Friday 23 September 2011
Argentina
It starts with an absolute unthinking happiness. An effortless movement; more sailing than cycling. Carried through a sunny day on an immense and blustering wave, I feel its hands upon my back, and I am pushed all along the great flat road at fifty kilometres an hour, not even the light and ticklish touch of an air resistance on my face.
After Peru and Bolivia, I have fallen into a heaven of small and wonderful things. The bread here is fresh not chewy and stale, there is cheese that tastes of cheese, and olive oil, and apples that are not powdery deceptive lies, but apples, and meat that melts, doesn´t stretch and string and crumble as old worn out leather boots, and wine, cheap wine, that doesn´t make you grimace and wince and shudder at its scent.
Everything is good. Glossy, shining supermarkets, shelves piled high with food. Clear cold drinkable tap water and strong hot showers. Signposts, cleanliness, order and receipts. Queues and politeness and priority seats for the elderly. Real coversations, interest and an understanding of what I am doing, and time to stop and talk and do nothing. Everything is good. And the wind keeps pushing at my back. The sun glints off windscreens, hands wave, horns sound and carry me easily south.
And then there is a change. The wind flails and twists around. And it is there in front of me, its cold breath fierce like a wall and fighting. And whipping up sand. And robbing happiness with an inhuman unkindness, and with a relentlessness slowly emptying me of everything.
After Peru and Bolivia, I have fallen into a hell of terrible things. Food is expensive and markets have disappeared, to be replaced by cold impersonal fluorescent lights, and loyalty cards, and car parks, and queues. And billboards everywhere saying stupid things. And everything closes for four idiotic hours in the middle of the day. And the countryside is a monotonous desert full of sand and nasty plants and barbed wire fences, and wild camping is a nightmare. And traffic jams and roundabouts and ring roads.
The wind sweeps me off the road, over and over, and I can´t lift my bike against it. I´m on my knees and screaming, furious angry words in capital letters, that tumble lost behind me, and I´m learning that the wind here doesn´t listen, even when you scream.
The wind keeps pushing and holding me down, and like a play thing, like a plastic bag, like nothing, I´m thrown all over the road. The sun that glints off windscreens laughs, and the hands that wave and horns that sound smack only of schadenfreude, and I am fighting slowly south.
After Peru and Bolivia, I have fallen into a heaven of small and wonderful things. The bread here is fresh not chewy and stale, there is cheese that tastes of cheese, and olive oil, and apples that are not powdery deceptive lies, but apples, and meat that melts, doesn´t stretch and string and crumble as old worn out leather boots, and wine, cheap wine, that doesn´t make you grimace and wince and shudder at its scent.
Everything is good. Glossy, shining supermarkets, shelves piled high with food. Clear cold drinkable tap water and strong hot showers. Signposts, cleanliness, order and receipts. Queues and politeness and priority seats for the elderly. Real coversations, interest and an understanding of what I am doing, and time to stop and talk and do nothing. Everything is good. And the wind keeps pushing at my back. The sun glints off windscreens, hands wave, horns sound and carry me easily south.
And then there is a change. The wind flails and twists around. And it is there in front of me, its cold breath fierce like a wall and fighting. And whipping up sand. And robbing happiness with an inhuman unkindness, and with a relentlessness slowly emptying me of everything.
After Peru and Bolivia, I have fallen into a hell of terrible things. Food is expensive and markets have disappeared, to be replaced by cold impersonal fluorescent lights, and loyalty cards, and car parks, and queues. And billboards everywhere saying stupid things. And everything closes for four idiotic hours in the middle of the day. And the countryside is a monotonous desert full of sand and nasty plants and barbed wire fences, and wild camping is a nightmare. And traffic jams and roundabouts and ring roads.
The wind sweeps me off the road, over and over, and I can´t lift my bike against it. I´m on my knees and screaming, furious angry words in capital letters, that tumble lost behind me, and I´m learning that the wind here doesn´t listen, even when you scream.
The wind keeps pushing and holding me down, and like a play thing, like a plastic bag, like nothing, I´m thrown all over the road. The sun that glints off windscreens laughs, and the hands that wave and horns that sound smack only of schadenfreude, and I am fighting slowly south.
Monday 5 September 2011
Southwest Bolivia.
"Pzzfk," he says. It sounds like pzzfk. With the eyes glazed and shining, and white frothy saliva collecting in the corners of his mouth, head rolling on neck, tottering on legs, and feet small-stepping - the ground a ship at sea. "Pzzfk," he says again, the watery swimming eyes staring through me.
"Pzz... pzzfeeto," he says, his hand held out.
He looks up, I shake my head, and he stays there, fixed, with a smile.
"Pzzfk?" I ask. "Pzzfk. Qué es eso?" Though I know what it is I ask him anyway. Beggars where I come from stand in front of whole carriages of people and offer eloquent accounts of misfortune, hide intoxication, and write succinct messages on appropriately impoverished squares of cardboard. They don´t just stumble and ramble, "quizzf..quer...que quiffz" at your face.
"Pzz... pzzfeeto," he says, his hand held out.
"Pesito? Para qué? Para emborracharse más?" And he smiles, almost toothless, head rolls, eyes close, and he gathers himself and nods, once - and his head hangs staring at the ground. Yes. A peso to get more drunk.
We are standing in undeveloping Bolivia. On the altiplano that stretches across the south west corner of the country, and turns its back to the internationally adopted race towards round abouts, supermarkets, pension schemes and ring-roads, sign posting, heating, sanitation systems and all those thing by which we measure development.
It is doing nothing. It is too cold and too poor. It is sat outside a hut, staring at a sandy, washboard road, and across at deserted buildings and broken glass, throwing stones at a dog to teach it something, shouting at children, hitting a goat with a stick, and sitting outside a hut waiting for the men to come home. And the men are drinking the 96% alcohol that I use as fuel for my stove. And the villages are dead and empty, or dying. And the countryside has moved to the city.
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