The total raised for Shelterbox is now up to £6,895-46...
Thank you so much to everyone for your wonderful generosity.
Miles so far 27,821
Thank you so much to everyone for your wonderful generosity.
Miles so far 27,821
Sunday 26 December 2010
Saturday 25 December 2010
San Salvador
The run into the city is the same. Pot-holed roads, busy and fast, sliding down the mountain sides, and the plastic signs of Burger King and McDonalds, like toy flags stuck into any patch of land in which there are rich, successful, fat people. Perfect squares of predictability and cleanliness in the surrounding dirt.
Three lanes of traffic at a complete standstill. Shards of light, solid and swirling, black and silver fumes. Police blowing whistles, and horns rupturing further the restless unquiet, as though in an effort to disperse the vehicles with noise alone.
By the time I weave through the cars, to the centre of San Salvador, it is three o´clock. A stagnant, sticky hour, the sun´s heat reaching its climax. At three o'clock street-vendors can gauge whether they have enough money in their pockets, and, with the knowledge that there are less than three hours to change fortunes, the noise becomes a cacophonic bawling; a clamouring of products and prices, screamed into the hot and seething air.
A bus with a flat tire blocks the last remaining lane, the cause of the gridlock. The rest of the road has been invaded by people trying to make money.
Clothes stalls. Christmas decoration stalls. Fruit and vegetable stalls. Meat and fish. People carry their wares on shoulders yelling into the crowds; Dresses $3!! Brooms $1.25!! Old ladies sit in front of baskets of bread, waving plastic bags tied to sticks to keep away the flies. Young girls sit in front of open bags of chicken´s feet, and heads, and limbs unidentifiable, doing nothing about the flies taking meagre bites from the warm, wet flesh and defecating over it.
Bootleg CDs and DVDs, porn magazines and cooking magazines, TV times and crossword puzzles. Fake Puma, Nike and Quiksilver. Men with missing limbs, and women with babies strapped to their breasts, with hands outstretched, and eyes that turn. Pleading. Desperate. Gone.
The sound of sizzling oil comes from somewhere. The sound is indistinguishable almost from that of running, inconstantly trickling water, but the scent of pupusas frying, and the melting cheese within them, rises sweet and strong, amongst the pungent smell of rotting meat and discarded fish bones lying on the floor, and the acrid sweetsick smell of ripened fruit, decomposing in the sun.
Whole rows of stalls selling nothing but coconuts, nothing but tomatoes, or cucumbers. And with a strange conspicuity that forces the question, which came first? the supply or demand? Barcelona football shirts are everywhere. In downtown San Salvador it seems that about 10% of the population wear Barcelona shirts. In the crowded throbbing streets it would appear as if match day had arrived, and the stadium were drawing close, if only there was some consensus of direction amongst the blue and burgundy stripes.
Boys in T-shirts, black with dirty oil, crawl out from under the bus. Huge metal wrenches are passed in sweating urgency as horns crescendo their disapproval. On the other side of the bus the street is empty of vehicles, full of people, and I glance down side streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of a hotel or hospedaje.
...
The sign says ´Feliz Noche,´ Happy Night, without even the plural to suggest that one might return. Certainly, the iron-barred gate, and the heavy padlock don´t look happy. Nor the razor wire, spiralling around the roof. Nor, when the padlock is unlocked and the gate squealed open, is there a happy face to greet me. Rather, the proprietor, if that´s what he is, has the face of a nasty, underfed rodent, with a thick black moustache, glaring eyes, and unmovable scowl. He folds his arms against a dirty, stained vest, that used to be white, and tilts his chin back to look at me.
He pauses for such a long time when I ask him how much it is per night, that I am left in the silence wondering whether he is simply not used to calculating the cost for a whole night, or if he´s slowly trying to work out how much money he can squeeze out of me. Both, perhaps. $10, and I´m too tired to argue.
