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TALES OF A FEMALE NOMAD: LIVING AT LARGE IN THE WORLD
By Rita Golden Gelman
Culinary books draw me into the kitchen to experience new recipes and to experiment with new ingredients. Books on personal awareness and consciousness inspire me and bring me back to mindfulness. But travel books -- I can hardly even describe it -- travel books ignite a deep passion I attempt to keep under wraps so that I can function day-to-day, as I have an insatiable longing for the road, and the less the road is traveled, the more drawn I am to it.
Tales of a Female Nomad, by Rita Gelman (Three Rivers Press, a Division of Random House) is a book that sings its siren call to my inner nomad. In fact, I know that within the next six months I will be on the road again myself.
Briefly, Rita Gelman is living an evniable life with a husband and family in Los Angeles. She is a successful author of children's books and her husband's work includes glamorous evenings at the theater and concerts, gourmet dinners and spending time with the glitterati that inhabit Southern California. While exciting, there is a part of Rita that isn't being realized, and she knows it.
A trip to the Galapagos Islands by herself brings to the surface her passion for travel but also her passion to meet and live with people of other cultures, to see both the geographical beauty as well as the beauty of people and wild animals worldwide. She comes back a changed woman.
Rita knows that it isn't practical for her to leave her teenage children and husband for a life on the road. Instead, she returns to graduate school in anthropology, deciding that she will get vicarious pleasure in learning more about other cultures and ways of living in the world. Of course, this isn't enough.
Finally, when her children are adult and Rita is in her late forties, she and her husband separate and she begins a new life, living at large in the world. Her travels take her through Mexico and Central America, on to Israel where she sees if her Jewish upbringing ignites a tribal connection with a largely Jewish country, back to the Galapagos where she lives with the animals full time while writing a book for children, Indonesia, where she lives with orangutans in the forest in Borneo, with a royal family in Bali, and much, much more.
What's very pleasing about Rita's writing and her travels, is that she immerses herself completely within the culture. Her only possessions are what she carries with her. She learns the language where she lives, stays with families in homes and traditional dwellings, participates in preparing food, playing with children and other daily tasks and shares her books and stories with the families she meets. What Rita never does is judge the culture or the people even when what she observes goes against her own personal beliefs. This is part of what makes Rita's book so compelling.
What also makes Rita's story so interesting is that she shares her inherent weaknesses and her regret when she later learns how her children felt she wasn't there for them as they navigate their early lives as adults. Her introspection includes her own path to growth and discovery of a sense of spiritual awareness, something she actively sought having lived a life that was full but never with a spiritual connection.
Having lived in Central America and Mexico, as well as traveling off the beaten path in Indonesia, Tahiti and China, I identified strongly with Rita's experiences of moving from culture to culture. As a writer and author and having focused on anthropology in school, I carry a similar life view as well. However, health constraints and personal obligations have never allowed me to quite so fully throw myself into village life as Rita has, and that has been a personal regret. Nevertheless, I have had enough experiences in my travels to appreciate the courage and compassion and inspriation Rita shares with her readers.
If your idea of travel is less about resorts, sun bathing and mai-tais and more about immersion in the cultures of the areas you are visiting, I highly recommend Rita's book. And if you are teetering between these two worlds, you should definitely read it as it will help you to decide how you might choose your next journey. We might even run into one another on the road.
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