Routes Magazine Volume 1, Issue 2

ROUTES

the hamilton college travel & exploration magazine

issue ii SPRING 2016 1

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TABLE OF CONTENTS END AUSTERITY NOW: A PHOTO ESSAY: ALEXIS STROEMER ‘18............................................ 6 GO WILD: WHY AND WHERE TO LONG-DISTANCE BACKPACK: KATE BROUNS ‘17......... 12 PARIS: A NIGHT GUIDE: SOPHIE GAULKIN ‘17.............................................................................. 14 STORMS AND SEA LEGS: ALI ZILJIAN ‘19........................................................................................ 18 FRIED CHICKEN, CHURCH LADIES, SHOTGUN WEDDINGS: REECE THOMPSON ‘18...... 20 ASPECTS OF BEIJING: ALEX WITONSKY ‘17................................................................................... 22 PHOTO CONTEST FINALISTS............................................................................................................ 26 FACULTY IN THE PEACE CORPS: OLIVIA BOX ‘17........................................................................ 30 REFUGEES IN LESVOS: ALISON WALDMAN.................................................................................... 32 AN INTERVIEW WITH MIKE NELSON ‘18....................................................................................... 36

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EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Victoria Bullivant ‘18 Alexis Stroemer ‘18

MANAGING EDITORS

Annie Berman ‘18

Jack Anderson ‘18

PHOTO TEAM

Jack Anderson ‘18 Bridget Braley ‘18 Jack Hay ‘19

LAYOUT TEAM

Julia Gorlovetskaya ‘19 Rachel Cady ‘19

WRITERS

Kate Brouns ‘17 Alexa Zildjian ‘19 Genevieve Darling ‘18 Olivia Box ‘17 Madeline Carlman ‘19

COPY-EDITORS

Olivia Paradice ‘19 Jacqui Young ‘17 Julie Flanagan ‘17

Hannah McLean ‘19 SPRING 2016 5

End Austerity Now Alexis Stroemer ’18 On June 20, 2015, tens of thousands came together in London to protest the United Kingdom’s austerity program. Enacted in 2010, the policy seeks to reduce the government deficit by decreasing government spending on a number of social services and benefits. Though meant to expire in 2015, the UK Treasury extended the austerity program at least through 2018. The cuts effect not only the millions who rely on welfare programs, but also all of those who work for the industries reuducing hours, pay and employees.

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GO WILD Why and Where to Long-Distance Backpack Kate Brouns ‘17 There are many popular social trends I would obviously never urge you to partake in out of peer pressure. That being said, when it comes to the rising popularity of long-distance backpacking (thank you for that, Reese Witherspoon, in the recent movie Wild), I can assure you that you should take notice of your FOMO (“fear of missing out”) and act upon it as soon as possible. Nay, I implore you to give in to peer pressure and try your hand (or foot) at long-distance backpacking.

While short-distance backpacking—a 2 to 5 day trip perhaps—can be a refreshing vacation, longdistance backpacking is a wildly different animal. A simple way to distinguish between what typically qualifies as a long- or short-distance trip is whether or not your hike requires at least one food resupply. If it does, then you’re in luck. A long hike offers a fundamentally different experience than a short trip, and here’s why: only long-distance backpacking is truly capable of temporarily separating you from your daily life and routine. Annie Emanuels ’16, who is preparing to hike the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail in 2017, commented, “It takes a few days to get in the mindset of feeling like you’re living on the trail. During a short trip, you think in terms of ‘What day of the trip is it?’ but on a longer hike, you begin to think in terms of geographical locations along the trail, of getting yourself simply from point A to point B.” On a long-distance backpacking trip, you encounter the rare opportunity of becoming completely absorbed in a different lifestyle; for instance, a popular long-distance hike often attracts groups of hikers all during the same season. As a result, you become part of a distinct community on the trail, allowing you to meet a diverse group of fellow hikers, each person from a different place with his or her own interesting story to tell. And lastly, long-distance backpacking is not your typical vacation in one crucial way. It is not a physical vacation; it is wholly a mental vacation. The trail offers a unique retreat from daily life, and I believe it to be the most humbling and cleansing retreat imaginable. And now, if I have hopefully managed to convince you, here is a sneak peek at some hikes you could begin planning for yourself!

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Wonderland Trail (Mount Rainier National Park)

Skill Level: Beginner Length: 93 miles; 10 to 14 days Features: Lots of elevation change, stellar views of Rainier, adorable marmots

Tahoe Rim Trail (California and Nevada)

Skill Level: Beginner Length: 165 miles; 2 weeks Features: Spectacular views of Lake Tahoe, granite peaks, deep forests, and wildflowers galore “ON A LONGER HIKE, YOU BEGIN TO THINK IN TERMS OF GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATIONS ALONG THE TRAIL, OF GETTING YOURSELF SIMPLY FROM POINT A TO POINT B.”

John Muir Trail (California)

Skill Level: Intermediate Length: 211 miles; 2 to 4 weeks Features: Unbeatable California weather, diverse landscape, opportunity to summit Mt. Whitney (highest peak in the contiguous U.S.)

Pacific Crest Trail (Mexican Border to Canadian Border) Skill Level: Advanced Length: 2,650 miles; 4 to 5 months Features: Begins in the desert, logistics-intensive, most thru-hikers go through four pairs of shoes!

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Paris: A Night Guide Sophie Gaulkin ’17

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Gossima Ping Pong Bar

4 Rue Victor Gelez, 75011 The Gossima Ping-Pong Bar is a perfect destination to have fun with a bunch of friends, and it generally is filled with brighteyed, French students. It’s a great hang for the night; it’s not for ping-pong enthusiasts as much as trendy university students.

The head bartender, Thomas, will invent drinks for you based on your personality if you ask.

Le Comptoir Général 80 Quai de Jemmapes, 75010

Au Chat Noir

76 Rye Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011 On Mondays, Au Chat Noir hosts spoken word and other forms of entertainment in the basement, which is what brought me there in the first place. But, I kept coming back because of the people I met. Everyone there is so welcoming, friendly and genuinely interesting. I lost my phone there, twice, and it was returned to me both times. You’ll make lasting friendships there with actual Parisians, which is generally very difficult— especially on an abroad program.

More than any of the famous Parisian monuments, Au Chat

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This bar is what makes the Parisian bar scene so famous.

It’s everything—a gallery, a museum, a bookshop, a café, a thrift store, and of course a bar. I can hardly describe the vibe because it’s so multifaceted. All at once, it has the look of an abandoned opera house, a rainforest with its incredibly high ceilings, and a 90s sitcom living room. It’s well-hidden from the main road on the Canal Saint Martin; as soon as you open the door it’s almost overwhelming. Their signature cocktail is Secousse with bissap, a Senegalese liqueur made from hibiscus flowers.

Le Syndicat

51 Rue Faubourg St Denis, 75010 New to the Parisian bar scene, Le Syndicat in the 10th arrondissement and is a really fun and friendly place with a trés cool hip-hop vibe that does cocktails with a twist. Drinks are often made with burning orange bark or pastis. Their idea is to use French-made ingredients, which is a great learning experience for the Hamilton in France students.

A la Française

50 Rue Léon Frot, 75011 This is what I would call a 70s styled drinking-den. This is the only bar I’ve found where all of the products are entirely French. It was incredibly difficult to find French whiskey anywhere but here. The head bartender takes a lot of pride in the extensive cocktail culture of French history, which selon lui, can be traced back to the 1800s. This is highly recommended for deeply passionate Francophiles and those interested in the art of cocktails.

Wall Street Bar

17 Avenue Parmentier, 75011 The Wall Street Bar is its own drinking game where timing is everything. All of the drinks and their respective prices appear on a huge screen—a screen that changes every 90 seconds.

One minute, a martini can be 2 euros and a glass of non-alcoholic orange juice can be 12 euros. And, at least once every night, the stock market “crashes,” meaning that all the prices hit rock bottom. It can be dangerous though, because after waiting for the best possible deal, the crash may inspire you to overzealously order, so be careful.

L’Apicus

20 Rue d’Artois, 75008 For a more refined experience, this bar is a beautiful mansion from the 1860s, as well as a Michelin Star restaurant. It’s trés chic, with a tiny terrace and 19th century frescoed ceilings that somehow perfectly blend with the modern décor. The bartenders will make each drink especially for you—just tell them vague details about what you like and don’t like in terms of flavors, and they will impress you beyond belief. You’ll never taste anything quite like it. Even classic cocktails like a Bloody Mary have an incredible twist.

Their take on it is farm-to-glass, made with cherry tomatoes, BBQ bitters, and cranberries, (which I thought would be weird but wasn’t), all prepared right in front of you. It’s understandably pricey, so definitely save this place for a special occasion.

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Storms and Sea Legs Ali Zildjian ’19

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I

have never lived in a place where a body of water was not in view.

As a little kid, the smell of saltwater would fill our house when summer rolled along because my sister and I had just returned from a short trip to the beach one house away from us. The little log cabin in Canada sits on Charlie Lake, which becomes so still you can’t decide where the landscape starts and the reflection on the surface ends. My home in Massachusetts will arbitrarily look like it sits near a lake instead of the North River when it floods.

Some of my earliest memories are drifting off to sleep on my mother’s boat while the shore slowly disappeared, the waves rocking us like a cradle. With wide eyes, I stared at Bermuda’s turquoise waters and exclaimed: “this is paradise!”

