Strangers Like Me

All my life, I wanted to travel the world. In high school I made big plans that never left my minds eye of going to foreign countries, learning new languages, and exploring different cultures. Finding hidden treasures whether it was through a group of locals or a simple hotspot located off the tourist maps. I envisioned helping war torn civilizations and curing those who had not yet possessed the technology to cure themselves. However, only a portion of these 'plans' ever came to pass.

Ideas of living spontaneously and backpacking through Europe took a backseat upon my entering the school of nursing at a local state university in Texas. School left little time for adventure, and after graduating I took the first traveling job offered to me without thought. Not thinking that a full-time career would only put even more of a hold on whatever development in plans I may have made. And it is my failure to fully think before acting that has brought me to the Dha-Hanu Valley of Ladakh in India. There, I will be apart of a medical assistance team charged with pediatric care of an indigenous people known as the Drokpa.

The mission is to preserve their population and ensure survival by administering whatever medical treatment is needed. Being an isolated people, they've no built up immunity to particular pathogens that may spell the end of their culture. But regardless of all the precise planning and documentation put into this trip, I feel somewhere that I will not return home the way I left.



The rickety bus shakes and wretches smoke within what feel like five minute intervals and sweat makes my once airy button up shirt stick to my abdomen and spine. All the windows are down, but only offer hot wind gusts, and my water bottle passed the criteria of luke-warm maybe twenty minutes ago. Only a few more miles now, the driver had said, Won't be long. I begin to wonder whether the definition of 'long' differed in this country as well.

"You look a little green there, love. Car sick?"
The word 'car' being pronounced more like 'cah' takes me a minute to register.

"I'm fine. Just jetlagged." I don't get car sick.

He offers me a doggie bag insistently and I wave him away. Tiredness always tended to make me appear sick. Considering I'm naturally a rather pale specimen to behold, it's not hard to cross the boarder between porcelain and corpse.
The engine upfront sputters and slowly winds down from the continuous offbeat hum to silence.

"We're here," the driver says in his heavy Hindi accent.

The bus has parked just outside a heavily wooded forest where a few tents are pitched and a line of five native officials wait to greet us.

"Hello!" The middle one says, leaping forward to shake the hand of our supervisor, Dr. Farvis.
While they exchange formalities the rest of us unload with the help of the other four. The youngest among them, a man of about 34 or 35, helps me with my two cases of luggage and medical kit. Upon my unpacking, he spies my notebook open to a sketch of a young child I had seen in the city.

"Very good," he says to me in broken English, "very very good. Must be careful. Good things disappear here."

I ask him what he means. He ponders for a moment, searching for the proper word to translate in English.

"ooo ooo," he says, making ape like movements and gestures.

"Ah, mon-keys," I say, careful to speak clearly.

He smiles at me knowingly and leaves my tent without answering. My tent-mate enters to unload her stuff and when I ask her about him, she waves me away.

"These people are superstitious," she says in that flat mid-western accent. She's the only other American on my team. "They believe in many things, real or not."

I say she's right and continue unloading.

That night the officials had prepared for us a sort of welcoming feast with a selection of what appeared to be similar to baked potatoes, a special brewed tea composed mostly of black tea, a food known as Gur-Gur-Cha, and mutton. One of my teammates, the Brit who had offered me a doggie bag earlier, had told me that mutton was saved only for special occasions, and that these people held items such as dairy and poultry to be taboo for religious purposes. It was in that moment that I realized I had done no real research on the people I had come to help; save for that which was required. I felt somewhat ashamed as Anthony, the Brit, seemed to catch on to my ignorance.

"Don't worry about it, eh? If you think about it, you need only to know enough not to offend them." He took another sip of tea as we sat around one of the fires.

"Yeah, I guess." I said absentmindedly.

The mans smile from earlier in the day stayed present in my mind until sleep found me that night.



I dream. In my dream there's a storm. Trees bow to the winds and rain splatters leaves every which way, tents are uprooted, though typically hot, the air is cold and cutting. And through it all, high in a stable thicket of massive branches are two eyes peering through the foliage.

Breathing.

Heavy breathing.

All is quiet, save for the steady inhale and exhale.

Screaming. No, yelling. Wild. Ape-like in volume.

Louder and louder until the pitch reaches that in which there is no sound at all.

Then all is dark.

I awake in a sweat. My sheets tangled every which way around my legs and my body jolts up right. Moonlight filters through the opening in the tent and I find no explanation for why I immediately search my luggage. It's there. Everything is still there. What did I expect? Something to be missing? Seriously? And then I see it.

There at the opening of the tent is an divot, a shift made in the dirt. A print. A gust of hot wind blows the flap so that light reaches nearly every part of the inside of the tent.

Two prints.

Slender in shape and with five circular points above each. Ape-like.

Almost human.