White Coffee

Since the change of government in Madagascar in March 2009, the country and its economy have been perched on the edge of a very steep cliff. The United States has repeatedly threatened to revoke Madagascar's AGOA eligibility which would destroy at least half of the textile industry here, eliminating as many as 50,000 jobs and returning perhaps as many as 300,000 people to poverty. AGOA - the African Growth and Opportunity Act - is a US law passed in 2000, mainly for the benefit of the petroleum industry, that allows thousands of African exports to enter the US duty-free. Thanks to AGOA, in petroleum-free Madagascar, a quarter billion dollar textile industry blossomed over the last decade.

My colleague and friend John, who heads the exporters' association here, went to Washington in April to plead Madagascar's case with the US Trade Representative's office and other government agencies. Their advice was to put pressure on Madagascar's clan of Hatfield-McCoy politicians, get them to play nice and return the country to constitutional government as soon as possible. Barring that, it would be game over for Madagascar.

Me, ever seeking windmills to tilt at, got involved in the fall of 2008 with the creation of an American Chamber of Commerce in Madagascar. When only one other American citizen showed up at a crucial steering committee meeting, I wound up as president of our newly formed association. Then came the events of January, February and March 2009 and quite suddenly I found myself talking politics and economics with folks at the highest levels of business, government and civil society in Madagascar. When the US said it would not talk or deal with the folks who took power in mid-March, my involvement grew even more as unexpectedly I found myself an intermediary talking to both sides but on behalf of neither.

It was a bit more than I volunteered for, and volunteering is what I have been doing.

The last ten months have been among the most stupefying and frustrating of my life, and I am someone who has worked for the US government and so am familiar with stupefaction and frustration. Despite trying every trick in and out of the book, and the impending demise of US-Madagascar relations, the pleading, lobbying, petition gathering, press conference holding, late night telephone talking that John, I and others had engaged in had advanced the prospect of saving the country's economy not a millimeter.

We would hold our last stand in Nairobi, at the annual AGOA Forum, at the beginning of August. Hillary Clinton would be there. The US Trade Representative would be there. Members of Congress would be there. Everyone who was anyone, plus a lot of nobodies, would be there. We would make the case one last time.

However, when John went to Washington in April to make the case the first time, bureaucrats were unmoved by his six-foot several inches height, thinning straight hair, and pasty white complexion. Despite his having invested 20 years in developing Madagascar's textile industry, they said he didn't look like the Malagasy people he was pleading for - who are generally somewhere between the complexions of sandalwood and ebony and rarely taller than 5' 5".

So before heading off to Nairobi, we began our own star search among the country's 100,000 textile workers.

Ideally she would be a she. She would speak some English, but not so well as to avoid entertaining hesitations and faux pas. She would be a mom and the only provider for her extended family. She would have years of textile experience, beginning on the factory floor. She would have a palpable sense of desperation because she, like everyone else in the industry here, would have no idea where she would go, how she would earn a living or support her family if AGOA for Madagascar were revoked.

A handful of phone calls later, we found her. Felana. A twenty-eight year old single mom of an eleven-year-old boy. The sole support for her younger sisters. Ten years experience in textiles from the cutting tables to middle management. Decent English made even better by a blushing hesitation. Cute as a kitten and not a lot bigger.

She had never been out of Madagascar.

The seriousness of the situation was made clear by the transitional Ministry of Foreign Affairs getting her a passport in less than 24 hours.

We met at the airport. She had never been on a plane before.

We've seen the movies. The ones that take the Big formula and reverse it. Thirty Going on Thirteen, Suddenly Seventeen and probably some others in which an adult suddenly becomes a wide-eyed youth. Hollywood has made it entertaining. Watching it in real life, in real time, was incredibly charming.

So many things that we take for granted, John and I found ourselves thinking about and explaining to Felana. As the flight attendants explained the emergency procedures before take-off, Felana hung on every word. She was remarkably cool but in no way indifferent the way a too-cool teen might be. Whatever John and I might explain - like the route the plane would take, where the toilets were, how she could have whatever she wanted to drink and as much of it as she might like - she would take it in as though we were explaining some new scientific theory, and then she would burst a tremendous irregular smile that at once indicated she got it and that whatever it was was too funny, silly or incomprehensible to really be true.

Although there was no ball and no pumpkin was transformed into a coach, Cinderella's adventure was certainly no less miraculous than Felana's.

In Antananarivo, and in all of Madagascar, there are very, very few miles of more than two-lane roads. Leaving the airport in Nairobi, we were soon stuck in some of the city's notoriously bad traffic, on a six-lane highway. How was this possible? Where was everyone going? Is that their type of local bus? Why was the driver sitting on the wrong side of the car?

