ATLANTIS
ADVENTURE
ATLANTIS ADVENTURE is the eighth book in a series now spanning a quarter of a
century which tells the history of ATLANTIS, a radical therapeutic and ecological community.
It is the story of the journey made by Jenny, the commune’s foundress, her three very
small daughters, and various male companions, to find a new settling place for her tribe in the
Third World.
Other books in the Atlantis series are:
Room To Breathe
They Call Us The Screamers
Atlantis Alive
Atlantis Is….
Atlantis Magic
Atlantis, Inishfree
Male Sexuality: The Atlantis Position
All published by Caliban Books, London, and written by Jenny James with contributions by
members of the Atlantis Community
Books in the making:
Atlantis, Colombia
The Atlantis Handbook of Sexual Techniques for the Heterosexual Female
(Subtitled: All You Ever Knew About Sex and Didn’t Dare to Mention)
The Journeyers:
Jenny, born 1942 in the time of Aries; English
Louise, Alice and Katie, her Irish daughters, born 1981, 1983 and 1985
Fred, Irish, father of the children, born 1949, a Taurus
Barnsley Bill, a Yorkshireman, born 1947, a Gemini
Ned, British, brought up in Ireland, a 1958 Taurus
Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar….
(I shall throw in my lot
With the poor of this Earth)
Jose Marti, Cuban poet and revolutionary leader
who died in combat against the Spanish 19th May 1895
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
to all those who helped to make this difficult journey at times a human, homely experience,
including:
María of Gomera; Elaine on Tenerife; Tony, a black friend and guide in times of need in
Mindelo, Cape Verde; the mountain people of Santo Antão on the Cape Verde Islands; Bori and
Roger on the S.V. Bel Espoir; the black fisherman in Martinique who saved my baby when no
white doctor knew how; Captain Jim of the S.V. Kukabo who sailed us to Venezuela in spite of
dramatically opposed world outlooks;
To the middle-class family in Venezuela who opened their home to such a strange crew;
to the simple mountain family in Chitagá, Colombia, who saved us from a dreadful night; to the
stonebreakers and the farming family in lovely Concepción, Colombia, who in spite of their own
poverty were so generous to itinerant strangers. A huge thank-you to old auntie Amelia and her
relatives in the Casalta, Bogotá; to my friend and enemy Josué Acosta, a Communist policeman;
to Gilberto Echeverría who sealed my destiny; and to Horacio and Adela, who had a very special
role to play;
To Jean, Meredith and Martha, three wonderful ‘gringa’ ladies settled in Ecuador; and to
three Swedes I almost managed to relate to: Johann, Miki and Leffe.
And lastly, in irony, I dedicate this book to two Irish social workers, Miss Marilyn Roantree and
Mr. Joe Cullen, in the hope that they may one day notice that the world is a little larger than the
confines of their offices in County Donegal, Ireland, and that children are far grander creatures
than they ever imagined.
This book is also dedicated to the concept of communism, a very old world order indeed, with a
prayer that I may live long enough to witness the final breakdown of the modern world into
human-size communities ....
Then a mason came forth and said, Speak to us of Houses.
And he answered and said:
Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness 'ere you build a house
within the city walls.
…..
Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower
scatter them in forest and meadow.
Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys that
you might ... come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments.
But these things are not yet to be.
In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that
fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer shall your city walls
separate your hearths from your fields.
And tell me, what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard
with fastened doors?
Have you peace ... Or have you only comfort, .. that stealthy thing that
enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of
your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the
flesh.
…Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, arnd then
walks grinning in the funeral.
But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped
nor tamed,
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
…You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor
bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe
lest walls should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
…For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky,
whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and
the silences of night.
“The Prophet”
Kahlil Gibran
Contents
Page No
INTRODUCTION
PART 1
Chapter 1
The Canary Islands
XXX
Chapter 2
A Swedish Nightmare
XXX
Chapter 3
The Cape Verde Islands
XXX
Chapter 4
A French Interlude
XXX
Chapter 5
Martinique
XXX
Chapter 6
In Which I Did Not See The Caribbean
XXX
PART II:
SOUTH AMERICA
Chapter 7
Venezuela
XXX
Chapter 8
Colombia
XXX
Chapter 9
Ecuador
XXX
Chapter 10
Peru
XXX
Chapter 11
Going Home is Such a Ride *
XXX
Epilogue
XXX
* A song by Dory Previn.
INTRODUCTION
Off the coast of Donegal in North West Ireland, there is a windy, rocky little island called Inishfree where
between 1975 and 1990, there lived a small, but widely - and wildly -reported commune called Atlantis, dedicated to
the internal cleansing of the human psyche through primal therapy and the external cleansing of the environment
through simple, self-sufficient, planet-friendly living.
For a few years, Inishfree spelt Freedom. But during the latter 1970s, a Great Flattening began as the Irish
government scrambled ever more to conform to British systems, values and laws.
Conformity hit Atlantis through the fashionable concern of social workers for ‘children’s welfare’, the
latest name for government intrusion into one’s private life. We in Atlantis were also concerned for our children’s
welfare: for instance we didn’t consider it very beneficial for a two-year-old Irish boy called Martyn Kelly to be
wrenched from his parents by police and sent to live for six years with a chain-smoking, television-watching
American foster family, simply because his mother was enlightened enough to admit she had problems and to seek
help. The Irish courts decreed the child had to stay in ‘care’ until he was sixteen. Atlantis decreed the whole system
could go to hell.
It took Mary Kelly, Martyn’s mother, years of daring campaigning and direct action and thousands of
pounds of the commune’s money to get that court decision squashed, by which time this previously nervous,
self-effacing Irishwoman had become an ardent public speaker on the subject of ‘parent abuse’ and was the scourge
of the Irish Social Work Department.
For the first year of her struggle, I helped her organise her fight. And then Fred, my common-law husband,
jealous of all the attention going Mary’s way, decided to kidnap our five-year-old daughter Louise and run away
with her, helped amply by the Irish police.
I decided it was time to Move, with a capital M. Our commune had already felt since 1979 that we were
finished with Europe. We planned to move to South America in search of wilder parts where perhaps in spite of
‘totalitarian’ governments, one’s daily life would be freer than when exposed to the interfering tentacles of our
Western ‘democracies.’
Acting through the Irish High Court to get Louise returned to me, I immediately left for London, very ill
from the shock of dealing so directly with the weight of Irish paternalism, but with my three little daughters
blessedly intact. I went to rest and recuperate at the home of a woman friend, Francine. With us was Bill, a
longstanding commune member who had also at times been my lover.
In London, in a park, walking one day with Louise, Francine bumped into someone they both knew well:
Fred. He stood and stared, genuinely shocked. Francine hurried home to me with Louise. Eventually, he traced us
and was seen walking up and down our street. After further Irish shenanigans, it turned out he was in London to try
and earn back the money he had caused us to waste on High Court fees, and that he wanted to rejoin the tribe.
We took him back, whereupon Bill sulked and returned to Inishfree, rejoining us later in the Canary
Islands. Meanwhile, Fred had no idea of the imminent journey to South America, and I needed help with the luggage
and camping. So I said to him, “Do you want to come on a kind of a .. er .. holiday?” He looked at me with his
startled blue eyes and nodded, glad to be back with us. “We’ll need equipment for both hot and cold weather”, I
said gaily, not telling him where we were headed...
I was two weeks short of forty-five when we left Europe for ever. Louise was five, Alice three, and Katie,
a year old, was still in nappies. I had never heard of anyone attempting such a journey with three small children
before, but other people’s precedents had never been a dominant factor in my life. I was nervous, of course, but I
figured that a family group, whilst a socially unacceptable unit for rough travelling in Europe, would tune in easily
with the Third World societies we were heading for. I had spoken fluent Spanish since age eighteen when I married
a Spaniard, and had spent my teens and twenties hitch-hiking and living out of a rucksack, covering huge distances
on foot on political missions and demonstrations. I was born into a Communist, atheist family and grew up in
indignant antagonism towards all things British, American and modern, most especially nuclear weapons,
authoritarian schooling, enforced religious observance and vivisection. I was born early enough to escape ever
living in the same house as a television and when I was a child, no-one I knew had a motor-car.
In spite of the politics of my family, my mother was extremely tight and middle-class. Decades of therapy
and digging the turf on Inishfree Island had done much to free me mentally and physically from her shackles, but I
knew as I set off for the Third World that I still carried a weighty load of bourgeois baggage on my back, and I
planned that the long, slow way we intended to travel, by foot and by sea, should be a deliberate de-conditioning
process.
Financially, our pioneering journey was backed by our community. But we are not a rich group and we
attempted to live throughout our travels as cheaply as possible, sleeping under the stars and cooking over a campfire.
I had been dedicatedly vegetarian since childhood, but Fred and Bill, my initial companions on this voyage, do not
always share my principles and often succumbed to circumstance - that is, no food except meat available!
Atlantis is anti-religious but with a wide experience of psychic phenomena. We do not smoke or take drugs
and try to avoid medicines except in direst need. We believe in the health-giving qualities of a good-natured
aggressiveness with a liberal dose of humour and an active sex-life. When relationships break down, as they
regularly do, it is always as a result of a person being deliberately mean about any one of these three basic
ingredients. We are not libertarian in a laissez-faire sense, either with one another or with our children, but demand
high standards of personal behaviour and co-operation from both. This results in tremendous energy and enjoyment
when these demands are met, and raging rows when they are not.
Self-imposed homelessness and poverty, whilst probably not the first thing you’d enquire about at your
local travel agency, are, when combined with endless time stretching ahead, a very good way to throw in one’s lot
with the poor of this earth. And if the urban reader finds it mystifying as to why this particular middle-aged
housewife should undertake such weird and uncomfortable tasks, I can only empathise: there were many moments
when I found some difficulty in remembering the Higher Purpose behind some of the more irrational of my
self-imposed trials. However, if you ever find yourself in a fit of frustrated despair with your hands in the sink
wondering whatever happened to all those childhood dreams of travel and adventure, you could always…..read on ...
The people in this book are still living in the wilds of South America. You can come and meet them if you
like.
FOREWORD
From Barnsley Bill to the Inishfreeans;
Gomera, Canary Islands,
14th June 1987
Dear Friends,
Thank you for helping me to get here.
There is a funny woman here with three kids and a husband. I don’ t know what possessed her to start this
mad journey except that she’s in some kind of mid-life crisis. It saddens me to think that I’ve spent the best years
of my life following a lunatic. Maybe living in reclusion all those years on Inishfree has finally got to her mind.
She eats white spaghetti and white bread. And I saw her with a packet of biscuits the other day. My guru eating
biscuits!
If you think this is a serious end-of-the-world quest for a place to live outside of Europe, let me put the
record straight and inform you all of the wanton excesses that have become the norm to a once proud, self-sufficient,
organic-farming guru.
Biscuits!
Love, sadly,
Bill.
PART I
THE CANARY ISLANDS
In a quick, ripping action to extract ourselves from a hated womb, we took our only air flight on this
journey - from London to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. The children, who had previously known only rowing
boats, seagulls and donkeys, screamed with the pain in their ears at the pressure in the aircraft, whilst I gasped for
breath, shocked at the airless, over-packed, overheated, panic-inducing interior of the plane, swallowing my fear,
then my rage at the smooth, “We hope you enjoyed your flight” over the intercom. Then, stepping out into the
rolling heatwaves of Lanzarote, we said goodbye forever to modern civilization and its delights, saving ourselves
from the incinerating ant-heap of the airport by hitching our first family lift, to a beach.
Night was falling. Our kids rolled over and over naked in the sand and splashed themselves free of their
airborne nightmare. Fred and I stood by our mountain of luggage and musical instruments, staring, slightly stunned,
acclimatising ourselves to the warm night air and to the fact that we had nowhere to go, didn’t know where we were
going, and what is more, didn’t care.
Lanzarote is a ‘German’ island, terrifyingly well-kept, with streetlights glaring down on the beach. I began
to scout for a shadowy corner to lay out our bedding, knowing full well it would be verboten. Then a very pleasant
German family started chatting to us - Fred and I both speak fluent German, - and worrying about us. Finally, they
ferried us in shifts in their tiny hired car to their very tasty little holiday home on a perfectly-ordered holiday
housing estate, where we laid out our familiar Inishfree bedding on our first unfamiliar floor.
Next day we clambered into an open rickety bus and crossed Lanzarote to the ferry for Fuerte Ventura, the
next-door island where my teenage niece Sara was living with her Canaries Island boyfriend.
Lanzarote is black, like a firegrate after the fire has gone out; the soil is volcanic ash and there is no
rainfall. But they manage to grow bushel-loads of tomatoes for export by scooping out little hollows in the fertile
cinders, where just enough dew collects to cultivate them. I couldn’t even feel sorry that the island was being
developed for tourists; there is little else you could do with it.
The ferry from Lanzarote to Fuerte Ventura ploughed at absurd speed through big seas and was so crowded
with vehicles and German suitcases that we never saw anything except the backside of a car-exhaust and from time
to time the seawater as it swirled around our ankles when the boat dipped alarmingly.
It was evening as we landed on Fuerte Ventura which, like its neighbour, is burnt out, but older: bits of
pathetic plant life and lichen give the island a faintly green hue; there are more nooks and crannies than on
Lanzarote and the villages are a mess.
The taxi-driver looked most worried and refused to drive away when we asked to be dropped at the most
run-down, isolated bar in Cotillo, the address my niece Sara had given us. He insisted the bar hadn’t been open for
nine years.
The wind was strong and cold and night was falling rapidly as we stood there, with no response
forthcoming to our knocks on the bar door. It was a wild situation, but I was as high as the wind, elated just to be
standing at last on our own feet on the non-moving earth.
Eventually the door opened and a tired, handsome face looked out, called for Sara, and invited us in. I
stepped inside, but then ushered the kids quickly back out into the wind: the bar was full of large piles of dog
diarrhoea. Many more young men kept appearing saying, “Come in, come in, it’s cold out there” but I preferred the
wind.
Sara and her friends drove us in a battered van in the pitch dark to a wild open beach where, breathing in
the delicious night air in the blessed freedom of Nature, we erected our first home.
Next day, I began writing home to the rest of the commune on Inishfree:
Cotillo, Fuerte Ventura, March 1987
We are living in a semi-circle of stones a few yards from the sea’s edge on a wild, rocky, deserted beach a mile from
the ramshackle ghost town of Cotillo. Our tent is stretched across the top of the stones and held down with strings,
rocks, and nappy-pins. The winds are so crazy, I can hardly write; and we can’t light a fire as it would be
uncontrollable with everything around us parched dry. Each day, the sea comes up a little further: it nearly reached
our shelter last night. I heard it thundering towards us and was so terrified, I made Fred sit up with a torch
watching the tide-line until it went down again. In the daytime, the breakers are marvellous to see, the sea a deep
turquoise, and the beach a children’s paradise of rock pools.
I cleaned my teeth in sea-water this morning, a nauseating experience - this is me being super-brave as
every drop of drinking water on this barren island has to be purchased: it is imported from Gran Canaria, the largest
Canary Island. A worse trauma is not being able to do any washing: no nappies for Katie and no knickers for
myself (I’m wearing Fred’s).
Alice is terribly sunburnt on her face and her eyes are nearly closed up as she refuses to take shelter when
told and is completely happy. She pees the sleeping bag every night and once during her afternoon sleep and it has
to be sun-dried. In the daytime, I turn the inside of the tent-house into a sandpit so the kids can play in the shade. I
use the stones our shelter is made of as nooks and crannies to keep everything in and all excess clothing is packed in
pillowslips for use as pillows.
In Cotillo, four of the island’s last trees lie felled by a rubbish tip. They were ‘darkening the windows’ of
a future tourist apartment. Cotillo consists of a heap of unfinished breeze-block buildings which are already falling
to pieces as the owners ran out of money. Goats eat out of tin cans; there is not a blade of grass to be seen.
Slogans on the walls say ‘OTAN - NO’ - NO NATO’. Well, I’m glad they got that right at least.
I’m off now to the ‘well’, that is, the artificial container which is artificially filled with water at an artificial
price. Luckily its owners, who are building an elaborate restaurant for future tourists, let us take water for free.
There is practically no waste on the island, so you can’t scavenge for thrown-away containers, but Fred brought a
cooking pot borrowed from Sara’s bar, and he found two thrown-away apples, one orange, a few tiny potatoes and
half a bottle of water discarded by Germans.
Tips for future rough-travellers: take clothes-pegs for hanging washing on wild Atlantic beaches and lots of
safety pins for pinning up your house when you can’t bang in tent-pegs because of the soft sand; a small mirror if
you have kids who want to see how weird they look when their sunburn is covered in white talcum powder; a
calendar so you know when it’s Sunday and water is 75 instead of 40 pesetas; and men, keep your hair on: you need
it to protect you from the sun. And ladies: take all your knickers, and more.
Love, Jen
After a week on the beach at Cotillo, we had conquered all aspects of living there and I was ready to move
on. We decided to travel westwards by sea to Gomera, having ascertained that it was the least developed of the
Canary Islands.
Travelling across Fuerte Ventura to the port of Rosario confirmed that this island is no place to live: I saw a
herd of fifty goats roaming around eating the last cactus spikes.
A modern ferry is nearly as dreadful as an aircraft. It arrived at midnight, by which time I was freezing
cold, dropping with tiredness and all three children were asleep; it was so crowded, I was on the verge of panic as to
how we were going to find space to lie down, but a steward beckoned to Fred and gave him a cabin free - there’s
something about Fred. It was just above the engines and completely airless but at least we could lay down the
sleeping children and our own exhausted bodies. I felt tortured and miserable. Then suddenly the alarm bells went
and my splintered mind prepared for a mad death in the wild Canaries seas. However, it was an announcement that
morning had come and we’d arrived at the port of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, where the boat stopped briefly to
disgorge passengers.
We went on deck. A hydrofoil skimmed by, somewhere between Heaven and Hell, and small boats
disappeared and reappeared in the swell. This was a calm sea we were told, yet you couldn’t walk on deck. I felt so
ill, all I could do was lie down and cuddle Katie, coping as best I could with her vomiting. Fred felt fine and looked
after everything, drying the nappies I managed to wash under the electric hand-drier in the loo, repeatedly carting
Louise off to be sick, and clearing up after Katie.
Eventually we arrived in Tenerife, where we sat waiting for a bus to the south of the island to get the final
ferry for Gomera. The posh loo had no soap, no mirrors, no loo seats and no toilet-paper. I spent a fraught half-hour
pouring cold water on poor Katie to wash the sick out of her hair and washing all her clothes. She then ran around
the bus-station naked. I hung all our washing in the breeze on plants behind the bus-station wall, and Fred
disappeared to get food for us. He returned having collected a huge sack-full of free fruit. The stall-tenders at the
market had been so sorry for him seeing him pick up waste fruit that they insisted he throw it away and gave him
better stuff from their stalls. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the biggest cauliflower I’d ever seen in the middle of
the smoothest steel-and-glass bus-station I’d ever seen.
Hints for travellers section: Take a tip from us, carry the least appealing luggage in the world so no-one is
tempted to steal it: scruffy, chaotic, enormous and unliftable. You’ll be safe anywhere you go.
GOMERA, 6th April 1987
Dear Folk Back Home: We celebrated our arrival in Gomera by coming within a split second of both Alice and
Louise being drowned.
We had just arrived in the port of San Sebastian, and their instinct was to rush down to the nearest bit of
sea. Unaware of the murderousness of the huge Atlantic breakers crashing against this mountain island, they were
standing on a boat slip-way squeaking in delight at the enormous spray. I screamed, Fred rushed, and he whipped
the kids up in a movement he’d probably practised many a time as Captain of his Cork football team. Next second,
huge waves broke repeatedly where the kids had just been standing. We’d have had the choice of suicide by diving
in after them, or living with having watched our children drown.
We took a bus across Gomera to the small mountain town of Valle Hermoso. As we waited for the bus to
come, a man watering a park handed me an armful of bananas for the children. But the driver refused to let the
children on the bus until they gave up the bananas they were eating. During the journey, he shouted at Alice when
she stood up to view the breathtaking vertical Gomeran scenery. When we arrived at Valle Hermoso, we felt ghastly,
out-of-place, hot, sweaty, scruffy. You could tell they expected a certain type of tourist - single, huge Germans with
plenty of money - and we were definitely the Wrong Type.
Tense and paranoid, we slept our first night in our tent on a bit of derelict land at the back of a supermarket.
In the morning, a policeman stopped the kids playing in the water fountain in the town square. “Somos Africa”
read a slogan on a wall. “We are Africa.” Oh no, they’re not. Electric hand-driers in the loos in the middle of the
mountains on one of the tiniest islands in the Atlantic. A swing-park full of hideous modern statues.
We sat in the square pretending we knew what to do next and watched our sunburned, naked children play.
We met some young German lads with a Volkswagen who let us pay them to take us out of “Beautiful Valley” Valle Hermoso - to see what we would see.
In the course of twenty miles, we moved back a hundred years, to the little village of Chipude where we
camped on a tiny ivy-covered ledge behind an empty cottage, with outdoor communal washing facilities a few yards
away. There was nowhere to go to the loo and no shops, but a woman gave us bananas, bread and cheese and several
people tried to sell us one of their funny little barns which they call houses.
In the morning, we awoke drenched by mountain dew, and leaving our tent and belongings under the
communal village eye, we trekked off on foot round the twisting mountain road to find a place that felt right to settle
for a while. It was Katie who found our new home by screeching inconsolably after a mile or so of hot road, so that
we simply had to stop. Fred climbed up steep terraced land to some peasant cottages to ask for water and a place to
camp, and that’s how we met María and came to be on top of Gomera. About 3,000 feet on top of it.
María is a robust, round-faced young peasant woman who led us confidently up the stony mountainside to
… a disused hen-shed.
It looked like paradise to us, so while Fred ambled off back the couple of kilometres to
Chipude to get our tent, I lay out the hot, tired children, sheltering them as best I could from the punishing overhead
sun. Two yards to my left was a drop of a thousand or so feet. I tried to ignore it, and settled down to write,
wondering how we were going to get all that dried chicken-ordure out of the shed.
Several hours later, Fred returned, with luggage and accompanied by a man who moved us up in the world
- up from the hen-shed to a cowshed owned by the same family, and which was a little taller. The manure inside was
even older and giant cactuses obscured the sheer drop outside the back door, so it was an improvement on the
morning’s accommodation. Miniature marigolds grew everywhere and through the cactuses I could see the Atlantic,
thousands of feet below us.
9th April 1987
María has adopted us. She gives the children hot milk, lets me do my washing in her sink and take water up the
mountain in her containers, and she wants to cook for us, which I absolutely will not allow, though Fred is keen on
it. Superimposed on the third-world conditions these people live in is a TV, a telephone at the local bar, roads
nearby, and EU prices. We live on £5 a day, and there is no fruit or veg for sale. Gomera is green and beautiful, but
every streamlet is dry. There seem to be more Germans than Gomerans on this island: right by our shack is a
footpath leading to ‘Fortaleza’, the highest peak on Gomera, shaped like a fortress. Germans climb it every day. I
wouldn’t dare.
We are immediately part of a small community. “Everyone helps everyone here”, says María as she pours
fabric softener into the soft mountain water I was rinsing our clothes in. She mast have seen on telly that that’s what
proper people use.
11th April 1987
Today is my 45th birthday. I celebrated it by battling my way with Louise against tremendous winds the two
kilometres to Chipude to look at a farm, as we played with the idea of buying a little place and settling for a while.
We were in danger of being blown down the mountainside and at times had to bend almost flat on the ground to
avoid being swept away out of control. But at least it was warmer than our fireplace-less cowshed where my hands
got so cold, Fred had to keep rubbing life back into them for me. The children aren’t cold, as people have given us
so many clothes - ugly, nylon, smelly clothes, amongst which were a few usable articles. The rest we stuffed into the
thousand wind-holes in the dry-stone walls. Fred stretched the tent across one wall as a draught-excluder, but we
can’t do anything about the roof, it’s too fragile to touch. I hung the flysheet across the side of the bed facing the
door, which is a rickety piece of wood. The ‘bed’ Fred built out of stones and poles with straw and sacking on top,
then our sleeping bags. The kids sleep snug in a manger, the hollowed-out trunk of an enormous tree previously used
to feed the cattle. They are on the side of the shed which is built into the mountain wall, so no draught reaches them.
I certainly did not bring the right clothes to the Canary Islands. On cloudy days like today, I survive by
wearing my pyjama trousers under layers of thin skirts and dresses, wearing every stitch I brought with me, even my
apron! On top of this, I wear one of Fred’s long shirts, my night shirt, my crocheted jumper of many colours, plus a
shawl over the top. Also, today I have on two mosquito nets wrapped around my head and neck for protection
against the cold wind, and Louise and Alice each have one on too. I also wear all of this, except the sandals and
shawl, in bed at night!
We reached Chipude and went to the house of a woman who wanted to show us her farm. As I entered the
house, it was warm - there was a wood fire on the floor. I looked up quickly to see where the chimney was. There
was none. I stared, seeking a hole in the roof. There was none. All the bamboo cane and rafters and walls were
black with smoke, but although these houses have no windows, the air was not smoky. Astonished, I questioned the
people as to how it worked and was informed, ‘el humo sale por la puerta.’ Well-trained smoke: it goes out the
door.
I didn’t like the farm we saw, but I was delighted with the possibility of a deliciously warm cabin, so
excitedly we ran home to try out this new invention: fire.
So now we have a lovely dark warm cattleshed. But the smoke definitely doesn’t ‘sale por la puerta’: it
goes out the walls and roof, but who cares, it goes. In fact, I’m breathing quite a lot of it as I sit outside writing
this, but - heaven - I was able to have a hot wash of the body, forced Fred to have a hot wash of his body and did my
washing in an ecstasy of hot water, an unheard-of luxury in these parts - everyone waits for the sun to take the chill
off it.
Two nights ago, I had a row with María; one, because she wanted Fred to go and sleep at her house ‘so that
he could meet her husband’ and two, because when I said No, she kept insisting that all of us go and have dinner and
sleep in her house. At this point, night was falling and we were all in bed and she actually expected us to get up
and go down the mountain with her. She eventually walked off in a sulk when I absolutely refused. I then had a
row with Fred as he had wanted us to give in.
Next night, she tried again, and again I refused. Then, finally, as it was my birthday, I gave in, and down
we trooped. There was wine, which for some reason was given to Fred only, and there was spaghetti and chips and
eggs all bathed in some poor animal's grease, and fruit drinks and bread and Heinz tomato sauce. Fred ate about
three dinners and the kids sucked lollipops at the same time as eating their chips. Only Katie behaved well, but the
couple loved having us. María’s husband, Elia, had bought his kids battery-run huge American cop cars that
swerved automatically when they touched an object. They were kept in a cabinet and the kids weren’t allowed to
touch them but on this special occasion they were brought out proudly and demonstrated to us. He had a guitar
which he couldn’t play, but which Fred plays well, so he serenaded them.
I loved having a warm cowshed to go home to, where there were no hideous china dogs or holy pictures or
TV. I put a wad of ancient cow manure on the fire and snuggled into bed, wishing I’d brought a dressing-gown,
some candles and some socks.
Goodnight, Jen
25th April 1987
Dear Ned,
This is a special letter to you as yesterday was your birthday. Have you noticed that life isn’t particularly
nice? You get the odd moment when the fire shines bright in the hut at night or the fresh morning sun makes
everything feel fine. But mostly it’s just the kids coughing their guts out, neighbours trying to take them over; rats
taking over the cabin at night and everyone getting at everyone, especially me at Fred, Fred at the kids, Louise at
Alice and Alice at Katie.
We are incredibly popular. Apart from María and her husband telling us where to sleep (in their house),
where to eat (in their house), what to eat (what they eat), apart from taking away our children and giving them
greasy food and fizzy lemonade and cough medicines and keeping them up late and letting them watch sadistic
violence on TV and generally considering it an insult if we won’t live with them or let our children live with them;
and apart from the fact that their children, their grandmothers and husbands and neighbours and aunts and uncles
and every-bloody-body else think they can walk over our hut night and day; apart from all this, they are very lovely
friendly people who give the kids pretty dresses to play mud pies in, Louise’s favourite game apart from chucking
dust and mud at people or spitting and vomiting all over them when she gets a cough-attack; as I was saying, there
are some exceedingly lovely women, very basic and homely and friendly who are always sending me parcels of gifts
and ordering me to go somewhere. Yesterday morning, when I’d been delivered my latest parcel, I said to the lady
who runs the bar-shop, "Aren’t there any families who need these clothes more than we do? " and she said, “No, it’s
to show that ‘te aprecia la gente’ - that people value you.” And when I looked puzzled, she said, “que te quiere la
gente” - that the people love you.
What have I done to deserve this? I’ve spent years practising being horrible to various commune-members
and visitors, only to come here and have to shout, ineffectually, at the impenetrable self-confidence of María’s
cheeky six-year-old daughter. I never win. She never takes any notice, and I can hardly hit a local child. Not that
anyone would mind, everyone accepts feelings here, it’s just one huge Primal Therapy community.
These
Gomerans are just plain primitive Screamers. My theories fit in wonderfully here, but my character structure is in
agony. I am completely uptight. I would like to find some remote mountain top on some remote island in some
remote part of the world to hide away in, like Gomera for instance. Scream!!!
Scream? They wouldn’t notice. They yell whenever they like, it’s just one big squabbling picnic. Never
mind, the Germans come here every day to climb Fortaleza and bring a little culture. I hate them. Especially the
two I stupidly invited in yesterday who of course in true German fashion knew everything, and more, than I did
about anything I’d ever done, thought, or experienced, and who refused to lift even one hair of their eyebrows at
finding a heap of blonde children and a sun-burned woman living up a
mountain in a cattle-shed. Cool.
I now like Louise. She has succeeded where I failed. She has managed to be so horrible to Elena,
María’s daughter, that the obnoxious child has buggered off.
I haven’t actually noticed any men in the Canaries. I suppose they are at work, or gone to Tenerife practically everyone has gone to Tenerife. The women are definitely the noisiest and most active. Two days ago, I
was frozen with fear creeping along a sandy mountainside track hugging the rock face, when up from over the
precipice trotted two women, chatting gaily, with huge loads of Christ-knows-what on their heads. One was
middle-aged, the other over 60.
What was I doing creeping round a mountain track near a precipice? Well, I thought I ought to take a look
at all possibilities in my search for somewhere more permanent to live while you lot get yourselves ready to leave
Europe, and so for good measure, I included a few impossibilities too. If you peer through the cactus plants outside
our hut and manage to control your knee-wobble at what you see, down in the mists below, in another hotter world,
there is a little settlement called Erque. María kept threatening to take me down there by the ‘short cut’ (close eyes
and jump?). The thought was so terrifying, I pre-empted her by taking off alone one morning in an attempt to reach
the place by the extremely long winding road which some foolhardy vehicles use to get down there.
On Gomera, there is a ‘whistle language’, the ‘silbo’, which people use to communicate with one another
over vast distances, from mountain to mountain. These whistles echo round the mountains mixing with the barking
of dogs and women screaming at each other. And so, as I turned each bend in the endless road, there was a great
screaming and whistling and barking of dogs; nothing particularly odd about that. Except that, with the heat
pouring down on me, my terror of the drop, and the treacherousness of the sandy road surface covered in fallen
rocks, I was in such a state of tension that I began to hallucinate that the shouting and whistling was directed at me.
It went on and on, crescendoing, so I thought, every time I moved, abating when I stopped to look and listen.
Eventually, there could be no doubt. If I disappeared round a bend, obscured from the view of the village
below, the cacophony stopped; when I reappeared, it started at hysteria-pitch once again. One of the words yelled
over and over again was ‘mariposa’, which normally means ‘butterfly’ but was obviously some form of abuse, also
‘coño’ which means ‘cunt’, and is a general all-purpose swear-word. But the word which finally showed me I was
not simply suffering from heat-and-fear induced paranoia was SUBA which means, quite clearly, GO UP, i.e. Not
Down, i.e. eff off and don’t come to Erque. By this time I had sod-all intention of going to their rotten Erk anyway
as it meant another few hundred thousand steps of fear, but I wasn’t going to turn tail immediately and succumb to
this psychic battery. Why ‘mariposa’? Was it my bright clothes? Was it the fact that I was clinging delicately to
the edge of a mountain?! All I know is, as I finally turned back, with what I hoped was a degree of nonchalance and
dignity, I bent to pick up an empty matchbox. On the back was the picture of a beautiful butterfly, with the name:
mariposa paradoxa. Just a little Carlos Castaneda trip on a hot Canaries afternoon.
Anyway, as you see, not everyone here ‘me aprecia’ especially not some old loony in her rotten
godforsaken mountain valley called Erk.
María told me when I’d recovered sufficient self-esteem to recount my tale that there is indeed an old crone
in Erque who screams thusly at everyone. Small comfort.
Happy Birthday!
Love, J.
29th April 1987
There is a serious row going on in the tiny settlement where we live. Just across the gardens from María’s house,
there lives an old woman who drinks; she has an unmarried son who, evidently, is María’s father, but no-one ever
mentions it as it wasn’t supposed to happen, and so it didn’t.
This old woman and María have blood-curdling screaming matches from their backdoors wherein the old
woman yells abuse at María for hobnobbing with ‘foreigners’ and María yells back that the old woman is just
jealous. María giggles with us about it, obviously enjoying the hubbub she’s causing, and with devilment in her
face, invites us down to dinner to play music outside her house. She says she wants to annoy the old woman by
having us make merry there. Fred loves the gregariousness of it all, so although I would always prefer to stay at
home, we went, and I dared to play my violin for the first time in front of these people.
Now I’ve come home alone, in the dark, as the baby had fallen asleep before we left and I had to come
back to her. A street light showed me some of the way up the steep mountain path, but at the end I was on hands
and feet feeling for my way, then I kind of bum-hopped down the last difficult ridge to our hut.
The baby is asleep in the manger, no crying she makes. Two new kittens are under the ‘bed’. Fred is still
with María, eating endless mouthfuls of cold greasy spaghetti, cold over-fried eggs and cold grease-ridden chips and
drinking heady home-grown grape wine.
I feel cold with my arms out of the sleeping bag writing this. The mountain mists have come down and
there is a sharp breeze. I can hear shooting in the mountains. It’s pitch-dark outside and the only creatures to
shoot as far as I know are rabbits. I’ve never been to bed here before without Fred, and although he’s the most
bad-tempered person I know, it is slightly comforting to have even the school bully with you up a mountain. The
dogs in Erque, hundreds of feet below us, are barking; the baby stirs. My face is burnt. Alice and Louise are
staying below tonight with María, a blessed rest for us as she seems to take their alarming coughing fits in her stride.
She says they have ‘tosferina’, which I think is whooping cough.
Goodnight, J.
3rd May 1987
To my sister on her 43rd birthday
Dear Snowy,
Elía, the slinky handsome drunken husband of María is sulking on a rock above us because I refused
point-blank to go down for yet another greasy spaghetti meal. He and María are very keen for us to buy their
uncle’s house, which is more like a big old barn to our eyes. The land attached is stony and is the size of a few
pocket handkerchiefs and it only rains here in winter, but we can’t bear the idea of travelling on right now, so we are
very tempted. My conflict about whether to buy the barn or not created this dream last night:
I dream I am pregnant. Suddenly, part of the pregnancy comes away. It is a hand-sized foetus, formed
except for its arms, covered in black fur and has small sharp teeth which can bite. I am debating 1) whether to
shove it back where it came from so that it can grow some more, 2) drown it as it’s deformed, or 3) nurture it in the
belief that as it grows, the black fur will disappear and it’ll look normal.
Meanwhile, I feel the real pregnancy
deep down in my stomach.
I wrap the abortion up in my skirt and run through crowds to find you, Snowy, calling your name at the top
of my voice to ask you what you think I should do. I find you and as I approach, I feel happy, show you my strange
baby, and ask your opinion. But I already know what you’ll say: ‘Oh, keep it of course.’
On waking, I knew immediately that the furry black foetus is this little shack we might buy, and the larger
pregnancy is the South American expedition.
So you think it’s OK to buy a furry black piece of land with no arms and with sharp teeth that might nip
me?! Well, it’s all incredibly picturesque: the stonework of the cottages in the deserted little village is itself a work
of art. The roof lets in plenty of daylight - but, we are told, roofs are easy to mend: you take off the loose curved
tiles, replace the bamboo canes which are rotting and replace the tiles! In addition to the house, there is a very large
high animal barn, much bigger, taller and grander than where we are living at present. And above the house, below
the house and to all sides is beauty: bare mountain beauty, with the occasional palm tree. It is surrounded by other
abandoned houses and barns and strips of garden; every path and stairway is of beautiful stone; there are vines by
the house, almond and fig trees everywhere, plus the ubiquitous edible fruit-cactus. Geraniums grow like weeds
and there are banks of lush mint by the water-hole.
I’m not sure whether I’ve convinced myself by now, but as it seems none of you are about to trip out to
view my abortion, I’ll have to make up my own mind to keep it!
All the best, Jen
Early May, 1987
Dear Snowy,
I sit on our own bench leaning on our own wall with our own dried-out grass under my aching feet, a
brown Fred digging with an odd shovel in the dusty earth, a lot of which was collected from our very own earthen
floor. Katie is with me, very good-humoured in spite of having lost both her health and her bottle-teat; she is now
bottle-weaned since the kitten ate the teat several days ago.
People are still bringing us gifts: figs, almonds, tomatoes, potatoes, cheeses, a bedspread, a plastic plate and
two tin ones, cutlery, a drinking glass, a milking bucket, and a little black dog! And now we have goats: there is
nothing under £100 for a milking goat here and we had only £175 left. I heaved, I breathed, and I said, OK, let’s do
it. She’s a strong black two-year old with a huge milk-sac that nearly touches the ground. I told the man who
brought her round that we’d buy another one when money came from England, and he said, “Have it now, and pay
when you’ve got the money.” We were also allowed to move straight into the house which we can’t pay for yet, so
we feel rich, even if you can see the sky through the roof and the floor is made of earth. And we already have a
pile-up of milk after only a few days, so we’ll do what everyone round here does and make one hard cheese a day.
Our house overlooks the sea several thousand feet away, so far that it looks like an extension of the sky.
At night, we can see lights on Hierro, another little Canary Island. The one street light of our ghost-village is planted
in our garden if you please, which means we have to live with a constant full moon, though we can darken the house
immediately by closing the door as windows are unheard of.
Alice and Louise are deliciously brown and picking up their first Spanish words. Katie is learning English
and puts life together in her own way: “a bad doddie seep na bed-a my” for example. The bad doggie was evidently
sleeping on her bed!
Our first night here, we had no bed. There was a double bed frame which Fred strung strings across and
hoped for the best, but both his hopes and our sleeping bodies were dashed to the floor. Katie has a door to sleep on
and the two other kids a frame with chicken wire stretched across it. The lady next door who told me how poor
they are just came to bring as a whole load of beautiful thick woollen blankets. Fred is selecting the smoothest slate
rocks around to lay a floor; and today I got an old dinner fork and poked little holes in the earth to pop lentil seeds
into.
With love and satisfaction, J.
25th May 1987
Dear People Back Home,
Things have gone so well ever since we came to Gomera, that something awful had to happen. We
encountered Social Wrath. We had been living without a washing up bowl, sink or bath for so long, that when I
spotted in an old barn a huge, carved-out tree trunk, split and mucky, I asked for it to be brought home to me. We
happened to have staying with us for a few days three men, a Swiss, a German and an American, who had come
visiting from Valle Hermoso and were helping Fred to build a fireplace.
Minutes after the men arrived with their trophy, a very irate neighbour, the same lady who’d given us so
many blankets and bananas, marched up to read me the Riot Act, lecturing about how people leave here and expect
to be able to come back years later and find everything intact. Fred had taken old poles from a ruin the day before,
and she had a rant about these as well. Meanwhile, I thought of my goats who were probably chewing some
absentee’s clover up the mountain, and suddenly it all felt too tight to breathe and the transaction for this roofless,
floorless, waterless, dusty, cold, practically landless house seemed most unattractive. Oh dear. Have you ever
arranged to buy a house, moved in, lived in it, improved it and then had to face telling the owner you don’t want it?
Oh dear.
We have received letters of encouragement from you all for whatever I’m doing, but whatever am I doing?
And letters full of the firm belief in the cosmicness of everything, but I feel completely cynical.
Sore feet and
worn hands and burnt noses and wrong food and no water and pain and illness and death is what I see. The sunset
is beautiful but I have to shout at the children every ten minutes; they are beautiful, but I still have to shout at them.
This cosmic business means that somehow each person is special, but there are just too many people for us all to be
special. I kill dozens of flies each day who all probably think they’re special. Two million come to take their
place, all intent on eating and drinking and getting on one another’s backs. But for me they’re only special if I
manage to kill them first swat, especially if it’s one of those delicious group massacres where they’re all feeding off
a dead mate and I swat a dozen dead at one blow. Do you know the best way to kill flies? You use a large wet
tea-towel and bring it down with a particularly fly-lethal twang. That’s how cosmic I am these days.
Mind you, we do have the two goats who bring themselves home for their siesta every afternoon and who
give us three litres of milk a day so that we can have lots of white milk on our white rice, white macaroni and with
our white sugar. Also it’s nice to drink with our white bread and helps down the white potatoes when they get
stuck. And fly-killing is fun after white wine with white salted cheese.
Anyone for the Canary Islands?
Bye, love Jen.
28th May 1987
I went for a break and a long, cool think with our visitors to their rented house in Valle Hermoso. The valley is
noisy because they’re building a road. A giant-toothed machine is gnashing at the lovely mountainside. Bob, the
American, says the locals are very pleased because it’s Progress. Great rocks crash down the mountain as they
dynamite into it. Sometimes rocks crash through roofs and then the people get compensation. Bob just came to get
me into the house because there was a call of ‘Fuego’ - Fire! from the men working up the noisy mountain. We’ve
had to come into the room with the solidest roof. I’m scared.
There was a boom; and another; the door shuddered with the shockwave. The sour Swiss fellow who lives
here just tried to tell me there’s something good about nuclear power. “Don’t bother to tell me what it is,” I said.
I’m in a state of trauma about having to let down people over our house. It’s like being married to someone
who’s very sweet to you but you just don’t want to be married to them any more because you feel oppressed. This
Swiss guy is trying to esoteric me off the face of the earth. I’m trying to write you a letter to settle my mind and
suddenly there is a third blast and my heart nearly stops. But at least I’m not at home worrying about whether the
next door neighbour is going to moan at Alice and Louise for picking up dry cactus leaves from a deserted garden
for our fire. Do you know it’s possible to think you have to live up a dry mountainside in a horrible barn and then try
to irrigate the whole world out of your own soul?
Did I mention I don’t like this Swiss fellow? He’s tighter than a German. Also very perceptive. He just
said of the Canary Islanders: “At first these people are very friendly. Later, they want to eat you.”
Talking of which we haven’t eaten all day. When they stayed with us, I rushed around feeding these
fellows constantly. It is six in the evening, I was up half the night and we walked twelve kilometres, fast, through
forests, to get here. I haven’t been shown where I’m going to sleep tonight, I’ve got a heavy period, and I miss
Fred’s snoring already.
Bob commented that the aggression on Gomera is mother-aggression; that is, give, give, give and then, as
the Swiss man said, EAT. As it happens, I’ve been giving, giving, giving, to Bob and his friends these last days, but
haven’t got to the EATing bit yet.
Bob accepts completely the inevitability of a nuclear war that will destroy absolutely everything
everywhere, so he smokes himself to death and ‘rests’ all the time. His flat has taps, sinks, floors, a roof, a toilet
and electric light. But it doesn’t have a fire, however smoky, any land, however dry, anywhere soft to lie, however
weird (our bed at 'home' is four foot off the ground on an old storage tank), any food, however white, or any life,
however troublesome. However, by coming here, I’ve cut the Chipudean umbilical cord. It hurt.
30th May 1987
I was packing, guiltily, to move out of our house, and preparing for the volcano I expected when people found out.
María and Elía came round in the middle of it. I breathed deeply and stared straight at María. Her aura was black
and red, she was an emotional time-bomb ready to explode. First of all, they fumed and sulked. Then they were
full of theories about why we were leaving - I was running off with Bob, leaving Fred and the children; we couldn’t
manage to pay for the goat, and so on. I talked solidly and calmly to them and told them of our problems with the
water situation, the neighbours invigilating us and that people had advised us we were spending our money unwisely
on the house. And I watched them become convinced. Then, to my embarrassment, María started putting all her
energy into trying to get us to buy some ghastly little house right near her belonging to her landlord. She said we
could be ‘vecinas’, neighbours, and that our goats could pasture together. A Scorpio, she did not actually break
down and cry outright, but at the point where she told us how the barlady was so fond of us and didn’t want us to go,
she stalked out to hide her tears. I was stunned. So it isn’t our money they are after (though they don’t mind
having that too).
I salved my conscience by arranging to pay Elía for the journey his aunt had made all the way from
Tenerife to arrange the house deal with us, and María offered to look after our goats for a few days while we decided
what to do next. And so to my
amazement, we all parted company with excellent feelings towards one another and
the day should then have proceeded sans major disaster, but with much work to move our gear, to the house of a
young German in Chipude who had been round a few times and who had offered to help. But the Fred Factor
reared its alarming head. He had been threatening violence a few times on this journey, but I always managed to
swerve direction to avoid physical damage and there was always enough cooperative aftermath to get the team
working again.
Well now. Fred had the task of carting our belongings load by load as I got it ready, the several kilometres
to Klaus the German’s cottage. His job was hard because of the heat and also because he’s managed to develop
willy-rot and accelerating willy-addenda rot of an evidently painful nature.
Certainly he walks like someone
who’s just come off a horse after riding across the Atacama Desert. Anyway, there I was, with my goats and baby
Katie up the mountain. Fred had taken the two older kids and a load of gear to Klaus’s and was supposed to return
immediately. He left heartily and happily enough. But he came not back. Myself at first tolerant (“Ah well, he’s
got a sore willy”), later baffled. I did all sorts of heavy packing and sorting which were really his job and got
everything together. I had no water and it was the hottest day so far. The food had gone off and the milk was sour.
Darkness was falling. I had to leave Katie alone while I went further up the mountain to bring the goats home.
Luckily, Katie is a very happy and centred child and does not make a fuss if I walk out. Then I milked the goats,
with difficulty as they are not used to me - Fred usually does it. Finally, with night falling, I picked Katie up and
began to trek the stony way to Chipude. It was pitch-dark by the time I was halfway there and the stony short-cuts
were dangerous.
I found my children at Klaus’s, happy. Bob and the Swiss fellow were also there. But Fred and Klaus
were not and had evidently left three hours previously. I wondered if Fred had suffered sunstroke or galloping
genital gangrene and had been carted off by helicopter to the nearest hospital on Tenerife. I left the house to go and
look for him, wondering whether I’d inadvertently stepped over any dead bodies on the dark road. I fell off a rock,
recovered myself, and met Fred and Klaus coming towards me with some of our luggage. It was about 10 p.m. I
had last seen Fred at 4 p.m. in pulsating heat.
The journey from our barn to Klaus’s abode takes all of twenty
minutes - OK, half an hour for someone with willy-rot.
I asked aghast what on earth had happened, and was met with a load of angry defensive abuse. Followed
by threats of violence. I tried over and over again to get sense out of him, but was met with a mouthful of further
insults and threats. I was told that I could go and stay at María’s and that I could get Barnsley Bill over from
Ireland to help me.
A no-win situation, Paddy gone berserk. So I ran off fast to get to Klaus’s house first to get Louise, Alice
and Katie out of there quick, knowing it was going to be ugly. Klaus arrived, drunk in that controlled Northern
European way where the eyes go steely and the behaviour super-controlled. He is huge. Suddenly, as I was trying
to bustle the kids out, he grabbed me by the wrists and absolutely would not let me go. This normally ‘sweet’,
silent, repressed German boy had turned into a babbling, incoherent, maudlin lunatic. Even Fred eventually told
him to lay off me - he wanted to heavy me himself, which he then proceeded to do. Exactly about what and why, I
never did find out, I was too busy biting Klaus’s hands and trying to kick him in the balls, which I failed to do as
they were too high up for me to reach. Louise rushed screaming for help to Bob, who hid in a corner out of sight
the whole time and pretended nothing was happening. Eventually I got away. The children were marvellous,
shrieking and screaming appropriately, running fast, and sticking together. They made no bones whatever about
rushing out on to a pitch black road into the hot black night with nowhere to go.
A car passed us and we shrank into the cliff-side in case it was hostile pursuit. It stopped and people got
out. It was María and Elía who had got hold of a vehicle to come and look for us to see what had happened to us,
as Fred had called there when he didn’t find me at home. He, as we later discovered, had spent the afternoon in the
bar with Klaus. I told María and Elía elatedly what had happened and asked if myself and children could stay the
night with them. At that moment, all their dreams came true: they had finally managed to capture us and put us to
bed in their very own house. I loved them and had fun taking the piss out of Elía who, drunk as usual, was slagging
off Klaus for drinking.
It was midnight as we passed the bar, on foot now. I was talking excitedly, high as a kite with the energy of
all that had happened, saying how the ‘aleman’ - the German - was a poofter and in love with Fred. Voices above us
made us look up, and there was a whole delighted audience in the gallery seats fascinated by the proceedings - such
excitement in a ten-house hamlet! I had always kept a restrained and polite image at the bar but now my cover was
blown, all social shields were ripped away, and when the bar-lady asked, ‘Y el marido?’ (And your husband?), I told
her gaily he’d gone ‘loco’ (mad) and with that, they seemed very satisfied and went to bed, and so did we. As to the
whys and wherefores of the day’s events, I can only suppose that willy-rot is a manifestation of Irish sexual guilt and
goes to the brain.
It felt safe and lovely to be at María’s. I knew an advancing army would never get past her door when she
was in a protective mood. But the night itself was terribly short; María and Elia were leaving for San Sebastian, the
capital port, at five the next morning, and my mind was gripped with worry about being homeless again, and
because our goats were still back at our old barn and needed milking early. Also, I was squeezed into one small bed
with all my kids, which I hate as Louise grinds her teeth and karate chops me in her dreams, Alice does underwater
swimming movements and Katie sleep-crawls all over me.
Next morning, the pursuit was on. Fred, hassling me non-stop in Gaelic and throwing fits everywhere: in
the street, in the bar, in people’s houses, in front of strangers, gradually wearing himself down until he became
human again. People around here seem completely accepting of all this: it was all part and parcel of the openly
emotional way they live. At one point, Fred was heavying me up and down the cultivated terraces of the settlement
and I was about to lock myself and the kids in María’s house for refuge, when a clean urban-looking gentleman of
about fifty appeared, gave us some figs, and asked if I’d bought a house yet. I said, No, and he said he’d like to sell
me his. He turned out to be María’s landlord. I knew I’d never buy his place, but at this moment, the idea of going
looking at houses with a gentleman to protect me was very attractive, so up the mountain I went and duly looked at
his tiny two-roomed house; and. then I dutifully trotted across the dry stony hills to look at his ill-defined and
worse-watered tracts of useless mountain bush-land. Then he took me to his store where he had gigantic barrels of
wine and he gave me some to drink. I told him straight that I’d never buy his house as Chipude was so dry and he
completely agreed!
Then I said, but I would like a place to rent while I looked for somewhere more permanent to stay and what
would he charge? He said, ‘Oh, there’s plenty of time for talking about that,’ and I said, ‘No, there isn’t, I haven’t
anywhere to sleep tonight.’ Whereupon, he handed me the key!
At which point, in barged Fred, weeping all over the place. The man handed him wine without blinking an
eye-lid at the strange phenomenon. Fred dropped it. I be-ed as English as I could under the circumstances, but it
seemed the man found nothing particularly odd about the situation, though he did ask Fred if he had anything wrong
with his heart, as Fred was clutching it. I felt relaxed and thought the man was jolly nice. He’d just given me a
house, so I felt rather on top. The joke might, however, be on me as I am now living just a couple of goat-leaps up
the mountain from María, whom I was originally trying to run away from.
Today, I gave up my goats to María, because we have no land to feed them on. She took them so naturally,
I kind of think she thought she deserved them!
Later, her uncle Bernardo, the owner of the house we had moved out of had a huge shout at me for backing
out of the deal, and then another one at Fred, and then he got over it and is happy. He’s blind drunk always.
Fred rejoined us of course. He came home one day outraged as a letter I’d written to a woman in the village
to explain our odd move had been taken out of his hands and read out loud in front of everyone at the bar, except the
person it was to, as she was absent. I was delighted, as I wanted everyone to know why we weren’t staying. It
certainly takes some explaining.
I can now report that I have found the Meaning and Purpose of Life. It is to renovate all the old barns,
cowsheds and summer huts of Gomera, fixing floors, mending doors, finding enough money to buy white bread, and
trying not to get anyone’s goat (give them yours). Also to keep body and mind in one piece when faced with the
Irish Problem and cope with people walking into your latest hovel and telling you how to run your life.
Goodnight, love, J
3rd June 1987
The bar where I sit is full of old women dressed in black who look at me and talk at me and keep hitting me (this is a
sign of affection). One came over and kissed me and I don’t know who she is and I am completely embarrassed
I
am flimsily dressed while all the old ladies wear thick black woollen stockings and the flies keep biting my bare
legs. Now María has come in and kissed an old woman who is crying; in fact everyone keeps kissing her, and now
I’ve found out it’s because her daughter has died. Have you ever done anything awful like not buy someone’s house
you’d moved into and then had everyone be lovely to you and you feel dreadful? I’d rather they’d have hounded me
out of the village with pitchforks and broomsticks.