I have to be out by 8am. This must be a peak time for the establishment I realise, and I smile at the sense that makes as he shows me to my room.
The walls in the bathroom don´t reach the ceiling, and negotiations from next door filter through the gaps. I can´t understand what the man is asking for; only that it´s going to cost him $3.50 extra. Everything I can imagine makes the room seem even more expensive than it did before, and I leave to find some food before they stop talking.
...
Outside in the dusk, under the dirty plastic sheets covering the market place, her face is painted, an unwell white. So shudders run, to think that what it hides could appear worse, more startling and desperate, more unwell, than the mask itself - shining almost, glowing and sick, against darker surrounds - and out of it, staring, those cold brown eyes.
Hands clinging now to my hand, and my arm, cold in the heat of everything else. But moist, as though waking in cold nightmarish sweat. Though the eyes stare, not feverish, but business like, with something in them that may be approaching cruelty, so that when the proposition comes, not in the teasing, coquettish language of a whore, but in her other language, in that simple need to be understood - "para llevar" she says, with the eyes still cold and staring, and the hands gripping tighter still, "to take away" she says - so that when the proposition comes, the subsequent refusal owes nothing to a distanced consideration of morality, but, rather, to an instinctive biological repulsion and the need to tear myself away.
On the streets around my ´hotel´ people lie, sleeping already, on cardboard boxes. A man lies, face down, half on the road, half on the pavement; grey curling hair, lips, and thick, dehydrated, alcoholic dribble, touching the concrete. Men stagger past me and faces lose distinct features in the slowly surrendering dusk. 8am, I think, is not too soon.
Three lanes of traffic at a complete standstill. Shards of light, solid and swirling, black and silver fumes. Police blowing whistles, and horns rupturing further the restless unquiet, as though in an effort to disperse the vehicles with noise alone.
By the time I weave through the cars, to the centre of San Salvador, it is three o´clock. A stagnant, sticky hour, the sun´s heat reaching its climax. At three o'clock street-vendors can gauge whether they have enough money in their pockets, and, with the knowledge that there are less than three hours to change fortunes, the noise becomes a cacophonic bawling; a clamouring of products and prices, screamed into the hot and seething air.
A bus with a flat tire blocks the last remaining lane, the cause of the gridlock. The rest of the road has been invaded by people trying to make money.
Clothes stalls. Christmas decoration stalls. Fruit and vegetable stalls. Meat and fish. People carry their wares on shoulders yelling into the crowds; Dresses $3!! Brooms $1.25!! Old ladies sit in front of baskets of bread, waving plastic bags tied to sticks to keep away the flies. Young girls sit in front of open bags of chicken´s feet, and heads, and limbs unidentifiable, doing nothing about the flies taking meagre bites from the warm, wet flesh and defecating over it.
Bootleg CDs and DVDs, porn magazines and cooking magazines, TV times and crossword puzzles. Fake Puma, Nike and Quiksilver. Men with missing limbs, and women with babies strapped to their breasts, with hands outstretched, and eyes that turn. Pleading. Desperate. Gone.
The sound of sizzling oil comes from somewhere. The sound is indistinguishable almost from that of running, inconstantly trickling water, but the scent of pupusas frying, and the melting cheese within them, rises sweet and strong, amongst the pungent smell of rotting meat and discarded fish bones lying on the floor, and the acrid sweetsick smell of ripened fruit, decomposing in the sun.
Whole rows of stalls selling nothing but coconuts, nothing but tomatoes, or cucumbers. And with a strange conspicuity that forces the question, which came first? the supply or demand? Barcelona football shirts are everywhere. In downtown San Salvador it seems that about 10% of the population wear Barcelona shirts. In the crowded throbbing streets it would appear as if match day had arrived, and the stadium were drawing close, if only there was some consensus of direction amongst the blue and burgundy stripes.