Madagascar has exactly one building more than 20 stories high, and it was only just completed. Nairobi has dozens. Antananarivo ("Tana") is one of the world's most difficult to navigate cities, with no parallel roads and impassable rice fields still penetrating right to the heart of town. Downtown Nairobi is a grid pattern. While most first-time visitors to Nairobi might find it chaotic and crowded beyond belief, Felana couldn't get over how disciplined and well-behaved everyone was. She and John checked into the Nairobi Safari Club, an up-scale hotel, with tourists and businesspeople dashing every which way. She'd never been in a hotel before. She'd never dared to enter the Carlton or Colbert, Madagascar's two higher-end hotels.

Despite having gone pretty far on a high school diploma and six months of college, I don't think she'd ever been in a place that had running hot water before.

John explained the breakfast buffet; "You take whatever you want and you can go back as many times as you want."

"Vraiment?"

"Oui. Vraiment."

John and I made the decision to bring someone with us only on the Wednesday before our Saturday departure. The registration deadline had long since passed. On Monday, when I inquired about registering Felana I was told it would be impossible. With Hillary Clinton arriving the following night, all of Nairobi would be on high alert. Sorry, nothing to be done.

Fortunately, the folks organizing the conference were a wee bit behind on the details. Badges hadn't been prepared for hundreds of participants. The following day, we just showed up and told the security folks Felana's badge still wasn't ready. In we went.

Despite being a middle manager, she had never been in a situation where business cards were called for and didn't have any. I took her to a Kenyan equivalent of Kinko's where, yes, they could make them while we waited. Felana, like most Malagasy, has a family name about thirty syllables long and so it took several proofs before the Indian manager of the shop got the spelling right. Each proof gave Felana a chance to ask if she could add something more. Her phone numbers in Tana? Sure. Her personal email address? Why not? How about a flag of Madagascar? No problem.

Twenty minutes later, she had the cards, with the flag, correct spelling and all.

"My grandmother is going to be so proud of me," she said to me as we left the shop.

At every possible opportunity, we drilled on the critical points. That Madagascar was on the verge of an economic meltdown. That the Malagasy leaders didn't care about their own people. That it would be people like her, Felana, single moms, young women, who would suffer any sanctions. We went over and over how and when she should hand out her new business cards.

"Hi. I'm Felana from Madagascar," she would repeat, extending her hand. "Nice to meet you."

At the Forum she must have appeared as exotic as a lemur because quickly she had a coterie of people, okay, men, saying hi to her at every opportunity. Had the conference lasted a month, her dance card would not have had a free spot.

At a cocktail party, we cornered a Congressman critical to our campaign. I found myself trying to explain the Byzantine complexities of the US government, with our different branches of government, the battalions of congressional aides, the lobbyists (half a dozen of whom were present in Nairobi) to Felana, and while I'm not sure I succeeded, she succeeded beautifully.

We had a meeting with three incredibly hard-nosed staff members from the US Trade Representative's office. They had told us specifically not to bring any Malagasy workers. We brought Felana anyway. The transitional government of Madagascar had been disinvited from the conference itself, leaving John, Felana and me as the only attendees from Madagascar, the second largest non-oil player in the AGOA world, among the 1,500 people attending the conference. In our meeting, we placed her directly across from the USTR bureaucrats, people who clearly take their dialysis with ice water. And even though Felana said not a word in our two-hour meeting, the point was made.

Putting her, and those like her, out of work would be like killing Bambi's mother. Again.

We got her in to all the luncheons, each one catered by a different Nairobi five-star hotel and held under a vast tent holding 120 tables for ten. Madagascar is all about rice and perhaps, depending on one's economic status, a bit of meat. Here were regular four and five course meals. Delivered by white-gloved waiters. Salad, soup, main course, dessert, anything you wanted to drink and as much of it as you would like. Heavily starched white linen everywhere. Cutlery on all sides of several plates.

At a cocktail, we struck up a conversation with a very rotund, very chatty, panting Sikh from Mumbai.

"Why does he wear that?"

"What?"

"On his head."

"Because they don't cut their hair. Ever. It's their religion."

"No?"

"Yes."

"No!"

"Yes. His hair is longer than yours. Only his wife sees it."

"Something wrong?"

"No. She's just never seen anyone like you. Our Indians in Madagascar are all Muslims."

"Come," he said, taking her hand and stroking his beard with it.

Smiles all around.

"You know, in our religion, that is prohibited."

She recoiled. In Madagascar, something that is prohibited, or fady, is very very taboo.

"Don't worry," he laughed. "For you, no problem."

The following morning, despite trying every possible angle, we could not get Felana into the plenary session that had the President of Kenya, the Prime Minister of Kenya, the Vice-President of Kenya, the Foreign Minister of Kenya, Hillary Clinton, the US Trade Representative, and the US Secretary of Agriculture all on the same dais. This time the security was tight.

But by the afternoon we had finagled her a badge and that evening we took the elevator boldly to the eighth floor of the Intercontinental where Hillary Clinton would be attending a meeting to announce a new trade accord between the US and Mauritius.

