|
|
So, lost another post to the trials of Ecto. You see I have sort of a love hate relationship with Ecto. Anyway, not much lost just my moaning mum stuff as 2 of my kids fly the nest in the same week.
The night before the flight to London the nearby river overflowed and took the path of least resistance down the road in front of the mechanics. In the middle of the night people were climbing over the wall and tow ropes were hauling cars in from the road as the river took over. In the morning what was left was some destroyed fish carts littering the street and sludge everywhere. We put on our welly boots, Sam took our boots back in a bucket as we jumped in our… taxi.
Lizzy is taking off to Texas to hang with Jessica, our amazing, wonderful Woman friend (notice the capital “W” for woman which I reserve for only my favourite women in the world) who we love.
 This is a photo of our first leg of the journey. Lizzy’s first hitchhiking experience. Actually we were waiting for a taxi to the airport and some of our friends saw us and gave us a ride in their big blue horsebox.
The rest of her trip was a bit more normal with planes and trains. Well, maybe not that orthodox as we flew ryan air to London. Every time we fly ryan air we say NEVER AGAIN but we always get drawn in by the illusion of cheap prices. We did get free entertainment on the plane this time. With a handful of drunks, an angry primadonna with a huge carryon and a man with a lost boarding card.
Sam, Donald and Alana took off for Scotland. The only drama we heard this time came from Alana. Dear Alana, Andrew drilled and drilled them in the taxi on the way but her carefree attitude, optimism and lack of extensive funds were no match for the near impossible border control in london and she was denied entry. She is now in a detainment centre in London – Ramada with bars – waiting for the next flight to Morocco in 2 days. Not sure if she will continue on with us or what. So, this time our clan got to provide the drama. Ahhh life.
Miracle of miracles Sam and Donald got in. I guess they had to let Donald in because he holds a british passport. Samuel, however, well, he did try. He put on all clean, all black, clothes that promptly got really dirty as we are presently living in a mechanics backyard. You see, miracles do happen in the modern day.
I AM feeling much better. Glad you missed my empty nest moan and groan. It was very sad and I am sure would have brought you all to tears.
Now we are all thinking, North or South. Do we continue south towards the Sahara or do we high tail it North. Hmmmmm, you know we do have sandmats proudly displayed at the back of our truck. We also have a large group of new friends gathering in Sidilfni preparing for Mauritania and beyond. There are visas to get and a carnet to figure out if we go further south.
The Mauritania visa is near impossible to get in U.K. Once you go to the Mauritanian Embassy, London website that has no clue to the Embassy’s closure until you take the long trek and knock on the stranger’s door where the embassy is supposed to be. If you probe deeper online they say to go to the French embassy where they say send in lots of paper and wait 4 months and they might say yes. Seems the thing to do is go to Rabat, Morocco and you get it in 5 hours. You know, you try to set things in order before you get on the road but I think it takes a leap of faith. Jump on out there and the answers come along the way. Oh no, there I go again with one of my rants. STOP ME PLEASE!
You know alot adds up if I havent blogged for a while.
Enough for today.
After all our fears of bad health in Africa and we have been doing OK. We have all been taking turns with stomach aches and diarrhea but not to serious. We ar’e in banana beach so eating alot of bananas helps out. Skin problems. Abi got a bad burn on her hand before we arrived in Morocco so we were very careful to keep it clean. A Moroccan man kept putting flower pollen goop on it which was greaas well.
The problem I am having is with people outside our family. We are hanging around alot of full time travellers. European young people mostly. What great people, loving and giving. They are not living out hedonist dreams but wanderlust mixed in with missions of global peace. Quite beautiful. They love natural medicine. They live simply and are normally broke.
However, here is the problem. Youve got this young man who has walked his feet bloody because of bad shoes or no shoes. He pees on his foot faithfully every morning to disinfect it, I have heard this is actually quite good. The problem is that he continues to walk around barefoot with an open wound and soak it in water full of special south Moroccan bacteria. Staph infection. He gives his infection to 10 others. They are all at least a 4 hour walk from a doctor.
So, where do you go when your foot swells up like a football? Mom. Since I have grey hair and alot of kids they come to me. I actually love helping people out with this. Hey, isnt this why I went to nursing school?