I now live just yards from María. The first day in our new hut, she said something about Eating in Her
House. I said, ‘Don’t you start that again!’ And she grinned and STOPPED.
P.S.
Progress report on Fred’s willy-rot: unfortunately recovering.
12th June 1987
A full moon celebrated by the arrival of Barnsley Bill! There he was, sauntering along the road below our
settlement as if he did it every day. His arrival has transformed a nuclear group into an Atlantis troupe. María and
Elia laid on an obligatory meal with music and dancing. Bill, Fred and I played music for them surprisingly well, as
we had not practised together. We stayed up late, then all awoke at 4.0 a.m. and talked till morning.
Bill is a bit alarming - he has a habit of lunging himself at me, is awfully white and thin, especially when he
wears shorts, and his bag-packing is a shambolic horror-trip: I had expressly forbidden him in London to bring his
stupid thick black overcoat to a hot country, and as for long-johns, thick cord trousers and odd socks that need
mending - and no mending materials ... There is also the complication that Bill has brought masses of heavy tools
with him, and we were just packing to leave for the island of La Palma.
Letter from Bill to the Inishfreeans:
We live at the top of a steep valley looking down on the clouds. Otherwise, it’s just like living on a Barnsley council
estate, the way they carry on, loud arguments and general wandering in and out of each other’s houses.
I’ve just heard the guru issuing her morning dictums “We are not going to make things uncomfortable,
that’s the first thing.” As you can see, the rot has set in really bad and the real values of hardship, toil and self-denial
have gone out the window. It’s a good job there are level-headed serious people like me around to report on the
bizarre extravagances that are happening here while the serious committed communards are busy slaving back home
to provide for an elite class to live in sun-soaked luxury.
June 15th 1987
This is a very good team. Fred occasionally attempts a moan but is happy; Bill regularly achieves a moan, but loves
the journey; Fred’s physical strength, music and gregariousness are great assets. Bill won the JJ Admiration Award
by making a Phillips screwdriver to mend a gas cooker with which Fred had just attempted to commit suicide and
infanticide in one bang. Bill made the screwdriver out of a broken hayfork. Then, reaching relaxedly to further
heights, he made a fish-slice out of a gorse-bush; it’s a work of art and took five minutes. His character shows
improvement in small matters: he has agreed to give up his Black Overcoat just before we cross the Equator. He is
also developing into the Expedition Doctor: specifically, using a scalpel on Fred’s willy-rot, now ‘healed’ as the
Church would have wished, namely, the bit that moves healed on to the bit that stays still, which it evidently
shouldn’t do, and this prevents him coming, which I personally think serves him right, but kind Uncle Bill is going
to relieve him of the unwanted connection….
Love, J.
We left Gomera.
María could never believe we would go. She was a big strong woman of 25, the same age as my eldest
daughter, Becky, yet she had been a - very forceful! - mother to me. As I passed her little house on the mountain
pathway with all our luggage, she broke down and sobbed in my arms. Her own mother was a crazy village
madwoman who had fallen in the fire in a fit many years previously and burnt all her face off; her father she had
never been allowed to know; her husband was sensuous and irresponsible. I don’t know what I had touched in her,
nor how nor why; I felt I had kept myself very much in reserve to protect myself from her bombardment. But sob
she did, and I had to leave her. My insides still heave when I think of her.
We left Chipude with a bang. We had just settled on the bus full of country people which would take us to
San Sebastian, the ferry port. Half a kilometre round the corner, a tall fair German stood at the side of the road and
hailed the bus to stop. Alarm flashed through me. I then watched aghast, crippled with embarrassment, as a sequel
to Fred’s brief flirtation with Klaus unravelled itself before my eyes. And on top of my head.
I knew Klaus was not going anywhere by bus and that he meant no good. My useless cry of warning to
the bus-driver, the opening of the bus doors, and Klaus’s leap towards me were practically simultaneous. The next
30 seconds were like the climax to some old-time American slapstick comedy: Klaus, spitting invective, emptied a
sack of potatoes on my head; Bill, sitting behind me, leapt up and punched him; Klaus punched him back, giving
Bill a terrible black eye; the driver and his mate, indignant, joined the foray to remove Klaus from the bus; then the
driver and all the passengers, up in arms, demanded also the removal of myself and family. I meanwhile scrabbled
desperately on the floor trying to save precious potatoes which were rolling all over the bus; Fred sat watching the
programme with a baby on his lap until tardily aroused from his comfortable ringside seat by Bill shouting at him
that the whole thing was his fault. Whereupon, Fred got up to join the fight, helping to remove the very tall Klaus
from the bus. And then getting off with him. And then the bus took off. And my children were screaming, firstly
because of the fight, and then because their daddy was left behind, tackling the towering Klaus verbally and
physically in the middle of the hot sandy road.
I thought, considering the threats of the driver coming my way, and the demands of the passengers for my
removal, that we were going just a few yards up the road to put us all off. But no, we continued. And so I, having
retrieved any potatoes within reach, and demanded of Bill that he cover up his blood and hideous wound, and shut
the kids up with some comforting lies, attempted to retrieve some kind of social image by talking intensively to any
fellow travellers who would hear me about what had happened, and trying to explain it. This was difficult as (1) I
didn’t know myself what wells of lunacy I’d tapped in Klaus and (2) everyone was talking at once. According to an
astrologer friend, I have a planetary aspect interpreted as ‘conducive to mob violence’...
The bus journey lasted a couple of hours. The communal conversation continued throughout at top pitch.
Everyone was telling everyone else what had happened, discussing it from every angle, passing round any
information which I delivered regarding the various relationships involved, weighing up the pros and cons, merits
and demerits, and generally commiserating with the poor husband who was left behind. The wife of the poor
husband however, after she had loosened up from the painful cramps of embarrassment, was doing her best to hide
the huge grin on her face at the delicious thought of Fred getting his comeuppance with his loony German friend.
The journey ended with the driver, who had also discussed the incident loudly and long with his companion
throughout the trip, and come to his own independent conclusions, warmly shaking hands with me as if I was a departing loved one. I apologised very emotionally to him for the awful scene, whereupon he became even more
affectionate, saying, ‘Not at all’.
After this surreal experience, I stepped kind of floating in odd gassy air into hot San Sebastian, where we
struggled with heavy luggage to an uncomfortable stony spot near the quay where Fred and I had camped some
months earlier. Half an hour later, a panting worried Irishman jogged up to us, having scoured the departing ferry for
us, thinking that we had dealt him the final punishment of taking off without him. Irish guilt is quite touching at
times. But how had he got to us so quickly? There were no more buses. Klaus’s girlfriend, appalled at her man’s
behaviour, had paid Fred’s fare all the long, way to the port by taxi. Some people always land on their feet.
That night, the police came to inform us: No Camping Here. Fine, I said, vibing the others to shut up. We
packed up obediently under watchful eyes. Satisfied, the police zoomed off on their motorbikes. We carried our
gear along the stony beach and sat down in the evening sunlight. As the sun sunk further, we quietly unpacked our
bedding and lay weary children to sleep, then stretched out together under the stars in the soft night air. Bye bye,
Gomera.
LA PALMA
Letter home from Bill,
Santa Cruz de la Palma. 24th June 1987
Dear Snowy, Anne and friends,
We arrived last night at midnight in La Palma, wrecked with tiredness. Jen asked the first policeman she
saw if there was a camping place. No Camping Here, he said in a hateful voice. Jen waited with the mountain of
luggage, the kids miserable and sprawled, sleeping uncomfortably on bits of it, while Fred and I ran around the town
for hours, unsuccessfully looking for a spot of space. We returned empty-handed, so Jen applied a rule she
developed on the trip: ‘what you are looking for is close at hand’. We crossed the road and there between the
Atlantic breakers and a car park was a miniscule piece of wasteland where we slept deeply on large stones.
Next morning, we gave up more of our luggage. We’d already left two bags full for María with a priest in
San Sebastian. Now I walked round the streets till I found some music-playing hippies who were delighted to
receive our gear. The cosmos rewarded me by presenting a pair of discarded sunglasses to cover up my black eye,
a going-away present I received from a German I’d never met before.
Love, Bill
Barlovento, N.E. La Palma
26th June 1987
Dear Snow and compañeros todos:
La Palma is damper, greener, richer, and more bureaucratic than Gomera. And it has moved on half a
century in time. Farmers drive off in posh modern Japanese jeeps to cut greenery for their tethered goats. No-one
carries bundles on their heads. There is a feeling of a kind of conservative Russian communalism: huge rural
council ‘Projects for the People’. Awful: yesterday, I was fooled by a road-sign saying ‘Laguna’ -'lake' in Spanish to dragging our troupe a very very long way to what turned out to be a massive hideous man-made concrete crater.
With no water in it. Next to it, Government Project for the Recreation of the People: little modern camping houses;
stainless steel sinks with taps, perfectly varnished tables and benches, cooking ranges each with a pile of neatly cut
logs; toilets - locked; swings and a slide. All in the broiling heat, no shade anywhere. A thousand dead transplanted
bushes in perfectly straight rows. Gravel paths. And absolutely no people. I dragged away howling heartbroken
kids who had been promised Water and a Lake, confirmed with a passing cowherd that absolutely no-one ever goes
there, and then I ran yelling and waving to the men who were appearing far behind me weighed down by heavy
luggage not to waste another step.
Following our instincts instead of government road-signs, we then found a damp shady apple grove - I
sniffed around for water and triumphantly discovered a broken irrigation pipe with lovely fresh water right next to
us.
No, we won’t be staying on La Palma. We’ll have to take the next island West, which I believe is called
South America. But we’re not in a hurry: at the moment we are rather preoccupied with an important test we are
undergoing in practical philosophy: it’s called Giving Things Up.
It began when we left loads of gear for María. It continued on arrival in La Palma, to the delight of the
street musicians. But still we had to travel in relays as the two men can’t carry all we own; I felt guilty and sick
after seeing them struggle in the heat, knowing much of the baggage contained precious, personal, beautiful and - at
this stage of the journey - perfectly useless gear of mine. I agonised about it privately all night, came to terms with
it in my own mind and then told the men in the morning: I was giving up my buttons, beads, embroidery silks,
sequins, all my unnecessary sewing gear, another sleeping bag, all our sheet sleeping bags, all our pillows, more
clothes, my knitting needles, my Indian handbag, and our bedding foam we cut down yet again. The fly-sheet and
groundsheet had already gone (no rain here), as had two thirds of our writing paper and envelopes. Today I have
halved the number of clothes-pegs and Bill is agonising over his tools. Twice yesterday he tried to give them away
but failed: people simply don’t understand, it’s too weird for them, they think he’s trying to sell them - or maybe
they just don’t want solid, old-fashioned hand-tools. Yesterday Fred had a hard time trying to give away my most
precious load yet. My patched and ornamented ancient natural cotton clothes were Not Appreciated. He looked for
a priest to give my gear to the poor (we haven’t actually spotted any poor on La Palma); no priest. He took it to the
mayor’s office. The bureaucrats wouldn’t even look up from their typewriters to acknowledge his presence.
Finally, Bill took a sleeping bag full of my treasure to a bar and offered it to the men there for their wives. They
stared at him. Eventually one guy, driving off in a posh car, agreed to take it home. Some woman I’ll never meet,
who I pray has a soul, will receive half a life-time’s collection of embroidered clothes, beads, sequins, sewing silks,
dolls and toys, my last remnants from the rich and dying world.
Afterwards I felt clean. The decision hurts, but then you feel free. Now Barnsley Bill has moved from his
ridiculous attachment to a black overcoat to merrily cutting his sharpening stone in half and extracting the blade
from his plane. I know we’ll have to give up more, but the lighter the luggage gets, the happier I feel.
The moral to this part of the story is: you can take it with you, but it’s so heavy and uncomfortable, you’ll
be too tired to enjoy it.
All the best,
Love Jen
From Bill
Dear Communards,
We are travelling right round the coastal road of La Palma and are about a quarter of the way round. Jen
says it’s ‘practice’.
We are spending the day at a lay-by on an unused mountain road on the edge of a valley where there is a
natural spring and trees all around. It has neat rows of toilets, locked of course, and tables for picnics, or in our case
for writing letters, doing tent repairs and for the kids to dance on naked bedecked in little belts with bells on, while I
play guitar for them. For four hours, the children have played in the water fountain in a swarm of wasps, only Alice
getting stung once, by poking a wasp when it was drowning. They splash on, undeterred, and somehow achieving
to get progressively dirtier.
I gave away my carpentry tools today, every last one. A wonderful spiritual cleansing experience, so I am
told. I am trying gradually to reduce the burden of Jen’s nagging, er sorry, the weight of the rucksack. I shouldn’t
talk about Jen nagging as she only does it about once a day for an hour or two. I gave up my black overcoat, a great
sacrifice as we’re not on the Equator yet; my two pairs of woolly trousers, two jumpers, two pairs of long-johns and
now she’s on at me to give up my leather lace-up shoes. She won’t be satisfied till I’m walking around in shorts and
sandals with no regard for what I’m going to wear when the nuclear winter sets in. She was trying to get one of
Fred’s shirts off him this morning, but he put her straight saying he rather liked the way it held his body together
since he gave up his skin.
Love, Bill
Next day, from Jen
Well, we might have known it. A man came along and told us I had to take down the wet washing I’d hung up and
that there was No Camping Here. He waited till dusk to tell us this.
So we hurriedly moved all our gear back to the apple grove where we’re taking a couple of days’ rest in the
sun and the mountain mist, hidden away from ‘hippie’-harassing bureau-snobs. Bill is about to make toast on the
open fire he’s built at the side of the road, Louise is tripping elephantine over the tent strings as usual, and Fred still
has willy-rot and it’s all my fault of course because I wouldn’t let him have sex up in the mountain hut two months
ago on the night of the ... etc.
Love, Jen
28th June 1987
We have moved down the coast to Tazacorte and are camping on the beach. Tazacorte is a kind of cheap holiday
resort cum council estate, a bit human (unlike most of La Palma) because of its shabbiness. We had a singsong last
night on the beach with one of the local alkies and haven’t been moved on yet...
29th June 1987
A bulldozer has come to our beach to 'take the stones away'. Fred has gone to Santa Cruz, the capital, to have his
willy looked at (again). It seems he likes people looking at his willy. In fact, this morning I had to stop him
showing it to some old ladies who were passing by - he was about to bathe it in some medicament in front of them.
There was a strange Arab on the beach yesterday. He had on white colonial shorts, skinny white legs, a tea
towel tied with a dressing gown string on his head, plus brown clodhoppers with black socks. He wasn’t very sexy.
Luckily I’d given away his sunglasses - his black eye is better. A dog has joined our camp and is guarding us,
barking at passers-by. Louise complains (delightedly) that the dog keeps ‘trying to give her puppies.’
I was watching Bill clowning all over the beach with the three kids and musing with some bitterness and
some triumph on the subject of Education, Europe and Social Workers. I see our girls growing up learning to dance
and sing and act and play music, earning their living spontaneously by being who they are and never ever knowing
the agonies, inanities and hypocrisies of the English school system.
My musings were interrupted by the appearance of a rather vampirish Belgian woman of about fifty who
came and sat with us and in her bad English told us she lives rough, sleeping amongst the rocks; she has no money
but sketches portraits in the bars and gets fed (and drunk). She asked why on earth we were camped where everyone
could see our eating, washing and living and told me she knew of a much better place we could stay. She took me
to the port, then across rocks to a fisherman’s lean-to shack high up in the cliff. It stank to high heaven but it was
certainly out of the way, no traffic, no policemen, a safe place to cook, and most needed of all: shade. Exposure to
sun is a bad problem on beaches.
I went back to tell Bill and we moved, nearly dying of sunstroke in the process. Fred was still off
willy-worrying, so we wrote a message in charcoal on the seawall for him. As we moved the last of our gear, the sea
came up and washed over where our tent had just been!
Bill tracked down the smell in the fisherman’s hut - a tray of rotten fish. So now the only problem is the
avalanche. We live under one. Just a small one. There’s a great pile of rubble right near us, and a constant sound
like the pattering of rain - that’s the stones falling from the cliff above us. The kids don’t mind a bit - each move
brings new delights. Alice is wearing a belt and nothing else. Do you think I have gone too far in giving up their
clothes?
1st July 1987
The owner of the avalanche came here yesterday and had a fit about us being here. Bill coped with the embarrassing
situation by lying an a bench pretending to be asleep while I faced the man’s wrath. I was hugely apologetic and
immediately started packing in front of him. Whereupon he said we could stay under his avalanche for another
night.
4th July 1987
However, we moved. We parked our tent under a bridge over a huge dry riverbed just a few yards from the sea. In
spite of the dirt and rubbish, the human poo, the huge stones, the traffic overhead and the sea threatening to come up
to close, we settled down and carried out our usual unpaid garbage-removal service.
Next morning, Bill was off with the kids to a safe swimming beach and I was alone doing the ‘housework’,
when the Belgian hippie woman came for a chat. Soon we were joined by a tall policeman. I greeted him quickly
before he could speak with “Ah, no se puede ..”, (I know, we’re not allowed ...) “Claro” says he. I said, “No nos
gusta anyway” - we didn’t like the rotten site. “Whether os gusta o no, no se puede,” said he and started quoting the
Mayor and tracing a big 12.30 p.m. in the sand. It was half past ten. Then he said, “And leave it clean.” “CLEAN?” I
said, looking in mock horror all around me at the mountains of shite and rubbish, whereupon he allowed himself a
little laugh and said, “Well, just your own things.”
And so, we moved. To a large cave up a vertical cliff-side above the singularly hideous town of
Tazacorte. Louise and Katie have chickenpox very badly, and there is no water up the vertical cliff: it has to be
collected by our brave men from the port below. Our cave is large, like a Soho disco but full of broken bottles and
pee.
I think the Council in Tazacorte have relations in the cement business. Cement is a very dangerous
substance and apart from ruining Europe, has also brought about the downfall of the island of La Palma.
Bill has gone to live on a small sailing boat with a French girl at my suggestion. This followed a special
cup of coffee he made me in the dark last night. I noticed it tasted funny and had rather a lot of grass in it. This
morning I looked at the water he’d made it from and noted that it was black. It was our waste water, which
amongst other unmentionables had been used to wash our feet. Bill thought this was very funny. It was the only
thing he had found funny for ages. I had had a very bad headache and could hardly raise my head off the ground,
but suddenly it lifted - at the very moment I sent Bill off to go and live on the boat.
I also sent Fred for a walk - up the vertical mountain above us to explore. I suggested he go, rather than
hang around me moaning about his priapsis (look it up in a dictionary). He came back quaking, having had to crawl
on hands and knees above a vertical drop and couldn’t reach the caves further up for fear. Yet this was once a
mountain settlement where generations of children were brought up!
I gave up my last possessions to the French girl on the boat - my dress-making scissors and my historic
blue patchwork dress. Then I gave her Bill. And then Alice as well. Bill, having given up all his tools, is now
living in a tool cornucopia. I had told him if he threw his chisel upon the water, it would return sharpened!
There were baby newts swimming in the water Bill brought up here last night, a dead mouse in the water
bucket this morning, and the skeleton of some poor lizard in the bottle Fred was using to trap a few of the million
flies that share our cave. Other than that, we’re just fine. Bill is various shades of revolting, Fred looks healthy and
handsome but is entirely obsessed with his... and won’t speak except to quote Keats or Darwin. I have banned him
from mentioning anyone dead. Me? I’m fine. I’ve just had a miscarriage, or so you would think judging by the
amount of blood flowing from me. My bum hurts sitting on this rock, there is nowhere to walk when you live on the
vertical and are not a fly, and we can’t leave the damn place as the children are so ill.
Oh, a P.S. from Bill:
Dear Snowy,
Please don’t believe any of the derogatory comments about me in this letter. My behaviour has remained
impeccable as always on this trip in the face of extreme provocation. I have put tents up in death-defying
brain-cooking heatwaves, cooked meals in near-vertical tidal waves for children who don’t seem to notice they’re in
a near-vertical tidal wave, let alone the person who’s feeding them, and tramped up and down mountains in the
scorching sun carrying gallons of water. Please ignore the abominable insults of someone who has not learnt to
express her gratitude for my presence on the planet. There is no truth in the rumour that I am resentful or wish to
blame anyone for anything that may be wrong with me, nor indeed in the rumour that there is anything wrong with
me. If someone can’t stand a bit of feet-washing water in their coffee at the end of the bloody world, then it’s a
bleedin’ bad job. She’s jolly lucky I allowed her to come on this trip!
Bill
7th July 1987, Tazacorte
Yes, still here. Bill is back living with us after a brief flirtation with a French yacht. He found the yacht boring,
especially after being asked for 500 pesetas a night (200 pesetas = £1), to live and work on it, minus food. He went
busking in the nearest large town, earned 1,500 pesetas and brought home colossal amounts of fruit which he found
thrown away. A policeman, seeing him pick the stuff up, took pity on him and gave him a hot dinner into the
bargain! Having to pay to be bored on a smooth yacht temporarily cured Bill of the moods he was currently
spraying over his hostess in the cave. Now I charge him 600 pesetas to walk past the smelly rubbish tip on the way
up here laden with water and shopping. Funny, he seems happier, and I’m glad to have someone to insult who also
makes doughnuts, as you need someone to bite when the flies are biting you.
The children, recovering from chicken-pox, are bordering on out-of-control. They are so free, strong and
insuppressible that we’re going to have to invent some tortures to get on top of them. Louise’s numbers include
standing naked and suddenly pissing like a boy, laughing her head off, regardless of whether anyone particularly
wants piss in their near vicinity, or going up the mountain above us and throwing stones down on us.
All the best to everyone,
Jen
13th July 1987
Blessedly on the move again - and on our feet, continuing our circumambulation of La Palma. This morning, we
gave up the cooking pot, ladle, tea strainer, cups, plates, the last forks, a knife and all idea of cooking. This because
when we were happily camped in a damp green orchard and Bill was making cocoa over a completely safe little fire,
we were suddenly surrounded by a band of very worried locals - how could we possibly think of making a fire in the
‘dry season’. We obliged by killing our little fire immediately of course and sat in our wet, cold camp drinking cold
cocoa.
Nights are difficult. We haven’t enough floor-covering, though we’re learning to cope. The kids are great,
inventing games and entertaining themselves kicking, slapping and fighting.
Today’s campsite was littered with fallen plums, and Fred is making lemon drink from yesterday’s
windfalls. We were also offered a goat in milk, free, from a departing English hippie girl. Very tempting, but we’re
not stopping. The day before that, we were offered a mountain forest hut, but we hate La Palma and are returning
to the port to get off! This is a police state compared to Gomera. We even discovered at the weekend that we are
illegal immigrants as you can’t stay in the Canaries more than three months.
I got to the stage when I couldn’t bear to see Bill eat or hear him speak, and let him know of course. For a change,
he leapt out his foul mood and started sleeping with me and Fred, instead of alienating himself on the other side of
the kids and this, as well as improving the atmosphere, has helped to rationalise the bed space in our rapidly ripping
rotting tent. Walking everywhere, and loving every step of it, has caused us to give up yet more gear: Fred has now
valiantly taken leave of his woollen jacket and smartie pants. I have given up all writing materials except for a few
sheets of paper to write to you. We tore out the lining of the tent bag, I cut off the legs of two pairs of kids’
trousers, Fred cut his toenails and Bill cut his hair. As it’s usually me who instigates the latest fit of giving up, I
come in for the odd joke or two like, “Is it the left leg or the right we’re leaving behind today?
On our worst night ever, camped on a field of volcanic rocks, besieged by ants next to a horribly busy road,
I had an acute attack of raison de voyager, or What’s the bloody point? Next morning, we set off uncomfortably in
the midst of heat and traffic when suddenly Bill got a lift for all of us in a Mercedes. The driver took us to
Fuencaliente right at the bottom of the island. When we were dropped, the wind was high and delicious, there was a
smell of pine and we found a little mound of grass surrounded by trees. I hung up the clothes I’d washed in the
ant-field in the morning, Bill played guitar, we ate, the kids played and we stayed there all the hot hours of the
afternoon, beginning to walk again around five. I prayed for something soft after the rocks of the night before and
just as the light was going, we found a little field thick with old hay and had the softest most delicious night since
giving up most of our bedding.
We had agonised over the fact that in order to hitch a lift to South America, we had to leave the countryside
and return to horrible capital ports and larger, urban Canary Islands. But life is odd and we found one of our happiest
camps slap bang in the centre of Santa Cruz, only yards from where the policeman had greeted our arrival on La
Palma with a curt ‘No Camping Here.’ We are tucked away on a beach behind a ‘sea wall’ - a huge chaotic mess of
concrete blocks - and no-one knows we are here except for a few council workers who come to collect sand and a
mad old man who breeds hundreds of dogs, or rather who lets hundreds of dogs breed and then feeds them.
Fred lights a fire and makes tea in a tin mug; the children are naked and happy all day long inventing games
with the rubbish the sea daily throws up. You have to avoid the poo and the tar, but at least I’m not subject to the
unsettling notion of planting seeds, hence I feel very settled. We had some very bad days until we escaped from our
own confusion as to what we are doing - settling in the Canaries or moving on. Now all is swinging, I’m amazed,
life can flow again. We will be extremely practiced roadside gypsies by the time we hit South America.
All the best to all, Jen.
18th July 1987
From Bill:
We had been getting messages for days that Pete (footnote: a friend and former publisher) was on La Palma
looking for us. Finally he caught up with us after chasing us round the whole island. He found us by walking out of a
travel agents, crossing a road to where a girl was playing the flute and saying - in English. - “hello, you don’t know
someone called Jenny do you?” As it happens, she was the only person on La Palma that would be able to answer
him - in English - as she was the girl who’d offered us the goat a few days previously! So along he comes to this
scruffy beach that has been forgotten by all decent law-abiding citizens. On the same day, something else arrived: a
double mattress. It came floating in on the tide and we dried it. This is the sort of thing that happens to publishers
coming in from Hampstead!
Jen objects and thinks he ought to get into the spirit of things and share our
masochism along with everything else: we have been sleeping on half an inch of foam rubber on stones.
Two nights ago, I was talking to Fred in bed. He launched into a Poor-Me of lengthy proportions covering
such old favourite as wishing he hadn’t entered into his marriage before having more experience of relating and
other such chestnuts designed to make the listener feel that he’s a hard-done-by, sensitive, inept, innocent lad lost in
a world of conniving, manipulating women. Jen fell asleep, but not before sprinkling the words ‘beastly’ and
‘ghastly’ about the place, mostly with reference to Fred and myself. She informs us that everyone is basically
beastly and when they pretend not to be, they become ghastly (pronounced ‘gharstly’ - she’s a Southerner you
know) ...
Love Bill
Pete stayed with us for a few marvellous days in our town gypsy-camp; we played music, we cooked,
talked, rested, and Bill earned lots of money busking in the streets. Then we all left La Palma together and went to
Tenerife - Pete to fly home, us to look for boats bound for South America.
TENERIFE
28th July 1987
Pete left us camped on a beach near the airport. But as winds swept across the huge flat expanse of sand making tent
life unmanageable, we moved next day to a rubbish tip in a stony cove sheltered by low cliffs all around. I spent
hours collecting the garbage that generations of holidaying Tenerifans had left, burning paper and bagging
unburnables. Then we hoisted a tent in the air to act as shade, and thus began one of our poshest-ever camps. We
are just an hour from the airport which is in operation nearly 24 hours a day bringing half the population of Northern
Europe to specially tarted up bits of this island that we never go near. Irony on irony - on this ugly, dry, barren
island, after one week we have a super private camp. In lovely rural Gomera, there was no privacy, everyone wanted
us. In more interesting La Palma, decades of invading hippies had left a neo-fascist regime hostile to all campers.
Here, in ugly, horrendously ugly Tenerife, which is covered with rubbish - and where there is no agriculture, no-one
cares or bothers, police don’t seem to exist, no-one minds anything; there is total tolerance, a million foreigners, the
Tenerifans completely cosmopolitan. Topless bathing is normal, no-one bats an eyelid at naked children, and even
I was shocked to see two very white English girls stripping down to nothing nearby, putting on what looked like a
piece of string, and which certainly left two large bare white bums to the breeze, then covering themselves with oil
and lying down to cook under a fierce sun I wouldn’t poke my nose out into.
This is the place we most feared coming to - overdeveloped, car- and tourist-ridden, money-mad modern
Tenerife; everyone is rich, there are crazy fast autobahns, it is dry dry dry; and yet here we find our most private,
natural, unhassled home. We are so hidden that a Canaries couple parked their car on the cliff right above us, not
knowing we were there, and our kids had a wonderful time peeking while the couple calmly stripped and had sex. I
didn’t know at the time - we were besieged by delighted details later.
I had worried that the kids would mind having only a stony cove to play in. I needn’t have bothered.
They are resilient and resourceful. Alice waddles bare-foot across the stones as if she’s on soft sand, saying,
‘Youise, yets pway ..’
Bill, whose character structure leaves much to be desired, is a wonderman when it comes to house-building.
We now have a home which competes well with the posh Tenerifan tents lining the bigger beaches - minus,
however, the generators, mobile kitchens, tables and chairs which evidently count as essential camping gear here.
Bill has built an ethnic geodesic tent without use of tools; just a bundle of tomato sticks from the hundreds of acres
of abandoned plastic-covered tomato plantations in the hinterland near us, plus a bunch of raffia from same; add
the Wonderful Inventive Mind (WIM) of Bill, and lo and behold, we live in an airy, spacious, sun-free structure. I lie
here in luxury on a thick foam mattress found by Fred, with a cliff of Cheap Rock (Bill’s phrase - it crumbles on
sight and site) behind me; to my left, the lovely ocean, which climbs to within a yard of our natural rock doorway.
Another WIM of Bill invention is the kitchen: arranged in a three-sided formation of rock from which he rules
supreme, cutting out all harassment from children, he serves them over the counter. In front of me, a triangular
doorway through which I can see caves, cliffs and the occasional friendly Tenerifan holiday-maker; and to our right,
a further WIM product: an offshoot of the main temple, one kiddie parlour, the subject of the daily war-cry: ‘Git to
your own house please’. Bill cooks and shops for us, Fred gets wood and water; I wash and sew and collect wood
and we all socialise locally.
It happened one day as I was out collecting wood that I noticed a large brown woolly bearded figure in
shorts watching me. He followed me home. Big Brown Bear turned out to be an American by the name of Michael Bear! He has the same birthday as me, though ten years later. He’s staying with a group of roving Yankee
Christians who believe Reagan is about to have his shootout at OK Corral. They think the Iran/Iraq war will go
nuclear this summer, adhering strictly to the Book of Revelation ‘not one generation will pass since Israel becomes a
nation again (1948) before the End’ or some such. They believe of course that they are The Chosen and follow the
fifth gospel of St. Thomas, something evidently unearthed recently in Egypt. I went to visit them at their camp, just
a kilometre inland from us. They live in a hot dry dusty ravine, about twenty of them with kids. But not their own
kids - in their group, no mother or father is allowed to bring up their own offspring. They have no shelter, just one
posh new Scottish tartan blanket each. There are another 100 or so of them in a town near here and some in Spain.
They call themselves Christics, they give everything away and trust that they will be given to. I don’t like them.
They are very Yankee, sexless, dead and ugly, dogmatic and very unhumourous. BBB, Big Brown Bear, is the best
of them - he’s with them for the free dinners and to see if Reagan really does get out his Raygun this summer. If
not, he’s going home. Bear is a self-confessed criminal, so successful in ingenious insurance and credit card wangles
that the insurance firm visited him in prison to offer him a job (so he claims!). His team of co-crooks used to give
one fifth of their ‘proceeds’ to charity - and the Messianic Brotherhood was one of them. Then he joined them.
So here we are with some neighbours on a Genuine Spiritual Exodus while we idly swat flies, eat (making
up for starvation on Gomera) and get up each other’s noses. Having given up all: possessions, idealism and
anything else we were carrying around, what happens? Having taken leave of one large frying-pan, we now have
two; we gave away one large cooking pot with only one handle and no lid. We now have an even larger cooking
pot with two handles and a lid. We gave away most of our bedding.
So Fred finds a thick white woolly sheet and plenty of foam; also huge pieces of material for sun-exclusion
on our roof. I had given away most of our towels; we found two gigantic new beach towels, thrown away just
because they had tar on them.
After leaving goats, cats and dog on Gomera, we even have pets; they are huge lizards which squeak and
are so tame they eat tomatoes out of Louise’s hand. Katie calls them Wabbits.
1st August 1987
In an old air-raid shelter on the cliffs above us lives a 45 year old working-class woman from Coventry called Elaine
with her grumpy Canarian boyfriend, much younger than her. She has made the shelter beautiful inside. She says
she is a ‘recovering alcoholic’. Her boyfriend is a non-recovering alcoholic. So we even have neighbours now.
Tentland suburbia.
3rd August 1987
Bill spent last evening with the Messianic Brotherhood in their ravine. They informed him the world is going to
end in 16 days’ time when the Mayan calendar runs out. I’m sorry we haven’t got any spinach growing at the End
of the World as I’d planned, but otherwise everything is fine, with brown lovely children who are learning to swim.
We all feel ready to go to Heaven, Hell - or to continue the journey as the case may be. The religious chappies say
that numerologically, Reagan’s name becomes 666, The Beast. Personally, I think the Anti-Christ is more likely to
be a woman, I think she’d do the job better. The Tenerifans don’t seem to notice the world is going to end - they
are busy covering their last kilometres with concrete to house British tourists. The English really are an astoundingly
ugly race, I’m glad I cross-bred to bring some good looks into the family.
Tenerifans passing by have begun to give us loads of food, as do the Brotherhood. That’s what comes of
giving up growing spinach. Fred is looking very trim and slim, but I can’t say the environment has improved Bill’s
looks in the slightest. The sun has accelerated ageing in me - so the mirror tells me, but this doesn’t seem to deter
the two wolves living with me. I have declared to both or them that my mating days are over and that they’re to
view me only as a comrade. One sulks (guess who), the other takes it humorously interspersed with bouts of maudlin
heaviness wrapped in “If only I’d had therapy seven years ago, I’d be able to handle you” (guess who).
6th August 1987 Hiroshima Day
We are running a battered women’s home. An Israeli woman came for refuge from the Brotherhood, psychically
battered by the End of The world Christians - they threw her out for being critical. Then late last night, Elaine, the
Coventry woman, turned up beaten up by her Canaries alkie. Fred went odd about it - he didn’t feel too comfortable
in the role of helping battered women after his past history.
7th August 1987
Elaine’s boyfriend turned up at our camp when I was chatting to her. He was vibrating heavy threats and it took a lot
of diplomacy to handle him with dignity. He was looking for Fred to kill him for helping Elaine to hide from him
yesterday. When he’d gone, I packed Elaine off in the opposite direction to get help. He returned, still steaming,
saying he would burn all Elaine’s clothes if they weren’t collected immediately. I said I would collect them myself
and he left. I then left our blessed shady beach shelter and climbed up to the parched barren hinterland boiled by
the sun. A strong wind was whipping across it blowing Elaine’s photos, sanitary towels, unwinding cassette tapes
and gaudy nylon clothes in all directions over a large area. Katie was screaming at the hellishness of our sudden
new environment, Louise was scatty and scared but tried to help, and Alice immediately started investigating
Elaine’s hair lacquer. I chased photos in the hot wind, then did about six journeys back to our camp with Elaine’s
gear. At the end of my sixth trip, the battering boyfriend invited me in to his air-raid shelter for a drink and to talk.
I was too exhausted to accept the offer and besides, I had three baffled, frightened kids to cope with. In England I
had read a report that battered wives are usually loudmouthed, outspoken women; well Elaine and I certainly fit the
bill. I’m glad Fred has to be on the outside observing it all for a change.
In the midst of all this, Elaine’s daughter phoned from England to Elaine’s workplace, having been told by
a clairvoyant: ‘Your mum is in danger in Spain, get her out of there’…..
16th August 1987
Today is a Very Special Day. It is the End of the World. Someone is supposed to end the world today so that
Jesus can come again and bring down Heaven on us all. However, I don’t think we’ll be going there as we
wouldn’t be able to stand the company and would be sure to start a brawl. I’m off to practice my violin now in case
they want me in the Choir.
17th August 1987
It declined to end. Fred met one of the Americans today but was too polite to mention the fact that it hadn’t. As
for me, I’ve learnt never to trust a Christian - not because of the absence of the End of the World, but because of the
absence of 2,000 pesetas which I had lent them. Bill has put up a notice on our tent door: ‘In God We Trust, All
Others Pay Cash.’ It hasn’t done a lot to improve Christo-Atheist relations.
21st August 1987
We left our super-camp. Life had been getting increasingly cushy, with Elaine bringing food to us nearly every day
in gratitude for us helping her; departing Tenerifan picnickers leaving us gifts; Fred arriving from town laden down
with huge quantities of post-dated spaghetti, as a local shop-lady had taken pity on him and regularly piled him high
with free fruit and veg, plus cake and biscuits for the children; and the disused plantations behind us yielded
mountains of little red tomatoes. I felt itchy to move, feeling myself underused; Fred would always be content to
stay wherever we are forever, so I had to initiate a campaign of slow subtle bullying, administering small doses each
day, to get us moving again. My plan was to walk right down the coastline to the port of Cristianos to try for boats
there.
We left pots and pans and clothes and foam beds, and after one day’s walking, we gave away the tent, yes
Old Faithful finally went as a tent isn’t very useful in such a hot country. Shade is the main problem when walking
and this a tent certainly doesn’t provide, it’s more like a microwave oven. When the sun goes down, there’s hardly
any evening before night falls, and when dawn comes, there’s only about one cool hour. Nine a.m. and you’re
sweating; five p.m. is violently hot because of heat radiating out of the rocks.
There is hardly a blade of green in South Tenerife. Yet suddenly, as we picked our way along the
rock-strewn coastline, there appeared before us a pea-green golf course, sprayed constantly for the rich with
precious water. We waded under the spray, bags, violin case and all, the kids yelling with delight. All of us are good
walkers, except Katie who seems to have been born violently anti-men and won’t let either of the stronger
team-members carry her which nearly kills me in this heat.
On Day Two of our coast-walking, our way was suddenly blocked by a gigantic sky-blue swimming pool
in a huge posh holiday camp.
We travel semi-naked, so stashing our odd bags behind a palm tree, we walked straight into the pool to
teach the children to swim. Even really old women and pubescent girls go topless here and it also seems to be the
style to be grotesquely fat and shame-free about it, especially amongst the Tenerifans whose national pastime is
eating (and then throwing the debris all around).
Fred now takes the medal for the most acclimatized member of the team, metamorphosing from the recent
past when he insisted on carrying three or four pairs of trousers, he now has none, just one pair of cut-down shorts.
He also insists on sunbathing when we rest, even when we’ve been walking in unbearable sun all day long.
I’ve discovered why horrible nylon clothes were invented. Cotton rots; very fast; especially when exposed
day after day to salt-laden air and washed every day. Everything I wear is patched all over and disintegrating
rapidly. Luckily the children never wear any clothes at all, except at night when we are drenched by dew, sleeping in
the open on the beaches.
Day Three of The Walk was terrible, carrying Katie across shadeless expanses of volcanic rubble, sick and
weak from sunstroke, sometimes going down to clefts in the cliffs to sit in seawater and pour it on our heads. Things
got very bad.
Then I found The Cave. And here we’ll be holed up for some time as I can’t move my aching limbs. It was
late in the day when we moved in; I was so exhausted I slept blissfully on the gravel floor with only a sheet of
canvas under me and a tablecloth over me.
The Cave is enormous, about 15 foot high and 30 foot deep. At high tide it is cut off completely but is just
above sea level (at this time of year). It’s smelly and full of rubbish, but to me it is Heaven because of the shade.
Here the sun never shines and you have no idea how important it is that sometimes the sun should not shine!
Katie, (now 2) when I don’t have to carry her, is pure delight. Every person who meets her melts visibly
and is glued to her. There’s
something about her legs and bum, her fluffy white hair, deep dark-blue eyes
and black lashes. Her speech is exquisite - you can hear her working hard at it with little gaps between the words;
after achieving a sentence, she gives a big grin expectant of praise which of course she gets. Even the Barnacled Bill
can’t help loving her. Louise is now a lanky six-year-old, at the moment having singing lessons with her dad. She
doesn’t notice the journey physically, she just trips from rock to rock like a little bird, and floats on her back in the
water as if she was born in it. Everywhere we go, she makes exquisite objects out of next-to-nothing, leaving a trail
of art behind us. She invents brilliant fantasy games for the others, and I can categorically state that, given a natural
environment, children do not need toys! As for Alice (4) - megalopuss as Fred irreverently calls her, she just eats,
enjoys, moans and contemptuously ‘corrects’ Katie’s speech as in:
Katie:
(pointing at a bi-plane towing an advert across the sky):
“Ma, two hairplanes.”
Alice:
“That’s not two hair-pyanes; that’s one hair-pyane and a fwag.”
From our cave, we look across the bay to the Port of Cristianos; a large lump of mountain prevents us
walking along the coast to it. Living even this close to the Port has changed our lives: not only are our food-bills
practically nil, but we are swamped in excess food, mountains of throw-away fruit and veg. which we don’ t have
time to eat before they go off in the heat. The fish near us are very well-fed indeed. This food mainly comes to us
thanks to a new friend, ‘Feo’ (ugly) by name. He is a huge, tall, fat fellow with a beautiful face who keeps himself
by touring the dustbins of the rich and flogging the proceeds to the poor(er). Feo has adopted us and Fred
sometimes works for him. Feo is Uruguayan and 35. He tried to get me, plus all my family, to go and live with him
at his home in a hot, dry ravine. He lives in an extraordinary shanty-shack piled high with mountains of retrieved
gear. He wanted me to cook for him while the fellows would both work for him. NO THANK YOU, I said. He has
donated us for the duration of our stay in the cave one round white fibre-glass table, five ugly box-seats out of some
cafe, four huge garish nylon curtains and one bedspread, all matching in sickly yellow with large brown flowers.
This gear he lowered down to us on ropes from the cliff high above us. We now inhabit the only curtain-fronted
cave in tourist-dom. The table is rat-proof - they can’t climb up its one round shiny leg.
I made my own timid debut into the world of garbage-dump mining, retrieving two circular red rugs which
now adorn our gravel floor, and two double divan beds, minus their upholstery, which we’ve covered with foam. I
have just fed my kids a free meal of fresh cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes, bread and posh cheese, with oranges for
afters. Earlier they had corn-on-the-cob, peaches, pears and bananas. I also have waiting for them potatoes
(unthinkably expensive to buy), green and red peppers, carrots, more maize, oranges, cabbages, green beans and
masses of onions. The only things paid for with money are milk, sugar and one litre of wine (50p.)
The only thing is, I have to do all the cooking with two teaspoons. Feo has been so generous to us that I
haven’t plucked up the nerve to ask him for a loan of cutlery yet.
27th August 1987
Dear Women of Atlantis,
Bill is working on a boat in Cristianos. And I am writing to you by candlelight and firelight. At 2.0 a.m. I
awoke to find Fred had sneaked off in the middle of the night, leaving me alone here with the kids. I feel so violent I
can hardly sit here. Three times I started to walk out into the night across the rocks, but each time, the thought of
the children waking and finding no-one here drove me back. So I have forced myself to sit and write to you all night
if need be. How right my sister was when she said once that when someone leaves, it’s not their love and sweetness
you miss, but a chance to relieve yourself of some righteous anger! Once again, I have to learn that 1 + 1 = Danger.
Stay in threes!
Later: Harmony reigns, i.e. I do. The culprit tried to creep in some time around 4.0 a.m. I shouted at him
until about 6.0 a.m. I had barricaded the cave entrance with furniture so he couldn’t get back without me hearing.
He claimed he had gone out running to ‘get rid of excess energy’ and had run into Feo who’d taken him out
working. This information took me two hours, a hoarse voice and a headache to extract. I kept myself safely on
the other side of the barricade and every time he looked threatening, I said, ‘Oh don’t be so corny - me alone,
stranded, in the dark in an isolated cave, do you really want to add one more time to your ignominious list?’ Well, I
didn’t actually say ignominious, I was far too frothy to pronounce such a word.
The children all had great fun as I gave them the go-ahead to get up in the middle of the night and eat
stewed pears by candlelight, and I deliberately burnt all our firewood so that Fred had to go off early this morning to
get more, while I stayed in bed late to make up for lost sleep. Then when I heard that Feo was coming at 1.0 p.m. for
Fred to work, and he having had only two hours’ sleep, I cackled a ‘ha ha on you’ and the revenge was so perfect,
even Fred had to allow himself a wry grin.
So here I am, happily alone, with a washing line full of clean washing, a hubbie gone off to work, and the
three kids visiting some English people living nearby. This is the dripping hour when the body reaches overload
and starts to melt; even in the shade, I have a wet tea-towel wrapped round my head.
Later: I’ll end now as the kids, returned home, are playing ‘chicken’ with the waves - seeing who can get
stranded away from the cave - and Fred, not having found Feo, is having an illegal sleep, so I’m going to bang some
metal drums.
'Bye sisters,
Love Jen
31st August 1987
Bill is home for the weekend and says we have to move to the island of Gran Canaria as it is the best place for
getting a lift across the Atlantic - only very small craft call at Cristianos. Meanwhile, Autumn has come; real clouds
in the sky, and this morning some real live spots of rain; about six of them.
2nd September 1967
I may not look like your typical idea of a suburban housewife sitting here naked and brown, flyswat in hand, the sea
gently lapping a few yards from my cave entrance, but I certainly feel like one. Both the men are away at work,
and in the case of Fred, absence definitely makes the heart grow fonder. He has gone into a Soft Phase after the
events of the other night, and this has had a very strange effect on me. It happened like this:
At our previous camp, Elaine had lent me an American novel called “A Cry in the Night”, about a woman
called Jenny who happened to marry a psychopathic murderer. The book scared me shitless and raised my normal
level of night-time fear about rats, waves, stars, breeze, lizards and all unidentified noises, to unbearable
proportions. The Jenny in the book had two little girls and a baby; the husband killed the baby and managed to get
her blamed for it. He killed several other people and managed to get her suspected; and then he kidnapped her two
girls and isolated her in a big house she couldn’t leave…..
One night in the cave, with Bill sleeping in a sulk at the back of it and Fred being relatively friendly, I
woke up with the book playing itself through my mind in technicolour pictures. My body disappeared and I was
stuck, rigid, in my head, going over it again and again. Fred asked me what was wrong and all I could say was:
‘I’m too scared to speak.’ This whole mental horror show was started by one of the kids waking up - a Cry in the
Night.
My fear grew to unmanageable proportions. I was choked with silent, terrified crying, and there I was, in
my forties, in a cave, with a temporarily well-behaved husband and a strangled primal childhood flashback on my
hands. Then I broke. I was screaming into the night and at the sea and my whole body was fizzing with the release
of pent-up childhood terror.
Once it was over, I was glad it had happened, because it won’t be very useful being scared of the night sky
and night noises travelling as we do, especially in South America. So in safe old Tenerife, where the flies can’t
even get it together to give you malaria, and the sea is pathetically sluggish and can’t even muster the energy to
wash away yesterday’s rotten tomatoes, let alone seriously threaten some strange people sleeping several feet above
it in a cave, I was donated an unexpected little PS to my primal therapy of years ago.
I have to have a Moan about Barnsley Bill. Did any of you ever notice that he doesn’t listen, aggressively
interrupts, obnoxiously and obsequiously pretends to want to hear what you’ve just said and says ‘sorry’ in a way
that makes you feel sick? And that he repeats himself endlessly, mind-stunningly and doesn’t shut up when you try
to interrupt his interruptions to tell him so? And that he talks to himself non-stop in order to shut you out? And
that all of the above numbers accelerate, augment and generally increase if one has the tough luck to be left alone
with him? Yes? I thought you might have.
5th September 1987
Dear Snow and Co.,
I’m very happy. The tide is so high the flies can’t make it through the spray to get at us. The moon is
coming up to full bringing the sea suddenly to life. It comes up rather far into our home but we love it and enjoy
squeaking at it. Bill and Fred have both ended their jobs so we’re all home together which feels great. Fred has
found a dry riverbed full of thrown-away wine, beer and food near a supermarket. My ‘fear session’ of a few nights
back has left me feeling more alive and much happier and enjoying everything. The kids are absolutely marvellous
and I’d like all the snotty social workers of the World to have to see them and feel the joy emanating from them as
they live their delicious childhood naked in this cave!
9th September 1987
Full moon, exciting high tides, a new kind of weather - clouds! Then one day the sirocco arrived - an incredibly hot
dry dusty wind from the Sahara which has blotted out Gomera, normally visible from here, and Cristianos, just
across the bay, and the skyline, so that we hover in a strange detached world. The whole air is full of red dust - the
last of Tenerife’s topsoil. As Fred says, it’s like living in a spindrier. The air is so salt-laden that our duvet,
clothes and towels are clammy. But I don’t mind any of it, as long as there is cloud, blessed cover against the
terrible sun.
The next comer to this cave after we have gone will find a ready-made home with candles, floormats, foam
rubber mattresses, cans of evaporated milk, bottles of wine, kilos of sweets, a box of toys, pillows, tables and stools.
I’m making two rucksacks, and we will move as soon as they’re ready: Fred’s is finished, but Bill’s is a State Secret
as I don’t want him interfering, moaning, picking, suggesting, speaking, altering, redesigning or generally
nothingintheworldcouldeverbegoodenoughforme-ing.
From Bill:
Dear Friends,
Please ignore the rude comments. I think Jenny has been a bit frustrated lately. I’d rather talk about Fred.
I want to tell you about his aversion to using the mountains of free food we have here. Jenny opened three tiny tins
of peas and put them in a pot, at
which point he reared up and all the hairs on his back stood on end and he
had a fit. Jenny has just gone for a pee and I have been left with express instructions in her absence to make sure he
doesn’t take wood off the fire or try to put food back in the tins. So you see, we all have our idiosyncrasies…….
I treated myself to a mini-nightmare just before we left Tenerife. Leaving the safety of our cave, where we
had lived entirely hidden from human eyes, we walked a hot and thirsty walk over the small mountain to the Port of
Cristianos, to a world packed with people. The kids rushed off to play on the flat sandy beach, and I retired to a
shady bench to read. Hours later, Louise came back. “Where’s Katie?” I said. “I thought she was with you,” said
Louise.
Panic seized my mind. I rushed madly along the beach scanning the crowded waterline. Katie would stand
out anywhere because of her colouring. Fantasies of a silent, unheeded drowning filled my brain. In tears, I
clutched at every person asking if they’d seen her. The nightmare grew and grew until suddenly, “Yes, she’s up
there,” said a woman, pointing to a First Aid hut. First Aid? Oh no. I rushed up the steps legless and burst in to be
met with a row of frowning, disapproving faces. Accusations filled the air without a word being spoken. I looked
around desperately for Katie. She was asleep, unharmed, in a cot. Some do-gooder had found her unaccompanied
and had taken her there.
My tears of relief softened the old dears somewhat and saved me from a lecture on Responsibility. I held
my precious bundle close, thanked them all profusely, and escaped.
GRAN CANARIA
Arrival at a new island; a sinking feeling of well-controlled panic: a new environment, how will we cope?
Where will we sleep? These ferries always seem to arrive in the middle of the night. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, a
huge sprawling port, the biggest in the Canary Islands. We sat amidst our luggage in a little park floodlit by street
lamps. The kids played on the swings, blissfully unaware that it was midnight, whilst we quietly viewed our
homeless situation. People came up and chatted. “Any beaches nearby?” we asked. “Certainly”. We were led
through busy streets along narrow pavements to a floodlit beach. The whole of Las Palmas was also there. It was
quite a remarkable sight, like a new planet: a night sky, but with people swimming, lounging on the sand under a
row of artificial suns, jogging up and down the long wide sandy town beach; fat people, ugly people, old people,
middle-aged men and women, puffing up and down. So this is how the natives cope with the heat problem.
We found one tiny shadowy spot between some fishing boats, laid out our bedding, ate our supper, and
snuggled down for the night. We were the only people who weren’t going home that night. By two or three in the
morning, everyone had left. We expected any moment a ‘No Camping Here’, but it never came, nor did it ever
come anywhere on Gran Canaria, the friendliest, scruffiest island of them all.
Gran Canaria is breathtakingly hideous, more hideous than burnt-out Lanzarote, barren Puerte Ventura or
dried-up Tenerife. Gran Canaria requires a whole new scale of adjectives to describe how hideous it is. After two
nights on beaches in the capital, we set out to walk down the coast. But you can’t walk down the coast. They have
built a motorway all along it as close to the sea as possible. We walked along the side of the motorway for several
hours, gritting our teeth and holding our breath as the metal monsters swooshed by. We escaped down to stony
beaches whenever we could and straggled along them. Then yet another industrial plant loomed ahead, blocking our
way, so, as we couldn’t face scrambling alongside yet more streams of screeching, belching motorway traffic, we
got a bus. We asked for ‘the next beach’ and gaped in horror as the driver charged us £4 to sit on his sticky hot bus
for hours on end. Eventually he put us off, two miles inland. Those forty kilometres on the bus gave us a thorough
look at Gran Canaria: flat, overpopulated, completely industrial; inhabited by busy well-dressed people who seemed
to be oblivious to the ugliness by which they were surrounded and to the intense heat and thick fumes in which they
lived.
Struggling down the steep steps of the crowded bus with three kids, an impatient driver, masses of luggage,
Bill gone deaf to my appeals for a helping hand and Fred spaced off somewhere, was a nightmare. Once out of the
bus, however, I recovered immediately, shouted at both the men, grabbed the now-happy children, and walked off
with them. Before the men could recover, a car stopped and gave me and the kids a lift to the nearest beach. We
crunched across the delicious damp pebbles, ecstatic. And I saw a huge piece of wet thrown-away foam; a good
omen.