Boys in T-shirts, black with dirty oil, crawl out from under the bus. Huge metal wrenches are passed in sweating urgency as horns crescendo their disapproval. On the other side of the bus the street is empty of vehicles, full of people, and I glance down side streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of a hotel or hospedaje.
...
The sign says ´Feliz Noche,´ Happy Night, without even the plural to suggest that one might return. Certainly, the iron-barred gate, and the heavy padlock don´t look happy. Nor the razor wire, spiralling around the roof. Nor, when the padlock is unlocked and the gate squealed open, is there a happy face to greet me. Rather, the proprietor, if that´s what he is, has the face of a nasty, underfed rodent, with a thick black moustache, glaring eyes, and unmovable scowl. He folds his arms against a dirty, stained vest, that used to be white, and tilts his chin back to look at me.
He pauses for such a long time when I ask him how much it is per night, that I am left in the silence wondering whether he is simply not used to calculating the cost for a whole night, or if he´s slowly trying to work out how much money he can squeeze out of me. Both, perhaps. $10, and I´m too tired to argue.
I have to be out by 8am. This must be a peak time for the establishment I realise, and I smile at the sense that makes as he shows me to my room.
The walls in the bathroom don´t reach the ceiling, and negotiations from next door filter through the gaps. I can´t understand what the man is asking for; only that it´s going to cost him $3.50 extra. Everything I can imagine makes the room seem even more expensive than it did before, and I leave to find some food before they stop talking.
...
Outside in the dusk, under the dirty plastic sheets covering the market place, her face is painted, an unwell white. So shudders run, to think that what it hides could appear worse, more startling and desperate, more unwell, than the mask itself - shining almost, glowing and sick, against darker surrounds - and out of it, staring, those cold brown eyes.
Hands clinging now to my hand, and my arm, cold in the heat of everything else. But moist, as though waking in cold nightmarish sweat. Though the eyes stare, not feverish, but business like, with something in them that may be approaching cruelty, so that when the proposition comes, not in the teasing, coquettish language of a whore, but in her other language, in that simple need to be understood - "para llevar" she says, with the eyes still cold and staring, and the hands gripping tighter still, "to take away" she says - so that when the proposition comes, the subsequent refusal owes nothing to a distanced consideration of morality, but, rather, to an instinctive biological repulsion and the need to tear myself away.
On the streets around my ´hotel´ people lie, sleeping already, on cardboard boxes. A man lies, face down, half on the road, half on the pavement; grey curling hair, lips, and thick, dehydrated, alcoholic dribble, touching the concrete. Men stagger past me and faces lose distinct features in the slowly surrendering dusk. 8am, I think, is not too soon.
Thursday 11 November 2010
guadalajara
The crumbling concrete walls of tiny houses crowd around the railway tracks. Small brown children run, scream, giggle, clamber, legs stretched, arms out, untumbling over the rails.
A boy holds a plastic ball, both arms reaching in a hug around its circumference, and he stumbles over the gravel because he cannot see his feet. An androgynous doll dangles upside down; American-pink-made-in-China plastic legs, gripped tight in a small brown hand. When the girl climbs over the track the doll`s head smacks against the metal, twice, both rails, like something forgotten. Each time though, the blue unblinking eyes still stare, expression unchanged, at the swaying upside down world, peeling red lips pouting at it.
From here the small concrete blocks dangle right angles into the sky, and the sizzling crackle of dough on burning oil snaps. Smoke coils down into the blue yellow air, like silk slowly sliding down the banister of a spiral staircase. Thick white toying with the sky, and melting into it. The scene sways uncertainly; stones, metal, concrete, hanging above the sun.
An older girl calls the children to eat, and they turn, straight away, and run. The ball bobbles over the stones, Barbie`s head smashes against the metal for the fourth time, and they run towards the hungry, sizzling fat.
