<Begin Segment 26>

AI: And Pramila, when, just before our break, we had left you still in Cincinnati, Ohio, and you were on the point of leaving your work there and making a change.

PJ: Yeah. Well, I just, I had to stay long enough to show I could do it, and then, and then I was really ready to leave. And I had always wanted to come to Seattle, and so my, my partner at the time, we were gonna get married that fall, and the wedding was gonna be -- actually, we were gonna get married the next year, and the wedding was supposed to be in New York, I think in May. And it was getting really big, there were a lot of people who were coming in, it was turning into Alan's parents' wedding, and so we said, "Well, let's quit our jobs and move back to Seattle, and then let's just get married in November, in Seattle." And we already had the place booked in New York and everybody was aware. So that's what we did. We moved to Seattle in September of 2001, and really with the intent of kind of taking some time to figure out what we wanted to do, because we were both -- he had a very similar background, we met in graduate school, and we both felt like we wanted to do something that we felt passionately about. We didn't know what that was, but we were very convinced that that's what we wanted to do. And so we moved to Seattle in September, and we literally got married in November, and we only had a hundred people at our wedding, which was what we wanted.

And, and then we took off backpacking, we went to West Africa and East Africa and then a couple of months in India. So we spent about three and a half months or four months traveling. And it was an amazing, amazing experience, you know, I think really, just being able to go, and it was his first time to India, though he had traveled in other places before, he had traveled in Africa, Latin America. But we just traveled through India, and I met -- I wrote about this in my book -- I met all these people that were phenomenal activists who were doing really great work in their villages and with very little resources, but just with the resources of soul and heart and passion, and I just decided that that's what I wanted to do. I wasn't quite sure how I was gonna do it, but that's what I wanted to do.

AI: Well, so then, I did want to ask you about, as you were traveling that time, whether, whether you were in places long enough to illicit reactions from people. And to you individually, as someone who now in some ways, acted and sounded like an American, although you weren't, you were not an American citizen, and also that you were in a relationship, an interracial relationship.

PJ: Right. Yes, I mean, that was huge everywhere, because in Africa, Alan was the novelty and... both in a good way and a bad way. And so I had to get both of those. I couldn't kind of blend in the way I wanted to, and the way I would have probably if he hadn't been there, but at the same time, there were a lot of things that, "benefits" that accrue to white people, and everything from people being interested and wanting you to go and stay in their houses or whatever, that gave me a whole different experience. And I think I noticed right away the difference. But I had noticed it before, 'cause Alan actually came to visit in Thailand as well, when I was working in Thailand. And I noticed the way in which people treat white people differently in other countries, and it's this love/hate relationship, because there's a lot of tension towards Americans, but there's also this kind of, if you're American, then everybody wants your attention and you can do no wrong. And you don't have to speak the language, whereas, of course, if you come to America, you have to speak English. So it's almost like no matter where you are in the world, there's benefits that go with being, with being white. And as you know, in other countries, it's considered favorable to be lighter-skinned, or to be white. So I noticed all of that, traveling with him. But... yeah.

AI: Right. So that, that became part of your experience, that, which you come back to again later on.

PJ: Yeah.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.