Old travel writing

Just something I stumbled across on my hard drive from a while ago.


Bus ride in Peru

After living in Peru for a couple of months you get used to the busses. Ancient wrecked vehicles sent down from North America where they failed their safety checks. The hardy South Americans, it seems, do not require such extravagant luxuries as windows and brakes. When you step up to sit (or most often stand) amongst chickens, children and Quechuans you hand your life over to the man at the wheel and hope that this isn’t his first day.

We had spent the weekend over in Cuzco, the historical centre of Andean Peru. We had not gone, I must admit, for the history. The tours amongst winding streets and excursions to massive Inca ruins had been completed months before. This weekend was about the clubs and bars and the free rum and coke given by the door staff as a thank you for choosing their establishment over the others. Inside was a sweaty Latin dance fest that rarely got started before 1am. By 4am we were dancing on the bar.

So it was with a self inflicted delicate temperament that I gave my life to the driver who would take us back, this Sunday evening, to our sleepy little village Urubamba; our base for teaching English in the surrounding rural schools. The journey takes about an hour and a half and the road climbs high into the Andes before snaking down a mountainside to bring us home. Even with a fuzzy head I could see that this was not going to be a good trip. It was dark and raining heavily on the tin roof. The bus had no windscreen wipers and headlights that, as Jeremy Clarkson might exclaim, looked like candles in jam jars. There was no kind of atmospheric control so every five seconds a man would jump in front of the driver and wipe the mist from the windscreen so he could see through into the pitch black beyond.

Half an hour in the animals on bored had become restless and the chatter had died down into a low mumble, barely audible above the noise of the rain. Suddenly from outside came a huge bang. I pressed my forehead against the window but couldn’t see a thing except for the vague outline of the road before it dropped away to the cliff beyond. In the distance the lights from Urubamba gleamed. The tyre had burst on the side of the mountain. All the men on board ran outside to find stones to stick under the wheels to stop the bus with no brakes rolling back down the hill and off the cliff. They began to work together to change the tyre, using the light from old Nokia mobile phones.

You know you're in trouble when the locals begin to cross themselves. The woman next to me juggled her box of live chickens around leaving one hand free to comfort her daughter and the other to pray. Out of our depth, my friends and I just looked at each other and bit our lips. Eventually the men clambered back in with worried faces. The driver started the engine and we began to coast down the mountain. Every second was an hour and at every bend I closed my eyes. It seemed nobody breathed.

As the bus drew into Urubamba the locals and travellers alike clamoured to be let off. It is the only time in my life I considered kissing the ground. My Britishness of course took over and I restrained myself, managing an exhausted smile. I walked home, secure in the knowledge that one bus had at last seen its last journey through the Andes. It was not to be. The next day on my morning commute to school I gave my life, not only to the driver, but to the patched up tyre I could see poking out from underneath the tin frame.

Jade

I got to thinking today about suffering, as I was nursing the hangover mentioned before! But not silly sticky self inflicted suffering, real suffering pain and poverty. A happy thought. We see most life through a lens or a screen in the west. The flooding and starving and bone crushing poverty that we see on the TV or on-line is objectified and turned into discourse until the writing, stories, myths and speculation surrounding the event become more important then the event and the people involved. We now care more about the nights in the super bowl than the thousands of people in New Orleans still have no home. How it demonstrated the inherent savageness of man, a return the primitive. Similarly the everyday plight of those in Zimbabwean becomes a list of evidence against Mugabe, rather than an actual physical reality for hundreds of thousands. The fact that I can sit here an write this shows my separation from these events, I must objectify them to then comment on how they have been objectified.
These thoughts were only crystallised during the story of Jade Goody. Hers was a life that was, to many of us, a story. From her birth into 'reality' to her actual death in front of our eyes she was ours. Her life only existed as an entertainment, as a stimulus to our lives. I think that is a vile type of inhumanity. But possibly inescapable.

This week

I had a bit of a Bridget Jones moment today, a right now right there that was the moment, moment. I stood at the bus stop watching the mothers taking their children to school under the new spring leaves. The morning sun was beginning to warm my back, as I stood their in last night’s rags and heals, desperate for the loo. My useless eyes thankfully blind to the looks on people’s faces, the jewels on my wrist doing nothing to hide my bagged eyes! Standing there, sick as a pig, I had my moment. My, it shouldn’t be this way moment. My, is this really how I want to be moment. But this is the point; I don’t have any evidence to the contrary to suggest that I am not this person. It’s getting past the point now that I can blame this on developing or youth, its getting to the point where, before long, this just becomes the person I am. Then what am I? I don’t want to be that any more, I don’t want to feel like this any more. To have crap nights and bad memories because I drink too much. So now i'v decided I don't want to drink any more. For a few weeks anyway. Problem is, these life defining moments seem to happen once a week for me. Tomorrow I might have another one and decide something else is hugely important. For today its TV, Exams and a takeaway.