We arrived early enough to get seats in the second row

In a kind of "seen one, seen 'em all" discussion, John had had to clarify that we would be seeing Hillary Clinton, not Bill Clinton who was in North Korea at the time.

"She's coming?"

"Sure."

"Mrs. Clinton?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"She's already here somewhere. When everyone is ready," I said while gesturing to the mob of television cameras and photographers, "they will call her."

"Can I get a picture?"

"I don't know. Maybe. You see those men?" I said gesturing to the square-built fellows with the curly transparent wires going in their ears. "Bodyguards."

"So I shouldn't stand up quickly?"

"That would be a bad idea. You see how they hold their hands?"

"Yes."

"That's to hide their weapons."

"Oh."

By the time Hillary arrived, the small room was strictly SRO. I translated her speech, reminding Felana that this was the woman who Barack Obama had only narrowly defeated and that maybe this was the woman who could still be the first female president of the United States. She was seated no more than ten feet from where we were seated.

"And you were here," I said without needing to add that everyone else in the room was a journalist, minister of government, secretary of government, or some type of titan of industry.

"My grandmother is going to be so proud of me."

That afternoon, we were able to break away from the conference for a few hours. Felana had to get gifts for her boss, grandmother, mother and son. Her son was under the impression that everything outside of Madagascar was free and so was expecting Felana to bring him back an Es-Pay-Deux. It took me a few seconds to noodle it out. I didn't know what an Es-Pay-Deux was. "SP2." Sony Play Station 2.

He would have to settle for t-shirts.

Madagascar has nothing that westerners would recognize as a mall. Tana's two, one-story shopping centers had both been looted earlier in the year. I took Felana to Westgate, Nairobi's latest shopping center, a place as modern and impressive as any multi-story mall in a mid-size American city.

She wanted a coffee. We sat down in the middle of the atrium at the local equivalent of Starbucks. The menu had two pages of coffee drinks, hot and cold. We settle on an iced cappuccino.

After much stirring, she took a sip.

"It's so cold," she said as if expecting that ice outside of Madagascar would not be cold.

I explained that anyone with a laptop could come to this coffee shop and surf the web for free.

"Where are the wires?"

"There are no wires."

Felana uses a computer and the net at work everyday, but not without wires.

"No wires? How does it work?"

"It's a radio or something. We'll have it in Tana soon."

"What's that?"

"What's what?"

"That."

I looked up "escalator" in my cell-phone English-French dictionary. It turns out that in French the word for escalator is escalator.

"What's the other one called?"

"What other one?"

"The other one. The one coming down."

"It's the down escalator."

"The down escalator?"

None of us had brought a real camera to Kenya. With our cell phones we had taken pictures of Felana at the airport, Felana in front of the "Welcome AGOA delegates" banners, Felana by the sculptures of elephants in the shopping centers, Felana with the Congressman, Felana with the Sikh, Felana in front of the huge promotional poster announcing the imminent arrival of "Ice Age 3" at the multi-screen cinema in Westgate (there are no regularly functioning cinemas left in Madagascar). But what she really wanted was a picture of her on the escalator.

We made a jerky video with my phone camera.

"We can never have this in Madagascar," she said.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because all the Malagasy will just come to go up and down."

With John and Felana leaving to return to Madagascar the following morning, there were still many things to do and explain. It was, as has been said many times, like living something for the first time, but through someone else's eyes. Yes, she could take all the little bottles of soap, shampoo and conditioner at the hotel. Really? Really. They are like gifts. You are sure? Yes, I'm sure.

But not the towels. You can't take the towels.

We discussed again and again why everything in Kenya was two to five times more expensive than in Madagascar. And why a cell phone chip that is pretty much free in the Madagascar (and comes with a new phone and an hour of calling time to boot) costs at least $25 in the United States if not much more. We talked about the drive-in movie theater we passed on the way into town from the airport. We drove past the Nairobi Arboretum. A park for trees? I explained that several times from several angles. A park for trees. Nope. Couldn't make sense of that.

Still, by the time we left, Felana was nearly a cosmopolitan, confidently handing out her new business cards and approaching the breakfast buffet without hesitation. One day, however, John and I had to leave her to her own devices and the waiter's question had stymied her.

Did she want black coffee or white coffee?

She thought the waiter was trying to trick her. White coffee? Madagascar grows coffee. She knows what color coffee is.

They went back and forth until it clicked. White coffee. Café au lait.

In the taxi, on our way from the shopping center to the function with Hillary, she said to me, "If I asked for white coffee in Madagascar, people would think I was crazy."

Then she threw back her head and laughed.

Her grandmother would be so proud.

On December 23, 2009, following the unanimous recommendation of the AGOA evaluation committee, President Obama decertified Madagascar from AGOA eligibility for 2010. Meanwhile, outstanding examples of democratic process and rule of law such as Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya remain AGOA eligible.

As a result of this decision, Felana and tens of thousands of others like her will soon be out of work.

Not one member of the seven-person AGOA evaluation committee visited Madagascar during 2009 to assess the situation in person.

