Rita Golden Gelman: Tales of a Female Nomad

By BARBARA HARRIS

Imagine being rich and living a privileged, glamorous life - dining with celebrities, attending the Academy Awards.

Fifteen years ago that was Rita Golden Gelman's life. But at the age of 48, with her marriage in tatters and her two children grown, she began to reinvent herself.

As well as being a writer of more than 70 children's books, she'd studied anthropology and had a burning desire to do more than just read about other cultures.

Sloughing off her old material trappings was relatively easy. "Things had never been important to me. Partly because things had to be cared for and organised and worried about. I was a lousy organiser and not a very good worrier." She sold everything she owned, rejected alimony and resolved to wander the world, living off her book royalties.

From the woman who was too scared to have dinner out on her own, emerged someone who thrives on being a nomad. That's not to say she doesn't have long stints in one place (she spent eight years in Bali).

Early on she learned not to judge. When she made friends with some native Guatemalans and they threw rubbish into the street, she had to fight the urge to pick it up.

Instead she joined them. "If I pick up after them, I am making a judgment that says I know better than they. Even if I walk with my own garbage to a pail, I am making a statement. I am an invited guest. I do as they do."

As well as Guatemala, she has lived in Mexico, Nicaragua, Israel, Indonesia, Canada, Thailand and New Zealand. Here she spent most of her time in Coromandel and was pleasantly surprised to find on school "pit day" that the children turned up with dogs, rabbits and even a "pit" spider.

On her global roaming she sleeps in mud huts and palaces, climbs mountains and learns to scuba dive.

Her writing, honed by all those kids' books, is easy and fluid, and her ear marvellously attuned to the sound of words.

"Butchers are slapping and smashing meat on huge wooden blocks, beating red blobs into tenderness. They are scissoring and chopping up yellow chickens that have been fed marigolds so their skin and flesh are gold."

Frequently she has returned to visit her family in the United States, and there's a lovely bit of role reversal when she turns up on her adult son's doorstep with a bag of dirty washing.

Many years ago her family thought she was running away from the real world, but today she's still deliberately homeless.

This is the sort of book that it's easy to imagine reading while lying in a hammock, just drifting off around the world because, as the subtitle says, "There's more than one way to do life".

Vintage

$29.95