In the short time I have been here I have seen some of the worst wounds of my life. I know my first aid kit is fine for a family but is sorely inadequate for this many people with bad infections. I have already given away my emergency antibiotics to a wonderful french father with an old burn that was causing his whole leg to swell up and no money for medicine. I gave him the antibiotics and asked him to take them to the pharmacist to see if they were right for the job. The pharmacist said they were the best for his infection and are not available in Morocco. He is very grateful and getting better but I now have no antibiotics.
Helping out all these people with infected wounds is actually a bit selfish too. Staph infections spread to other travellers and to my family. Aggressive little bacteria that can jump into a little mosquito bite on a leg and cause a disfiguring scar or amputation.
Sorry for my rant. I was trained as a nurse so I can help with early problems but people are coming to me too late, way too late, when amputation is on the tip of their tongues. I feel quite ill prepared for this. Is there a place for extra training and alot of supplies? Do I need extra training or just more confidence? I dunno.
I feel better. Thanks for listening.
Sorry, no pictures with this post. Honestly now, would you want pictures!?!?
Well, I finally did it. After over 12 years of talking about it I finally got my tattoo. Paulo worked on it for 2 hours. It did hurt – alot. He would still like to do some more colour. But, this is the one I have been imagining all those years. It is the tree of life with a wild vine wrapping around and from it. I am Sooooo happy.
I guess I never thought it was the right time because a tough guy stranger etching a permanent mark on me that represented my spiritual journey was just not the image I had. But, when I met Paulo I knew I trusted him and I respect him and his own spiritual journey. Just seemed the right time and the right person to do it. I have been talking to Paulo about doing it since May. I have found out that Paulo is not just a great person but one of the best tattoo artists in Portugal. He has been doing tattoos for over 20 years. He said that when he first wanted to do tattoos you couldnt buy a tattoo machine so he made his own out of a blow dryer.
He did many sketches in November before finding one that we both liked after about a month of efforts. It is a different sort of thing combining a tree and a vine I guess. So, I went into Spider Tattoos in Olhao today with Paulo and Serge and have come back with “ink”. Andrew and Sam are kinda jealous I think. I am so pleased. Paulo said it might not seem like my arm, at first, when I see it in the mirror, but actually, I recognize it. It has been in my imagination for so long and is perfect. I love it.
Just wrote a new page on Countries. Thought I would put it here at the same time so you could have a read. I am also working on pages on Portugal, Germany and England at the top. Take a look but realize they are still a work in progress.
As we have been traveling about we have learned many things that we wish people would have told us before. Things to enjoy. Things to watch out for. Things to help us understand better. So, as we learn them, or think we learn them, we put them up here. Feel free to agree, disagree or add to. When your home has wheels you are aware of being on a journey. All about us is on a journey, what we know, what we love and our awareness of who we are.
A quick word on travelling to different cultures in general. I love experiencing different cultures. It is like a latent part of my mind and my imagination come alive. When a woman leans forward to kiss my cheeks, when a man I have never met insists upon standing uncomfortably close as we talk or when I see a woman on a hot day hanging up clothes on the line while wearing only a bra and unders. I say to myself, “I am definitely not in Kansas any more”. I LOVE IT. I have learned something new. “People kiss on the cheeks 3 times in some parts of Switzerland as opposed to twice where I just was in France”. “WOW, why do I feel so uncomfortable standing this close?” “I think my home culture is more modest, I wonder how much of our modesty is good and how much we might just have extra baggage around body issues, hmmmm.” And there I go. Learning new things. Asking questions. Not really looking for right and wrong. Not passing judgement about who is better but celebrating the diversity in our world. We are all different from each other. Not just from country to country but person to person.
We have a choice. I have a choice. I can throw off that insecure teenager complex of making my insecure self feel better about me by putting down anyone who is different and stand in amazement at this beautifully rich and diverse world I live in. We can stop looking for McDonalds, supermarkets and Coca Cola. Lets go into that run down cafe, that smelly fish market or drink Kofola (communist coke).