I lift my bike across the railway, on the fringes of Mexico´s second largest city, thinking about planning permission; about the bribes to keep away bulldozers, tiny perhaps, but too expensive, immobilizing. I wonder what it must be like to have a functioning train track instead of a back yard or a field, and I smile, because from the sound of the laughing and the giggling, the joyful screaming and the smell of frying food I think it must be wonderful.
Back onto the main road. New German cars. Tired, rusty, old buses; coughing black, and choking. At the traffic lights adolescent boys in dirty t-shirts too big for them, and faces too old for them, squirt soapy water onto windscreens, and wipe glass that was already clean. Women in long skirts walk between the cars selling sweets, crisps, cigarettes, chewing gum; unhurried and slow, knowing the exact amount of time they have before the lights turn green.
In front of the four lanes of traffic a young man in a dusty top hat and a black magician´s cloak stands, holding a black box. He holds it upside down, displays the empty interior, and the next moment pulls out a small dirty-white rabbit. The rabbit is sleeping; bored by the trick, repeated all day and every day, at every red light, in the choking fumes, and as the magician walks down the lines of cars, in the hope of a couple of pesos, the sleeping rabbit lends a decidedly anticlimactic ending to the display.
In the centre of Guadalajara, kids in skinny jeans, Hoxton-haircuts and Converse shoes walk in the thick dark shadows cast by four hundred year old buildings, and through the blinding yellow shafts of sunlight, conscious of their silhouettes. A street fills with hundreds of bicyclists and in front a stereo blasts tunes in keeping with the kids; the haircuts, jeans and the silhouettes.
Later I sit here, half-talking, half-gesturing in a will to be understood, with Carlos. He kindly, tells me that everything he says is unimportant when I say I don´t understand it. He is one of those people who bring life and joy to a conversation, even if only 20% of it is, on the face of it, comprehensible.
"¡Me gusta la vida!" he says, over and over. Smiling at every passer-by, saying hello to everyone in the centre of a 4 million person city. "Buenas noches, buenas noches." He turns to me. "Qué ते gusta?" What do I like?
"Me gusta... me gusta viajar."
"Por qué?"
And somehow with broken words and hands, even a slightly broken chin, threatening to burst every time I smile, I tell him that I love to travel because when you see something you´ve never seen before you feel like a child. Suddenly life is new, everything becomes full of wonder, as though you have just been born. And, miraculously, I think he understands.
A boy holds a plastic ball, both arms reaching in a hug around its circumference, and he stumbles over the gravel because he cannot see his feet. An androgynous doll dangles upside down; American-pink-made-in-China plastic legs, gripped tight in a small brown hand. When the girl climbs over the track the doll`s head smacks against the metal, twice, both rails, like something forgotten. Each time though, the blue unblinking eyes still stare, expression unchanged, at the swaying upside down world, peeling red lips pouting at it.
From here the small concrete blocks dangle right angles into the sky, and the sizzling crackle of dough on burning oil snaps. Smoke coils down into the blue yellow air, like silk slowly sliding down the banister of a spiral staircase. Thick white toying with the sky, and melting into it. The scene sways uncertainly; stones, metal, concrete, hanging above the sun.
An older girl calls the children to eat, and they turn, straight away, and run. The ball bobbles over the stones, Barbie`s head smashes against the metal for the fourth time, and they run towards the hungry, sizzling fat.
I lift my bike across the railway, on the fringes of Mexico´s second largest city, thinking about planning permission; about the bribes to keep away bulldozers, tiny perhaps, but too expensive, immobilizing. I wonder what it must be like to have a functioning train track instead of a back yard or a field, and I smile, because from the sound of the laughing and the giggling, the joyful screaming and the smell of frying food I think it must be wonderful.
Back onto the main road. New German cars. Tired, rusty, old buses; coughing black, and choking. At the traffic lights adolescent boys in dirty t-shirts too big for them, and faces too old for them, squirt soapy water onto windscreens, and wipe glass that was already clean. Women in long skirts walk between the cars selling sweets, crisps, cigarettes, chewing gum; unhurried and slow, knowing the exact amount of time they have before the lights turn green.