We wandered along this strange, scruffy beach in the late afternoon sun exploring, and feeling blissfully
happy. The whole of the Gran Canarian coast is not only used by the local people, they live on it. I never saw a
tourist or foreigner in all my time on the island: they are all tucked away in their expensive ghettoes elsewhere,
being protected from seeing what we see all the time: dreadful housing, shacks and shanty towns, rubbish by the ton,
destruction, barrenness, desolation, and cars. And more cars. And hundreds more CARS. On one popular beach in
the capital, we saw a huge oil slick only yards from the shore and stretching out to sea. In this, the merry Canarians
and their children were playing in their hundreds. A big ship further out was spraying something on the water. Fairy
liquid?
But I love Gran Canaria! I like it best of all the islands. The people are the most down-to-earth. The
feel of the Canaries before it disappeared under the uniform cloak of artificial EEC wealth and tourism is still here:
beggars in Las Palmas, the capital port; tramps by the handful; blacks, Chinese, Russians, Indians on the docksides.
Tremendous friendliness, especially as we walked along the people’s beaches, for to walk along the seafront is to
walk through people’s lives: they eat, bathe, play and work on their beaches. Their dreadfully ugly, breeze-block
built houses open on to the sea, and they put up with us, or are friendly, or very friendly, or positively delighted as
we pass by in a tatty unit that they recognize and can relate to: children, woman, men, and our home on our backs.
These people are part-time fisher-folk and they really need and use their beaches. From this follows the natural
left-wing politics of the island: anti-speculation, anti-tourist industry, but never anti-foreigner. The whole island is
anti-EEC and anti-NATO, and also, ironically, very concerned with ecology. This however, does not seem to stop
them from lighting picnic fires under their last trees, throwing mountains of rubbish everywhere, smashing bottles
and producing plastic by the ton. Gomera was the only island innocent enough to welcome 'development': they
should take a trip to Gran Canaria or Tenerife to see the results!
The proliferation of political parties down here is phenomenal, a reaction to thirty years of clampdown
under Franco. We’re used to our two, maybe three parties: but here on the Canaries, there are whole handfuls of
them, including organizations for the individual islands, for a single area, and for each small neighbourhood. In the
capital, I had gone walking northwards with Louise to the peninsula of Isleta and found a kind of UDI (Unilateral
Declaration of Independence) situation where the coastal people had banded together to prevent any further
development northwards.
They had their own little community of several hundred people in shanty shacks,
(sometimes with big posh cars outside them!), their own sports events, kids’ play-places, bars, dust roads and a
general feeling of co-operation and sticking together, living right on and in and next to their livelihood, the sea.
One shack was built of election placards used sideways to form the house walls. The slogan of that particular party
was: ‘La Otra Manera de Hacer España’ - literally, ‘the other way to make Spain’.
The most obvious pathology of the Canarians of Tenerife and Gran Canaria is obesity. Hundreds and
hundreds of grotesquely fat adults and children, which I assume is a sign of sudden change from rags to riches. Here
on Gran Canaria there is a second, even more arresting, pathology: Hermaphroditism, a kind of mixture of
premature sexuality, dual sexuality and asexuality, as in a person with a black beard, deep voice, short hair, huge
stomach, enormous tits and three sons who call her ‘mummy’ passing you by on a beach, and just as you are
recovering from that one, from the other direction comes a person with an enormous stomach, large tits and a
squeaky voice who, judging by the shape of his swimming trunks, is a man. All this seems to go unnoticed by the
Canarians who are simply gregarious, full of fun and completely happy. Gran Canaria is the working-class island
of the Canaries; Tenerife the posh rich island where everything is based on tourism; the island of La Palma the
snotty-nosed pretty conservative little country village. And as we run from civilization and all its discontents, we
find ourselves loving best this large, flat, ugly industrial wasteland!
17th September 1987, Castillo del Romero, South Gran Canaria
Dear Clan,
I sit in a shady grove of huge old trees, the very last trees on Gran Canaria as far as I can see. A herd of two
hundred goats lounges nearby. The billy goats look like small bison, with long twirling horns and enormous
bodies. They do not eat grass, there being no vegetation left on this island, but have sacks and sacks of maize
sprinkled on the ground for them twice a day by the farmer who owns them. It hasn’t rained in this particular spot,
I am told, for two years; the only green bits are the slime of the outlet from the tomato-ketchup factory next door to
us. Yesterday we were given four bottles of the sauce hot from the production lines.
Three naked blonde children are building a house of stone at the foot of one of the trees. I have shade all
day long and my washing flaps gently in the breeze. Fred has gone to the nearest small town to buy food; our water
is free from the goat farm nearby. Bill has returned to the capital to boat-watch.
I am leaning against a
near-immaculate turquoise double mattress found thrown away outside the village - one side is a little burnt. The
goat-bells tinkle; the sea is a few yards away; the children play. This is our best camp so far, better than the cave of
Tenerife for here the breezes blow, we see the sky through the trees and there is more contact with the reality of the
Canary Islands.
As we walked to this grove, I found strewn amongst the straggly bushes a huge heap of discarded toys,
including two lovely baby dolls and enough books, pencils, paper, biros and children’s clothes to last us till the end
of the century. So many toys were there, that I have given bags of them to the farmer who lets us have his water
and gives us goats’ cheese free.
On the person-front, the rift with Bill widens. He becomes flatter and duller and greyer. There is barely a
wisp of friendship left between us. He and Fred live in an animosity-laden truce. He continues to be extremely
useful, and Fred deals with him crudely and well. But when Fred throws his bullying fits, as he did three days in a
row recently during one of his menstruals, neither Bill nor I can deal with him, so we ignore him till the next phase
of his personality takes over. There is enough variation in his several postures to make life in between perfectly
liveable. Fred deals with me OK, while Bill is as unartistic as possible every time I bleep. I bleep regularly these
days so as not to get oppressed by Bill who demands that I be intimately, passionately concerned with his peristalsis,
blood and lung functions, sweat-gland operations, repose/activity balance, general dysfunctioning, as well as the
texture, hue and quality of every fibre beclothing his horrendous corpus. As I quoth to the Frederick this morning,
Bill disports a pathological concern for the continuance of his life. If he were more in-touch, he’d be grateful
enough to die. In the few brief moments of Truth he allows himself (don’t sneeze or you’ll miss them), it transpires
that he shoulders a grudge that I am not panting to renew our brief affair of last Christmas, which he ended by
running back to mother.
18th September 1987
Dear comuñeros:
A roll of thunder just passed overhead and there is an argument between Alice and Katie as to whether it is
a hair-pwane or a space-rocket. The latter theory just won. Well, it nay not have rained here previously for two
years, but it is raining on me now and my double bed is getting wet.
19th September 1987
At which point, it deluged. Fred asked for shelter for the night from the farm people, and, wading through torrents,
we transferred our lives to a pongy, windowless, concrete maize-store, and were so exhausted from the frantic move
that we slept most gratefully on and in wet bedding in the hot airless darkness. It had been so long since we were
enclosed and confined, so long since we had slept without seeing the stars overhead, that it was a tremendous relief
to return to our windy camp the next morning.
20th September 1987
Fred found one bottle of port and one bottle of champagne and two full packets of biscuits in dustbinlandia today. A
big fat cop came swaggering up to him and said, “What’ya doin’ mate?” or the equivalent in Spanish. “Lookin’ in
this dustbin mate, wanna make summint of it? replies Fred in Paddy Spanish. And the big fat cop says: “I’ll see
you and your passport in three quarters of an hour at your camp.”
Big fat cop turns up at the appointed hour. Pre-warned, tall thin mamma and her three children surround
his car and soon have him eating out of their hands, retreating rapido and apologizing mucho to that Class A
Olympic Gold Medal Poor-Me dustbin artist, Fred.
Later, another cop car drove up. This is it, I thought, we have to remove our tattered, windblown shanty
tent. I hurriedly donned a tee-shirt - I live semi-naked - and went to face the music. But the music was entirely
unfaceable, worse than tarantulas, hurricanes or vertical heights. The even bigger, fatter cop opened the back door
of his car and - no, he didn’t bundle us into it; he pointed instead to a back seat full or packets of milk and piles of
bread, indicating that I should take the lot. Then, staring at my naked children, said, “Are the children cold?
Tomorrow I bring you clothes.” For Lord’s sake, it’s not safe to look in dustbins any more.
It is Sunday night and a mass of departing campers have left us chicken, olives, bottled water and paper
kitchen rolls. The shelter is about to blow down and Fred has got to work out what to do with all the food.
Anyone for Port wine? PS. This morning I expressed a wish that I had a dictionary for some of the more obscure
words in the pile of books of Spanish literature we have found thrown away. Fred then found two dictionaries in a
dustbin……..
22nd September, 1987
…..and then I went to bed, moaning that Bill had some of our bedding with him in town and I was cold. I’d hardly
shifted to full curse-gear when a gruff ‘Hello’ came out of the dark. Bill, with a huge thick warm, clean, new
thrown-away blanket, several clean fresh double sheets, a thick warm nightdress for me, men’s vests and pants,
army trousers and shirts, toys and clothes for the kids, plus a mountain of good clothes we don’t need but which we
will give to the farm people. It seems everyone in the Canaries washes, bleaches and irons their possessions before
throwing them away. That night, we were warm.
All through the following day, we were visited by people bringing us food and offering us help. Three
young women stood for ages hovering by a tree; I sent Bill over to them. They had seen us arrive on the bus a week
ago and came bringing five carrier bags full of food, mainly tins of meat, but also fruit, macaroni, two large bags of
powdered milk, chocolate spread for the kids, and biscuits. Anyone want to come out and join us living frugally
and rough? They asked if there was anything else we needed. Looking ruefully at our patchwork shelter, I said
politely, ‘Some canvas?’ The young women were a social worker, a teacher and a pharmacist, and they stayed half
the day talking. They had been nervous they said, that we’d be offended by them bringing us things. I said it was
fine, but that I drew the line at the police giving us food!
Later three younger girls came, asking the time and for a light for a cigarette - evidently this is the accepted
way for females here to make contact. Bill was once again delegated to chat to them, and then things started
moving really fast. First they wanted to take our children down to the beach. Fine. Then they wanted to take all
our kids away to a fiesta and to ‘eat’ and to stay the night. They had toys, they said, and would bathe the children
and give them clothes, and they had lots of little brothers and sisters for them to play with. I had to swallow very
hard and keep all my social-worker paranoia under control and remind myself that here people just do these things
and that it is not an insult to offer to do them.
Several hours later
Alice has come home from the visit looking like any other Gran Canaria hermaphrodite - little boys’ pants and shirts
on, and her hair scraped tightly back, and wearing a crippling pair of new shoes. I let out her hair, released her
from the bondage of the clothes and shoes and slowly she turned back into “Alice” again, that is, part clown, part
destructive little urchin and partly extremely loveable little girl.
Meanwhile the stream of visitors continues. We have definitely been discovered. They are nearly all
young girls; six in one group for example, all bearing gifts of food, mainly for carnivores but including longed-for
fruit. I used to be paranoid about cars driving up here to peek, aggress or make objections to us living here. Now I
am paranoid about cars turning up here delivering gifts.
A jeep stopped. A woman staggered out with a huge cardboard box full of tightly-packed clothes. Of 100
items, I picked out six; the rest we will, embarrassingly, at some point have to leave here. Some of the people who
come delivering don’t even speak or ask anything: we’re here, the children are naked, the tent is a shambles, and
Fred has been seen looking in dustbins. And that’s it, Q.E.D.
I am trying to bully Fred into a relaxed attitude to it all. Translation: I am trying to quell my own rising
hysteria about the situation. My unrufflable old Taurus actually admitted that the last delivery was indeed an
overload and that he too is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His tension comes out on our visitors in the form
of loony Irish jokes quipped in unintelligible Spanish.
My tension comes out in diving headfirst into my
three-sided shelter every few minutes to hide from the latest delivery, or alternately I try effusive, culturally equally
unintelligible explanations to blank-faced people as to what we are doing. They obviously don’t see there is
anything to discuss. There we are, naked, poor, abandoned to the elements, our children manifestly starving and
FRED LOOKING IN DUSTBINS. Excuse my hysteria, but I feel hysterical. And so might you, ladies and
gentlemen, if you’d just spent the last months giving up every last button and piece of elastic and sock and dress and
sheet and tent and you ended up with something closely resembling the commune clothing store. Just when I was
rising to higher things, i.e. poverty, they come and bury me under tins of corned beef and nylon dresses. As Fred
mournfully admitted today, “It looks as though I’ll have to give up my insecurity neurosis.” It seems we have
become a shrine and spectre of the recently passed poverty of these people, and as such we are performing a public
service much as a prostitute or priest does; they come to us to get rid of something, maybe guilt at their new
opulence, or, more importantly to get a feeling of contact and meaningfulness which their new opulence has stolen
from them. That’s what we came here for too, to get away from a thing-world and to find a people-world. Well,
we did it, but - WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH ALL THESE THINGS??!
24th September 1987
They’ve taken my children away. No, not the social workers. It’s just one of those things Canarians do, like
having sex in public. It was the first time Katie had ever been away from me during the night. I felt terrible and
thought: this giving away of possessions has gone too far! Meanwhile, at dark, another carload of food arrived.
“We heard there were some people with starving children - I hope you don’t mind.” I ate the yoghurt by the light of
the gift candles. Earlier a very fat lady had brought yet another enormous load of clothes wrapped in yet another
double sheet and yet another huge double blanket. “Poor things, must be so cold at night!” We’re sweating!
I feel ill, I wonder if they had Katie for breakfast; maybe it’s the menopause, the heat, the unaccustomed
customs, but I’m going barmy, We’ll have to leave this shady grove and brave the heat and destruction of the
coast-line and get out of here.
Fred has just managed, somewhat lethargically to rescue Katie from the grips of the whole town. Hordes
of unknown Canarian girls all squabbling over who is to have which and how many of my children, and for how
long, Giving away things was difficult; accepting free gifts was harder still; but giving up my children just to please
people? Or, more complicatedly just to please the children? NO!
It seems Fate is constantly contriving to make all events and thoughts and feelings go into the same black
hole in my brain; a kind of asthmatic desperation to get away, further and further away from European
contamination, tins of tuna fish, sacks of useless clothes, people fussing and worrying over my kids, my completely
happy, healthy, free kids. “Oh, but they can’t get an EDUCATION if you’re travelling around,” said one concerned
newly-middle class young woman last night. Education? If this trip isn’t an education, I don’t know what is, I can
hardly keep up with the lessons myself.
“Oh you poor things and what about the cold and here’s another ton of tuna fish.” Meanwhile, I feel
constantly hungry, one, because the food is nearly all for carnivores and two, because I can’t bear to eat, I am so sick
of the sight of food and three, because there is no chance here ever of anything green to eat. How would you like
three bottles of cooking oil? A huge jar of white rice full of beetles? Or just two dozen more tins of tuna fish?
This morning I was so fed up with all the food that I gave several packets of white bread to the goats.
I long to be in countries where to be ‘poor’ is not strange, where to sleep in the open is normal, where for
kids to have no clothes on does not raise an eyebrow; where the idea of ‘education’ is as distant as a satellite; where
to go barefoot and scantily dressed is a matter of course; and where Paddies can look in dustbins without causing a
social upheaval. The worst of it all is when you find yourself looking at patched clothes and not liking them, or at
children’s bums and wanting them covered, or at a perfectly adequate little shelter and feeling ashamed.
Later
All is much better inside me. The sun shines. I’ve just been in the sea and then washed my hair. I’ve seen some
amazing mugwumps - the kids’ name for the enormous lizards crawling everywhere here, also some beautiful birds.
I’ve never been very interested in birds, but when you see a yellow-headed punk-rock bird with a long sharp bill and
black and white striped body and a spike of feathers on the back of its head suddenly lie down on its back, spreading
its wings, the spike becoming a fan, then put its head back, open its beak, close its eyes and SUNBATHE, well then
you do feel a little honoured to be let in on such an occurrence.
Fred is annoying me. Not unusual I know. But he’s developed the habit of being deaf. He goes
swimming and this makes him deaf. Then he buys little bottles of something-or-other to put in his ears, then he
spends half the day and night leaning over on one side and obscenely jiggling his ears; and then he goes swimming
and gets deaf again. Here he comes now, as usual with a towel stuck in one ear joggling it around. The worst of
all is when he pretends to try and hear what you’re saying by leaning his head on one side towards you, just like my
dad used to, only much more malevolently. So if you read of a woman up for murder offering her defence, “But,
Your Honour, he leaned his head on one side when I spoke to him” …..
The girls who took Alice have just been here. They tell me how the nuns at their school always collect
money and clothes for the hungry in Africa, and was it Africa we were going to? “So you see, some of the people
in Castillo are good” one girl said, almost accusingly. Yes, of course, I agreed, and thought of fat-bummed Alice
stuffing herself stupid and sighed slightly. This time she again came home looking like a boy, with a puffy red
face, clean clean hair, and definitely wanting her mum. I didn’t mind her being a bit sulky and bad-tempered
because I was so delighted to collect my family together again. After the babysitters had gone, I stripped her down
to her perfectly adequate skin, quietly packed away for dumping all the far-too-small clothes she’d been given, and
after a cuddle and a moan and the requisite row with Katie over blue teddy bears, they then went off joyfully playing
together all the long, magical evening, even enchanting Old Grump the father, running up and down the woodland
path yelling, over and over again till dusk, brown bodies covered in blonde fluff, pale pale hair, happy, free, at
home, not needing TV or baths or more food, or an Education.
Fred meanwhile is scoffing at me for getting absurdly het up at little things like having all three of my
children taken away.
29th September 1987
This morning I stepped out of the tent into the autumn air, to discover that we had been surrounded by the Army.
They hadn’t come to get us, but merely to practice killing one another with machine guns. They’ve gone now, but
on departing, they left us a boxload of ... tuna fish, sardines, bread, jam and biscuits.
1st October 1987
The Army come every day now, surrounding us and bringing us breakfast - it was eggs today. This morning Fred
was having a fit, so they were treated to hours and hours of him ranting and raving. I studiously avoided being
drawn into Fred’s storm so he accosted some innocent motorist parked nearby reading his newspaper, raved further,
sobbed and insisted on telling the poor man his terrible story in a mixture of Sanskrit and Spanish.
3rd October 1987
Today I am bored, so decided once again to give up all and move. At which point, Bill arrived to tell us that he has
found a huge cave five kilometres north of Las Palmas, and has built himself a little wooden hut outside it.
6th October 1987
We moved. And in so doing, descended several rungs on the social ladder. Our landlords now are a family of
eight scruffy, beautiful blonde gypsy children, their parents and grandmother, who live in a hut built on to a cave
next to a huge rubbish tip. We are perched on an outcrop of rock just below the family. We sleep on gravel, ants
and cardboard covered with thin foam. We face the rising sun. The four-year-old of the family is covered in black
filth from head to foot and is completely loved and happy. The mother of the eight children is 32 and a grandmother.
One of her babies was born in the clinic lift, another on the stairs. She herself was born in the cave the family still
live in. All her children look like blood-brothers of our kids. Alice and Louise were out playing in the dark in the
nearby village with some of the brood after I was asleep last night. No bother about bare feet, bare bums or patched
clothes here! Bill brought the family half the enormous mountain of clothes we were given at the last camp and
they wear them proudly, including the old aunt, María, who says she is 86 and looks 60.
There is no beach here as the North coast is solid rock cliffs. It is full moon and the waves hit the coast
with such force that the whole sea rides up sending spray twenty foot into the air. Yesterday I was about to step
into a glass-like rock pool with Alice, when suddenly the maliciousness of the ocean gathered itself together to
override all obstacles and swamp the pool. I was pale and weak with fright for ages. The sea in any new place
needs watching for a long time before you know its moods.
On a personal level, I have to fight Bill and Fred, but on the practical level, the team is tested and tried and
always works well as we are unified in our basic attitudes and goals: i.e. scavenging waste, improving our
immediate environment, never adding damage to it, and moving ever further down the social ladder, which is the
same thing as ever higher up the ladder of human contact and intuneness. The family here tell the truth about
human relationships, mishaps, needs, and angers, because they wouldn’t see any reason not to.
8th October 1987
The fishermen who come with their rods to these rocks have found us. And so we were given a gallon of drinking
water ‘para los niños’, ‘for the children’, three tins of sardines and two large loaves of fresh bread.
I dreamt last night that I was leaving home for South America and had to have a jumble sale of all my
clothes in aid of CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) before I went and the cameramen were at the door
and I had about half an hour left to organize the jumble sale, speak to the Press, and get to South America. So I
decided to forget the jumble sale, and at the moment of relaxing and giving up, I woke up. I couldn’t make out
where I was as there was a white roof above me. I stared at the white roof for some time when suddenly it dawned
on me that I was staring at the sky, unaccustomedly covered in cloud. It then proceeded to rain on me - the shanty
house which Fred started building yesterday has no roof. I pulled all available coverings over the kids’ heads and
we squeaked and giggled while Fred cussed and ran around blaming everybody with the cold rain belting on his
warm, naked body. He finally acquired a filthy old tarpaulin and put it on one wall of the structure. He’s Irish you
know.
10th October 1987
Bill has just given me his mirror, the first fair-sized one I have had in the Canaries, so I was able to see a thin,
brown, very healthy looking woman with short curly pepper-coloured hair and big white teeth. I can’t see the
bottom half of me.
We live against a black rock cliff. To the right of us is a big cleft where these last full-moon days
enormous waves splash in and up. In front of us is an area of rough rock with pools in it, then a long drop to the
fierce sea. At the moment, the sea is very wild - and is sending 30-40 foot waves crashing high into the air to spray
all over the rocks. We look up at the white water in the air, but so far none of it has reached us. Fishermen come
every day and perch on the highest points to try their luck in the churning sea, nodding politely at the odd occupants
of a gypsy encampment which grows more elaborate by the day,
I love October. The morning sun is shining through a mist of sea-spray. Bill gets fruit and veg. waste
from the town. One day he was there with Alice and Louise sitting outside the market and immediately they were
showered with lollipops, sweets, yoghurts and a bag of cheese-ends from the cheese-stall man.
Meanwhile, there is heavy acrimony between Bill and Fred. Bill has gone extremely black, uptight and
bachelorish and is deliberately hateful. Unfortunately, Fred handles his own feelings so badly that it is quite
impossible for me to be on his side for more half a minute. Bill scores points over Fred, but is always the loser, as
Fred is actually living rather than just treading water until death.
12th October 1987
After a lovely morning sewing in the sun, with the wild October sea thundering nearby, I went to sit up high on a
viewing point near the camp to observe the sea as it seemed in a rougher mood than usual.
“Oh!” I cried immediately, calling down to the others, “get your umbrellas out.” But then it wasn’t funny. I saw
the troughing. I watched the heaping. And then it came, all in a matter of seconds. The Wave. I watched
horrified from my dry spot as it deposited itself on what was once our camp, our outdoor kitchen, our washing on
the line. And on the children. I screamed. The next thing I saw was a completely drenched little thing, Katie,
being scooped up and taken to shelter by Fred. Alice came running up to me, wet but OK. Katie was inured on
her forehead; the wave had knocked her flat on to the rock floor.
We miserably transferred our home up to a dirty, sloping, dark cave; at least it was dry. The sea became
heavier and heavier; the fishermen got drenched and gave up. They said they’d never seen the sea so high before.
Further waves came, many of them, drowning Bill’s little house and forming a huge pool where previously we had
lived on dry rock. The fishermen who had seen what happened to us brought us bread and fish and meat, for the
non-vegetarian men to eat.
16th October 1987
The crazy weather eventually ended, so we moved back to our rock-ledge and built a much-improved shack. I now
live in something that looks a little like mum’s sitting room, except that it is perched on the edge of nowhere.
I can confirm after seven months’ travelling that it is definitely possible to live, make homes, and beautiful
ones, to get on with people of different cultures, to travel with very small children, to manage with very little money,
to live with people you don’t particularly like as long as you have a common purpose, to feel healthy and strong at
forty-five, that you don’t have to get fat, that you can let your children be free without letting them be free all over
you, that you can eat post-dated food out of dustbins without getting ill, that you can live in the middle of
disgustingness and clean up a little bit of it, enough to create a place of beauty, that you can drink all kinds of water
and stay well; that you don’t have to be a Nice Person in order to have all sorts of unlikely people appreciating you
(the Army and Police for example!); and that what you got told about a country ain’t necessarily so. And that I feel
very happy.
Much love, Jen
23rd October 1987
In the night, I got that rotting mackerel feeling, that is, things going putrid, namely me putting up with too much air
pollution from Bill in order to keep the team together. He had been sulking blackly lately, something to do with
failing to prove that cut-off bachelor isolation is better than living with Irishmen who put cold water in my chocolate
drink ‘so that I can drink it’ or me tearing my hair out to get obedience from an unruly brood of quarrelling kids.
So I challenged him about his stinking bad humour, whereupon he threw a Force 9 tantrum which included jewels
such an ‘how could I stand Fred’s ginger pubic hair’ (evidently black would be better).
There was no
enlightenment at the end of the storm, so Fred and I had to effect his removal and risk living alone together - a risky
business indeed. But pollution is pollution, so Bill was sent off on uncompassionate leave to live in town.
It is now raining on me inside my shack, so I have to go ….
Jen
26th October 1987
It wasn’t just rain, but a deluge lasting three days, very unusual for this time of year according to local people and
definitely not too good for a shack roofed with plastic sacks stuck together with sellotape. We hated the idea of
moving back into the depressing, dark cave, but solved the problem by building a lovely little house inside it.
Generations of fishermen had used the cave, which is big and airy and very high, and they had built fires in it so that
the floor was black and mucky and smelly and covered in broken glass. We cleared the rubble, covered the dust
with sacks, a wet carpet and a muddy tarpaulin and camouflaged the lot with some gigantic beautifully hand-painted
Japanese canvasses that Bill had found thrown away outside a restaurant.
In the midst of all this moving and rebuilding, Mr. William Greyface turned up, not to apologize for his
ugly behaviour or to admit that he needs his friends, but to deign to offer us shelter on the boat he’s working on!
As I said to Fred, I’d rather live in a wet paper bag in the middle of a busy road.
Fred and I are very happy. The weather is gorgeously wild, windy and fresh. We just used heated water
for the first time in six months for hair and clothes-washing. Because of the height of the cave and the fact that we
are living at the top corner of it, we have a magnificent view out to sea and all horribleness strewn around by human
beings is obscured.
All three of the children are speaking Spanish, not just with local children, but amongst themselves. The
early evening darkness is coming on, so I must away.
Much love, Jen
29th October 1987
I’ve been excited for days with no obvious reason, I feel so healthy I could fly. I have felt it ever since Bill left - he
must have been sitting on my aura!
3rd November 1987
I had nowhere to put the excitement, so I decided we had to move somewhere where there’d be more company. So
on Sunday, we got up early; a beautiful cloudy showery day. We took only the children, passports, money and
food, thinking it was safe to leave our gear in the cave for one day.
Gran Canaria looked exquisitely beautiful! The glaring ugliness that unremitting bright sun shows up was
gone: now clouds brought light and shade and colour under a wild changing sky, and several days’ heavy rain had
slightly greened the distant hills. The kids ran delighted like dogs let off the lead along the sandy beaches of Las
Palmas - they were never able to move like that in the vicinity of the cave with only rocks and a dangerous sea
below. A wave suddenly pounced on us, hitting right against the sea wall, and knocking the kids over - Katie yelled
and so did the people up on the promenade above us, but Louise and Alice loved it all. I got wet, but everything
felt wonderful. Fred had found me a light Indian skirt thrown away some place, which was lucky as all I had left to
wear otherwise was pyjamas or a nightdress, having lived in knickers and a bikini top all summer.
We were headed for Confital, the shanty town on the peninsula of Isleta that Louise and I had briefly
visited when we first landed on Gran Canaria. I had never forgotten the place and felt sure that if we went there
with the kids, we’d be allowed to take over some ruin and move in.
Feeling a little less uptight in our oddness after so much practice at being outsiders, Fred and I walked
politely up the dust streets of the shanty town and spotted an unfinished, roofless, breeze-block structure. I asked a
neighbour about it and he said, ‘Have it!’
We were leaving for home, happy, and planning what roofing material we’d need, when a fat lady stopped
us and said conspiratorially: ‘Come over here!’ We went with her and she showed me another shanty house,
complete with furniture, toys and a toilet, right on a lovely sandy beach with rock pools, a beautiful deep blue sea
lapping gently, the coastline stretching out of sight and a magnificent view all around. True, the house is made of
wood and hardboard and is dark, musty, dusty and damp, and the loo has to be flushed with a bucket of sea-water.
The lady told us it belonged to her auntie, but that she lived in town now and didn’t need it any more, and
would we like it? Would we!
So we set off for the cave, a very long way away across town, to eat, sleep and pack. But suddenly, just as
we were leaving the shanty town, several things happened at once: my sandals broke unmendably; Katie started
screaming blue murder with tiredness and because she had no shoes on the rough, gravelly road; Alice was
exhausted and wanted to go straight back to our new house because it had toys in it; and Fred spontaneously
combusted, throwing a violent fit at me and saying he was going to ‘smash my “fat” face in’ as I’d refused to be
fobbed off with some odd Irishism he’d just tried to sell me; and finally, it rained, solving the whole problem. The
kids wanted it, God wanted it and now I wanted it, what with no shoes, no strength to carry two tired kids, and now
the new weight of Fred.
So I returned to our new home with the children and never saw the cave again, while Fred
worked off his foul mood on the approximately seven-kilometre trot to Tinoca to fetch our gear from the cave.
So much good luck in being handed a new house had to be balanced out in Heaven. The blow came. Fred
arrived late at night in a jeep with some neighbours who had lived near our cave with the remains of our
possessions. 31 major items were missing, The previously friendly family of vagabonds who had originally given us
hospitality on their rubbish dump, annoyed with us for leaving them, had allowed their children to wreck our
cave-house, knocking down the walls, setting fire to it, splattering water, flour, powder drinks, cereals and
everything else eatable over the floor, and destroying or stealing all that I loved most: my sewing and mending
materials, wools, knitting, all our books, pens, writing paper, notebooks, kids’ toys and beads.
The gypsy children vanished like jungle guerrillas when Fred arrived, saw the destruction, and blew his top.
It was dark. He salvaged what he could, bedding and clothes, pots and pans. It was 11.00 p.m. when he returned to
me, but neither of us could bear to go to bed, so he went back yet again, taking candles and matches. I am here
freezing, alone, agonizing and trying to pass the time.
Next Day
It is sweltering mid-morning and Fred has still not come back. I have no money (we need to change sterling), no
food and no water. A beautiful environment, a nice house, and little else. I’ve cleaned, improved and tidied the
whole house, but can’t do my washing - water has to be purchased. And in my head, a desert wasteland: giving
away all your worldly goods is one thing; having them ripped from you and wantonly wasted is heartbreaking.
Later
Fred came home. He had stayed till dawn to confront the family about the theft and of course they ‘knew nothing
about it’, in spite of the fact that he’d caught some of their kids red-handed the evening before. So he walked
around their cave, retrieving our possessions which were everywhere, tangled up with the mess they live in. From
7.30 a.m. till 10.00 a.m., he hassled the whole family. The stepfather became increasingly aggressive. The mother
had fits; the grandmother argued and the wild culprits sniggered in the background. Old Taurus, he stood his
ground. He invited them to call the police, all the while steadily going through dark cupboards and drawers,
collecting our stuff and packing it. I now re-own some 60% of what I previously owned. Every single thing they
took, they tangled, damaged or destroyed.
It seems that if you throw in your lot with the spoilt urban poor of the
world they will probably rip you off mercilessly in the process. I grew up with the silly-born socialist myth that
people steal through need. I bet any cop would know different. We needed that food that they trampled underfoot
in our cave. I need that paper they have spat on, shat on and burned. Ah well, it’s good to get de-romanticized
while it’s only our spaghetti they’re mincing underfoot and not our entrails. One thing I still carried from Inishfree:
a bag of all kinds of seeds. They were burnt, by a bunch of wasteful urban gypsies swamped with so much of the
capital’s overflow that they never mend, make or appreciate anything; just get, waste and chuck.
The main thing I have lost is my social virginity; I just stepped into the first reaches of the Third World.
4th November 1987
I feel leaden. I’m stuck here all day while Fred is off performing worldly tasks. I am always waiting, the fate of a
million suburban housewives. Bill’s hatefulness has been effective by destroying our team of three thus taking Fred
away from me.
Fred is bad-tempered always. Ants are crawling all over us. There are jumping spiders all around me.
This morning Fred dropped hot coffee on my bare feet. In the night, Alice fell out of bed but didn’t wake up. I
had just replaced Katie who’d fallen out of bed without waking up. Louise didn’t fall out of bed. She just
indulged in her habit of grinding her teeth all night.
Fred went to find Bill to ask him to do something about the theft, as much of our gear is still missing. Bill
went up to the cave with minimal enthusiasm, met with blind denial and outrage and limped back as dynamic as
yesterday’s lettuce.
I suppose if you have a gratuitous aggression done on you when you’re feeling happy, and a limp lettuce is
your only hope of retribution it is somewhat conducive to depression.
6th November 1987
I am living on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In every place you live, there is of course something to cope
with: on Inishfree, it was too much work, cut-off men and people leaving aggressively without a word; in London it
is alienation and traffic fumes; out here there have been variously heat, cold, wet, dry, fleas, flies, beetles, Bill;
María’s greasy macaroni; the Forestry Commission on La Palma; ugliness, dust and scorching sun on Tenerife; tuna
fish in South Gran Canaria. And now we have our shanty town, Confital: it is full of thieves, and they are all under
nine years old; many are pretty and sweet and half of them are female; they are friendly, lively, healthy and good
company for my kids; they are generous and so are their parents - our kids go into every shack near us and have a
great time. But they are thieves. They come here and they steal toys, toys which aren’t even ours but which were
in this house when we got here. And so I have become tense, tight, hate-filled and paranoid, and my paranoia is
always justified. I am only happy during school hours and I am terrified of the lunch hour when they all come
home. I am foul to my kids and to Fred. I smacked Katie. I could not stay sitting out in the sun today because of
so many little girls marauding in the house. We ban them. It makes no difference. I went to the shop for two
minutes and found Fred had let a fifty-year old elephant into the bedroom. He informs me she’s about fifteen.
She’s thick, huge, and pushy.
No-one in these countries responds to my arsenal of European tactics: bad vibes, sarcasm, open hostility,
rough speech, tellings-off, complaints, accusations or puttings-down of foots, I mean feet.
Outside there is a lovely beach. I dare not go out to walk on it. So I sit in our yard to do some sewing.
Six little girls went into the house with Alice to ‘get her a jumper’. I grabbed my sewing and went in after them. I
re-emerged to see my new needle case in a young girl’s hand. I put out my hand without a word. She gave me the
needles. If I hadn’t spotted the theft in time, I’d never have seen my needles again. The girl then sat as near to me
as possible, leant across me, took my scissors and proceeded to cut a doll’s hair. NO, I said. NO, I said again.
After the third NO, she finally stopped.
I feel violent. Fred is wrapped up in his own cotton-wool bubble and doesn’t notice the world around him.
I do. Every time I look at our kid’s toys, there are fewer of them. I walked out to post a letter and saw a little
neighbour carrying a plastic jug we’d just given Louise. Then I marched three little boys out of the house. That
felt good.
I read in a Canaries newspaper today some ‘facts’ about the English:
1.
They only wash on Fridays.
2.
The English medical profession is in despair because everyone goes to witch doctors.
3.
Their favourite pastime is STEALING.
I also read in the newspaper a report on Confital. Two days before we arrived, the Governor of the Canary Islands
drove through here in a motorcade to see the ‘MISERIA’. I live here and I have not seen any Miseria, nor have I
seen anyone miserable. They are a very gay lot indeed and have a very good time. They shout and scream and
live and enjoy their environment and their little bars and the immediately available company everywhere. They have
cars and tellies and plenty of everything, especially plenty of kids. They make their shacks to please themselves,
and some of them are very big. They have lots of animals, pigeons, caged birds, thousands of well-fed cats and
dogs, monkeys, chickens, and rabbits. Their environment is fine: hills behind, beach in front, and it is the most
tremendous relief to come back here after being in the hot traffic-crazy town packed with prison-like tower-blocks
where there is evidently no ‘Miseria’.
It also says in the newspaper that there is a 200 km. front of locusts travelling over North Africa and due
here shortly, but not to worry as they’ve got the air force on the alert to spray insecticide into the atmosphere....
It is 8.30 p.m. Fred went to bed ages ago. You don’t know anyone who would like to come out here who
actually speaks, do you?
7th November 1981
I awoke in the night full of impotent anger about the cave theft, Fred was caged behind an impenetrable barrier of
sleep; he woke briefly, made things worse, and I broke and cried for ages like I’d been kicked in the gut. Louise
and Alice woke and came into the bed with me and Fred got out. With the kids, I could let go more. It felt like
poison draining out of a wound, no words, just hurt and more hurt. The people who had destroyed our house in the
cave had been our friends. They wounded me. Afterwards, I felt soft and light and empty.
Effect on the children of all this mother-pain? Alice fell asleep. Louise waited till I’d finished and then
said,
“Mummy, what happens if the bird comes back when the cuckoo is laying in her nest?”
And so the day started well. At 5.0 a.m. Fred went mad in a more constructive way than usual. He ran to
town to post letters; then he swept all the floors; then he found and hung a door, made a gate, improved the outdoor
cooking-place, banged in nails, put up drapes and generally made our house feel more secure.
Funny thing, this Life business. Has its ups and downs.
Love, Jen
CHAPTER 2
A SWEDISH NIGHTMARE
November 10th 1987
Yesterday morning I returned from town to find Fred on the edge of the shanty town waiting for me. He had come
for refuge because there was a riot outside our shack. A large group of women were having a screaming match, and
it was about us. One against, six for. The one against was the owner of the shack, whom we’d never met and who
had suddenly appeared and given Fred a very bad time. Evidently the fat lady who had given us the shack had
never bothered to tell her auntie about it!
The owner had thrown a pink fit and accused Fred of stealing her doors and her documents. He didn’t
have to answer because the other women were screaming at her telling her it was a load of lies and that the stuff had
gone long before we came. Eventually, the woman was convinced. She then proceeded to try to get me to buy the
shack for 60,000 pesetas (£300). I wouldn’t hear of it and said we’d move out immediately. She then threw a
second fit, saying Fred had promised to buy it. I looked at him in astonishment and found out it was true. So I
signed a cheque for 60,000 pesetas, with a local policeman who had joined the fun as witness.
No sooner had the owner betaken herself off, well-pleased, when a posse of local women descended on us
saying, “What happened? Did you buy it? How much for?” And when I told them, they nearly fainted. “Don’t
buy it!” they said, “it’s far too much and we’ll give you a caseta (shanty-house) for nothing.” Keys were offered to
us. So I said I’d go to town tomorrow and cancel the cheque.
The women left. Fred was busy with a man who was helping him mend the roof - rain, as well as help,
was flooding in. I was doing my washing, when in walked Barnsley Bill mumbling something about a large
Swedish boat docked in the port about to cross the Atlantic and that we ought to go with it. I went with him in a
taxi - paid for by him, a miracle - to see a very large Swedish boat indeed with a lot of brown-skinned, half-nude
blonde people on board.
They didn’t look up. We stood on the key-side, feeling out-of-place and calling politely. They ignored us.
We shrugged and were just about to go away when the Captain, a man in his 50s, turned up on the quayside and
spoke to us. He was very nice and said we could sail with them the next day. It is a huge sailing boat with every
possible modern device and about seventeen robust Swedes on board. We are to have a four-berth cabin to
ourselves. Bill is crossing the Atlantic on the Dutch boat he’s working on - he’ll get paid; we have to pay. It’s a
lot of money, about $2,500 dollars, but Bill urged us to take it as he says we’ll have difficulty finding berths, being a
not-very-useful family group. The Swedish ship is called the Gullmar. Pronounced Ghoul-mar.
I was up at 2.30 a.m., packing by candlelight. At 6.45 a.m., Fred got a taxi. We left piles of our
possessions on the doorsteps of neighbours who had helped us. At 7.30 a.m. I was sitting on the cold steps of the
Caja Canaria, the bank who hold our money. At. 8.15, they opened their doors. At 8.25 a.m. I was told: “You
can’ta cancel cheques in Espain; it is an offence punishable by law.” I stared in disbelief. I got the man to repeat
what he had said. And then I burst into tears.
Whereupon the bank manager took me into his office and said: “If you empty your account and transfer the
money to another, when the woman comes to cash the cheque, you no longer have an account in that number.” I
recovered, waded through hours of bureaucracy, and then, to the horror of the bank personnel, walked out of the
bank with so many wads of notes from our closed account that I couldn’t do up my handbag. They had informed
me that it was illegal for me to take our money out of the country because we’d changed it into pesetas, and we
weren’t allowed to change it back again! Wow! the conventional world has some great rackets going. It was the
last time I’d ever use a bank.
The rest of the day I spent sitting on our luggage on the quayside waiting for the Swedes to Have a Meeting
to see if they would allow us on board - evidently some of them were Opposed to Children. Bill was working
alongside on his boat. I was hungry. Fred was rushing round town sorting out last minute necessities. Bill came and
sat with us and said: “I want your help, Jenny, to bring my double bass out here from Inishfree. I feel part of me is
missing without it.”
Please read in a Barnsley accent. He was serious. “Very useful for hitching round South
America with,” I said lightly and changed the subject. He didn’t get the row he was looking for, and his face was
an awful colour.
The Swedes finally let us on board. It was evening and I was starving. It was in their Rules that we had
to have insurance, so Fred had to dash around town yet again. But non-residents of Spain can’t buy insurance, so
we discovered later - after a crooked travel-agency sold Fred some expensive, useless policies. So Fred arrived on
board looking for someone to murder. He usually chooses me.
Anna, one of the only three women on board, finally brought us some supper in our cabin. I stared at it in
horror, and then at her to see if she was serious. She was. It was one tiny plate of white rice. “For me and the
three children?” “Yes,” she purred.
Bill came to visit us on board. I was hungry and upset and told him about the food. He softened
somewhat and said, “We’ve got to got you off here, come on.” But after the nightmare of the shanty-house, the
bank and the palaver of getting on board, I couldn’t face it. “No, I’ll stay now,” I said, “But there’s room for you
too in here if you want to come.” He hesitated, but decided against it, because of his work. It would have changed
my life if he’d stayed.
November 12th 1987, somewhere south of the Canary Islands.
Snowy,
I know you can’t do anything about it, but I am stuck in the middle of the ocean in pain with very bad
period cramps and very bad emotional cramps. I have landed myself at sea with a lunatic Irishman who is using
the opportunity to turn all the thumbscrews and with some very NICE Swedes.
Snowy, they don’t feed the
children. They are so Well-Organized that one feels one is stealing, cheating or misbehaving if one goes into the
kitchen ‘out of hours’. I have been crying for three days because when the children ask me for food, I can’t give it
to them, and I am hungry myself all the time. They produce three extremely Swedish meals a day - that is, sparse,
Spartan and downright mean. The first is at 8.30 a.m. I awake around four; the second is at two in the afternoon,
by which time we’ve dropped dead of hunger; and the third is at 7.30 p.m., long past our bedtime and the worst wait
of all. That is the time I always end up in tears; and when the food arrives I feel too upset to eat properly. They
drink lemon juice without sugar. Fred’s response to my pleas to do something about the situation is to offer me
violence. He doesn’t have a problem as he eats meat and fish with the very large Swedes. If I try to enlist his help,
he goes backbiting about me with the female kitchen staff or throws fits on deck. It seems he approves of the
situation as he never did like the kids eating anyway - it was the subject of many rows.
When I was paying our fare to Anna, I asked for a rough estimate of how much extra they would expect for
food at the end of the journey. “About £3 a day for all of you, as you don’t eat much”, she said. I never
discovered where she got this idea from.
As I write this on deck, Fred is screaming at the top of his voice “I don’t want to spend my life with a
violent woman”. I have decided to leave him at Cape Verde, our next stop. I can’t travel any further with him
without the safety-net of Bill. It is dangerous and embarrassing. Fred is now lying on his back on deck kicking
and yelling. He is mad. The Swedes pretend not to notice. I thought he would change on a boat at sea. I am
stupid.
I just told one of the Swedish women here that I have to separate from Fred at Cape Verde as it isn’t safe to
travel with him. She kept telling me to ‘calm down’ which was very odd, seeing that I was completely calm and
she, for some reason, was in tears.
Fred keeps cornering me up against the sea-rail. I feel just a little unsafe you understand.
I am learning to cry on my own. Public expression is Not On here; these people make the English look
like Latins. Besides, any chink in my calm when Fred is around would be asking for a punch in the mouth. Only
he is allowed to freak out, whenever and wherever he likes. I tried to speak about what is going on to one of the
women. She cut me dead, froze me with her eyes and claimed that no-one on the boat had heard Fred, “because of
the engine noise.”
Bill would be Heaven right now. The kids are a tremendous comfort, and amazingly brave seeing how
heavy Fred is with them: they tell him to shut up when he’s crapping on. They are very lively and happy now that
the first ghastly sea-sicky day is over. I feel as if we’ve been on this ship for years.
The kids ask me for bread all the time but we are not allowed to take bread. The Swedes keep assuring me
it’s OK to have food, but when I pin them down and ask “So can I go into the kitchen and get some?” they fidget
and look awkward and admit that it isn’t OK. Their answer to children’s hunger is hard, tasteless, inedible dry
rusks.
If I have given the impression that there is no food on the boat, let me correct it: there is masses of it.
They have rich, complicated, heavily prepared meals, spend all day making them, and they are obsessive about
having a different menu every day. But when the food arrives, it is not enough to feed a flea. Somehow, the
Swedes are all huge and healthy and a couple of them are fat. Sometimes at night, there is a rich, greasy meal, but by
then I have turned into an emotional and physical anorexic during the long hours of hunger, and I can’t simply stuff
my body for the future. And they give me nothing for the kids, so of course I give them my food.
Fred is happy to be unreal with the Swedes, so he gets on with them. I am entirely isolated. They don’t
like me and they do like him. I am starting to feel extremely claustrophobic. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Loving the kids, lying on the deck in the sun and being sea-ill (I don’t actually get sick - there’s nothing in my
stomach) when the motion is bad, helps to pass the time.
Fred had been sitting chatting with one of the girls, Nina, all evening. She took him a cup of tea. I would
say she is coolly being rather dirty. Fred is busy proving that he is hard-done-by. I am very bad at making contact
in ‘cool’ situations. I can definitely not bring myself to talk about the rigging. I would burst into tears. This boat
journey is an extremely heavy lesson. I have yet to discover in what.
Evening
Nina just came in to my cabin, with Fred hot on her heels. He won’t let me speak to anyone alone in case I spoil his
game. Nina said she had been married and suffered terrible mental cruelty and that in Sweden you can die on the
street and people will walk over you rather than get involved. Then she said they must be ‘fair’ to both parties and
not take sides. I told her I could not sleep in the same cabin as Fred as he was behaving violently towards me.
“Oh, but he’s not being violent now,” she cooed. He had just manhandled me in the doorway in front of her. I
pointed this out. “Oh, but that’s history,” she said. Then she tried to force me to hand her a pillow and blanket for
Fred to sleep in the main cabin. I declined.
I am gasping at the twisted poison of these Nice people.
However, the Swedish girl in her sweet
understanding way has solved my immediate problem by making it very difficult for Fred to come in to my cabin.
This means that I can breathe. It also means I have to do absolutely everything for myself and the kids without
help.
A dozen times a day, I most embarrassingly fill the toilet with menstrual blood, I then have to ask a man to
throw a bucket overboard for water to flush it. I’ve tried swinging the bucket myself: once I ended up bruised and
scarred - the boat is very fast with the engine on and the sea grabs both you and the bucket; once I lost a bucket;
usually I perform the classic of not getting any water in it at all. I was relieved to note that even the strongest
amongst these polite Vikings have some difficulty with the manoeuvre, and Fred nearly got dragged overboard.
Later
I solved it. Bucket and chuck it. Bucket in bedroom, lock door, put up with children’s questions about Blood, then
escape up skylight to empty it. When putting this into operation for the first time, however, in the dark, I was
trembling so much from the Nina and Frederick encounter that I dropped the pot, so that in the morning I have to
dash up at first light and wash the blood off the deck. I trust that no-one at any stage will be cleaning my blood off
the deck because I am not there to do it myself!
Friday 13th November 1987
Well, Friday the thirteenth isn’t my unlucky day: I just managed to piss Nina off, quite a feat on this cool ship.
“Will you tell Fred dinner is ready?” she said. This from someone who knows well that I am not, and why I am
not, speaking to Fred, and who also never ever in all the hundred years I’ve been stranded on this boat ever let me
know food was ready! “I’d rather he died,” I answered gaily. “Pardon?” she said, in shocked haughtiness. “I’d
rather he died,” I repeated, grinning. She tutted, raised her eyes to heaven and shrugged me off impatiently. I went
off happily.
Dinner today was three little pancakes each (not three for the children of course). I personally would
rather have had three carrots. I keep looking at all these hefty Swedes and wondering how they manage to stay
hefty. I’ve survived today by stealing loads of milk and drinking pints and pints of it. So today I’m happy.
Except for a headache given to me by Fred who tried several times at breakfast to ‘speak’ to me, block my
pathway, take things out of my hands to ‘help’ me, and speechify me about the kids "being his responsibility too". I
hadn't noticed. In the galley, he tried a sudden desperate tack, ‘Look, Jenny, we’re all alone, you’re alone, I’m
alone.’ “Well, I’m not alone enough, could you go away please,” retorted the hardhearted wife (Swede version), or
the carefully defensive female learning from recent bad mistakes (my version). He then disappeared all day. I
began to fantasize with some relief that he might have put himself over the side as he did once on our boat in
Dartmouth in the middle of winter (the police on that occasion tried to accuse me of attempted murder when he
turned up at the hospital with hypothermia). I wondered if our illegal insurance would cover suicide. But at that
moment, lowering myself through my cabin hatchway, I stepped upon a male leg. He was sound asleep in my
bunkbed. When I block his maniacal attacks, a sleep-depression ensues.
I woke up today having enjoyed the bucket-and-chuck-it system all night; no fighting with nocturnal toilets
that spew back at you when you use them. I don’t know why they can’t have simple sea-cocks. Actually, I’ve
noticed rather a lot of sea-cocks round here. They are on frequent display, usually poking over the rails. Excuse
me.
I saw my first dolphins today, a whole school of them leaping and playing alongside the ship, travelling
with us for ages. To my grief, there are two fishing rods permanently trailing their lines from the ship, and this
morning there was a catch on both sides at once, big fish that fought wildly. The Swedes then show Passion,
Energy, Excitement, Animation and Delight, ingredients otherwise unknown aboard ship. They hold up the frantic
struggling dying creatures and take lots of photographs. They then club them to death, which takes a long time.
Every nerve in my body went out to those animals, and I felt disgust at these well-fed humans who have such a
backlog of stored blubber in their bodies that they don’t feel hungry with the paltry meals here. Breakfast was one
yoghurt and one small bread-bun per person. I look around in amazement to see signs of dissatisfaction, but
everything is entirely smooth and harmonious and well-run. Not only are there no perceptible bad vibes, I can’t
actually detect any vibrations at all. Swedes don’t seem to have character structures.
Katie is asleep and has therefore missed her one pancake, child allowance.
Louise just took me off for a shower. I hadn’t dared use it myself in case there was some unspoken rule
against it. Is the Cold Swedish Front disapproval? disinterest? disgust? or just emotion-free contentment?
Self-contained and semi-detached they may be, but I’ve noticed a lot of them smoke, And they do their washing-up
in fresh water electrically-heated to boiling point. At sea.
There is pure hatred in Nina’s eyes when I speak to her, though her voice is sugary. She has a boyfriend
on board, though you’d never know it. They sleep in the cabin next door to me, though you’d never know it,
Sometimes I can’t find anyone on the ship at all. There is more of me and the kids than there is of the other twenty.
It certainly is a very smooth way to cross the Atlantic. Sometimes I catch myself hoping for a storm.
I felt excited last night, thinking of managing alone on the Cape Verde Islands. Fred accused me of
Looking Happy this morning. He told Louise that he might die if we leave him. I told her I might die if we don’t.
We are now in full-blown Stage Two of the Male Cycle, called Maudlin Aftermath of Violence. He now gives
Louise his cold left-over pancakes, whereas before he was offering to beat me up because I wanted him to talk to the
crew about the fact that we are all hungry . And now he is doing such an effective Poor Me right near us that Louise
came and whispered “I’m feeling sorry for Daddy.” I advised her to go and sympathize with him. The suggestion
seems to have cured her.
I think by the end of this trip, what with all the rest, the sun, the long soft bunks, the immaculate wood and
steel accommodation, the frugal diet and the general vibrational requirement to be Cool, that I might step off at Cape
Verde as a temporary Swede. Are these really descendants of the Vikings?
Louise just asked me, “Mummy, do these people get sick on land?”
Alice has found a way to amuse herself on the featureless steel deck: she puts a plastic mug on each ‘paw’
and clip-clops around being a goat, butting Katie up the bum and thus interrupting the all-pervading, terrifying
silence of this community. The Ancient Mariner had it better than me; at least he had a dead albatross for company.
It’s dark now. Anyone out there?