Confessions of a Travel Writer

My career as a travel writer began innocently enough. I was looking for a way to deduct the $10,000 my five-month honeymoon in Asia had cost.

“Why not write an article?” my wife suggested. “You could write about honeymooning in Japan.”

The piece I wrote about our nights in the love hotels of Japan slipped out of the word processor with almost no effort on my part and was published in quick succession by the San Jose Mercury News, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Sunday Examiner, Orange County Register, Sacramento Bee, and Salon among others. Suddenly and unexpectedly I had become a writer.

Within weeks press releases began appearing in my mailbox. A small flurry rapidly evolved into a blizzard of offers to visit destinations exotic and remote as well as domestic and mundane. Without ever knowing how, my name found its way on to the mailing lists maintained by the tourism authorities of Austria, Panama, South Dakota, Australia, Switzerland, Britain, Hawaii, Anaheim, Orlando and the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa. All wanted me to visit. All offered free food, flights, accommodations and the promise of a story that only a writer of my caliber could bring fully to life.

Like most free offers, it was all too good to be true. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had effortlessly merged onto the literary road to ruin; the road known as travel writing. In reflection, I now see that I started on the trip to rock bottom, like so many others before me, in Las Vegas.

“Hi, this is Patrice,” the preternaturally cheery voice on my answering machine stated before asking that I “please excuse the message however my attempts to notify you personally have been unsuccessful.” Patrice buoyantly went on to inform me that I had been “selected to receive two fully-paid round-trip airline tickets as well as two nights deluxe hotel accommodations in the heart of Las Vegas, Nevada. Congratulations.” All I had to do was call an 800 number and confirm.

“This is so cheesy,” I said to Nina, as we pulled into the parking lot of a non-descript office building halfway down the San Francisco peninsula. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“Come on,” she insisted. “It could be fun. Plus, it’s free.”

Ninety minutes later we left the time-share presentation with a coupon redeemable for our free trip to Vegas.

“Don’t you feel dirty?” I said to Nina as we drove home.

“Of course I do,” she said. “But I’ll wash off in our Las Vegas hotel room. It’s freeeeee!”

When we got to Vegas, I had the taxi wait outside the Wild West Motel. Despite what Patrice had promised, “deluxe” is not the word I would have chosen to describe our room at the Wild West or the smokers’ lounge that was filled with truckers or the small pool that was crowded with their wives and children and surrounded by a chain-link fence.

“Let’s go someplace else,” I said.

“Why?” Nina said. “It’s just a room. And it’s free. Plus I want to get to the Liberace Museum today.”

“I have something else in mind,” I said.

By the time of this trip I was already an “award-winning travel writer,” thanks as much to any native talent as the fact that the number of awards given out annually by the travel industry makes the people behind the Emmys look like pikers. We made our way back to the Strip and the looming, gold-mirrored complex where the local Four Seasons occupies the top several floors of what is otherwise known as the Mandalay Bay, and where the publicist was more than happy to accommodate us… since we were in Las Vegas anyway.

“Better?” I asked Nina as we looked down on the neon from our room on the thirty-first floor. Our bathroom at the Four Seasons was significantly bigger than our room at the Wild West. No doubt the plush terrycloth robes had more thread in them than all the Wild West’s linen, carpet, curtains and towels combined. “It’s okay,” Nina said as she moved over to look at the rate card affixed to the back of the door. “But I’m not paying $425 a night.”

If Las Vegas began my descent into traveler writer’s hell, then a call from San Francisco magazine completed the trip. Would I be interested, an editor wanted to know, in helping to inaugurate “He Drives/She Drives,” a special advertising section in which a married couple drives a luxury car to a luxury destination every other month or so and then writes about it.

“You’ve called the right people,” I said without hesitation.

For our first trip we were given a baby Benz and a lovely suite overlooking Monterey Bay. “You know,” I said to the hotel manager, “if we were able to visit your new spa, I’m sure we would have that much more to write about.”

“I’ll see to it right away, Mr. Strauss,” the man said, dispensing with the knowing wink that surely would accompany such a request in a Hollywood movie.

“What?” I said to Nina who was glaring at me, her jaw slightly cocked to the side in an expression I had come to know as one that combines disbelief with disgust.

“You are a whore,” she said.

“So I guess then I’ll be going for the salt-rub exfoliation by myself?” I asked.

“I didn’t say that,” she said.

“You’ve gone over to the dark side,” my writer friends told me before explaining that as far as responsible journalism was concerned there was no place held in lower regard than special advertising sections such as “He Drives/She Drives” where any pretense of a separation between commercial and editorial interests disappears altogether. I wasn’t troubled. “He Drives/She Drives” was a gig I hoped would go on forever. We were traveling around California in a style more typically associated with newly minted IPO babies than with lowly travel writers.

