my life in ten objects, #3 visas

When I was a student, an Interrail ticket was the highest form of luxury, flying was way too expensive, hitchhiking was not everywhere a safe option, and while a bicycle could get you almost anywhere, it took time. And boy oh boy, did I ever want to move, I wanted to go everywhere. Everywhere. Just because. My German family failed to understand this. A holiday in Denmark, the Italian Alps, the French Atlantic coast, school exchange to the UK, all well and good, but real travel, with no return ticket, no schedule, no prebooked accomodation? No way. 

Enter the Irish man I met one summer's day in Connemara (I was hitchhiking, he was cycling) who had just returned from working several years on the African continent, and with him my slow understanding of the Irish diaspora, the Irish history of emigration and forced famine and colonialism and so on.

In short, for economic reasons but also because we were young and adventurous and wanted to go and see and hear and and smell and taste, explore!, this planet, we emigrated. It was the second emigration for me, the third one for him, the first of several for our daughter. With little time to prepare, two months between him being interviewed in a Dublin hotel and departure date, we hopped on a plane and 12 hours later stepped into the tropical heat of paradise.

the dates never matched reality

expiry date was 12/1998

 

There is no other way to describe these years. It has been paradise. Other, shorter work and travel stops followed before we eventually returned to Ireland and the - at the time - dismal prospects which resulted in us moving to Germany a short time later. All this happened a long time ago and yet, we still talk about it as if it was yesterday, we know this has shaped us like nothing ever could.

nothing in this visa is correct, nobody noticed

 

The UN calculates that a record 215 million people now live outside their country of origin. An additional 700 million are adrift within the borders of their own nations. This represents a seventh of the global population. It is part of the greatest diaspora in human history, a hegira from country to country, from city to city, from empty belly to mouthful of bread. It is our species’ oldest trajectory. Only the colossal scale is new.

The figures are from 2013, the quote from Paul Salopek, who in 2014 started walking from what he calls Eden, the origin of the human species in East Africa. He is currently somewhere in Japan and this year hopes to cross from Asia to the American continent. 

There's a recent interview with him here, to read or to listen to.

While the figures have probably changed - my guess is increased - they are too colossal to even imagine if you are a person who has never really lived anywhere but home. And even to me who has accumulated several homes over the years. All of them comfortable homes.

We are an African species. That broadly means that Homo sapiens emerged on the land that is now Africa, and most of our evolution occurred there in the past half a million years. The rest of the world was peopled when a few left that pan-African cradle within the past 100,000 years. Until recently, this was largely known from the old bones of the long dead. But recovering DNA from those old bones has become fruitful. (. . . ) a study led by Sarah Tishkoff at the University of Pennsylvania showed that the small amount of Neanderthal DNA in living Africans today had entered the Homo sapiens lineage as early as 250,000 years ago somewhere in Eurasia, meaning that we had left Africa several times, and way earlier than thought.

Adam Rutherford

A while ago I was watching the TV series Expats with Nicole Kidman who is the wife of a business man living with her family as affluent "expats" in Hong Kong. We were once considered expats, which basically stands for white people who live in relative luxury for a while in a foreign country, mostly in Africa or Asia, often working for multinational corporations or in second or third level education. Expats are neither migrants nor immigrants and certainly not refugees, or at least don't see themselves as such. There is quite a privileged life style attached to being an expat, including servants, receptions, sports, clubs, whatever. It's actually a sickening life style based on colonial attitudes and racism.  I admit to being captured by the shiny allure at times and I have been to a couple of receptions with high commissioners and embassy officials but we were poor expats, sent with the blessings but no financial support of a poor NGO from a poor country, without servants or credentials to join the yacht/tennis/golf clubs, and we refused being housed in a gated neighbourhood and instead lived in a small village with an ancient roaming tortoise and chickens and dogs and a large number of curious children. In short, we were looked down on by the real expats. One year, the people of the village asked us to celebrate Patrick's day, the older ones had been educated by Irish missionaries, and together we organised a big party with charcoal that was prepared from coconut husks for days, firing a large grill where several massive tuna fish that had been marinating in ginger, chili, garlic and oil where prepared and then eaten wrapped in banana leaves. Everybody including the grannies came, The kids were all over the place, the music came from a tape deck, there was plenty of beer and some bacca (a powerful alcoholic drink you don't want to know how it's made). Of course, we also invited our expat colleagues and friends who thought it was great fun compared to the drinks in hand events at the yacht club and some even called it tribal.

As I've mentioned Africa a few times recently, click here for a nice game to play. (I wasn't very good either.)

We travelled and lived simply, wherever we stayed, we left stuff behind and when we arrived back in Dublin one autumn afternoon, all we had was what we carried on our backs. But that was by choice. We had lived a life of luxury. Nowhere were we refused entry, nobody stopped us on our path, when we walked into glamorous hotel lobbies just to use their bathrooms we were greeted with polite smiles. Two white people with a six year old blond child could do anything. Still can. Movement across land, sea, borders, for me, for my family, is a luxury we can afford when and as we see fit. Our passports will get stamped with visas for almost everywhere on this planet. No problem.

