jumps up in front of the bull waving the red shirt in the air. “Torro! Torro! Torro!” All the jumping and floor scraping starts looking like a wild dance, a dance I feel certain will finally elicit a response from the stubbornly silent bull.

“RAMON!!” a woman’s voice yells. Hearing the warning in her tone, we don’t even wait to find out who it is. We turn and run back into the house, back into our private world far away from the women cooking in the kitchen. Yohana rushes out of the bedroom to greet us and we retell the story over and over to ourselves, comparing all three perspectives. Ramon earns top marks for his daring performance, and Yohana decides it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. The excitement of the encounter—our titillating moments of courage and cowardice—temporarily wash away the sense of boredom. Though we failed to gain the bull’s recognition, we succeeded in finally creating the type of Third World entertainment we craved.

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If Maxine knew what I was writing, she’d probably protest and say, “No, the wedding snuck up on me! I was just minding my own business!” Right. When you combine intelligence and a drama queen all in one dog, there’s no way such a dog ends up in the spotlight “accidentally.” That’s why I strongly suspect she planned the whole thing up herself.

Quite a few weddings in Juneau, Alaska revolve around the city’s icy treasure: the magnificent Mendenhall Glacier. In summer, some couples will even take a helicopter up to the top where they celebrate their union against a backdrop of endless ice. There has even been a piano flown up there—recorded music just wouldn’t do for a wedding.

It was winter, though, so this particular wedding took place at the Mendenhall Visitor Center. Located just across from the glacier, it was the perfect compromise: a warm ornate man-made structure from whose large windows one can safely view nature’s unruly creations. The constant movement of the glacier makes it dangerous, for now and then a huge chunk of ice will fall and smash anything in its way. Between the visitor center and the glacier is a lake peppered with huge icebergs that have fallen off the glacier at one point or another. During winters when the lake is frozen you can walk right up to these icebergs. If feeling a little crazy, you could walk up to the glacier, too. When you’re that close, you can hear the loud clicking sound of the ice constantly shifting, or beginning a deadly countdown. 3…2…1…

I was glad to be inside the warm visitor center. The main room was mostly full when we arrived. Three rows of seats spread out in semi-circles around the small stage, across from which stood the large windows overlooking the lake and glacier. Not wanting to be in the front row, Gordon and I found ourselves seats in the second row. Maxine also took her seat after some prodding, only her place was not on an actually chair, but tucked away beneath mine. Her head and front paws stuck out a little into the aisle, but there would still be plenty of room for other guests to pass without tripping over her.

When the ceremony finally began, Gordon entertained us by silently signing his commentary for the ceremony. “The groom’s mumbling through his vows!…I knew that guy in high school…He should take her last name, it sounds better…OK, they’re exchanging rings.” Gordon is quiet now, and I imagine the bride and groom walking offstage through the little door on the right with their train of bridesmaids and best men following close behind.

I glance to my left for no particular reason and am startled to see the newly wedded couple walking towards us. Instead of simply going from the stage to the door on the right, they were taking a de tour through the aisle right in front of the second row of seats. I checked Maxine to make sure she was sufficiently tucked under my chair and was horrified to find her stretched out across two thirds of the aisle. My guide dog was trying to stop a wedding!

“No one told me they were going to parade through here!” I sign to Gordon.

“No one told me either!” he responds.

Maxine was too comfortable for me to do anything quick: I would have to either interrupt the couple’s parade so that I could move her out of the way, or I could just let them step over her. Before I could even decide, they were passing right in front of us. Up went the bride’s high-heeled foot in an extra extra large step, and then down it went on the other side of the napping dog. Maxine seemed completely indifferent to her surroundings, and the whole thing started to actually seem funny. Just as I was beginning to relax, another fancily dressed couple came parading down the aisle. Up went the bridesmaid’s high-heeled shoe in an extra large step over the smug dog. People up and down the aisle were smiling and Gordon and I were struggling to suppress laughter. Did Maxine stretch out on purpose? I decided to wake her up and move her, but another couple came parading by. Up went another high-heeled foot in a long step over the little dog. Keeping myself from laughing was getting pretty hard. Maxine ought to be smart enough to move when she saw people coming, so I had a feeling the little dog was enjoying the wedding a little too much.

Gordon and I stepped outside after the ceremony. With an hour until the reception, we decided to explore a little path off to the left of the front door. The path led to a viewing point that looked out on the lake and glacier. Several people were skating on the frozen lake, and others were walking their dogs.

“Excuse me; can I take your picture?” The wedding photographer was out on the viewing point, too, so we posed for him with the lake and glacier behind us. Maxine, of course, was right in the center of the photo. As the wedding photographer takes Maxine’s photo, the bride and groom come out to the viewing point. It was as if where ever Maxine went, they went. Gordon and I immediately left the viewing point so they could have their photos, but again they all had to pass by Miss Maxine.

The little shepherd hadn’t done anything particularly wrong when she made herself comfortable on the floor, and she did not do anything to draw the photographer’s attention. All of this occurred by Maxine being herself. Her personality is such that she absolutely loves attention, much more than the average dog. So even though she did not do anything “wrong,” I strongly suspect that she stretched herself out on the floor in hopes of earning herself more attention. Whether she planned it or not, she certainly attained the attention she loves.