Love, J
14th November l987
There’s a breeze at last, so they put the sails up. The boat moves more now, a beautiful motion. When we were
moving out of the Canary Islands, cutting across the waves, I had felt sick and terrible and feared I’d make an awful
sailor. But now, it’s a marvellous feeling like riding gently and heavily forwards on a very smooth horse. The sea
is behind us all the time and I feel not the slightest ill effect on my body. I thought that at sea I’d be weak, helpless,
incapable, passive and frightened. I find I am efficient, agile and very awake. I now chuck a bucket with the rest
and the best of them, and now that I’ve handled water-carrying, child-care and everything else alone, Fred seems
quite lost and miserable. The once-violent maniac is now a child. My problem is: Does one abandon the child on
the Cape Verde Islands because tomorrow he may once again be a violent maniac?
I’m feeling so healthy I actually started fancying one of the blokes here. He’s kind of slobby and
comfortable, might even have a sense of humour, unlike all these immaculate body-building models with their
smooth shoulders and smooth bottom and smooth faces and neat penises. How can a penis be neat? I assure you,
the Swedes have very neat penises. They also seem to be a hairless race, and whatever fluff does dare to intrude on
their neat faces is immediately shaved off electrically. At sea. Are you sure these are the descendants of the
Vikings? They disappear up the ratlines like catlings and nip along the boom to unfurl or tie sails; when it comes to
any kind of sail-change, they act as one, like ants or bees: no swearing, no friction, no shouting, no order-giving.
Everything happens as smoothly as their electric mixers, their immaculately executed shift-systems, their on-the-dot
meals. The men all do their own washing and they do it perfectly. And there’s no problem about water because of
the De-salination Plant.
I hope I haven’t given the impression that there’s anything wrong with anyone here. It’s just that it’s so
quiet. The third woman, whom I have only just discovered is female, has very short hair and is older than me. Her
name is Magan. She was lying on deck reading yesterday. With a tape-recorder plugged into her ears. Total
silence. And everyone sticks to a night and day schedule as if we were sitting on a tube in Stockholm. I do my
washing at first light. I have the boat to myself - hardly anyone appears until 10.0 a.m., and by 10.0 p.m., everyone,
the last vestiges of everyone, has gone to bed,
Fred has been tame for 24 hours and keeps bringing me drinks. Wow! I said to him: “What are we going
to do about the fact that I’ve told these people that one of us is getting off at the Cape Verde Islands?” No answer.
The food situation has stabilized: 1) through me getting used to a certain level of constant hunger; 2)
because my body is painfully adjusting to their fierce time-table (never mind your stomachs what time is it?); 3)
because occasionally, as last night, I am suddenly given too much food and feel sick; and 4) because I was sitting on
a locker near the forepeak crying because I was hungry, when I remembered a lovely cheese I’d handed over to the
kitchen when we first came on board. Finally, I dared ask Anna if I could get some of it, and taking advantage of
the excuse of access to the Holy Shrine, relieved the boat of one cup of cooked chick-peas and some powdered milk.
Problem temporarily cured.
Maybe it’s because I have feelings and blood moves around my body that I get so hungry? Perhaps if I
was full of fish-oil and never moved, I wouldn’t long for potatoes, bread, cereals and vegetables all the time.
We have four big sails up and the boat is riding high. I get wet just walking up the deck. We’re in the
full Trade Winds; sailing in these conditions is a piece of cake. The kids are playing their favourite game of
catching, tethering and milking goats, ‘maa-ing’ round the deck all day long. ‘Let’s play maa shall we?’ they say.
I had to explain to a group of amused young Swedes that there was no vroomming on our island, just maa-ing. I
felt very proud: no bang-bang of war games or zooming of aeroplanes. Just maa-ing.
Fred is now being human and apologetic, so I told him to guess which of the blokes on board I liked best;
and he did guess because at base Fred and I see the world similarly. The Swedes are very slowly taking some kind
of form; I am beginning to be able to distinguish one from another. All are self-contained and there is still a large
group of faceless ones, but a small group - the ones that respond to the children - seem quite human. And one or
two are just bloody uptight. The women I do not like; however ‘kind’ they act, they make me feel bad.
I have asked several times if there is anyone on board who would teach me Swedish in exchange for
Spanish or English. They stare at me. At no point in the journey could I find a single person who would teach me.
Learning their language could have saved my emotional life.
I feel upset. It is the aftermath of hunger, crying, daring to cure the hunger; Fred returning to human-hood.
I want to have an affair with someone here; I want to belong and to crack all the mysteries of this hermetic group
and be on the inside.
Wow! Nina just offered me some popcorn with ice-blue eyes that freeze you as she wanly smiles. I was
so full of (our own) cheese that I couldn’t eat one pop.
The refrigeration somehow seems worse in a woman; I'm so used to women being the emotional
department.
This boat is running to South America. The sea and sailing are part of life, all ups and downs; pleasure,
fear, death, sickness and extreme health. This is easy, marvellous, fast - boats work! They ride like a horse, go
with the waves. Harnessed in harbour at Las Palmas, the feeling was terrible, a short, ugly, disturbing movement;
then crossing the inter-island waves, dreadful. If you go against the sea, it makes you feel bad. Once you’re out
here, any mood the sea gets up to - you’re in it. A bit like being married to an Irishman. We’re racing along
through the night now. Down below in the cabin you get chucked around, up here you ride the sea. I watch the
sea closely, staring down at it, entering right into its spirit, and getting to understand how the boat copes with its
surging motion.
At dinnertime, I was so full of cheese and nicked chickpeas that I couldn’t eat anything. Three slices of
cheese and half a cup of chickpeas had filled me up. That shows how shrunken my stomach has become. It might
also be that the white-rice-and-nothing else on offer didn’t turn me on. But the One Half Pear Slice we were
allowed was very nice indeed. I went back and asked for the juice for the kids, and got Fred to give them his ration
too; and just now Nina came to our cabin and brought me four leftover halves in juice. Her words were: “This may
seem like scraps from the rich man’s table, but I know you’ll appreciate them.”
Fred is complaining of pain all over his body and in his balls, and his face is swollen up as if he’s drunk.
Interesting what happens if you play tennis with the bad feelings a man is trying to land in you court, i.e. bat them
back. He even commented of his friends, the Swedes, “These people are heavily into nonchalance.”
17th November 1987 Approaching the Cape Verde Islands, off West Africa
I keep crying. I look at the sea, and I cry and I can’t stop. I’m crying because I have no contact with anyone.
I’ve done some very un-me-like things to try and alter my situation. I sat at the feet of Miki, the chubby bosun he’s 31 and looks 40 and has been at sea for 12 years - and I asked him lots of questions, chatty questions, as he is
one of the two most amenable Swedes. He was very nice indeed, and answered everything and talked. But I have to
make every move; these Swedes simply don’t.
I have fallen in love, which is painful and makes me act awkward around the person in question who is 29
and has a girlfriend waiting for him in the Caribbean. His name is Leffe and he is the one Swede I mentioned
earlier who is not as smooth as the rest: his shoulders are slightly rounded, and his hair slightly unruly. I wake and
go to sleep with thoughts of him. He shares the cabin next door to me with Nina and her invisible boyfriend.
Nina’s week-long kitchen shift ends today and I’m waiting to see if the incredible tension, authoritarianism
and general misery surrounding food will end with it. I have starved; I have cried about it; and more and more
frequently I have aggressively relieved them of certain items of food to feed myself and the kids. I get some drinks
and services from Fred, plus a long violin practice on deck yesterday with him, but contact is tight and ultimately
hostile.
I have tried sitting in the main cabin to ‘socialize’. The cabin is small and an awkward Swedish shape,
most unhomely. There the Captain lays out a dead fish to draw and paint it in water-colours; other Swedes fix up
fishing-rods or check ammunition. Loud above all this, they play English pop-music and a record of a French
couple having prolonged sex, fully amplified in stereo. No-one bats an eyelid; perhaps sex is as cool as everything
else for them. For example, their tea. Nina gave me a lecture on how Cold Tea is Nice, and Everyone in Sweden
drinks it. Even Fred can’t stick her now. She said to him “Now eat up your sausages, sonny, or you might fall apart
on the night shift.” She refused the children tinned fruit unless they first ate the soup, which they hated. I waited till
she went to eat her dinner in the dining room then nipped into the kitchen and got the kids three glasses of fruit.
Then I nipped back for seconds - definitely Not Done. Nina came through the passageway just as Louise was
asking for more, and she said, all sugary, “Of course” and trotted off to fill Louise’s glass, not knowing it was for
the third time.
One day in the breakfast queue, I enquired whether the allowance was one slice of bread per person. Leffe
was next to me and he said, “Yes, but you can have as much as you like.” I nearly had a heart attack with the effort
of stopping myself bursting into tears.
I told Miki, the chubby bosun, that I’m bored and prefer the Latin temperament. “Yes, I know,” he said “a
bit of yelling and crying.” And at least Fred is humorous now; when I talked about having an affair, he said he’ll see
if the Captain, who is meek and effeminate, would be interested in him.
18th November 1987
We are steaming into Mindelo, the main port of the Cape Verde Islands. I have been crying nearly all day,
especially every time Leffe speaks to me or looks at me. I feel terrible about the commune money I will waste, but
I have to leave this boat; I hope you will all decide my life is worth it. Whatever the difficulties, I must go and join
the black people of Cape Verde. If I could form one decent relationship on board, I would stay. The ship is
staying here in Mindelo for one week.
7.30 p.m. We are at anchor but cannot go ashore as it is too late for Customs clearance. So one more night to get
through, with Fred gone tight again. He came and told me that Anna says everyone on board likes the children. So
they should, daisies in the desert. And that they are the best children they ever met; yes, and it was I, woman too
lowly to relate to, who brought them up.
You may be wondering why I have been so passive in this nightmare. I can only say that the 'social' climate
here is about as conducive to emotional expression as a London tube train around 9.0 a.m. in the area of the City.
Fred has his little sparks, but you couldn’t light a fire with them.
The mournful saga of the food situation definitely changed with the new shift: it got worse. Even less
food, and gruesomely cooked. Today’s menu:
Breakfast:
One boiled egg and one slice of bread.
Lunch:
One bowl of sticky sweet rice.
Dinner:
Two slices of cooked tomato and a tiny portion of sliced potato, semi-raw, and not hot.
Next Morning
I’m sitting outside a post office in a new land. I cried with Miki this morning, and I let it be known that I don’t like
the females on board. I told Anna she had a lot to learn. She ended up weeping, smoking and asking FRED for
comfort. I feel militant. They were keeping me down for a very good reason. I’d blow the top off this nasty ship.
I’ve made some enemies this morning, and I’m very very glad.
I have walked a hot hour round the Port of Mindelo. It stinks of pee. Men defecate openly on the
beaches. There is broken glass all over the sand. A woman told Katie off for having no knickers on. But mostly
the vibrations everywhere are beautiful: lovely tall, black-skinned people, once slaves. The language, Portuguese of
sorts. A few blonde negroes, kids with crinkly fair hair and negro faces. Beautiful babies, mange-ridden dogs.
Urine, urine, everywhere. I hate to think where a woman could go for a pee here. Not much shade to sit in. It is
very poor. Market women sit selling little bundles of nothing, all covered in flies; only tomatoes were recognizable
to me in the vegetable market. Everyone loves the kids, they are even more outstanding here than in the Canaries.
We have just been surrounded by a group of men and boys. A black man asked Louise to marry him. My
Portuguese is rusty, dusty and minimal, but I’ll get it back. These people have given me more contact in five
minutes than the Swedes in a week at sea. They are all talking to me. I feel at home, but shy. On the boat, if I
speak, the Swedes get embarrassed.
Sitting on a breezy park bench, I’ve been adopted by the people. Thank you Maria of Gomera for your
warm passionate adoption society. Thank you Swedes for teaching me to appreciate the need to be adopted by the
people I meet on this hot journey.
A black man called Tony has appointed himself as my guide. I was about to buy orange drinks for the
kids, very expensive, and he paid for them. And he is poor. He tells me I could stay on these islands and be a
Profesora.
In the evening, I went ‘home’ to the Gullmar and was met with: “Oh, we thought you would have eaten in
town.” The meal was tinned corn and tinned tomatoes. Fred looked vile and violent. On board were all the worst
people; the more gutsy men were on shore drinking. I left the kids on the boat, collected a load of clothes and toys
to give away and went back on shore.
I met all the Swedish guys I like best coming along the promenade in a group. They had been drinking
and were funny and friendly and physical. It seems that me crying in front of them this morning and saying I hated
the women has not turned them off me!
The way to get back on to the Gullmar is to yell from the shore and they send out a dinghy. When I had
finished my business in town, I did this and was delighted to find myself collected by two of my favourite fellows:
Johann and Miki. I knew straightaway that things had changed. Dinner was being eaten, disgusting, revolting food,
but I didn’t care because Johann was chatting nineteen to the dozen to me, and Miki asked me in the kitchen, “How
are you feeling?” Yes, he asked me HOW ARE YOU FEELING. I now have to hide in my cabin briefly, not to cry
my heart out this time, but to recover from the shock of pleasurable contact.
Some noisy Swedes from another boat came on board and they, plus Johann and Miki, took over SV
Gullmar. I am stunned at the difference between land and sea behaviour. Miki was a clown. He started making
daft jokes criss-crossed between two languages, making no sense and laughing hysterically at them. Johann told
me Miki has a ‘drinking problem’, and that once he’s on shore, he doesn’t stop. I think the Swedes have a sobriety
problem. Johann, a little guy who never normally speaks, but who nodded and vibed agreement when I was letting
off on board this morning, became very forceful, insisting I drink glass after glass of wine. I sat for hours being
entertained, my mind bending to understand something that to most people must be rather obvious: the function of
alcohol. Swedes need it; they live so tight and cut-off, they hop from shore to shore on the binge, then pack it all in
again and go to sea,
Next day
Have you ever noticed that life doesn’t deliver itself to you on a plate? After my elation at release from the iron
grip of impenetrable Swede-ism, I am met next day with the cold eyes of Miki staring at me as if he wished I didn’t
exist. Social schizophrenia.
I invited myself out with Leffe today, in a group consisting of the courteous, ineffectual Captain; a guy I
call Tarzan who spits at dogs and watches for opportunities to tell my children off, and another Swede of the
no-character type. We went to a poor part of town where people live with goats and pigs and hens. Leffe bought
me a beer. I chatted gaily, but I felt terrible. I could feel the ice beneath the social graces.
The following day, with many tears and ploys I attempted to relate in a non-Swedish manner to Miki and
Leffe. NO GO. Miki told me to KNIT if I was lonely and bored. Leffe won’t talk. Johann acts as if he never
knew me, meanwhile. Meanwhile, Fred is getting on with people because he plays the superficial game well and
likes it. I am in utter turmoil at the decision before me: a further month of horror at sea, or waste our money and be
stuck in Cape Verde. I sounded Fred out: he LIKES it on the boat and will continue on with the Swedes if I leave.
4:50 a.m.
The bottom of my stomach is about to fall out and I feel as if my body has a disease. It is called loneliness and
anger. I remember feeling this in Holloway Prison where the staff were deliberately humiliating and degrading; but
NOT in prison in Thailand where we were all in a cage together with no extra cruelties added. No-one is harming
me: they just ignore me to death whatever I say or do. Atlantic storms would be a relief.
At 5:00 a.m., I went on deck to see who was on watch and found Miki. Usually he doesn’t come back to the
boat as these Swedes are into prostitution as I recently discovered when I was walking through the saloon and saw
our Captain in a bunk bed with a black face underneath him. Miki had the nerve to ask me how I was today.
“Angry,” I said, “and therefore better.” Then for two hours, I sat with him and told him about Atlantis and myself.
He is a bad listener but I forced myself onwards.
Then suddenly the gods of Valhalla gave me a little gift as I’d warred so bravely with their race. The
Swede I call Tarzan suddenly launched himself on deck and started yelling at Miki. I don’t know a word of
Swedish but suddenly the language became completely intelligible to me. Miki was supposed to have woken him
at 6.0 a.m. to go out on a day trip and he forgot. It was delicious to watch: Tarzan was fuming and throwing his
weight around like a huge spoilt brat. Miki, at first very angry and answering him strongly unfortunately gradually
went under. After the incident, I asked Miki what was going on, but he refused to answer. So I just gloated and
made comments about Swedes and said to Louise who had joined us: “Miki is busy dying of cancer.” But Miki he
said nothing.
Later in the morning, I saw Miki and tried again, “What happened?” I asked. Miki looked at me with cold
steely eyes and spat through sharpened teeth: “NOTHING HAPPENED”.
In the evening of our first day in port, a Swedish woman came on board. Her name was Silvia and she was
a social worker living in Mindelo where her husband tells the natives how to build houses. I immediately told her
what was going on for me on the ship, still hopeful that something could be cleared up with these people so that I
could continue the voyage. She seemed completely understanding, but next morning when I tried to visit her with
the children, she wouldn’t see me. I’m trying, but I’m dying.
Myself and kids returned to the boat, and found we had the ship all to ourselves, so we had a ball. I let
them all have showers and run water for as long as they liked. We opened a tin of thick milk and a huge tin of
pineapple and I gave them biscuits and chocolate and loads of boiled eggs left over from breakfast. It’s a pity my
stomach is so shrunken that I can only eat a very small amount at a time. Magan, the oldest woman on board, who
is really the Captain though they make a big palaver about the ship being run ‘democratically,’ keeps a book
wherein she writes every single item of food that is taken out of the cupboards. Luckily I won’t be there when she
finds some food has gone missing.
Miki has now been asleep for 24 hours after the 'incident that didn’t happen' this morning. I have a broken
sandal and as he is the bosun, I can talk to him about mending it. It is very important you know, to have a thing to
talk about.
On shore, I was bad-rapping with a Dutch girl about Swedes when suddenly a friendly voice said, “Want a
lift?” and it was one of the non-verbal Swedes in their high-powered rubber dinghy. Wow! And just now Johann
said to me, “Jenny, food is ready,” Wow! Precious oases in an emotional desert.
Next morning, however, Magan asked me in a coldly hateful tone why I had had children, and then she
said, “Fred could have the children. He would look after them.” All my danger signals flashed red and I went very
cool indeed. It was obvious the collusion with Fred had taken a very dangerous turn indeed. I had to get the kids
off the boat quick. Magan also had decided, it seems, that I was a rabid women’s libber - what irony! - and said
how lucky it was that I had girl children and what would I do if I had boys, and how the men and women on their
boat are Friendly and Don’t Fight. She also informed me that I had made a mess of everything and that I should
learn to ‘speak frankly’. Fred, enjoying his Swedish sympathy trip said that I should “get into my feelings and sort
out why I was so unhappy!” I’ve heard that Sweden has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. I can’t
imagine why.
I asked for my money out of the ship’s safe. They said they’d have to ASK FRED. I practically levitated
with fear. But Fred was so heavily into a ‘Poor-Me’ that he said it was not his money. Phew! There is a meeting
amongst the Swedes tonight to decide whether they will let me have the unused part of my fare back. The outcome
is a foregone conclusion.
When I stepped on shore with the kids, it felt like breathing again after being in a tight plastic bag, plus a
terrifying physical weakness as if I’d been put through a wringer.
Later
I have just phoned London, and Pete’s voice was the sweetest I’ve heard for a long time. I’ve asked for someone to
be sent out to come and join me.
I then went back to the Swedish social worker’s house and asked her if I could put my children ‘in care’ for
the afternoon while I try and find somewhere for us all to stay. She did not say, “Oh, you can stay here.”
I am walking round this town in the stifling heat with my insides falling on to the pavement trying to find
us somewhere to live by nightfall. I will keep the kids in hiding until that ship sails away.
I returned to Silvia’s house after leaving messages all over town for Tony, my self-appointed black guide,
to contact me, as he’d promised me help if I wanted to stay in Cape Verde. Silvia invited me to eat dinner with
them, but I couldn’t swallow a thing in the frosty atmosphere. I asked her if I could wait in her house an hour or
two till Tony arrived. Cold eyes said NO; the mouth said Yes. Then she and her husband went back to work,
leaving a shifty-eyed Swede in the house with me. They’re all ‘left-wingers’ on a political project to help the poor
ex-colonials. Socialist Swedes living rich in the posh part of town, far, far away from the recintos (poor suburbs).
Their spoilt five-year-old son had a room-full of expensive toys, enough for every child in town.
The phone rang. It was Silvia’s husband telling my ‘guard’ that I was to be gone from the house by the time
they got back.
Mustering my last speck of dignity and strength, I said, “Fine, we’ll go straight away.” My heart was
breaking, but I got my kids together and left and went to sit in a park with the sky crashing down around my head.
There are now four delighted runny-nosed little Cape Verde girls somewhere in this town clutching pink
plastic dolls to their breasts that the señora inglesa gave them, and some mothers who have little bags of our last
clothes and shoes. My kids walk barefoot because they expressly want to be like the other kids. The very poor
blacks give us food: a few bananas, sweet things for the kids, a couple of bread biscuits.
Little boys ran up to me as I sat in the park saying they’d found Tony, and they took me straight to him.
The most Tony ever asked me for in all the time I knew him was 3p to buy a cigarette.
The cool hours are coming. I feel breath in my lungs again. I drowned on that boat this morning; it’s
hard to stay afloat in a pool of piranha fish.
Tony kept his promise. He has brought me to his auntie’s house. She is 40 and has seven children; her
husband is dead; he got bitten by a mosquito in Africa and died. She is very poor. I have given her all my sheets,
the remainder of the toys, some pots and pans, plastic cups and cutlery. I will pay her for food. She has saved my
life. I lie on the floor on my own duvet in a hot, sticky, dark room with no windows and no door. It smells thickly
of paraffin; there are four chairs, a pee pot, a double bed, and clean linen. Now I have really thrown in my lot with
the poor of the earth. I have no man, but I am happy. Tony lives in another part of this rabbit warren. In the
entrance to this shack, there is a pit covered by a stone; you move the stone, throw in a bucket and haul up water.
The water has to be purchased. There is no toilet. You pee and poo in a pot and the woman throws it on some
stones outside the shack.
In this place, I safely stashed the children and went aboard the Gullmar at 6.0 p.m. to collect the rest of my
gear. Tony waited for me on the quayside. Anna and Nina both tried to make things up with me. Nina was in tears
asking would she ever see the children again! I was amazed. What is going on? Now it was my turn to feel on
top, with my children safely in the care of the lovely black woman whom I held and kissed within ten minutes of
knowing her, and cried in her arms, which made her cry. On the ship, I suddenly felt light, strong, young; no-one
could harm me. Fred had stolen the commune guitar, but that is all he got away with. Nina complained that I had
stopped talking to her - she even knew the date, and was tearful about it. I said, Yes, I did, because you supported
Fred; so she tried to sell me the one about being Friendly to Both of Us.
Leffe said I could stay on the boat IF I CHANGED. I was feeling bright and hot and beautiful and
answered, “Oh, I’m far too old to change,” and added that I was very happy as I was - in the right company. I have
noticed I get on very well with the ‘poor of the earth’ and the blacker they get, the better I get on with them.
I didn’t go to the Swedes’ poxy meeting. I wrote them two pages to be read out stating my case, asking for
my money back and mentioning that they should never again take vegetarians on board or they might find
themselves with a funeral bill on their hands. I could hardly keep my lips together, this time not from held-in
crying, but because I wanted to grin at everything. Anna offered me Dinner. I said, Yes, but first I’ll pack.
I made everything ready to go, then danced up on to the deck and had my first sighting of Fred. He was
skulking in the saloon alone, and there I was, chatting gaily to Anna in the kitchen and eating with everyone on
deck. Tonight for the first time, they had a notice in English pinned to the bread saying, “Two Slices Only Per
Person”. “Ah”, says I to Anna, “You should have done that all along, that would have made things so much
clearer”. Then I said, “One last request - anyone mind if I have a shower?” I grinned and danced off, had a
shower, drank pineapple juice in front of Fred and generally made free around the Forbidden Area of the kitchen.
When I left, I hugged Miki. He was stiff as a board.
As Tony and I were leaving the quay with all my gear, the harbour police called us over. Evidently you’re
not allowed to disembark without going through customs and getting a visa, and you’re not allowed to live with the
people: you have to live in a hotel. Luckily, the immigration officer knew Tony and his auntie and eventually let
me through.
As I sat with Tony waiting for a bus, I was as high as a kite; I couldn’t stop grinning thinking of all those
Swedes sitting round in their serious meeting discussing - what? I’ve gone! Leffe and Johann told me to meet
them at Immigration tomorrow to hear the results of the meeting. I already know the results: £1,500 divided by 20
for drunken evenings, non-stop cigarette-smoking and prostitutes.
I have bought my freedom. It was very expensive. I would love the Swedes to see where I’m living now;
they’d drop dead; they only come to the slums to take photos.
By the way, the police told Tony that if Fred stole the kids, the boat would not be allowed to leave, as it is
against their laws for a father to have female children in a separation; if they were boys, he’d be given them! What
a sensible arrangement.
As I was walking through the streets with Tony and the kids to his auntie’s, an ugly bent white man stopped
us. He was Swedish, a co-worker of Silvia’s. He asked us what we were doing and I told him I was going to live
with the black people. He told me that I couldn’t, that it was bad and wrong and wouldn’t work. He really tried to
stop me and lay down the law. I don’t suppose it mentions in the guidebooks that Swedish social workers run Cape
I asked him what on earth he meant.
Verde?
He mumbled something about ‘Difficulties’ - we’d have
‘difficulties.’ Difficulties. Well, well, I wonder what one of those feels like.
November 24th 1987
400 fat Germans just arrived to spend two hours in Mindelo on a huge white ship. Some of them passed me at top
speed panting: “What is there to see?” I answered: “A lot of poverty and a lot of people.” A woman in the group
spat, “Hah! Just as I thought - nothing!” And they all rushed off.
Next Day
I have just met Johann and Leffe to get the football results. Verdict: I am allowed to return to their ship. (I don’t
remember requesting this!) And if I don’t, I don’t get any money back. Well well well.
I laughed, jumped up from where we were sitting, shook hands with them, kissed Johann, and said, “I do
hope you’re as happy as I am”. Then I ran away laughing to link arms with a tall black man from the Ivory Coast I
had just been talking to.
The shit on the dusty urine-drenched ground outside the concrete cave I live in with a warm widow and her
seven children is worth more than the whole weight of the immaculate Gullmar in Swedish crowns.
CHAPTER 3
THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS
26th November 1987
Life in Cape Verde is not easy. It’s insanely expensive. It’s hot. It’s not very healthy. I long for rain. I gave a
thin tethered goat a banana skin. A black man called out, “Tres gentil, Madame.” They love me, I love them.
But I still need to cry with someone from home.
My first day at the widow’s house, I lay very ill in my hot, dark room, two weeks of stress finally
manifesting in my body. My black mamma tended me, curing my diarrhoea with magical mint tea. Tony came to
see me in the afternoon. He told me the Gullmar had just left harbour. With Fred on board. I started to recover
immediately and twenty-four hours later, I am completely better.
And I have just heard from the hotel I phoned from, that Ned is coming out to join me next week.
We did not stay long with the black lady, as she had given up her bed to house me and slept cramped on a
stone floor with all her offspring, so there was no way I was going to stay any longer. I hugged her goodbye; I felt
she had saved my life.
I’m very downhearted; money runs away like water. Overcrowding is very real. I’m living illegally in a
kind of ‘squat’ with a very large number of male black Africans who are all here from mainland Africa to try and get
across the Atlantic to enter the Promised Land, North America, illegally, god help them. I made contact with these
people through the Ivory Coast man who approached me at Immigration, speaking to me in French, asking me if I
could help him get on a boat. I told him of my paid places on the Gullmar, and suggested he try asking them if he
and his two friends could use the space I’d paid for. You’ll be amazed to hear they said NO (he had the misfortune
to speak to Nina, but it wouldn’t have made any difference). I cursed the Swedes yet again, and then asked my new
black friend for help with somewhere to sleep. He brought me to this house which has a wooden floor, is quite big
and airy and has a kind of toilet. There is no furniture whatever. The Africans keep their part of it as clean as they
can. There is a small balcony with a washing line and a flat roof where in the after-sun hours you can actually
breathe, as long as you are careful to avoid the inevitable pile of human and dog poo. The Africans wash their
bodies meticulously each day and keep their clothes really clean; and they have nothing. They are very reserved
compared to the gay, child-like, mucky, extremely intrusive Cape Verdians. They keep their dignity as best they
can in their very depressing situation.
This country has been independent from Portugal for a decade and the place is a shambles. The whole
country smells and is covered in shit and broken glass. There is no rain. I managed to buy milk this morning. It
smelt strongly of manure, but I drank it because milk helps when you’re in a state of chronic malnutrition. We live
on bread and bananas. I asked about carrots in the market: £l.60 for a kilo. We did not buy carrots.
I met a Swedish woman with three children on the beach today. I told her my story and she was in tears;
she said she works on an aid project in Guinea-Bissau and ‘can’t get any contact going’ with the fellow Swedes who
work alongside her!
Cape Verde is definitely a Swedish colony. The only reason the place survives at all is because of the
Swedish desalination plant: it hasn’t rained for five years. The 40% unemployment rate looks more like 100% to
me with everyone happily playing or sitting around.
And this is a rich town, being the incoming port for
trans-Atlantic vessels. No-one is actually starving, though I’m sure everyone would like to eat more. I certainly
would!
Cape Verdians love white people. They pick Alice and Louise up whenever they can - Katie yells, and the
older two are beginning to learn to kick, punch, fight and yell at so much unwanted handling. No-one either gets
offended, or stops doing it. They just laugh. The young black boys immediately fall in love with my girls. They take
them swimming in the sea, they hold their hands or carry them in the streets. As I sit here on the beach writing this,
the whole wall above me is lined with faces: they’re simply fascinated, and there is no hint of theft in the air.
28th November 1987
We stayed a long time on that beach and gradually the crowd of people watching us got the idea we were destitute.
One woman gave us three bananas. A man brought us a pile of little yellow bread rolls, some spread with jam,
others with rancid margarine. Another asked if there was an English consul in Mindelo and looked worried (there
isn’t - only a Swedish one). Another asked if we have money and whether we have anywhere to sleep.
The Africans I live with are a bit restrictive - Katie was brought up to the floor I live on by a very uptight
black, looking most disapproving because she’d walked out of the house to play, with no clothes on. It took me
ages to calm her down as she was howling from this unaccustomed intrusion. I long for the freedom of a beach or
the countryside. Here, it’s like living in Brixton, only slightly more crowded. Hurry up, Ned!
I’ve noticed the Cape Verdians mistrust the Africans and operate a kind of colour bar. They call them
‘black.’ I look with amazement from one black face to the other and can’t tell the difference, except for the free
manner of the islanders, who tragically, think of themselves as part of Europe, not Africa.
1st December 1987
Getting so depressed waiting for Ned, I phoned Pete and heard that Ned is in Dakar. I asked a beautiful blue-eyed
Dane where that is and he didn’t know either. Eventually we found out: 500 kms due east from here, in Senegal on
the African mainland.
A Cape Verdian man invited us to visit his home and family. Their house was decorated, proudly, with
Coca Cola cans. They gave the children a little pile of white sugar on a plate to eat. I was sitting there struggling
with this strange language, Creole Portuguese when my new friend placed the Gullmar on my lap. I stared
transfixed. A glossy pamphlet advertising their glossy boat with glossy photos of all the glossy people on board.
It turned out that one of the perfectly pleasant Swedes and the terribly sweet Captain had been drinking in town and
had also been invited to this house and had spent the night here.
2nd December 1987
It seems awful to be putting all my hopes on to Ned, someone who hasn’t exactly been the life and soul of the
commune these past years - but someone to help with the kids, carry water up two flights of stairs, someone to
organize cooking, to carry luggage and to discuss what to do next, someone to talk to and to pass judgement on my
leaving the ship - this I need! This week alone in Cape Verde is very very difficult but at least it doesn’t have the
mental hospital, Catch 22 quality of the Gullmar.
Several times black women in the street have given us money - the idea has gone round that we’re destitute.
I always refuse it if at all possible. One woman kept following us around when I was shopping, trying to find out
what I wanted to buy, and finally bought me a big loaf of bread: it turned out that her little girl was one of the
recipients of one of our large pink dolls.
In the park one day, I was tapped firmly on the shoulder by an American I’d met once when out with the
Swedes, and he handed me a plastic bag of soap and Louise’s shoes that I’d evidently left on the boat. My, what
honest people the Gullmar crew are! They only stole a thousand five hundred pounds.
Today I was walking in town with Tony when a stranger came up to me and said I was wanted at the
Mindelo Woman’s Centre, where an efficient but kindly woman told me she’d heard there was a woman with three
little children wandering around in ‘bad conditions’ and that although her centre didn’t have much money, she felt
duty bound ‘as a woman’ to enquire and try to help. I quickly assured her I had money for food, told her my story
briefly, thanked her, hugged her and left. A woman such as they do not grow on SV Gullmar.
A man gave us five oranges today, a tremendous gift. Otherwise, we live on white bread, foul margarine
and white sugar. There is simply nothing to buy here at manageable prices.
A policeman visited me at my African squat. I thought, “This is it, they’ve come to get me out of
here.” But he was simply concerned about the conditions we were living in, and whether I had money, food and
bedding. This still didn’t stop me being paranoid about my basically illegal status, so that when I went on a water
hunt very early this morning and found every bar closed (normally the only source of water) and a very ragged man
told me “Get it from the Policia - they have a barracks near here.” I stepped backwards in horror and said, NO!
“You don’t like the Policia?” the man said. NO I said. He burst out laughing, grabbed my container and trotted
off, barefoot, to get water for me from the Policia.
Louise has been given a puppy. I was worried about it peeing on the bad-tempered Africans’ floor, so we
went up to sleep in the open on the roof. I dressed us all warmly and the kids fell asleep, but I was too cold and can’t
sleep on concrete floors as my hipbones are protruding these days!
Later Blessed relief: the senhor who took us to his house, Franco by name, has taken us to live with him. And he
fed us, the first real meal we’ve had since we left Gran Canaria: rice, a few potatoes, one omelette between us all, a
lot of beans, bread, and water.
3rd December 1987
Ned is here! And Senhor Franco has let him move into the house with me. We have a little cubicle in the airy
wooden rickety attic. Other little cubicles house a medical student and various sons.
After what I’ve been through, Ned seems a wonderful person. Never mind that he hasn’t spoken to anyone
in the commune for the past year! I gave him a headache by chatting to him so much. He informs me we’re
supposed to be going to some place called South America. Well, I’m at a stage where I’ll listen to anyone who isn’t
actively trying to dismantle me.
My children are all sprawled, sleeping, on the carpeted floor. Senhor Franco would have a fit if he knew,
as he equates sleeping on floors with the most shocking lack in his hospitality. He would much rather I squeeze
myself into the single bed with three stroppy kicking peeing children.
Ned has a single bed six foot away from mine, so we can talk. Thank goodness there are no uptight morals
here - they simply haven’t got the space for them! Couples have babies together without marriage and are
completely accepted and some women have babies by several different fathers, no problem. Humanness is not
something the Cape Verdians stop to question.
5th December 1987, Letter from Ned
Here I am writing to you by candlelight in the corner of an attic. Jenny is falling asleep on the other side with kids
crawling all over her. In other corners, various Cape Verdians are sleeping. When Jenny is happy, you’d think she
was one of these Latin nigger types, gabbling away in their lingo and throwing their arms round each other all the
time. When I arrived, she proceeded to tell me her news and all the Cape Verdians gabbled away at me and so did
the kids, all at once. The result for me was a splitting migraine headache. Late in the evening, as I lay on this bed,
not having slept properly for four nights, Jenny said a few times ‘Your headache is from me talking to you so much’,
but immediately went on doing so for hours. I’ve still got a headache three days later.
Jenny looks better than I’ve ever seen her. She wrote home once that she looks older because the sun
speeds ageing, but she doesn’t.
Every day, I go and look at the yachts to see if there are any crossing the Atlantic. There’s a whole culture
of people looking for lifts. My attitude is to concentrate anxiously on getting to South America at all costs, but
Jenny’s is just to live and ‘treat it all as South America.’ She wants a complete break from what she’s just been
through, so we’re going for a while to another Cape Verde island which is greener, and from which there’s no
chance of getting a lift anywhere.
Ned.
6th December 1987
After one day of rest and relief with Ned, I have now taken a more critical look at our situation - and at Ned. The
senhor of this house obviously thinks that with the advent of Ned, it means the arrival of money-bags and he is just a
complete pest coming into our cubicle ninety-five times a day, telling us it will cost £10 a day for food in his house this when we’ve practically lived on the muesli Ned brought.
As to the rest of what Ned brought - my heart sank. I didn’t think anyone could excel Bill’s mal choice of
clothes when he came to Gomera, but the heap of mud-coloured unsuitables brought by Ned beats the lot. I went
out and bought a container of water for £2 as I’m obviously going to have to do a lot of washing! I’m shocked he
didn’t even bring a sleeping bag, or underpants. And what does he want a coat for off the West Coast of Africa? It
would have been nice to see a packet of elastic bands, a handful of buttons, a belt, some teabags, a sharp knife, a
plastic dish or cup - little things mean a lot out here. I tried to organise some combination of Ned’s clothes which
didn’t make him look like a day-release from a hospital for the subnormal disabled. I failed. His white legs,
absurd shoes, no socks, ghastly shorts … oh dear.
But he’s already been worth his weight in gold - and you all know how much weight that is. His Taurean
character structure just enabled him with nil Portuguese to talk to the senhor about money, i.e. the £10 per day he
had asked for. As soon as Ned broached the subject, the senhor changed it to £8. Ned said a few more words and
Franco said £7, and so on till it was £5 - not bad going,
By the way, I was sitting outside the Post Office just now and an English woman approached me and asked
me if I was a friend of Bill’s! She’d known him in Tenerife and thought I ‘looked like the kind of person who
might know him!’
7th December 1987, The Island of Santo Antão, Cape Verde
We left the overcrowded hubbub of Mindelo for a rest on an island where few foreigners go. I practically ran from
Senhor Franco’s house, not even stopping to do the kids’ hair, as they were killing baby goats in the passageway by
tying them up, laying them down, making a hole in their necks and bleeding them to death. The goats lived a long
time and were frightened and cried.
The journey to Santo Antão lasted about an hour in quite rocky seas. I felt a little queasy, but then a Cape
Verde lad near us started being outrageously sick without the slightest effort to lean over the rail which was just
inches from him. He simply sat in the very narrow gangway and puked and carried on puking, making primal noises
as he did so. I don’t know how anyone could contain so much liquid. I was so incensed by this generally
incontinent and un-British behaviour that I never felt the slightest bit sick again. The Cape Verdian passengers
meanwhile were busy falling apart. I’ve never seen such bad sailors in all my life, and this is their nearest island!
The whole lot of them, except the crew, lay down and grovelled in their misery. I sat up looking after the kids Alice who was white as a sheet, and Katie, who was sick on me.
When we arrived on Santo Antão we took a bus straight to the other side of the island. It felt like entering
a new world. First we travelled up, up to Heaven, higher than we had been in Gomera; damp, green, misty
mountains. It got cold inside the bus; I cursed the fact that we had left all our warm clothes in the boot. Then
down to the other side, landing in a place called Robeira Grande. Once out of the bus, I put our bags down and
immediately the familiar Third World poo-saga began; we found excreta on our bags, on our feet, on the kids’
hands. We had landed in the town toilet, that is the natural world.
We went down to the beach, avoiding the several thousand broken beer bottles. The Atlantic was fierce
and wild and relatively uncontaminated, the sky clouded; we needed all our clothes on. This is such a different world
from the first island, Sao Vicente. We needed the tent we’d given up in Tenerife. It had rained all across the
mountains on the one-and-a-half hour bus ride, and evening was coming,
We scoured the wide wild beach for possible shelter. There was a bit of a cave; full of poo. All along the
shore were pigsties. With pigs in them. Ned went into town to see what he could see. He came back with news of
a place with a bit of a roof where we could sleep ‘after 9.0 p.m.’ It was now nearly pitch dark. Suddenly someone
up on the cliffs a hundred feet above us started throwing rocks at us. Time to move off. We walked through a
little town from another world, with cobbled streets, poverty and happy people. We came to a school-house with
lights blazing. There was no-one in it; the electricity here is controlled centrally and it would go off at 9.0 p.m.
We settled down in the school porch-way to wait. It smelled of excrement. I was paranoid about officials turning
up to say ‘NO.’ But the man who appeared with papers under his arm was the local French teacher who said we
couldn’t sleep there with three children because it wasn’t good enough, and he took us all the way back through the
town and up to his house, which was so new, stiff and well-appointed that we could hardly breathe. The New Rich
give themselves a very bad time with their corrugated asbestos roofs and their ornamental elephants and furniture
you daren’t sit on. A girl fetched some stiffly starched bedding and we were taken off to an unfinished empty house
next door with two rooms and one double and one single bed where we stretched out our own bedding on the floors,
distributed our bodies and had a superbly comfortable night. This brief interlude of middle-class comfort caused
me a few horrors in the dark hours about the insecurity I had landed us in, with the wrong clothes, wrong bedding,
wrong equipment, wrong time of year, and not knowing where we’d be sleeping next.
But in the morning, activity cured the horrors. I did my washing, packed it wet; we set off, and had a
perfect day. The next settlement was just eight kilometres away, an easy journey. The roads on this island are
exquisite, presumably built by the Portuguese; they are constructed of cube-shaped stones and are very wide, a joy
to walk along. High cliffs to our right sheltered us from the heat; the Atlantic was on our left below us, fierce and
cleansing, and the kids were happy. A relief from the smell of human excreta at last, for the first time in Cape
Verde.
The luggage Ned is carrying is too heavy, though he doesn’t complain; it’s a problem packing for so many.
We walked till we’d had enough, then simply rested for three delicious hours, sewing, drying washing, and eating we live on bread and water and the last of the muesli and I’m never as hungry as I was in ‘Sweden.’
Continuing our lovely journey, we arrived in the little settlement of Paulo: palm trees, stony Atlantic
beaches, buildings that nestle into their surroundings; scruffy people with runny-nosed kids and, wonder of wonders,
a public clothes-washing place with constant water and further on, a running stream. I have heard this is the only
one of the ten Cape Verde islands with water. But we couldn’t find anywhere to sleep for free so after a lot of
soul-searching, we agreed with ourselves to spend £4 for the whole family, the first time on this journey that we paid
for a night’s sleep. It was a government ‘posada’, a boarding-house, but as no-one else was staying there, the five
beds in a very big room were all ours. There was real running water coming out of a tap, so I did masses of washing,
and the lady of the house let me hang it in her back yard a few feet from the sea, where her starving goats were
tethered. The only problem was, we couldn’t open our windows, because if we did, they immediately became lined
with staring faces. And if you sit out in the open, a thick crowd gathers instantly and becomes ever thicker. And
when you are walking along the road, you get shadowed. I stand back to let these shadows pass; they then look
confused and amble on aimlessly. Very few people beg from us, because we look poor and have kids, but when
they do, we give them food, which they definitely don’t want, they want money. A woman yesterday said she was
hungry, and rubbed her lower belly. I knew she was lying, because I know where you feel hunger, and it’s not
down there! Ned gave her some bread, and that settled that. Ned himself looks like he’s just come out of a jumble
sale, and he walks around scowling at people, which is quite handy when you’re getting unwanted attention.
We’re going to walk up a valley now, to seek a free place to hole up in for a couple of weeks till I get over
Mindelo enough to return there, as that’s the only place to get a lift across the Atlantic.
December 10th 1987
Leaving Paulo, we took a path along the wide riverbed and headed mountain-wards. We soon had to stop to let a
huge funeral pass: people walking in blue, black, white and coloured clothes, carrying a coffin, with one woman
wailing. It was a very large crowd, the people seemed very young and a lot of them were women. We assumed it
was someone famous as the whole population of the valley had turned out.
We kept walking, resting, walking. We walked for several hours, every inch of the way beautiful, shady,
green, damp; plants, grass goats with something to eat. Towards late afternoon, the way became very steep. The
funeral people were now on their way back, hundreds of them, some in hired cars driving far too fast, most on foot,
all friendly. Women picked up our children and carried them for us; Katie fell asleep. The road got very steep
indeed, and the baggage exceedingly heavy at this time of day. Then we reached a certain spot and were told that
was where the dead person had died. She had been the young mother of two small children and had been collecting
weeds for her goats on a very muddy slope and had fallen to her death. A little way on, there came a wailing, a
keening, a sound that caught me right in the throat and chest; it must come from a very ancient place inside us. The
dead woman’s house was high above us, and there the whole population were paying homage.
We walked on, very moved, and soon came to a lovely cradle within a valley. There below us was
something we’d been told about in Paulo: A Tourist Spot. I don’t know if it was the fault of the Portuguese or of
the Cape Verde Revolutionary Government, but there it was: a locked enclosure with little paths and steps and
buildings and tables and seats and a swimming pool (no water in it) and trees and flowers and toilets (locked) and
arbours and arcades and verandas and lawns. All locked up. We were informed that you have to have the Written
Permission of the Delegation of Paulo to go in. ‘Oh’, I smiled, and turned away. But someone sent for the Man
with the Key, who smelt of funeral booze and who was very warm and nice and who informed us that his son, a
sour-faced young man, worked for the Delegation and that they’d let us in as long as we left at 7.0 a.m. Or maybe
8.0 a.m. he said. We went in. There was one covered area with a marble floor. We have no foam and not enough
bedding. We ate our dry biscuits and drank made-up powdered milk. The dry biscuits cost 1p each. Ned could
only get two bananas in the whole district, but we were happy and never feel hungry. The man with the Key asked
for cigarettes. I said, ‘Give him money, Ned.’ We gave him £1. He looked bewildered and said, ‘But that’s too
much.’
He unlocked the toilet. We laid out our scant bedding on the inhospitable floor. The kids had great fun
feeding dry biscuits to the black children hanging over the wall, and then they fell asleep on the concrete floor and
didn’t stir all night. I was cold, until Ned gave me his jumper and eventually a loan of his body-warmth. But
concrete floors and cold don’t deter the well-tired body and we slept.
Next morning, glad to leave this well-meaning concentration camp, we moved about six feet, to the outside
of the wall, and stayed there all day till dusk. I did my washing in the stream, as did all the local women. Ned
cooked rice and beans in a powder-milk tin with the lid on - a very good steam cooker. And we ate dry biscuits and
drank water and two beer bottles full of cows’ milk. I found watercress and gobbled it up, the most wonderful thing
I’ve eaten in nine months. Ned found a tiny sprig of mint and made mint tea; the kids love it.
A few feet above us, there was a minute cave, just an overhang really and Ned fitted it with dry foliage.
But at dusk the shopkeeper from the cliff above came down and led us away to a tiny, beehive-shaped hut woven
from dried sugarcane leaves, above his shop. They dragged a straw mattress into the hut, and this filled the whole
floor-space. This was all lovely, except for the Extremely Enormous Spiders, one pregnant with a huge white
undercarriage full of more of the same. I’m not going to tell you how big they are because you wouldn’t believe
me. Alice wanted to DRAW one. ‘Tomorrow’ I said, and tried not to look at them.
Letter From Ned
Today the supply lorry came to deliver to the local shop sacks of rice and sugar and maize, and I couldn’t resist
helping them unload. The sacks had to be carried down a stony path, across boulders in a small river up a cliff and
along a path to the shop. I felt at home with a heavy sack on my back and enjoyed showing off that us soft white
people can do that kind of work as well. The shopkeeper gave us a papaya afterwards.
Next day we kept on walking up the magic valley, a twisting cobblestone road crisscrossing with the river.
The road gradually became steeper. I had bare feet (sandals broken). Jenny carried Katie some of the time.
Normally we start looking for somewhere to sleep in the afternoon, but we didn’t see anywhere obvious, so we just
kept going. And the road got steeper still. We stopped to have a shower in a waterfall. We asked passers-by
what happens if you keep going on this road? But no-one seemed able to tell us anything. On a map we’d seen the
road simply ended. We got to that spot, but it didn’t end, except for vehicles. And it got rougher and twistier and
steeper. We could see huge jagged mountain peaks ahead and decided that we’d take a few days to get to them …
The countryside was getting less populated and people were more reserved and respectful and less obnoxiously
staring: they didn’t follow you or breathe down your neck as they do in more populous areas.
Some men cut sugar cane for us and showed us how to peel it and chew it for the sweet juice. A girl asked
us if we were going to the ‘cova.’ Jenny thought this meant a cave. So after this, though it was very late, we
didn’t worry too much as we had this promise of a cave. By now we’d left the river and the valley far behind and
were at the same level as some clouds.
I was sitting down for a rest when out pops a German, complete with Rucksack, Map and Watch. He told
us the height of the mountain we were approaching was 1,200 metres and mentioned the name Cova. What?? said
Jenny, Cova? It was the name of the mountain! So there was no cave. By this time, we’d left any habitations and
barns far behind - everyone along the way had of course happily pointed upwards every time we asked the way to
the ‘cave.’ The German was in much the same predicament as us, but had a posh sleeping bag and no kids and
marched off at 100 miles an hour. On we walked, with sheer drops below, a corkscrew road getting rougher and
narrower, a stony path that you practically had to crawl along. We just kept going, the sweat pouring off us ...
(Jenny writing now)
I’ll continue the tale. I was scared. The worst for me apart from the height, was having to deal with the
kids. I had to practically frog-march Katie, poor little thing, sometimes crying, sometimes moaning, up a sheer
mountain. I carried her as much as I could, but with a bag on my back, fear in my heart and sweat pouring off me
because of the gradient, I simply had to fiercely bully her to do half the work. The situation we were in fulfilled
many of my nightmares about South America,
This made Gomera look like a pimple. Louise, meanwhile, skipped up the crazy track more interested in
the butterflies and plant life and she never tired. Alice always enjoys a moan, a hang-back or a sulky walk
backwards towards the edge of the track, adding to my general tension and desire to murder.
But the track kept going, and so did we. Nowhere to stop at this gradient. The mountain-range in front of
us had a strange formation: the peaks were biscuit-thin and sharp like shark’s teeth, and we didn’t know what was on
the other side. A sheer drop? But no-one had flapped their hands saying ‘go back, go back’ and there were
comforting signs of donkey poo very high up.
We reached the summit and everything changed suddenly: there was a blessed flat path at the top, and no
more higher peaks beyond. Before we reached the top, the sun had gone down. Now it reappeared, golden and
shining down on a big round crater, beautiful, isolated, flat, green, carefully cultivated farmland, in a magical world
of its own. We had just climbed up the side of an extinct volcano, and now had to descend into the crater below.
The sun was setting for the second time that evening as we scrambled and stumbled down the rock-strewn
path (poor barefoot Ned) to the valley below. I told the first human being I saw, who was tending cows, that we
needed a place to stay the night. He disappeared down the rocks without a word. I was now moving much faster
than Ned who had to pick his sore way over very sharp rocks. Some people in a farmstead to my right shouted to
us. My silent cow-man had fixed us up for the night, and we were taken into a delightful old stone farmhouse and
given a room with a wooden floor - very important when you haven’t got foam - and with one single bed in it. The
woman of the farm I judged to be about 60. She’s 42, an old woman, and a very nice one.
The whole floor of this valley belongs to one man who does not live or work here. The people work the
land and don’t even own the houses they live in and have to give half of everything they produce to the owner.
At night here, you’re in a silent bowl, with a clear clear sky. The crater is practically waterless - water has
to be collected from a communal tank. We gave the family the mint and watercress collected from the stream the
other side of the volcano; the sweet potato, sugar cane and little sour apples we’d been given on the journey
upwards; and our rice, sugar and margarine. We were given hot sweet milk and loads more of the staple dry
biscuits that everyone eats here. Next morning, Ned went up to other side of the crater with the son of the family
who works in a shop there, to buy more food as we are going to rest here for a few days to recover.
Last night I dreamt I had in my hands my Portuguese dictionary from back home, and it was covered in
dust which I had to blow off in lumps; that is what is happening: the Portuguese I learnt at university years ago is
gradually coming back.
The night before that, I dreamt I was having a row with one of the worst Swedes on the boat and that I was
having to push and push just for him to listen to me. My relationship with the Gullmar continues.
My throat feels like sandpaper and I’m losing my voice which will delight the children. I have extremely
badly behaved children. We arrive at a homely hospitable farmhouse after having climbed a near-vertical volcano
cone. Are they tired, gentle, grateful? Or do they leap and jump on the bed, grab at ornaments, and sulk, kick and
disobey when told to stop? And what was Alice doing when we were chatting to the shy, proper German we met
on the shattering incline? Was she 1) listening attentively to the adult conversation? or 2) Did she have her hand up
his very short cotton shorts looking for something which shall remain nameless? No prizes.
14th December 1987
I went for a walk in the flat bowl of the volcano with Alice and Lou. No-one ever seems to know what sex our
children are, especially Alice, even though she has very long hair. Today she was wearing just her underpants.
Along comes a cackling old crone gabbling at me incomprehensibly and evidently finding the whole universe
entirely hilarious, and she bends down and pulls away the front of Alice’s knickers to ascertain her sex, and carries
on cackling.
Meanwhile, having undergone a few lessons in de-Europeanisation since I threw myself into the arms of
the cosmos, I took.advantage of her bending down perpetrating this indecency on my daughter and slapped her on
the top of the head. She found this doubly hilarious and went cackling off.
Last night I dreamt that several couples on the Gullmar were encouraging Fred to take out his feelings on
me. He is taking rushing leaps at me like a mad bull and swiping me across the head. I am having to shame myself
by ducking in fear as I haven’t a chance. I say to the three men in the couples: you could join together and hold him
back. But I might as well have spoken to thin air. Fred keeps on diving and swiping over and over again, feeling
fully justified. The dustbin of the psyche slowly cleanses itself.
The thing about breeze and butterflies and silence and peace and blessed aloneness and rest and time for
oneself is that they flow like water, are fleeting and unhangonnable-to. Such a time is this, and I know I will cease
to believe that such exist as soon as the next hot dusty sticky jangly pit presents itself.
We stayed three nights in the farmhouse in volcano valley and than said a sad goodbye to the lady; she was
nearly in tears, and I felt choked up as she’d been yet another wonderful mother to me on this journey, and I knew
there was no chance I’d ever see her again. She was ‘uneducated’, yet completely clairaudient: Ned and I would
discuss something together in English, and she would answer logically in Portuguese. The oddest thing about it
was that she didn’t find what she was doing at all amazing, and she did it over and over again, leaving us
open-mouthed. It was completely natural to her, a simple, homely, heart-ruled old woman living in a volcano cone.
Thank you.
When we climbed out of the other side of the volcano, I sat by the side of the quiet road and made small
rucksacks for Louise and Alice as they want to start carrying their own clothes - a great help. A procession of local
people passed us on the way to collect water - it seems they often have to walk miles for it. We have never seen
men carrying anything though: it is the women who carry huge amounts of water on their heads; the men just
manage the donkeys.
Cape Verde is a terribly non-viable country, spoilt in the past by colonialism and in the present by
international food aid. They use a lot of their growing land for tobacco and sugarcane, which is grown to make
white rum which they drink all the time. The place is a weird mixture of poverty and decadence.
15th December 1987
We travelled back, walking and hitchhiking, to the Port of Santo Antão. Then we walked along the shoreline,
passing through a horrendous environment of poo, pigsties, broken bottles, dryness and ugly shacks. I must stress,
however, that the people don’t mind or even notice, and are not unhappy. We kept going till all habitations ended
and camped by the remains of an old wall with a couple of bushes round us.
But the people found us. The audience got so absurdly oppressive that I nearly died choking on withheld
rage. Night was falling, I’d put the kids in their sleeping bags and then had to do all the ‘housework’ with a circle
of black faces a couple of feet from my own. Ned saved the day. He suddenly got up and went around noisily
shaking everyone’s hands in a menacing fashion, saying GOODNIGHT and GOODBYE. It worked. They went!
Mind you, by this time it was pitch-dark and the show was over anyway.
Next morning we moved a few yards to a copse I found in what was once a riverbed. It has only one
obvious entrance and I am completely hidden by prickly bushes, which means I am sitting in delicious shade while
the world burns out there. It also means that anyone who wants to ogle has to climb a tree, as I saw a group of
young lads doing this morning. There are absolutely no sexual undertones to this: a tit or bum would have the same
curiosity value as a piece of knitting or a teaspoon, it is all white mystery to them, and to stand close and stare for
hours on end is completely normal behaviour everywhere here: children, young women, old women, men and boys
all do it. I hate all of it. I feel violently angry that you can’t sit, stand, walk, sleep, or eat without an audience. I
feel ready to kill. I don’t care about customs, colonialism, culture differences, just the fact that you can’t get
privacy. I don’t care that it’s obvious that a strange white family living out in the open in a poor black country is
very interesting. I still want to kill when a black girl jumps into our camp and starts brushing down my duvet to get
the sand off, or when my kids can’t walk without being picked up, taken over, led off and generally eaten up.
Emotionally, I feel starved (Ned’s company isn’t very juicy); physically, I am oppressed with too much contact. I
get rougher and rougher with my kids, demanding a certain amount of fascistic obedience from them when the
tension gets high. But also I feel moments of great love and appreciation of them, especially for their adaptability
to living outdoors and their ability to create marvellous games out of nothing. They are completely hardy and don’t
seem to notice the journey much at all.
As I write and breathe, I’m starting to feel better. Everything certainly felt very black for a while here.
Further inland, the country people watch you from slightly more of a distance. These townspeople would observe
the movements of your uvula if you let them.
My bad mood just got cured by Ned turning up with a (borrowed) washing bowl full of water and I’ve been
able to wash everything; and now he’s taking three black children (mine) to the well to get them washed too.
‘Well’: a very large hole dug very deep down with a few inches of water in it.
A woman came to my sandy grove and brought me two little cups, a bowl of sugar, some milk and a flask
of strong coffee, all covered in a pretty little cloth, and she did not want money for it. I suppose it must be a fairly
amazing experience for poor blacks to be able to give to even poorer whites living in a copse near a beach with their
washing hanging in the trees. The kids have gone off now to play at the woman’s house with her five little
children. And Ned has gone into the sea. If he discovers there are no rocks, sharks or fatal tides at this point, I’ll
follow him. It’s useful having friends. Ned is very kind to me, but I would like a husband.
A word about firewood. There isn’t any. To cook, I collected: husks of maize corn, dried droppings from
the trees, minute thorny little twiglets, so small you only find them by treading painfully on them. And when we
moved camp, I said to Ned: ‘Quick, go back for the ‘firewood.’ Too late. We had only moved a few yards, but it
was gone. Women come down to this copse from the nearby breeze-block village and send their sons up the trees
to wreck and tear and bludgeon off branches. That was one time when I loved trees more than the whole human
race. And wouldn’t you think that, along with cats, human beings could have an instinct to dig a hole and bury
their own shit? And wouldn’t you think that, along with most animals, the human race would have the decency to
cultivate an aversion to the smell of its own etceteras? It does share one thing with goats however - a complete
disregard for the flora of the planet, a complete unawareness of the sacredness of these last little bits of green in this
horrible desert. Goats are surrounding me now. They’ve discovered there’s SOMETHING STRANGE living in
their copse.
In a Government book for kids from which I’m re-learning Portuguese, there is a piece about eliminating
all places where flies could breed. It mentions not throwing away fruit waste or paper. Guess what it does not
mention!
Ned took Louise to town this morning to check ferry times. A load of schoolgirls gave her some coins,
then followed them home. They gave her more money and sweets and asked could she come and visit their house.
But she didn’t want to. Back at camp, more school kids turned up, till there were about 30. Ned kept them away
from the camp, and after some negotiations, Alice agreed she’d like to go off with them, but ended up roaring and
kicking at them, so Ned rescued her. He shooed the crowd away, which by now included a lot of adults. They
kept asking could they take Katie away.
Our glade quickly became a nightmare. We packed and made for the Port, a few kilometres away. But it
got worse. All the schoolchildren of Porto Novo went barmy and started trailing after us. I kept close to the sea,
stumbling as best as I could over the stones and rocks, keeping the kids close to me, moving fast. Ned ‘fielded’ for
us, trying to keep the hordes away. The opposition were having a great time. I was sweating black fury but
putting all my energy into getting to the Port.
In the Port, it got worse still, with about 70 people crowding round us. I screamed English venom at them.
I renamed their poxy country Cape Merde. I told them they were cowards. I’m sick of loving everybody just
because they are black or poor. I liked hating them, it made me feel better. I found something to stand up on and
continued yelling at them. I said how did they expect ever to attract anyone to their miserable shit-ridden country if
that’s the way they go on, never giving anyone any peace. Then 1 leapt over really close to them and said, ‘How
would you like it if I kept looking at YOU?’ They all scattered when I did this, then immediately came back in still
huger numbers. They loved the show. A lighter-skinned black woman came up and spoke to me in English asking
me what was the matter. I told her what a beautiful time we’d had in the mountains and how ghastly it was down
here and I was nearly crying and she said, ‘Calm down’, so I immediately cut off from her and walked away. I’d
had enough of that kind of advice from Anna and Nina on the ghoul boat to last a lifetime, and I’m never going to
calm down again! PS. Ned says I’m guilty of understatement, as there were several hundred people involved in the
riot. He also says he’s seen Europeans break down under this kind of harassment in India and in fact he’s having a
nervous breakdown himself.
We finally escaped by going into the enclosure where people wait on the quayside for boats. We swam in
the little bay, cooled off and sat on some inaccessible rocks, then as boat-time approached, sat on our luggage
feeling like refugees from persecution. A black woman gave us a pile of doughnuts and cake and a carrot. I was
still so shell-shocked from being chased by the hordes that I just took what she gave, ate the lot and didn’t even say
thank you. A drunk harassed Ned for money and I harangued him in probably unintelligible Portuguese. It feels
good not to be good and not to love the nice black people! And then I managed to put an old man in a bad mood.
He had the misfortune to say ‘Good afternoon’ to me. I said, ‘No, it’s not, it’s a very very very BAD afternoon.’
He went off kicking a barrel and mumbling in Creole about touristas and extranjeiros, and suddenly I felt happy.
And then one of my black African friends from Mindelo appeared and told me that ‘the father of the
children’ had arrived and was looking for us! We knew this couldn’t be true and worked out it must be Bill.
We heard his ship, the Adelaar, had docked briefly in Santo Antão and then sailed off, so we guessed Bill
had given up looking for us and left.
17th December 1987
Ned and I returned to the African’s house and went to live on the roof. The German we met up the mountain on
Santo Antão gave us his lovely sleeping bag and some sandals for Ned.
18th December 1987
Senhor Franco came panting up to our rooftop worried, to warn us that the ‘father of the children’ had arrived, and
that he’d prevented him from coming up to get us. We leaned over the parapet of the roof and looked into the street
far below. There was a bearded Barnsley Bill saying in a loud Yorkshire accent: ‘Bloody hell, you’re difficult to
find, aren’t you? The whole town has been ganging up trying to fend me off.’
Bill’s Story
I received a letter from Jen when I was still in Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, telling me about the ghastliness of the
Gullmar. Oh dear, I thought it was all a bit too neat and good to be true when I packed her off on that boat. Well,
I got my comeuppance: the next worst to a Swedish boat is a German boat. I’d already worked for a month or more
on the switched-off Adelaar. They were all ever so nice and said very flattering things about my carpentry and that
they wanted me to cross the Atlantic with them, but my stomach was so tight I couldn’t eat and I had to sit down
every two minutes to relax. Everything made me feel sick. Food on the Adelaar was horrible; these people have no
idea: they came very near to turning me into a permanent vegetarian; no greens, no fresh veg., just veg. cooked for
three hours till all the nature’s gone out of it. Sometimes people who look a bit hip are more conventional than the
older generation who at least know that cabbage is good for you and that you can’t always rely on bloody
technology - they didn’t even have a handsaw until I persuaded them to buy one.
When I got Jen’s letter, I went to the Port in Gran Canaria to find out if there were any boats going to Cape
Verde - none! I was standing on the quay wondering what the heck to do when someone persuaded me to get back
on the Adelaar, headed for Barbados, which was low-cost money-wise, but high-cost brain-damage wise. I wish I
was one of those types who tell people where to get off instead of smarming my way around. Have you ever
noticed there’s something really heavy, I mean really bloody heavy, about Krauts? Even the nice ones have this
heavy sense of structure and order and if something doesn’t fit in, then it’s for the chop. The crew all spoke
German so we had about five captains. They were all ever so hardworking and clean but give me a common,
fish-and-chip-eating, decadent, fag-smoking beer-swilling Brit any time. As it happens, there were Dutch, Swiss
and Austrians on board, but they all come under the general category of Kraut - you only have to listen to the
Austrians tell you several times a day that they’re not German to know that they are. There was a Norwegian
doctor aboard: I watched him carefully to see if he came under the general category. The only human being on
board was Murad, a Tunisian with a sense of humour; and Janet, who’s American and a pain in the arse with her daft
questions, chewing gum, sunglasses and stereo headphones, but she was partially human, though I had to keep a
careful watch on my Reaganometer.
Dinner with the Krauts was an experience as distasteful as going to church. They wish each other ‘Bon
Appetit’ before they eat, like saying grace. It’s like the kiss of death and finishes off your appetite for good.
Within a few hours of being at sea on that boat, I got very sick owing to the very bad motion of the boat
and also to a few kilotons of repressed feelings, and I spent three days confined to a prone position. On the fourth
day, someone told me that the wind had set us a course for Cape Verde, the thought of which made me feel much
better. Two hours later, someone told me the wind had changed and we were now on course direct for Barbados.
I had just about come to terms with this again, when someone else told me the wind had changed again and
we were still heading for Cape Verde, and so on, for about three more days until one day, we saw the Cape Verde
Islands! And the Captain very kindly asked if I’d like to call in to see my friend on São Vicente. But my friend
wasn’t there, so next day, we went across to Santo Antão where I’d been told Jen was. I was given four hours to
find her, say hello and goodbye and rejoin the boat, or leave. So I left, preferring to relax a while rather than carry
on in the Germanic fashion I’d been following for the past six weeks or so.
Once on land I got very sick very quick as all the stiffness of the Adelaar regime came out of me and I
spent three days on Santo Antão in varying degrees of fever - spent them at the ‘Tourist Spot’ that Jenny and Ned
had stayed in! Then I managed to follow their trail around the island, and almost caught up with them, but they’d
just left on the ferry…….
19th December 1987
It was delicious seeing Bill again. His vibration had changed completely after his Germanic trials. He looked thin
and ill and pale, but he immediately renewed his earlier, sexier relationship with me and we now have a very good
team. We talked and talked, interrupting each other with tales of Northern European Awfulness. We sat on the
beach, homeless and happy - homeless because two of the Africans were very unfriendly, so we moved out of the
squat.
I’m writing this now on a windy beach getting sprayed with sand - we slept out last night in the fumes of a
factory by a sea-wall. Apart from the occasional factory-worker’s face peering down at us, we’ve been left in
blessed peace. We have nowhere to live, and yet all feels good. This is because of the Magic Number Three: if we
were two, I’d be alone with kids while Ned trekked back and forth from any camp we set up, looking for boats.
In the middle of the night, after many previous hours of bad feelings about myself for wasting commune
money on the Gullmar, I had my first moment of absolute peace and resolution about it (maybe having sex with Bill
helped!). I suddenly felt very tall, though I was lying down, and completely above it all. I saw the hugeness of the
sea, and I had an image of paper money fluttering meaninglessly in the breeze, and I felt my own good body feelings
and there I was, happy, on this sandy beach, warmer and more at home in our homelessness with this bunch of social
dropouts than ever I could possibly feel in the tightness of any middle-class situation, Swedish or otherwise.
I am in love with Bill again - we do this kind of thing once a year you understand, just for Christmas. He
is painfully thin and ill-looking and I think I will be a widow shortly. Ah well, better a widow with fond memories
than a wife with foul thoughts.
There is a sandstorm on this beach and - ouch! - when it comes, so does half the rubbish of Mindelo.
Last night in the fumes, the breeze and the dark of the beach, three blonde children screamed with delight,
rushed about madly entirely naked, splashed in the water, played monsters and various obscene games, then, when
they felt like it, came and got under their little duvets and fell asleep. In the wild, they are fine, and all their
unmanageability in social situations is irrelevant; they’re a good barometer as to how near we are to living as we
should.
By the way, one night in the volcano crater, I dreamt that Miki hadn’t left with the Gullmar after all, but
met me in Mindelo and invited me to come with him. It turns out this was the night that Bill arrived in his big ship,
got off and decided to stay and look for me.
21st December 1987
We’re living under some bushes on sand and ants a few kilometres from Mindelo. It’s cool and shady, and the sea
is near. Ned is about to commute to town to look for boats and to get food - he feeds us well. There is wood and
paper for campfires in this totally unused woodland. I’m busy all the time, sewing, knitting, washing and enjoying
life for the first time in absolutely ages.
22nd December 1987
A blessed spot of peace, the woodland glade is still ours alone; the people of Mindelo are satisfied with their
everyday contact with foreigners turning up on boats and don’t need a riot to eat up whites. Our third day here
now. Bill spent yesterday writing a letter to the Gullmar headquarters in Stockholm about their treatment of me. I
continued knitting a much needed blanket and lapping up all Bill’s cursing about Adelaars and Gullmars. Louise
made a kids’ camp out of sticks and debris. Mint tea on a woodland fire, no smell of anything obnoxious for miles
around, branches and stars for our roof. A bit breezy and hard under the hip at night, but otherwise, the world is
ours.
Ned returned from town at dusk with Alice in the arms of an English captain in his mid-50s, brown and
thin, with a Southall accent, Jim by name. He’s sailing his boat to Barbados and has a miscellany of passengers on
board who pay him £50 a week each, food included - two Swedish girls with thighs like tree trunks so he tells me,
and they have to keep eating to fill their legs he said. Within 30 seconds of arriving, he accepted my invite to sit
upon the bedding, covered himself with my blanket and chatted away non-stop into the night. We were all
astonished when he asked if he could stay the night, because of our primitive conditions, but Alice was delighted as
she is cross-eyed with love for him, won’t let go of him and wants to go back to his boat with him. We gave him
the new German sleeping bag, and Alice. Ned managed with one sheet, one blanket and a pair of socks. Alice
Loudmouth says to ‘Jim, “We’re not going to have sex are we?” Where did I get her from; she’s five years old.
The Captain took it in his stride, there’s not much he hasn’t seen and done in his life. He brought us a tin of sweet
corn, one of baked beans and a packet of fruit juice, amazing luxuries to us. He told us that in the war his mother
had a Yankee boyfriend who kept them in fruit salad!
The nights are a bit too long when you have to go to bed at dark, but Ned was up snapping twigs and
making mint tea at dawn, and he’s off to town with Alice, Louise and Captain Jim. Jim said there’s no chance at all
that we’ll ever get a lift with such a big group, that we’ll have to split up (no way!), and that he’s very worried about
our living situation which we think is marvellous. Ned was offered a single berth to Martinique, but we all want to
stay together. As for me, I’m perfectly happy if I move nowhere except a few trees away to pee at the moment.
Both Ned and Bill are very good at shopping, generous but sensible. Me, I’m scared to buy practically
anything at all because of the insane prices here and my big recent waste of money. So I’m enjoying relaxing and
being entirely taken care of in that area. Bill has worked so hard on the Adelaar that he is constantly ‘knackered’
according to him, but I take no notice and just tell him I don’t like horizontal men. He really does look better
vertical. At the moment, he’s making shoes for Katie out of beach scrap, and I’m making myself a jumper for the
nippy nights out of bits and pieces of wool found in the Canary Islands on needles made by Ned out of a wooden
coat-hanger. We feel rich, especially with the advent of Bill’s huge blanket which he retrieved from a Las Palmas
dustbin. We lay it on the poor little ants. Also a row of fairly friendly bodies is a good shelter against all sorts of
external and internal inclemencies. Cape Verde has turned into Home. The climate is delicious as long as you
have trees, and Bill was given a load of free ground coffee in the nearby village this morning - what else could you
want? Alice found a potty on the beach, and I do all the family’s washing in it. So life is once again most liveable,
in spite of the ants, of which there are about two billion per square yard.
Christmas Eve, 1987
Bill and I had our regulation four or five days before Dr. Jekyll turned into Mr. Hyde once again. They were very
nice days indeed and showed me that my sexual life is not necessarily over, it just depends on the company one
keeps. However, after 24 hours of the other sort of company that Bill offers, Ned and myself sent him off into the
wide world once again to earn his tragic living until the next metamorphosis.
Captain Jim has adopted us, but he’s a very overpowering Capricornian daddy: yesterday he came rushing
into our camp to demand that I take all my children to some nurses he had brought along to vaccinate them. I was
horrified, refused point blank, and he threw a fit, cursing me to Kingdom Come and delivering me an hour’s lecture
on the virtues of sticking poisoned needles in children. He has proclaimed that all my kids are going to die of TB.
In spite of which, we’re invited to Xmas dinner on his yacht. He has also joined the long line of people since Maria
of Gomera who want to tell me how to do my washing. Jim wants me to take it to a nearby well where I will be
lonely, dusty, sandridden, exposed to the sun, surrounded by goats and completely isolated from ‘home’ - our camp
- just because he can’t bear to see the guys carrying water for me to the woods, which they don’t mind doing.
But he slept with us for two nights. On his second night, he told dirty jokes at top speed non-stop for
about two hours without repeating a single one - a legacy from being a bar-owner in England. The following day,
after haranguing me half the day about the kids’ health, he slept happily near me in the sun, then went back to his
boat. Enter then, one black vulturish presence, the twin of Barnsley Bill, shoulders and bottom lip drooping in
unison. Ned felt so violent about him that suddenly there was a very ugly fight on the forest floor which with some
difficulty I managed to stop. Ned wanted to kill Bill and was about to do so, and Bill is always happy to wind
things up so that the real issues get lost in dirt and blood. These two have been going through that routine for as
long as I’ve known them.
Boxing Day 1987
I’m sitting on the edge of a desert in the hot December sun. My three little blondies are out walking over the dunes.
I went on board Jim’s boat yesterday and he gave me macaroni cheese, potato, Xmas pudding, custard and
port wine! His boat is very relaxed and homely. I didn’t like his male passengers though, a Dane with a ghoulish
countenance and a German with a blank face reminiscent of some other Nordics I knew recently. The unbridled
consumption shocked me somewhat after living so frugally in Cape Verde, and I felt more myself walking home
afterwards along the debris-strewn beaches picking up a Christmas-stocking-load of plastic tops and other colourful
rubbish for the kids.
I’m alone a lot of the time now since Bill’s demise as Ned is looking for boats in town. We thought of
going back to Senhor Franco’s, but then heard that the police had been round to his house expressly forbidding him
to let us stay there - foreigners are not allowed to mix with the local population! So we continue to live on nothing,
under nothing, and in the middle of nowhere, which becomes depressing once Bill turns hateful, as Ned is by far the
most uncomfortable person I’ve experienced on these travels - he minds much more than anyone else (the kids don’t
mind at all) about sleeping on the hard ground; he’s grumpy and bad-tempered in the night and most uncongenial. I
had some very depressing insomniac hours in the night viewing in my mind the Yellow Face of Fred, the
Green-Grey Face of Bill and the Grey-White face of Ned!
I am very aware as I lie each night and watch the stars, the planets, matter burning up and whizzing across
the sky, the satellites, the Moon, and the moving branches of the trees, that in South America it may well be
impossible to sleep looking at the sky because of the insect life. And travelling round islands that you can walk
across has given us a false impression of the size of the world.
27th December 1987
Ned saw Bill in Mindelo and said we were looking for people to join our team, so Bill signed on again. When he
came back to camp, I questioned him severely and eventually he broke down and told the truth - that it had been so
nice sleeping with me again, he’d got alarmed at his dependency and gone out of his way to turn everything to shit, a
familiar story.
With his return, we decided to move to the other side of the island, further away from the town. So about
5:00 p.m. (the only time of day it’s possible to walk because of the heat) with only an hour and a half of light left,
we started trekking along the dead straight road across ugly São Vicente. Towards night, Bill, the kids and the
luggage got a lift, whilst Ned and I trotted painfully the rest of the very long way - I had a bad foot through stabbing
myself on thorns in the woods. When we arrived at the coast, we were faced with a post-nuclear landscape of flat
empty dry awfulness. But, exhausted, we lay down by some prickly reforestation-project bushes and all slept
soundly, with interruptions for midnight revelries, which is a welcome feature of life with Bill when he’s not cut off.
In the morning, I went scouting and found a tiny three-sided cleft in the rock cliff with no top to it. We
roofed it with a sheet so that when the wind blows and bits of rock fall on us, some of them are caught in it. The
door is a blanket; this protects us from the sand which is blown about constantly and forms a large dune outside.
Ned and Bill bravely try to prepare food up on some rocks with sand blowing into everything. Big breakers crash
on the beach a few yards away. And Louise, lying next to me, has a fever and red rash.
I have a headache as I write. It may be the sun; it might be the tension of our extremely basic Bedouin-like
living conditions; it might be the mile-long walk Louise and I went on along the beach to the nearest village to see
what food we could buy (none) with the wind beating against us; it might be the several hundred flies living with us.
Or, most likely, it might be the fact that this morning as I rounded the corner of some rocks on our beach, I bumped
into Silvia, the Swedish social worker. She was very polite, and so was I. I left her with Ned, as I feel too bitter to
talk to her without a full-scale most un-Swedish blow-out. Ned spent some time with her telling her the Gullmar
story from my point of view, which of course she did not wish to hear, but had no choice being a polite Swede. It
turned out that Bill had already met her and her husband on Santo Antao when he was looking for me and had been
treated to a blast from hubbie’s deep-freeze “trying to ignore me out of existence’’ as Bill put it. It also turns out
that this very beach is her own personal hidey-hole where she gets away from the hubbub of her charitable existence
and was the very place she was heading for the day she refused to see me in Mindelo. Poor Silvia, fancy meeting
me here. She kept telling Ned that there would be no boats across the Atlantic after the New Year, that is, hurry up
and get off my island. Then, suddenly, it seemed she and her friends no longer found their beach so attractive and
they left.
It is dark now and we are in our very warm world: a square little cave just big enough for us all to lie in,
with three candles blowing wildly. Ned is up on a higher ledge outside making tea.
We’ve just had burnt toast; it
tasted wonderful. Earlier, we had sweet rice, also burnt and with sand in it; and that tasted marvellous too.
28th December 1987
This morning, my first joy was to discover Louise’s hair crawling with lice and every single hair of her head infested
with their eggs. You can’t buy lice shampoo in Cape Verde, so I sat for hours on end, just like the blacks do, picking
out the large lice, and will have to do it again each day as more hatch. And I have had to cut her lovely hair short.
Another thing they don’t sell is toilet rolls, so we use the sea to wash ourselves; and they don’t sell candles,
so now I write to you in the dark. And a rat chewed our bread in the night.
But the environment is good, no people and so no dirt. We can live naked, though the sun is too fierce to do
so much of the day, and there’s nowhere to hide from it except the sea - you can’t stay in the cave in the daytime
because of the flies. We cook in a milk tin and Bill mumbles about lead in the solder. Water isn’t a problem as
there are men working on a building in a nearby deserted village during the daytime and they have water for the
cement. I’ve spent all today sewing together sacks found strewn about the woods to form a tarpaulin for a better
roof. Bill has bravely done all the cooking in the hot sun. We have one or two tea-bags donated by Captain Jim
(“post-dated Tampax” as he calls them). The greens we bought in Mindelo were too tough to cook, so we ate them
nearly raw and were glad of them - baby Katie wolfed them down with her rice and beans and onions. Everything
we eat is badly cooked, laced with sand, the water containers are foul, it all takes ages to do, and we’re grateful for
every mouthful!
New Year’s Day, 1988
Bill was off begging for water when the guard of a posh house near here offered him a small concrete rectangular
hut with doors, a floor, a roof, windows, a very long table and two very long benches, plus a huge pile of goat
droppings which Ned and Bill cleared. So now I’m writing outside our very own house. It is not exciting and the
Cape Verde landscape is depressing, so I don’t look at it; I have a nice view of an abandoned church next door, and
sea, sand and cliffs are always good to look at. Also when you’ve just been living in a sandstorm and have an ill
daughter, you don’t sniff at goat poo. It’s a painful walk to go to the toilet in the bit of woodland if you happen to
have a septic foot instead of a septic tank, but we have the most important element of all: shade.
Our friend the guard looks after the Belgian consul’s house, which is next door to us. He is very bored and
came in with his cousin for New Year’s Eve. He put on a radio and we all sat in the dark, eating some Cape
Verdian concoction they brought us. We only own one teaspoon - I gave everything I owned to the black lady in
Mindelo who looked after me - and I promised myself I’d never give up anything again, not that it looks as though
we’ll ever again own anything to give up.
To amuse the children, Bill made some chimes out of metal he found lying around, and I gave the OK for
the children to bang horrendously on metal lids, and Bill splashed out and bought a bottle of wine, one sip of which
had me temporarily forgetting the depressingness of everything. And thus we saw in the New Year about 8.0 p.m.
after which we fell asleep on cardboard and plastic and sleeping bags on the concrete floor behind the sheet pinned
up as a curtain. We awoke dozens of times for various children’s complaints, cats jumping in windows, the
unaccustomed banging of bits of hardware - a house! - and for the pains of a septic foot caused by the most
superficial grazing on a rock. It’s got bad, badder and worse. Today I’ve dressed it with a bit of ripped pillow slip
stuck on with masking tape. Masking tape??! Just one of those things Bill happened to have in his pocket. At
least it stops the flies eating me. Alice has a whole row of such septic sores, Katie has a poisoned finger, Ned had
poisoned feet in Santo Antão after his barefoot volcanic rock expedition.
Bill has just made popcorn (donated by Captain Jim before he sailed away) for the kids in an old tin can on
an open fire in a ruin outside the house. I am seething. Nothing to do with the popcorn; it’s just that a houseload
of Swedish weekenders have arrived in this otherwise deserted village of San Andres - they work at the hospital in
Mindelo - and two of them went and unlocked the church and had a look in and I hated them. How dare Swedes
have the key to a Cape Verdian church?!
3rd January 1988
Ned arrived yesterday from town and brought light into our darkened lives - six candles.
Bill has cut off
emotionally again, please don’t yawn. And I cut off all Louise’s remaining hair because of the nits. Ned had
heard that paraffin kills them, so Bill rubbed poor Louise’s head with it. The nits did verily die, but it took about six
shampooings to get rid of the smell. Katie, not to be outdone, wanted her hair off too; it’s only low-quality fluff, so I
obliged.
7th January 1988
We have discovered that in seeking nature and privacy and coming to this ghost village, we have inadvertently done
some social-climbing. We were visited by the Belgian Consul, his son, his Cape Verde daughter-in-law and a whole
bevy of their black relatives, who brought us some dinner. We have landed ourselves in the private haunt of the
Mindelo rich weekenders. In another house there are some rich Cape Verdians who embarrassingly claim to be
Americans, but aren’t. They brought us some dinner too. And not far away, we have the hermetically sealed but
very polite Swedish consul, his doctor friend, and other very white companions. They did not visit or bring us
dinner.
I have been in constant sick-bay: the once superficial foot-wound is eating ever deeper into my flesh, my
ankle is swollen and no healing is in sight; it hurts me to stand. I have fantasies of amputation. We got some
purple paint-on stuff from the Mindelo hospital pharmacy for free and some locals gave us a tube of something, but
no change.
Ned is steady, co-operative and miserable. I only ever relate to him in conjunction with another person, so
I don’t need to worry what it would be like to need anything more stimulating from him, a seriously disinvigorating
experience I would imagine. My main preoccupations in life are my gangrenous ankles, my itchy head and our
general raison d'etre in dreadful Cabo Muerte (Cape Death); also, the latest market prices, which include: 70p for a
lemon (we didn’t buy it) and £2 for a plastic bucket deeply engrimed with tar (we bought it).
Last Sunday, we had a visit from a Swede - the hunchback co-worker of Silvia who had told me I could not
and should not live with Cape Verde natives. He turned up uninvited in a car with two very young prostitutes, one
15 years old. He plonked himself down and delivered a half hour of undiluted arrogance and cheek; I was so
overdosed on Nordic obnoxiousness that my brain has not retained a word of it. Ned at first stared at him in
amazement and then turned on his best British contempt-plus-condescension mix which was very fitting in the
circumstances (however much we may want to kick his head in for it at other times). Bill mumbled several
important things in an unimportant voice and was duly ignored. After the fellow had left, I found I felt good; he
had been so outrageously over-the-top, speaking out all the colossal out-of-touch fascism that the Gullmar Swedes
had vibed but never spat out, that I almost liked him, he was so extreme. And Ned pulling him up dented him
hugely, unaccustomed as he was to anything but lording it over everybody.
Since then, Bill has met him two or three times in town and our outspoken opposition to his normal way of
going on seems to have opened his ears somewhat. He actually listened at long last while Bill told him the story of
Fred and the Gullmar. Of Silvia, the Swede, he said she was a hypocrite ‘who likes to think of herself as a Florence
Nightingale;’ He has known her for years. I felt the Balance of Things was grinding slowly, rustily into motion.
Even atheists need to believe there is Justice in the workings of the Cosmos!
Unfortunately, the drabness and deliberate horribleness of Bill, plus the soul-crushing unexcitingness of
Ned are giving me the odd contraband fond thought of Fred. I mentioned this to my good friends, and so Ned
invented a new line in fairy stories for the kids: he told the most tragic tale of a coven leader who scritched and
scratched for a living and washed little pieces of rag in a Pink Pottie and hung them up to dry on a miserable little
piece of string and all she wanted in the world was a little old husband to sit in an armchair and not move away and
she searched the whole world over and did all sorts of crazy things and concocted all kinds of odd spells, but never
did she find a peaceable little old husband to sit still in a little old armchair.
I thought it was a very touching tale and it had a strangely cathartic effect on me, but it made Bill SULK,
can you imagine it, because I felt so peaceful after the story I fell asleep when he was evidently being Passionate “with my right leg” he informed me.
Ned tried to mend his own bruised ego by going to bed with the 15-year-old prostitute in town.
It didn’t work. She fell asleep.
CHAPTER 4
FRENCH INTERLUDE
9th January 1988
One day Bill turned up from Mindelo in an old-fashioned taxi and said, “Get in, we’re going.” He had found a
huge old French sailing ship, carrying a load of people to Martinique in the Caribbean. I had to be practically lifted
on board because of my septic foot.
Le Bel Espoir. The Good Hope. It was quite the scruffiest boat I had ever seen, a huge three-masted
gruesome job, every bit of metal rusting, every bit of wood unpainted; plastic bags pinned to the ceiling of our cabin
for the drips, the ‘toilet’ soaked in male pee, a galley that would cause my sister’s hair to fall out quicker than
Chernobyl radiation if she set eyes on it. But to me it is Heaven, Paradise, the joke-answer of the Cosmos to SV
Gullmar. There is food everywhere. It is falling out of lockers and off shelves and everyone says, in French,
"Take as much as you want." We woke up in the middle of the night and drank apple juice and orange juice and ate
apples and oranges and chocolate biscuits and muesli
When we arrived on board, three French girls, all with some nursing training looked at my horribly swollen
infected foot and recognized it immediately: staphylococcus infection. I’d never heard of it. They cleaned the
wound with iodine, put on antiseptic ointment, bandages and plaster and then required that I take antibiotics. Oh
dear; that was a bump as I’ve avoided them all my life, but I gave in as they said it is very contagious and that we
are all infecting one another - Alice has a whole row of septic wounds which she enjoys picking enormously.
We have paid £300 per adult for this trip, children free, and are to be a few days in port before leaving
Cape Verde. The price includes food! I sat on deck accustoming myself to a new and happy people-oriented
environment. Near me worked a large French male with a scar all down one leg; he was chain-smoking, had long,
dank dirty hair and was naked but for a tiny pair of underpants; he had a very relaxed belly and big black rings under
his eyes. He was beautiful. He kept vibrating male predatoriness at me as I sat there with my bandaged foot. He is
the chief mechanic of the Rara Avis - “Rare Bird” - the sister ship to the Bel Espoir; the two ships travel together.
My scruffy mechanic healed me in five minutes of two weeks of icy blue cut-off smooth-bodied anti-sexuality on
the Gullmar. I felt like a person, of the female kind. I was a mother, scarred by Caesarean operation, life-dented,
greying, yet I could be completely myself, flesh and blood, still a woman, still desirable. I felt I had been given the
world.
I sat in a trance, staring at water, at diesel barrels, at Mindelo across the bay; and the name Bel Espoir
stared back at me, reflected in a pool of oily dock-water, right next to the generator; I felt like crying with happiness
but I couldn’t; I tried to gather my thoughts, but I couldn’t; I just felt BOATS, little worlds, and in particular a recent
Boat I was on.
At meal times we were served! We were brought dish after dish of rice and vegetables and tomato-mix
and bread and butter and fruit drinks and fresh fruit and dessert. There was a happy, relaxed, messy atmosphere.
The dining saloon is big enough for people (on the huge Gullmar, we were squeezed into a suffocatingly hot little
alcove). The passengers include a group of French men over 50 and even over 60 years old, all full of life. And
there are young guys who sit up at night playing music and no-one minds, They pee on their toilet seat and I don’t
mind (especially as Bill is so happy at the moment that he washes it all down). Yes, Bill has resurrected once more,
or rather re-erected. He’s like a dog with three willies. Ned is grumpy - imagine! - but solid and dependable as
ever.
“Where do you wash?” I asked when first on board. “We don’t wash,” they said, grinning. “And
clothes?” I asked. “We don’t wash them either.” they said, laughing their heads off.
In the afternoon of the first day, a Norwegian boatbuilder came on board and talked to us for hours. He had
been chucked off a Norwegian yacht with his girlfriend and stranded in Cape Verde for speaking his mind to the
Captain. I told him the whole story of the Gullmar, and he was nearly in tears because it was so similar to what he
had experienced on his boat! He slagged the Swedes for their capitalism, their hypocrisy, their terror of feelings,
their schizophrenia and the way they blank you out. Therapeutic honey to my ears, I lapped it up.
11th January 1988
We were about to leave port when Ned, about to make a cup of tea, discovered the ship had run out of drinking
water. The crew hadn’t checked and weren’t going to bother to fill up before crossing the Atlantic! This is the sort
of boat where you can do what you like. For instance, you can mend your own toilet, move food stores around so
you’ve got bed-space in your cabin; bring your black friends on board and sit them down and stuff them full of fruit
juice, biscuits, muesli bars and whole dinners all day long; go and boil one dozen eggs for yourself and kids any
time of day and feel completely at ease about it; borrow a guitar for the journey from the sister ship; be up at all
hours; and generally be all of yourself, yet fit in perfectly with all that is around you. I love the French! Vive la
France and vive the French blood I have from my grandmother! I love their dirt, their piss, their mucky hair, their
wrecked bodies, their smoking, their gluttonous eating habits; I love their sensuality, and I love their love of life.
They are all different! Their faces are all different! I can immediately tell one from another! They bang a bell at
mealtimes and shout, “Food is Ready!” On the Gullmar, you might find a quiet meal going on and you’d been left
out and you’d feel like a thief for joining in.
I am covered in parasites, hair lice and scabies and staphylococcus; I am full of antibiotics which drug me;
and Bill covers me with sweat at night: his sexuality is so neurotic it’s quite a liberating experience - it doesn’t
matter what you do! There are no sheets on this boat and no bedding. We are gradually soaking the already
salt-drenched mattresses with sweat and kids’ pee and nothing matters. It is all very Ffffrench. I haven’t started
eating lobsters or smoking Gauloises yet, but I am lowering my standards daily, or rather nightly. I’ll be so
dégoutante by the time you all see me again that you’ll be thoroughly dégoutés. And if this wreck of a boat sinks,
I’m sure there’ll be plenty of biscuits and good humour in the life rafts. My extrovert manic self has found a
perfect home here and if the itching I feel all over my body definitely is scabies rather than reaction to drugs I’m not
used to, I’m going to save them up and rub myself all over every glazed-eyed Swede I meet in the West Indies!
14th January 1988
Dear Commune,
This is our fourth day at sea. For the first three days, Ned couldn’t eat, walk, or sleep below without being
sick. Bill bravely battled on but was sick ever such a lot. I feel sick, but it gets me in the head and not the
stomach. Katie turned green before we were 100 yards outside Mindelo harbour and fell into a deep coma. She just
slept and slept and is now fine, except I had to shave off the front of her hair to remove the next 50 nits. Alice and
Louise also slept their way through the awfulness of the first 12 hours at sea. Sea is horrible and boats are a Bad
Idea. The Gullmar was exceptional - it was so smooth, it even smoothed out the sea. But even they would have a
job smoothing out this lot slurping around us. This is a dreadful boat! You’re not supposed to have water for
anything, but we nick a small amount each day. There is a paid Breton crew; the captain is a scruffy little young
fellow who does everything from driving the boat to climbing the rigging to mending the sails to getting you
bog-rolls if you ask for them! In no emotional sense is he the Captain. The French are just un petit peu too bloody
laid back. There are two horrible half-dead dogs on board. No-one can tell me who they belong to: ‘They’ve
always been here.’ They shit all over the foredeck, the only place where there’s any space to be. Ned and Bill in
the midst of extreme mal de mer somehow manage to swill and scrub down the decks.
French habits are
obnoxious. The loo is your typical French Parisian pissoir. The brave Barnsley Bill, in spite of green-grey facial
colour, does his best to keep England alive at sea by washing it regularly.
These two sister-ships are run by a crook-priest who operates them as a ‘charity’ for young recovering drug
addicts and gets all the food given to him free from various French firms. He sails on the other boat. One young
ex-heroin addict made friends with us before we left port by coming to us very shaken up by a row he’d had with the
Brazilian female cook who’d thrown a fit at him for trying to take from the ship one of the million packets of coffee
on board to repay some Mindelo friends who’d helped him. I immediately worked out a plot for him to get his
way: Bill went ashore for a ‘shower’ with the kids, hiding under his towel a bag full of goodies for Jean-Charles,
our new friend, to give to his black companions. He was delighted. I had had enough of food fascism for all time.
Also on board is a small handsome Aquarian Frenchman called Boris, 30 years old, who does Tai Chi and
juggling on deck; he is a professional cook and, miracle of miracles, a vegetarian, which saved our lives because the
official cook and his unpleasant Brazilian girlfriend threw a fit when Bill enquired as to whether it might be possible
to leave out meat from some of the food. So Boris makes the most exotic vegetarian dishes for our little group
while the cook and his missus freak out or sulk. I call it the Lavatory Attendant mentality; mean little people in
positions of great power! But at least on this boat, the war is open, and we can have a mini-mutiny on board with
most passengers regarding the cook as ridiculous.
Ned and Bill have practically taken over neglected boat domestics; they sweep and clean and mop the
saloon floor when coffee jars jump off the table and smash everywhere; they do piles of washing-up when the rota
doesn’t work (which is most days); and they go through the oranges and tangerines and chuck away the rotten ones
to save the rest.
Dear Sister back home, we would have to give you tranquillisers if you were to step on board. All the sails
are rotten and torn; the main sail just ripped, and we’ve had nothing more than a Force 5; the shackles are so rusted
it would take only a Ned leaning on one to snap it through; it’s a ship that simply hasn’t been looked at, cleared out,
cleaned or cared for since the Flood. The galley looks as if a couple of rotting old bachelors have had it to
themselves for five years. The saloon is built of old dark wood with long benches and tables and nice large
windows and could be beautiful, but is a complete tip. A hatchway most dangerously opens into it from below:
Katie nearly killed herself falling down there before we even set sail. The benches fly around the room, and the
floor is always wet with spillages. The passengers, who have travelled all the way from France like this, sit around
playing cards or reading, oblivious to it all.
The main awfulness, though, is that oily revolting substance out there they call the Sea. Foulacious stuff.
Why it is so romanticized, so written and sung about, I can’t imagine. Travel is biologically unsound (said she),
and Bill and Ned hate it much more even than I do. The French meanwhile, are completely relaxed; they smoke
and eat and carry on with their lives as if it were normal to be chucked around like this.
Yesterday I was feeling so sick and miserable that I looked around for a remedy, and all I could find was
two close acquaintances of mine, one thin and ill-looking, the other large and of strangely strangled appearance, and
I took them both into our small, uncomfortable, sweat-drenched, sea-damp, unventilated, lurching, claustrophobic
apology for a bunkbed and smothered myself with their flesh, just simply and deliberately went about getting all that
irksome energy down from face and head and ears and eyes and neck and throat and stomach to more pleasant areas.
Seasickness is a kind of overlay, you can actually be quite healthy underneath it all; you just have to join with the
sea, by turning to liquid yourself, as I discovered, and for the duration of this event, you can get not only
extraordinary relief from the irksome sickness, but also an above-average dose of pleasure as the body is in such a
state, and the cabin and the ship are in such a state, and the mind is in such a state, and one’s partners are in such a
state, that any inhibitions that one might normally carry around go by the board …
From Ned, January 15th 1988
On Day 5 at sea, the main thing to report is that we haven’t sunk, a miracle considering the state of the ship. I
didn’t know it would be like this: the non-stop rocking and rolling, the heaving and creaking noises all the time,
things falling and breaking and a feeling of my stomach getting left behind on one side of the boat as we heave to
the other. The weather is ‘calm’ by the way ...
From Bill
Dear People of Atlantis,
We’ve travelled about 500 miles into the Atlantic or more correctly, over the top of it. I hope we stay in that
general relationship to the sea, that is to say, on top of it. Sailing is definitely horrible; I can’t imagine why any of
the other people are on board. One masochist is sailing to Martinique in order to fly back to France!
Ned has gone glazed and glassy-eyed after some nocturnal adventures with the commune recently, that is,
with Jenny and me. It’s a funny thing, that some people can’t take a degree of closeness without doing strange
things afterwards rather than go with the flow and feel good ...
From Jenny, 17th January 1968
We’re half way to the other side of the Atlantic and I feel the best today since coming to sea (for one thing I illegally
gave up taking the foul antibiotics). Yesterday the sea behaved a little more as it did under the Gullmar. The
breeze was light. And the sails ripped - badly; more times than we could count. They put up the big square sail. I
observed the many slashes across it, the damage from folding and age, and I said: ‘I give it five minutes.’ I badly
overestimated. The ship rocks like a drunken pig in the slightest swell, the sails rip in the slightest breeze; the ship
has run out of bogrolls as I’d told the crew we would before we left port, but they heeded me not. Yesterday the
cook, after complaining to Ned about water consumption, left the pump on and so lost gallons of fresh water into the
sea. The Captain spent most of yesterday at his sewing machine on deck patching rotten sails.
Two days ago, there was a general mutiny. One subdued lad who was quietly dying of hepatitis suddenly
exploded at the cook, sending him flying across the corridor and yelling mouthfuls of French at him. I understood
very little, just watched fascinated. I picked up the words, “Everybody, absolutely everybody, feels the same” and
he indicated me and said, “Ces-gens-là aussi” - those people too. Then suddenly I understood every word as his
French gave way to Spanish! It turned out he was the son of Spanish immigrants. The cook turned into a pale,
shaking, little weasel, and from then on has done his awful best to be Nice instead of a pint-sized fascist. And a
series of accidents has befallen him: for example, Ned came to us grinning all over his mug saying he’d gone into
the galley to find both the kitchen and the cook entirely covered in pineapple. The cook dolefully explained that he
had opened a bottle of it and it had exploded all over him.
Yesterday Ned lost the ship’s bucket overboard. It was no loss as its bottom was stuck on with sellotape.
OK, so you don’t believe me. It is a scandal that we have had to pay £900 for this boat. You pays your money and
you picks your scandal. At least this scandal is happy, humorous, and human, if extremely smelly - Ned is trying to
extricate dog excrement from the ropes lying on deck. I am sitting here bare-titted. I’m not quite sure if this is
OK; it’s definitely not ‘cool’ anyway, like it would be on the Gullmar.
Ned writes, 20th January 1988
Bill and Jen are playing guitar and violin on deck in the dark and I’m minding the kids. It just rained for the first
time and everyone delightedly stripped off and took showers in it, soaping themselves on the deck. The rain also
pours into the cabins. Jen has a crush on a Froggy crew member, who never speaks but just stares at her. This is
very stupid of her because of the dazzling attention she has been receiving from Barnsley Bill and me, but instead of
appreciating us, she chooses to set her eyes on some unevolved Frenchman who wouldn’t even know an emotional
block if he saw one. He only has to pose on deck with a sail-sewing needle and curse at Jenny’s washing flapping
in his face, and she’s a goner…
From Jen, 21st January 1968
Four days from Martinique. I’ve finally become accustomed to having our dinner fly across the saloon from time to
time and often even forget that we are at sea. The people on this boat are very friendly, it’s like a natural instant
commune.
This does NOT include the five paid crew members who are desperate to maintain their separate status,
especially as the six old codgers amongst the passengers are all experienced sailors. One of the old fellows whom
we call ‘Punch’ because of his looks, wanted a picture taken of himself posing with our group. I reached to put on
my tee-shirt as I was topless, but he grabbed it firmly off me. He also grabbed from Bill the tangled mass of
knitting wools he was unravelling for me and later returned a pile of immaculately wound balls to me. Bill has
been making carved wooden dolls for the kids - I make the hair and clothes for them - and Punch demanded that Bill
make him one for his newborn daughter. Surely he must mean granddaughter, he’s well over 60, but maybe not, as
he’s a sexy old fox, posing naked after seawater showers and flapping his equipment in the breeze.
Ned has mentioned my crush on one of the crew. He has crossed eyes and looks like Humphrey Bogart;
he’s not a nice person at all and has been directly horrible to Ned about food, and generally a belligerent air comes
off him, but there you go, I find him delicious. Ned and Bill take it in turn to be in foul moods, but nothing too
serious, so the team survives. Our cooking mutiny is going well - the number of people who fancy our meals and
join us to eat is getting larger by the day! It’s a very happy aggression. All in all, this is a very gentle and loving
part of the journey and goes a long way to heal me of the recent permafrost.
25th January 1988
Dawn. We are in sight of Martinique. I renamed the Bel Espoir the ‘Hope-for-the-Best’ and later the ‘Some
Hopes’, but she seems to have got us here.
Bill has cut his hair and beard short and looks ugly as sin, but he insists I’m his soulmate and Ned says we
look very well-suited; and as some very acceptable things happen in bed on occasion, I am content with my lot (for
now). Last night Bill, with great patience and insistence, questioned Ned laboriously to extract an account of life
and death on Inishfree Island during the last year to try and get to the root of Ned’s marathon sulk against you all.
Bill used the right amount of firmness and occasional hostility. But the extreme lack of Light emanating from the
accused caused me to remark over morning tea, ‘Ned, I think you should cut off from your past.’ I was so tired
from catching up on eight years of sexual deprivation with an Irish Catholic that I slept through a goodly 80% of
Ned’s tale of woe. Thrown very close together on this crossing, Bill, Ned and I have become very intimate. I am
somehow able to have a sexual relationship with Ned which is subsidiary to my partnership with Bill. Bill for me is
like a deliciously incestuous brother; I could never call him a husband because of his extreme childishness. My
daytime relationship with Ned remains sensible and is never touched by other business which is hermetically sealed
and ever more shall be so!
Motoring along the coastline of Martinique, we passed a rock which some English soldiers long ago held as
a ‘battleship’ in a war against the French, attacking French vessels as they passed by. As we levelled with the rock,
an otherwise quiet little old Frenchman on board, who was evidently an ex-colonel, suddenly jumped up and down
on deck, then ripped his trousers off and threw them high into the air and overboard at the rock, this apparently
representing the greatest insult he could muster against the English. After that, he subsided back into obscurity,
sans culottes.
CHAPTER 5
MARTINIQUE
26th January 1988
We left the Bel Espoir this morning with great relief, as the young Breton crew members had become increasingly
hostile the more we enjoyed ourselves on board; according to the French passengers, the Bretons have a reputation
for Puritanism, a bit like the Welsh in Britain.
On shore, we suddenly saw Bill wrap himself around a dark-skinned young man. It turned out to be
Murad the Tunisian, his only friend from the Adelaar. He’d left the boat, hating his Nordic employers - it seems
there is a lot of this kind of thing going on at sea.
Martinique is counted as a Department of France and is maintained at an absurdly high standard of living,
which means crazily high prices; it’s a somewhat shabby holiday resort for millionaires in fact. We’ve taken
enough food off the boat to last us for a couple of days, but we haven’t got anywhere to sleep. The heat this side of
the Atlantic is humid and less easy to bear and it rains every hour for a minute or so, quite heavily. Added to this,
my two male companions have decided to slide downhill into a general darkening of whatever light there was.
Ned is displaying his worst characteristics, for instance his habit of Knowing Everything, especially things
he hasn’t a notion about. He walks along crowded narrow pavements holding Alice’s hand so that she is walking in
the road in the middle of fierce traffic, while he stares into shop windows looking for an answer to the Cosmos.
Bill, whose light went out in his usual après-sex manner, delivered Ned a lecture about his character structure which
helped not a bit. According to Ned, I ‘make everything bad’ and ‘the children are such a problem.’ What a merry
team the two men would make without me or the kids! Meanwhile, the local tourist agency, obviously responding
to Ned’s vibrations, just informed him that you ‘can’t walk out of town’ and that there is ‘nothing to see anyway.’
So we’re walking out of town immediately.
29th January 1988
We crossed to the other side of the huge bay on a ferry to a greener, more wooded area. We landed in a kind of
Disneyland for the bored, tired, fat, friendly French rich. I was last to leave the ferry and spotted a smart umbrella
that someone had left behind. I picked it up; it was to become our only roof for the night.
Leaving our motley mound of luggage with the men, I walked through the brightly lit night playgrounds of
the rich till I came to their moonlit beaches, deserted of people, but covered with furniture: plastic chaises-longues
and little sunshades. I started to grin and ended up laughing out loud, all alone on that beach. We were about to
institute a new stage in our management of whatever environmental resources presented themselves to us. I went
back to report to the others that all we needed was cheek.
We installed ourselves in a corner of the beach, shaded from the glaring lights of a hotel, on the plastic beds
provided, with our umbrella for a roof. Bill predicted a beachguard and along he came. I chatted to him in French
and he said he was so sorry to have to tell us that we really weren’t allowed to be there. In fact he was so sorry that
as far as he was concerned, we could stay there, but that his partner might not like it. I checked with him that the
beach wasn’t actually private, but the chairs were, so we sat upon the sand. Then the second guard came along; I
quickly chatted him up too and he said, ‘OK, we could stay if we were gone by 5:00 a.m. (the hotels wouldn’t like
us).’ ‘6:00 a.m.’ I bargained, and the deal was on. So we lay on God’s Caribbean sand usurped by European
capitalists and had a completely dreadful night, as it rained heavily and often. Somehow the children never woke,
though we got very wet protecting them. Ned went off to sleep on a veranda outside the ticket-office on the main
street where black Rastafaris were already slumbering. I preferred the beach and the rain. Bill erected his large
Tenerife blanket and we slept intermittently.