Despite the wit I attempted to infuse into each junket, our handler at San Francisco did not see us as heirs apparent to Tracey and Hepburn. When the magazine opted for an all-male “He Drives/He Drives” for its gay pride issue we lost our pole position permanently. For me, as a writer, it was already too late.

In the beginning, I had been productive, reliable, and conscientious. Then something happened. The concept of actually having to pay for a trip out of my own pocket, whether or not I would or could actually write a story about the experience, became distasteful. Why should I fork out for a trip when so many were begging me to visit? Trying to get something for nothing had become a game between two fixtures of the lower species of the modern literary world, the professional travel writer and the publicist. I had reached a point where paying for a meal, or a hotel room, or an airline ticket, or a round of golf, seemed like something only commoners did. Why bother with a Motel Six or a Holiday Inn when an email could secure a luxurious suite where a complementary fruit basket, bottle of wine, and a hand-written note from the manager were sure to be waiting? If invitations had started coming to me from Faustus Public Relations I would have been only too happy to accept. How, I wondered, could I have fallen so far? Not long before I had been enrolled at a Quaker college.

My wife and I maintain a list of “things to do” in life, a list that includes things like seeing a space shot and the aurora borealis, building a house, and owning a small island. One of the items had long been riding the Blue Train, the famed South African railroad that runs between Pretoria and Cape Town. I called an editor friend and was given a loose assignment that was just solid enough to extract a luxury cabin. For free.

We never should have gotten on the train. After all, I still “owed” stories on the cruise we took to Napa on a luxury yacht. And on the nights at the Hotel Mediterraneo in Rome. Then there was the personalized cooking class we took in Archidosso, in Tuscany, where the chef himself hosted us in his castle-like home. And what about the safari at Tiger Tops in Nepal? Or the days spent on the pure white sand of the Full Moon Beach Resort in the Maldives? And would I ever get around to writing something about the mountain biking and helicopter excursions I’d been given at Whistler in British Columbia? Or the free rounds of golf at Mauna Kea in Hawaii? I mean to write about all of them. I do. Honestly.

Even before boarding the Blue Train in Pretoria, I had a sense that this was a train too far. Despite the irresistible attraction of soaking in a full-size tub on a moving train, I should have turned down the assignment. I should have known better. The guilt I had accumulated over free trips and unwritten pieces had become disabling. But instead of saying no, I took the Blue Train’s offer and built upon it, asking for free rooms at some of South Africa’s top hotels. They all said yes.

I couldn’t help myself. I had become a free travel junkie and each fix had me lusting for the next. Of course, I had no one to blame but myself. Yet an addiction like this can’t thrive without willing dealers.

Less than a year earlier a woman had called from Colorado to ask if I would be interested in four days of free skiing at Vail and Beaver Creek. Sure, I told her, before explaining that I was moving to Africa in a month and didn’t think I’d ever have time to write about it. Plus, I told her, practically begging to be let off the hook, “I don’t write skiing.”

“You might some day,” she said in the ever-upbeat tone that seems to belong exclusively to those in marketing and publicity. “I’ll send you a ticket.”

Like Al Pacino in The Godfather III, I knew very well that I needed to get out - but I kept letting them suck me back in.

The Blue Train was fabulous and lived up to every bit of its reputation. Twenty-seven hours on board was hardly enough. Had I $2,000 to spend on such a trip, I might have even considered paying for it myself. And then there was the dinner in Paarl, in the heart of the wine country, at Bosman’s, one of the country’s best restaurants. On the veranda, under a full moon, it could not have been better. The cherry encrusted steenbok was gamy, delicate and sweet all at once. And there was the free room at Johannesburg’s elegant Westcliff and at its sister hotel in Cape Town, the Mount Nelson, where, quite by surprise, we were given two nights in the recently refurbished Royal Suite, not long ago inaugurated by Prince Edward himself.

“Not bad,” Nina said as she took in the vast, two-room suite where everything was done in mirrors and shades of gray and where the television rose up out of a mirrored box at the foot of the four-poster bed on some kind of hydraulic lift system one would expect to find only in a love nest designed for Austin Powers.

In fact, although everything about our trip to South Africa was wonderful I have been unable to craft a story worthy of the many thousands of dollars of transportation, food, and accommodation that we were “comp’d” as they say in the trade. There are, after all, only so many things one can say about sumptuous meals, luxury transportation, jade green golf courses, and expansive rooms in five-star hotels.

In the years since our trip to South Africa I have written failed draft after failed draft. I have been up for hours, frozen at the keyboard, blocked for the first time since I began writing years ago. I suppose it’s some type of cosmic torment for the promises I have made and failed to keep. I’m sick about the whole thing.

At long last, I think I have learned my lesson. I can no longer handle the angst of taking something for nothing and carrying the weight of a debt unpaid. The offers of free meals and hotel rooms keep coming. Despite my love of travel I cannot accept them and remain at peace with myself.

Unless, of course, they throw in the airline tickets.

A version of this story originally appeared in The Best Travel Writing 2005: True Stories from Around the World.