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“Can blind people make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?” I posed this question to my seven-year-old cousin as matter-of-factly as I could. Considering the ridiculousness of the question, sounding serious proved to be pretty hard. My little cousin, Yafet, had just finished demanding that I make him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Now if he had asked me politely, maybe I would have consented. What you need to know about Yafet is that he is an extremely smart kid. So smart, in fact, that he has discovered that he can get away with being rude to my sister and me by sweetly telling our parents, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just a kid, I didn’t know.” They fall for it every single time. Whenever he comes to our house he swiftly touches one of our favorite games or toys and instantly destroys it. “Oops! I’m just a kid, I didn’t know.” This evening, for instance, he mercilessly tore up one of my card decks—cards I had carefully brailled myself.

***

“Don’t let Yafet see you,” my mom warns me as I head over to the kitchen to make a sandwich for my lunch the next day. It was the last day of Thanksgiving weekend and my mom and her sisters were socializing in the living room, while three of my young cousins run around the house. Yafet reliably demands to have whatever my sister and I have, regardless of whether he actually wants it or not. This evening he had already eaten lasagna and two slices of chocolate cake. Well, the official count was two slices. Several times he silently disappeared into the kitchen, so who knows how much he really ate.

I slipped into the kitchen unnoticed and brought out all the ingredients for a PB&J. As I worked, I could hear Yafet and his cousins shrieking in the next room. Every game they played involved running around shrieking—in addition to destroying things.

While spreading the peanut butter on a slice of bread, Yafet popped out of nowhere. His appearance was so sudden, it was like a horror movie. His head didn’t go much higher than the kitchen counter, but that didn’t make it any less threatening. “What are you doing?” he asks, though he could clearly see what I was doing.

“Making a PB&J,” I mumble. “It’s for my lunch tomorrow.”

“Oh,” he says.

He doesn’t say anything else, and I begin to relax a bit. So he’s finally starting to be reasonable by not asking for food he doesn’t need. Finished with the peanut butter, I start spreading the jam.

“Make me one,” he insists. After I don’t say anything, he decides to explain his case. “You know, if you don’t make me one I’m just going to tell Auntie Saba on you. She’s going to tell you to make me one, so you better make me one.” The worst thing about being blackmailed by a seven-year-old is that they’re almost always right when they claim that the grown-ups will take their side. Auntie Saba just might insist that I make him one, especially if he asks her sweetly and pretends to be very hungry. She also might do it to create some peace and quiet in the house—a kid chewing is quieter than a kid running around the house shrieking. So if I wanted to avoid playing personal chef for Yafet, I had to think fast.

“Yafet,” I said patiently. “Can blind people make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?”

He thinks for a second, and then gives his answer, “No.”

“Yafet,” I continue, keeping all emotion from my voice. “Am I blind?”

“Yes,” he says, without even thinking about it this time.

“Well, then, if blind people can’t make PB&Js and I am blind, then I guess I can’t make you one, right?” Yafet just stands there without a word while I neatly put the two pieces of bread together. As I start closing the jars and putting them away, he turns and runs out of the kitchen. From the next room I hear his frantic wails, “AUNTIE SABA! Haben said…Haben won’t…”

A minute later, Yafet runs back into the kitchen all breathless. “Haben,” he says sternly, “Auntie Saba says you have to make me a sandwich.”

“But you said blind people can’t make sandwiches. So how can I make you a sandwich?”

“But I saw you make one!” he bellows.

“Oh?” In my mind, I decide that changing Yafet’s attitude towards blindness would be worth making him a sandwich. He understood that I, as his cousin, am completely capable of making him a sandwich. For seven years he’s been coming to my house and watching me do a million different things. Still, like all other kids, movies and books have taught him that blind people can’t do anything. For some reason or another, he had decided to ignore his own personal experiences with me in favor of believing the all-knowing TV. After all, he had just now seen me make a sandwich! I would give him one last chance, though. If he could get over the old stereotypes and acknowledge that blind people can make sandwiches, I would agree to make him one. “So you saw me make a sandwich? That’s interesting. Now let’s consider that for a second. Does that mean that blind people can make sandwiches?”

He actually takes a bit longer to think about it, and I begin to hope that he’ll start putting two and two together. But then he gives me the same old answer, “No.”

“I can’t make you a sandwich, then, sorry.” Yafet stomps his foot and runs out of the kitchen. Oh well. Some ideas are harder to learn than others.

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Traveling is usually fun, but after the first two weeks there tends to come a day when you feel utterly incapable of entertaining yourself. I was twelve-years-old and bored out of my mind after one month in Eritrea. It’s hard to get bored in Eritrea with so many people and so many things to do. My grandmother’s house, where I was staying, had about ten people staying there at the time. That’s ten different people this twelve-year-old could turn to for entertainment. I would urge my uncles to teach me a new song on the piano, and then practice it for hours. Sometimes I would take this little toy piano to the road in front of our house so that I could teach the songs I learned to the neighborhood kids. My sister Yohana and I spent many hours playing with the neighborhood kids. We would skip rope, play hand games, or, at night, play hide and seek. I thought I knew the rules of hide and seek, but there was something different about their version. First it seemed like the game was limited to the road in front of my grandmother’s house, but depending on who was Seeker, the kids would sometimes run around the corner and hide at the next block. My sister and I just went with the flow, not really sure why the rules changed so much. When we played hand games with them, we did not entirely understand the songs, either. We understood the language, Tigrinya, well enough. The kids had to slow down when they talked to us to make sure we understood, but we communicated just fine. The problem with the hand games was that they were not all in Tigrinya. I knew this for a fact because one of the games involved a wacky English rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” sung while spinning in circles in the middle of summer. Maybe the kids didn’t understand the songs they sang, either.