But movement is also humankind’s oldest survival strategy.

Migrant is an unforgivable term. Migrants are people who have properly cancelled their electricity and telephone connections, sold their belongings online, thrown a last farewell party, who may even have earned a few moving pennies by selling their trivial emigration story as a TV event.

The others who have no time to mourn their dead, to search for and bury the bodies of their loved ones, but have to run quickly to protect at least the rest of their families, these are refugees. The ones you see in the camps are also very poor. In a war, the wealthy always flee first and the poor last. People who try to escape in plastic sandals while bombs are falling, they are refugees. The media houses of the world  should not be allowed take away the refugee status from these people by using false terminology. It is their only remaining protection.

What these refugees, including an unusually large number of children, experience is the most catastrophic thing that can happen to people in their existence. It makes no sense to list the massive violations of human rights. You have to imagine it like this: The poorest of the poor, the weakest of the weak, the most merciless of the most merciless are imprisoned, beaten, tortured, attacked under the direct testimony of Western population who considers themselves to be the most civilized and valuable of their kind. You let them starve, freeze, cry, persevere. You allow this, it is truly not an exaggeration, and always remember this: you let them die.
 

Giving opportunity a chance

By now, I have figured out how to shower safely and anyway, wounds are healing, generally that's their job. There are wobbly moments but all in all, it's a pleasure to notice improvements, something that's not part of my usual chronic disease experience.

We are testing friends and family on their anatomical knowledge, looking for novel ways to incorporate the word duodenum into day to day parlance and watching reactions.  

I am experiencing the first twitching moments of boredom and plans of a walk down to the river are being formulated - against some resistance but working on it.

On one of the extremely hot days recently, the builders down the road, a poor sweating crew from Poland, cut through a cable which resulted in a power outage for a couple of hours. We just found out today in conversation with a neighbour, because with a the solar battery in our basement we didn't notice a thing. Now we feel ready for the end of the world as we know it.  Also stocked up on coffee.

I should expand on all the important stuff we are debating, the way some of our own politicians are starting to play being trumpish and how is doesn't seem to matter at all to some. May the best liar win etc.

Greetings from the garden:

we don't mind the crocosimia

 

this is waiting for the wasp attacks

one of many beauties

the day lilies are coming up everywhere

only a small sample of a massive tomato harvest

sharing with a stink bug

 

 

 

one organ less

I am on day three. Carefully coughing up the phlegm residue from the stomach tube I had inserted during anaesthetics takes time. Also, laughing hurts. My abdomen is full of air, I can tap it like a drum.

Of course, I showered a day too early and while I was rinsing my hair, could watch the blood seeping into the compress underneath the waterproof covers I had so carefully pasted over it. For a moment, I felt guilty and thought about using the hair dryer but thirty minutes later, R had delivered me to the GP. They just smiled politely while cleaning and covering it and told me to behave.

In other words, the gall bladder has finally left the building. As expected and predicted, there wasn't a single trace of stone inside. Instead it was found to have attached itself to the duodenum, requiring some additional manoeuvres and we are awaiting pathologic workup of the why and how. When the surgeon mentioned a most likely autoimmune cause with chronic inflammation and ladida whatshallwecallit, I almost said, didn't I tell you. But I was the good patient and I thanked him for his insight. 

We are now watching The Narrow Road to the Deep North which has the most amazing soundtrack and is the saddest most depressing brilliant story, so no risk of laughter for me. 

When I got home last night, sitting in the garden was the best thing on earth. 

Here is another tigridia blossom.

 

 

my life in ten objects, #2 bicycle

Behold the bicycle: an ingenious arrangement of metal and rubber that liberates the body from the dusty plod or the frustrating car to ride on a cushion of air, at speed or with leisure, stopping on a whim, travelling for free. Its design is simple and its maintenance inexpensive. Yet for all the ease and economy the bicycle possesses an even greater quality. It offers the possibility of escape.

 

This is me with bicycle number one, in the summer before I started school. One morning my father told me that if I could show him by Saturday that I can ride a bike, we would go into town to buy one for me. I have written about it here. 

For me, cycling is a means to get from one place to another. It is neither a hobby nor a sport activity although I have done a lot of fabulous long distance cycles in my life. 

I do not own a single piece of "cycling" attire apart from basic water- and windproof stuff which I often forget to bring and a hi-vis vest with IKEA family written on the back (a freebie from way back). I own a helmet but don't always wear one (another story).

This first bicycle was used to travel to and from school during my first four years (German primary school) in all weather, all seasons, unless the roads were icy. All kids had bikes, they were our horses, our racing cars, our ladders to get up on to a high branch, our scaffold when we built dens, they were an extension of ourselves. This bicycle stayed with me until I was half way through secondary school (which was too far from home to cycle) and my legs had grown too long for it. I still managed to have good grades then and as a reward - always rewards in my family - I received a fancy folding bicycle, the latest craze at the time. 