In front of the four lanes of traffic a young man in a dusty top hat and a black magician´s cloak stands, holding a black box. He holds it upside down, displays the empty interior, and the next moment pulls out a small dirty-white rabbit. The rabbit is sleeping; bored by the trick, repeated all day and every day, at every red light, in the choking fumes, and as the magician walks down the lines of cars, in the hope of a couple of pesos, the sleeping rabbit lends a decidedly anticlimactic ending to the display.
In the centre of Guadalajara, kids in skinny jeans, Hoxton-haircuts and Converse shoes walk in the thick dark shadows cast by four hundred year old buildings, and through the blinding yellow shafts of sunlight, conscious of their silhouettes. A street fills with hundreds of bicyclists and in front a stereo blasts tunes in keeping with the kids; the haircuts, jeans and the silhouettes.
Later I sit here, half-talking, half-gesturing in a will to be understood, with Carlos. He kindly, tells me that everything he says is unimportant when I say I don´t understand it. He is one of those people who bring life and joy to a conversation, even if only 20% of it is, on the face of it, comprehensible.
"¡Me gusta la vida!" he says, over and over. Smiling at every passer-by, saying hello to everyone in the centre of a 4 million person city. "Buenas noches, buenas noches." He turns to me. "Qué ते gusta?" What do I like?
"Me gusta... me gusta viajar."
"Por qué?"
And somehow with broken words and hands, even a slightly broken chin, threatening to burst every time I smile, I tell him that I love to travel because when you see something you´ve never seen before you feel like a child. Suddenly life is new, everything becomes full of wonder, as though you have just been born. And, miraculously, I think he understands.
Monday 25 October 2010
Jalisco
Neat blue lines of agave in the Mexican highlands. The untouched rows of plants under a cool blue sky. Growing slow. And then a field that appears as if torn apart.
A jimador holds a coa. The instrument, hoe like, has a handle as tall as the man who takes it in his grip. The man´s white shirt, open at his chest, sticks, wet, to his back, even under the cool, high sky, as he hacks violently, time and time again, at the ripe agave. The outer leaves of the plant lie scattered around his work - torn and fractured like dismembered limbs. The man´s actions appear desperate. Around him, where the hearts of other plants have been torn from the ground, craters appear, as if small shells have exploded, rupturing the soil. Again he strikes the plant. Flicks head. Flies sweat. Thrusts again. And a new limb tears away. And the harvesting looks like a murder.
The next day I leave Tequila. The road winds once again through the fields of blue succulents, quietly awaiting the jimadors and death. Here, in the mountains, the warm, springlike air feels clean and pleasant to breathe. Butterflies flit, light, in the breeze. Bright white wings against light blue sky, passing of deep green fields, and beneath, along the road, lizards dart and scatter, in sun-fuelled panic. Grasshoppers flick themselves from peril to the long green grass, and sometimes flick themselves from peril to greater peril, further into the road. Occasionally the shiny, greenbluesilver gold-metallic shimmer of a beetle´s back catches the sun, as it attempts a journey, surely doomed to fail. The bodies of grasshoppers; dried, or half-dried-half-gooey-wet, internal organs spilled. And then another huge white butterfly dips in front of my eyes, dancing as if thepetals of a flower have been brought to life.
Perhaps I should pay less attention to these kinds of things, because the next time I look up a truck is reversing towards me, and my face has taken on a strange tingling, numb sensation, and my front wheel is jammed between the vehicle and the ground. Four men get out of the truck and ask if I´m okay.
"Si, si - muy bien," The answer should be sarcastic, but I feel like I´m smiling as I say it, and though I feel like I´ve just been punched in the face with something very big and metal, all I can feel is an overwhelming sense of relief that I´m not dead, and a kind of shock that I managed to head butt a rusty metal truck, without aquiring any injury.