Next morning I felt great; all this was so much better than being under a cloud of tension on someone else’s
pox-ridden boat. I skipped with fresh morning energy through rich-ville to explore and soon found another, better,
little beach. Then I went to rouse Ned - the ticket-office was open and he was still wrapped up snoring.
We moved the next half kilometre - I love living like this! - and settled under a huge tree on a shady,
quieter beach. Then I suggested that Bill and Ned do something radical and immediate about the atmospheric
pollution emanating from them both, and announced I wasn’t going anywhere, least of all to place called South
America, with them in that state, and that I was staying on the beaches of Martinique forever if they insisted on
being such a disgusting influence on the Universe. I then removed myself for an hour or so to find somewhere to
live. I walked through hot wet green pathways, got thoroughly lost, and returned to the beach in time to see the
police telling Bill and Ned they couldn’t be there. So I chatted the police up - I was getting good at this - and they
were very friendly and directed me to an even more out-of-the-way beach. I then suggested to Bill and Ned that
they bugger off with our unsightly luggage to find the beach, and settle on it while I had a gorgeous rest in the shade.
At one point there was torrential rainfall and half the population of the beach came and sheltered under our huge
tree. I dressed the kids in layer after layer of clothes including my own tee-shirt - everyone else was freezing as
they only had their swimsuits. I like Martinique - you never feel out of place here, these rich people are kind of
lost, not snooty; they’re spending money because they’re seeking pleasure, not to impress anyone. It makes for a
gentle atmosphere.
After the rain, I lay dozing in the sun, a sleeping child on each arm and one wrapped round my head, when
a lovely friendly face, male but with waistlength hair came up and stared at us lovingly, then spoke to me in odd
French - he turned out to be Argentinean. He offered us his flat to take showers in - but ‘after 6:00 p.m. as his
landlord was loco’, he said.
Bill returned to collect me - he and Ned had got lost too but had finally found the way to Beach No. 3 and
our next step down the social ladder. I followed him along ever-narrower, ever-muddier tracks through wet
woodland. We travel now by relays, so as never to give up any possessions again. The new beach was Creole at
one end, with boats and black people, but with campsites and posh holiday homes at the other, and always the gentle
lapping of the calm sea and plenty of shade from the many trees. We felt a bit stuck at first as to where to erect our
home, seeing that we had nothing to erect, but I spotted a piece of corrugated iron, and we still had our two
umbrellas. Very tired now, I just trusted and gazed and visualised and saw a palmtree that no-one had pruned and
which had a wealth of scruffy fronds hanging to beach level, and this became our new home. A soft sandy floor, a
piece of plastic, some string for a washing line; and abundant water here - my washing looks clean after nine months
of water-skimping culminating in the practically waterless Bel Espoir.
After buying two loaves of bread at 80p each, it became clear that we have to find a way of living free here
or earning money. And as I have no further use for Bill, having exhausted his sexual potential for the next six
months, I favoured the theory that he should become our scout. So he was packed off back across the bay to Fort
de France, the capital and port, while I sighed with ecstasy at the luxury of the environment, the water, the washing
and the washing lines. I found a nearly-new lemon on the beach and spotted a bagful of waste bread in a roadcart;
the beach is covered with beautiful shells and coral. Ned carves very nice spoons, and there is wood everywhere so
our campfire burns non-stop. Tomatoes may cost £3 a kilo, but Ned took out a box of bananas from the rubbish tip
and we lived on banana fritters till they came out of our ears. And then we were sighted by two people from the
Rara Avis, the Bel Espoir’s sister ship, and they brought us 6 eggs, 4 yoghurts, 2 loaves of bread and a bar of
chocolate. God helps them who help themselves!
I was thus in even deeper ecstasy when Bill came back across the water with a box of fruit; he’d been
picking up waste in the market when a market woman called him over to see what he had, then threw it all away
saying, ‘Paf! That’s no good’ and she filled up his box with perfect fruit from her store.
Old men come along from the tourist end to the proletarian end of the beach and visit us. They see our
Robinson Crusoe camp and our naked children and our washing and stop to talk and take photos. Ned found a
perfect groundsheet thrown away at the campsite, so we now have a roof-extension. I found my violin case sodden,
but the violin still plays and so do I. I throw an occasional mini-fit, usually in praise of Fred, by way of comparison
with the present company and this creates sufficient ripples to clear the airwaves temporarily. Bill continues to
pretend to have problems and Ned continues to pretend to have none, and so we live on. We’re all rather good at
this living business and the kids have a wonderful playground, with the sea just inches away and very calm. We
watch the moon and are ready to shift up the beach a little for the nights of peak tide. The black fishermen in front
of whose posh houses we have parked don’t seem to mind us being here, they are quite condescending towards
whites. They are mostly excessively fat, and their big fat mommas rush out and heave up the fishing boats with
their men when they come ashore. Here, there is no worship of our children; the blacks are affluent and egotistical,
they mainly ignore whites or treat them with a basic underlying hostility; they are also very noisy and always having
loud rows in French Creole, which makes me feel at home.
I like the cosmopolitan, scruffy laissez-faire
atmosphere of this island and feel I’m on holiday too, after a long struggle. Having been through our crazy
stripping-away of possessions in La Palma, the crazy affluence of Tenerife and Gran Canaria, the equally crazy
sparseness of Cabo Verde, the cool craziness of the Gullmar and the craziness fullstop of the Bel Espoir, there is
something level and balanced about this crazily expensive place where you can live for nothing. A new kind of
survival technique is required here, which is urban in spite of the fact we live under a palmtree; there is no
background culture here of caring or giving so it depends very much on one’s free enterprise.
30th January 1988
Bill has just come home from Fort de France with the news that the Gullmar will be in Martinique in a few days’
time, that they will be staying a couple of weeks, and that they left Fred in Trinidad! Bill is preparing a welcome
for them by telling everyone he meets in the Port the Gullmar story and pinning up notices everywhere warning
people about them.
He also came home with some tale of cyclone seasons and trying to bully us into going quickly to
Venezuela. So we’re definitely not going anywhere. Bill is being so disgusting that Ned redeemed himself
somewhat by coping with his tantrums and general verbal violence. Then Ned Be’s Nice to me during the day, and
that’s fine by me, we have a nice camp on a nice island, surrounded by nice people in a nice climate, and I’m having
a very nice time and looking forward to some nice revenge on some very nice Swedes. No-one here tells you that
you can’t do anything, that you can’t live on the beach or erect your own house, cook in the open, go naked or play
music at night. A Czechoslovakian American just spent an hour taking pictures of the bare kids and returned with a
bag of huge quantities of porridge oats, two big jars of milk powder and two of peanut-butter, and loads of
wholewheat biscuits. And the Virgin Mary supplies us with candles from a little house she has down the beach,
(she doesn’t need them as I’m sure she can see in the dark). The local council - called the ‘Commune’! - keep clean
an excellent toilet on the beach and put in fresh toilet paper every day. And someone left a tricycle below tide
level, so the kids are in heaven.
31st January 1988
A dream: I am in my room in a large building.
Someone has let off some gas so that the whole of the atmosphere outside is unbreathable. The air in the
room I’m in stays clean. In the large hall immediately adjacent to us is a ‘friend’ of indistinct sex lying on some rag
(Bill). He knows that we can breathe in our clear space and we keep calling him to come in, but he never does. A
pale faced, shocked woman (Ned) arrives and I quickly let her in without a word. I hardly know her, but I think,
well she found her way here and that’s that. I realise in that moment that the room I am in is endlessly stretchable
and could encompass loads of people if they wanted to walk through the door. The disaster that has struck outside
is very bad: branches, defoliated and dead-looking, are pushing their way through every crack and crevice in our
room, trying to get in to get some fresh air. I go to the garden door and open it briefly and take three quick breaths,
just to see what the air is like. It is pure gas, so I shut the door again quickly.
End of dream.
4th February 1988
The Gullmar arrived in Fort de France on 1st February. I did not go to welcome her, but Bill and Ned busied
themselves sticking up leaflets headed ‘BEWARE THE SWEDISH SHIP GULLMAR’, each one different and each
one full of details of their treatment of passengers and warning people not to pay for any rip-off voyage. And then
Bill paid them a visit on board, reminding them that he was the person who had recommended them to me and put
me on the ship. Here’s what happened to him:
Letter from Bill
Dear Snowy and All at Home:
Leffe told me very heavily that I had to listen to his version of events without comment. There were six or eight
Swedes crowding around me at this point. I compared what they had done with Fred to what the Swedes did in the
war with Hitler, i.e. pretend to be neutral but help him invade Norway and sell him guns, at which point I was
grabbed by the lapels by the sweet, smiling Captain and told heavily to take back what I had just said. I pointed out
the violence being done to my person and said that I would not take back what I had said because it was a good
example and used this excellent opportunity to repeat it. From this point on, the session sizzled. It had taken five
minutes for them to show what was underneath their cool front, namely they were a load of violent heavies. I was
with them for about an hour during which about half a dozen more of them became physically threatening, while
others sniped verbally. The hateful old woman Magan was one of these; she kept on repeating in a reasonable
voice (1) that Jenny shouldn’t have had children (WHY?) and (2) that she should have caught an aeroplane! I
finally flipped at this, banging my fists on the table and screaming in her face what a load of hateful shite she was
talking, and I was soon offered a lift to the shore, that is, after a new round of intimidation had failed to silence me.
Swedes seem to think that they can shut people up by telling them to shut up.
I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the whole business as soon as I realised they were even worse behaved
than me and therefore that there was no reason to hold back or to worry what they thought of me. I was losing my
voice trying to put over my point of view. They were completely incapable of seeing that their behaviour was
violent. The bit I enjoyed most was standing up looking round the whole table full of them and spluttering; “What
a load of cold fish Eskimo bastards” because it cut across their stupid middleclass democratic sham of polite
behaviour. When I asked who the captain was, a large apelike figure, whom Jen used to call Tarzan, claimed the
title, and they let him completely take over their meeting. He spent a good part of it attempting to get a fight out of
me by such means as sticking his face two inches from mine. There was no way I would give him the excuse he
wanted to get even heavier as he was much bigger than me and muscley with it. After I got him to back off - by
telling him to do so! - I pointed out that the crew were letting a monkey rule their meeting, but as this ape still
claimed to be in charge, I immediately asked him for the commune’s money back and made a few points about
responsibility, like why hadn’t he stopped Fred behaving badly, to which I was told that Fred had been very nice all
the way! So I pointed out once again that Jenny had had to leave their boat because of Fred’s, and ultimately their,
hostile behaviour. But it was like trying to get through the Polar Ice Cap with the heat of a torch bulb.
Bill.
From Jen
Well, I had been worried that maybe the Swedes would be so Nice that Bill would never really understand why I
left…. Ned went next day to see them, but of course they weren’t going to let even a blonde, curly-haired,
blue-eyed, polite-sounding stranger on board this time. He spoke to a couple of them on the pier but quickly went
under as their politeness game is the same as his own.
However, he got a second chance. Next day I was walking along our beach to the loo when I nearly
bumped into ‘Nina’ and her frosty boyfriend - they must have come for a quiet day’s rest across the bay away from
the horrid happenings in the Port! She didn’t see me, and I quickly ran back to Ned at our camp with a plan, which
he carried out; he followed them into the beach café and sat down nonchalantly at their table. They had never set
eyes on him before. He then proceeded to ask them if they realised that it was his money they were spending.
Ned Recounts
“I explained my reason for asking this - that I was part of the commune that they had effectively ripped off to the
tune of £1,500. Their initial quiet outrage towards me heightened and they certainly weren’t going to listen to what
I was saying about how Jenny and her children had been treated. They seemed Deeply Offended that I should be
saying anything to them at all and at the same time Belligerently Aggressive as if there should be some kind of law
against people like me existing. They would only talk on a ‘strictly business level’ as in ‘Jenny chose to get off the
ship.’ I talked about Jenny’s reasons for leaving their boat - Fred and food - but they refused to discuss any of it.
To them, it seemed enough to keep on angrily pointing out that Jenny had paid and then got off - and they obviously
resented using up their breath to say this much to me. The fact that she is a human being definitely didn’t come into
it.
I could only count it as some small victory that it was they who got up to leave the table before I did. As
they left, I threatened them that we would follow them and their boat wherever they went and that they would never
forget this…….
Ned
The Gullmar left after just a couple of days in Port. On their last day, Bill gave them the full treatment,
walking along behind Magan and her boyfriend through the town with a megaphone, saying in bad French: “These
people are thieves” and taking Alice up to Magan and saying, “That’s the woman who says you shouldn’t have been
born.”
Having to confront that hornet’s nest did Bill some temporary good as he had been throwing frequent
tantrums about nothing on the home front. A full moon brought turmoil, aggression, and lots of good contact too.
The main aggro, apart from Bill and the Gullmar, was from the fat black police, who finally turned up and said it
was ‘interdit’ de camper sur their rotten plage, so we went on another Explore and found Beach No. 4, so small and
so hidden away that no fat black cop could ever find us. We didn’t want to give up all the carefully collected
hardware of our camp - corrugated iron and building poles - so Bill constructed a raft out of them. Ned tied it to his
ankle and he then swam the enormous distance across a wide bay from one beach to the other. And he still had
enough energy to make dinner afterwards.
We have come to a difficult, wild, mosquito-ridden place, which we thought was isolated, but we were
woken up the first morning at dawn by a raving black fisherman saying that the stones we had holding down our guy
ropes were his, and he took them back toute suite. We’d already had another black man screaming mad for two
hours yesterday because a friendly young black neighbour had shown Bill a shortcut for us to take as we traipsed all
day up and down through the woods with our luggage, and the path evidently went through the madman’s land. We
stayed for only 30 seconds of the yelling, the rest was delivered to our poor black friend who confirmed the guy was
cuckoo and that it was a public footway.
I was feeling like we had to leave Martinique, what with all this black hostility and the kids getting eaten
alive by mosquitoes at night, the constant wind on our new beach and running out of free food. But then out of the
woods appeared Boris from the Bel Espoir come to visit us, accompanied by ‘Punch’, one of the merriest of the old
fellows, and Boris left us with loads of beautiful gear he didn’t need, natural fabric clothes, a canvas rucksack,
sleeping bag, brown rice, a huge bag of mandarins for the kids, plus a bag of food sent to us by departing passengers
of the ‘Rara Avis.’ Ned had resurrected from the dreadful trough he’d been in - must have been the swim, and
having to cope with the Gullmar crew. And then Bill signed on for his once-a-month sexual fling. And then, we
heard that English Captain Jim from Cape Verde is coming to Martinique soon, so we left a note for him in the Port
telling him how to find our hidey-hole.
Bill is concocting a tent for us out of pinned-together bits of cloth and plastic, fighting against the wind and
against time, trying to mosquito-proof the place before nightfall. Ned is in the ‘kitchen’ - two sheets of corrugated
iron behind which he squats with everything covered in sand. He is cooking for nine people as three young lads
from the Bel Espoir have just joined us in the woods. We all watched the Bel Espoir on the horizon, motoring off
and a few jokes were cracked about us having a ringside seat to see her sink.
6th February 1988
Hello People Back Home,
I’m sitting in the hot sea on a home-mended armchair with a very strong breeze blowing at me, the tubular
chair-legs sinking into the sand as the waves lap over my feet and the sun sinking behind the bushes. Bill found a
small tent thrown away near the ferry, so our camp is growing. He was with Louise looking in a dustbin when
some people from a boat collared him and gave him loads of food - they were glad to find someone to give it to they
said. He also found piles of cloth and wools for me to make things, plus toys and Xmas decorations (!) for the kids.
We have now built a hut out of the woods itself by weaving the branches of surrounding bushes together. Ned and
I did it. We lifted the canopy of the forest with poles, burnt the debris covering the forest floor for cooking wood,
put up two bits of corrugated iron, well camouflaged, as a rain cover, and added sail canvas found by Bill and four
umbrellas which, suspended to form a roof, also provide clothes hooks.
As regards resourcefulness, coping, teamwork and hardiness of spirit, also general attitude towards rough
living, this team is A-One; on the emotional front however….. As I said in bed last night, do we really want to drag
the slime of Europe across a new continent?
This comment was met by Concern from Ned, and black
chewing-gummy vibes from Bill whom I renamed Dill (short for Dildo). He claims to be dying of some disease or
other. We said we wished he’d hurry up. The only thing keeping him halfway liveable with was his daily
expression of aggression to the Ghoulmar crew. Lacking this outlet, one night he did not even come home after
Ned had read him the Riot Act. I live in danger of comparing Fred favourably with my present companions, though
Bill, like Fred, is extremely alive during his three-minute switchons, and that’s the hook, as well as his brilliant trail
of free supplies, the latest being many packets of mosquito-coils (not an insect contraceptive, but an insect repellent
which you burn).
17th February 1988
Dear Snow and Co,
The last few days have been idyllic, coming nearest to my youthful fantasies of building huts of twigs in
the woods. Our hut is invisible from the shore; it’s a huge bird’s nest, the intertwined twigs and branches still
growing. On the inside, the nest incongruously incorporates tinsel, Christmas decorations, silver paper, plastic
bags, cardboard boxes, corrugated iron, old bits of tarpaulin and our faithful umbrellas, all artistically woven in. In
the centre, the fire is always alight. Bill has found and renovated three chairs; an old suitcase is the kitchen
cupboard and a new suitcase is the kid’s clothing store. The floor is sandy earth. The wind copes with the midges
and mosquitoes on windy days; on airless days, we wear socks, long trousers and long-sleeved shirts, and as soon as
dark comes, we disappear into our tents. The only sacrifice is the night sky: you really do have to give it up if you
want to deprive the mosquitoes of a long meal.
Yesterday was one of the most contented days of my whole life, spent sitting on our own little beach,
making a dress for Katie out of scrap. But the day ended strangely with the world spinning faster than normal, the
floor sliding away from me and me feeling sick. So with Ned’s help, I got a field-hospital together and lay down
feeling ill but happy while the men attended the campfire and made toffee for the kids, who live in a constant
adventure playground, with their own beach, fishponds, trees to swing on and climb and plenty of invented toys cars, boats and dolls’ houses out of cardboard. They fight hugely and play imaginatively. I am proud of the
amount of space and closeness, intrusion and privacy, healthy disgust and general affection, hardheartedness and
interdependence, humour and awareness of the seriousness of it all, that we have amongst us. Not a morning or
evening passes without Ned’s recent and distant past being brought up. I have a vested interest in getting the
taciturn Ned to speak, so as to shut the verbose Bill up. Although the winds blew Bill to Cape Verde, and the
airlines brought Ned, and the Gullmar dumped me, there is a voluntariness about our present association: only a
Fred can be foolhardy enough not to notice that what we all have in common is far greater than the issues which
divide us.
All the best, Jenny.
18th February 1988
Dear Snow’n’all,
My ‘sunstroke’ headache has remained intact for two nights and a day. I am very ill. And Bill has, of
course, cut off. In bed, everything took a swoop for the downward, my battered head, the tent airless and full of
mosquitoes, the rain pouring down; Bill’s sulk got blacker and deeper. I lay in ill sleep on Ned’s shoulder to try
and cure the pain. Bill didn’t mind helping Ned therapeutically as long as he thought there was no chance of Ned
coming through; when Ned opens up a bit, Bill hates him for it. I think he managed about one week this time
before going black.
22nd February 1988
Things so bad with Bill, we’ve stopped letting him sleep here and have sent him to town. I am very ill. Yesterday
my whole body seized up but I had to drag myself around as we had a camp emergency - very heavy rain. This
morning I couldn’t move my neck from side to side.
23rd February 1988
Something is happening to the kids: it starts as a red flush all over the face, then swelling which turns to blisters,
then horrible scabs. Ned gets it too, mainly on his hands and arms. And we all get burning of the lip and mouth
ulcers, and yet the kids are full of health and energy and are playing happily as usual under the trees on the swings
Ned made them.
25th February 1988
When I saw the kids today, I nearly passed out. Alice’s face was bright red, Katie’s face was blotched red with
swollen eye-rims. I knew that that redness would soon turn to blisters, and then to scabs. Yet the children
continued to have energy, and no high temperature. What could attack them so incredibly fast? It definitely
wasn’t sunburn - no sun at the moment. Yet their faces were burned and their eyes were swelling up. I said, we’ll
see how this develops and take them to a doctor tomorrow if it gets worse.
In the evening, I heard Katie yelling in her sleep. We brought her from the kids’ tent into ours and turned
a light on - a bicycle torch Bill had found. I saw something horrible lying beside me that made my stomach seize
up. My once beautiful Katie was a monster. Her little face was puffed up, her eyes were completely sealed, she
was unrecognisable. And she cried and cried. Alice looked like a puffed-face Chinaman. Yet they still had no
temperature, and Kate was very bad-tempered which made me suspect she wasn’t about to die.
In the morning, Bill took Louise, who has just one of these wounds on her face, to see a doctor. Ned took
Alice separately to another; her whole face was now covered with blisters and her eyes were slits. I stayed at home
with Katie, who was still asleep. When she eventually woke up, I had to swallow very hard and keep a hold on
myself. My baby was a blind monster. She couldn’t open her eyes, which were congealed with pus, blisters and
swelling. Her trousers were full of diarrhoea. I carried her gently to the sea and washed her, experiencing what it
must be like to be the mother of a blind baby. I took her to our deckchair and laid her down. She slept nearly all
morning, her face now a mass of blisters, the delicate skin on her eye lids and beneath the eyes just one huge mess,
her mouth burnt. She slept and slept.
Then I spotted a young black man in the woods. He comes here every day to trap land-crabs. He’d
sheltered me and the kids the day we arrived, in a torrential downpour, in his house on a little beach near here. I
went up to him in tears and asked him in French if he would come and look at my child. He came immediately.
He stared at Katie intently for a long time, while I held my breath. Then suddenly he galvanised into
action shouting; ‘Manzanouille!’ The trees! Poison trees! We were living in, living under, a glade of the poison,
acid, burning manzanouille tree. I remember reading about them long ago in a French tourist book: “All those who
have the misfortune to shelter beneath these trees will find themselves covered with burns.”
My black friend rushed off into the woods and picked a bunch of olive leaves, bossing me around and
telling me to get some water boiling. I experienced total relief; he took over completely and all I had to do was
obey. He told me that wherever the poison trees grow, the ‘contre-poison’ (antidote), the olive tree, also grows.
The cure was to boil the olive leaves thoroughly, let the liquid cool, then dab it onto the acid burns several times a
day. If the children had ingested any of the poison, they had to be given the potion to drink, and then forced to be
sick. The black man said, ‘It’s very good you called me, because les médécins (the doctors)….Pah!’ and he made a
dismissive gesture. I already knew he was right because a few days ago I’d hitched a lift with a French doctor who
had looked at a couple of the blister burns on Louise and said it was a viral infection. And I knew that if Ned had
received the correct information, he’d have been home in a flash, and he’d been gone hours. When he finally did
return, he had a carrier bag full of medicines and had spent about £12; if he’d have bought all he’d been prescribed,
it would have come to £20. And it was all irrelevant. Bill arrived shortly afterwards and had had a similar
experience, except of course, being Bill, the doctor had given him the medicine free. Bill’s doctor had informed
him that Louise had impetigo; Ned’s doctor had insisted Alice had been burnt; then said, ‘It’s sunburn’, and had
finally settled for staphylococcus infection and a prescription for expensive soaps, washes, ointments, and
antibiotics.
Meanwhile, the potion over the campfire brewed, and the witchdoctor’s instructions were being carried out.
Katie had opened her eyes one eighth of an inch, she’d drank some milk and spoken through swollen lips to her
sisters.
That night, while I lay groaning with bayonet pains shooting through my temple and jaw from whatever
illness I had, Katie slept peacefully all night. This morning, the sight of her was as ghastly as ever, with her eyes
sealed together. Leading a blind child to the potty, I expected to devote myself to caring for her all day. But two
minutes later, she was playing with the heap of plastic toys Bill found yesterday and is now running around in the
midgy muggy woods with the others, her eyes now one-quarter inch open, looking as if she just arrived from
Nagasaki in 1945, but in perfect health. I shudder to think what would be being done to her now if the doctors had
set eyes on her; the ignorance of the white doctors here is unfathomable. Ned’s doctor had a diploma in tropical
medicine and had muttered about ‘poisonous plants’ and said not to burn wood! but actually knew nothing. The
major factor in the tragedy had been that Katie had sat for half an hour pulling off the leaves of the manzanouille
tree. She had even said to me; ‘Look mum, I’m playing at taking off the leaves’ and was so disarming, I hadn’t the
heart to lecture her about not damaging trees. Little did I know that the tree itself was about to engrain correct
woodland behaviour in our brains forever.
CHAPTER 6
IN WHICH I DID NOT SEE THE CARIBBEAN
26th February 1988
Yesterday a little rubber dinghy suddenly zoomed up to our hidden beach where no-one ever lands. It was Captain
Jim! “Get in, we’re going to Venezuela!” he said in his broad Cockney accent.
It is the most inauspicious time to travel, I have to hide Katie’s face when we’re in public as she looks like
a napalm victim; and I have been constantly ill, hauling myself through days and nights of headache, neuralgia,
migraine, shooting pains in the head, and a strange sweatiness and sickness. All this is made worse by Bill and Ned
who have both sunken into passively foul states.
But Jim wants me and the kids on board - and will tolerate the men if they help with the sailing. He says he
wishes he’d taken me and the kids across the Atlantic as he hated his German and Swedish passengers so much that
he spent all his time hiding from them in bed! His boat is only 47 foot long, but wide and spacious inside. Jim is
easy-going and generous and the boat feels like a floating home.
Later
I am writing at sea, not that you’d notice it, as it is dead calm. The bays of Martinique seem almost stationary as we
slowly pass. Apart from Jim and my two horrible companions, there is one other person on board, an enormous
Belfast man of 52, also called Bill. He had heard of me and Atlantis in Ireland, and immediately called me out to
talk to him, saying “Perhaps you can give me therapy on this journey” - he’s evidently got problems with the wife as
a result of taking his girlfriend on holiday with them! He’s completely outrageous, open and easy to talk to, and is
already retired - he made a lot of money selling Union Jacks to the Proddies in Northern Ireland!
27th February 1988
Shooting pains in my head as Bilious Bill sucks up to Belfast Bill at the wheel. Ned and Bill are both being Good
Boys. They produce bland, tasteless meals and bland tasteless drinks and act in a bland tasteless manner. I now
have cystitis to add to my troubles. But despite the pain I’m in, what is happening is fantastic as Jim is taking us for
the price of our food the rest of the way to South America in the most relaxed fashion imaginable, gently
island-hopping with hardly a night at sea. However, ‘sailing’ in becalmed water is a most unpleasant experience as
it means use of a smelly noisy engine with shocking heat below decks and the sun far too hot to be above. Calm seas
are sicky and sticky. Barnsley Bill now holds the all-time seasickness record by managing to turn green, grey and
white all at once and puke up in seas calmer than the water in your washing-up bowl. Little Katie still looks like a
radiation victim, and me, I’m just being bayoneted every few seconds by pains in the head, in spite of which I
manage to have an extremely dynamic rapport with Belfast Bill, who is cheeky, aggressive and fun, in contrast to
the Shadows on the Deck.
The Island of BEQUIA
We docked, and Belfast Bill asked me out for the evening. I accepted, in spite of my state of physical health, in
order to protect my still intact mental health from the vibrations on board. I walked gingerly ashore, floating some
inches above the ground, hanging on to my huge companion. He then introduced me to the vulgar playgrounds of
the vulgar rich of France, England, America and Canada. Of these, the English are the most vulgar, the Americans
the most crude and gauche, whilst the French and Canadians are marginally more refined. The Caribbean blacks
are a surly post-colonial bunch looking out for every opportunity to insult the whites they ‘serve’ whilst ripping
them off handsomely. In the restaurant we went to, they made the white people queue up like kids waiting for
school dinners and serve themselves, then we had to traipse back across the long hallway with our food, for which
honour some atrocious sum in East Caribbean dollars was demanded. Belfast Bill went in looking for a fight,
negro-hater that he is; he was deliberately rude to the large black man behind the bar, who then came striding across
to our table, threw Bill’s tip back in his face and said, “I been a-meeting your type before.”
I watched all this wide-eyed with amazement. There are a lot of different worlds on this planet!
We’d been at the café the table all of two minutes when Bill said in his booming Belfast accent: “Do
you like oral sex?” I nearly dropped dead and felt like a 14-year-old out on my first date with some bad man I’d
picked up. As for Jim, he already holds the world speed record for how many dirty jokes he can pack into a
millisecond. I began wondering through the pain of my head the stinging of my cystitis and the aches all over my
body, plus the fact that the table and floor on my left-hand side were slipping away from me, just what I’d let myself
in for. But I was absolutely determined to have a go at ridding my body of the contamination I feel from Bill and
Ned who are just hanging around to help carry my coffin, so after a dinner I was too ill to eat, I took stock of my
surroundings: a large concrete dance floor; taped music; a pretend-band of zombies aping the music for some
unfathomable reason (the high female voice on the tape didn’t fit too well with the all-male mime-band); no-one
dancing. I asked my escort very nicely if he’d mind if I danced alone, I then took over the empty dance floor, let
go, and gave the blacks a dancing lesson complete with high kicks. Soon I had the whole floor bopping with
bottoms of large black proportions. I asked a white man who claimed to be 87, but who was sprightly and fit and
attractive enough to be 60, to dance with me, which he did. But he kept trying to calm me down and stop me
dancing so wildly, and when he failed, he gave up, claiming the doctors had wanted to amputate his leg last week
after he fell on a rock. So I got hold of Jim’s 22 year old daughter who is staying in Bequia, and we started dancing
together. I loved it, but she said she’d fallen and hurt her leg on a rock that day too, so I ended up dancing alone
again, which was the best arrangement considering the amount of energy I needed to get rid of.
After that, the evening sailed along. I discovered that in these white-man’s holiday grounds there is a
whole stratum of so-called middle-aged and ‘old’ business men who are younger, healthier, sexier and more alive
than any male specimen I’ve met for a very long time. They talk about nothing but sex, competing in how low they
can sink with their jokes. And the thing is, they actually like women. Big Bill tried a few teenage snogging
numbers with me which were not appreciated; I knew what I wanted, and that was his flesh, all 15 stone of it, to
bury my head and all its pains in, to sink into, drown and lose myself.
We returned to the boat where Bilious Bill and Nice Ned had kindly made up a huge bed on the deck,
wherein they actually expected me to posit my body, what’s left of it, between them after days and nights of their
psychic vulturism. So I grabbed Belfast Bill’s enormous hand and said, ‘Oh, isn’t that nice of them’, peeled back
the sheets and lay down with him. He had a cowboy hat and boots on. Barnsley Bill, who had become the size of a
vinegar bottle and was the colour of Thames mud, had the nerve to try and slip in beside me and the ship’s rail; a
gap of about 2½ centimetres. Ned lay down on the other side of Belfast Bill and started snoring. The jokes flew
thick and fast. Big Bill was the most relaxed lump of human protoplasm I had ever encountered, also the oldest
man I’ve ever slept with. I extracted all the headache cure I could, repeatedly removing bits of my body from his
hands and eventually stopped him hassling me with a simple method I used as a hitchhiking teenager in France when
threatened with rape by massive French lorry drivers: which is to make them come as soon as possible before they
even get their clothes off (it calms them down immediately and prevents murder). I could then pursue my own ends
with B.B., namely burying my head in his flesh in search of a headache cure.
Next day, I am laid out completely with raging cystitis. I’m dying, pouring with sweat, my whole head and
body in pain. Big Bill came and put oil on me and massaged me. He is completely loving. Small Bill is
completely toxic; the contrast is amazing. Those rich guys, Jim and Bill, are large-hearted people who get drunk
and cavort in the water like porpoises, knocking each other off the dinghy and laughing crazily. And they weep
openly when playing a tape of hymns sung beautifully by big Bill’s religious wife. Then they vociferously agree
with one another that all blacks should be exterminated as they’re not human and smell. They are anti-homosexual,
but openly love one another in a completely caring way. They are full of life and love and fun. Neither of them
smoke, but they drink, a lot. They are both working-class and have worked their way up in the world by various
means legal and illegal. They sing loudly out of tune, Protestant and Irish Republican songs with equal verve.
Early March 1988, Bequia
Life for me has been nothing but pain, illness, weakness, sweating; my days pass in a fog. Yesterday morning Ned
helped me to hobble to a doctor with my left kidney in agony; but every day the pains are in a different part of the
body. The doctor was Indian. He laid me down, tapped me and poked me and looked at me, without a word. Then
he told me to follow him into his office where he said, “Madam, I want to ask you a question. Is there anything
troubling you?” I stared at him, then realised he meant anything emotional. ‘Oh, you’re suggesting my pains are
psychosomatic?” I said, somewhat relieved. “Yes, Madam, I have to tell you you are suffering from a neurosis”, he
said, and charged me £5 for telling me so.
I left the surgery with Ned, trying to believe the doctor. I collapsed instantly. The distance to the boat
was a couple of hundred yards, and I couldn’t make it. I had to kneel, squat or lie down several times, just so that I
didn’t pass out. I felt just like after Katie was born on the island, a weakness close to death.
Barnsley Bill has sat behind me to support me for half an hour just so I could write this. Yesterday, my
spine was in such agony that Ned had to put his unwilling hands on me just so that I could calm down enough to
sleep. Big Bill has a friend on Trinidad who is a haematologist and he says he’ll get me blood tests to find out
what’s wrong.
Approximately March 6th 1988
I am writing to you on my way by sea to hospital in Trinidad. I have been incredibly ill. Between 11:00 a.m. and
4:00 p.m., I get a few hours when I can sit up a little, speak without exhaustion, even go to the loo without fainting
on the way. My crisis has frightened Ned and Bill into being human with me and really looking after me. They also
have the kids to look after and quite a lot of sailing duties.
Yesterday, we were anchored in Grenada harbour. Barnsley Bill went zooming round to all the posh
yachts in the dinghy looking for a doctor. He brought on board two very proper Swiss gentlemen, one a doctor, the
other a dentist. It felt like a visit from angels. They told me that whatever I have, it isn’t hepatitis as my eyes aren’t
yellow, that I must get a blood test immediately and that I won’t die in the next two days.
Jim keeps shoving medicines, antibiotics and painkillers at me, but I refuse to take anything at all until I
know what I’ve got, apart, of course, from a “neurosis.”
Port of Spain, Trinidad, March 8th 1988
From Bill
Jen’s too ill to write. As soon as we reached Trinidad, she left with Ned and Belfast Bill to find his doctor
friend. They came back several hours later with Jen half dead, having established that she has hepatitis.
Later, From Jenny
I’m horizontal, sweating, photophobic and feel like fainting.
Yesterday’s journey through polluted
Trinidad was a nightmare. I’d previously only been able to make the six paces on this boat to the toilet and
suddenly I had to walk hundreds of yards, sit upright, which is impossible, and wait at roadsides for taxis - I lay
down on the pavement while Ned explained me away to worried passers-by. On the long quayside walk on the
return journey, Ned tried dragging me, supporting me, carrying me; the tears were pouring down my face. The
doctor, who was accompanying us for a social visit, whispered confidentially to me that one of the effects of
hepatitis is that it makes you depressed. Depressed! I was in terrible pain. When we got home, Ned threw a
violent fit because of my ‘Bad Behaviour’ in public, that is, lying down on pavements in agony causing him the
terrible torture of social embarrassment. It reminded me of Fred complaining about me going into labour at the end
of my pregnancies - all three of them. And when Ned got insanely violent over this, Bill went flabby. And just
now, Jim freaked out at having to stay in a ‘black country’ just because we need visas to get into Venezuela. He
said maybe we could get off his boat and get the ‘ferry’ (there’s no such thing) to South America. And I can’t stand
up.
Meanwhile, in spite of these various male violences, I actually feel better, not physically, but mentally: I
have a Name for what is wrong with me, and I won’t be bothering to die from it. And I have new confidence in my
intouchness, as all my phantasies of what was happening to me have turned out to be very precisely correct: I had
felt that my body was somehow ‘shitting into itself’ - with a conked-out liver this is exactly what was happening. I
hadn’t been able to face any food, and wanted only ice-cream, jelly and boiled sweets - not available at sea and
never a part of my normal diet. The doctor, after applying a massive intravenous injection of vitamins which made
me sting all over and confirming that any medicine or antibiotic would have killed me, said the only food I was
allowed was ‘ice-cream, jelly and boiled sweets.’
After this, I lay stagnant for several days, which was good news as previously I’d always been getting
worse. Then Louise went down with hepatitis too. Jim kept insisting that what she had was seasickness. We had
been in port for nearly twenty-four hours. He also told me there was nothing wrong with me, that all my children
would die of yellow fever in Venezuela, that none of us would be allowed into Venezuela, that we’d all be dead in
three weeks anyway, killed by South American bandits, that we can’t stay on his boat, that he’ll miss us when we go
(crying as he said this) and there are No Roads in Venezuela. He then brought Big Bill’s doctor friend back on board
with injections for yellow fever for the kids and I feel sick that I finally went under to the psychic battery and let
them vaccinate the two howling younger ones. Louise was too ill. Big Bill followed this up by suddenly ripping
all our washing off the lines on deck saying that we were about to dock in a ‘yacht club.’ It turned out to be a slum;
we could have had pigs on deck. And my two longer-term companions informed me they hated Mummy for being
ill.
Thusly do we enter the Now World.
PART TWO - SOUTH AMERICA
CHAPTER 7:
VENEZUELA
12th March 1988
We docked in Pampatar Bay, on the island of Margarita, North-Eastern Venezuela. I lost count of all the nights of
distress, dripping with sweat, sick as a dog and weak as a kitten, and fuzzy-brained, in this very long illness called
hepatitis.
But I do remember Bill calling me urgently to come on deck in the first hour of morning light after docking
and me staggering up the steps of the boat. And I do remember staring out to see, moored just behind us, a great
ugly hunk of metal. The Gullmar. We had threatened to follow them everywhere till they paid back the money
they had stolen from me. Now Fate was forcing us to comply with our threat - but at what a time! With me laid
out, sweat-drenched, feeble and slow-brained after weeks in a tiny floating airless sick bay.
Both Bill and Ned shaved so that they wouldn’t be immediately recognizable. Bill went ashore and found
an English-speaking female lawyer. She assured us that if the Gullmar tried to move, they would find their papers
impounded. It was the weekend, but on Monday morning, so she said, she and a policeman would board the
Gullmar and confront them with our demands for repayment of my fare.
Just after dark, I left the Kukabo, Jim’s boat; it was the only time possible for me, as sunlight kills me. I
didn’t even know if I’d be able to walk.
I walked! I walked shrouded in a veil of greyness, gently testing myself, along the dark beach. Bill and
Ned were still on board, spending hours packing our gear and leaving everything tidy. Louise is weak, she’s very
thin and her tummy hurts. I moved carefully with the children sitting down every few yards, then gently moving on
again, breathing Venezuelan air, feeling the breeze through my sick, oily skin, the sea crashing beside me, but no
longer under me. Freedom.
For the first ten minutes, the toxic poisons just swum around in my head. Then gradually, I got a sense of
what was around me. Terra Firma made itself felt under my feet, though sometimes it rocked rather sickeningly. I
noticed that no-one was stopping us entering Venezuela, that there seemed to be a Road behind the beach shacks,
and that South America was a very normal, scruffy, populous sort of place where people didn’t mind you having
bare feet, three children, and sitting around on an evening beach. I noticed that no policeman came up and
demanded to know if I had a right to exist, and that no bandits had appeared demanding my money or what was left
of my life. I found my first taste of South America rather like I’d imagined; very human and tatty, and also, because
Venezuela is one of the richest South American countries, full of government-subsidised outboard engines and an
extraordinary number of fishing boats.
I walked back along the beach. My path led past the end of the wooden pier. A small figure in shorts
hopped off the pier in front of us. I recognised him at once. “Hello Johann,” I called out in the dark. Johann of the
Gullmar stopped still and turned round. I walked up to him, shook his hand, and said no more. He stared at the
children; the air around him was full of question marks, but he said not a word. So I smiled, ignored him and
moved on.
I then felt rather well. In fact, when Ned and Bill eventually rowed ashore with the luggage, I gave a little
dance on the sands; and then I played my violin for hours and hours into the Venezuelan night. But I paid heavily
for my moments with Johann: forewarned, the Gullmar slipped anchor and disappeared next day, before our lawyer
could act.
Since I left the boat, my mind has healed, I have discovered for example, that it was really rather a lovely
idea to come to South America. I have rediscovered that life is possible, that it can be shared with a huge variety of
people, and that myself and children are nowhere but in Sweden-land treated like lepers. People give us melons,
bananas and eggs. And when we travel as a family group, live simply, cook in the open, lug large quantities of
strange-looking baggage around and hang out our washing, this is accepted unquestioningly as part of life. I have
come to know and assess people by their attitude to my washing!
The remains of our money, after Sweden and Le Bel Espoir have taken their toll, is suddenly worth a great
deal: Venezuela is extraordinarily cheap. I was feeling poor, but now what we have left is plenty, in spite of all the
doom-laden predictions of Jim who would make Rockefeller feel like a pauper.
We slept our first night under a tarpaulin roof on the beach. Next day, Bill hailed a huge old taxi - £2.60
for 30 kilometres. We told the driver to drive far far away from anything or anyone. I needed an isolated beach
hospital to recover. We went to the edge of nowhere. The sun beat down mercilessly. Bill found a fisherman’s
canvas roof stretched across poles and we moved in under it, the sea nearby with rock pools and sand and shells for
the children and no-one anywhere in sight.
And here I sit, bearing a little sun for the first time on my dank, cold, half-dead flesh; my sweat is cold,
constant, oily and grey. But today I managed to do the washing, and to write you this letter. I walk, move, even
collect driftwood for the fire. I feel once more I have a life, and even a future.
Everyone we talk to has bad hepatitis. Some people report months of hospitalisation; others
say it takes a year to get better. Today Katie’s pee was dark orange and she was miserable and
bad-tempered, and my heart sank; but all day she has been playing happily. Louise has been very grey
with the illness, but children seem to recover so much quicker.
In spite of the degradation of hepatitis, I am left feeling quite beautiful. The weakness and dependence I
have felt have been the most extreme since childbirth and this made me feel very female and completely reliant on
Ned and Bill to do everything. They have done it very well, with the exception of course, of keeping themselves
emotionally healthy, which they don’t.
Ned has the well-meaning bubonic plague and Bill has the
badly-intentioned I’m-perfectly-alrights.
One year of this journey has passed. I love the delicate remains of myself, which is just as well, as I have
been under one or two influences that did not favour my continuance on the planet.
17th March 1988
I declared myself fit to move on. We packed up our camp, left lots of gear for local fisherfolk who had made
friends with us and walked along the sands, all the way from the deserted end of the island back to the lights and
tourists, starting at the only time it is bearable to move near sundown. Then we slept on the beach.
Next day, I celebrated my return to society by going to the dentist and having a tooth out. The dentist was a
lonely little middle-aged man whom I found dolefully standing in his doorway as if no-one had been to him for a
long time. Going to the dentist was a completely ecstatic experience. What? Yes, because I was so terrified, and
he responded with such love and gentleness, and it didn’t hurt after all. He told me I was ‘muy sensible’ which
means ‘very sensitive’ and that pain and pleasure are very closely linked, and he brushed against my breast, assuring
me this was necessary for the position he had to get into. I asked him if he’d ever been scared when first he took
out someone’s tooth and he said, “Yes!” he had shaken so much, he pretended to his patient that he was wobbling
the tooth to loosen it.
I returned to my waiting family, walking on air and very proud of myself having a tooth out all on my own!
I wrote Bill and Ned a note and handed it to them: “You’ll be very pleased to hear that the dentist says I mustn’t
speak for an hour in case of bleeding.”
Then we left for mainland Venezuela on a huge ferry where they locked us all - hundreds of people - into a
cage below deck. Artificial modern travel gone mad - we never saw the sea. We laid out our foam and bedding in
a corner and rested the whole way, except the kids who spent the entire journey rushing up and down the huge cage.
Ned with nil Spanish somehow conversed with some lorry drivers who fed him on beer; the kids kept bringing me
cups of it. You’re not supposed to take alcohol when you have hepatitis but I have drunk both red wine and beer in
small quantities and it has helped me with the pain of the illness. For future sufferers of the hep., let me put on
record that I have cured myself through (1) having sex (the most important); (2) eating ice-cream; and (3) having a
tooth out.
Our team is working well again: Bill and Ned have looked after me faultlessly after their initial neglect.
For the moment I have a good relationship with one of the team members; he’s not very nice-looking but
occasionally the sex is very nice indeed. Louise has come through her hepatitis, and I at last have normal-coloured
pee, a beautiful sight to behold. My skin no longer oozes grey oil. My eyes are still a bit yellow, matching my
hair which has changed from dark brown to straw-colour, evidently a symptom of hepatitis - even Negroes go
ginger.
Venezuela is very friendly, very much like Tenerife, the people overweight, the towns dirty and polluted,
rubbish and wasteland everywhere. When we got off the ferry, it was 10:00 p.m. We walked a couple of hundred
yards, lay down under a palm tree on a mucky beach and people walked round us in the morning without batting an
eyelid. Toilets in Venezuela do exist, but they don’t flush and of course don’t have toilet paper.
There are cars everywhere. Everyone says to us: ‘Oh, stay in Venezuela, it’s the best, it’s the cheapest, it’s
the most prosperous, you’ll ‘advance’ the quickest, we have OIL.’ They all say the other countries are ‘dictaduras’,
dictatorships, and there are guerrilleros and the people are hungry. I’m sure they’re right. So we’re moving on.
It’s 800 km to the Andes.
Bill wrote to Captain Jim saying strange how Louise and Katie and Jenny still seem to be ‘seasick’ so far
inland, and how the cannibals here are very sneaky as they give you melons and cake and eggs to fatten you up
before they eat you. And Ned wrote a note giving information on hepatitis to the doctor in Bequia who charged me
£5 to tell me I had a neurosis. Ned is in and out of his neurosis all the time, mainly in, but we find ways to keep the
team going. I hope I don’t have to go to the dire lengths of nearly dying again though just to keep the team in good
repair. After my brush with death, I have symptoms of severe malnutrition, my stomach is sunken in, my legs
Biafran, my skin aged and I keep needing milk and tomatoes. I have for the first time ever experienced missing a
period simply through ill-health. The guys joke feebly about how they’ll have to think of some new way to get me
down now I seem to be recovering, but I think even they don’t find it very funny after what we all went through.
We look very colourful as we travel, not hippy, not touristy, not rich, not too scruffy, not too poor, just very
unusual, very human, a manageable size and a relatable-to unit. I am pleased to report that amidst all my terrible
failures over wasted money, getting on awful boats and my health cracking up, I was right that South America is an
A-One place to be and that the family unit is a great way to travel in the Third World. Also I’m happier, more
myself, less fraught and better-tempered without Fred. For whatever weird chemical or character reasons, my life
with Bill is very sexual and this is very good for the self-esteem of women in their forties! Also, it keeps you slim,
mobile, suitably sarcastic about anti-life forces and quite nice to the children.
Yesterday a Chilean we met recommended we live in Chile (1) because there are no Negroes; (2) because
it’s very ‘tranquilo’ (everyone dead since the military coup?) and (3) because it’s orderly, clean and the people are
very educado (polite). Guess where we won’t be going.
20th March 1988
We spent two days in buses and travelled right across Venezuela for about £6 a day for the whole lot of us. The
first day, we had a mad driver and the bus was so hot that whenever it stopped, our last body fluids dripped on to the
floor. Ned and Bill were bare-chested and the police, sweating in their heavy uniforms, banged angrily on the bus
window, ordering them to put their shirts back on, which they did, ostentatiously removing them again as soon as
the bus moved on.
We passed through Caracas, the capital; 2,000,000 people crowded together, every hillside covered in
human beehives. As we sailed through, we called out of the windows “Good luck Fred, you can keep it.” (we had
heard that was where he was headed) At ten o’clock at night, we disembarked in a place called Valencia, which
was so out-of-this-world awful, I just had to laugh. Disneyland, sex shops, a bus station so big we couldn’t find our
way out of it; Venezuela has gone far along the path of no return. Landing late and tired in this strange inhospitable
place, I implemented our golden travel-rule: your resting-place is nearby. And there it was, a piece of wasteland
outside the bus station. We lay down our huge plastic sheet, our bedding, ourselves, and slept. In the morning, Ned
fetched water, I did a big wash and hung up our wet washing at the back of the hot breezy bus we then boarded.
Eight hours later, at the end of the journey, I folded it dry into our bags, and we descended into a town called
Trujillo, at the very beginning of the Andes.
We always feel hot, ratty and embarrassed when we arrive, stiff in mind and body, at any new place, and
never know what to do. I grit my teeth, steel my soul and trust, aggressively. Marching on as if I knew where we
were going, I looked over a wall and saw far below a very small river, a tree and a tiny spot of green. A frightening
broken metal stairway with steps missing led the long way down to it. Louise went gaily on ahead, unafraid, and I
forced myself to follow her. At the bottom was a scruffy house inhabited by simple people. They said, “Stay here.”
So we did.
They have no furniture, eat very little food, live in a cloud of midges, have electric light on all night and
water running always as there is no tap on the pipe. We have been here for two days now, and the kids have spent
most of it in the little shower-room, which is also the toilet. I’ve spent the whole time sewing, with Ned cooking on
the fire outside. At night I played violin for the people here and the men of the house take Ned and give him a lot
of beer, which does not improve him one bit. The kids sleep on our bedding laid on the concrete floor of the house;
Bill and I sleep and cavort in our tiny tent erected amidst the ants and midges, and Ned sleeps outside on the
concrete veranda getting eaten by midges because, according to him, ‘he likes it.’
The little kids of our host family are pale and ugly and unhealthy and have bare arms and legs which feed
the mosquitoes. We have fed the whole family for two days. They are not desperately poor, their menfolk have
jobs, but they are hungry out of a kind of lethargy to do anything about it. At night, the men buy vast quantities of
beer and pass it around, which helps me to play the violin without being embarrassed, but as I say, doesn’t do much
for the character structures of Bill and Ned. This doesn’t bother me too much as it’s more the body structure of one
of them that I’m interested in, which is extremely odd to look at but fine in the dark.
Although inside me I can still feel the tremblings and backlog of hunger from the hepatitis, the end of the
illness was officially announced by the return of my missing periods.
As I write to you, the river is sending up smells of what it is - an open sewer fed by the toilets of the
villages higher up. The women laugh at us because we carefully burn our used toilet paper. They of course throw
it in the river, along with their plastic bottles.
At night, fifty foot above us, a discothèque fills the world with loud music and one of the fellows of this
house, a quite astonishingly ugly man with a fat beer belly, fills this house with drunken brawling until the very
small women beat him with sticks and bite him, sending him packing. Last night he declared he had fallen in love
with me and kept repeating about 93 times ‘Jenny bonita’, (pretty!?) at which Bill unkindly pointed out that the man
was cross-eyed.
These people want us to stay here ‘forever’ so we’re off tomorrow to the Andes proper, to see if we can
find South America in Colombia, because it certainly isn’t in Venezuela.
End of March 1988
I just spent two days in the little park attached to a bus-station outside Mérida, the last big town in Venezuela. At
night, we slept on some bulldozed land by a wall on a building site. There was a tap near some flats and there I did
our washing each morning and dried it in the bus-station park each day. We were stuck. We had run out of
Venezuelan Bolivars and needed to change money, which in our ignorance we had kept in Spanish pesetas, with a
few pounds sterling. Bill walked around Mérida for five hours discovering that no bank will change any such thing.
The US dollar may be toilet paper elsewhere at the moment, but here it is still the currency. Eventually he found a
travel-agent that changed him £100 sterling at a loss of about 10%. Meanwhile Ned was rushing around Mérida
trying to find foreigners who might change pesetas for us; he went to the little airport to catch people coming off the
planes and found himself face to face with the nurse from the Rara Avis, sister ship to the Bel Espoir, that had cured
my rotting foot in Cape Verde!
At last we were able to get on a bus and land, screwed-up with embarrassment through knowing how odd
we must seem, in the surprised little village of San Juan in the Venezuelan Andes. Just before leaving, however, we
had our final confirmation that we want nothing to do with Venezuela: Ned brought me two horrible German
travellers who informed me authoritatively that Venezuela is the best country in South America. On questioning,
they said with no sign of shame that they hadn’t been to any of the others.
The Sunday before Easter, March 1988
Arriving in a little mountain town, we were told there was a waterfall nearby.
Hungry for greenness and
countryside wilderness, we set off happily. The road was wide, concreted, unshaded and very steep. At the end of
it was a Government Park, with neatly constructed little bridges and paths, blaring music and a huge notice listing 12
‘no se puedes’ - You May Not.... Tight little cooking houses supplied with neatly cut piles of mountain logs for
day-trippers, the walk to the bottom of the waterfall concreted all the way. The children loved it. I felt sick. Ned
was sick. Bill sensibly refused even to go and look at it; he didn’t want the full frontal.
Disgusted, I crossed the wall out of the park, and there we found ordinary meadows with horses and foals,
and so we set up a beautiful camp in the folds of the mountains with nooks and crannies for cupboards and shelves
and seats, ample firewood and hidden places to go to the toilet, trees and birds and huge butterflies and lots of time
to sew and mend and knit the kids some jumpers - it’s a constant juggling act to keep them clothed; sometimes they
end up wearing my clothes if we travel for a day unable to do any washing. The farmer who owns these lovely
green hills came and chatted to us and said it’s fine for us to stay here, and Bill has turned our huge sheet of plastic
into a second tent simply by taping it to form a tunnel, cutting poles for it each time we stop, and pegging kids’
sheets over the two open ends. We are within sound of the waterfall, and unfortunately this means a Road, plus
incredibly loud and horrible music blaring from cars owned by noisy teenagers who drive up here at night; and
electric light shines even from the highest settlements in the mountains.