After a month of all this, we found ourselves battling boredom. Nothing seems new and exciting. We’d seen it all, we’d done it all. In other words, we missed TV.

Now it happens that my grandmother actually does have a TV, but it does not offer any of the cartoons we love. After desperately flipping through the limited number of channels at various times of the day, we discover that for one hour each day there is a children’s program on one of them. Now, this would be fine except for one big problem: it isn’t cartoons. Not only is it an educational program, but it’s in Arabic! English would have been ideal, but Tigrinya would have been OK, too. Of all things, why Arabic? The main language in Eritrea is Tigrinya, so that is what everyone around us speaks. On the TV, a group of kids start singing a familiar tune with an Arabic twist. It’s none other than the Alphabet Song. Annoyed, we turn off the TV and leave the room.

Between the main house and the two outer buildings is a large courtyard with trees and shrubs. A few chickens usually roam the yard, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on whether my grandmother felt like making a chicken stew. She usually has the same hen for a good long time that produces eggs for us, but the roosters would come and go. Earlier that week we had turned to the chickens when boredom first struck. I would start chasing one from one side of the yard, and then my sister would come at it from the other side so we had it cornered. They were fast! Sometimes they’d run, but often they’d just squawk and fly up a few feet. We derived so much entertainment from teasing the chickens mercilessly. My grandmother eventually told us that chasing the hens caused them to produce fewer eggs. I felt so guilty when I heard that. Learning that a supposedly innocent game actually causes some harm was always a bit of a shock. My sister and I promised our grandmother not to bother the hens anymore.

Unable to chase the hens., we instead scheme up a game involving the rooster. It occurs to us that if anyone so much as looks out a window or steps out into the courtyard, they would definitely see my sister and me chasing the rooster. So with all the maturity we could muster, we decide not to chase the rooster. Well, not exactly—our methods of entertainment just became a bit more sophisticated

Yohana and I stand outside leaning against the wall that runs by the entrance to the kitchen. Very, very casually—as if innocent of ulterior motives—we chat about cartoons, movies, and the neighborhood kids. Meanwhile, the rooster pecks around about fifteen feet away.

“So, Haben, what show do you think we’d be watching right now if we were back in America?”

“Maybe Nickelodeon is doing a special of Chicken Run,” I answer. Yohana snickers, but then someone comes walking down the hall. “Hey Yohana,” I say hastily, “do you think it’s going to rain?”

She looks up at the sky and takes her time deciding. My aunt Senu steps out just as Yohana makes up her mind about the weather, “Oh, yes, it definitely is going to rain. You know how it is here, pouring rain every single afternoon.”

Senu walks past us towards one of the outer buildings, but then stops suddenly. “Of course, this is the rainy season,” she says defensively. We learned long ago that the easiest way to get Senu worked up is to make the smallest criticism of her country, even if it is only a comment on the *interesting* way they do hamburgers, or, in this case, the weather. “The rain is good for the land,” she goes on, “it keeps down the dust.”

“Yeah, and turns it to mud,” I mutter.

“Anyways, so what are you two doing standing there?” she demands.

“Nothing!” We give her our biggest smiles.

“Uhu, I’ll be watching you.” And with that she turns and starts heading for the outer building.

“Hey Senu, I like your shirt!” Yohana calls, her tongue coated with sugar.

“Yeah! It’s really nice!” I try to sound sincere, but fail miserably. Senu being Senu, she would not buy it for a second.

“Troublemakers,” she mutters in Tigrinya. The literal meaning of the word would be “troublemakers,” but its common use has an affectionate ring to it.

When she’s gone, I whisper, “She has no idea!”

“I know!” Yohana giggles. “Hey, here he comes!” Our little friend the rooster is finally pecking his way towards our side of the yard. As planned, Yohana and I continue chatting by the wall, purposely facing each other so that Mr. Rooster would not suspect a thing.

“So, you think hens and roosters taste the same?” I venture. I know I have to keep my voice calm, but any human could tell I was suppressing a laugh. I prayed the rooster couldn’t tell.

“Hmmm,” Yohana mused. “Grandma usually takes the roosters, so maybe they taste better.”

“Oh yes, roosters would be much better. This one could probably make thirty chicken nuggets. Hey, he’s coming closer. You think he’s volunteering?”

“You think it’s time? Shall we get him?”

“OK, Yohana,” I slowly step away from the wall and edge towards the other side of the rooster. “You block that side, I’ll block this side.” The rooster is still calmly pecking at the ground, oblivious to the trap. We have him surrounded on all four sides. On one side is the wall we had been standing against, the open double-doors to the kitchen at a ninety degree angle to the wall, and Yohana and I stood where his only possible escape would be. We inch forward, slowly closing him in.

“He’s doing it!” says Yohana gleefully. “The stupid rooster is actually following our plan!” Since the rooster cannot walk through a wall or walk past us, he is forced to do what we want him to do. Mr. Rooster struts into the kitchen.

Quickly, we step in after him and close the doors. There is another door leading out of the kitchen, so I quickly step in front of it to prevent him from trying any funny moves. He takes his time pecking at the kitchen floor, probably enjoying the abundance of crumbs.

“Aww, isn’t he sweet?” Yohana says in a mock-cheery voice, “he’s fattening himself up for us!” We laugh the laugh of excited children. The sound reverberates against the walls of the small kitchen. Startled, the rooster looks up.

At last, the moment we had been waiting for: the moment we had worked so hard to create in hopes of casting off that miserable cloud of boredom. The rooster looks up, and in the glass door of the oven sees his own little reflection. We watch bright-eyed as the rooster puffs up, spreads his wings, and declares war on his reflection. “Buck-buck-buck bucka!” It is so loud! The whole house shakes with the rooster’s rage. He flares up and flies at his reflection again. “Buck-buck-buck bucka!” His beak pounds the glass of the oven door, but amazingly it does not break. Yohana and I are doubled over with laughter. We had planned to sneak off down the hall so no one would know how the rooster got there, but the laughter felt so enlivening after so many hours of boredom, we stayed in the kitchen with the rooster: all three of us in hysterics. The two sisters sharing a special moment, treasuring their teamwork, and the stupid rooster raging war on a non-existent rival.

Senu comes running into the kitchen to rescue the oven. The way the rooster attacks it, the glass door is at serious danger of breaking into smithereens. My grandmother told us that she tried to avoid having more than one rooster at a time because they always ended up fighting each other over the hens. So you see, my sister and I were trying to educate the rooster of machismo’s follies. Nonetheless, Senu scolds us. As a result, we decide to take our mirth elsewhere. Finding the living room unoccupied, we settle into the couch to savor the memory.

“That was hilarious!” Yohana starts laughing all over again.

“Next time, we should totally get it videotaped! Maybe Ramon could help us out.”

“Yeah!” Yohana cheers. “And that rooster will totally fall for it again!”

“This is what happens when there’s no TV. If we can’t watch cartoons, we’ll just have to make our own!”

****

Ten years later, Yohana decides she wants to become a veterinarian.

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Me and Maxine captivated a classroom of students and teachers at a school here in Juneau, Alaska. All Maxine did to win the admiration of the whole room was to sit quietly on the floor—she even got away with eight yawns! I, on the other hand, needed to actually work to earn the audience’s respect by carefully balancing colorful stories about my life as a law-school-bound college student who was blind and Eritrean, with educational facts about guide dogs. Seven minutes was all I needed to introduce Maxine, myself, and the basics of traveling with a guide dog, but the students fired out so many entertaining questions that we stayed in that room for an additional forty minutes. Perhaps it was rude of me, but some of those questions made me laugh.

Q: Can Maxine go everywhere?

A: Yes, absolutely! Everywhere most people can go, she can go. Restaurants, planes, buses, you name it. There are some exceptions, like someone’s private house, but generally she can go anywhere.

Q: Can she go to the swimming pool?

A: /Laughing./ You mean IN THE POOL??

Q: Yes.

A: /Laughing./ Nooo!

Q: What happens if Maxine goes blind?

A: We take her to the vet a few times a year, so the vet would notice if she develops any eye diseases. If she does, then she will have to stop being a guide dog and would turn into a pet.

Q: But what if she goes blind overnight?

A: That would be interesting! She would probably act confused and bump into things in the morning, so I’d notice that something was wrong and immediately take her to the vet.

Q: Do you ever crash into other people?

A: A few times, but everyone makes mistakes and bumps into things now and then.

Q: Do you have blind friends?

A: Yes. I also have sighted friends, and deaf friends, and hearing friends, and black friends, and white friends.

Q: What would happen if Maxine ate candy?

A: She should not pick up stuff from the floor, and she knows it. Sometimes she does, though, and I correct her. She’s eaten candy before, and she’s still alive…

Answering such creative questions for almost an hour was incredibly fun! I promised myself not to disrespect anyone’s question—no question is stupid, right?—but I really couldn’t help laughing at some of them. The randomness of some of the questions makes me marvel at how the ten-year-old mind works. They were conjuring every bizarre scenario that might befall a guide dog and asking me what in heaven I would do if ever this highly unlikely event were to occur—like what if Maxine goes blind, what if Maxine gets lost, what if you and Maxine get attacked? The air practically sizzled with all those neurons busily constructing imaginative scenarios to throw before my feet, and Maxine’s paws.

In some ways, I delighted in the challenge of showing respect to the uninhibited curiosity of those little kids. Thriving at a Q&A session with a policy of “there’s no such thing as a stupid question” is really an art, a skill one has to fine-tune through practice. If I dare say so, I quite excel at this art.

She squirmed a little and switched positions a bunch; at one point her energetic scratching caused her harness to jingle and made the kids giggle. One student finally braved the question that they had all been dying to ask, “Can I pet Maxine?” When ten sixth graders surrounded the little shepherd to pet various parts of her smooth coat, Maxine just stretched out and sighed like the little princess she was.

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Traveling through Italy last winter, I searched for clues illuminating Italy’s attitudes towards the blind. After several ticket sellers at cultural monuments had refused to charge me admission, I began wondering whether Italian society harbored negative attitudes towards the blind. Did they refrain from charging us because they assumed we were incapable of earning an income?

The most revealing clue was a wheelchair lift outside Pompeii’s tourism office. With Italy’s many steep ledges and steps, the lift stood out sharply. Unlike braille and sign language interpreters, ramps and lifts are highly visible from the street. For this reason, quantifying wheelchair accessibility can be an easy way for tourists to gauge a society’s attitudes towards their often hidden disabled citizens. That lift in Pompeii seemed to symbolize the achievements of disabled Italians fighting for their equality.

My optimism quickly turned to dismay when I noticed the huge potted plant blocking access to the lift. Imagining that a careless decorator had placed the offending plant there, I climbed the stairs to the office to explain the issue. The receptionist, confused, actually offered to carry me down the stairs—ostensibly thinking that my interest in the lift was due to some mobility impairment. I clarified for him that I could walk and that my concern was for visitors with wheelchairs. Finally listening, he proceeded to reveal, with a dismissive tone, that the lift had long been broken.

With this disturbing news, I determined that Italy’s blind had many potted plants to push aside.

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We all trip over things now and then while distracted by other matters in life, and such little mishaps are no big deal…unless the person has some sort of disability! A mistake made by a disabled person is magnified ten times. As you’ll soon read, a small fall by a blind person, a completely harmless fall, results in magnificent drama.

Though we might pretend otherwise, people with disabilities do make mistakes from time to time. When these mistakes are then blown out of proportion by onlookers, how does one respond to the social uproar? When American culture idealizes rugged independence, people with disabilities often struggle with the precarious business of balancing our identities as independent and autonomous individuals, and individuals needing some help (and yes, the masculine independence worshipped in America would love to have you believe that ablebodied men don’t need help).

***

During my trip to Costa Rica with Mobility International USA, we visited the University of Costa Rica in San Jose. We listened to panels about services for students with disabilities, and then mingled with the students with disabilities to compare student life in Costa Rica to student life in the United States. The mingling continued at the cafeteria where I took the opportunity to converse with a deaf law student. He planned to be the first deaf lawyer in Costa Rica.

After finishing my lunch, I was surprised to learn from Katie, the student leader of the day, that we had an hour of free time until the next event. Our schedules were typically so packed that we simply rushed from one activity to another. I hadn’t planned for a break, and had no idea what I would do. Tired of sitting in the noisy cafeteria, I decided to leave my group and explore the campus on my own.

Immediately outside the cafeteria was a wide rectangular courtyard. Enjoying the warm Costa Rican sun, I walked around the periphery to see what I would find. About halfway around, I found another blind person. Instead of a cane, though, she had a guide dog. Maria had been in the meeting before lunch with us, and standing beside her and her dog was a travel instructor for the blind who had also been at the meeting. We chatted for a while about the meeting, then about her dog. Interestingly, the dog was from a guide dog school in the US and Maria had traveled there to train with the dog. I had come across another guide dog earlier that week that also came from the US, and from the same school, too.

There is always something refreshing about communicating when there is a language barrier. When there is a language barrier, communication cannot occur unless the two parties really make an effort to communicate. Maria was doing her best to recall all the English she had learned in school, and I was racking my brain for all the Spanish phrases I’d been forced to learn in high school. Knowing that the other is really trying creates a special form of friendship. We were laughing through our mixture of Spanish and English. When I had to leave so that Maria could finish her lesson with the travel instructor, I was hoping I would see her again that afternoon.

I turned around and walked down the middle of the courtyard. My right hand swung my cane rhythmically on its own as my mind lingered on the conversation with Maria. From somewhere on the left, I heard my name being called. The voice belonged to Kamilah, a girl from my group. I squinted ahead and spotted a group of people. One was wearing a white shirt. Who from my group was wearing a white shirt that day? Kamilah and the people with her seemed very low, so I figured they were sitting on the ground ahead. Did I want to stop and sit with them? All morning I had been sitting at meetings; chances were that the afternoon would consist of even more sitting. Perhaps I should chat for just a bit and then use the rest of my break for walking? The group was getting closer and I could see that Alison was one of the people there with Kamilah.

The ground beneath my feet vanished. Suddenly, I was falling.

The fall was only for a second. I landed standing firmly on my two feet, as if I’d simply hopped off the ledge. My cane was standing straight and tall in my right hand, acting as though it hadn’t just betrayed me. The ledge was about two feet off the ground, and now that I was coerced into paying attention to my surroundings I could see that there were steps to my right. I could also see that Kamilah, Alison, and two other people were standing a few feet to my left—they looked low not because they were sitting, but because they were on lower ground. But they weren’t just standing. When four sighted people watch a blind person trip and fall despite using a cane, a storm is inevitable.

“Oh My God! Haben! Oh My God! Are you OK? Oh My God!”

Now, I was physically fine. No bruise, nothing. But inside, I was horrified. Embarrassment doesn’t even begin to describe what I felt. Would I ever live this down? How would anyone trust me to walk by myself again? I would have to forfeit my walking license…

They came over to me right away asking over and over, “Are you OK? Oh My God! I thought about warning you but I figured you’d see it with your cane. Oh My God. Are you sure you’re OK?” Katie and her personal assistant Marie Clare were the other two with Alison and Kamilah. Alison and Kamilah are hard-of-hearing and Katie uses a wheelchair. I knew that their disabilities would prevent them from being too patronizing. But still, how easily I’d played out the caricature of a blind fool. I did what every sighted person would envision of a blind person, and despite their disabilities my peers were all sighted. All I could do was hope they would believe my explanations. I simply wasn’t paying attention. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone trips and falls at times. We went over the episode several times and began laughing about the silliness of it all. How I’d scared them, how I’d broke the fall beautifully as if I’d intentionally stepped off the ledge, with even my useless white cane erect and ready to keep moving. They accepted my explanation and I would not have to forfeit my walking license. I would, however, have to endure several days of good-natured teasing.

A woman walked over to us with a guide dog. “Hi Maria,” I called.

“Hi Haben!” She came over laughing and put an arm around me. Oh no. Someone must have described to her what had just happened. Who else witnessed my humiliation? I felt incredibly embarrassed, but I knew that the best way to push the episode behind me was to laugh about it. Perhaps laughter would coax them into treating the episode as though it were no big deal. Honestly, what’s so earth-shattering about a blind person taking a harmless fall?

Maria’s arrival helped distract us a bit. I re-introduced her to the others and then asked her to give us a tour of the campus. Enthusiastically, she led the way to the various academic buildings. At every single staircase someone would say, “Haben, use your cane!” or “I’ve got my eye on you!” I wasn’t thrilled by these constant and unnecessary reminders, but I understood that I deserved them in a way. I laughed it off as best I could.
Later that day, I told the whole story to Loren, one of the group leaders. Loren understood the complexity of my situation. Yes, it was only a small and harmless fall, but when a disabled person makes any sort of mistake, it is almost always magnified ten times. Yet, Loren was shocked to see that I was actually telling him this story. He wondered if it would be wiser to try to bury it in the past, and he asked if I was going to repeat it. When the four had come rushing to me with a chorus of “Oh My God” and “Are you OK?” I decided then and there to confront the issue with a smiling face. It would have been futile to try to keep it a secret when four people, and maybe even more, had seen the fall. Each person would have their own version of the episode, perhaps even with a few creative tweaks to make it a better story. I would understand. For the sake of maintaining my independence, though, I needed to tell the story how it *really* was, emphasizing that it was my fault for not paying attention. In addition, experience has taught me that embarrassments eat at you from the inside if you try to hide them. There’s a huge emotional release when the embarrassing story is told to someone else, and indeed I did feel a lot better about the situation after admitting the whole thing to Loren. It stopped being so embarrassing.

Sure enough, by the next day everyone had heard the story. “Did you hear how Haben fell off a cliff??” I don’t know how a two feet high ledge turned into a cliff, but what did I say about creative tweaks? I retold my version of the story many times over the next few days. Adding here and there that everyone gets distracted now and then; everyone makes mistakes. Since I willingly told the story to people and laughed over my flaws, the story actually disappeared after a few days. The fact that we were on a fabulous trip to Costa Rica ensured that plenty of other things would distract and entertain us. I made an extra attempt to not get distracted from my cane, though.

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Feeling a strong pressure near the tip of my cane, I looked down to see Katrina’s black cat butting my cane with his head. I reached down with my gloved hand and stroked his head while he purred contentedly. The cat resembled Katrina in many ways: they were both pushy but very friendly. Together they were the perfect hosts, making my boyfriend Gordon and I feel welcome at Koka Roka Rooms, a small hostel Katrina manages in Kalambaka, Greece. We had come to Kalambaka to explore Meteora, a series of monasteries built into the tall sheer rocks particular to this region. Our plan to explore the monasteries the day before had been thwarted when both Gordon and I came down with malicious colds. Though we both still felt weak, we decided to try it that foggy morning on January 7, 2009. Gordon experienced the worst of the cold, so he was still upstairs in one of Katrina’s rooms, slowly getting ready, while I was playing with Katrina’s cat. Eager to be outdoors, eager for an adventure, I had come out, alone, to explore an old corner of the world.

Since the monasteries are above the town, I decided to walk uphill, away from the charming cat and Koka Roka Rooms. The road was cobblestoned in this part of town, and wide enough for only one vehicle to pass through at a time. Barking sounds came from a house on my right, and since the barking did not grow in volume I merely moved on. I loved the freedom I experienced on this trip. For the first time I, not someone else, decided where and when to go. All my travel experiences before this involved family members who controlled the agendas. My family’s interests and hobbies differ greatly from mine, so I tended to feel a lot of frustration on those trips. Last summer I finally earned enough money to plan and execute an adventure nearly completely on my own. (Gordon helped a little with the planning, but he was mostly busy with his senior thesis). So walking along that cobblestoned path in Greece, knowing a parent or teacher would not hold me back, was a thrillingly new experience.