Bicycle number 2 looked a bit like this one and I brought it with me when I started university in Heidelberg. Like all of the very old German university cities, Heidelberg is really a small town and cycling is the fastest way to get around. But in order to be part of the cool crowd, it became important to invest in a Dutch bicycle, a preferably vintage Gazelle Omafiets. Purchase of which involved some pre-EU smuggling across the Dutch-German border. My memory is hazy.

Bicycle number three was the first one with gears, three gears to be correct and it was the only bicycle to date that was stolen from me, outside a pub one night. At the time I was a member of the student union and as it was deemed necessary for me to have a mode of reliable transport at all times - we were organising marches and sit-ins and boycotts all over town - bicyle number four, an almost identical replacement but with five (!) gears, was generously financed. And it was bicycle number four that I rode from Heidelberg to Dublin, together with R on his bicycle, in the autumn of 1980. There were stopovers in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and London and ferry journeys and for part of the UK we used the train but we cycled off the mail boat from Holyhead one early morning onto Dun Laoghaire pier into the Irish rain. This bicycle brought me all over County Dublin, along the Wexford coastline and into the Wicklow mountains. It had its troubles, something with the gears not being aligned but bicycle number four, and R's bicycle, too, were eventually fitted with a child's seat on the back to carry S across Cork, up and down the hills, to preschool and her first primary school, panniers packed below her legs. When we left Ireland to work in the small African country we call paradise, we gave both bicycles to another young family on loan forever.

Bicycle number five was only with me very briefly. A proper pink lady's bicycle with a fancy basket hanging from the handlebars. I inherited it from a Swiss midwife who left paradise in a hurry after she discovered her Swiss doctor husband's affair with a young local nurse. It wasn't very practical, the bicycle, it attracted a lot of attention and it often took me far too long to get to work or home what with people stopping me and cheering and laughing. So when the wife of a minister decided she wanted to have it, I sold it to her for a small fortune in foreign currency. I believe she cycled around her courtyard for a while.

Before bicycle number six, I had to live without one for almost two years, travel, work, family and work interfered. But at least I could watch my child learning to cycle, which she managed one sunny afternoon under the supervision of her Irish granddad.

Eventually, number six was purchased at the fleamarket, a sturdy second hand one with five gears, it lasted for the first year of our new life in Germany and was soon replaced by bicycle number seven, brand new and again five gears! On number seven I cycled along the Danube into Vienna, along the Rhine south to Switzerland and northwest to Holland, and along many more German rivers until I finally had enough money to spend on a serious trekking bicycle, twelve gears, hydraulic breaks, strong handle bars, to carry me up and down the hills to work and countless other long distance trips for 12 years. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with bicycle number eight, but shit happened, aka chronic disease diagnosis, and now bicycle number eights rests patiently in the basement for visitors to give it a run.  

At around that time, while I was coming to terms with my miserable fate and people suggested cumbersome tricycles and even wheelchairs, along came the amazing invention of the e-bike. Thus, bicycle number nine, by now scratched and covered in accident wounds and various campaign stickers, has been my chariot for 14 years now. It has saved my life, my sanity. I call this bicycle my freedom.  On it I have cycled up and down the coast of North Holland, along various German rivers, across the Auverne mountains in France and I still dream of cycling across the Alps from Bavaria to Milano and on to Venice. And that route from the Rhone glacier to the delta or at least as far as Lake Geneva. Alas, only dreams.

 

 

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.

Iris Murdoch 

 

      Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the human race.


H.G. Wells

 

 

It is very hot. We get up very early, pick the raspberries and the blueberries, dig up the last potatoes, fill the bird bath and are greeted by yet another of the Tigridia blossoms that will last for that day. Later when it gets hot and hotter, the hover flies will crowd it, drunk on pollen.

After breakfast on the patio, we move indoors, shut all windows and let down the blinds and stay in the cool old house until sunset, hoping for a cool breeze by then, fresh enough to sleep well beside a wide open window. If not, we move down into the basement for the night. One of us will wake in the early hours when the birds start and open up all windows. 

My brother tells me that in the years to come, this summer will be remembered for being the coldest in history.  

My sister complains that the heat is keeping her from being outdoors, now, in summer, and that it's not fair.

My nephew, a marine biologist, shrugs and says, we made this mess, we better adjust. 

I am glad I don't have to go to work anymore. Instead, I have an appointment late afternoon with outside temps expected to be 40C in a building that most definitely has no airconditioning. I just fixed a thick neckband to my wide straw hat so I can tie it below my chin and it won't blow off when I cycle there. 

For a while we lived on the edge of the Thar desert in India,  R reminds me as he hands me a flask of water to bring along.

I tried to listen to the Peter Thiel interview in the New York Times but gave up, not sure what hit me. seriously, these tech bros, I get memory flashes all the way back to early childhood psychology lectures, John Bowlby's rhesus monkeys and their hopeless search for attachment, acceptance, empathy.

 

In contrast, this sounds like a breath of fresh air in tech sis speak: