You just have to laugh when you find yourself squatting over a toilet in the middle of nowhere. Laugh to keep from crying. Laugh, because there just may not be anything funnier than finding myself hunched over trying not to touch the seat of this outhouse.
I’ve only just arrived here. I don’t know where I am or really who I’m with. It’s pitch black; the only light I have is whatever’s illuminated from my headlamp. And the only thing I can see are ants…everywhere. They’re crawling around the base of the toilet and over the seat. I try to pee quickly and jump back before they have an opportunity to crawl over my feet. When I do, a giant frog leaps up from the drain in the floor and onto the toilet seat. Our eyes meet, and after a few minutes of taking each other in I reason with him.
You stay over there.
I’ll stay over here.
No sudden movements or all bets are off.
If you know me well, hearing that I’m on a farm, in the rural area that is the Burma-Thai border, having a tête-à-tête with an amphibian, you’d probably be like ‘eh, that sounds like Hana.’ I love being outside. I can rough it with the best of them. But even when roughing it, there’s something comforting about sleeping in the dark and knowing what’s out there. Here in Thailand, I don’t know what’s out there. Despite, a biology degree I can only make vague guesses as to the fauna that lay beyond my doorstep. That, unfortunately combined with vivid imagery of the bugs that seem to be a delicacy around these parts, frightens me. I’ll go charging into the woods at home because I know the worst thing I’ll find is a bear or mountain lion. Even more likely I’ll just come home with a nasty case of poison ivy. Here, I’m shit out of luck. I’m just another stereotypical dumb American.
So, standing in the corner of an outhouse I begin to reevaluate my choices. Where in my life was the turn that led me here? Here to the dimly lit concrete block with just a toilet and hose for showering. Where was the fork in the road that would have led me to the life that everyone else has gone on to lead? Maybe I do want the secure job, the picket fence, and the family. Maybe I do want to join the masses. Where is it in my genes that makes me so prone to situations like this? Why do I always seem to find myself negotiating with frogs in the middle of the night?! And the hardest question of all why do I seem to enjoy it?
I tell the frog all of this and he just stares unblinking at me. Somewhere though, on some level I know he understands me. Or at least, he sees me. But even he doesn’t want to hear me gripe. I open the door to the outside world and he leaps out making the turn in his road to continue to be a frog. Outside of the tiny brick house is a whole other land. I can’t really see it but I know it’s there. It sounds different in the wind than home. The trees are more tropical and are heartier in their movements. But the stars, oh, the stars are the same ones I’ve always known. They come as a set with the same moon I’ve seen every night before this one.
I know there was never any fork in my road. There was never the option of studying some practical subject and sitting behind my financially secure desk and white picket fence. There was never the off ramp to business school or 401Ks. There was never any other real option than to become a vagabond. That path in life that everyone else walks won’t fulfill me. Time has come and chipped away at my soul; and only standing in places like this, where I can see every star for a million miles, can begin to fill some of those cracks. I wish that I could make this more clear to those at home waiting for me to return. Sometimes I wish for them, that I would stop moving around and sit still and let them love me. But I am too selfish to sit still for anyone but myself. So until I’ve filled every crack in my life with something greater, I must keep moving.
The Way U Carry It 