So when my school decided to take my seventh grade class on a trip on a schooner for a week, I was ecstatic. We started on a bright April day, and the ocean spray was a refreshing change from the heat as Boston Harbor disappeared from view. We joked around as the captain taught us how to tie certain knots, and when a party ship passed by playing “Bad Romance,” we sang along.

It was an amazing, fun time. We were split into two groups: one group would sleep for four hour blocks, and the other work for those hours and then we switched off, pretending we weren’t sleepy.

Being one of the few people who didn’t struggle to gain their sea legs, I was given a lot of responsibilities, mainly steering the schooner. In the pitch black of night, I would stare at a glowing compass for hours on end. When we sailed far enough away from the city, though, the light pollution disappeared, revealing so many stars I had never seen before. In moments of complete silence, I could sometimes hear a puff of air in the darkness as a whale surfaced nearby.

With no land in sight, the sunrises were breathtaking. Every color of the sky was laid out in front of me: black speckled with stars turning

to purple and deep blue while the horizon was stained a bright orange. In those moments, it was hard to focus on the compass.

When I got up one morning to begin working, though, something was different. In the distance, an enormous cloud had begun building. It was a deep, dark grey, and the dent in the middle made it look like a mouth about to eat the ship whole.

The captain, a thin, wrinkled man with wispy white hair, came to talk to us.

“We’re going to have to let her go,” he said.

“Take down the sails and get ready for this thing to hit.”

The best thing to do, it seemed, was to try to minimize damages by not even attempting to steer. We didn’t even question him. He basically said, “let’s see what fate mother nature has decided for us,” and we, naive 13-year olds, thought, “Sure, that sounds fun!”

Because I was the “work for four hours” group, I had to remain above deck when the storm came raging through to help if anything came loose. Decked head to toe in rain gear, my friends and I sat and watched as it inched closer and closer to us.

When it did hit, it was intense. The rain fell so hard that in only a few seconds, my jeans were soaked through. The water churned into a naturemade roller coaster, tossing our boat recklessly through the rolling waves. We tipped so far back that water got in through the guardrails, flooding the decks. The entire world turned grey and thunder shook us as it roared through the wind.

Looking back, I realized that I could have died that day. I wasn’t really thinking about that in the moment, though. I was having far too much fun.

Nothing as exciting as that had ever happened to me outside of my books, and the feeling that I was on a real-life adventure filled me with more joy than worry.

Eventually, the waters calmed, and the grey ceiling opened up into a peaceful blue sky. It was my group’s turn to rest.

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fried chicken, church ladies, shotgun weddings Short fiction by H. Reece Thompson '18

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“You was born special, Suzanna,” her mother said. “On the sunniest January day anyone in Brownsboro, Texas ever seen and I know it because I asked all the church ladies when you got baptized. You know, the ones with their blue hair. They said you were special, too.” She took a swig and ***

You see, Suzanna’s mother drank too much and her father drove big rigs on I-20 to Shreveport and Birmingham, so he was only home on the weekends. The church ladies wanted better for her, and they needed to meddle in something that maybe wasn’t their business. So when she was twelve, they introduced her to Linda-Belle’s grandson, Rhett.

Linda-Belle took them both to Pop’s Honey Fried Chicken that first time, but stopped going after that. The first few times, she had to make excuses about her back aching.

But pretty soon Rhett stopped asking her to come along, he wanted to see Suzanna alone.

They went to Pop’s together on the last Saturday of the month for six years.

Rhett told Suzanna to always get fried chicken at the end of the month, because they have to change the oil in the fryer on the first. The higher the day on the calendar, the darker the fry will be and that’s where the flavor is. Linda-Belle taught him that.

Rhett got down on one knee on the greasy tile floor of that chicken joint and the church ladies immediately started planning the wedding. Rhett would start at UT in August, so they had to hurry and get everything together before they left. Linda-Belle gave Suzanna her dress. “You look better in it than I do these days.” Rhett wore his church suit.

In those days, that’s just how you did it.

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6 By: Alex Witonsky ’17 Cliche has it that Beijing is a Janus-faced city. One face is fixed

and the metaphoric Brain of China, the Forbidden City focalizes a

outward; between blinks it gaz-es with joy at all the treasures of

paradox animating the nation in the 21st century: how to ensure

a burgeoning Chinese modernity: stunning feats of architec-ture,

authoritarian control amidst the changes engendered by globaliza-

Olympic Games, a growing middle class, dwindling levels or urban

tion?

poverty, and interna-tional tourists and students in droves.