To my surprise, the road thinned to a trail. A huge grey rock jutted out of the ground like a gigantic braille letter A. The sides of the rock were sheer and smooth, somewhat similar to a round skyscraper. I wondered if a monastery existed on the top of this rock, and then immediately realized that I must be on a trail that leads out of Kalambaka to the monasteries. The trail was still cobblestoned here, but the stones jutted out a bit and were further apart from each other than those on the street. My cane collided with some of the stones, but for the most part the trail was quite easy to follow. The air felt cold but clean, and my hard-of-hearing ears couldn’t pick up a sound other than the tapping of my cane. I felt so happy to be walking along this trail after spending the last day cooped up in Koka Roka Rooms with a cold. I jubilantly curved around the huge rock, contemplating whether the path would lead to a monastery.

After twenty minutes of following the trail, I turned back to Koka Roka Rooms to see if Gordon was ready to climb some hills. I found him just putting on his coat in our room, and together we went downstairs and out the door. Katrina met us outside, showering us with advice and directions to the monasteries. Apparently, the trail I had found earlier was indeed the route to the monasteries. Thanking Katrina, we embarked on the trail that I already knew. Despite the below-freezing temperatures, the upward hike soon had me warm enough to remove my hat and gloves. Following the cobblestones brought us higher up above the city. Kalambaka nestled in the valley behind us, while before us in a semi-circle stood the tall rocks that had been pointing at the sky for thousands of years. Gordon could see power lines snaking to the top of the nearest rock on our right; our first hint of a monastery. The sounds of rushing water soon reached me, and sure enough the cobblestones ended at a stream. With my cane I found some sturdy rocks to dryly step across the stream. However, the absence of cobblestones on the other side of the stream meant treading mud, so my shoes soon acquired a thick wet coating of it. From here on the path steeply zigzagged up the side of the cliff just below the rock with the telltale power lines. I felt a combination of fatigue and dizziness climbing up. My typically excellent balance wavered at every upward step. Gordon also felt similar cold symptoms, and I wondered if it would be wiser for us to wait another day to continue the adventure. We did stop for many water breaks on the way up. We took many photos on those breaks, too, for the vistas of Kalambaka and the rocks only improved as we neared the top of the cliff. The patches of snow also increased as we neared the top, and the last fifty feet of the trail was completely covered by two inches of snow. Finally stepping off the trail onto a wide paved road with a tall dark rock protruding out of the cliff on my right, a wave of relief and excitement replaced the gloomy fatigue.

According to a sign Gordon read aloud, the tall rock on the right housed the Agios Stefanos Monastery. Full of curiosity, I walked faster than I’d walked for the last hour. Cold wet rock greeted my hands at the stairs leading up to the monastery. The stairs curved under another set of stairs from which water dripped incessantly. So as I climbed the steep steps water rained down on my nose and forehead, which were not completely covered by my coat. As a result of the water, the curved staircase threatened to slip my feet from beneath me. In addition to the slippery water on the stairs, like so many European spiral staircases, the individual steps were narrow at one side and wide on the other. Practically glued to the right side of the staircase where the steps were widest, I made my way up with one hand on a railing while the other hand used my cane. When I reached a viewing platform at the top of the staircase my hands were freezing wet. I made a mental note to travel to warm climates in the future. Despite the numbing cold in my hands, I felt the rocks on the surface of the waist-high ledge that stood between me and a thirty foot drop to the base of the staircase. Some of the rocks were smooth while others were bumpy, reminding me of some of the grand structures we had explored in Pompeii. Looking out beyond the ledge, I could see and feel the expanse of space before us, our great height above Kalambaka. Defying the cold breeze, I witnessed the majestic dark blurs of the surrounding monastic rocks, the great green expanse of winter’s leaves below those rocks, and the white snow patterned as though a child-God fancied it vanilla frosting.

Up there, at the door of Agios Stefanos Monastery, at the top of a cliff overlooking Kalambaka I realized just how much I enjoy the freedom granted to the independent traveler. Only an independent traveler would spend an hour arduously climbing a cliff to reach a monastery that was closed; tour guides would not allow such a mistake. Independent of expertise and groups, Gordon and I ended up with a part of Greece all to ourselves on a serene viewing platform above Kalambaka. I explored and touched and listened and moved at my own pace. Remarkably, Gordon’s tastes and pace resonate so much with my own that he was a wonderful travel companion. We moved when and where curiosity led, with ten days in Greece and no agenda, we had time. The absence of burdens, the absence of obligations, the absence of schedules was just heavenly. We took care to ward off boredom by never staying more than three days in any city in Italy and Greece. During our time in Italy we even found kind hosts who provided us with friendship and a free room, all through the online database couchsurfing.com. With Internet access at every place we visited, we truly had the freedom to explore spontaneously, limited only by our own sense of adventure and monetary funds. I know I will soon depart on another independent trip, perhaps to the Middle East. Many vacations occurred in my twenty years, but none compare to the pristine experience of this style of travel.

That day in Kalambaka we spent another four hours walking along the paved road between the six different monasteries. Since the monasteries each have about 3 kilometers between them, you can see how we spent so much time on that one paved road. Unfortunately, most of the monasteries were closed that day, so we merely walked up to them and explored their surroundings. At 4 PM, an hour after all monasteries closed, we walked along the 10 km road to Kalambaka. Miraculously, a car with three Greek students on holiday offered us a ride, dropping us off in downtown Kalambaka. Famished, we then wandered around looking for a good place to eat. Gordon spied an ATM machine, and to my bewilderment the ATM had English braille! I felt disappointed that the braille was not Greek; the Greek Ferry we took from Venice to Greece had Greek braille on signs in a few places. I suppose English braille is better than no braille at all.