The Island

Today they picked the person for the world's dream job...six months on an Australian Island where the only responsibilities were to look after the fish and write a blog! The winner seems lovely and I bet he'll have the time of his life. I was wondering whether to enter, I very much doubt I would of got it there were hundreds of thousands of applicants! But today walking to Uni to hand in my dissertation I came up with the video entry I would use if it ever came up again.



Picture photos and video of all of these things flashing up as I say them. Except the bungee jumping which is currently a lie! (although wont be after Victoria falls)


So why pick me,
For the worlds dream role,
Well now you’ll see,
Cuz iv got soul,

I'm a scuba diving,
Paragliding,
Death defying,
Maniac.
A blog writing,
Cause fighting,
Exciting,
Brainiac!

I’m a degree having,
Windsurfing,
Bungee jumping,
Historian.
A peace loving,
Tree hugging,
conservation
Thunder storm!

Hitched hiked across Europe
Trekked the Andes and Alps
Lived in Peru
On the string of a shoe
And Africa too!

As a Fundraising
Fish feeding
Strong swimming
Adventurer
An English teaching
Sky reaching
World loving
Wanderer

I’m all of this and what else more
OH so much I’ll tell you later!
So why delay, pick me today
As your wonderful island’s caretaker.

People

For a while now I've been contemplating how things which can seem so fantastic and worthy of your jealousy from the outside are inevitably fraught with problems in reality. The perfect relationship, the perfect smile, the perfect grades, the perfect household: dig a little deeper and there's always an issue, always a problem, its never what you expect it to be.

Today I was sitting with some people who were discussing a person who I know, though not very well. I had always assumed from this person's confidence and general demeanour that they were universally liked, breezy, happy, with no problems in the world. From behind my book I listened. The picture was painted of a proud, difficult and easily dis-likable person. Many unknown enemies. Much unhappiness.

I sat there pretending to read "On the Road" and began to think about green monsters with green eyes. It didn't matter whether every thing these people were saying was right or wrong, all that mattered at that moment was that someone I had held up and an untouchable, one of those people I could never be, was in fact me with another name. Maybe somewhere on campus a similar conversation was going on about me, where someone who had assumed my life was perfect was finding out the truth.

The fact is not one of us has a perfect life. Not one of us has nothing they dislike about themselves or that others dislike about them. All that matters is striving to be happy in your own skin and not desperately wanting to slip into someone else's. You might find you preferred your problems.

Books

I'm trying to get a little reading done before I go; partly because I think I would have enjoyed Peru more if I had know something about the country before I went and partly because it is a damn good distraction from my dissertation! Here is a little list of the stuff I am going to get read:

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart by Tim Butcher - Read - excited but upsetting, granddads remember when cars were on the road and the kids have never seen them.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - Read - fiction but beautiful. It changed the whole way I thought about the challenges facing Africa and the Africans.

Things Fall Apart (Penguin Red Classics) by Chinua Achebe - Read - Stunning, experienced a bit of post colonel guilt to be honest. It's a very difficult issue because in some way there is almost no point in regretting it, its done, but it was awful to read of the traditonal African beliefs from the point of view of them being ripped to shreds.

The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence by Martin Meredith - Still to read.

Africa: A Biography of the Continent by John Reader - Still to read.
The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life by Ryszard Kapuscinski and Klara Glowczewska - Still to read.

Uganda: Tarnished Pearl of Africa (Nations of the modern world: Africa) by Thomas P. Ofcansky - Still to read
Swahili for the Broken-hearted by Peter Moore

Long time to go

Hi all,

I don't plan on telling anyone about this page until just before I go so I guess most of these posts will go unread. It's hard to know what to write here, I will need to practice. Writing in a diary is easy, it doesn't matter what you say or how you spell it (dad), you're the only one who is going to read it!
So Uganda it is, i have to admit my reasons for choosing it were almost entirely selfish, better location for travelling, better climate ect But i don't feel too guilty about it, i am spending 8 months in this place so i should at least be happy with it!

I have been thinking about these projects recently. I am really excited but I need to try and get out of my western mindset of Us and Them. Us going over to help Them with our ways because They can't do it Themselves. It's a bad discourse to be in but almost impossible to get out of. I really want to learn a lot more than I can ever teach.
I am getting more and more interested in the effects of gender inequality on the AIDS crisis. I never thought i would be one of those women who got into gender issues but when I hear that these girls just don't know that saying no is an option it makes my blood boil a bit. Just lie back and think of the antiretrovirals. I hope that i can do some work on that when I am there. Building confidence and making girls aware of their rights is really important and just seeing people like my partner (whoever she will be) make positive life choices will be a start.

Ok i have babbled! Time to go.