Of course, theory and reality, cliche and observation differ some The other face is stern and turned inward, toward the geograph-

when your feet are on the ground. Below, in no particularly mean-

ic and political center of the city. Fazing out the busy periphery,

ingful order, scraps of Beijing from the perspective of a foreigner

it stares transfixed at the symbol of CCP’s political and cultural

who spent the previous summer and fall there.

authority, the Forbidden City. Indeed, as the literal heart of Beijing,

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BEIJING:

As More Circular Than I’m Accustomed To Beijing proper is divided by six ring-roads, big highways that circle the city in concentric fashion. These roads shape the city in the image of puckered lips or a Princess gemstone.

This means that unless you live in the epicenter–the Forbidden Palace–you seem to always circle the city, to observe it from different angles, without getting the sense of living within it so much as around it. Part of this sense is bolstered by the sheer size of Beijing and the width of the ring roads.

As A Symphony Upon The Tastebuds I returned to America as a crestfallen gourmand. Perhaps it’s that I live in a Long Island suburb, and that the average restaurant there interprets cooking as a practice that exists at the intersec-tion of trade magazines and salt, but the first meal I had back home really did disappoint me. Anyway, a majority of the food I had in China was delicious–well-balanced in terms of flavor and generally healthsome, varied by region, and usually a bit spicy to boot. Some of the best food I had in Beijing includes these: yak dumplings in a spicy sauce, whole steamed fish, any old piece of fruit (a much fresher, fuller taste than equivalent NA fruit), sweet sticky-rice served hot out of a pineapple, and bingtanghulu, a candied fruit snack. Coco Bubble Tea wasn’t bad either.

In Regards to the Sky The sky over Beijing is ironed blue. When the pollution reached dangerous levels–which was often–the whole city was shrouded in a blue-gray quilt that carried to the back of the throat and all over the mouth and tongue a faint note of rust. On the most apocalyptic of days, the atmos-phere turned Martian–an interminable green-gray wall which fails to come out in photograph.

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As Related To Me Through Metaphors I spent the majority of my time in Beijing at Minzu University.

Minzu is located in Haidian district, a place which was described to me at times as “Beijing’s Silicon Valley,” and at other times as an “urban suburb.” Though that last word usually has me heading for the hills the second I hear it, I at first thought these equations made sense, in a nominal, get-your-bearings sort of way: two subway stops away were the headquarters of three Internet Giants: Sohu, Baidu, and Youku; each company hosts sites which may be likened to MSN, Google, and Youtube, respectively. Only later, as I spent more time in Beijing, did the comparisons to American places increase, and an insidious feeling began to spread, even as my Chinese got better: just up the street was Tsinghua, China’s Harvard. Next to a KFC was the coffeeshop chain & internet bar Beigel, where many of my compatriots went to study everyday after class. If not Beigel, then Old Bike, a burger joint. In a subtler sense, all the petty rhythms of that “urban suburb” slowly took a turn for the Cheeverian: booze-fueled weekends at the bar or else wellheeled departures to The Real City’s clubbing districts and restaurants, vaguely incestuous relationships sexual and non (all of us housed as an enclave in Minzu’s guest hotel), a high-school like groaning about school and classwork, whispers of previous students who had done it better. How much of these things does one bring with them and choose to perpetuate? How much does one’s native language and culture paint another one with a broad brush, trap us in a linguistic labyrinth of native asso-ciations?

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As A Mongolian & Austrian Birthday Bash Minzu can be roughly translated into English as ‘ethnic group.’ As Beijing’s Ethnic University then, the school implements a quota to ensure availability for those among China’s 55 ethnic-minority groups. One night, while eating some lamb kebabs outside a Korean restaurant, my friends and I met a Mongolian who insisted we call him Black Star, so called because his com-plexion is darker than most Mongolians. Black Star was adamant that my friend Gunther resem-bled his brother back in inner Mongolia.

(Günther, who is of Austrian descent, claims that his high cheekbones tend to elicit these type of comparisons with some regularity.) And indeed, Black Star’s brother and Gunther shared a shocking resemblance. Since it so happened to be both Black Star and Günther’s birthdays that star-crossed night, Black Star announced a cele-bration and took us to a Mongolian bar, where we “drank the Mongolian way.”

As a Poetic Backdrop People fell into and out of love. One night, as bar-lights paint the surface of Houhai lake in streaks of purple and yellow, Kevin watches a paddle-boat cut across the black water, and real-izes the soft murmurs from within the boat are actually the strumming of a guitar.