Louise keeps getting setbacks in her recovery from hepatitis, vomiting hugely and often, worrying me with
her thinness; but then next day she’s climbing trees and running up mountains, which I certainly can’t do - I have a
recurrent debility from the illness which makes it hard for me get back up the slope to camp after going down for a
pee. I also have a weird anorexia where my body is hungry, and yet all I feel like eating is watermelons.
Venezuela is the first place we’ve been in on this year-long journey which I have no incentive to tell you
about; it has everything we are escaping from, only on a vast scale: complete urbanisation and industrialisation of
the countryside, rampant ‘free enterprise’ - even the parks have private companies in charge of their upkeep - ; and
women with thick layers of make-up and long red-painted finger nails. Every settlement in the Andes is a horrible
car-ridden town, there is refuse everywhere, the rivers are stinking open sewers and people respond much as
urban-dwellers do anywhere in the world, that is, they ignore you to a very great extent. The lavatory attendants
here are also identical to the rest of their kin: miserable, hostile, resentful, surly money-grabbing and they make you
feel like you’re offering them a personal insult by wanting to use the loo.
Of course, within all this, you have South America, which means a freedom of behaviour inconceivable in
Europe: you can put up shacks and tents wherever you like, your kids can run and play under the water sprays in
parks, and you can even sleep there if you don’t mind the publicity. It is quite like Tenerife: affluent, ruined and
still, underneath it all, very Latin. Several people have told us of a lovely Venezuela somewhere, of primitive
peoples and sweet mountain villages. But then we were told that Mérida, an eight-kilometre urban sprawl polluting
an enormous valley in the mountains, is a lovely city. People who tell us Venezuela is the place to settle must feel
happy breathing car fumes, and presumably, sleeping on a mountainside with three kids about to cross into
Colombia would be their idea of hell.
I dreamt last night of Leffe of the Gullmar. He was pale and crumpled and I went to him and held him and
he melted and cracked up and disintegrated in my arms. It was very sexual; I felt madly in love with him,
mind-blown and excited, and I knew he would stay with me.
Then I woke up. It took me an hour and a half to get over the disappointment that none of this was real,
but just a gigantic fantasy-fulfilment and that the reality of my everyday life is the vulgarity of Bill.
28th March 1988
Yes, Bill. He sulked so much about my dream and became such bad company, that weak as I was, we simply had
to break camp and move on to save ourselves from a quick death from the black fumes emitting from him. We left
the lovely hills covered with rowdy boy-scouts and the nauseatingly fat Venezuelans sitting on little ponies for a tiny
ride round the field, and we took off with far too much heavy food to carry far too late in the day, with Katie asleep
and a dead-weight on our backs, and the men plodding along under great packs - well, one way to extract energy
from Bill anyway. Down into the town, up the other side, and evening coming on. After hours, a truck stopped
and we bundled in. The driver said he'd take us to a camping place with ‘agua caliente’ - hot water. We were
mystified. We were dropped off where several streams flowed, near an old deserted house, a rickety bridge, green
green grass, some huge old trees - and a hot water spring! A pool of delicious warm water where the children have
played now for two days non-stop from grey dawn to bright night. They squeaked and called to us to see two huge
toads that live there which were hopping around mating, about the sexiest thing I’ve seen lately, given the deepening
of Bill’s black sulk.
All kinds of people come and bathe, almost fully-clothed, in the hot spring; crippled people come as it’s
sulphurated water, good for arthritis and other complaints. In the river running past us, there are hundreds of
perfect carrots floating downstream all day long, evidently from a carrot-washing plant upstream. We also have a
constant supply of fresh watercress from the same river.
An idyllic spot. Or so it should have been. But picture now a small green field surrounded by large and
lovely trees, a cool mountain environment, a couple of makeshift little huts and a pleasantly smoking camp fire. A
bronzed lady in her forties sits sewing sweetly. There is an early morning mist.
Picture then in the middle of the field a crazed lanky creature, his face covered with wet black mud, white
eyes wildly threatening, white teeth - some missing - gnashing and snarling and mouth yelling ‘I’ll get myself
deported’ into the breeze. In the same field, a lumbering lout in his 20s, sweating and snorting. The woman, no
longer sewing, is standing on weak and spindly legs screaming at the sheepish unrepentant lout that that was not
what she meant by creatively dealing with the Black Bill, namely, smearing bog mud in his face. She then defends
herself valiantly against the black mud-bespattered lunatic who is coming for her saying it’s all her fault. She
orders him off, using his all-pervading mother projections to elicit obedience. She insists he get washed, which he
proceeds to do, not, mind you, in the cold mountain stream, but in the kids’ warm pool, besmirching it with foul
mud and giving great attention to his precious trouser-turnups.
That was the end of Bill on this pioneering journey. There was nothing for it, but to work out how I could
manage alone with Ned. The prospect gave me a heavy heart, but the alternative of putting up with Bill’s childish
violence and sulks was just not on.
Ned gave Bill enough money to buy a guitar to earn his living, and he was duly packed off. He came back
later and stood by us, saying not a word. So we sent him shopping. He returned with the food, hung over us again
and tried ‘I hate both you bastards’ in a sulky, blaming way. We both leapt up simultaneously and screamed at him,
whereupon he went off with some speed. But only as far as the road, where he stood for several hours within sight of
us, immobile, shoulders and bottom lip drooping, black waves emitting from all his being.
Finally he came down to the camp and said, ‘I want another three or four hundred pounds’, whereupon I
laughed mightily, and Ned said, ‘Oh yes, sure we’re going to pay people to behave like you do.’ He left.
Early next morning, Ned and I packed up camp, walked a long way in the sun till the children started
moaning, then got on a country bus which took us to the top of a very high mountain covered in mist, very cold.
Louise was sick on the bus, a regular. Sitting next to Ned was a clean-shaven Colombian reading Nietzsche and
Bach (Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, not Johann Sebastian). He started lecturing Ned, ignoring the fact that Ned
does not speak Spanish, on the esoteric philosophy of the Gnostic Church. He had a loud voice and no awareness
of the ordinary people around him. He got off the bus at the same place as us. We had to climb incredibly steep
mountain roads with exhausted children. The Colombian, oblivious to everyone - carried on talking. I interrupted
long enough to tell him I came from a community called Atlantis. He then told me that a huge planet three times
the size of Jupiter will appear in the sky in June, the poles will shift, the seas will drain away and new continents
arise. Also that the blue-skinned (?!) people of Atlantis are still living with us under the sea and they will come up
and help those deserving of it.
An open-backed van stopped and took us on board, travelling through beautiful countryside.
The
Colombian did not stop. He proceeded to inform me that the answer to all problems is that ‘we’ have to hold in our
semen so that it goes to the brain to bring about higher consciousness. He said one intelligent thing, however: he
asked a peasant travelling with us to put out his cigarette as there was a huge leaking canister of petrol in the back of
the van with us.
Meanwhile, I struggled to keep the kids warm in the cold mountain air, and to stop the leaking petrol from
reaching our clothes and sleeping gear. Eventually, blessedly, the Colombian disembarked at a gaudy modern
church planted obscenely in the middle of the mountains.
The van now travelled down and down until it became unbearably hot as we reached a valley called La
Grita. We were left, dazed and stiff, at the side of the road. I did my washing in a midge-ridden streamlet, and
then in the cooler hours, we walked the long way into, through and out of a town in the difficult search for a night
camp along a busy dangerous road. In these circumstances, I have to be militaristic and hateful to the kids, just to
keep them alive: road-training them is a nightmare.
Eventually, exhausted, I settled for a dry, unattractive canyon where we camped on stony ground amidst
horse dung. Ned had to cross a scary-looking plank bridge to the other side of the valley just to get drinking water.
In the morning, I felt dreadfully weak after collecting a bucket of water from a stream to do the washing,
but as there was no shade whatever in the valley, we had to move on. We were packing our bits and pieces when
some instinct made me look up the sharp incline behind me. My heart stopped as I saw a familiar, ugly face. The
figure came down. Bill had found us. He had spent all his time finding us. Somehow he had seen us get on that
bus yesterday.
Yes, he found us. But what for? To sit and moan and sulk and weep fifth rate crocodile tears about us
‘leaving him to walk alone in South America.’ I collected the children and left, leaving Bill and Ned to pack up,
assuming there’d be some sensible resolution and reunion.
Myself and kids walked many a hot and horrid mile, plagued by a constant stream of traffic. We walked
until Louise had blisters. We sat by the side of the road, and along came Ned. Alone. Then Bill arrived, in a van.
I assumed - silly me - that Bill had hitched a lift to pick us all up, and so I put my bag in the back of the van. But
Ned muttered to me: ‘The last time I saw him, he was threatening me with rocks.’ I quickly got the picture, yelled at
Bill to put my bag out of the van, apologised to the driver, and that was the last we saw of Bill.
Ned and I and the kids had a picnic. Ned told me the story of Bill’s familiar outrageous nonsense when I’d
left the camp. Then we got a lift for many many miles to a very hot place called ‘La Fría’ (‘The Cold’).
That evening we were badly stuck, doing a frenzied trot along busy main roads desperately trying to find
rural Venezuela. We were saved at last by a young middle-class Venezuelan couple who gave us a long lift in their
open-backed van. We explained to them that we were looking for a little bit of flat land to camp on. Ah yes, ‘San
Pedro del Rio,’ they said, and took us to a smart little village, letting us down by some concrete benches on a
concrete path under some trees. ‘Thank you’, we said, kind of puzzled, looking around for some earth to bang tent
pegs into. There was none. So they bundled our baggage and children back into the van and took us round the
corner to a football pitch. There was a football match in progress. We piled out of the van again, me tearing my
flimsy skirt badly as I did so. We gulped a ‘thank you’ again, gathering that the kind couple had never been
camping. They told us that the road to ‘Colón’ was such and such, which was an odd piece of information, seeing
as we’d just come from there. I said ‘thank you’ once again ‘but we’re not going to Colón, we’re going to
Colombia.’ 'Oh, Colombia!' they said -'we’re going there, get back in.' So, embarrassed as hell, we bundled our
bags and baggage and by now very confused children back into the bumpy van and drove for several hours till we
were within spitting distance of the Colombian frontier. Once or twice we stopped for the Venezuelan bar-whizz
syndrome; it takes about thirty seconds: the driver whizzes into a bar and whizzes out smoking and hands us cans of
ice-cold beer (10p each!) or malte. Malte is a non-alcoholic fizzy malt drink, and quite the most disgusting liquid
I’ve ever tasted, worse than Pepsi Cola.
I travelled the whole journey in a state of excruciating tension; one, because the metal floor was boiling hot
from the engine; two, because it was impossible to keep any stable position in the back of a flying van; and three,
because it was now dark and I didn’t know where we were going to sleep. And four, because for weeks now I’ve
been pumped full of horror stories by all and sundry about Colombia. The woman in the van herself turned out to
be a Colombian and now repeated the familiar list of warnings: they’ll rob you, they’ll rape you, they’ll kill you,
they’ll steal your children. Why would anyone want to steal my children? I ask, ‘Pura maldad’ is always the reply
- pure badness. End of conversation, and beginning of tormented thought-stream, mind barely held together by
reason: Venezuela, everyone’s Promised Land, is hell to us. The people are fat, the rivers and air polluted, the
crops sprayed thick with poisons; hardly any wildlife. So if they tell me Colombia is dreadful ...
Towards the end of the journey, one of my worries ended. The good Catholic lady invited us to stay in her
house for the night.
Venezuelans live in cages. They build a house. And then they erect a metal mesh cage all around it. It
is a very nice cage, often hung with plants, beautifully tiled, usually with the dining room furniture on display to
passers-by, and even people sitting around inside the wire, breathing the car fumes of the busy road outside the cage.
Also all cages have a special compartment for the huge American car which every family owns. Coloured TV
blares out from these cages. Nevertheless, it was very nice on this particular night to get to this particular cage.
The toilet and shower were nice too, except that the toilet was part of the main bedroom where the couple slept and
had no door. Not very convenient for shy visitors with the hepatitis runs. We were very dirty from our urban
travels and felt terribly out of place.
Then we watched ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ reproduced on TV as a cheap jerky modern kids’
cartoon.
They made a meal. It was fried plantains, fried maize-burgers, little lumps of white salty cheese and huge
amounts of freezing gaseous Pepsi Cola. My heart sank. ‘Thank you,’ I said politely, wanting to cry. I couldn't eat
any of it.
They put Ned in a hammock on the veranda then locked him out. They let me lay out our grotty piece of
foam on their living-room floor and, leaving the air-fan whirring beside me, they said good night. It was a very bad
night. From where I lay, I could see through two sets of cage-bars to the cars on the red-dust street. Through the
open door beside me where whirred another electric fan, their very fat little eight-year-old girl coughed dreadfully.
In the morning, I was very ill. I talked to the woman about hepatitis. She said her little girl had had it
three years ago and that it had taken her two years to recover from it, She’d got fat, she said, from all the vitamin
injections. She told me you get better as long as you lie flat - oh how I longed to lie flat! - and don’t eat chocolate.
I was so weak I gave Ned the washing to do and in such distress I took over an hour to sew a small patch on to my
torn skirt.
Later, they drove us to ‘a very good place to camp.’ It is called ‘Aguas Calientes’ - hot springs. They
stink, most horribly, of sulphur. It is rather like being in hell. The water in them is boiling. The Venezuelans
have the knack of making any place they touch extremely ugly. Near the springs, they have built a massive public
washhouse. Hideous. Row upon row of concrete sinks with alarming concrete ‘washboards’ beside them where
the women punish their clothing and try to tell me I should do likewise. What is left of their clothes is then hung
upon lines of barbed wire put there specially for the purpose. As Ned generously quipped, only a man could have
thought that one up.
Our kindly hosts showed us proudly round this ‘camping spot’, gave the children a large doll each, and then
left. I collapsed near the boiling hot sulphurous water, ignoring the midges, whilst Ned went scouting through the
insect-ridden sulphur-stinking woods to find - nothing. No piece of flat land anywhere.
And so I dragged myself on all fours up a steep steep incline, Ned bravely carting a rucksack, a food
bag, and Katie. Up, up, anywhere, just to climb out of Hell, struggling through thick pathless thorny undergrowth,
slithering on stony landslides, up, till the nauseous smell of sulphur and the last happy Venezuelan holiday-makers
were left behind.
With my last drop of strength falling from me, I spotted a man-made structure in the undergrowth. It was
a concrete bunker about four feet high, with no roof. I sank down, letting go of my violin which somehow I’d
managed to carry safely, and letting the last shreds of a pair of seaside slippers fall from me. And I wept, a long,
overdue weep. And I carried on weeping from pure weakness as Ned viewed the bunker full of earth, stones, cactus
plants, small saplings, ants, millipedes and woodland debris. He worked to clear a corner of the concrete pit,
carrying out the stones and dust with his bare hands. At one point, I attempted to help for two minutes. Mistake.
That cost me another hour’s rest. I was very very ill.
We laid our tent on the dusty floor, then a piece of foam and a sheet, and then finally, I could lie, blessedly
flat at last, in my new hospital surrounded by trees and dry scrub. I knew Ned would have to descend that
near-vertical hill for every drop of drinking water and food, but he gets extremely ratty if I mention that he might
have any physical difficulty whatsoever, so I try not to too often. I had the thing most important to me: privacy. I
knew I was going to die, and I wanted to die in peace.
That night I was ill indeed, with stomach pains, vomiting and constant hepatitic excretions. I could hardly
stand, let alone get through the sharp bush each time I needed to divest my body of some foul matter, so I had to
crawl, and would then suffer a relapse within the relapse each time I got back to base. My tongue was fat, dry and
furry; I was hungry, but unable to eat as all food tasted of excrement.
Ned is scaly as a dinosaur, but he gave what
he could and I took what I needed. I groaned in my pain that I wished I had someone, even a Barnsley Bill, to talk
to, and I kept on like this until eventually Ned hauled himself to the surface through the abnormally thick layers of
his sleep, and was then very attentive, if not exactly sensuous, making the fire bright, our only sign of Hope in the
darkness. Then finally I pushed through my fear of the bad reactions I might well receive from Ned and forced out
a yell which broke me into crying, and then right before me in my mind was Fred on a gigantic Ghoulmar telling me
I had no right to have any Needs, that I should be hermetically sealed in perfect self-sufficiency, and there was
Magan sneering at my woman-self, at my extreme weakness and difficulty in being in the world and looking after
three little children - who, incidentally, slept without a stir while I cried and groaned. And then the latest, the very
heavy, very strong, very competent Mr. Bill Dickinson laying his breathtakingly violent Child Act upon me.
Ned lay with me for a short while, something I had for a long time banned because of extreme neurosis on
his part plus extreme determination to engage me in, mix me in and blame me for, same. However, he lay beside me
to comfort me and laid a warm hand on my churning stomach and I slept a brief while which was pure magic. Then
I woke up in torment and went outside to be sick, nothing but burning bile, the trademark of the hep.
It is now about 7:00 a.m. on a wet morning in the Venezuelan wilderness, bird noises filling the woods
which were until last night's rain, spiky and crackling with a long drought. This is the first time I've been able to sit
up for several days. My insides are still very delicate. I am like a goat with scour, gaunt, and smelling roughly the
same. Goats though usually die more quickly, which I have often wished to do as I couldn't see how my body was
going to pull through. But somehow, with the help of ice ollies, boiled sweets and a mouthful of the ghastly fizzy
local wine to put me to sleep, I have survived.
To sleep at all last night was a miracle, on a piece of wet foam on some muddy concrete, naked, with a
damp sheet over me, our tiny thin tent stuck on sticks above us. The puddle I slept in was the result of Ned's
clumsiness in draining the puddle that had collected in the canvas above us. He drained it on to my head, his
revenge on me (for being a woman). My revenge on him was that he stayed up most of the night drenched, keeping
the fire going., making tea, draining more puddles off the roof and occasionally sitting uncomfortably in the
miniscule inches of space left under our shelter.
Ned and the children went down to the barbed-wire washhouse this morning to wash all our clothes which
got mud-drenched in the night. The discovery that I can sit and even stand today is very beautiful, though tempered
by the fact that my insides are collapsed and non-functioning. The town of Cúcuta, Colombia, is visible in the
distance, just ten minutes across the frontier. We'll go there when I can walk again. A few hundred feet below us,
Semana Santa (Holy Week) rages, complete with amplified services blaring from the church. Some of the choral
music is actually very beautiful; I was most impressed lying dying listening to the angels last night.
CHAPTER 8
COLOMBIA
Tuesday after Easter 1988
I am sitting weak but semi-ambulant on a busy, ugly, smelly Third World rubbish-strewn traffic island in Cúcuta,
Colombia. We just crossed the frontier on a shopper's bus, not that we noticed, as there were no checkpoints.
Everywhere around us is decrepit, and dilapidated, and we're already happier. The ‘bandidos’ who are supposed to
steal from us just offered me a crisp note of some denomination, thinking I was alone and destitute with my kids. A
little boy came over and gave me and the kids a dish of beautifully cooked rice and vegetables.
I am carrying several thousand pounds in my scruffy little rucksack. I feel odd, but safe. I think we have
come nearer to what we will call home.
8th April 1988, Concepción, a small town in N.E. Colombia
Dear Snowy,
Your sister is weak and Colombia is beautiful. Cúcuta was a horror pit of heat and dirt and urban insanity,
but then soon, the bus takes you to the hills... We have lived five days in Colombia, having to wear every last stitch
of much-mended clothing because we are in high mountains - cold! We are in the province of Santander where the
people all wear thick woven woollen ponchos and black bowler hats. We have travelled through the small towns of
Pamplona, where we camped two nights in the pine forests, and Chitagá, where we arrived after dark. We were
very stuck, yet couldn't bear to give in to paying for a pensión - we never have in all this long journey. Panicking
slightly, we were saved by a family who took us in, gave us floor-space and a small bed and even some extra
blankets; a very simple, poor family with hearts of gold. That night, rain thundered on the corrugated iron roof we'd have been absolutely sunk in our flimsy little tent. In the morning, I was weak again with hepatitis; it is my
fault - as soon as I feel better, I walk far too much, stunned by the beauty of Colombia, the running streams, the
greenery, the lovely high mountains. The day we left Pamplona, I had insisted on walking to really feel where we
are. The children moaned and dragged behind as we climbed the quiet road out of the little town, so when a truck
full of road workers, wheelbarrows and shovels stopped, we all climbed in. I was ecstatic, I felt we had arrived in
South America at last, but Louise was sour: she couldn't appreciate the romantic significance of sitting on tar, her
bones being shaken, with black fumes in her face, surrounded by worn-looking men in ponchos, mountain mists
swirling around us, to be dropped eventually by a hole in the road, which they all got out to mend.
But I was happy! I loved being dumped nowhere and not knowing where we were going. I loved to see
field upon field at crazy gradients with purple-flowering potatoes, shacks, chickens and water running everywhere.
I skipped on, walking for hours and hours, the children taking it in turns to be dreadful, with Katie the worst. Lots
of country buses passed us, all full, they wouldn't stop. Eventually one did, and then I realised why the poor kids
were so ratty: it was 5:00 p.m. Cloud had covered the sun all day and I'd been so happy, I'd lost touch with time.
All three children immediately fell asleep on the bus, and I realised I'd pushed them - and me - too much. I paid in
guilt and yet another relapse.
But still I feel like crying with relief at being in Colombia after the plastic horror of Venezuela. I have
been most impressed, too, by the 'ladrones' (thieves), especially by their tactics for stealing my children: they always
ask me first, as in ‘regálemela’ (Oh, give her to me!), marvelling at their blue eyes. Often I say 'Yes, here you are’,
especially if one of them has been annoying me, but I still seem to have three of them with me. Taking a look at
our general chaotic aspect, perhaps the ‘ladrones’ are not too hopeful of a very high ransom.
Hepatitis weakens me, slows me down and makes me stop; apart from when I'm actually groaning and
writhing in pain, I'd say this probably makes me slightly more bearable for my companions. Otherwise, I'd just
keep walking and walking forever in countryside like this. When we left cold, rainy Chitagá, we travelled for three
and a half hours by bus, down below cloud and mist level, down past mountain areas where all they can grow is
potatoes down to the relative richness of growing onions as well, further down to the maize-growing levels, and then
finally we stopped here in beautiful Concepción, a perfect climate, wet and cool and sunny and hot by turns. A
fast-flowing river by an old town, green flat banks by the river to camp on, friendly people, a stone-breakers' camp
right near us. These people take huge boulders from the river bed and break them with a mallet from dawn to dusk,
to provide material for road-building, for a daily pittance, but they found time to come and watch us put up our tiny
tent, light our fire - and then they brought us firewood. A woman stonebreaker from further down the river came
one evening and brought us an enormous packet of biscuits bread, a huge pack of coffee, rice, panela (block cane
sugar) and matches, and then warned us that the other stonebreakers were thieves. However, these ‘thieves’ like all
the others we've met so far, have been incredibly kind to us, sharing their simple lives with us.
There is a civil war in Colombia. Our experience of it so far has been limited to noticing a military
presence - short, skinny 15-year-old soldiers sauntering around some of the towns, and two bus-searches. In one
village, they pointed paranoidly at my violin case, stood back as if it would explode, and demanded I open it; when
everyone saw it was safe, they all crowded round to see the unknown instrument. The soldiers were also mystified
by my tampons and started pulling one to pieces. They made us unpack every stitch of clothing too, but by this
time, it was mainly curiosity, a spectacle for all the muddy village to watch. I liked it, because when our domestic
rubble was on display, we immediately became charity-cases instead of potential rich victims.
On one bus, a man started asking really interesting questions about what we were doing, and was quite
shocked that we don't even own a wristwatch. To my surprise and elation, our conversation led to half the bus
becoming involved in an animated discussion on the evils of pesticides. I felt shivers of excitement run through
me, all my fur standing on end, as I saw the purpose of us coming here, people from the rich dying North come to
wave a red flag saying, 'No, stop! turn back, don't copy, don't go any further, we've been there, we’ve seen, we
know where it leads to, and we want no more of it.' Talking with these country people, I found it really easy to
explain how we want to turn the clock back a century - they are really interested, never blank, uncomprehending,
sarcastic or 'clever' like you would find in Europe. It is a big surprise to me to discover that it is not just adverts for
Pepsi Cola, nuclear power and lipstick that the Third World is exposed to, but that ideas and information travel just
as easily, so that they are familiar with the issues of deforestation, pollution and other environmental destruction.
When in Europe I used to hear of the Brazilian forests being burnt down and feel rage; I didn't expect my first
sighting of a Venezuelan newspaper-heading to be an article worrying about forest-cutting, nor my first conversation
in Colombia to be about organic farming. Religions have travelled too: there are gatherings of evangelical sects
even in the smallest towns; I was handed a Seventh Day Adventist leaflet on a Venezuelan bus telling me of the
evils of keeping Sunday rather than Saturday as the Sabbath!
11th April 1988, My 46th Birthday, Concepción
I am always depressed on my birthday. We have been resting for three days under the corrugated iron roof
overhang of an old mud barn in a beautiful wet green mountain area, I've spent the whole time washing and
mending, as during the long and worst days of my hepatitis, everything went to rack and ruin and I'm still catching
up. Also a drop in temperature through living so high up in the world means I have to knit warm garments and do a
juggling act to wash and dry clothes and still have enough to wear at night. Yesterday it rained all day and all night
too; the first night in the chilly mountains. Ned, me and three kids slept in the tiny tent; we were dead tired and
no-one moved, so it worked. But all subsequent attempts to house five bodies in a two-person tent have been
ghastly - air is a problem. So Ned has usually braved the cold and slept outside; or in my very ill days at the
Venezuelan frontier, we both slept outside so I could groan, writhe and vomit all night. But now I am sleeping
outside as we have the luxury of the roof overhang above the earth floor.
Each night, I practice my violin. And each day, the very dirty farm people nearby bring us gifts of
potatoes bananas, beans, eggs, a little piece of homemade bread. They are poor, but to them, we seem so much
poorer - everyone is convinced we are destitute. Ned sat down with Louise in Concepción square for a brief rest
yesterday and was given 40p (the stone-breakers earn 70p a day each). Every time we leave a place, somehow we
manage to find amongst our paltry belongings some little articles of clothing or gifts for the people who are so good
to us.
14th April 1988
The deadness of life with Ned is unbearable. I knew it would be of course, but I didn't have a lot of choice. At our
Concepción camp, Ned interrupted a long silence with the information that he needed therapy. Then ensued several
more hours' silence during which I did a lot of sewing. He then repeated the statement to which I eventually
replied, 'But, Ned, I can't think of one single thing that I could possibly bear to come out of you, unless I was
surrounded by an army of bodyguards.’ Silence. So I said, 'I'm bored. Let's move camp’, to which he readily
agreed.
I have to mention that I am finding the full side-view of Ned (I wouldn't dream of exposing myself to the
full face-view) a little more sickening each day; sometimes the more virulent vibrations of Barnsley Bill seem
almost attractive in comparison. My complaints:
1.
Deliberate deafness.
2.
Unintelligible mumbling.
3.
Blowing his nose with his bare fingers, loudly, and near food.
4.
Collecting 'knowledge' of petty details and expecting me to be dazzled by it; saying, 'Yes, so
what?' when told anything; and scoffing at me for not knowing something I couldn't possibly
know.
5.
Unreal sugary voice when attempting to be 'nice.'
6.
Utter, complete, general, constant, total bad temper, unrelieved, unrelenting, unchanging and
self-righteous.
7.
Attempting constantly to argue, make an issue of, contend, and try to pick a fight over absurd
irrelevant petty and entirely boring details of daily life.
8.
An insistent vibration that I owe him something, namely, to make him happy. He's got a long
wait.
Two nights ago as we were leaving the little mountain town of Málaga, two nosey young cops gave me my
first dose of 'European' thinking since we left Jim of the Kukabo. “Are you hippies? What are your professions
and why aren't you teaching English?
Do you like walking around like that and what about the children’s
education?’ and so on. Yet in the end, they were pleased enough to shake hands with me and only looked at our
passports out of pure curiosity.
At 6:30 a.m. it is hot already, as we travel further downwards. Nearer the Equator, we have almost an
equal 12 hour night and day, but the high mountains give a kind of dawn and dusk by shielding us from the sun for
some time at each end of the day. Yesterday we just walked and walked; Colombia so far is exclusively lovely and
we have no desire to get buses, though twice cars stopped to give us lifts. We have reached a zone where for mile
upon mile of fertile mountain valley, all available land is taken up with growing - tobacco. At evening time, we
were taken by some well-meaning locals to a 'park' to camp in the little town of Capitanejo; the 'park' turned out to
be the town square. Light was failing, so we hurriedly left the town and camped on stony ground just outside it. I
slept outside the tent blissfully under the stars, dreaming beautiful dreams about ugly people with whom I have
delicious, sexy love affairs.
15th April 1988
And in the morning, I separated from Ned. I'm sorry about this, dear folks back home, all these men's fares and all
that, but with my physical health already so badly damaged, I have at least to guard my psychic health from male
vibrational bullying. It happened like this: We moved down off the stony hot midgy public piece of wasteland near
the pigsty where we camped last night, down a steep cliff to the muddy edge of a river. It was equally midgy there,
but cool as the vertical cliffs kept the sun off, for a while at least. Louise and Alice immediately painted their faces
thickly with river mud, Ned went off to buy food, and I attempted to get on with the washing. Then I felt so
liver-ill, I had to lie flat; my insides are wrecked.
Resting there by the riverside, I found myself playing with the idea of going it alone; I worked out details
of what I'd take, what I'd leave Ned, how I'd manage. Immediately, it became real. Ned returned from shopping, and
I handed him everything, keeping only my one small fragile yellow back-bag that I’ve had since the beginning of
this journey. It holds the kids' clothes, a towel, some sewing gear, and then it's full. I left Ned the violin and told
him to sell it in Bogotá. He was shocked at the separation and said, “Yes, I've been badtempered lately and
blaming you,” No further energy was offered, so I left. I was quiet and polite with him as usual; there's nothing to
get het up about when you don't share sex with a person.
I have plenty of technical problems. The first was how to get up the slope from the river without help. I
pant with the slightest incline, and this was practically vertical. I had to get Katie up there. Louise and Alice have
no problems with the physical world and hardly even noticed it was dangerous. Katie and I were scared; I got her
to crawl on all fours and just prayed my feet would hold as I supported her. Next thing we had to face was a long,
very hot road. I had to break through my shyness about going into bars just for water: the kids drink gallons of it and
we don't want to buy any horrible fizzy drinks. Katie always wants carrying. There is very little shade. It was
awful, but I was free.
We crossed a bridge over a river and a minibus trundled up, packed with people. I asked if there was room
for us as I wanted to put some distance between me and Ned to feel out who I was in my new, difficult, but more
interesting situation. We drove many hours to the horrible town of Diutama, getting very hungry. At one stop, I
asked could we get out to buy some bread - I was stuck at the back of the bus and couldn't move without other
people getting out. They refused, saying, “we're nearly there.” They were lying; we travelled for hours after that.
But three fat men got out and bought mouthfuls of cake for themselves. In the backseat with us was a woman who
had heard us say that we were hungry; she had a sack full of tomatoes and offered us none. We have reached urban
Colombia, flat, well-to-do, car-ridden, inhuman, the conservative province of Boyaca.
I paid to sleep in a bed, a very well-spent two quid. We showered in a measly but warm dribble and slept
blissfully, And in the morning, we starved. We awoke at dawn, and the shops didn't open till hours later. And every
time I went out to see if there was anything to buy, the landlady asked, “Se van?” 'Are you going?' Asking
directions in the street was like doing so in Paris, if you’ve ever had that unfortunate experience. And buying food
in the shops, they make you feel like they're doing you a favour to sell to you.
I saw myself in a mirror, the first time for months. I was shocked; I am sunken and thin, and ageing has
galloped ahead with my illness. But there seems to be something left of me, namely a preference for nervousness
and difficulty and hunger and worry rather than the bullying bullishness of a not-attractive young man who served
me like a rotten-tempered hotel slave used to better things.
16th April 1988, BOGOTÁ
Dear Snowy,
I feel like crying. We came all the way to this horrible city specially to get letters from you, and there aren't
any. And the nasty little post office official tells me they can't send post on if anything does come.
We hitchhiked here from Diutama - one lift all the way, hours and hours of driving in a jeep with a very
polite driver; we talked all the way, exhausting. When we got to Bogotá, my driver couldn't bear to leave us in the
centre where, he said ... the children would get kidnapped and put out to beg on the streets, and I would get robbed,
and all the cheap boarding houses would be full of prostitutes or let out by the hour to couples and we'd be disturbed
all night. So he gave himself and us a very bad time driving round and round town for hours, he dead tired, and
putting me in the embarrassing situation of having to refuse two expensive hotels he wanted to leave me at. In the
end I settled out of politeness for a £5 one, which I would never normally pay. It has no toilet paper, no soap, no
towel, no water coming out of the taps, but plenty coming out on to the floor from the toilets; a toilet that flushes
only once an hour, only one sheet per bed and one blanket, in freezing Bogotá. I asked for more blankets and slept
a good warm night cuddled up with the children. I even dared ask for a toilet roll this morning and was given the
measly end of one.
Not getting post from you is upsetting me terribly, I feel completely cut off from everything and everyone,
sitting in this dark cold uptight hotel just because I've been told that everything outside the window is dangerous.
I'll take the kids to a park and find out how to get OUT of Bogotá.
The kids somehow find amusement and enjoyment anywhere and give heart and warmth to everything. I
put them in the most boring, uncomfortable and difficult situations, and somehow they always come out shining,
with plenty of moans in between of course about hot sun or tired legs or lack of water, but never a moan about our
life-style - they feel entirely secure!
Later
I am resting my hepatitic back in the square outside the post office. There is a clown show going on. Alice
and Lou are delighted. Katie is yelling relentlessly and causing a public scene. I am desperately trying to abandon
her to kidnappers, but nothing goes right for me these days and not a bloody kidnapper in sight. In fact, as I
regarded my three bundles of noise and energy cantering down the sidewalks quite out of my control, I did verily
doubt the ability of any kidnappers to nap them.
Later Still
The square filled with clowns and actors giving hours of entertainment to the kids. I meanwhile
was accosted by some very violent Christians who tried for half an hour to beat me round the head with how much
Jesus loves me. I pointed out that I wasn't very impressed with how Jesus was treating me at present, whereupon
their aggression increased and they started to show their teeth, whilst pretending to offer me a meal and a house to
go to, to 'talk' further. I asked them for somewhere to sleep; this negotiation was underway when I suddenly looked
up and saw a clean, luggage-less NED. Fate accompli, excuse the pun.
So I got him to take the moaning Katie to see the clowns. A lady then came and sat beside me and said
she'd heard me arguing with the post-office man, agreed he was a heartless brute and offered to let me use her P.O.
Box address to receive post and she'd send it on to me. I am now sitting on her bed in her house, and so are my
three kids and her own nine-year-old daughter. She lives in one small room, so we can’t stay here, but she let me
have a luke-warm shower, I washed my hair, despaired at the shrunken state of my face and neck, did my washing
and hung it up on her line; turned off the violent American kung-fu programme on TV and I am waiting for Ned,
whom the lady, Myrian by name, thinks is very handsome. God forgive her.
Later Again
Myrian gave us a patchwork duvet cover her mother made, three neat tee-shirts for Louise, and I
gave her £2 to buy 20 eggs, some milk and bread, as my kids had eaten her out of house and home. Then she saw
us off to the bus-stop and I kissed her goodbye.
She had told me lots about Colombia, a pot-boiler of a country: a Liberal government that allows cocaine to
be grown in the sticky jungle, lets off the top drug ring-leader for a bribe, kills dissenters, the army shooting with
impunity; yet there is also a strong anti-drug campaign here and the families of the ‘desaparecidos’, disappeared
people arrested and killed by the police, march the streets in protest, the students are active, and everyone is very
politically aware. There is a middle class, clean, educated, aware, polite, rubbing shoulders uncomfortably with a
huge lumpen-proletariat that look like Irish gypsies; people sleeping and begging and hassling on the streets,
alongside the military walking around armed to the teeth. Ned reports he has been frisked several times for
weapons.
Yes, Ned. He was supposed to be taking us to the cheap hotel he had slept in the previous night. He
confidently marched me and tired kids miles through the centre of town which he claimed to know so well. At one
point I said, 'Oh look, there's the square we were in today.' NO IT'S NOT ' says Ned. Oh? says I, absolutely sure
it was. We walked on and on and on. Finally we came to an enormous square, and he stopped dead and admitted
he was lost, simultaneously claiming it was OK, he knew the way perfectly. My patience ended, and I demanded to
know the name of the street where his hotel was. “Calle Socorro” he said - ‘Help Street.’ Now this was a bit of
bad luck for Ned, because I knew exactly where it was - it happened to be the street we had stayed in last night - so I
quickly marched us there, all the way back we had just come. His hotel was 50 yards from ours!
Meanwhile…. Ned had carried all our beautiful bedding in the same rucksack as a leaking bottle of cooking
oil, but at least he knows everything about Colombia and Jesus loves me - he must do, he gave me Ned.
Colombia gets to my heart, tragic, amazing, dangerous courageous, many-faceted country.
The
townspeople are quite 'protestant' and uptight in many ways, not a warm people, and yet extraordinary kindness and
concern does come our way occasionally, like from Myrian and my driver yesterday. Myrian said, 'Don't live in
Colombia - go to Ecuador!'
I feel very tired and very full. Years ago, I had therapy to find my place in the world. Now I find my
place is the whole world.
Jen
18th April 1988, Bogotá
Not in Bogotá, but above it.
Standing in the Post Office square, knowing I wanted no more nights in
boarding-houses, I had looked upwards. Bogotá has been prevented from spreading further at this point by some
very steep green forested hills. ‘Let's go up there’ I said to Ned.
Up we went, a considerable climb with rucksacks and kids; but we were rewarded: a lovely pine forest with
some flat green grassy spots and a couple of farms, just quarter of an hour from the main Post Office. No-one
comes up here - city dwellers are allergic to grass - so we have a huge sweet-smelling private world, with an odd
sight below us: the unreal vision of a huge flat plain completely covered with buildings. Bogotá. Because there is
no shortage of space in South America, apart from a handful of skyscrapers all buildings are one-storey high, a very
strange capital to European eyes.
The first night up here in the forest was very unpleasant as Ned had washed our cooking-oil-drenched
duvet, so all I had to cover me was two damp thin pieces of cloth with some wet lumps of duck-down in the corners
- once my beautiful duvet. I froze. So I tried sleeping in the tent. I froze again. It was a very Neddish night: he
had parked the tent on a tree root. So I moaned and groaned and woke him up every two minutes. He claimed to
be warm and comfortable, so I congratulated him, as in, 'Well isn’t that bloody nice for you' and made sure he was
less so. Eventually he cottoned on to the amazing idea that if bodies lie close together, they generate heat for one
another. At such moments, Tarantula Bill seems quite cuddly.
On the second night, we moved the tent to a softer place, the duvet was dry and I slept deeply in spite of the
fact that the lady of the farm next door and the lady from the farm on the hill and the two other ladies who live with
the lady of the farm next door and all their children and brothers (none of them seem to have husbands) all warned
us repeatedly that we will get robbed, raped and killed. The 11-year-old daughter of one of them, who is short and
squat and looks about seven, reeled off the information: they'll kill the señor and violate the señora and the little girls
and any little boys too, but 'por atrás' (from behind). Also, we must not go any further up the hill because there it is
especially full of 'ladrones' and they definitely kill people.
Now it seems from the newspapers and from history books and from general information that people do
unfortunately get killed rather a lot in Colombia. But it seems to me there are two main ways of dying: one is, you
live and eventually you die; the other is, you kill yourself slowly with paranoia, and never live at all.
As it happens, I am actually dying, but it isn't the bandidos or the rateros (street thieves) nor the guerrilleros
nor even the militares. It's the hep, once again, and that's why our one night camping above Bogotá to change
money is stretching into a week, as I find even a walk to my washing line five yards away quite an effort. Hepatitis
is quite good for me: it forces me to take much rest and make little movement. I've just completed a woollen poncho
for Louise for her seventh birthday made out of Martinique street throwaways. The kids spend the whole day at the
neighbouring farmhouse where there is even a ‘piscina’, a little swimming pool. The old lady of the family showed
me round her astonishing house. It is actually a historic old colonial house, belonging originally to one of the
colonels who fought with Simon Bolivar. It has a huge internal tiled courtyard, big murals, some partly destroyed,
two gigantic statues, heavy oak floors, enormous rooms and very little furniture as the people inhabiting the place
are quite poor - they were the servants of the former owner who died, leaving them there; the old lady has lived there
for twenty years and still religiously polishes the huge expanses of oak floor as if her master would check up on her.
The place is called the “Casalta”, 'high house'.
Last night after dark when I was happily asleep in the tent, the same old lady, called Tia Amelia, and two of
her nephews, came out and woke us up; they were frightened for us, and please would we move into their house?
All the children were fast asleep, and what we were being offered was a completely empty stone-floored room, with
no windows. I told her as kindly as I could that grass is very nice and soft but that if it rains heavily, we'd be glad
to accept the offer. In the daytime, Amelia repeatedly urges me to use her wash-place and is horrified that I prefer
to do my washing in our little red bucket in water heated over our camp fire. Her niece came and worried that I'd be
lonely and bored. I reassured her, heaving internally at the agony of never getting any peace as their kids, my kids,
and a stream of visitors are always milling round.
If either my driver who brought me to Bogotá, or Myrian, knew where we we're staying, they'd have heart
attacks. Ned says even the hippies and street sellers, including black Africans, laughed at the idea of camping in
Bogotá, because you would definitely get killed. Personally, I feel more in danger from the hepatitis runs, the
renewed argumentativeness of the persistent Ned and the difficulty of crossing a main road in Bogotá. On the
curvy steep busy road just below us, sometimes you hear a strange sound, a bit like heavy roller skates. If you
emerge from our green hidey-hole and peep over the edge of the cliff, you will see small local children precariously
perched on a speeding go-kart swerving round the bends against the fast oncoming traffic. I don't wait to see more.
That's what I call “peligroso” - dangerous. Yet these people who don't bat an eyelid at this daily occurrence are all
horrified and mystified by how we are living. The old lady brings me hot coffee in the mornings, or she did until
she heard I have hepatitis. Now she brings me herb tea; and soup; and bowls of cherries for the children.
21st April 1988
Still camped in the Bogotá woods. These neighbours of ours are now getting very sad at the thought of us leaving
and are putting a lot of emotional pressure on us to stay longer. We're giving in for now as it really is a lovely spot.
My adoptive family say they like me because I am so ‘descomplicada’ - uncomplicated. See, you're all wrong.
Love, Jenny
22nd April 1988, Louise’s 7th Birthday
I've come away from the shrieks and screams and hassles and headache of trying valiantly for several hours to
organize a bi-lingual birthday party. Ned has now taken over. I played my violin for musical chairs and played
‘Happy Birthday’ which they all know in Colombia. Guess what the only two little boys at the party did? Disrupt
and interrupt. Guess what the girls did? Organise, invent, create and cooperate.
This family has finally managed to kidnap us. The rain came and we moved in to a dark stone prison, prey
to evening TV noises, the comings and goings of all late sleepers, and the general paranoia ruling all Colombia,
whereby you have to bar yourself in with tree-trunks, making night trips to the loo impossible. Oh for the wet
woods! An absurdly small tent erected with bricks and strings in an airless dark passageway and shared with a
dinosaur (Ned) isn’t exactly what I meant by going back to Nature. Mind you, their generalised paranoia started to
make made more sense to me when old Tia Amelia told me that two years ago she awakened to find that two
corpses had been dumped on her doorstep - jewellers shot through the head in a robbery.
25th April 1988
Yesterday was Ned's 29th birthday, and the whole family got together to make a lovely vegetarian meal for us. I
walked gingerly out into the world again with Alice, enjoying the Sunday street markets and mixing amongst all the
people I have been told to fear and shun. Street kids were still asleep in the middle of traffic islands wrapped in
clothes ingrained with grime and breathing the black air.
Then I went down to a free, open-air, people’s theatre nearby called the ‘Media Torta’ and watched
colourful graceful Colombian folk dancing. It was one of those timeless days which simply refused to end. I was
reasonably strong again and my insides fairly stable. All evening, I watched TV, and enjoyed the sociological
experience: adverts for cornflakes and slimming courses and Alka Seltzer; all the films American, all the females
blonde and all around me the short, squat, dark people of Colombia believing in the insane American Dream.
We left. They gave Louise a puppy and one of the many young men of the family said “gracias por todo”
- thanks for everything - as if we were their benefactors.
Sitting on the pavement of the huge, ugly, seat-less bus terminal of Bogotá, idly scanning the names of
places to the south and wondering which to pick, I looked up to see an unusual woman - not unusual for High Street
Kensington in the '70s, but definitely unusual for Colombia, with flowing clothes and surrounded by very tasteful
baskets of belongings. She had a little girl with her. She felt me watching her and came over to talk. Her name
was Teresa, she and her man owned a little piece of woodland in a place called Pandi, and would we like to go with
her?
26th April 1988, Pandi
Teresa was sweet, but her man was not. He met the bus in Pandi, and as we stepped out into the heat, he grabbed
hold of Katie, ripped off her cardigan and said, “You must not put this on a child, it is not natural fibre.” He then
told Ned that people with hepatitis should not eat anything at all and stopped him buying tomatoes as it was not an
‘ethnic local fruit.’ Unfortunately, none of the ethnic local fruits he approved of were in season, they grew nothing
edible on their plot of land and we were starving to death. I leaned weakly on Ned and went back to Pandi square, a
sweet-looking little place bedecked with tropical flowers, and we bought natural yoghurt. And then more of it.
Expensive, but probably cheaper than a funeral.
In our absence, Louise had been told by Teresa’s husband, as she petted her birthday puppy: ‘Do not touch
the dog. Dog walk with dog, bird fly with bird, man walk with man.’ And he cut a stick from a tree and hit the
dog. I decided to devote the rest of my life to walking with Dog.
We pegged our tent on to a bamboo platform and were eaten by mosquitoes. It's tropical and airless here.
Lorenzo, our host of the many rules, informed me threateningly: ‘This is the best climate in the whole of Colombia.’
I couldn't breathe. I like wild savage high mountain valleys with black-looking people in shacks and horses and
wind and inhospitable looking territory. And I don't like shrines to Eastern gurus in little cave grottos in the middle
of wonderfully pagan Colombia. And I don't like porcelain flush toilets in the open air without even a curtain for
privacy. And I don't like sitting on the steps of the little Post Office in Pandi and being told by a woman, who
crossed the street specially to do so, to cross my legs as my skirt was too high up and 'people would talk.'
29th April, ICONONZO, Tolima
So we took off along the airless overheated dusty rubble road to Icononzo, on our way to Villarrica, which Lorenzo
told us we must not go to because ‘the guerrilla are there.’
After half an hour's walking in the sun, the puppy was at death's door, Katie was swooning and Alice was
beetroot red, so we gladly took the first passing bus for a pleasant climb to breezier realms.
In Icononzo, there is a treeless stone-slab square perched at a wild angle - the whole little market-town is
built on a crazy slope. We rested under a large tarpaulin roof erected for a market-stall, taking shoes and socks off
sore feet while Ned went food hunting and the dog recovered. A band of schoolgirls came along and asked me to
do their English homework. Then a young woman came over and told me she had travelled all over South America
with her young kids; she didn't look old enough to be a mother. She asked would we like a roof for the night.
Would we! Her name was Reina, she was 25 and had four children, the eldest of whom was eleven. Her husband
is 42. They part-own a coffee farm an hour’s walk up from here, and have a big empty rented house in Icononzo
too so that her eldest daughter can go to school. The house is wooden and bare - no furniture; they are very
hard-up. I could choose whatever airy echoey room I liked - I chose a first floor room with windows that look out
over a large panorama of mountains. All the roofs in the area are of rusted corrugated iron which somewhat
detracts from the view, but what a lovely cool home after the steamy jungle of 'perfect climate' Pandi.
We have a sink with running water in our room, and a loo off the landing which is overflowing excreta all
over the floor. Ned went to buy some caustic soda to put in it. The water bubbled and rose higher.
Last night I went with Reina to a school concert. It was tragic. Young girls and boys putting their whole
energy into miming and mimicking popstars they'd seen on TV whilst records blared away on a crackly sound
system painful to the ears. Act after act after act of the same. I left, and went home. Ned had completely cleared
and cleaned the loo.
Sitting in a thunderstorm under the noisy corrugated iron roof, the hollow wooden house resounds with
voices. I am on our piece of foam leaning against a solid wall, a most unusual feeling after months of camping.
Ned is cooking. I am in a constant state of starvation, my body having eaten up all its reserves during my long
illness. I breathe gratefully in relief at not being cooped up in a little tent with no headroom, mopping up puddles
with our only clean towel and wondering when the whole roof will let water in. The sky is bucketing down, and we
have a friendly communal home. Louise is clumping round the house with a horde of noisy kids; my two little ones
are asleep either side of me. I think my children are having rather a nice time in South America.
1st May 1988
May Day bloomed, or rather boomed, an hour before dawn. We were rocketed out of our sleep at four a.m. by
vicious fireworks - the priest's way, evidently, of hailing International Labour Day in the church square just a few
yards from our house. This sadism was then followed by loud music played over the sound system, which woke up
all the cockerels in Christendom who then competed in a generalised fowl hysteria. Ned went to the square to see
what the hell, expecting a war. But it was just Sunday - market day when everyone comes down from the hills to
sell their wares. I opened the street door and nearly walked into a passing horse, ridden by a young woman in
suburban dress carrying a very small baby, with her two toddlers seated on another horse behind.
I'm reading a book Reina has lent me by a French herbal doctor who says hepatitis can be caused by ...
sexual dissatisfaction!
Reina’s brother-in-law, 46 and unmarried has arrived. He looks about 24, Gilberto by name, a figure like a
ballet dancer (he turned out to be one!), very slim and small built, good-looking, with a head of curly dark hair and
perfect skin. My first reaction was to dislike him - he was so obscenely well-kept, and with an earring in one ear.
Then he went out of his way to make contact with me, and he forced me to change my mind…
2nd May 1988
Gilberto invited us to go and stay at his farm, an hour away. There were stores to take up there, so we hired a lorry.
It climbed a muddy path and we came to a swollen river cascading across our route into a turbulent pit. We all
stood around and watched the muddy tumbling waters for half an hour, the Colombians assuring us that the flood
would soon change and we'd be able to cross. Eventually Reina waded across to test the depth, and the lorry
followed her. On we trundled, till we came to another river. This time it was even deeper and more turbulent. So
we stood and watched it for another half hour, till two horsemen approached from the other side and crossed, and so
did our lorry, with me praying fervently. Later, the lorry could go no further, so with luggage and people, our
puppy and children, we went on a very wet, beautiful walk, ducking our heads to avoid branches, through a coffee
plantation. Coffee grows on pretty green bushes like ornamental holly with red berries; these are picked by the
sack-load, put through a hand-turned machine like a giant cylindrical cheese-grater to remove the pulp; then the pale
yellow beans inside are washed and laid out to dry, and that's your coffee bean, which is roasted till it's black, and
then ground.
Which is by way of a diversion from mentioning Gilberto. I now like him very much. He looks 30 in the
daylight; he's an Aries like me, one year younger. Ned hates him. He's incredibly accomplished in a dozen skills,
an artist and craftsman. His farm is beautiful and well-kept, several stone buildings around a patio with a lovely
wooden coffee-drying house converted into a semi-open-air 'meditation' room by Gilberto. These people are really
middle-class Cali artists turned farmers. Their furniture is heavy antique - renovated by Gilberto. His mother lives
with him, she has arthritis and a deep voice like a man. Gilberto's brother Jorge, Reina’s husbands told us to stay in
this area forever, it's the ‘only place’ he says. He and Reina have travelled all over South America, and this is
where they chose to settle. They tell us we are now in country controlled by the FARC - the Communist guerrilla
force; and that the army don't come in here. They are extremely pushy about us staying. I'd like to be persuaded
by them that we've 'arrived', it's so beautiful here and we're so travel-weary.
Ned has gone coffee-picking with Gilberto with whom I am very slightly in love. He seeks my presence
and he is very good company. His mother's mother is 104 and still alive in Cali. She had 30 children, including
three sets of twins. Alice is running around stark naked. The people here love us living with them, but I'm not
very good at being in other people's houses: they put me to bed on a hard board in the dark cavity of a larger bed on
stilts, where sleeps Jorge the brother, who is extremely authoritarian. He gave me a lecture on all the dangerous
creatures we might meet here, including tarantulas which evidently regularly walk into the house, so all doors have
to be closed at five p.m. But I need somewhere to lie flat in the fresh air, and have a covetous eye on Gilberto's
'meditation' room as it is open to Nature.
4th May 1988
I then got colossally ill again. For about twelve hours solid I had a headache so bad I kept crying with pain. The
whole time, all I wanted was for Gilberto to come and be with me, but he was busy all day turning the
coffee-pulping machine. At dark, I could stand it no more and asked Ned to call Gilberto for me. He spent ages
making some awful herbal potion for pain and then came up to me where I was lying on a couch in his meditation
room. I took hold of his hands, which are tiny, and put them on my head. He’d told me that morning that he can
move objects without touching them and that he's very psychic (he's not very modest - a quality not in vogue in
Colombia!). He spent an hour pressing lightly on all the points of tension in my head. I had had a temperature,
and this brought it down. The pain didn’t go, but I slept soon after he left, and have woken bruised but better.