Afterwards, we found a small restaurant providing flavorful gyros. They were absolutely delicious, and the friendly staff gave us excellent directions to Koka Roka Rooms. We enjoyed the thirty-minute walk through the quiet streets of Kalambaka, returning to Koka Roka Rooms to find Katrina and her son Arthur in the dining room. While Gordon asked to use their computer, I went upstairs to grab my PAC Mate. Katrina had a fire going in the dining room, where the smells of cigarettes and her wonderful coffee mingled in the air. I sat beside Gordon with my cane by feet and my PAC Mate on my lap.

“What is that?” asked Arthur, Katrina’s middle-aged son. Gordon and I thought Arthur was British at first, but then we learned that his accent was actually a mix of Greek and Australian English.

“It’s called a PAC Mate,” I explained. “It’s a computer designed for people who are blind.”

“Are you blind?” he asked me. I felt puzzled. What had he imagined I used my white cane for? He’d seen me tapping my way with it quite a few times.

“Yes,” I answered. Through the following conversation about blindness and accessibility, I discovered that the only blind people Arthur could remember were blind beggars on the streets of Athens. Perhaps that was why he could not believe I was blind despite my visible use of a cane; the thought of blind people traveling internationally was beyond him. I realized that by merely traveling, by merely allowing people in rural Greece to see me moving with my cane I was spreading a positive message about the possibilities for the blind. The next time Arthur and Katrina come across a blind person, they will have a story to tell, that blind people can indeed travel.

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Second to Last Day

New York City

Seeing how well today went at The Seeing Eye, I now am certain that Maxine and I are ready to leave. Today’s adventure took place in Manhattan. All five remaining students and two instructors drove out there in a van, parking in the gigantic Court Authority building near the heart of Time Square. The crowds were splendidly dense, giving Maxine a challenge that she took on pretty well. She did bump me into a few people, which resulted in an immediate correction, of course. She’s slowly figuring out how much room she needs to steer around obstacles, people included. When compared to our trip to New York City on Thursday, Maxine’s progress shines.

On top of all the crowds and traffic, we both had to endure the heat. Walking along the bustling city blocks, we would occasionally catch a cool breeze from the opened door of an air conditioned establishment we passed. Maxine would urge me to go in: “Come on, let’s go inside, it’s too hot!” She doesn’t speak English, but she communicates with sharp turns and pulls. She resigned herself to the heat, somehow managing to ignore the enticing cool air that wafted from open doors. Since the pavement was so hot she was wearing little dog boots to keep her paws from burning. She does pretty well in the boots and doesn’t complain too much about them. For the first minute or so her stride is a bit clownish. Quite quickly she becomes used to them, though.

Our instructor decided to take us to Central Park, which turned out to be a great idea because not only did we get crowds, we had pigeons, pet dogs, and horses to contend with. The other animals definitely distracted Maxine. She tried to visit with some of the dogs, stared at the pigeons, and walked as far as she could from the horses. We steered around rickshaws, children, and hot dog stands. Strolling along the tree-lined paths of Central Park we went through a tunnel, passed a playground full of kids, and up to—yes!—The Carousel! I don’t think I’ve ever liked carousel rides, not even as a toddler. But riding a carousel with our dogs?? It was all our instructor’s idea, and she paid for us to get on one of those couch seats, with dogs on the floor of course. Wizard of Oz music played while we circled around. Maxine didn’t react at all, seemingly comfortable with the circular motion. Brave dog. Perhaps it’s a sign that she won’t mind plane rides either.

Going to New York City has been the best part of the program. Gliding along the streets of Manhattan, I marveled at the many mouth-watering smells of food from all over the world. I love the constant motion, the diversity, and the contagious excitement. Weaving through crowds of people is fun in itself, like stepping into a video game where three crashes equals Game Over. And the dogs are really pushed to their limits there, having to navigate huge crowds, tolerate loud noise, and watch so many fast moving cars. My instructor pointed out that he took Maxine to New York City before and she did fabulously. This trip to Manhattan was not a test for her, it was merely to build up my trust, and also to see how well the two of us work as a team.

We ”tripped the lights fantastic”—and a person or two—“on the sidewalks of New York…”

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Today’s the day Maxine really showed off her intelligence. At this point in the training students basically request certain trips they’d like to practice with their dogs, and since I enjoy hiking I requested that we test Maxine on a hiking trail. So there we were, Maxine, instructor, and I gliding along an uneven dirt path beneath a leafy canopy. Maxine followed the trail easily, which impressed both the instructor and I because Maxine had never guided on a trail before. How much more relaxing it is to just hold the harness handle while strolling along a trail compared to hiking with a cane that gets stuck in every little crevice. Near the beginning Maxine would lead me into piles of stones and logs without even stopping, causing me to trip and catch myself (I never fall!) Each time I stumble over something she gets distressed, and by the middle of the trail she’d figured out to lead us around the big rocks, holes, and even puddles! She learned how to guide on a trail so quickly; I’m very pleased with her.