Honolulu Mammas

They said it couldn't be done. That going on vacation with my mother in Hawaii would be a big mistake. Cooped up together there would be a good chance that the hard fought calm between us would explode into corrosive flows of emotional lava.

I wasn't concerned. I didn't think we'd actually get to Hawaii. For the last few years, as mom closes in on 80, she has repeatedly voiced her interest in a series of improbable adventures that never came off.

"I'm thinking of studying Icelandic," she'll say to me on the phone from the east coast. "Their epic story-telling fascinates me."

Or, she'll say, "You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to rent an R.V. and drive across the country."

I used to challenge her cruelly whenever she mentioned what I considered another preposterous notion. "What are you talking about?" I would have said. "You fall asleep behind the wheel on the way to the corner market. Now you're going to drive cross country in a Mini-Winnie?"

"Well, I'd like to," she'd say, her enthusiasm dampened. "If I could find someone to go with me."

Invariably, mom begins our weekly telephone conversation with, "Oh! You know who died?" It's her way of reminding me she's not going to be around forever, and that maybe I should pay more attention to her.

So when she said, for the sixth time, "You know what I'd really like to do? I'd like to see Hawaii," I realized that this was not another passing fancy.

Traveling anywhere with mom is no carefree outing to the park. After decades in the frozen northeast she's doesn't venture outside unless she has several layers of clothing, emergency food, and a snow shovel.

"What do you think the weather will be like in Hawaii?" she asked. In the early 1980s I spent a summer in Hawaii. That made me an expert on island life.

"Snowy and cold," I told her, reverting to form.

"No, I'm serious," she said. "I want to know what clothes to bring."

"It'll be tropical and balmy," I told her.

"'Tropical and balmy?' What does that mean? Will I need a sweater?" she asked. "What about a raincoat?" As we discussed wardrobes, I saw storm clouds building off Waikiki. I made a final attempt to discourage her.

"Mom," I said, "You don't like the sun. You don't like the beach. I can't see you taking up windsurfing. You don't even like swimming. I mean, you haven't gotten your hair wet since FDR was in office. Why do you want to go to Hawaii?"

"I don't know why I want to go," she said, a tinge of anger rising in her voice. "I just know I want to see Hawaii -- while I'm alive!"

Cheap airline tickets and a free place to stay in Honolulu conspired to make Mom's dream a reality. After half a dozen telephone calls about the exact nature of "balmy and tropical weather," we were set to leave.

"Guess what?" my wife said to me. "I mentioned the trip to my mother. She didn't exactly ask to be included, but I think she'd really like to go."

My wife and I had been married two years. Our mothers were conspiring to test our marriage.

"Would you like a peanut butter sandwich?" my mother asked a few minutes after take-off. She had been carrying them from the east coast, "Just in case," as she likes to say. The jelly had already soaked through the bread and was clotting on the inside of the zip lock bag.

"No thanks," I told her. "They're going to be serving lunch in a few minutes." Besides, we had finished breakfast only 90 minutes earlier.

"I know," she said, "but I have to have something right now. I'm starved." My mother has the metabolism of a lemming. If she doesn't eat continuously, she's likely to pass out. Her purse is always bursting with crackers, candy, gum, a few vintage sandwiches, and at least half a loaf of bread. In an ocean liner disaster, she would be the last one alive in the lifeboats.

Probably like everyone's mother, mine has a number of idiosyncrasies. To the outside world, they are endearing. "Your mother is just great," people say after having spent five minutes with mom. But we were about to spend five days together. Five days of listening to mom read all the street signs in Hawaii out loud. Five days of watching her write mental notes in the air with her index finger and then erase them with a wipe of her hand. Five days of listening to her hum while she eats, watches television, and reads the paper. I heard myself concocting justifiable homicide strategies to the judge. "Your Honor, I was becoming just like her," I would plead. But she was my mother. She wasn't getting any younger as she often reminded me. Five days. It was the least I could do.

I had no idea what we would do for five days. More importantly, I had no idea if our mothers would get along. My mother-in-law is a firebrand who marched through the streets of Berkeley in the sixties. At the slightest hint of any injustice done to anyone anywhere in the world her first comment is likely to be, "The Bastards!" A piece of plastic litter blowing down the street will start her off on a crusade against the multi-national petroleum companies ("The Bastards!"). On the plane to Hawaii she insisted that we hang on to the sandwich bags and other plastic items for recycling on the mainland. I still haven't found the courage to tell her that, on occasion, I have voted Republican.

My mother, on the other hand, can't stand confrontation. "It's a shame" or "Isn't that awful" or "Someone ought to look into that" are about the strongest comments she can muster about something like, for example, the Chernobyl disaster.

Mom has spent thousands of hours in the beauty salon. My wife's mother washes her own hair and leaves styling to the wind. She grew up eating spicy middle-eastern food. Anything more daring than a boiled chicken breast sends my mother to the gastro-enterologist. As the plane approached Honolulu, this family vacation in Hawaii was looking more and more like a tsunami about to wash ashore.