We can stop fearing “other” or just anything different. The news thrives on creating fear. We think about launching out and we are bombarded with stories of pirates, kidnapping and strange diseases when the countries we come from could very easily be more dangerous than most we are going to. It is just plain fear of the unknown and it keeps us from living.
Live life.
Love People.
Happily waking up this morning surrounded by billowing, beige, canvas and doing way too much thinking. Thinking why do me and Andrew choose to sleep in our little tent when we were offered a bedroom in the large villa next to us. Our girls are in the bedroom because we didnt want it. We normally sleep in our truck and sleeping surrounded by canvas is a special luxury for us because campgrounds charge extra for our little tent and it looks too obvious when we are wild camping. We didnt want the bedroom. Are we weird or something?
So anyway, as I got out of our little canvas sleeping chamber (tent) I saw the crooked window in the shed I see every morning since we arrived. I see the crooked window. Or is it. The other day I was talking to Edna about it while we were staring at this window. You see the window only looks crooked. It was put in with a “spirit level”. The window is straight. The window is fine. The window is true to its nature. The building was built by the builders of the large villa. A place to shelter from the sun and siesta. A place to rest and sleep. The building lies straight with the lay of the land so as to lessen its impact on the land. The building is straight. The building is fine. The building is true to its nature.
We havent been very good at saying the why of what we are doing on our blog. The truth is, now that mum and dad are in their 40s, we are learning about being true to our nature. Giving ourselves permission to be ourselves. True to the way we believe God created us to be. You know, no two of us are the same, inside and out. We started traveling again because it is true to our nature. Sure it is not the norm. It doesnt seem consistent with the straight line of contemporary culture. We are lousy at keeping up a house, our hearts just arent into it. Sure, we like to play with a house but we sure dont act grown up and responsible with it. I figure what if we traveled not because we are hedonists or rebels or circus performers or outlaws but because it is true to our nature. Are we blazing a trail for others like us. It is time to stop playing house and feeling guilty about not being like anyone else. We actually are grown up and we are settling into our lives. Lives that are true to our nature.Yeah, we ARE weird but this is who we are. You know I think we need to accept each other with all our differences. What is right for us may not be right for you. What is right for you may not be right for me. We need to accept the uniqueness of each other. To DANCE together in a technicolour celebration of diversity. Maybe there would be less wars if we did this. Less judgement. More joy.
We celebrated Donald’s 18th birthday. He got some manly gifts, since he is a man now. As part of our family tradition he got to choose all the food for the day. We have never had such a detailed birthday menu. The best was his choice for a cake. He chose chocolate fondue.
The little ones, Nelson, Joshua and Rania, couldnt believe such a thing existed. The sheer decadence of dipping fruit or cakes into a chocolate puddle. They persevered long after the adults called it quits. We tried to capture photos of them but they were moving so fast and consistant that even though we took about 10 or 20 photos this is the only one without motion blur. At one point Nelson (right) wouldnt take his eyes off of the wonder for fear it was just a dream. He was so focused he fell off his chair, didnt cry, got up quickly and almost fell off the chair again because he refused to take his eyes off the chocolate. I am sure they were swimming in chocolate dreams long after the chocolate fondue was put away.
It was extreme decadence. It was a celebration. I think that especially in times like these when funds are tight we need to celebrate. We are back to a breakfast of porridge oats this morning but even if we had to have porridge for every meal for the next week or month to balance out the decadence of a single day of celebration we still need to do it. Celebration brings joy and life. We dont need a lot of money to celebrate, sometimes what is needed is simply to make the mundane feel special. We have had years when we had no money to celebrate a birthday or other holiday and have pulled the strangest combinations of food out of our cupboard and melted it all together to create some kind of cake but we have always celebrated. Lets celebrate life. Lets learn from the little ones and not miss the wonder and joy, beauty and celebration of life.
|
Traveler IQ test
This Traveler IQ was calculated on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 02:21PM GMT by comparing this person's geographical knowledge against the Original Travel Log's other 5,010,585 travelers who've taken the challenge.
|
This is a photo of our first leg of the journey. Lizzy’s first hitchhiking experience. Actually we were waiting for a taxi to the airport and some of our friends saw us and gave us a ride in their big blue horsebox.
Comments