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PHOTO CONTEST FINALISTS Top 10 images from the #knowthyroutes Instagram contest

Sydney Warren ’19

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Becca Butler ’17 This photo was taken in the Atacama desert in Northern Chile near the main town of San Pedro de Atacama. It is the driest desert in the world and has the clearest night sky anywhere, and also separates Chile from Peru. I traveled around this desert with a group of foreign exchange students while I was studying in Santiago, Chile this past fall. We saw salt plains, mountain ranges and active volcano in addition to a surprising number of lagoons and lakes. We swam in holes dug into the earth for mining purposes and biked through the “Valley of Death” to go sand-boarding. Two of the four nights we were there, we held an “asada” which is essentially a Chilean barbecue and spent time with other students from Germany, Hungary and the U.S. My favorite part of the trip and of my abroad experience in general was the ever-present view of the Andes Mountains, pictured here. “La Cordillera,” as they call it, changed forms and climates, but it was always the same.

Ryan Ong ’16 This photo was taken on a beach at the RIU Palace Las Americas in Cancun, Mexico.

My friends and I wanted to soak up the sun for spring break so we decided to fly down to Cancun. I took out my GoPro at sunset and told my friend Sydney to go on the porch for a picture!

Amelia Heller ’16 I took this photo in the desert outside Jerusalem, Israel, the night that my birthright group and I stayed at a Bedouin tent. I had an amazing time in Israel, exploring the historical sites, eating the amazing food and making friends with the camels!

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Rachael Feuerstein ’16 I travelled to Eastern/Central Europe over Spring Break this year and one of my stops was in Vienna. This is Vienna’s town hall or “Rathaus”. Vienna is by far the classiest, most ‘Old World’ city I’ve visited. The building were well preserved and the architecture was extremely sophisticated. It’s historically interesting the Soviets once occupied this country.

Kate Brouns ’17

This photo encapsulates my experience of visiting Kerala in southern India this fall. Traveling here from the hot and dry state of Rajasthan in the North, I was prepared for more camels and deserts. Kerala, on the other hand, was home to spice gardens, tea plantations (pictured here), and rolling green hills. Yet again, through this abrupt change in climate, I was provided with another example of the many ways in which India is uniquely diverse.

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Alice Chen ’18 I took this photo in NYC, 82th E, Park Ave, during spring break. My friends who go to school in the city were trying to show me around. We just visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art and were walking towards a restaurant on the 3rd Ave and we passed this peaceful and cute street. The scene caught my eye because the mirror on the motorbike reflected a building nearby.

Since I am always a big fan of classic architecture, I felt that was a great and new perspective to capture the building’s beauty. Interestingly, it also showed the traffic at the intersection. Therefore, I feel the mirror represents the intersection of automobile and pedestrians, reality and image.

Olivia Melodia ’18 This photo was taken in Oía, Santorini, Greece in November 2014. I spent ten days traveling around Greece with two friends while abroad in London for our Jan semester. Because we were traveling during the offseason, many shops and beaches were closed, but we had the opportunity to explore spots that were more off the beaten path. My favorite moments were ATVing on dirt roads up mountains and along the coastline, and jumping off a boat into the natural hot springs of the Mediterranean.

Rachael Feuerstein ‘16 Last spring break, my mom and I travelled throughout Italy. We are both big art history people and we were on a quest to see as much art as possible in 10 days. Our last stop was Venice, which is pictured here. Life in Venice is a fairytale. The architecture is so unique and beautiful, the water’s a perfect turquoise, and your only mode of transpiration is gondola or boat!

Matt Lebowitz ’18 I took this photo with an older Nikon in the summer of 2012.

My family and I stopped in Sedona, Arizona on our way from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon, and I had just started to take landscape photographs, so it felt incredible to capture this fantastic lightning strike against Sedona’s famous red rocks. I find the way the lightning illuminates the texture of the clouds particularly compelling.

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Faculty in the Peace Corps Olivia Box ‘17

Traveling for service on a volunteer assignment is an important, often neglected ways way to see new places. The Peace Corps is one of the ways for Americans to serve internationally for two years, providing a work experience that allows for immersion into a community vastly different than can be found in the USA. To understand the commitment and experience of Peace Corps volunteers, I interviewed Professor Heather Sullivan of the Government department and Professor Michael McCormick of the Biology department about their experiences in the Peace Corps.

Both Sullivan and McCormick joined shortly after completing college. Sullivan was interested in issues surrounding poverty and international development. Due to her Spanish background, she was placed in Honduras. McCormick had been interested in the Peace Corps since he learned about it in high school. After securing a research associate job at DuPont after graduation, he found himself unsatisfied with the job and looking to try something else. He applied to the Peace Corps, and was assigned to Ghana as an education volunteer.

