Hello from Pretoria! I only have a few minutes before we head back to Ithemba La Bantwana, the daycare we are painting in Soshanguve, the township outside of Pretoria, but I want to put up a quick update. The painting has gone well, with us press-ganging whatever AFnet staff members, neighboring children, and bystanders we can find into helping us, but yesterday we finished the bulk of the painting. The walls of the daycare are now Shrimp Toast on top and Chili on the bottom.
Shrimp Toast is basically pink, and to be honest at first I was scared we were making a tragic mistake, but once the chili gets on there to counter it and it all dries nice and evenly, it looks pretty good. This sentiment has been echoed by the real judges too, the children, who at first answered our question of "do you like it" with solemn no's, but now have all so far said yes, they like it!
When we got there the walls were heavily scuffed with lots of chips and chunks out from wear and tear over the years, but now they are clean, even walls. Today we are going to be cleaning up and painting flowers, dragonflies, and whatever else we can manage to further brighten the place.
I have a couple pictures of the process, but the bandwidth here is not currently sufficient to load them, so sit tight!
We did two craft days, one at Ithemba (the full name means "Hope for the Children") and one at the orphanage, Tsakelani ("Celebration") where Katrien guided the kids in making felt flowers, and both were complete successes. The kids loved it, everyone participated, helped each other, smiled, laughed, got their little hands soapy, and walked away with flowers adorning labels and headbands.
Okay, time to go paint flowers and scrub floors!
Thank you one and all for your donations that made this possible!!!
More to come on what we put that money towards...
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Crossing another border
I am in my twenties.
By the time anyone reads that, it will most likely not be true anymore. I think, according to the Popular Wisdom conveyed through our modern sages, like episodes of Friends, that I am supposed to be freaking out right now about getting older. Old.
After all, I am about to turn 30, I have no job, nor any visible path to one, no home…shit, I don’t even have a cell phone. And that is just the way I like it. (Well, for the cell phone at least, I am well and truly primed to start working again…)
I am ready to wrap up this decade. When I think back to who I was when I was 20, and the things that have happened since, I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude for all the people who were part of my life. I am satisfied with my twenties, time to wrap them up and start a new project.
The last decade has been good to me, on the inside and the outside. On the outside, it started with a sense that the politics in my country were accelerating down the drain, greased by greed, deception, and apathy. I felt a heavy pull towards losing all respect for my countrymen, and it was not a good feeling.
Now, while still not convinced my countrymen are all smart enough to come in out of the rain, I have seen something happen that maybe only the dreamers thought possible back 10 years ago. (Oh look, Hollywood has cast a black president, how cool would that be? Maybe someday…) And best of all, we don’t even notice he’s black anymore! I am proud of that. Albeit not planning on visiting Alabama any time soon. I like my optimism, thank you very much.
Those ten years have been good to me on the inside too. I have known good times, good friends, love, laughter, and sadness and pain to round out the form. I spent the first half ensconced in Santa Cruz, barely leaving the zip code, and it was good living. I spent the last third moving among thirty-something countries on three continents and that was good too. And just as with the politics, at the outset that transition seemed unimaginable.
And best of all, my thirties are shaping up to be fanfuckingtastic too.
Halfway into my first day of my thirties my amazing girlfriend Katrien will be joining me in Madrid where we will somehow survive the heat and enjoy vegetarian food from our favorite little restaurant tucked away on that one street I am pretty sure I still know how to find. And three days into my thirties we will get on a plane to Qatar, and four days in we will get on another plane to South Africa. From there it is a month of presumable amazingness in Africa, with a special glow leant to it by all of those who so generously supported out fundraising efforts. Thank you!!!
That glow of generosity is warming me as I move from my twenties to my thirties.
The first thing I will accomplish in my thirties will be painting orphanage walls in Pretoria, made possible by the contributions of various awesome people, from old friends I’ve had since I was 13 to new ones I haven’t even met yet. Friends one and all! And my twenties and thirties are richer because of you!
So I will try to cross this border of years with an appropriate mindset. One of openness to the world, gratitude to my fellow humans, and optimism for our future.
Well shit, look at that, I’m in my thirties. Cool.
By the time anyone reads that, it will most likely not be true anymore. I think, according to the Popular Wisdom conveyed through our modern sages, like episodes of Friends, that I am supposed to be freaking out right now about getting older. Old.
After all, I am about to turn 30, I have no job, nor any visible path to one, no home…shit, I don’t even have a cell phone. And that is just the way I like it. (Well, for the cell phone at least, I am well and truly primed to start working again…)
I am ready to wrap up this decade. When I think back to who I was when I was 20, and the things that have happened since, I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude for all the people who were part of my life. I am satisfied with my twenties, time to wrap them up and start a new project.
The last decade has been good to me, on the inside and the outside. On the outside, it started with a sense that the politics in my country were accelerating down the drain, greased by greed, deception, and apathy. I felt a heavy pull towards losing all respect for my countrymen, and it was not a good feeling.
Now, while still not convinced my countrymen are all smart enough to come in out of the rain, I have seen something happen that maybe only the dreamers thought possible back 10 years ago. (Oh look, Hollywood has cast a black president, how cool would that be? Maybe someday…) And best of all, we don’t even notice he’s black anymore! I am proud of that. Albeit not planning on visiting Alabama any time soon. I like my optimism, thank you very much.
Those ten years have been good to me on the inside too. I have known good times, good friends, love, laughter, and sadness and pain to round out the form. I spent the first half ensconced in Santa Cruz, barely leaving the zip code, and it was good living. I spent the last third moving among thirty-something countries on three continents and that was good too. And just as with the politics, at the outset that transition seemed unimaginable.
And best of all, my thirties are shaping up to be fanfuckingtastic too.
Halfway into my first day of my thirties my amazing girlfriend Katrien will be joining me in Madrid where we will somehow survive the heat and enjoy vegetarian food from our favorite little restaurant tucked away on that one street I am pretty sure I still know how to find. And three days into my thirties we will get on a plane to Qatar, and four days in we will get on another plane to South Africa. From there it is a month of presumable amazingness in Africa, with a special glow leant to it by all of those who so generously supported out fundraising efforts. Thank you!!!
That glow of generosity is warming me as I move from my twenties to my thirties.
The first thing I will accomplish in my thirties will be painting orphanage walls in Pretoria, made possible by the contributions of various awesome people, from old friends I’ve had since I was 13 to new ones I haven’t even met yet. Friends one and all! And my twenties and thirties are richer because of you!
So I will try to cross this border of years with an appropriate mindset. One of openness to the world, gratitude to my fellow humans, and optimism for our future.
Well shit, look at that, I’m in my thirties. Cool.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Manjarin
The Knights Templar... I knew the name, but little beyond a vague sense of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Then I met some and they did more than attempt to assassinate charismatic archaeologists with chiseled jawlines. Tell me more, Indiana Google.
Among the most powerful military organizations during two centuries of the Middle Ages, the Templars were founded to protect pilgrims to Jerusalem after the First Crusade, and played a key part in many battles during those ill-advised conflicts.
Individual members were sworn to poverty and a life of servitude, but the order prospered, partly due to the creation of an early form of banking, whereby crusaders would give their money to the Order and receive a paper script, which could be redeemed in The Holy Land and/or their return home. This meant they didn't have to carry their money, leaving them less tempting to bandits on the long road to/from Jerusalem, but also that the ones who died, effectively gave their earthly fortunes to the Knights.
Being rich and sort-of-banks, the Templars eventually loaned a bunch of money to King Philip IV of France, who was an asshole. Instead of paying them back, he eradicated his rivals in 1307 by having them all arrested (on Friday the 13th) and tortured into confessions of idolatry, homosexuality, and spitting on the cross. History records that the last Grand Master of the Templars was burned at the stake in Paris in 1314 for having recanted his earlier confession.
There is a popular legend that as he died he cursed the Pope and the King to join him in death; both died within the year.
Almost seven hundred years later, somewhere in the 1980s, a snowstorm hit the mountains of western Castilla-Leon. The people of the already semi-abandoned village of Manjarin were forced to take refuge in the lower lands, and when they returned, they found that snow had caved in their roofs, and looters had taken most of their possessions. Harsh, no? The town had been struggling to survive for some time already, and that was the flake that broke the villagers' back, so they packed up what remained and left, leaving the town to fall into ruin, like several others in the area.
A few years later a generous and hard-working man named Tomas opened an encomienda in the abandoned schoolhouse. It is separate from the albergue system of the Camino de Santiago, and is located just before the highest point on the French Way of the Camino in an area characterized by bad weather.