The four men lift the back of the truck and free my bike and help me to the side of the road. That´s when I start shaking, I think.
One of the men says something in Spanish with the word hospital in it.
"No, no. Siento muy bien. No necesito." I say, trying in terrible Spanish to convince them that I feel fine.
"Necesitas." the man says kindly, and slowly, realising I can´t really speak Spanish at all, pointing to my chin.
"Es poquito," I say. "Solo poquito." I touch my chin to further illustrate that it´s really nothing at all, but when my hand comes away covered in blood, I agree that perhaps it is a good idea that we go to a hospital.
They put my bike on the back of their truck. I sit in the front with the man who has by this time introduced himself as José. He offers me elotes, corn on the cob, wrapped still in their leaves and steaming hot. I say no and thank him. I do not know how to say that I have never felt less like eating in all the time I can remember.
José seems pleased with my name, "Samwell!" It is a biblical name. "Cristiano?" he asks, and seeing the icons hanging from the rearview mirror, realising his obvious interest in the subject, and not feeling up to discussing agnosticism, I agree, "Si, Cristiano."
"Católico?"
"No."
We arrive after only a couple of minutes. It was the perfect place apparently to cycle into a truck; right on the edge of a town. I cover my chin with my hands as we enter the waiting room, José explains what happened, and they usher me in to a private room. The doctor or nurse, I´m not sure which, asks me lots of questions I can´t understand, and I realise that it must be hard for them to work out whether I´m showing signs of concussion, or if I just appear stupid and confused because I can hardly understand a word they are saying.
Every so often I recognise a word. ´Cabeza´ - head. "Mi cabeza es bien" I say. ´Dolor´ - pain. "No tengo dolor." "Puedo ver" I can see. "No otro dolor" I say, guessing then at the things they might ask me. This would have been much more difficult a month ago, I think.
The doctor or nurse administers a local anaesthetic to my already numb chin, and holds alcohol under my nose, as I begin to feel myself faint, and my grammatically incorrect chatter attempting to convince them that I´m fine, comes to an abrupt halt. In the same room, standing in the corner, a fat girl of about 20 watches as my chin is stitched back together. When I entered I took her for an assistant perhaps, but, as my face is being mended, it seems that her only role is to make shocked, slightly disgusted faces, occasional sounds portraying queasiness, and to give a general impression that she is finding the whole scene far too much to take.
In less than half an hour I am ready to leave. José pays for the treatment. And a ridiculous and quite unnecessary bandage is wrapped around my head. The effect is apparently so comic that José, the nurse-doctor, and the girl who did nothing useful at all decide that we must all have a photo together. On taking the camera out of my bag, however, I discover that it has been crushed by the accident and no longer works. Still, a broken camera and a cut chin is certainly not the worst I could have come away with, and I happily say goodbyes and thankyous to everyone who helped, and even to some people who didn´t help at all, as I leave toward Guadalajara.
A jimador holds a coa. The instrument, hoe like, has a handle as tall as the man who takes it in his grip. The man´s white shirt, open at his chest, sticks, wet, to his back, even under the cool, high sky, as he hacks violently, time and time again, at the ripe agave. The outer leaves of the plant lie scattered around his work - torn and fractured like dismembered limbs. The man´s actions appear desperate. Around him, where the hearts of other plants have been torn from the ground, craters appear, as if small shells have exploded, rupturing the soil. Again he strikes the plant. Flicks head. Flies sweat. Thrusts again. And a new limb tears away. And the harvesting looks like a murder.