Sullivan was placed as an agriculture volunteer in a rural village. Most of the villagers barred her from doing a lot of the agriculture work she had expected to do because she was female. Instead, she found herself drinking tea with her neighbors, volunteering at the local school, and later securing a grant with other volunteers to introduce small animals to the agriculture system in the village. It was through this grant that she was able to bring the villagers to a local organic farm in Honduras, where the farmer trained the villagers. Sullivan spoke highly about this experience. She said, “It is a little absurd to think we could come in and teach peasant farmers...the Peace Corps is good at providing that connection...so they [the village farmers] can learn from each other.” As a volunteer, she had the tools to provide the connections for the villagers and to gather resources so these projects could take shape. She spoke fondly about the simple interactions such as socializing with neighbors and local women, and became more integrated into the community. She learned the value of community, and believes the best way to help a community is to work in one. These experiences propelled Sullivan to move away from international development, feeling her skillset was more suited to teaching and researching Latin 30 ROUTES MAGAZINE

America.

Across the map, McCormick taught science in a rural school, and he similarly spoke fondly of simple interactions like trying out Kasem [the local language] in the marketplace. He said you “always have to ask...whats the long term benefit to being there?” He strongly felt that his presence in the classroom gave his students the opportunity to learn about science. He hadn’t expected the warmth and hospitality that received him immediately.

He was struck how “artificially supported” our lives are in the US and how his neighbors had economically nothing, but were the happiest people he had met. McCormick credits his classroom time as influencing the trajectory of his professional career. After the Peace Corps, he wanted to keep teaching in his career path. Living in Ghana influenced his scientific interests, and provoked his interests in green and inexpensive technologies, leading him to pursue a doctorate in environmental engineering.

These two Hamilton professors enthusiastically recommended the Peace Corps, and had plenty of advice for students considering the experience. Flexibility was the biggest attribute that both Sullivan and McCormick advocated. McCormick said, “If you’re one of those people who can laugh when things are going wrong, that definitely helps.” Sullivan echoed that statement, saying it was important to “learn to relax, live on a different time frame...and have a certain kind of grit.” This service experience is not for the faint of heart. McCormick laughed, saying he had malaria twice. Sullivan said being an American didn’t make you immune to infection. “If the villagers had parasites, I had them too,” she said. McCormick expressed that many students felt the need to join the “rat race” right away by securing a job or graduate school after undergraduate, but you’ll never be as free as you are after undergraduate-or when you retire, which is when he and his wife plan to join the Peace Corps.

The Peace Corps provides a new way to approach travel. Sullivan remembered her experience and the same excitement that comes from exploration: “You get to know a place and a people better... when else can you do that for two years...You’re in it with the people.”

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REFUGEES IN LESVOS HAMILTON ALUMNUS ALI WALDMAN RECENTLY SPOKE ON CAMPUS ABOUT HER EXPERIENCE VOLUNTEERING IN LESVOS, GREECE. HER SPEECH HAS BEEN EDITED FOR THIS PUBLICATION.

I visited Lesvos this January, where I met and spent time with many incredible refugees and volunteers from all over the world. Lesvos is a Greek island that happens to be very close to Turkey. 5 miles, in fact. Its proximity to the Turkish coast has made it the destination for refugees en route to Europe.

Lesvos is beautiful in a rustic and gritty sense. It’s not as whitewashed and sparkly as Santorini or Corfu. It’s economy depends on tourism, fishing and olive oil. The capital Mytilene has a picturesque harbor with fishing boats, cafes and restaurants. The island boasts beautiful beaches, fishing villages, tavernas, great birding, as well as thermal spas, a petrified forest and even a Museum of Trash.

Well, now picture this: every street and beach is strewn with soaked lifejackets, wet clothes and trash. Now sprinkle in hoards of volunteers and clusters of refugees. Everywhere. In the month of February there were 30,000 refugees who landed on Lesvos - that’s equivalent to the entire population of Mytilene. And millions have made their way through Lesvos since last Summer.

“EVERY STREET AND BEACH IS STREWN WITH SOAKED LIFEJACKETS, WET CLOTHES AND TRASH.” Where governments and aid agencies failed in their obligations under international law, thousands of people from all over the world have stepped up. With a bankrupt government appointed the gatekeeper of Europe, holes in Greece’s aid system were inevitable. So volunteer networks were given the go-ahead to do the lifesaving work no one else was going to do. Giving up their holidays, even their jobs, to bring compassion and solidarity to the refugee road. One of the greatest accomplishments of this historic mass migration has been the creation of an 32 ROUTES MAGAZINE

army of independent volunteers from all over the world who serve as whistleblowers to educate and humanize the crisis for people back home. And it’s been one of the greatest honors of my life to be part of this effort.

But everything since my return has changed. All refugees and volunteers have been evacuated. The camps where we spent our days playing with children, sorting donations, doing intake at the medical tent, serving tea - they have been disassembled. Only olive trees remain standing now. It’s almost as if the camps and life within them never existed.