Tomas is a Templar Knight.
I reached Manjarin coming down through the mist after passing the Iron Cross, a pilgrim landmark and guide post with an unfortunate name (though the cross was there long before the Nazis hatched from their eggs). The town is largely reduced to piles of fallen stones, with the notable exception of the refugio, that welcomes you with a display of flags and woodsmoke from the chimney.
The building is basic, stone, and the fireplace in the corner provides all the heat, some of which is carried by a chimney up to the loft where a dozen lucky pilgrims can sleep on mats, nervous about the smoke that lingers in the room but grateful for the heat.
There is no running water in the abandoned town, so the toilet is a dry one, with a pile of sawdust to dump in after you use it. The generator is for emergencies, and illumination comes from candles, a propane tank providing the cooking, and a bellows is an everyday tool for keeping the fire going.
A few serious men have dedicated themselves to this ancient order, and live in that empty stone town, offering peregrinos a unique experience in a place without street lights, clean of the cacophonies of traffic and television, and wrapped in mist that holds the sound of the Gregorian Chant close and intimate.
Tomas was away the night I was there, but the two men who were there prepared a simple dinner for us, which we took together at a trestle table, discussing their belief that Jesus took a wife, had children, and that women can exist outside of the Virgin v Whore dynamic promoted by some other dogmas over the centuries.
They believe celibacy is a powerful tool for getting closer to God…if the brother chooses it. Otherwise it does not work. It is always nice to hear common sense.
That place is no softer now than it was in the 1980s, and the modern Knights alternate years staying during the winter. They get few pilgrims during the snowbound months, but they do get some. The thought of that isolated mountain shrine, wrapped in snow, Gregorian chant hanging in the stillness…that would be worth the cold climb.
Among the most powerful military organizations during two centuries of the Middle Ages, the Templars were founded to protect pilgrims to Jerusalem after the First Crusade, and played a key part in many battles during those ill-advised conflicts.
Individual members were sworn to poverty and a life of servitude, but the order prospered, partly due to the creation of an early form of banking, whereby crusaders would give their money to the Order and receive a paper script, which could be redeemed in The Holy Land and/or their return home. This meant they didn't have to carry their money, leaving them less tempting to bandits on the long road to/from Jerusalem, but also that the ones who died, effectively gave their earthly fortunes to the Knights.
Being rich and sort-of-banks, the Templars eventually loaned a bunch of money to King Philip IV of France, who was an asshole. Instead of paying them back, he eradicated his rivals in 1307 by having them all arrested (on Friday the 13th) and tortured into confessions of idolatry, homosexuality, and spitting on the cross. History records that the last Grand Master of the Templars was burned at the stake in Paris in 1314 for having recanted his earlier confession.
There is a popular legend that as he died he cursed the Pope and the King to join him in death; both died within the year.
Almost seven hundred years later, somewhere in the 1980s, a snowstorm hit the mountains of western Castilla-Leon. The people of the already semi-abandoned village of Manjarin were forced to take refuge in the lower lands, and when they returned, they found that snow had caved in their roofs, and looters had taken most of their possessions. Harsh, no? The town had been struggling to survive for some time already, and that was the flake that broke the villagers' back, so they packed up what remained and left, leaving the town to fall into ruin, like several others in the area.
A few years later a generous and hard-working man named Tomas opened an encomienda in the abandoned schoolhouse. It is separate from the albergue system of the Camino de Santiago, and is located just before the highest point on the French Way of the Camino in an area characterized by bad weather.
Tomas is a Templar Knight.
The building is basic, stone, and the fireplace in the corner provides all the heat, some of which is carried by a chimney up to the loft where a dozen lucky pilgrims can sleep on mats, nervous about the smoke that lingers in the room but grateful for the heat.
A few serious men have dedicated themselves to this ancient order, and live in that empty stone town, offering peregrinos a unique experience in a place without street lights, clean of the cacophonies of traffic and television, and wrapped in mist that holds the sound of the Gregorian Chant close and intimate.
Tomas was away the night I was there, but the two men who were there prepared a simple dinner for us, which we took together at a trestle table, discussing their belief that Jesus took a wife, had children, and that women can exist outside of the Virgin v Whore dynamic promoted by some other dogmas over the centuries.They believe celibacy is a powerful tool for getting closer to God…if the brother chooses it. Otherwise it does not work. It is always nice to hear common sense.
That place is no softer now than it was in the 1980s, and the modern Knights alternate years staying during the winter. They get few pilgrims during the snowbound months, but they do get some. The thought of that isolated mountain shrine, wrapped in snow, Gregorian chant hanging in the stillness…that would be worth the cold climb.
Couchsurfing is the shit.
Humans are better than you are sometimes led to believe.
When I spent a week in a religious community in May, the sad thing was their super pessimistic view of modern society and humanity in general as being massively selfish Self-interest may indeed be rampant in many individual’s lives, poor souls, but I spent my last three days in Santiago as a guest of a guy I met the day before, who brought me into his house, gave me a set of keys, cooked for me, and showed me around town, introducing me to his friends and making sure I enjoyed my time there. The charge for this hosting was…nothing.
The website www.couchsurfing.org coordinates travelers and hosts, providing a framework for people to meet each other, help each other, and learn about each other. It is an absolutely beautiful thing. Now of course it has its tainted individuals, skeezy guys looking to get laid, or incomprehensible jerks who abuse the trust of the hosts, but as far as I can tell 100% of the time (with a slight margin of error) it provides for positive experiences.
I have only surfed twice, but both were fanfuckingtastic. The first was in Vitoria, the capital of the Basque Country in northern Spain, where a photographer showed me around this under-valued town and a student brought me on the field trip for a Symbolism and Iconography class to a local monastery which culminated in a five hour long lunch and sobremesa, the Spanish tradition of hanging out at the table after the meal, singing, telling stories, and a whole lot of laughing.
The second time was the one from above, in Santiago, Galicia, in northwest Spain. I was guided to the Galician heritage museum, a Thursday flea market of frying churros, hawkers selling pairs of socks for fifty cents, and flocks of bargain hunting Spanish women peering through piles of fashionable(?) footwear. We spent one evening eating tiny sea snails out of their shells with toothpicks and listening in on a Ben Harper concert beside the massive and impressive Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela while sipping local Galician vino tinto.
On my first trip through Europe one of my regrets was that I met very few locals. If I knew someone in a given country, chances were that I had met them while they were traveling somewhere else entirely. Couchsurfing is the remedy to that. I know have Spanish friends in Vitoria and Santiago, how cool is that! Even if you are not looking to sleep on someone’s couch, the site has a level for people who volunteer to meet up with you for a cup of coffee, a tour around town, or advice on what to do/see. It’s kind of like a facebook where the whole world is your friend.
There is only one aspect of my couchsurfing experience thus far that I don’t like: that I don’t have a way to return the favor. This type of generosity is a growing thing, and I want to pass it on.
In a world where the evening news shows you almost mythic stories of exploitation, violence, and insanity over and over, couchsurfing.org is a reminder of the generosity of actual people.
When I spent a week in a religious community in May, the sad thing was their super pessimistic view of modern society and humanity in general as being massively selfish Self-interest may indeed be rampant in many individual’s lives, poor souls, but I spent my last three days in Santiago as a guest of a guy I met the day before, who brought me into his house, gave me a set of keys, cooked for me, and showed me around town, introducing me to his friends and making sure I enjoyed my time there. The charge for this hosting was…nothing.
The website www.couchsurfing.org coordinates travelers and hosts, providing a framework for people to meet each other, help each other, and learn about each other. It is an absolutely beautiful thing. Now of course it has its tainted individuals, skeezy guys looking to get laid, or incomprehensible jerks who abuse the trust of the hosts, but as far as I can tell 100% of the time (with a slight margin of error) it provides for positive experiences.
I have only surfed twice, but both were fanfuckingtastic. The first was in Vitoria, the capital of the Basque Country in northern Spain, where a photographer showed me around this under-valued town and a student brought me on the field trip for a Symbolism and Iconography class to a local monastery which culminated in a five hour long lunch and sobremesa, the Spanish tradition of hanging out at the table after the meal, singing, telling stories, and a whole lot of laughing.
The second time was the one from above, in Santiago, Galicia, in northwest Spain. I was guided to the Galician heritage museum, a Thursday flea market of frying churros, hawkers selling pairs of socks for fifty cents, and flocks of bargain hunting Spanish women peering through piles of fashionable(?) footwear. We spent one evening eating tiny sea snails out of their shells with toothpicks and listening in on a Ben Harper concert beside the massive and impressive Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela while sipping local Galician vino tinto.
