Listening to London

During a recent trip to London, I was surprised by all the languages I heard on the street: a lot of European ones, especially Polish and French, but also quite a bit of Hindi, Farsi, Turkish, Korean, Arabic, Hausa, and other tongues I couldn’t identify. London was an international city back in the 1970s, but not this international. I could now catch as many snippets of conversation that weren’t in English as those that were. All this strangeness has freaked the British out—all of them, that is, except the Londoners themselves. 

Curious about the change, I looked up the demographics when I got home. (Read on for some riveting statistics!) A report put out by Oxford last October says that the foreign-born population in the U.K. doubled between 2004 and 2017. Over half of these immigrants are concentrated in London, the rest scattered across England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Ironically, this means that the Brits who fear immigrants the most—and voted to leave the European Union—live where there aren’t many immigrants.  

London is worried. As I eavesdropped on people in restaurants and theaters, I kept hearing the word “Brexit.” It’s already sending the economy down the tubes, people said. David Cameron should have never called for a referendum. Parliament doesn’t know what it’s doing. This Brexit thing is going to drag on forever. 

There are a lot of people in the U.K. and the U.S.—as well as in Eastern Europe—who are hell-bent on cutting ties, throwing up walls, and shielding their cultures from foreign contamination. As I picked up on the anxiety in London last week, the trend I’ve been reading about got a lot more real: the reaction against globalism is global. It’s happening all over, not just in the States. 

But the reaction here is pernicious. Americans are being detained for leaving food and water along routes traveled by illegal immigrants fleeing gang violence. A woman in West Texas—a lawyer, no less—is facing possible federal charges for trying to help three young people who, having run out of food and water days earlier, desperately flagged her down. 

It seems impossible that America has come to this. But like other liberal democracies,  come we have. Enough people voted for Trump. Enough people voted for Brexit. The forces of tolerance and intolerance have assembled their pieces on the board. The question is what happens next. What kind of world do we want to shape? What kind of world will we have shaped—whether by apathy or action—twenty years from now? 



People do strange things when lonely in a new culture.

Sometimes people do strange things when lonely in a new culture. When I arrived in West Africa with my fellow Peace Corps volunteers-in-training, we drank a lot of beer and smoked a lot of jamba. Some of us fell in love right away. When we were sent to our posts, scattered to the far ends of the country, some of us got so sick we had to be sent home. The loneliness could be excruciating until we learned the local language well enough to make friends. If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, what got you through it? A lot of people have to find something comforting to hang on to for those first several months. My something was a tree.

When I arrived in the Gambian village that would be my home for the next two years, the chief and his wife showed me to my house. It was nothing special—a two-room adobe without electricity or running water—but when the chief opened the back door, I was greeted by a mosaic of green and golden light. I rushed outside, spilling over with happiness: I had a tree. Gambian yards were usually sunbaked, hardscrabble lots, but the spreading branches of this tree—which I was told was a cassia—canopied my little enclosure, splintering the hard, equatorial sunlight into gentle wisps. The leaves reminded me of ferns, the blossoms of yellow violets. I didn’t know it yet, but for the next several months, when I felt like I was about to split open from loneliness, I would wrap my arms around the cassia, holding on to its smooth trunk until its quiet presence calmed me down. It was my first friend in a strange new land.

Almost twenty years later, I returned to my village for a visit. Within an hour of my arrival, I was fighting back tears. My tree had been cut down to make room for a house. I felt like I should have known—like one of those people who wake up in the middle of the night, gasping from the piercing awareness that someone they love has died. I should have heard the trunk crack, the air sighing through the leaves as the cassia crashed to the ground. I hurried back to the room I was staying in, locked the door, and wept.

Fast forward fifteen years: my husband and I are celebrating our anniversary in the Caribbean. As we’re exploring a little town in St. Maarten, I glimpse something out of the corner of my eye and before I know what it is—as if it were calling me—I dash across the street. In front of a school stands a tree with smooth bark, spreading branches, and leaves that reminded me of ferns. Looking up into the foliage, I spill over with happiness. For a moment, I’m home.       

What keeps us creating when there's no guarantee of worldly success?

I often think about people who spend years on their craft, hoping for financial reward or public acclaim but knowing that it might never come. What fascinates them so much that they keep on working, regardless of the external results? Maybe it’s a love of the process—but the process has to go beyond just having a good time. It has to teach us something about ourselves, our lives, our world.

Last week, insecure about putting myself in cyperspace in a public way, I sent out my first newsletter, which let people know that I’ve finished my memoir, a coming-of-age story set in West Africa. People I haven’t seen in years—and some I’ve never met—wrote back to congratulate me and tell me they can’t wait to read The Geography of Desire. I’m forever grateful for their enthusiastic support.

I’ve tried several studios over the years, but this is where I work best.

When I say I’ve “finished” my memoir, it doesn’t mean I’ve found a publisher—only that after years of writing, getting feedback, and revising, I’m satisfied that I’ve made the manuscript the best as I can. Now it’s time to start looking for a literary agent, who will hopefully sell my work to a publisher. Many writers—especially unknown ones like me—approach scores of agents before landing one. Some never do. 

I began my bookover a decade ago, knowing that it might not get picked up by a big house like Penguin. But the longer I worked, the less important that seemed. I became absorbed by the process: making a little-known corner of the world come alive, getting at the emotional truth of my story, and creating a narrative with forward momentum. I became more confident in my writing and gained a deeper understanding of my life. And that—whether I end up publishing with a big house, a little indie press, or a site like Wattpad—is precious to me. 

If you’re one of those people making art and hoping to sell it but knowing you might fail, ask yourself what your creative process teaches you about yourself, your life, your world. Then, when the indifference of the marketplace makes you wonder why you keep it up, you’ll have your answer. 

The world beckons, but the laptop is cozy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the risks I’ve taken and how I’ve learned from them. My biggest adventure happened when I ran away from home to live in Africa, an experience that changed my life in ways I could have never foreseen. I’ve written a memoir of this time, sometimes thinking I would never finish it. But I did, and I hope you’ll add your name to my email list so I can keep you posted as I look for a home (read: publisher) for The Geography of Desire.

By the time I was twenty-four, I was stuck in a dead-end job and my love life had dwindled to ashes, so after a decade of dreaming about it, I joined the Peace Corps. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to make it in an African village, but I was equally desperate to reinvent myself. What really prompted me to get on that plane, though, was the image of my future self: an old woman sitting in a rocker kicking herself for not even trying to do the thing her younger self had so passionately wanted to do.

A lot of us long for adventure, but it’s raining outside and the laptop feels cozy. Though the world beckons, we hesitate. Years pass. Some of us might be thinking about opening an Etsy shop, others about hiking the Appalachian Trail. Still others might simply want to get their own place on the other side of town.

Have you ever taken a risk that changed your life? Or are you hesitating? How did you get up the courage to take the first step? Or what will help you do this? I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me at linda@lindagambill.com or on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

I was super-happy to get wheels. Loved that Honda 50! We had a lot of adventures in The Gambia.