The next day I leave Tequila. The road winds once again through the fields of blue succulents, quietly awaiting the jimadors and death. Here, in the mountains, the warm, springlike air feels clean and pleasant to breathe. Butterflies flit, light, in the breeze. Bright white wings against light blue sky, passing of deep green fields, and beneath, along the road, lizards dart and scatter, in sun-fuelled panic. Grasshoppers flick themselves from peril to the long green grass, and sometimes flick themselves from peril to greater peril, further into the road. Occasionally the shiny, greenbluesilver gold-metallic shimmer of a beetle´s back catches the sun, as it attempts a journey, surely doomed to fail. The bodies of grasshoppers; dried, or half-dried-half-gooey-wet, internal organs spilled. And then another huge white butterfly dips in front of my eyes, dancing as if thepetals of a flower have been brought to life.
Perhaps I should pay less attention to these kinds of things, because the next time I look up a truck is reversing towards me, and my face has taken on a strange tingling, numb sensation, and my front wheel is jammed between the vehicle and the ground. Four men get out of the truck and ask if I´m okay.
"Si, si - muy bien," The answer should be sarcastic, but I feel like I´m smiling as I say it, and though I feel like I´ve just been punched in the face with something very big and metal, all I can feel is an overwhelming sense of relief that I´m not dead, and a kind of shock that I managed to head butt a rusty metal truck, without aquiring any injury.
The four men lift the back of the truck and free my bike and help me to the side of the road. That´s when I start shaking, I think.
One of the men says something in Spanish with the word hospital in it.
"No, no. Siento muy bien. No necesito." I say, trying in terrible Spanish to convince them that I feel fine.
"Necesitas." the man says kindly, and slowly, realising I can´t really speak Spanish at all, pointing to my chin.
"Es poquito," I say. "Solo poquito." I touch my chin to further illustrate that it´s really nothing at all, but when my hand comes away covered in blood, I agree that perhaps it is a good idea that we go to a hospital.
They put my bike on the back of their truck. I sit in the front with the man who has by this time introduced himself as José. He offers me elotes, corn on the cob, wrapped still in their leaves and steaming hot. I say no and thank him. I do not know how to say that I have never felt less like eating in all the time I can remember.
José seems pleased with my name, "Samwell!" It is a biblical name. "Cristiano?" he asks, and seeing the icons hanging from the rearview mirror, realising his obvious interest in the subject, and not feeling up to discussing agnosticism, I agree, "Si, Cristiano."
"Católico?"
"No."
We arrive after only a couple of minutes. It was the perfect place apparently to cycle into a truck; right on the edge of a town. I cover my chin with my hands as we enter the waiting room, José explains what happened, and they usher me in to a private room. The doctor or nurse, I´m not sure which, asks me lots of questions I can´t understand, and I realise that it must be hard for them to work out whether I´m showing signs of concussion, or if I just appear stupid and confused because I can hardly understand a word they are saying.
Every so often I recognise a word. ´Cabeza´ - head. "Mi cabeza es bien" I say. ´Dolor´ - pain. "No tengo dolor." "Puedo ver" I can see. "No otro dolor" I say, guessing then at the things they might ask me. This would have been much more difficult a month ago, I think.
The doctor or nurse administers a local anaesthetic to my already numb chin, and holds alcohol under my nose, as I begin to feel myself faint, and my grammatically incorrect chatter attempting to convince them that I´m fine, comes to an abrupt halt. In the same room, standing in the corner, a fat girl of about 20 watches as my chin is stitched back together. When I entered I took her for an assistant perhaps, but, as my face is being mended, it seems that her only role is to make shocked, slightly disgusted faces, occasional sounds portraying queasiness, and to give a general impression that she is finding the whole scene far too much to take.
In less than half an hour I am ready to leave. José pays for the treatment. And a ridiculous and quite unnecessary bandage is wrapped around my head. The effect is apparently so comic that José, the nurse-doctor, and the girl who did nothing useful at all decide that we must all have a photo together. On taking the camera out of my bag, however, I discover that it has been crushed by the accident and no longer works. Still, a broken camera and a cut chin is certainly not the worst I could have come away with, and I happily say goodbyes and thankyous to everyone who helped, and even to some people who didn´t help at all, as I leave toward Guadalajara.
Tuesday 19 October 2010
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