On my first trip through Europe one of my regrets was that I met very few locals. If I knew someone in a given country, chances were that I had met them while they were traveling somewhere else entirely. Couchsurfing is the remedy to that. I know have Spanish friends in Vitoria and Santiago, how cool is that! Even if you are not looking to sleep on someone’s couch, the site has a level for people who volunteer to meet up with you for a cup of coffee, a tour around town, or advice on what to do/see. It’s kind of like a facebook where the whole world is your friend.
There is only one aspect of my couchsurfing experience thus far that I don’t like: that I don’t have a way to return the favor. This type of generosity is a growing thing, and I want to pass it on.
In a world where the evening news shows you almost mythic stories of exploitation, violence, and insanity over and over, couchsurfing.org is a reminder of the generosity of actual people.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
More interesting than the bus.
Hey cool, I didn’t get ax-murdered.
Always trying to save money (seriously, someone hire me…please?) and have interesting experiences, I decided to skip the bus from Santiago to Madrid and hitch-hike. Don’t tell my mom. (Hi mom.) I figured this was a great place to do it, with all these great pilgrim people around, Santiago must be used to alternative travel arrangements and trustworthy folk, right?
Besides, I had just come off an incredible three days couch surfing so was pretty high on the human spirit. (If you don’t know couchsurfing.org and are cool, you should check it out and sign up.) I headed over to the spot recommended by my host and stuck the thumb out.
It took longer than I expected, and I admit I was getting a little down on the Spanish character when I got a ride from a lady with a mini-van full of kids. Unexpected. Normally when I see kids in the car I lower the pulgada because I understand someone not wanting to put some wacko off the side of the road in the car with their progeny. But this car was different. I don’t know what the story was, some sort of kickass foster program, maybe? The kids were from different countries, and the conversation ranged from drugs (where I duly reported that they are an awful idea, other than a little natural herbal goodness) though the kids knew more than I do I think (what the hell is “pollen?”) to what strange food we’ve eaten, where I thought my goat-head soup with brain, kidney, heart, liver and who knows what else would stack up well enough, but even the tiny dude has eaten the testicles of some sort of animal (I couldn’t hear him real well over the background noise of his adorableness).
The matron of the wagon was totally down to earth and realistic, and to be honest I had nothing but confidence in these kids as they climbed out at various points around town.
They recommended a place to get good cheap food, so I went over and ordered my chicken-breast sandwich. It was good for the first half, which I ate fast enough o not notice that the chicken was basically raw. Nothing like hitchhiking with the imminent possibility of projectile vomit, right?
I started walking again, trying not to be grumpy about the cook’s ineptitude (these things happen, right?) because no one wants to pick up a grumpy hitcher. Apparently I hid it well enough because the very first car stopped and picked me up. It was one of those mini van-truck things that are so uber-popular in Spain (called fulgonetas here).
The highway we were on went straight to Ourense, with no other towns of note and no other highways to choose from, but he consulted the map to make sure it was on his way. That could have been a sign.
He was coming from a seminar of vocational training classes in Galicia and on the way back was looking at a house he was considering buying in Castilla, before returning home to Madrid. Sure, why not, I’ll ride along.
We made our way to the town. The village. The hamlet. The Podunk. It was one of those towns that I passed through on the Camino de Santiago where all the young people have left and the streets are dry and unstained, four octogenarians sharing the occasional bench in silence. Those were sad, this, without the passing pilgrims, was worse.
We found the house and I am proud to say I managed to wait until I was out of their sight before letting my jaw drop open in absolute astonishment. The place was…a mess. I can understand that not everywhere is going to have the USA realtor style of polishing everything and spraying New Cookie Smell aerosols everywhere, but shit man, at least sweep up some of the dead cockroaches, no?
It was one of those traditional countryside buildings, with roughhewn timber ceiling beams below plaster and adobe walls, uneven floors and a big pit for a cellar. It was like a museum…that hasn’t had funding in 30 years…where the curator died 27 years ago without anyone noticing…and he left the doors and windows open.
There was stuff in the house from the previous owner, but of course it couldn’t be normal stuff, no, it had to be bizarre canes and tattered religious icons and dishes covered in dirt from the decaying ceiling and thingymajiggit whosawhatsits. And I swear I got some seriously spooky vibes from that back bedroom, the one with the bed in the dark corner below the crucifix. Somebody got themselves chopped up with a kitchen knife in that room. Possibly by one of the dolls in the parlor that were watching me.
And there was a noticeable difference between the level of the roof outside and the level of the ceiling inside, with no access and no windows. It was less than a full storey width, but more than just an attic. I asked what was up there and the agent, without meeting my eyes, murmured something about other space and changed the subject.
My driver guy though didn’t seem to care about these details, and when I got back from exploring, fleeing, and protecting my soul from the vengeful poltergeist, he was ears-deep into a monologue about the corruption of the Spanish government and how the people in this town, all 1,000 of them, should form a new political party and overthrow the system.
The realtor’s mom, because what realtor doesn’t bring their mom along, was giving him one of the best askance looks I have ever seen. I wanted to take a picture. Instead I walked back to the car before the doll that was following me with a rusty (that is rust, right?) cleaver caught up with me.
We left behind the decaying adobe walls, straw and underlying bricks hanging out into the street, and got back on the road. He seemed to be considering buying it.
From there it was onward to Madrid. The trip should have taken maybe 5 hours. It took us 11. I don’t understand how, because he drove like a madman. A blindfolded madman. With a tendency to reach behind him for a soda as we approached sharp turns, roundabouts, or pedestrians. I wasn’t sure Red Bull was such a good idea.
Americans can’t drive straight, we drift around our giant lanes like oversize pinballs. Italians drift fully across and between lanes. This guy did the same. My favorite was when he would drift over until we were straddling the lane line, then signal and move back into the one we’d just left. Once it got dark he would randomly flick on his high beams, without any sort of rhyme or reason that I could identify.
Early in the trip he told me he was tired of living in Spain, but every country I suggested he was afraid of. I thought that was actually kind of cute, in a sad way. Poor guy, scared of everything.
Then he offhandedly mentioned that all his friends and family think he is a monster. I didn’t ask for an explanation and he didn’t offer one.
Then I learned how he had run afoul of Almeria. The entire town. He told me about how it was all mafia down there and after some unintelligible details concerning the sale of a motorcycle or three, some sort of medical process gone wrong, and a whole lot of legal denunciations on his part, he had fled the city.
Looking to change the subject I asked him about the classes he had taken. They hadn’t ended well, with him leaving early after being threatened and abused by the programs sub-director. And more denunciations. Those were kind of a theme of his. The classes he was taking were about programming automatons.
Then he was telling me about his dreams and detailed belief in extraterrestrials, and how he remembered his own birth and back to his own conception.
We got to one of the tollbooths for the highway, and as we pulled through I wasn’t sure if I wanted the Guardia Civil to approach us or not… Dealing with the Guardia Civil is kind of like dealing with belligerent gorillas or being in prison, you kind of just don’t make eye contact and see if you can slip by. But not my guy. He pulled up to the two officers, who I swear looked to me like they were about to start goose-stepping, and asked “Can we help you with anything?”
I don’t know who was more surprised, the officers, me, or himself. They responded with a curt and clipped “move along” and off we went. I couldn’t help but wonder if it would have been better to jump out at that point, losing my backpack to save my hide.
But we kept on, eventually getting to the Community of Madrid, where I breathed a cautious sigh of relief at having made it. Turns out the Community of Madrid is frickin massive, and we still had 47 kilometers to go. By this time he was getting really tired, seemingly at an increasing rate. Now when he drifted over to span two lanes he didn’t seem to notice or care.
He was running a fairly continuous commentary, and it increasingly made no sense. “El coche zapatilla” and “el coche de Bilbao aqui era dejado” both sound like bad poetry, but when they are spilling from the glazed aspect of the person who is driving the truck you are in at 120 kilometers an hour? Not so pretty.
We finally made it to the streets of Madrid proper, where at least we were going slower. Now if only he hadn’t been honking at all the semi-naked ladies (seriously, I don’t mean to sound conservative but…never mind, that’s another post) and drifting into crosswalks. Then he got in the taxi-only lane and when we caught up to the queue of taxis honked at them for blocking the way.
I don’t know how long it has been since he was here (he says he lives here) but he tried to turn onto a street that was now a pedestrian zone covered with people at 1:00 AM on a Spanish Friday night. Twice.
