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From: Terry Ward
To: Catherine Watson, Liz Sinclair and Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Subject: “He My HUSBAND!”

The first time I traveled sola abroad as a woman, it was to one of the more challenging regions. I had gone to visit my friend Clara in Amman, Jordan in the summer of 2001 when I decided to travel alone for a few days to the Sinai Peninsula. Clara loaded me on the tourist-friendly bus (the expensive one—the one with air-conditioning), advised me to avoid eye contact with random men and bid me farewell.

No sooner had we pulled away from the city, the hills of Palestine and Israel shimmering out the windows, did a man move into the seat next to me.

Not wanting to be unfriendly but wary of the cultural rules, I pushed my body as close to the window as I could and tried to politely answer his questions, of the usual, “Where you from, where you go?” genre.

The bus was full, and I noticed a veiled woman two rows back, baby in her lap, leaning forward and listening to our conversation with increasing ire.

“Don’t worry about her,” said the man, tiny nod her direction, “She doesn’t know English.”

He leaned in closer as I receded further into the nook between the seat and plate glass and tried to appear lost in the scenery.

“Welcome, you are very welcome in Jordan,” he kept saying, offering his services as my personal guide in Amman and stealthily attempting to slide his phone number my direction, as I murmured, “No, thank you’s,” out the corner of my mouth.

Then the woman leaned forward, madly waving my way, and belted out “He my HUSBAND!’ The whole bus craned at the commotion as I tried to disappear and the man stared innocently ahead, pretending he had never so much as spoken to me.

It was the most uncomfortable bus ride of my life, and I had no idea how I’d gotten myself into that situation—other than the fact that I was foreign and female and sitting alone.

I’ve had a few other negative experiences in that same vein, traveling alone as a woman, and they are by no means relegated to the Middle East. But despite that fact, I find my gender more of an advantage than a disadvantage while traveling.

From Indonesia and Thailand to Central America and New Zealand, people—and not just men, I’m talking women, too, and entire families—have invited me to dinner, welcomed me to pitch a tent in their backyards, offered to find me jobs and more. And while I have not accepted all the offers, the opportunities are always there.

Was I just being my usual friendly self when I got upgraded from an economy car to an Audi at that rental counter in France, or did my ‘charmante’ attempts at the language and perhaps an unconsciously batted eyelash or two sway a favor from the male attendant?

Certainly cultural doors open to me when traveling, and I meet people I would never ordinarily meet, because I am a foreigner—and, often, I know, because I’m a woman. It is hard for me to distinguish one advantage from the other sometimes.

But is the latter somehow using my femininity as a means to an end? And should I feel guilty for doing so?

Part One: “He My HUSBAND”
Part Two: The “Feminine Card”
Part Three: Arguments and Getting to the Heart of the Subject
Part Four: Being a Woman—Wherever
Part Five: Settling Down on the Fringe
Part Six: Wanna See My AK-47?
Part Seven: Loosing Gender
Part Eight: The Home Dilemma
Part Nine: Girl Power, and the Get Up and Go
Part Ten: Ode to the Mother Road
Part Eleven: (De)Parting Words
Part Twelve: Hitting the Road

About the participants:

World Hum contributing editor Terry Ward writes for many online and print publications, including The Washington Post, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Orlando Sentinel and AOL. Her favorite destinations for traveling solo are Morocco and anywhere in Europe or Southeast Asia. A story she wrote about a women-run guesthouse in Rajasthan, India was selected as notable travel writing for the 2006 edition of the Best American Travel Writing series. She is based in Florida.

Catherine Watson is the former travel editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a winner of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and the author of two collections of travel essays, the new Home on the Road—Further Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth, and Roads Less Traveled—Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth. Her latest story for World Hum is Where the Roads Diverged.

Stephanie Elizondo Griest has mingled with the Russian Mafiya, polished Chinese propaganda and belly danced with Cuban rumba queens. These adventures inspired her memoir Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana and guidebook 100 Places Every Woman Should Go. Atria/Simon & Schuster will publish her memoirs from Mexico in 2008. An avid traveler, she has explored five continents and once spent a year driving 45,000 miles across the United States, documenting its history for a Web site for kids.

Australia-based Liz Sinclair is currently living in Bali, learning Indonesian, volunteering as a grant writer for a maternal and child health center for the poor and writing about Australia and Asia, with an emphasis on Indonesia and interfaith issues. She wrote Why I am Still Going to Bali for World Hum, and has written for The Melbourne Age, The Big Issue, Australia, The Brunei Times, The Evening Standard and Islands magazine.