Deportations back to Turkey are in full effect as a result of the Turkey/EU Deal. The premise of the deal is that for every Syrian sent back to Turkey, a vetted Syrian refugee will go from Turkey to Europe to be resettled. The maximum number is capped at 72,000 people. In return, the EU will give Turkey billions in funding to help it provide for the migrants within its borders, and grant various political concessions.

In a crisis where immigration law criminalizes vital humanitarian work, this is a recipe for disaster.

As volunteer boat rescue operations were curtailed, volunteers report they are not being replaced, leaving boats to drown quietly in the darkness. One volunteer recently told me: “You can’t imagine what it’s like… to have a mother hold out her baby to you from a waterlogged boat, and to tell her that you can’t take the child into safety because you’ll go to prison.”

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It is not just about elbowing out the political activists to allow authorities time to organise the registration process. Entire flights chartered for volunteers have been cancelled. Even Clowns Without Borders were barred from the camps.

This is a bid to re-establish government control of Europe’s borderlands, particularly Lesvos, an island which the world was watching. Booting independents off the island, detaining refugees at sea and pushing boats back to Turkey all serve to sweep the refugee crisis off of European soil.

“BOOTING INDEPENDENTS OFF THE ISLAND, DETAINING REFUGEES AT SEA AND PUSHING BOATS BACK TO TURKEY ALL SERVE TO SWEEP THE REFUGEE CRISIS OFF OF EUROPEAN SOIL.” I’ve been questioning why I should come up here and talk to you about something no longer relevant. Something that no longer exists. I’ve also been having a tough time processing everything that happened in Lesvos and that has happened since my return home. Interactions I had with refugees and volunteers, acts of bravery, selflessness, humanity and compassion that I witnessed. It’s hard for me to resurrect these memories - let alone speak of them out loud - without tears coming to my eyes. I also witnessed shameful and dehumanizing acts, which broke my heart.

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So, I was all prepared to cancel this speech. Why waste time talking about something in the past? Until I remembered that Passover is around the corner. Every year on Passover Jews re-tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. And for many years as a child I’d say - what is the point of going through this all over again? We know how the story ends. We know what happened.

It took me a long time to understand that going through it all over again is the point. That events have no meaning until human beings invest them with meaning. That retelling the story is what turns event into symbol and symbol into liberation ethos that invests people with a sense of purpose. I believe that the refugees deserve their own liberation ethos. Their story needs to be told, even if it’s difficult to tell.

I went to Lesvos in January because I wanted to impart a sense of hope and warmth to the refugees. I was so overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation. The situation being the fact that Syrians are fleeing by the millions a government that’s been killing its own citizens and ISIS that is also killing them. The scale and scope of the tragedy is so unsolvable that I thought well at least I can focus on something small, like offering a bottle of water, a blanket, a lollipop or a hug. I wanted to inspire them to be positive and persevering. But instead I was inspired by what I saw and experienced.

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Nepal

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Annie Berman, Managing Editor, and Victoria Bullivant, Editor-in-Chief, sat down with Hamilton College Senior Michael Nelson to discuss his adventures abroad last spring in Nepal.

Annie: Hi Michael, thanks for sitting down with us to share your adventures in Nepal. We know there were some pretty amazing moments and some pretty challenging ones. We would love to hear more from you but just to start, which locations in Nepal did you visit?

Michael: My program was based in Kathmandu, but over the course of the trip we had a few field excursions to The Terai, the southern plains, as well as The Himalayas in the north.

Victoria: What attracted you to Nepal as a study abroad location?

M: I was looking for an adventure and wanted to get out of my comfort zone. I really wanted to explore Southeast Asia and the culture of that area. I feel that we often see depictions of Southeast Asian culture in the media but I wanted to what is is like to be there first-hand. So, I decided to go for it, a little uncertainly, but excitedly.

A: You studied the development of the country from an economic standpoint, were you conducting research in a classroom setting, or through an outside project?

M: I’m an economics major, and the program itself was an SIT program (School for International Training) focused on social change and development. We combined a few hours of classes everyday with field excursions. In class, we examined social issues, structural issues, and development issues that Nepal currently faces, and then of course, kept those in mind during field excursions.

V: Who were you able to interact with, local people, Hamilton students, international students?

M: My program had seventeen students from sixteen American schools, I was the only Hamilton student. Sadly, we weren’t given much time to meet Nepali students, but I lived in a homestay with a Nepali family.

A: What was it like living in a homestay? Were you speaking Nepali most of the time or were you able to get by with English? To what extent were you speaking, or able to speak Nepali in various locations?