But we made it to the neighborhood where I know of a few hostels, and I climbed out. To be honest I am very thankful to him for taking me all this way, and really wish him the best of luck. And I gave him my email address, which is linked to my face book, which has this blog address…maybe I shouldn’t post this…
Always trying to save money (seriously, someone hire me…please?) and have interesting experiences, I decided to skip the bus from Santiago to Madrid and hitch-hike. Don’t tell my mom. (Hi mom.) I figured this was a great place to do it, with all these great pilgrim people around, Santiago must be used to alternative travel arrangements and trustworthy folk, right?
Besides, I had just come off an incredible three days couch surfing so was pretty high on the human spirit. (If you don’t know couchsurfing.org and are cool, you should check it out and sign up.) I headed over to the spot recommended by my host and stuck the thumb out.
It took longer than I expected, and I admit I was getting a little down on the Spanish character when I got a ride from a lady with a mini-van full of kids. Unexpected. Normally when I see kids in the car I lower the pulgada because I understand someone not wanting to put some wacko off the side of the road in the car with their progeny. But this car was different. I don’t know what the story was, some sort of kickass foster program, maybe? The kids were from different countries, and the conversation ranged from drugs (where I duly reported that they are an awful idea, other than a little natural herbal goodness) though the kids knew more than I do I think (what the hell is “pollen?”) to what strange food we’ve eaten, where I thought my goat-head soup with brain, kidney, heart, liver and who knows what else would stack up well enough, but even the tiny dude has eaten the testicles of some sort of animal (I couldn’t hear him real well over the background noise of his adorableness).
The matron of the wagon was totally down to earth and realistic, and to be honest I had nothing but confidence in these kids as they climbed out at various points around town.They recommended a place to get good cheap food, so I went over and ordered my chicken-breast sandwich. It was good for the first half, which I ate fast enough o not notice that the chicken was basically raw. Nothing like hitchhiking with the imminent possibility of projectile vomit, right?
I started walking again, trying not to be grumpy about the cook’s ineptitude (these things happen, right?) because no one wants to pick up a grumpy hitcher. Apparently I hid it well enough because the very first car stopped and picked me up. It was one of those mini van-truck things that are so uber-popular in Spain (called fulgonetas here).
The highway we were on went straight to Ourense, with no other towns of note and no other highways to choose from, but he consulted the map to make sure it was on his way. That could have been a sign.
He was coming from a seminar of vocational training classes in Galicia and on the way back was looking at a house he was considering buying in Castilla, before returning home to Madrid. Sure, why not, I’ll ride along.
We made our way to the town. The village. The hamlet. The Podunk. It was one of those towns that I passed through on the Camino de Santiago where all the young people have left and the streets are dry and unstained, four octogenarians sharing the occasional bench in silence. Those were sad, this, without the passing pilgrims, was worse.
We found the house and I am proud to say I managed to wait until I was out of their sight before letting my jaw drop open in absolute astonishment. The place was…a mess. I can understand that not everywhere is going to have the USA realtor style of polishing everything and spraying New Cookie Smell aerosols everywhere, but shit man, at least sweep up some of the dead cockroaches, no?
It was one of those traditional countryside buildings, with roughhewn timber ceiling beams below plaster and adobe walls, uneven floors and a big pit for a cellar. It was like a museum…that hasn’t had funding in 30 years…where the curator died 27 years ago without anyone noticing…and he left the doors and windows open.
There was stuff in the house from the previous owner, but of course it couldn’t be normal stuff, no, it had to be bizarre canes and tattered religious icons and dishes covered in dirt from the decaying ceiling and thingymajiggit whosawhatsits. And I swear I got some seriously spooky vibes from that back bedroom, the one with the bed in the dark corner below the crucifix. Somebody got themselves chopped up with a kitchen knife in that room. Possibly by one of the dolls in the parlor that were watching me.
And there was a noticeable difference between the level of the roof outside and the level of the ceiling inside, with no access and no windows. It was less than a full storey width, but more than just an attic. I asked what was up there and the agent, without meeting my eyes, murmured something about other space and changed the subject.
My driver guy though didn’t seem to care about these details, and when I got back from exploring, fleeing, and protecting my soul from the vengeful poltergeist, he was ears-deep into a monologue about the corruption of the Spanish government and how the people in this town, all 1,000 of them, should form a new political party and overthrow the system.
The realtor’s mom, because what realtor doesn’t bring their mom along, was giving him one of the best askance looks I have ever seen. I wanted to take a picture. Instead I walked back to the car before the doll that was following me with a rusty (that is rust, right?) cleaver caught up with me.
From there it was onward to Madrid. The trip should have taken maybe 5 hours. It took us 11. I don’t understand how, because he drove like a madman. A blindfolded madman. With a tendency to reach behind him for a soda as we approached sharp turns, roundabouts, or pedestrians. I wasn’t sure Red Bull was such a good idea.
Americans can’t drive straight, we drift around our giant lanes like oversize pinballs. Italians drift fully across and between lanes. This guy did the same. My favorite was when he would drift over until we were straddling the lane line, then signal and move back into the one we’d just left. Once it got dark he would randomly flick on his high beams, without any sort of rhyme or reason that I could identify.
Early in the trip he told me he was tired of living in Spain, but every country I suggested he was afraid of. I thought that was actually kind of cute, in a sad way. Poor guy, scared of everything.
Then he offhandedly mentioned that all his friends and family think he is a monster. I didn’t ask for an explanation and he didn’t offer one.
Then I learned how he had run afoul of Almeria. The entire town. He told me about how it was all mafia down there and after some unintelligible details concerning the sale of a motorcycle or three, some sort of medical process gone wrong, and a whole lot of legal denunciations on his part, he had fled the city.
Looking to change the subject I asked him about the classes he had taken. They hadn’t ended well, with him leaving early after being threatened and abused by the programs sub-director. And more denunciations. Those were kind of a theme of his. The classes he was taking were about programming automatons.
Then he was telling me about his dreams and detailed belief in extraterrestrials, and how he remembered his own birth and back to his own conception.
We got to one of the tollbooths for the highway, and as we pulled through I wasn’t sure if I wanted the Guardia Civil to approach us or not… Dealing with the Guardia Civil is kind of like dealing with belligerent gorillas or being in prison, you kind of just don’t make eye contact and see if you can slip by. But not my guy. He pulled up to the two officers, who I swear looked to me like they were about to start goose-stepping, and asked “Can we help you with anything?”
I don’t know who was more surprised, the officers, me, or himself. They responded with a curt and clipped “move along” and off we went. I couldn’t help but wonder if it would have been better to jump out at that point, losing my backpack to save my hide.
But we kept on, eventually getting to the Community of Madrid, where I breathed a cautious sigh of relief at having made it. Turns out the Community of Madrid is frickin massive, and we still had 47 kilometers to go. By this time he was getting really tired, seemingly at an increasing rate. Now when he drifted over to span two lanes he didn’t seem to notice or care.
He was running a fairly continuous commentary, and it increasingly made no sense. “El coche zapatilla” and “el coche de Bilbao aqui era dejado” both sound like bad poetry, but when they are spilling from the glazed aspect of the person who is driving the truck you are in at 120 kilometers an hour? Not so pretty.
We finally made it to the streets of Madrid proper, where at least we were going slower. Now if only he hadn’t been honking at all the semi-naked ladies (seriously, I don’t mean to sound conservative but…never mind, that’s another post) and drifting into crosswalks. Then he got in the taxi-only lane and when we caught up to the queue of taxis honked at them for blocking the way.
I don’t know how long it has been since he was here (he says he lives here) but he tried to turn onto a street that was now a pedestrian zone covered with people at 1:00 AM on a Spanish Friday night. Twice.
But we made it to the neighborhood where I know of a few hostels, and I climbed out. To be honest I am very thankful to him for taking me all this way, and really wish him the best of luck. And I gave him my email address, which is linked to my face book, which has this blog address…maybe I shouldn’t post this…
Monday, July 12, 2010
Capitalism on the Camino de Santiago
Back in The Day when pilgrims were darn likely to die en route of disease, bandits, exhaustion, exposure, drowning, falling off the Pyrenees, or (my own closest hazard) sneezing until their brains liquefy and leak out the ears (I believe the Latin term is Mortis Supersneezus) their devotion and Calling to their faith was rewarded and assisted by a spirit of charity that ranged from locals giving water and food, to organizations like the Knights Templar which risked their own wellbeing to patrol the Camino.
