Ojisan Bobby!

Sometimes you spin a globe to see where you will travel to, other times you travel to a place because you’ve dreamed of the blue water or the crooked cobble stone streets, sometimes it’s to get away from yourself, your life or something in your life. I’ve done them all, but last October when I was sitting on my bed staring at my map and wondering where I should go, I started to dream about the little old man whose been living on top of a hill in rural Japan since the end of World War II. I day dreamed about this cute 84 year old face that looks slightly like mine and much more like others in my family.

Bobby Becka, also known as Father Kimura, is my great uncle who forged his papers to go to war in Japan as a seventeen year old. Bobby, being protected by his superiors, was relegated the operating room to act as the surgeons assistant so not to risk the bloody battles on the beaches. As the family legend goes after standing witness to tragedies of war and the devastating use of the atomic bomb, his heart ached so deeply that he returned to California, only to call off his marriage and become a Catholic priest so he could return to Japan to become a part of the healing of a nation and its people.

When I walked into his room last week in Japan, I heard a different version. He joked so casually, "I was bored in class one day so I wrote to Rome that I would go to Japan, I’d seen a notice that they needed people there. Then next thing I knew, Spring of 1953 I was on a ship to Japan."

He was even cuter then I imagined and had seen in pictures…small with a big nose, very confident, very sweet. Oh, the sweetest thing. When I leaned over and hugged him and told him my sister and mom both sent their love and a hug with me, his bony arms grasped around me and he gave me a good pat and said enthusiastically, “Oh wow, I’ll take em, I don’t get many hugs in Japan.”

He has spent the past 57 years in Japan as a Catholic priest, helping generations of people find hope and community. So many times when my Dad and I were talking to him last week he would struggle for the English word or answer us in Japanese, then roll his eyes and correct himself. He is the brother of my Dad’s mom who died in 1956 when she was only 36. I’ve always been so curious about her, about who helped create one of the sweetest people I know, my Dad, and married one of the gruffest people I know, my Grandpa Bill. When my gruff but so so dear friend Grandpa Bill died last September I felt this strong desire to know Bobby. Maybe it is just because I am obsessed with old people, maybe it’s because I’m so curious about religion and felt I ought to visit a priest as a newly bootleg baptized catholic (I’ll explain later), maybe I felt like it was honoring my Grandpa by making a trip to Japan to visit one of his oldest friends, maybe it’s because I wanted an excuse to pin point somewhere on the map and buy a plane ticket. I think it was a combination of all of them. And the fact that my Dad met me in Japan for the visit made it even more special to me.

In Bobby’s room, Bobby, my Dad and I didn’t solve the problems of the world or crack the code on religion. We shared funny stories about my Dad taking his priest uncle to the bars when Bobby came to visit him in college, about how my Grandma was so straight and always taking care of everyone and making sure everybody was alright (also ironing a lot), about how liberal my Grandpa had gotten in his old age.

We shared some more serious ones too, about Bobby losing his mom at six and how remembers feeling at the funeral that if he becomes a priest he will be closer to his mother, about the tragedy of war and his work to help develop the peace Cathedral in Hiroshima, about the trials of old age and growing up to be 84.

My sister yelled to me when I was in the shower last night in Townsville Australia that we got a sad email from Dad. She told me Bobby died. My heart jumped up a couple inches and just stood there. I closed my eyes as my sister read me the email. Dad thinks he is perfectly happy where he is now, he’s now with my Grandpa and his mom and so many others he hasn’t seen in so long. He said he must have been holding on just long enough to visit with us.

My heart eventually started to beat again and I looked around the stark white hotel bathroom for someone to thank that those day dreams on my bed, led to painfully long wait times with United Airlines, which led to me to Tokyo, which led to a hug with Bobby. Knowing that bony hug is so very important to me.

It's just so fun for me to try to figure out what they mean...

Blue Bottle Japan!

Somewhere between Takadanobaba and Ueno Stations

(Dad pondering the subway map)

Tokyo is home to the most extensive rapid transit system in the world and it is INCREDIBLE. Every train is EXACTLY on time and the stations and trains are immaculately clean. Though Sri Lankan buses didn't share the immaculateness and packed in three or four times the capacity into the bus they were also always on time. So according to me, both Sri Lanka and Japan's public transportation systems have the San Francisco MUNI beat by a long shot. Get it together SF.

Tommy Box in Japan...and me toooo!

I'm with my Dad!! I left Sri Lanka last week and have been in Tokyo for a few days meeting with young organizers from the Japan Eco-League and the Japan Campus Climate Challenge (will tell you more later).