M: There was no language requirement for the program which means I met my host family on my third day of trying to learn Nepali. My host father spoke English pretty well but my host mother didn’t speak English at all. I really enjoyed living with my host family which included my host mother and father, a fifteen year old brother, his sister in law, and their 22 year old dog Lakpa! In the city, people speak English well, but in more rural parts you have to speak Nepali more often. I was took three hours of Nepali a day and was able to supplement with English for the most part.I was treated better when they could see me make an effort to communicate in Nepali. I think they like to see Americans try.

V: What did your host family do?

M: My host father was a banker and my host mother was a stay at home mother and did a lot of household work. The family did not have access to heat or clean water, but were pretty well off. We had a nice house with a wifi signal that would come in and out, as well as a generator which meant there was always at least one light on.

A: How did you get water?

M: There was no running water, all water came from plastic jugs. Everytime we needed water we needed to buy a sealed water bottle, making sure the seal wasn’t broken- or one of those big blue water jugs. Some neighborhoods have a truck that drives by with water jugs. No matter how wealthy you are, you can’t drink the tap water, Kathmandu just doesn’t have the infrastructure to support a clean water system.

V: I remember you were there during the earthquake in April and had to evacuate. How long were you in Nepal?

M: We got there late January and were scheduled to leave in early May but yes, we did have to leave early in April when the earthquake hit.

A: What was the process of evacuation like for you and your program? How did the earthquake impact the area you stayed in?

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M: All of the program participants were in the middle of a month long independent study project- we could go anywhere- I was in Katmandu when the earthquake struck. We eventually all made our way back to the program center and slept under tarps for about a week, then were evacuated on a commercial plane. Others from my program flew out about three days after us.

A: How did people react to the earthquake?

M: My group was incredibly nervous and believe it or not through experiences in the past, even with the outing club, I have been in situations that are physically uncomfortable, and when I have had to assess the real versus perceived risk. There was a lot of risk for many people but my situation was fortunate, we were under tarps, we had clean water, electricity, and once we set-up I wasn’t that nervous. Eventually we had to just wait it out. But, that said, it was very scary for a lot of people and if i didn’t have those resources I would have had to be under constant vigilance.

A: What was the damage around you?

M: We had an American built program center where we were staying which had good infrastructure, clean water, a wifi signal, electricity, and a generator. We couldn’t sleep inside- you don’t want to risk it with aftershocks- but we had a really good setup compared to the average person in the country. We were extremely lucky.

V: It sounds like you were pretty fortunate. What was your independent study about?

M: I studied cooperatives in the cashmere and pashmina industry. Cashmere is made only from Himalayan goats because in order to grow that texture of fur the goats must live at that high altitude. Pashmina comes from their underbelly wool and is a bit softer and finer. I examined the ways agriculture cooperatives boost the textile industry.

V: How did you arrive at the idea for the project?

M: Well, Nepal which is landlocked with fewer resources, and one of its largest assets is trade. I wanted to see how Nepal could increase trade with first world markets where the margin of profit is a lot higher rather than in surrounding countries. From there, I saw that their big industry is cashmere and garments, so I looked at why they were selling at the level they were as opposed to a higher one. In the 1990’s there was a cashmere boom and people in first world countries bought boatloads of cashmere and pashmina, but then an influx of fake products entered the market and undercut their prices and so now they are trying to rebuild the industry.

V: What did you do when you left Katmandu?

M: After Kathmandu, we went to the Terai, the southern plains of Nepal. The south is very flat, where as The Pahad, the middle of the country, has cities and snowless mountains, and then of course the Himalayas in the north. In the Terai, we went to Chitwan where we explored the livelihoods of people and tourist sites. We also went around the Annapurna Circuit in the Himalayas, we trekked for a week and lived in this little mountain village which was probably my favorite thing we did. On my own, I trekked with a program friend, a little farther north to Jomsom which is the farthest north a tourist can go.

V: It seems great to go somewhere really different, which leads me to ask about those sort of wow moments. What were some of your greatest experiences?

M: Greatest experiences were definitely being able to travel alone during independent study. Our program was incredibly structured with only a couple of hours of free time per day and for study abroad you want to be able to explore. Of course the most trying moments were during the earthquake.

A: What resonates most with you from the trip? How do you carry these experiences with you back on campus or in daily life?

M: I feel a lot tougher, I will probably not be back in a situation where I have to be as mentally or physically prepared. Even just on the walk to school I would have to avoid dogs, cars, falling water, I got a lot tougher. As far as going back, I would love to go back as a tourist- there are so many cool and beautiful tourist areas- but living there is such a hard reality. Reality sets in because tourist life is completely different than local life. In terms of getting back to help, while I was there studying the cashmere and pashmina trade and ended up meeting a lot of high quality, ethical manufacturers. I started selling some of their products back in the US and ended up sending about $1500 back to Nepal for earthquake relief. this interview has been edited for clarity

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