Nowadays most locals don’t seem to notice pilgrims anymore, moving around them the way you unconsciously move around puddles after a month of rain, and the Guardia Civil (Spanish police) only interacts with you if you look Moroccan. (I know, that’s inflammatory, but shit man, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a police force more given to racial profiling. It‘s worse than Arizona.)
Anyway, what I was getting at is that the spirit of charity for pilgrims has generally dissolved. This is entirely logical, given that instead of death, we only risk physical discomfort, and instead of a few devout/crazy individuals, today you find everything from students on a cheap holiday to retirees proving their mettle (far more of the latter, and still all varying degrees of crazy). With ATMs and guidebooks we don’t have that same level of dependency on the goodwill of others. Plus there’s 150,000 of us annually.
The problem I see is the speed with which a certain dearth of charity is evolving into outright exploitation.
Up until a few years ago all the accommodation was based on donations by pilgrims. Apparently their numbers outpaced their generosity, so a modest fee of a couple euro became standard. Now it is pretty much just the religious shelters, “parroquial” albergues, that are donativo, and not surprisingly they conserve a very different feel and attitude than the private ones.
Guide books from even last year advise typical prices for lodging as 3 Euro, a bocadillo sandwich is 2, and a pilgrim menu 7. I found few incidences of any of those three that were less than 2 euros higher than those prices, with a lot of the private albergues charging 12. (Just in case, bocadillo is the Spanish sandwich whose predictability has kept me alive and utterly bored flavor-wise for the past month, and menu is in the European sense of a two course meal plus wine, bread, and usually dessert. That sounds luxurious, and fairly is, but pilgrim menus are a standardized, almost fast-food version of a two course meal, served on the cheap, and you burn something like 5,000 calories a day walking.)
Some of these albergues, especially those that combine lodging with food service, are making an absolute killing off of pilgrims. 5 euro for every body in a bunk bed in a 100 bed room where you don’t even provide sheets, and 9 euro for every cheap dish of meat and French fries, and I am starting to look for a Knight Templar to protect me from the bandit, you know?
Now, I don’t want to bitch and moan about 2 euro…and I’m not. I’m bitching and moaning about 2 euro for everything, every time, and around something that is supposed to be about high-falootin‘ stuff like personal transformation, spirituality, and the goodness of mankind. And it is seemingly increasing dramatically in only a year or so; what is the future?
Capitalism is infiltrating the Camino de Santiago.
Now, I know it is all relative. If you were to go for a personally transformative experience in a New Age center like Sedona, I don’t know but I expect you would be paying exponentially higher amounts. But damnit, that’s their problem, they’re even farther off-track. (We can talk about the psychology of humans and how they only value things they pay for another time.)
This being said, there is a flip side, but these columns, though narrow, look intimidatingly long so I will put that in a separate post…
Oh, and this is the town from the other post that is growing so quickly...Hontanas, hidden in the plains of the meseta a day past Burgos. The albergue was in the ?th century pilgrim hospital.
Nowadays most locals don’t seem to notice pilgrims anymore, moving around them the way you unconsciously move around puddles after a month of rain, and the Guardia Civil (Spanish police) only interacts with you if you look Moroccan. (I know, that’s inflammatory, but shit man, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a police force more given to racial profiling. It‘s worse than Arizona.)
Anyway, what I was getting at is that the spirit of charity for pilgrims has generally dissolved. This is entirely logical, given that instead of death, we only risk physical discomfort, and instead of a few devout/crazy individuals, today you find everything from students on a cheap holiday to retirees proving their mettle (far more of the latter, and still all varying degrees of crazy). With ATMs and guidebooks we don’t have that same level of dependency on the goodwill of others. Plus there’s 150,000 of us annually.
The problem I see is the speed with which a certain dearth of charity is evolving into outright exploitation.
Guide books from even last year advise typical prices for lodging as 3 Euro, a bocadillo sandwich is 2, and a pilgrim menu 7. I found few incidences of any of those three that were less than 2 euros higher than those prices, with a lot of the private albergues charging 12. (Just in case, bocadillo is the Spanish sandwich whose predictability has kept me alive and utterly bored flavor-wise for the past month, and menu is in the European sense of a two course meal plus wine, bread, and usually dessert. That sounds luxurious, and fairly is, but pilgrim menus are a standardized, almost fast-food version of a two course meal, served on the cheap, and you burn something like 5,000 calories a day walking.)
Some of these albergues, especially those that combine lodging with food service, are making an absolute killing off of pilgrims. 5 euro for every body in a bunk bed in a 100 bed room where you don’t even provide sheets, and 9 euro for every cheap dish of meat and French fries, and I am starting to look for a Knight Templar to protect me from the bandit, you know?
Now, I don’t want to bitch and moan about 2 euro…and I’m not. I’m bitching and moaning about 2 euro for everything, every time, and around something that is supposed to be about high-falootin‘ stuff like personal transformation, spirituality, and the goodness of mankind. And it is seemingly increasing dramatically in only a year or so; what is the future?
Capitalism is infiltrating the Camino de Santiago.
Now, I know it is all relative. If you were to go for a personally transformative experience in a New Age center like Sedona, I don’t know but I expect you would be paying exponentially higher amounts. But damnit, that’s their problem, they’re even farther off-track. (We can talk about the psychology of humans and how they only value things they pay for another time.)
This being said, there is a flip side, but these columns, though narrow, look intimidatingly long so I will put that in a separate post…
Entrepreneurship on the Camino de Santiago
There is a massive amount of business opportunity being wasted on the Camino de Santiago.
Pilgrims generally start walking between 5:00 and 7:00 AM. They are going to be walking all day, burning well over twice as many calories as in normal life, and are generally hungry. Spanish bars, the standard (and often only) eating establishment in most of the towns, rarely open before 10:00 and when they do open, they pretty much only serve coffee. And white white white bread. (In the town in the picture there was no bar or cafe, and one little store, no sandwiches or prepared food, only that airy dry white bread.)
The Spanish siesta is still very much in force, especially in the small towns, and as pilgrims arrive at their day’s destination around 1:00 or 2:00 PM they often have to wait for things to open again at 5:00.
I was happy to see people sticking to their traditional ways, without regard for accommodating us interlopers, buuuut…
Particularly for that morning period, if you opened a little waffle, pancake, crepe, or whatever cart along the side of the camino and sold them for 50 cents each? You would sell out every day. You could take a giant vat of pancake batter down there and pilgrims would be licking it clean for you within two hours. That’s actually kind of a gross and post-Apocalyptic image, sorry.
Sandwiches in the afternoon, especially if they actually have any flavor, and especially especially if you added a couple fans and shade to sit in, and it would be the same story. Only without any licking.
I know I was just ranting about how business is tainting the Camino de Santiago (sometimes don’t you wish you could kick Big Business right in the taint?) and that may seem at odds with this, but it’s not, as long as the cart/stand is run with the right mentality. Charge enough to cover costs and pay your rent, and provide for the pilgrims without exploiting them. We are hungry, man!
All the way across Spain, 1,000 kilometers of walking and I saw one guy doing this, selling drinks and snacks out of the back of his tiny pickup truck at the ferociously windy peak of Alto de Perdon above Pamplona.
All this being said, I am going to rather contradict myself, as usual, and say that there is also something essential about pilgrims NOT having their needs met. We SHOULD be hungry a lot of the time. We SHOULD be thirsty and footsore and smelly. It’s part of the experience.
This opportunity is glaring, and I know I am not the only one to notice it, and to be honest I am a little scared to see what will happen to the Camino de Santiago over the next few years. I met an Italian guy, Graziano, who had been in one of the tiny towns the year before. Last year there was one albergue, and one café. This year there were two albergues, three restaurants, a tiny store, and at least three more buildings under construction.
So don’t open too many stands, but maybe one at the top of that one hill before Santo Domingo…
Pilgrims generally start walking between 5:00 and 7:00 AM. They are going to be walking all day, burning well over twice as many calories as in normal life, and are generally hungry. Spanish bars, the standard (and often only) eating establishment in most of the towns, rarely open before 10:00 and when they do open, they pretty much only serve coffee. And white white white bread. (In the town in the picture there was no bar or cafe, and one little store, no sandwiches or prepared food, only that airy dry white bread.)
The Spanish siesta is still very much in force, especially in the small towns, and as pilgrims arrive at their day’s destination around 1:00 or 2:00 PM they often have to wait for things to open again at 5:00.