But last night Mister Tom Box showed up and now we are headed out to adventure around Japan! It felt so strange, after months of traveling alone, to be standing on the street corner looking onto the busy streets of Tokyo waiting for my Dad to pop up out of the subway. It was really fun to see him when he did pop up, but it was also strange. It was like this: Hello person who made me. Weird. Ah, my Dad is here. Cute. I love him. I look so much like him...shoot is that a good thing to look like a 65 year old man?! SO glad he made it safe. Dad's here. Wow me and my Dad are in Tokyo -- YAY!!

I will keep you posted on our travels and also be posting more from Sri Lanka. I was so sad to leave Sri Lanka last week. The past two months have most definitely been two of the best months of my life and I feel so grateful to all the incredible friends that took such good care of me there and shared their country with me. I am forever changed for the better! I cannot wait to go back and cannot wait to see the amazing things that the Sri Lanka Youth Climate Action Network does over the next few years.

Sleeping with Elephants/Elephants killed your parents?!

Meet Dinu. I met Dinu when him and his friends took me and some other tourists on a crazy jungle ride to chase elephants. I was a little nervous because I'm not so much of a wild life person and I was with all wild boys who were ready to push the limits!! But the second I met Dinu I felt safe, there was something very calming about him. We were standing in a tree house looking out for elephants and I asked him how he got into elephants. He looked at me and said, "My parents were killed by elephants." I could tell he was serious. He went onto explain that he grew up on a jungle road and one evening when his parents were walking to temple elephants killed them by picking them up with their trunks and throwing them into a ravine.

Flash forward two hours. I was standing in the middle of the jungle, my heart beating so fast as we watched a group of elephants move toward us. I looked at Dinu for reassurance. He looked at me and said quietly, "Don't worry, we are safe. We are being careful and they can sense we are respecting them. Stay here next to me and just don't surprise them. They won't hurt anyone." I flashed him a look like, are you CRAZY?!?! BOTH of your parents were killed by elephants!!!!!

He continued, "I know, I know, Let's just watch them naturally, be calm Heathie" (what a lot of Sri Lankans call me).

The elephants snuggled each other and made a low but very loud purring sounds, it was INTENSE to be that close. On the way home in the jeep I was trying to express myself about the experience, rather inarticulately - "They are SO big and weird, you could really see that they loved each other."

Dinu said, "I know, I know what you mean. I just want to sleep as close to them as possible. Some nights I drive my jeep into the jungle and go to sleep in the back. Packs of elephants just crowd outside the jeep pressing against it and knocking it- purring and squealing all night. I sleep good there."

You just gotta go with your crew

(more pics to come)

I think one of the best things about this trip for me has been the it has really forced me to expand my definition of who "my crew" is. A couple of days ago it became very clear to me how much my definition has changed in the past few weeks.

I am currently on a farm in Sri Lanka learning to build a house out of mud (it is called earthen building). I am part of a workshop that consists of twenty Sri Lankan men (17 to 60 years old), one Thai guy, two teachers (husband and wife - Jo from Thailand and Peggy from Colorado) and their 5 year old kid, Tan.

On the second day, after a hard day of building, me and some of the others went for a bath in the river. I stood on the river bank and watched the boys and men strip down to their tighty whities (actually mostly tighty bluies and tighty blackies) and dive in. I dove in only to eject three feet out of the water - "SOMETHING BIT MY FOOT!!" It didn't hurt, actually it felt kinda good, whatever it was, but it scared me SO bad!! One of the men swam over and let me know that it was just a fish and it was just eating at the wounds on my feet (of which there we MANY from mixing the mud with my bare feet). He told me it would help my wounds heal faster. I nodded but decided to just float on my back to avoid the situation - good or not.

As I laid there and looked down the river at the men unwrapping their bars of soap and lathering themselves and their laundry up I felt the strangest feeling...peacefulness. Heather Box in the middle of no where Sri Lanka, at dusk, swimming with eight stranger men, most of whom I couldn't communicate with, in a muddy river with biting fish. That is about half of my fears mixed into one setting. I mean, if I imagine myself coming across a group men alone in the middle of no where as it was getting dark I know my heart would pound and I would just think the worst thoughts and go in the opposite direction. (I have an irrational fear of groups of men I don't know - as many women do). But tonight as I looked upon a game of soap monster (man covered totally in soap minus his eyes, chasing one of the other guys) I realized that these guys, for this week, were my crew and I felt so safe and at ease.

I can only hope that I carry some of this home with me. Maybe, when I get home, if I just imagine the groups of guys on the streets of San Francisco and New York in their underwear playing soap monster I will feel more comfortable and at peace when walking down the streets alone.