The balmy and tropical weather I promised my mother turned out to be a tropical depression. Mom's hair was under assault before we left the airport. She quickly produced one of those hair protectors that begins about the size of a stick of gum and unfolds into a protective shield of hideously unattractive plastic. I'm told stores will not sell these to women under 65 years of age.

To escape the slashing, cold rain, we went to the IMAX theater in Waikiki. Circle of Fire, a film about the movement of the tectonic plates of the Pacific Rim, was playing. On the enormous screen, mountain tops were exploding, earthquakes were reducing cities to rubble, rivers of lava flowed from red hot fissures into the ocean which erupted into scalding columns of steam. The theater rumbled with SurroundSound. I looked over at mom. Her head was thrown back. Her mouth was wide open. She was dead asleep.

"Wasn't that something?" she said as the credits came up. "I've never seen anything like that. That was great."

"You know why they let seniors into the movies two for one?" I said to my wife as we left the theater. "Because they figure that together two of them might see the entire movie."

The next day the weather at last turned balmy and tropical. "What would you like to do?" I asked. I had told our mothers and my wife to get some travel books and research Oahu's many sights. I didn't want to be responsible for everyone's entertainment. "I don't know," they each said. "What do you recommend?" We began our first of several circumnavigations of Oahu.

Since our mothers come from the opposite ends of the political activism spectrum, spelling and pronunciation were items they could discuss right away without much potential for rancor. Every street sign, every advertisement, became a pronunciation challenge. It was a reverse spelling bee - in Hawaiian.

"K-a-l-a-k-a-o-u-a," Mom would spell out. "How do you say that?" she would ask from the back seat as though I were the Magnum P.I. of Hawaiian pronunciation.

"I think these names are very musical," my mother-in-law added. "Ka-me-ha-me-ha," she sang out with the trill of a tropical songbird. "Kai-lu-ah-oo-ah" my mother chirped back.

My wife and I exchanged sideways glances. This back and forth tweet-tweeting went on for the next four days.

Food was another area of non-controversial common ground. One day we passed a store that had dried beans on sale. After spelling out and pronouncing the name of the shopping center ("Ha-wa-eee - Ka-ee" my mother-in-law yodeled), my mother commented, "We really don't have enough beans in our diet."

Reacting as though my mom had just come up with the formula for world peace, my mother-in-law said, "You're right! And why not? They're delicious."

"And easy to fix."

"And inexpensive."

My mother then lowered her voice, as though she were about to reveal the details of a particularly sinister conspiracy, and said, "What I don't understand is why people don't eat more lentils. I love lentils."

"Yes, they have been ignored."

I looked at my wife. She was clenching her stomach, squeezing her eyes, her face frozen in a pained grimace beyond laughter. She either had to let go or we would have to come up with a good explanation for Avis.

"What about lima beans?" I asked of the back seat. "Why don't they get more attention? Or favas?"

"I've never understood that either," my mother said.

"There ought to be equal opportunity for beans," my mother-in-law said. A shriek sliced through the car. Tears streamed down my wife's face.

We did just about everything one could do in Hawaii without getting wet or having one's hair blown out of place. Bit by bit mom broke down. At a roadside stand she tried some papaya. We went out for Japanese food. I ordered the chicken with udon noodles in miso for her, thinking that was about as close to boiled chicken breast as the Japanese got. It wasn't close enough.

The next morning she was at our bedroom door. "Robert," she said, clutching her stomach with one hand and the doorjamb with the other, "I need some bread."

"Now?" I asked. "It's quarter to seven."

"Now," she told me.

At Safeway she tore into a loaf of Italian white bread. The color came back to her face. She was restored.

As we drove around Oahu, my mother-in-law exclaimed over every flowering shrub and tree. "Oh look at that one," she said. "And that one. Oh my goodness, who can imagine such colors." Like a frenzied Hollywood fan at the Oscars, she tapped my mother on the shoulder at every new sighting. "Did you see that?" she would say having spotted another banyan or plumeria. "Did you see that?" -- tap, tap, tap.

"Lovely," my mother answered. "Robert, can you find a store? I'd like to get some bread."

"Mom, what is it with you and bread? Are you worried that Hawaii is going to run out of flour? We've got three loaves at the house."

"I'd just like to have some bread in the car," she would say, her voice a bit more forceful.

"But mom," I'd begin again before feeling my wife poke me in the ribs, a reminder that it was easier to stop for bread than to uncover my mother's incessant need for it.

One day, driving along Oahu's North Shore, I spotted a fisherman poised with his net on the rocks just above the surf. There is tremendous skill involved in tossing a net out in a perfect circle. I thought "the ladies," as we had begun to call our mothers, might like to see it.

For half an hour the fisherman didn't move. He peered into the surf and waited. And waited. And we waited. I don't exactly recall how the following conversation got started or how it evolved, but it went something like this.