I was happy to see people sticking to their traditional ways, without regard for accommodating us interlopers, buuuut…
Particularly for that morning period, if you opened a little waffle, pancake, crepe, or whatever cart along the side of the camino and sold them for 50 cents each? You would sell out every day. You could take a giant vat of pancake batter down there and pilgrims would be licking it clean for you within two hours. That’s actually kind of a gross and post-Apocalyptic image, sorry.
Sandwiches in the afternoon, especially if they actually have any flavor, and especially especially if you added a couple fans and shade to sit in, and it would be the same story. Only without any licking.
I know I was just ranting about how business is tainting the Camino de Santiago (sometimes don’t you wish you could kick Big Business right in the taint?) and that may seem at odds with this, but it’s not, as long as the cart/stand is run with the right mentality. Charge enough to cover costs and pay your rent, and provide for the pilgrims without exploiting them. We are hungry, man!
All this being said, I am going to rather contradict myself, as usual, and say that there is also something essential about pilgrims NOT having their needs met. We SHOULD be hungry a lot of the time. We SHOULD be thirsty and footsore and smelly. It’s part of the experience.
This opportunity is glaring, and I know I am not the only one to notice it, and to be honest I am a little scared to see what will happen to the Camino de Santiago over the next few years. I met an Italian guy, Graziano, who had been in one of the tiny towns the year before. Last year there was one albergue, and one café. This year there were two albergues, three restaurants, a tiny store, and at least three more buildings under construction.
So don’t open too many stands, but maybe one at the top of that one hill before Santo Domingo…
Serendipity baby
This Universe is just too flippin amazing sometimes. Of course things don’t always go well, but when they just fall into place…it’s a trippy sense of the Divine, no?
Last night was the World Cup Final, and my recent case of Spanish Futbol Fever had me stoked (if I can reveal my continuing low-grade case of California surfer slang). Watching a soccer game alone is okay, but oh-so-much-better with friends. The problem was, in this entire city I knew two people, and since they are always together, effectively count as one person with regards to likelihood of random encounters.
I wandered around the city all afternoon people watching, reading, and making a ginormous sandwich in the park with sharp sheep-milk cheese, fresh tomato, and red bell pepper while sitting across the path from a bench loaded with four nuns in beige robes eating ice cream. It was beautiful.
But I didn’t see my friends. It was getting kind of chilly, and since the game wouldn’t end until 11:00ish, I headed back to the place I’m staying to get my long-sleeve shirt. Since the world is a beautiful and amazing place, on the way I ran into, yup, the couple I know. They had a table with an extra chair in view of the screen, their Spanish couch surfing host was on the way, and suffice to say, I never made it back for that shirt and am absolutely fine with that.
I may have shivered a bit, but I had good Galician beer to drink, octopus to eat, and great company to keep me happy. An entire city and I happen to walk right past their table. Serendipitous, no?
And it gets better. They were couch surfing, their host came by, he is fantastic, I need a place from tomorrow on, they are leaving today… So now I am meeting the host, Juan, in the park tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 to move my stuff to his place.
I am adding Serendipity to my list of names of the Divine.
Last night was the World Cup Final, and my recent case of Spanish Futbol Fever had me stoked (if I can reveal my continuing low-grade case of California surfer slang). Watching a soccer game alone is okay, but oh-so-much-better with friends. The problem was, in this entire city I knew two people, and since they are always together, effectively count as one person with regards to likelihood of random encounters.
I wandered around the city all afternoon people watching, reading, and making a ginormous sandwich in the park with sharp sheep-milk cheese, fresh tomato, and red bell pepper while sitting across the path from a bench loaded with four nuns in beige robes eating ice cream. It was beautiful.
But I didn’t see my friends. It was getting kind of chilly, and since the game wouldn’t end until 11:00ish, I headed back to the place I’m staying to get my long-sleeve shirt. Since the world is a beautiful and amazing place, on the way I ran into, yup, the couple I know. They had a table with an extra chair in view of the screen, their Spanish couch surfing host was on the way, and suffice to say, I never made it back for that shirt and am absolutely fine with that.
I may have shivered a bit, but I had good Galician beer to drink, octopus to eat, and great company to keep me happy. An entire city and I happen to walk right past their table. Serendipitous, no?
And it gets better. They were couch surfing, their host came by, he is fantastic, I need a place from tomorrow on, they are leaving today… So now I am meeting the host, Juan, in the park tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 to move my stuff to his place.
I am adding Serendipity to my list of names of the Divine.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Acabo de peregrinar.
Well shucks, man, I finished. No more walking. That is, no more Walking, no more pilgrimage. This morning I woke up at 9:00. 9:00! On a typical Camino day I was up at 6:00 or 6:30 and walking within about 20 minutes, or earlier if it was going to be a really hot day. By 9:00 I’d be a couple towns down the road.
And I took a shower…in the morning! Camino showers were in the afternoon, partially because by the time I reached the albergue (pronounced “al-bear-gay” by the way) I was in desperate need of a shower but also because showering makes your feet all wet and soggy and soft, and more vulnerable to blisters, so inadvisable in the morning.
And today I expect to only wear my sandals. My shoes are on vacation. Smelly, smelly vacation. On the outside windowsill.
Sleeping in, showering when I want, and wearing only sandals are three things I enjoy…but it is really tempting to give them all up for the sweat and blisters and uncertainty of walking. Maybe there’s a shaded little beach next to a river just beyond that hill… Maybe a really interesting person from who-knows-where is in the next albergue.
But I am done. And it’s weird. And it’s good. Tonight I will go to bed in the same place I woke up. (Well, same city anyway, I am still day-to-day on accommodations…if anyone knows of a couch I could sleep on tonight, let me know.) I know where the nearest store is, and a good bar, and a bench in the shade.
When I was here before, three hundred kilometers ago, I was surrounded by the energy of finishing. My pack of five-ish fellow walkers counted down the kilometers to Santiago, and up arriving it was satisfaction, celebration, and farewells. I was the only one not done, not going home.
Then I walked to Finisterra, and the albergue and town were saturated with that same sense of completion. People burned their hiking boots and threw their walking sticks into the sea. It is a tiny town and buses back to the city leave every couple hours.
Then on to Muxia, where it was the same, everyone was finishing. And back to Finisterra, same same. Back to Muxia. Again. Including the Dutch couple who walked all the way from the Netherlands, three thousand km or something like that. Oy vey!
I bused to A Coruna, where I joined up with a fantastic Scotsman named Charlie to walk the Camino Ingles back down to Santiago. Again, arriving in the city had a culmination feel. Same same, but different.
This time I was actually finishing. And because the Universe has a sense of humor, Charlie was not. He stayed overnight and took a bus south the next day to start the last section of the Camino Portuges. I was on the other side of the fence now.
So now I am finished. I can sleep in, let my blisters heal, and maybe finally tell you about Manjarin. I stayed up late reading last night. I bought a heavier bag of groceries today.
I’m sure there are more things I would like to say about this, but right now I am going to go for a walk. No, a stroll. I am going to go for a stroll around town. Slowly. My backpack stays here.
And I took a shower…in the morning! Camino showers were in the afternoon, partially because by the time I reached the albergue (pronounced “al-bear-gay” by the way) I was in desperate need of a shower but also because showering makes your feet all wet and soggy and soft, and more vulnerable to blisters, so inadvisable in the morning.
And today I expect to only wear my sandals. My shoes are on vacation. Smelly, smelly vacation. On the outside windowsill.
Sleeping in, showering when I want, and wearing only sandals are three things I enjoy…but it is really tempting to give them all up for the sweat and blisters and uncertainty of walking. Maybe there’s a shaded little beach next to a river just beyond that hill… Maybe a really interesting person from who-knows-where is in the next albergue.
But I am done. And it’s weird. And it’s good. Tonight I will go to bed in the same place I woke up. (Well, same city anyway, I am still day-to-day on accommodations…if anyone knows of a couch I could sleep on tonight, let me know.) I know where the nearest store is, and a good bar, and a bench in the shade.
When I was here before, three hundred kilometers ago, I was surrounded by the energy of finishing. My pack of five-ish fellow walkers counted down the kilometers to Santiago, and up arriving it was satisfaction, celebration, and farewells. I was the only one not done, not going home.
Then I walked to Finisterra, and the albergue and town were saturated with that same sense of completion. People burned their hiking boots and threw their walking sticks into the sea. It is a tiny town and buses back to the city leave every couple hours.
Then on to Muxia, where it was the same, everyone was finishing. And back to Finisterra, same same. Back to Muxia. Again. Including the Dutch couple who walked all the way from the Netherlands, three thousand km or something like that. Oy vey!
