A Skeptic Traveler

In Tayabas Filipinas, when I was 5 years old and my sister three, my family lived in the jungle near an underground gold mine, where my father worked. To reach the mine from Manila required a half day on a banana boat and another 4 hours on the back of a water buffalo. Our house was built on stilts as mandated by the monsoons. I recall the bamboo floors which allowed the dirt to filter down to the ground many feet below, along with a few other items, like the dime I lost; self cleaning floors and no dust. Pest control took the form of night time mosquito netting, and Geckos, which are noisy insect-eating house lizards. We ate everything, although my parents were careful to boil water, and wash, or peel, or chlorine soak, or cook all food. Chlorox, cod liver oil, and evaporated canned milk were essentials. We did not go barefoot in populated areas, but there were few people about.

Our family continued the life of mining industry itinerants for ten more years. Every year a new teacher in a new one room school, a new set of friends, a new mine, sometimes a new country and language, with no chance to set down roots. In those circumstances, a child doesn't just "get" friends, but makes, or earns friendship. In Mexico, during WWII, I recall having to walk to school with a stick at first; yet not until years later did I realize that when my new-made childhood playmates and I played war games, we always shot down Gringo rather than Axis warplanes.

So the life of a hard rock miner's child was not always an easy adventure.Yet there were advantages. It was a life of great freedom for children. An underground miner tends to calculate risk, knowing his life is generally in his own hands. As a consequence, mining communities allow children and fools a great deal of freedom. I grew up playing in abandoned mines, and bat lined limestone caves, set in remote mountain or desert country. We knew what a blasting cap looked like, and that it was unwise to fall down a shaft, step off a cliff or fall off a log while crossing over white water. My parents seemed to feel that infection and disease were personal also, believing there were well-defined ways to remain healthy; they felt competent to act accordingly, making common sense decisions based on whatever information they could find. Though one generation can seldom understand the mind set of another, and children often must reject parental values, much is carried forward, and manifest in behavior. I have continued to travel all my life, and continued to think that personal freedom requires the exercise of independent judgement and understanding of personal responsibility. When I tend to believe too faithfully in my own ability to make common sense decisions, I can blame my parents, a time honored tactic which one generation uses to put down another.

In a Nepalese village, looking down on an ages-old ridgetop trail, there is dirt. It looks like Nevada dirt, smells like it, an feels the same. Overhead is a sky much like another. Nepali E histolytica, though more common there, dies after a 15 minute boil, even at high altitudes, and it is killed by Chlorine or Iodine, just as here. Neither Giardia, found everywhere wild or domestic animals leave spoor, nor the kind of malaria found on the Urubamba river in Peru, are mysterious. I prefer the freedom to continue to drink from a shallow clear sun-radiated mountain stream to the restriction imposed by fear of Giardia or amebiasis. After all, metronidazole is rather effective, especially when given soon after infection. Likewise, where falciparum is not an issue, I prefer to carry chloroquine, but not take it unless infected. I would rather know when and where I get malaria, if I ever do.

In Nepal, a helicopter used to fly gamma globulin to Peace Corps volunteers every 4 to 6 months, thereby blowing the minds of locals, and in effect blowing the cover of volunteers, without significantly altering the incidence of serious complications of Hepatitis A. I prefer to skip the globulin. traveler's enteritis, related to foreign strains of E coli, it is quite benign; but the traveler who doesn't have time or inclination to adjust to the new strains can do that which one should do in any event: don't drink contaminated water. If one is on a low budget and wants tap water on demand, it is a simple to reduce the risk by setting out a pitcher or two of hot tap water every night; in the morning it is pretty well pasteurized, and cool.

At Niagara Falls the visitor is fully protected from any possible accident, and also from other than a kind of distant and sterile experience in viewing the falls. Last time I was at Cataratas de Iguazu, I walked along a board about 8 inches wide, with a 2 x 4 railing on the falls side, right up to the Devils Throat (Garganta del Diablo). While I understand the need for safety, especially in our litigious society, I prefer the freedom that leaves me with the knowledge that I have a responsibility for my own life. I am not opposed to immunizations. Tetanus, Polio, Hep B, are prime examples of my ideal immunizations. But Influenza? Cholera? Typhoid? Effectiveness almost nill. Tetanus Immunization Si - Cholera, etc., No.

I decry inhaling smoke from all burning plants, and especially feel that children should not be exposed to second-hand smoke from pot or tobacco. Still I continue to breathe diesel fumes and noxious city gasses, including second hand smoke. To not do so would deprive me of access to most of the world's great cultural and population centers; I would lose touch with many of the world's most informative and fascinating people, even in the USA, especially if one considers cigar smoke. Unless the traveler never leaves his "non-smoking hotel room," he must put aside fears of second-hand smoke, and hope that the world changes in the future. While continuous breathing of second-hand smoke is probably harmful, occasional exposure is nothing more than noxious, arguably only as irritating as continuous exposure to the fuming of anti-smoking fanatics.

The living of life is at least as important as its length. Often the pleasure in living is enhanced by accepting the risk of trusting one's own considered judgement, never trading too much freedom of action in exchange for a deceptive proffer of security. I suggest to the reader that this is especially important now in the USA when we suffer an epidemic of pseudo-security-mania with its typical TV/ media mediated febrile seizures. Partial immunity can be developed through contact with other cultures, some of which flourish within our own country.