"It's very sad," my twice widowed mother said.

"What's that?" my divorced mother-in-law asked.

"When people are alone."

"Yes, it is sad."

"You know who it's particularly sad for? Gay men."

"Yes, you're right. And also for fishermen."

"That's true. Fishermen do have lonely lives."

"Do you suppose a lot of fishermen are gay?"

"Yes, I've heard that also."

"Isn't it terrible? They spend all that time by themselves, on the boat, and then they can't find anyone."

"It's sad to be alone. But to be a gay fisherman and alone, that is really very sad."

"You're right. Oh look!"

A pick-up truck had pulled up on the side of the road. A single man got out. He went down on the rocks to confer with the fisherman. He stood there waiting, and watching, with the fisherman.

"Do you think that's his boyfriend?"

"I hope so. He looks very nice."

"And he's so patient. I think they're very happy together."

"Me too."

I looked at my wife. For the umpteenth time she was about to pee in her pants. I turned to the back seat.

"You know," I said, "I don't think that people really appreciate just how difficult life is for gay Hawaiian fishermen."

"No, they don't," the ladies chimed in from the back seat. There was a squeal from the seat next to me. The passenger door flew open and Nina raced out of the car holding her belly.

It took a bit of persuasion, but a day later I got the ladies out to Hanauma Bay, Oahu's marine park and popular snorkeling spot. I don't think either had had her face in salt water for many, many years.

"No way my mom is going to do this," I told my wife.

"You're always underestimating her," she said.

"Well, she's not getting her hair wet, I'll tell you that."

"Wanna bet?"

We led the ladies out into the water by the hand.

"Now don't let go of my hand," mom said. Although she was very careful not to get her hair wet she did stick her mask in the water to look around. We were lucky. Moorish idols, coronet fish, all kinds of wrasses and puffers swam right up to the ladies. It wasn't clear who was more enchanted; the ladies or the fish.

I was surprised by my mother's adventurousness. But after four days of wind, rain and sun, her hair was a mess. The Aqua-Net force field that has protected her hair for as long as I can remember had failed.

"I really should get a touch-up," she said looking in the car mirror.

"Don't worry, dear," my mother-in-law said, "We'll fix it at home." I sensed a smirk growing across my wife's face.

"You think so, dear?" my mother responded. On day four, the ladies had taken to calling each other "dear."

We dropped them at the house and went to the store for more bread. Mom wanted two loaves even though we had only 24 hours left in Hawaii.

When we returned to the house I heard light-hearted humming coming from the bathroom.

"That looks lovely, dear," I heard my mother say.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Nina's mom washed and set my hair," my mother said, her hair up in rollers.

"You washed your hair?"

"Sure, why not?" my mother-in-law said. "You think she's allergic to shampoo?"

"HA!" my wife shrieked. "You owe me a hundred dollars."

"A hundred dollars? For what?" my mother asked.

"He bet me a hundred dollars you wouldn't wash your own hair."

"A hundred dollars! I don't believe it."

"Oh yes," my wife said, her hand opening and closing in my direction. "Pay up."

Hearing about our wager, my mother broke up completely. She reached out for the sink, afraid she might topple off the toilet she was laughing so hard. Tears began to fall. In 40 years I have never seen this. "A hundred dollars. Oh my, oh my." The moment her hysteria began to fall to a girlish giggle she would look at me and break up again. "A hundred dollars." I couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe it.

The next day we set out for the airport three hours ahead of departure. Mom wanted to get to there in plenty of time. Having spent most of her life traveling in and out of the northeast, she must have been worried about a freak snowstorm.

"Well, I just want you all to know I had a wonderful time," she said. "Thank you."

"Me too," my mother-in-law added. "This was great."

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," I told them. "Only two more hours till we leave."

The trip I had dreaded and now found myself enjoying was about to end. Neither of the ladies had learned to hula or surf but my wife and I had been hysterical most of the time. Turns out our aging mothers were stand-up comediennes. We were their straight men.

"Anyone hungry?" mom asked as she puttered around in her purse. "I've still got a few peanut butter sandwiches. Let's not waste them."

We chewed our way through the week old PB&Js in silence. My mother-in-law gathered up the plastic sandwich bags for recycling on the mainland.

"You know what I'm thinking, dear?" mom finally said. "I've been thinking about a trip to Sicily next year."

"Ooohhh," my mother-in-law said, "That could be lovely, dear. You know the Italians have the most wonderful bread."

"I've heard that, too," my mother responded. "And some lovely trees."

My wife put her lips next to my ear. "Think they have any gay fishermen in Sicily?" she whispered.

"I don't know," I told her. "But it might be fun to find out."

A version of this story originally appeared in the November 24, 1996 issue of West, the Sunday magazine of the San Jose Mercury News. Other versions were subsequently published in the Chicago Tribune, the Orange County Register, the Sacramento Bee as well as various travel and in-flight magazines and several volumes of the Travelers' Tales series of travel anthologies.