I bused to A Coruna, where I joined up with a fantastic Scotsman named Charlie to walk the Camino Ingles back down to Santiago. Again, arriving in the city had a culmination feel. Same same, but different.
This time I was actually finishing. And because the Universe has a sense of humor, Charlie was not. He stayed overnight and took a bus south the next day to start the last section of the Camino Portuges. I was on the other side of the fence now.
So now I am finished. I can sleep in, let my blisters heal, and maybe finally tell you about Manjarin. I stayed up late reading last night. I bought a heavier bag of groceries today.
I’m sure there are more things I would like to say about this, but right now I am going to go for a walk. No, a stroll. I am going to go for a stroll around town. Slowly. My backpack stays here.
Futbolista
Blech, I was trying to write a post about how business is contaminating the Camino, and it is just too wordy, so instead here’s a note about soccer.
I don’t know if you have been watching the World Cup, or were already aware of this, but Spanish soccer fans are lunatics. I watched the last game (sorry Germany, it surprised me too) in a town whose name I can never remember and whose size confuses me (why is it so big? There is nothing there!) and our table of three pilgrims stood out as the only people not wearing jerseys.
You could feel everyone holding their breath off and on until Spain finally scored. Everyone jumped up and we were all yelling and screaming and bedlam and I felt something hit my feet and looked down into the glazed and confused eyes of the guy wearing the Spanish flag as a cape who had been sitting next to me and was now passed out on the floor.
He was so excited by the goal he literally fainted dead away. It was only after a couple more rounds of high fives and finishing the song-chant that anyone could control their enthusiasm long enough to pick him up.
Poor guy probably lost all memory of the goal. The good thing for him though is that since then they have replayed the game and goal about forty-seven thousand times. Yesterday there was a pack of a dozen jersey-wearing fans walking around Santiago and they saw a TV showing the game again. They were headed to the Cathedral, but since it was minute 64 and they all knew the goal comes in minute 72, they decided to stand in the street and wait for it.
Eight smiling minutes later we had cheers and a song, and then they were back on their way to church.
I don’t know if you have been watching the World Cup, or were already aware of this, but Spanish soccer fans are lunatics. I watched the last game (sorry Germany, it surprised me too) in a town whose name I can never remember and whose size confuses me (why is it so big? There is nothing there!) and our table of three pilgrims stood out as the only people not wearing jerseys.
You could feel everyone holding their breath off and on until Spain finally scored. Everyone jumped up and we were all yelling and screaming and bedlam and I felt something hit my feet and looked down into the glazed and confused eyes of the guy wearing the Spanish flag as a cape who had been sitting next to me and was now passed out on the floor.
He was so excited by the goal he literally fainted dead away. It was only after a couple more rounds of high fives and finishing the song-chant that anyone could control their enthusiasm long enough to pick him up.
Poor guy probably lost all memory of the goal. The good thing for him though is that since then they have replayed the game and goal about forty-seven thousand times. Yesterday there was a pack of a dozen jersey-wearing fans walking around Santiago and they saw a TV showing the game again. They were headed to the Cathedral, but since it was minute 64 and they all knew the goal comes in minute 72, they decided to stand in the street and wait for it.
Eight smiling minutes later we had cheers and a song, and then they were back on their way to church.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
The Company We Keep
The formal Camino ends at the Cathedral in Santiago, but you can extend it to Finisterre. From there you can further continue to the other side of the peninsula to a small town called Muxia, which has its own legends, a striking sanctuary church, and a sea that was stormy and gray.
I am still a couple hundred kilometers short of my 1,000 km goal, so two days ago I walked the 30 km up to Muxia, then yesterday walked back. On the way up I walked with Michael from Denmark, on the way back with Yoshino from Japan. The path was the same but the experience totally different.
Michael has been homeless for years. He has been addicted to hard drugs, served time in prison for a bank robbery, and been hunted by Middle Eastern gangsters. He served in the French Foreign Legion to escape for awhile, and the military left its stamp on him. He wears camouflage pants and a sleeveless olive T-shirt, and has the quick, firm-bodied movements of someone familiar with violence. He walks with two dogs on short chain leashes, has buzz-cut hair and sun-weathered skin.
Though not overtly aggressive, he has that “problem with authority” and frequently gets into arguments with albergue owners. Unable to find a place to stay with his dogs in Santiago he slept in an abandoned building on the fringes where rats ate his last remaining money. With two bags on and the dogs, he moves like a compact tank, despite only being around 5’6”.
When we were walking through a tiny farming town and stopped in some shade to eat our bread and cheese lunches, an old woman kept a suspicious eye on us from inside the house opposite and all the neighborhood dogs barked at us without pause for the entire time we were there.
Yoshino is a petite Japanese woman with a ready smile, open pretty features, and a willingness to talk to anyone. She speaks excellent Spanish and I think everyone in between Muxia and Finisterre yesterday learned that it was her birthday. Everyone enthusiastically wished her a happy birthday.
When we stopped for a break we chatted with a local lady who made very sure we knew how to get where we were going; people she said hello to called out tips from upstairs windows. Sitting on the beach in Finisterre we made friends with a local fisherman who guided her throughout the town looking for a salon to get her hair cut, his plastic bag of fresh calamari on hold until she had an appointment. (The locals here, as in most places with heavy tourist flow, are somewhat separate, and though friendly, they are not overly quick to engage you in conversation). The dogs we passed all approached, wagging their tails, and sometimes paced us for a while in friendly companionship.
Now, obviously the presence of Michael’s dogs has a lot to do with at least the last one, but the disparity of experience on the two walks was glaring. Their physical appearances and demeanors heavily determine the lives they experience. They are also both great people, and I am thankful to have met each of them.
One of Michael’s dogs, Keisha, he found beaten with a bat and shot with a pellet gun. He nursed her back to health and has taken care of her for five years; she still get upset when people take pictures of her, mistaking cameras pointed at her for guns. He carries a second pack in front, heavy with dog food, and does not leave them alone even when that means he has to sleep outside too.
Nevertheless, when we got lost in the woods I was aware that it was just me and Michael and his dogs, with no one else around. And to my shame, I passed a beautiful scene that day and did not take a picture of it because I didn’t want him to see my camera. To be honest, this is mostly because of my own fear of being perceived as spoiled and privileged, but I have to suspect that there was also an element that I didn’t want him to know I was carrying anything expensive.
He is very open about his mistakes in his past, but is trying to turn his life around. He was happy to get his certificate of having completed the route to Muxia, which he will send with his Compostela (the certificate for completion of the Camino) to his son who he has not seen in 11 years. His son is 13. He wants his son to “know that his dad is capable of something.”
But people don’t see that, they see someone who has lived a hard-bitten life, and who has done whatever it takes to get what he wants. And they are cautious around that. The police question him regularly and shopkeepers keep an eye on him. I was not surprised to hear that he has spent time in prison. I met and very much liked people he reported as being intolerable assholes.
Michael and Yoshino will never be perceived the same (at least until age has blurred them both to innocuousness). Yoshino’s generosity of spirit shows through and people immediately trust her. Michael’s bad choices have left their marks, but hopefully his good ones will show up too.
For me, I have poorly patched battered jeans (which I love), but a ready smile. I am an unknown (and usually scruffy) young male, but a greeting for everyone. I guess we all make our own caminos.
I am still a couple hundred kilometers short of my 1,000 km goal, so two days ago I walked the 30 km up to Muxia, then yesterday walked back. On the way up I walked with Michael from Denmark, on the way back with Yoshino from Japan. The path was the same but the experience totally different.
Michael has been homeless for years. He has been addicted to hard drugs, served time in prison for a bank robbery, and been hunted by Middle Eastern gangsters. He served in the French Foreign Legion to escape for awhile, and the military left its stamp on him. He wears camouflage pants and a sleeveless olive T-shirt, and has the quick, firm-bodied movements of someone familiar with violence. He walks with two dogs on short chain leashes, has buzz-cut hair and sun-weathered skin.
Though not overtly aggressive, he has that “problem with authority” and frequently gets into arguments with albergue owners. Unable to find a place to stay with his dogs in Santiago he slept in an abandoned building on the fringes where rats ate his last remaining money. With two bags on and the dogs, he moves like a compact tank, despite only being around 5’6”.
When we were walking through a tiny farming town and stopped in some shade to eat our bread and cheese lunches, an old woman kept a suspicious eye on us from inside the house opposite and all the neighborhood dogs barked at us without pause for the entire time we were there.
Yoshino is a petite Japanese woman with a ready smile, open pretty features, and a willingness to talk to anyone. She speaks excellent Spanish and I think everyone in between Muxia and Finisterre yesterday learned that it was her birthday. Everyone enthusiastically wished her a happy birthday.
When we stopped for a break we chatted with a local lady who made very sure we knew how to get where we were going; people she said hello to called out tips from upstairs windows. Sitting on the beach in Finisterre we made friends with a local fisherman who guided her throughout the town looking for a salon to get her hair cut, his plastic bag of fresh calamari on hold until she had an appointment. (The locals here, as in most places with heavy tourist flow, are somewhat separate, and though friendly, they are not overly quick to engage you in conversation). The dogs we passed all approached, wagging their tails, and sometimes paced us for a while in friendly companionship.
Now, obviously the presence of Michael’s dogs has a lot to do with at least the last one, but the disparity of experience on the two walks was glaring. Their physical appearances and demeanors heavily determine the lives they experience. They are also both great people, and I am thankful to have met each of them.
One of Michael’s dogs, Keisha, he found beaten with a bat and shot with a pellet gun. He nursed her back to health and has taken care of her for five years; she still get upset when people take pictures of her, mistaking cameras pointed at her for guns. He carries a second pack in front, heavy with dog food, and does not leave them alone even when that means he has to sleep outside too.
Nevertheless, when we got lost in the woods I was aware that it was just me and Michael and his dogs, with no one else around. And to my shame, I passed a beautiful scene that day and did not take a picture of it because I didn’t want him to see my camera. To be honest, this is mostly because of my own fear of being perceived as spoiled and privileged, but I have to suspect that there was also an element that I didn’t want him to know I was carrying anything expensive.
He is very open about his mistakes in his past, but is trying to turn his life around. He was happy to get his certificate of having completed the route to Muxia, which he will send with his Compostela (the certificate for completion of the Camino) to his son who he has not seen in 11 years. His son is 13. He wants his son to “know that his dad is capable of something.”
But people don’t see that, they see someone who has lived a hard-bitten life, and who has done whatever it takes to get what he wants. And they are cautious around that. The police question him regularly and shopkeepers keep an eye on him. I was not surprised to hear that he has spent time in prison. I met and very much liked people he reported as being intolerable assholes.
Michael and Yoshino will never be perceived the same (at least until age has blurred them both to innocuousness). Yoshino’s generosity of spirit shows through and people immediately trust her. Michael’s bad choices have left their marks, but hopefully his good ones will show up too.
For me, I have poorly patched battered jeans (which I love), but a ready smile. I am an unknown (and usually scruffy) young male, but a greeting for everyone. I guess we all make our own caminos.
The End of the World
I have seen the End of the World.
And to be honest…it’s actually pretty nice. Pretty severe, even harsh at times. I was surprised by the number of tourists and the tables selling bric-a-brac souvenir kitsch.
The symbol of Santiago (i.e. Saint James) is the scallop shell, and it has also become the symbol of the Camino de Santiago and its pilgrims in general. There are plenty of local legends of Saint James showing up to save dying pilgrims with water from his scallop shell, and back in The Day, pilgrims would take home a shell to prove that they had completed the Camino.
The problem is that the city of Santiago is about 100 kilometers from the coast. The word Compostela derives from Camino de la Estrella that is “Path of the Star” with the legend regarding the rediscovery of Saint James’ body involving a vision-blessed shepherd following a star to the west to find the tomb (which may sound familiar if you didn’t nap through the entire Christmas service).
Pilgrims are an intense lot (kind of the original Extreme Sports crowd, only with less Gatorade and more diphtheria) so many pilgrims continued to follow the path of the star onward past Santiago to the farthest western point in the (medieval) world, a town called Finisterre, as in Fin de Terra, as in “End of the World.”
I, despite my lack of either Gatorade or diphtheria, did likewise, and so found myself one bright June day, sitting on the fiercely hot, jagged rocks below the lighthouse that caps the peninsula about 4 kilometers west of Finisterre (the End of the World is actually not quite at the end). It is a drastic place, and you can feel the weight of all the powerful moments pilgrims have had here over the years.
(This is despite the busloads of tourist who manage to walk all the way from their buses to the tables selling souvenirs. I don’t mean to scorn them, it’s cool that they want to come here, but the folding tables piled with mass produced crap seem profane in such a place. As an example, the Spanish word for any shell is concha, though Santiago’s symbol is specifically the scallop shell. The tables however were piled with conch shells, despite their irrelevance to Santiago and this area entirely.)
One of the traditions for Finisterre is to burn something, usually some of your clothes. I suspect the irritation of a month of the same two shirts and the relationship between the perseverance of sweat and the effectiveness of hand-washing have something to do with it, but it is at heart a purification ritual.
Purification is a recurring element on the Camino. You bring a stone from home to leave at the Iron Cross in the mountains of Leon, and/or one in Santiago, and/or you burn your clothes in Finisterre. The idea is always to leave behind something from your life that you want to get rid of. Destroy it, purify yourself.
I thought about it for a whole slew of kilometers, and not that my life is perfect by any means, but to be honest there isn’t really anything I feel like burning out of my life. So I reversed it, cuz I’m just Mr. Unique like that, and took something from The End of the World instead. A little piece of quartz, fits between two fingers and kind of hangs there by itself.
It is a reminder of the lengths humans have gone to to try and rid themselves of their mistakes. Of the unthinkable vastness of human experiences and this chapter of my own. Of the temporary nature of reality, from a place that was considered for centuries to be the westernmost point in the world, and here I was sitting, a guy who had spent his entire life up until a couple years before, far far west of there.
So greetings from the End of the World, the beginning of some, and the continuance of mine.
And to be honest…it’s actually pretty nice. Pretty severe, even harsh at times. I was surprised by the number of tourists and the tables selling bric-a-brac souvenir kitsch.
The symbol of Santiago (i.e. Saint James) is the scallop shell, and it has also become the symbol of the Camino de Santiago and its pilgrims in general. There are plenty of local legends of Saint James showing up to save dying pilgrims with water from his scallop shell, and back in The Day, pilgrims would take home a shell to prove that they had completed the Camino.
The problem is that the city of Santiago is about 100 kilometers from the coast. The word Compostela derives from Camino de la Estrella that is “Path of the Star” with the legend regarding the rediscovery of Saint James’ body involving a vision-blessed shepherd following a star to the west to find the tomb (which may sound familiar if you didn’t nap through the entire Christmas service).
Pilgrims are an intense lot (kind of the original Extreme Sports crowd, only with less Gatorade and more diphtheria) so many pilgrims continued to follow the path of the star onward past Santiago to the farthest western point in the (medieval) world, a town called Finisterre, as in Fin de Terra, as in “End of the World.”
I, despite my lack of either Gatorade or diphtheria, did likewise, and so found myself one bright June day, sitting on the fiercely hot, jagged rocks below the lighthouse that caps the peninsula about 4 kilometers west of Finisterre (the End of the World is actually not quite at the end). It is a drastic place, and you can feel the weight of all the powerful moments pilgrims have had here over the years.
(This is despite the busloads of tourist who manage to walk all the way from their buses to the tables selling souvenirs. I don’t mean to scorn them, it’s cool that they want to come here, but the folding tables piled with mass produced crap seem profane in such a place. As an example, the Spanish word for any shell is concha, though Santiago’s symbol is specifically the scallop shell. The tables however were piled with conch shells, despite their irrelevance to Santiago and this area entirely.)
One of the traditions for Finisterre is to burn something, usually some of your clothes. I suspect the irritation of a month of the same two shirts and the relationship between the perseverance of sweat and the effectiveness of hand-washing have something to do with it, but it is at heart a purification ritual.
Purification is a recurring element on the Camino. You bring a stone from home to leave at the Iron Cross in the mountains of Leon, and/or one in Santiago, and/or you burn your clothes in Finisterre. The idea is always to leave behind something from your life that you want to get rid of. Destroy it, purify yourself.
I thought about it for a whole slew of kilometers, and not that my life is perfect by any means, but to be honest there isn’t really anything I feel like burning out of my life. So I reversed it, cuz I’m just Mr. Unique like that, and took something from The End of the World instead. A little piece of quartz, fits between two fingers and kind of hangs there by itself.
It is a reminder of the lengths humans have gone to to try and rid themselves of their mistakes. Of the unthinkable vastness of human experiences and this chapter of my own. Of the temporary nature of reality, from a place that was considered for centuries to be the westernmost point in the world, and here I was sitting, a guy who had spent his entire life up until a couple years before, far far west of there.
So greetings from the End of the World, the beginning of some, and the continuance of mine.
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