I am in love with Gilberto. He is nothing like the Indian cave-man I came to South America to meet; he is
educated, effete, terribly refined, small, exceedingly handsome, and with a very strong personality. Yesterday
when a hostile neighbour's son threw a guava-fruit very accurately over the fence and socked him on the side of the
head, Gilberto gave a yell and rushed over towards the aggressor, shouting and threatening him. I had to blink and
stare intently to see if he was the same person, he was totally transformed in that moment. He looked like Che
Guevara.
His old crone of a mother guards him jealously. Any time he comes to be with me, she soon follows.
When he was curing me in my illness, she slipped in and sat in the dark shadows, watching ... It turns out that in
recent years, she was so crippled with arthritis that he devoted himself to her, washing her, dressing her, turning her
over in bed, massaging her pains, getting her to diet. She now walks around, eats, interferes - and tells me she hates
living in the countryside.
I got my way by being ill and am now allowed to sleep on the floor of the open meditation room. I'm
supposed to be on the Peruvian altiplano milking a llama and learning Quechua or rowing round floating islands on
Lake Titicaca; but here I am in verdant, lush Colombia, surrounded by fruit trees and in love with a fairy Christ-like
figure who sends me no sexual vibrations whatever. However I think I'll allow myself to be kidnapped; it seems
silly to keep on travelling just because of a concept.
A near neighbour has three times been caught nicking their coffee-berries. I asked Gilberto what he's
going to do about it, and he said they'd have to see the guerrilleros about it: it seems they police the region.
Meanwhile, a policeman friend of the family is playing with my kids, all of whom are now fluent in Spanish. The
policeman is in the Communist Party and is a friend of the guerrilleros. Jorge says the guerrilla movement is very
successful and popular and that the army has incurred so much hostility that it doesn't dare to come into any area run
by them. He says the guerrilleros would be delighted if we settle here. 'Why?' I asked. It's good for them, he
says, because the people's movement is into culture and as foreigners with the ‘right’ attitudes and ideas, we bring
what they want. 'But', I protested, 'we came to learn from the indigenous peoples' ... Yes, he said, you will learn,
but you’ll teach too.
5th May 1988
Roasting in the early morning sun, and I've already been for a long jungly muddy slippy walk and up a hot hill - to
take Louise to school! The young teacher that I thought at first was a schoolgirl, spent all her time apologizing to
me about the 'poverty' of the school, which seems perfectly adequate to me. The school is free, but we have to buy
pencils and an exercise book. It seems we have moved in.
Last night, I was delighted to be called in by Gilberto and Jorge for a talk with the Communist police
secretary who spent all yesterday here. His name is Josué. The many long talks I have with these people are like
food to me. Last night, amongst other topics, we spoke of Summerhill School; of the one-way pendulum of being
too liberal with kids; of body energy, the importance thereof and how a person's politics are read more in their
life-force than in their professed beliefs. And I asked them once again: “Why do you want us to stay here?”
Gilberto answered immediately and sent shivers of excitement through me. ‘I don't believe in co-incidence,’ he
said. And on we talked. I told them of our early encounters in Ireland with the IRA, their efforts to intimidate us,
and how we used the women to confront them, hiding our men away. They understood this and were excited by it.
I told them of our belief that fear kills and that you have to confront aggression in order not to go under and that you
actually cause danger if you don't handle your own and other people's aggression well.
They understood
immediately when I described the essential religious conservatism of the IRA, of the faction-fighting in Northern
Ireland - all these things are known to them from their own experience of politics, and they love hearing about it. I
told them how Europe is dying of robotism and zomboidism, the diseases of the cities, and how the last enclaves of a
simpler life, like Ireland, are bleeding to death as the young folk abandon the countryside to follow the Lure of the
Lights; “to buy a cheap metal bracelet” as Gilberto put it.
Colombia has me. Peru can wait till later. These people are so adamant about us staying that to oppose
them would be childish. We have an open doorway to political, cultural and rural involvement of a kind that jars
not one bit with anything that we are, have learnt, or want.
9th May 1988
Trouble came as I fell more and more in love with Gilberto, but could never get enough time with him, mainly
because of his Bodyguard Mother. One morning, I sat him down to talk to me and cried in front of him. For my
pains, I got a lecture from him about ‘transcending desire.’ This cured me immediately. Fuck you, I said, or words
to that effect, and I left the farm and went and stayed the night in Icononzo with Reina and Jorge who live there
most of the time. I talked three hours with Reina about their family history, especially about Gilberto, Gilberto and
women, and Gilberto and the Mother. Jorge interrupted to say there was one thing he had against me, and that was
my radicalism. Reina laughed. I said I had to be radical because I'm not twenty, and don't have much time.
Jorge has borrowed money from us, and I don't like it. He drinks. Every time I mention repayment of the
loan, he and Reina are extremely reassuring, but I don't feel reassured. After one night in town, I got fed up with
their urban decadence and walked back up to the farm, back to Ned and the kids. And to Gilberto. Unaccountably,
I found myself smiling all the way home, in spite of the hot muddy walk, a too-heavy rucksack and an unstable
stomach.
As I entered the courtyard, I walked straight up to Gilberto and his mother and told them all the news of
immediate interest to them. And then I told them we were leaving to go further up the mountain as soon as I'd
rested.
Suddenly, there were screams and Louise was bleeding at the mouth from colliding with some object. I
tended her in Jorge's dark cold bedroom. Gilberto followed to help. Then he said, “Shall we talk?” and there we
stayed for many hours. I said, “The reason I'm leaving is because I don't like the decadence of your brother or your
perfectionism.” He told me his life-history. He said he had had a very busy sexual life and is taking a rest. He said
he feels himself so blown around by feelings and falls in love so easily and gets involved too much with everyone
and so now feels he has to hold back. I said I'd thought he was homosexual and he said he loved men and women
equally. I said I feared he was disgusted by me physically. “Quite the opposite,” he said. I asked him if he wanted
me to stay and told him I'd be happy to as long as I had contact with him each evening without the presence of his
mother. He was happy to agree to this and said he’d often wanted to come and talk but hadn't, ‘out of politeness.’
I went coffee-picking. The intensity of what I feel with Gilberto is such that I need a coffee-plantation to
recover. My mind flies. My brain burns. The very idea of physical contact with him is too much. I need to
steady the boat, set the sails, study the charts, and check whether I'm in the boat at all or if I've flown off with the
seagulls. Or turned into one of the fishes in their beaks. Sometimes being on this farm feels like I've walked into a
novel, and I'm not sure that I like the part I've been given. I began to imagine that the whole family were in some
elaborate plot against me. One minute the place seems like a South American Atlantis with an extraordinary level
of personal and political consciousness; the next it's like a boring old church, sterilely inhabited by asexual ascetics.
I came home from coffee-picking, electrocuted all over with intense paranoia. I suspected Josué, the
policeman, of ripping off money when he changed some dollars for us. I took my worries to the kitchen, to
Gilberto. I cried as I spoke. He listened, intently. Then he broke down and cried in my lap. I was astonished
and never did find out what had moved him so. The mother stood by the stove, watching,
After dark, I played my violin, timidly, in the shadows of my open-air room, tense about how it sounded, I
played on and on, thinking of Gilberto all the time. Then a lad who is staying on the farm came looking for him.
“He’s not in here,” I said. But a figure stepped out of a dark corner. He was in there: he’d been standing for half
an hour right next to me in the dark, listening to me.
I went barmy with embarrassment. Ned came in and I pummelled his ample back yelling, “The bastard!”
to get rid of the feeling. And then I got hold of the violin and played it raucously and vigorously in front of them all
with the kids jumping and hopping and Gilberto playing some improvised rhythm instruments. He stayed with me
for hours afterwards till my Spanish became incoherent with tiredness. He leans all over me when he talks and
practically sits on me in his exuberance. And this time, he stayed longer with me than I wanted.
This is a love affair of two Aries who are inflamed, not so much with each other as with a vision we both
share of how to live and what is important in life. He was concerned to ascertain whether I was into 'age-ism' rejection of the old - and I assured him quite the contrary remembering how I always preferred the older generation
in Ireland. His main fight in life, as he experiences it, is for high standards of work and hygiene and personal
behaviour and growth. I feel him as my mirror image. People hate him for his standards as they have hated me
and he is almost completely alone. Yet he is also charismatic and desired. A familiar story. I myself can't look at
him for too long, as if he shines too brightly.
12th May 1988
I'm writing to you from a tiny hamlet called ‘Balcones.’ Louise and I walked here yesterday, three hours up the
mountain from Gilberto's farm with Josué, the Communist police secretary. We came to buy a horse. The minute
we acquired one, seven year old Louise was up riding her bareback, while I shook with terror and everyone laughed
at me. Now, after walking miles round sugar-cane farms with Josué so that he could show us off, we have to rest
our limbs sufficiently for the long trek back home in the dark.
I also bought two kittens and was crooning over them; Josué laughed and told the farmworkers how crazy I
am about animals. Then he said, pointing to himself, 'What about this specimen, couldn't you fall for me?' He's
33, very small like all the men here, and lively. He is one of the activists in the Communist movement, which has
lost over 600 of its regional leaders in the past six months, shot by rightwing paramilitary groups with the silent
acquiescence of the government. 'Capital punishment' doesn't exist in Colombia, they just kill off any left-wingers
who get too popular.
16th May 1988
Hello Sister,
I live in a mind-blown whirl of high energy, with a smile I can't rub off my face and complete satisfaction
inside me interspersed with small agonies. We have been at Gilberto’s farm for two weeks and I had never slept
with him. I did my best to be a nineteenth century lady. But then last night four friends of his arrived from
Bogotá. He said they could have his room and he’d sleep in the attic. I hit him with a towel and told him not to be
stupid and to come and sleep with me. He kind of sat bolt upright and stared into some private space, then agreed
but ‘after he'd talked to his friends.’
By four in the morning, he had not come to me and I had given up all hope, both of his company and of
being able to sleep. Then I dropped off for a few moments and dreamt vividly of getting up and finding him
standing, staring, stuck about some decision. I put my arms round him, he was warm and receptive and he came to
sleep with me. Then I woke up abruptly. All was dark and silent. I couldn't bear it, I had to find out what he was
doing. I got up and lit a candle and walked down the steps, round to the tap for a drink, then to the loo and back.
As I approached my room, I heard a scuffling. I checked all the dark corners. Nothing. I went back to bed. But
someone was there before me. Gilberto.
Evidently I'd walked right past him on the path in the dark where he had been standing just outside my
room. What were you doing? I asked him. “Enjoying the darkness and quiet” he said, “and guarding the house
against robbers.” Hmm.
His body is hot, firm, male, and he doesn't feel small in bed. We lay stiffly together holding hands. I
noticed he wasn’t breathing very deeply, but who am I to notice anything; I feel so completely under to him because
every movement he makes is perfect (he's a professional dancer amongst his other talents), he's a walking work of
art, loving and chivalrous and has probably had all the most beautiful girls in Colombia in love with him; but he's
given them all up because, as he tells me, ‘everyone wants him.’ He's got a child with some TV actress and a
12-year-old boy with an ex-schoolgirl who, according to him, captured him in the street with a gang of her friends,
took him home, seduced him and she got pregnant. He’s physical, he’s mental, he’s spiritual, he’s emotional. And
he says outrageously boastful things about himself like, ‘I have extraordinary hands; I can do anything with them.’
But what he says is true. He treats everyone exquisitely and makes everyone feel special. He’s just the sort of
person I can’t stand, the sort I view as dangerous because he’d break your heart; I've always chosen instead loners,
losers, beggars and bastards. This guy is a Christ figure. He's also a devil. The whole thing makes me sick.
Well, it should. But actually it makes me high with health. I've got so much energy I'm flying. I've walked so
many miles recently, it’s unreasonable. I'm up at dawn, often awake at night, my ex-hepatitic stomach is fine; my
heart's a bit damaged but it doesn’t seem to be doing me any harm. I didn't know things like this happened at 46.
And he at 45 dances around like a pixie, he hasn't a single line or grey hair nor the slightest shadow or dent on his
face to give away any hint of the passing of years. And he looks so beautiful on our horse, I feel like fainting. The
whole thing’s so indecent I think I'll go coffee-picking.
We both agree that we are not each other's ideal type, I am too large for him and he is too small for me.
Yet he is enormous in all ways but height; he fills my horizon yet leaves plenty of room because what we share is
feelings for Colombia, politics, work, children, friends, gardening, animals, and plans for a journey deeper into the
Communist Colombian wilds and the setting up of a highly idealistic but very practical community in the heart of
guerrilla-land. He doesn't block, stall, play games, defend, avoid, attack, sulk, cut off or piss around. And he has
had his fair share of the unpopularity that being a superior human being brings.
At the age of ten, he witnessed a holocaust: the explosion of Cali, a large town in Colombia which is his
home town. Several lorry-loads of dynamite in a military barracks of 1,000 soldiers blew up, blowing up also a gas
works and setting off a chain reaction in paint shops, oil stores, petroleum deposits, until the whole town burned,
leaving a crater as if a volcano had exploded. It blew up the cemetery so that the old dead were thrown up to mix
with the new dead. No-one knows how many thousands of people died. The vultures came down, disease spread,
the piles of corpses grew. Fire brigades from the whole of Colombia couldn't put out the blaze. Aid from dozens
of countries came to help in the aftermath. He said everyone spent days crying. His half-sister worked at the
telephone exchange. But she couldn't bear what she had to see on the way to work, so Gilberto used to lead her
blindfold through the streets.
19th May 1988
Today I heard bloodcurdling screams in the woods along the pathway that leads to Louise’s school. I rushed out
barefoot down the muddy stone path amidst thick jungle undergrowth, calling, but Louise never heard me, so loud
and continuous were her screams. Then suddenly, they stopped. I found my body was not registering alarm, so I
returned home, muddy and puffed-out and asked Ned, who has a swollen poisoned foot, to go and look for her.
After two minutes, they arrived back, she still heaving with sobs. She had just seen her first tarantula. It was
evidently the size of a dinner plate and was carrying two baby tarantulas on its back. It had been sitting in her
pathway and she'd rushed all the way back to school screaming till some boys came back with her to get her past
The Spot.
I am writing by candlelight, tired after picking coffee most of the day. The three kids are giggling and
eating rice with Ned down in the courtyard. The endless sound of crickets fills the trees and my wood-slat room is
open to it all. I am beautifully dressed and alone, awaiting the return of my compañero from town on the fine mare
I have lent him. His mother is nervous; he is late indeed.
21st May 1988
Gilberto did not come back that night, nor for half the next day. He had my money, my passport, my horse and my
heart. By ten in the morning, his mother was sitting rigid and staring on her bed. She said he'd never failed to
come home before, that he was very responsible and that he knew we were out of food. I went to pick coffee and
had fantasies that he hadn't come home so as not to sleep with me, as things had become more loving between us.
But with the mother's rising panic, I decided I had better be prepared for his death. People regularly disappear in
Colombia. His mother, half crying, said maybe someone had attacked him for the money he was carrying. She
pleaded for action, saying we could hire a horse and look for him. So Ned went down to Icononzo, an hour's walk
away, hobbling on his injured foot, and I went up to the school to see if anyone had news of him. By the time I met
Louise’s teacher, I couldn't speak for crying, but she said she'd seen Gilberto in Icononzo the evening before with
his brother Jorge, and Reina had been riding my horse. My feelings changed swiftly from sorrow to anger. I had
listened for a fortnight while Gilberto and his mother delivered sackloads of bad news into my ear-holes about Jorge
and Reina who had, amongst other things, suggested to Josué that he steal money from us.
I marched home. Hours later, they turned up: Ned limping and fuming, Gilberto and Jorge chatting gaily.
Gilberto came in beaming his blithe hello and went in to his mother and spent ages with her. I decided to leave.
Pushing away Gilberto's outstretched hands, I said I wasn't going to be used as a rubbish tip any more,
endlessly listening to the family's moans, only to see him all palsy with his brother. Gilberto got extremely angry
immediately and said I was ‘neurotic.’ I pointed out he tended to use this word every time I showed feeling of any
kind. Then he called me ‘selfish’ for not wanting to help his family with their problems. I heartily agreed and
went to pack. Ned was delighted. Gilberto yelled ‘Yo no soy hijo de nadie’ - I'm nobody's son - which was
rather odd. Then he wrote ‘I’M FREE’ in English in huge angry charcoal letters on the white wall of his house and
disappeared. I appealed to Gilberto’s mother to talk about all that had happened, which she refused to do. So I
generally insulted the whole family, whilst she and Jorge turned their backs studiously on me. I then packed
slowly, laughing, my anger spent, and off we went, me, Ned, kids, horse and luggage into the late afternoon sun
feeling elated and energised.
We walked for several hours uphill towards Balcones. Night fell. I had to carry Katie, Ned following
with a laden horse and very tired kids. A long, long trek. We arrived at Balcones police station in the pitch dark
and out came Josué to stare, grinning and dumbfounded, at us. Ned slept on a table and I slept next to Josué on a
mat on the floor at his insistent request.
Next morning, Gilberto phoned Josué to ask if we'd arrived and whether we'd ‘mentioned anything.’ Josué
said, Yes of course, we'd told him the whole story. Gilberto then warned Josué that we were ‘colonialistas.’ I
found this hilarious. As for Josué, you can’t wipe the grin off his face, so delighted is he at having the ‘gringa’ all
to himself. And I can't stop smiling, it’s so delightful to find out that my cool guru-man is full of completely
normal feelings.
I felt absolutely right about leaving the farm. We've come away from bourgeois-ville further up the
mountains to a colder mistier region of more pasture, less jungle, ordinary campesinos (peasants) and a simpler form
of conversation. Of course, I'd love Gilberto to come panting up the mountain shouting, ‘All right, I'll give up my
mother. I love you, I'll leave the farm and follow you to the wilds ..’ but as a matter of fact, I don’t think that’s
about to happen!
Meanwhile, it's quite nice sleeping on a hard mat on a stone floor in the tiny back room of an
electricity-less police station with the police secretary who is a completely ordinary man.
22nd May 1988
Last night I played my violin in the empty, echoey police station where I live. It was dark and the shutters were
closed. The acoustics were brilliant and I have never enjoyed playing so much. I went on and on, the darkness
making me uninhibited. After a while, I noticed that Josué was sitting transfixed at his desk, listening. At times,
the kids joined in, singing and dancing and tumbling about and painting their faces with the police station's magic
markers. When I was tired and putting away my instrument, Josué told me that half the village would be outside
the shutters listening. And he opened the doors to prove it. In traipsed a group of women and kids and I had to
start playing all over again. Louise sang some songs for them, and then Josué fixed up with a woman who sells
drinks from her farm-shack that I would play publicly for the village the next day.
I spent the next day with butterflies eating my stomach away. I was so nervous by the time I crossed the
village green to my execution that I played really badly in front of the group of surly men who took no notice of me
at all, but kept on playing tejo, a somewhat cretinous stone-throwing game common all over Colombia, while the
landlady plied me with free beer for my pains.
Later in the evening, the local Communist leader, who looked like a cheery Mexican bandit, came to
‘interview’ me with his very serious retinue of young cadres. A whole crowd of curious onlookers crowded into the
police station to listen. I soon had everyone laughing and as he was a well-practised popular leader, it was quite a
show, a warm event which ended with him asking me if we'd ever heard of Balcones in Ireland, and me answering
by asking him if he’d ever heard of Inishfree Island. The basic message came across very clear: that they were
delighted to have the gringo ‘colonialistas’ in their village. It turned out Josué had been taken aside and questioned
by Party-members for letting potential 'spies' into his bedroom. But his immediate boss, the police inspector, eats
our banana fritters and lets Ned sleep in his bed when he is off duty; and the chief up-and-coming young Communist
called Emer, is giving us a room at his farm down the valley to live in while we look for a farm to buy. And in an
hour's time I have a date to play violin and sing English songs to the kids in the school across the courtyard which
Louise is already attending.
Meanwhile Ned is just off to travel the seventeen kilometres to the nearest shops on horseback.
27th May 1988
Dear Sister and Comrades,
We've suffered a nasty setback, I've been in a psychic lemon-squeezer for a day and a night. I suppose in a
country where people are getting arrested, tortured, murdered or 'disappeared' for their political opinions, it is
somewhat out-of-touch of me to expect decency, honesty or straightforwardness in personal relationships. I think I
probably met three of the most self-searching people in this part of Colombia, Gilberto, his brother Jorge, and Josué,
and yet I have just terminated with the last of them. For several days, we lived in great harmony, excitement and
fun with Josué in his one little room. Then we moved to a lovely wooden farmhouse on the side of a beautiful
valley where I pick coffee for the family who have lent it to us. Louise walks the hour-long muddy steep journey to
school every day at 7:00 a.m. accompanied by hordes of kids who seem to appear from the bushes all around. I was
very happy.
Yesterday, Josué was due back from a long and tiring journey he had kindly undertaken on our behalf to
see Gilberto and Jorge about money they both owe us, and to get my passport, still in their possession. Ned went
up to the village to see Josué and find out what had happened and came back very angry. No money; no passport;
and Gilberto denying any knowledge of same, and Josué 'gone weird' on the whole thing. I flew up to the village
myself on hearing this, fainting with anger; the exhausting sweaty journey seemed to take only moments. I found
Josué on his bed-mat asleep. He behaved oddly with me. I cried, I explained, I argued, I described again all that
had happened at Gilberto’s farm, but he remained stony and hostile, basing his newfound enmity on the fact that I
had got angry at the farm and insulted Gilberto's family. He said I hadn't any 'receipts' to prove loss of my money
and generally doesn't like me saying to people's faces what he readily says behind their backs.
This is bad news. We are in a Communist-controlled area and Josué has a lot of local power. Ned is very
supportive. He left immediately on receiving my news with Louise to stay in the village and get the dawn-bus to
Icononzo to see if he could sort anything out with Gilberto. So last night I was on my own with the two small
children, our cat and our puppy.
The cat sicked on the bed. I threw it out. The dog poohed on the floor. I threw it out. It howled. I let
it in. It squeaked till it got on to Alice's bed. It poohed on her bed. I threw it out again and cleaned up the mess.
After a very long time, I couldn't stand it howling any more and let it in again. It poohed diarrhoea on the sheet. I
threw it out, this time for good. Then I heard water falling. I put on the candle and found Alice had peed an
enormous puddle straight through her mattress on to the floor. I threw her out. But I had to let her in before she
howled.
Baby Katie woke and kicked everything off her, got cold, and howled when I covered her again.
Interspersed with all this, I had to battle miserably with the ghouls and creatures of my brain. Finally, exhausted I
fell asleep. Then I had a car-crash. I awoke violently to find myself lying in a crumpled heap in the wreckage. I
stared, stunned, into the dark for a long time before I could make out what had happened. The wooden bed had
collapsed under me and I was twisted into a very odd shape on the floor in the middle of it. I pulled the
exceedingly heavy, hard mattress to the floor and slept again. And dreamt of a huge sexual, comforting man into
whose body I folded like a little girl. Some hopes.
Dawn came too soon. I was horrible to the animals and the children. The bossy little girl from the farm
came and told me not to leave the filthy lumpy old mattress on the floor… and noted the peed-on mattress put out to
dry. I hated her deeply.
I went picking coffee in the rain and had a magnificent time giving speeches in my brain about women and
feelings and Revolution and What Marx Left Out, and had just taken off my wet tee-shirt when the young lad from
the farm, the 23-year-old Communist trainee, came to talk to me. I covered my nakedness apologetically and
started to talk enthusiastically about all that had happened with Josué and Gilberto. But Emer had just been to the
village to talk to Josué, and his eyes, at first bright and friendly suddenly turned black, his voice changed and he
pronounced in his best official voice that he had come to inform us on behalf of his superiors that we could proceed
no further and had to return 'por donde entraron' - the way you came in. 'Fine', said I breezily, 'the world is a big
place and it makes no difference to us where we go.' Relieved, his official-ese ended and he returned to being
human. He told me Josué was in trouble with the Movement for letting us in. “And is there anything in our
behaviour that has caused this decision, or is it just that we're foreigners and therefore a security risk?” I asked,
knowing perfectly well that it was the security of Josué’s macho defences that was at stake through me standing up
to him, but I enjoyed playing the political game. “Precisely”, said Emer, “we've never seen foreigners this far up
before.” Especially women with big mouths, I thought. I asked him why Josué hadn’t told me all this, “He’s
probably upset at you having to go and at the trouble he's in,” came the answer. “Well” said I. “I don't want to be
waiting around for recovery of the debt Gilberto and Jorge owe us, so perhaps Josué might find the energy to get the
money if I say I wish to donate the money to your Movement. And please tell your leaders, whoever they are, that I
wish them every success politically and that I completely understand their decision and would do the same in their
position.”
Oh the delicious taste of pure victory in the guise of respectful obedience. I packed gaily, said goodbye
happily, left the heavy gear for Ned to fetch on horseback on his return and set off, grinning, for the trek back up to
Balcones. What a relief to be going back to the familiar corrupt air of capitalist freedom and to be leaving the
miserable paranoia of communist-held territory. Was ever rejection so sweet? Reminds me of my Venezuelan
tooth extraction. Pure pleasure.
PS. If you were a gringo spy, would you:
1.
Enter hostile territory in the guise of an outspoken, emotional woman with three naughty attractive blonde
children and a tall taciturn curly-haired blue-eyed gringo fellow and;
2.
Cause fuss and commotion wherever you went?
Next Day, Balcones
Balcones means balconies and is so-named because it sits on a flat hill with an immense view on three sides over
mountains and the valley of the Sumapaz river. It is also giving us a good view of Colombia.
Arriving with my heavy rucksack, violin and a bag of food, from my run-in with the local Communists, I
straightaway went to see the tall school-teacher and his pretty wife with whom we'd already made friends. They
just happen to belong to the Liberal Party, that is, the party of the Government, as does half of this village. When I
told them that we'd been told the leave the area, they were incensed and immediately started discussing where we
could stay and what farms were for sale. Tonight we sleep on their floor. Then we met up with the jolly, fat
Telecom lady, also of the Liberal Party. I told her The Movement had forbidden us from living here. “What
Movement?” she said, and then, outraged, “They're not the only people round here you know.”
29th May 1988
So we decided to stay. In high spirits, I went to see Josué the police office. “If I refuse to leave the area, are you
going to shoot me?” I asked, grinning. Horrified, he protested that he had never threatened me. “Oh, you're not
threatening me?” I said. “Well, unless you threaten me, I'm not going!” Josué collapsed in a heap on the floor,
unable to hide his grins. “What about if I buy a farm here?” I pushed. Alarmed, he begged, “Oh no, Jenny, no.
Please buy one further down at Icononzo.” “You mean you are only requesting me to go?” I said. “Yes, that's
right,” he said, hopefully. “Well then, I'm not going,” says I. “But if you say you'll shoot me next Wednesday if I
don't go, then of course, I'll be off.” Horrified once more, Josué protested he would threaten no such thing. “Fine”,
I said, leaving him to his brain haemorrhage, “See you.”
The teacher's wife is talking of calling a village meeting to complain at our being told to leave. Several
local women said to us, “They're just trying to rule by fear. Don't obey!” I love these people - all of them, including
those who would cast us in the role of baddies. Even the Communist mother of the lad who gave us the push
wished me all the best several times as I was leaving her farm. She didn't say much, but I could feel she didn't
exactly perceive us as dangerous spies.
So I now live next door to poor Josué, who has banned himself from being our friend.
2nd June 1988
After a few nights on the floor of the schoolteacher's little stone house, I went walking with his wife, Carmen, to
find an old farmhouse to live in while we look for a place to buy. We visited a handsome countrywoman called
Lucinda who looked us carefully up and down, then led us to our next home: a two-roomed wood-and-mud house
with the regulation corrugated-iron roof, an open wooden veranda the whole length of the house, and a separate
shack used as a cooking-place. No windows, no furniture, but in this climate it is all we need, in heavenly
surroundings, water coming to us in a little pool via a bamboo 'aqueduct' from higher up the hill.
Ned spends half his life in the kitchen, the wood-fire at waist level, the smoke travelling out of the gap
between roof and walls. We have two chickens. All around us is lush growth: lemon and orange trees and banana
palms. Dahlias that would win prizes at an English country flower show grow as weeds in the woods. Coffee
bushes abound, I pick coffee for Lucinda, a lovely job, immersed in wet woodland vegetation filling a bucket tied
round my waist, then emptying the beans into a sack. We buy milk very cheaply from a neighbouring farm-lady
called Doña Dora, and people give us bananas and guayabas (guavas). This area produces giant blackberries; we
buy them to make drinks and jam. Sugarcane grows all around: big blocks of brown sugar are processed from it,
called panela. Unfortunately, the abundance of cane and the lack of money for dentistry means that nearly
everyone in Colombia has terrible teeth, from toddlers upwards.
On every second day, I go off with local people on foot or on horseback to look at farms for sale. Often
the journeys take all day - hence the need for a day's rest in between. Yesterday I went with the Telecom man, José,
to a farm above banana, maize and orange level, up into the clouds, almost straight up at times, and at a trot too.
Sometimes I worry that I have chosen somewhere too 'easy' - such a beautiful climate, no llamas, snow, desert, or
horrendous jungle creatures. I did spend all morning getting exhausted running around fixing up our horse with a
decent pasture for £2 per month .. does this count?
Ned is liking Colombia, which is almost enough to make me pack my rucksack and move off again. If he
tells me he's hungry, cold, tired, or aching, I feel sick. If he breathes, as he tends to do occasionally in his sleep, my
chest constricts and I feel as if I'm in prison. Can anyone please explain this? My soul is being worn down by
having only a powder keg to relate to.
16th June 1988
Yesterday as I struggled up a hill with two local men, one about 60, looking at a farm for sale, I was told by them
that these are not mountains. So all these weeks I've been scrambling upwards on all fours, my heart beating
scarily, or sliding down muddy inclines on my posterior have been in vain: I haven't even the glory of calling these
mountains. I gaze over range upon range with my fifty-foot-above-sea-level Inishfree Island mentality and am told
this is ‘plano’ - flat. The map tells me these are the gentle beginnings of the Andes, but these men wave vaguely
into the far distance if I say, 'Oh, where are the Andes then?'
And so, another journey, two hours there and two hours back, and much walking in the middle, my body
hardly recovered from a horse marathon two days previously. I arrived back late in the afternoon in Balcones,
nearly crying with a feeling of love for all the people I know here, including the communist men of the village who
unaccountably smile at me though I'm officially banned. And it was on this journey that I found the new Atlantis.
It is a 20 hectare farm with banana palms, sugar-cane, coffee bushes, yucca, giant blackberries,
tree-tomatoes, and a variety of local edible plants unknown to us. The wooden house is tiny. The majority of the
land is jungle-forest. One of the young owners, called Horacio, showed me a creeper you peel to make baskets; his
old father-in-law was sitting absentmindedly rolling hemp-fibre between his hands making a rope. The chair I sat
on was made by Horacio of polished coffee-wood with a hemp-string macramé seat and back, and the little beds in
the tiny house were made by him too. The roof of course is corrugated iron, but, unusually, their kitchen-shack was
not smoky as they had made a chimney from a piece of rusty folded metal. All around the yard were the strange
fowl breeds of Colombia, chickens with Beatle haircuts or bald necks or covered in curly black fur; some with
beards and Edwardian side-burns and miniature hens smaller than bantams; exotic ducks and a pizco - a huge,
turkey-like bird with unlikely psychedelic decorations hanging from its face.
The whole place is dilapidated; there are fields of fern taller than me where once potatoes grew and a
general feeling of depression in the family. But there was a homely, lived-in feeling, it was miles from anywhere,
and nothing posh about it that would make it expensive. I was already warming to the place when I asked if there
was a stream nearby. ‘Of course.’ Half a minute from the house, I was shown fairyland: a tumbling mountain
stream, cold water gushing over enormous boulders, and flowing swiftly through a magic tunnel of trees and
undergrowth, green light, a rock floor covered in soft green lichen sprinkled with woodland flowers; a little further
down, a small river pool safe enough for children, but deep enough for adults.
For these people, it was just the boundary marker of their land and the next. For me, it was the deciding
factor. I tried to hide my enchantment so that they wouldn't put the price up. I asked casually how much the farm
would cost. They took ages to reply, knowing full well that ‘monte’ - wooded mountainside - is considered
worthless here. 'Pues, dos millones' was the final reply - two million pesos, that's £4,000. And my chief informant
in Balcones, the serious, careful little woman called Doña Dora, tells me that whatever price is asked is double what
they hope to receive.
20th June 1988
I'm singing in the rain. Ned has gone off to see the farm today. If he likes it, then it only remains for someone to
come over with the money.
25th June 1988
Ned liked the farm very much! We have offered £2,000 for it.
5th July 1988
Katie is three today. Yesterday Ned was in Icononzo and just happened to have some of our Atlantis books with
him and just happened to bump into Gilberto, who said he thinks about me a lot and that he's going to sell his farm
and come and live with me!
Ned admitted to me he gets depressed and feels pointless if I’m away for even a few hours, but the physical
fact of the matter is that I can't bear him and am the most ungrateful person on earth. He feeds me and the children
and works for us non-stop and then asks me to look at his eye because a fly had flown into it and I fossilized on the
spot. Another day he got stung by a poison caterpillar that evidently can drive a grown man mad with pain; he was
writhing, screaming and crying in agony for several hours, all the kids were in tears of sympathy, and all I felt was
stony disgust. He went off to see Lucinda, who acts as a local country nurse and who injected him with pain-killer.
8th July 1988
I am writing this in front of a television! I am in Bogotá getting my violin mended and staying with the family
where Ned and I lived in their huge old palace of a house - the Casalta - above the awfulness of the city.
Colombia makes me cry. I love her. Ghastly things happen, but then where else would you see a heading
in a popular newspaper: WE ARE A NATION OF PSYCHOPATHS? I'm churned up inside, the feeling is called
love and it's for the whole country of Colombia, and I do not understand this feeling! The bus drivers drive to kill.
The air cannot be breathed. Everyone constantly warns you of the thieves. I will turn to the graffiti I have seen on
the walls of Bogotá and maybe this will give you a feel of this crazy, intelligent, super-conscious, terribly raw
country. My favourite is: La virginidad da cancer. Vacúnese. 'Virginity gives you cancer. Get vaccinated.' Or
how about: Ámame y serás madre.
'Make love to me and I'll make you a mother.'
This next one needs
explanation: La semántica de Barco me mata. ‘The semantics of Barco are killing me.’ Barco is the president.
He calls himself a Liberal. The sweet words of the Liberal government are a front for the police and military to
murder whomsoever they choose. And finally there is simply: Quiero vivir. 'I want to live.'
In Bogotá there are little boys and not-so-little boys and dilapidated old men and women sleeping in
begrimed heaps in the streets. The latest method of dealing with them is for 'death squads’ to take them off and
shoot their brains out. Amelia, the old lady at the Casalta, was in tears as she told me about it. Then in her next
breath she told me that recently she opened her purse to give a young beggar a coin and he snatched her purse and
ran off with it. She is poor herself, working from 5:00 a.m. till late at night keeping a whole family of nephews and
nieces who got left to her when her sister died giving birth to the last one. She is an old maid, but mother of all,
bent, wizened and prudish, fierce and sharp, she looks like a witch, and has a heart of gold. I love her and told her
to give up waiting on everyone and come and live in the country with us when we buy the farm. She was touched
and delighted.
In the centre of this ugly city is a huge square called the Plaza de Bolivar, and in the Plaza stands the
blackened wreck of the Palace of Justice. There was a massacre there a few years ago televised for all the country
to see. Some guerrilleros from the movement called ‘M19’ took the building, the Army was called in, and the order
was given to fire. Inside were judges, politicians, tea-ladies, secretaries, women, children, the famous and the
unknown. One particularly well-known judge was telephoning out pleading with the army not to fire. They fired.
They shelled the place.
They machine-gunned.
They burnt.
Over 200 people were killed.
They landed
helicopters inside and of course the guerrilleros killed the soldiers who dropped in. Most of the guerrilleros
committed suicide. On the TV, people saw their relatives, women and children included, escaping from the
building. But these people were never seen again. The army rounded them up and 'disappeared' them.
So how can I love Colombia? Because absolutely everyone cares. I thought that in a country like this,
people would be hardened, cynical, used to tragedy, from the destruction of the rain forests to the plight of the poor
to pollution and overpopulation. I was wrong. There is tremendous concern everywhere. Even the military have
enormous hoardings all over Colombia saying, 'Colombia te queremos' - Colombia we love you.
10th July 1988
And as I left Bogotá yesterday, the last slogan I saw was: Por la vida. No a los militares. Sí a Papa Noel. 'For
life. No to the military. Yes to Father Christmas.'
Arriving in Icononzo, I met Gilberto’s brother Jorge in the street. He strode straight up to me, arrogant,
sarcastic and rude and never mentioned a word about the money he owes us. I was left reeling from the encounter,
and was still raging inside as I sat on the Balcones bus waiting for it to leave. Then I saw him again, outside the
bus. He was smoking and buying expensive ice-cream for his children, a thing I'd never do. My rage suddenly
shot out the top of my head. I opened the bus window and said in a very loud voice for everyone to hear: ‘And my
money, Jorge?’ I put my hand out of the window and said, ‘19,500 pesos please.’ He mumbled some excuse,
vibing me to shut up, but I'd switched into full gear and said, loud and clear: ‘I'm going to let the whole town know
so that no-one ever lends you money again.’ He walked right over to the bus window, his face a horror of different
colours, so I slammed the window shut and he was left making rude signs.
I felt brilliant but had to turn my attention quickly to all the passengers around me, apologising profusely
for my behaviour and explaining my anger to them. By the time the bus took off, I was giggling into Louise’s hair
in rapidly alternating attacks of embarrassment and glee. In fact I felt so good I even felt sorry for Jorge.
12th July 1988
Alice is five today, and my friend Lucinda is 42, so we are having a joint party with doughnuts and coffee, made by
Ned.
13th July 1988
Today my friend Doña Dora was up a guayaba tree throwing fruit down to me, when she casually asked me if
‘anyone had said anything to me lately.’ This is Colombian code for: 'Has the Communist movement made any
threatening moves towards you recently?' I said, 'No?' English shorthand for 'Why, what have you heard?' So she
told me that the Communist police inspector had told the people we're buying the farm from that they can't sell to us
because we have to leave as we ‘haven’t got the right papers.’
19th July 1988
And so, once more like a fish out of water, I came back to Bogotá, this time to visit the security police (DAS) to fix
up residence in Colombia. And the first thing I discover is that one has to 'return to one's country of origin' to apply
for a visa. Most amusing. ‘Unless’, mumbled the man behind the glass window out of the side of his mouth, 'you
are married to a Colombian national.' It also says on the official information sheet that all relatives of the applicant
aged seven and over have to apply separately. This means that Louise has to fly home; or get married.
It was hard to control my tears on the bus. Shock, exhaustion, anger, and a sense of empty desperation at
having to spend so much time in this dreadful city just in order to live quietly on some grass.
20th July 1988
I have just spent all yesterday evening and half this morning crying. All my thoughts have turned towards leaving,
giving up and going to Ecuador. Walking in Bogotá, everyone stares at me. If you wear pink pyjama trousers,
carry a battered yellow rucksack, don't wear makeup and have a child in a worn blue nylon dress and welly boots,
people treat you badly. Cafe's refuse you permission to use their loos. Yesterday we were walking through the
University grounds looking for a Communist professor we wanted to see to ask about the attitude of the local
Communist movement to our staying (we didn't find him) and a woman passed by in trousers, a sweater and no
make-up. I knew immediately she was a professor and spoke to her, confirming it. Louise said, 'She wasn't posh,
was she?' 'NO,' I said, 'the bottom people in the world and the top people don't bother about how they dress because
they have more important things to think about.'
Hours later, back in Icononzo
Today is the 500th anniversary of when the South American-born Spaniards first defied the mainland Spanish. To
mark this day, the priest and the mayor of Icononzo (who was voted in with the help of the Communists), announce
over the loudspeaker system that dominates the little market town that everyone in Icononzo must fly a Colombian
flag or be fined. The police visit every house and shop and make the inhabitants sign a paper stating that they have
been informed of this ruling.
The owners of the farm we want to buy did not care a damn about papers. María from the commune in
Ireland, came out to Colombia to bring us the money and we moved in.
8th August 1988
We are about to move to our new farm two hours across the mountains from Balcones. Ned has gone up the field
carrying a huge double mattress; Maria is taking nails out of the walls. The chickens are incarcerated awaiting
transportation. The four children - my three and María’s boy Francis - have already gone up to the village of
Balcones where we will sleep the night before taking off in an old hired lorry to our farm.
On the first day of settling into our new home, a lanky bare-footed figure with his trousers rolled up to the
knee and a rucksack on his back came tripping down the horse path. “’Allo,’ said a Yorkshire accent, 'I ‘eard you
might 'ave some work 'ere.' It was Bill. He had turned up at Balcones, found us gone and trekked hours through
practically pathless jungle to find us. This seems to be some kind of private courtship game he periodically
indulges in....
17th August 1988
Dear Snowy, (from Bill)
You will no doubt be pleased to know that I am back on the expeditionary team. Due entirely to Jenny's
resentment of my blocks, I have spent the last four months in a cowshed in Venezuela...
19th August 1988
This land we have bought is so big I don't know where the boundaries are and I couldn't get to them if I did because
of the matted jungle. We live in a small clearing. There were rats running around in our attic last night so we put
the dog up there and he piddled through the floorboards on to Francis’ sleeping head. Francis didn't notice.
My machete-arm is sore from clearing jungle. Bill and Ned spent yesterday uncovering huge old trees
from the undergrowth to build a chicken-shed. Colombia is boiling and bubbling but here there is total peace. If
one day you hear of my death, I want to record right now that I chose to die here, and that so far I have found no
place or people I would rather die with.
When Louise came in last night, she undressed and got underneath my bed with Francis and announced she
was going to 'have sex' with him. There's no accounting for taste. There seems to be a place for us all on this
planet.
I keep worrying about immigration, but all Colombians say not to worry, no-one will ever bother us here.
This is a Communist area, and Josué’s trying to get us out of Balcones seems to have been more to do with me
refusing to be his mistress than any political edict. Ned will get married soon and get official residence and then
we'll finalise papers for this farm.
The spirit amongst us all is great. Bill and I burst into song this morning, an old Protestant hymn: 'He who
would valiant be /’Gainst all disaster' ... and 'There's no discouragement/Shall make him once relent/His first
avowed intent/To be a Pilgrim. And 'Who so beset him round/With dismal stories/Do but themselves confound/His
strength the more is'……
The loo is built, a deep Ned-dug hole with a Bill-designed seat surrounded by a leaf-covered structure.
The water-place outside the kitchen is fed from a spring just yards away, unsullied, and it runs all the year round,
even in droughts. Bill has built a bed; Maria, Ned and Bill take turns at our non-stop kitchen, and I do all the
mending and have all the ideas! The climate is perfect, cool mornings and evenings, warm days with plenty of
cloud so that work feels good; lots of lovely tropical rain and sometimes a few hours of hot mountain sun. There is
a humming contentment amongst us all.
María just called us out to see a worm over two foot long, and some of the butterflies are as big as my hand.
Anyone ready to come out and tame the savages (my kids)?
20th August 1988
We have been here a week and a half. María took Louise and Francis way down the valley to the nearest village;
it's much hotter there as you drop several hundred feet in a very short time. She left late and the night caught her
and she returned scared out of her wits having had to feel her way on all fours along jungle pathways. The barking
of our dog and the candle I put on the veranda helped them the last part of the way.
Adela, the woman who used to live here, comes almost every day to see how we're getting on, to bring me
plants, collect her remaining bits and pieces, advise me on the garden and take me to introduce me to all the people
round here. Today she offered to get me a labourer to help plant maize as she can see I am overworked, trying to
cope with the gardens alone as the others are so busy on other jobs but we are determined to do everything
ourselves. Katie just came for a cuddle; I am grateful to her to remind me to stop for a moment and not try to clear
the whole of this jungle in the first week. These early days are bound to be hard as the farm has been totally
neglected. The families round here are small and nuclear and the mentality capitalist in spite of their politics: each
family sticks to its own patch and they don't work together unless paid to do so; yet this land demands communes,
tribes, village co-operatives or extended family groupings.
23rd August 1988
Adela's sister Rosa told me today that sometimes guerrilla soldiers pass by, that they are ‘buena gente’ - good people
- and that they sort out any problems in the region - that if we had any difficulties we should tell them. She also
said that no-one ever steals anything round here, 'not even a chicken' and that the guerrilleros iron out any quarrels
between neighbours.
26th August 1988
Our life is beautiful here. Because there are no seasons, you can plant carrots on any of 365 days. Apart from
machete-ing jungle, that is, preparing the gardens, I have managed to make a woolly jumper for a teddy bear, some
red ears for a dog that had lost his, and write an article requested by the South American Explorers' Magazine. The
farm is taking shape, though it will be a year before we know all our land.
Tom and Alex joined us from the commune in Ireland. Ned got married to a Colombian girl who came to
live with us, and completed his immigration. Bill and I went to Bogotá to arrange our papers.
And then the blow fell.
When Ned and I had walked into Colombia, we knew nothing of immigration stamps or time limits. But
Ned told a few lies, paid a fine, and was given time to get married. I, however, am the world’s worst liar and stood
no chance with the DAS. I begged to be allowed to pay a fine like Ned had done, but they wouldn't hear of it.
They said they ‘recognised my face' and that I had been at their office before. I don't know what James Bond
scenario they were inventing in their heads, all I know is, they are deporting me, and Bill too. I was grilled for
several hours, the detective who dealt with me alternately shouting at me, insulting me, threatening me, advising me,
being kind to me, joking, - and - finally holding the door open for me when I left.
Whilst in the office, Bill talked to a Colombian who used to work as a security guard at the DAS HQ,
whose eight-year-old son was born in England. His son is being thrown out of Colombia.
A middle-class
Colombian lady was in tears because her passport hadn't been stamped at the country of exit when she flew into
Colombia and they were trying to force her to fly back to get the stamp. This is the same country where you can
murder someone without the police batting an eyelid.
The office then closed as the police were about to have a party. I have to go back in five days.
9th November 1988, Bogotá
I have been instructed by the DAS to deport myself within ten days. They say if I don't leave, and am caught, I will
get two years in prison. Then the detective told me I have to get the children’s father, if you please, to “give
permission for them to leave Colombia.” Louise, seven years old, had her fingerprints taken. We were sent to the
Bienestar Familiar - the Family Welfare Department - for them to check their files in case 'the father' was searching
for the children.
I am told I have to stay away at least six months and can then apply for a re-entry visa at a Colombian
consulate.
10th November 1988
I have been crying for hours in my private agonised goodbye to Colombia. Bill is unsupportive, limp, and distant.
Louise is quite gay about travelling again, saying bravely, 'I'm used to it now.' As for Alice and Katie, as long as
they have lollipops, the sun is shining for them, even here in cold and rainy Bogotá. I did ask the DAS if the kids
could stay in Colombia with friends, but they hit the roof, saying aghast, 'Son ilegales tambien' - they are illegal too.
My children are illegal. Being wrenched from Colombia feels like an operation without anaesthetic.
Once back home on the farm, I recovered from the trauma and decided to treat the calamity positively,
using the enforced journey to look at other South American countries and even, it we found an irresistible paradise,
to sell the farm and transfer the community once again, deeper into the heartlands of South America.
14th November 1988, Icononzo
Dear Ned, Alex and Tom,
We are sitting on a stone bench waiting for the bus to Melgar on the first stage of our exile. When we left
the farm, yesterday, we slipped and slid for nearly two hours on the steep jungle pathway to Hoya Grande, and
arrived in pitch-dark at Adela’s house. We slept well on the wooden floor and woke easily at four in the morning.
We're on the road again. There's a scruffy English guy with me from Barnsley, we fancy each other most of the
time and at the moment he seems a fairly good chap to get deported with. The whole family we're staying with got
up early to go to the bus with us. Adela cried inconsolably on the shoulders of a neighbour.
We're now breakfasting at the side of the road, it's raining and we have no place to shelter. I feel happy, in
spite of my neurotic boyfriend having a fit on me just now about some obscure grievance.
15th November 1988
A group of soldiers stopped the bus outside Melgar and we all had to get out and the men had to stand with their
hands stretched up on the bus while they were frisked for weapons. The soldier in charge spoke perfect American
and got so interested talking to us that they forgot to complete the search properly and never even asked for my
papers.
16th November 1988
This journey is one long war with the kids, plus a fight for survival against carbon monoxide poisoning. Last
night's stop was in a lorry park at the edge of the main Arctic-Antarctic Highway. At 4:00 a.m. the lorries all took
off, trapping us in a gas-chamber. The fumes were nearly as bad as the vibes emanating from Bill. We are
pushing South at a rate too fast for the blood, lungs and mind, in order to comply with the DAS deadline. This
means travelling on posh long-distance buses where they separate you from the driver and force you to watch an
ageing Richard Burton being a boring Nazi in some film sponsored, one must assume, by dynamite manufacturers;
and when they turn that off, you get hiccupping Colombian country-tunes with as much sex to them as a Daz advert.
This would be bearable when you're madly in love, but when your passion has just died a violent death ... Weeding
beetroot at home would be bliss.
18th November 1988, Ipiales
Hello Ned,
I took off yesterday morning from Popayan, leaving Bill; I could stand him no longer. I took a nine-hour
bus-ride alone with the kids to Ipiales, where Katie was sick in the gutter immediately on arrival. I went into the
first pension I could see, which stank and was expensive, bare and tiny like a prison cell. I'd been in there about
two minutes when there was a knock at the door. Bill. He’d been round all 20 hotels looking for us. He got our
money back and we went to a better place across the road.
Once away from the countryside, Colombia is crude and capitalistic; if this is the Third World, the Dreadful
has indeed already happened.
19th November 1988
When we went to get stamped out of Colombia, the DAS official looked at our exit-papers and said, ‘Cuando
vuelve?’ When are you coming back? 'Never', I said. ‘Listo, porque no puedes.’ ‘Good, because you can't’ he
said.
CHAPTER 9
ECUADOR
19th November 1988, The First Village in Ecuador
We walked straight off the highway at the frontier, down to a dirty river, and put up our tent. It's lovely living at
our own rhythms again after the nightmare rush to get out of Colombia in time, which has left a scar on me forever.
The Equator is a cold place, especially at night. The dirty river where I did my washing was freezing and
the grass too cold to walk on barefoot. Bill is chatting to some soldiers camping in the village, they are half his size
with high squeaky voices and all look about sixteen. One just pointed a gun at him, in jest.
In this tiny settlement we have landed in, we can't get milk, but we could have BAYTROID CURATERR
CUPRAVIT ANTRACOL FOLIMAT or BAYLETON, the various agricultural poisons on sale here. Bill swears
this place we are camped is the Sheffield moors, and I'm sure it's Maidstone in Kent. Wherever it is, it's cold,
cloudy, stripped of all forest, terribly neat and cultivated as far as the eye can see; the black and white cows are
entirely English and we've just been given two crisp lettuces by the farmer whose land we're on. Bill is eating a
mango, about the only sign we've left Dover.
21st November 1988
Dear Ned,
This is written horizontally. Bill and I are both ill, me very much so. We are 3,000 metres up in the air
and at night the ground is very cold, and I can't walk. I have horrible pains in my limbs, a constant headache and an
unstable stomach like the goats just before they died. We are camping in our flimsy tent in wet grass and have been
given loads of free potatoes and milk. By 8:00 a.m., the sun beams down. Our bags are too heavy, but we don't
know what to give up as we have to face both winter and summer each day.
24th November 1988
For days we have had to stay in the cold, wet field going through body ague, unable to eat, with diarrhoea and
terrible weakness. Last night the local family who adopted us insisted we play music in the dark outside the tent.
And this morning, I woke up well.
We were constantly given gifts of free food, including a huge plate of hot rice, potatoes and lentils. The
people here are friendly without smothering you and they ask you straightforward questions like, “What are you
doing here?” What indeed.
27th November 1988
We spent a night in Tulcan, the first Ecuadorian town, in a ‘pension.’ It was a waking nightmare, besieged by the
noise and fumes of the Pan-American highway. Our room shook. I decided that whatever else happens, we have
to get off, and stay off, the main roads.
Ecuador is stripped. There is no forest. The Indian population are docile, friendly, tiny, mostly beautiful
and all exquisitely dressed; the women and little girls are in fancy dress even when standing thigh-deep in a river
bashing their clothes on rocks, or bending in the maize fields, with babies tied on their backs. It seems everyone
has a baby, even the tiny little girls are carrying babies. The men and boys have a long black plait of hair down
their backs and the women and girls always wear row upon row of golden neck-choking beads, exquisite
embroidered blouses and everyone wears the same colours: dark blue and turquoise and white, with a thick woollen
cloth wrapped onto their heads no matter what the weather.
The village shops sell only Fanta and white bread and Colombian lollipops. The people are very clean and
are forever washing themselves and their clothes, but there don't seem to be any toilets. The towns smell of pee.
The descendants of the Spanish are quite obviously a different race and live in a different world. There isn't much
miscegenation and I don't blame the Indians. The whites are ugly.
The Indians have bicycles, ride in taxis and crowd buses. An Indian woman whose Spanish was very bad
sold us some cooked potatoes at our camp site this morning. They speak Quechua together, but have TV aerials
and radios blaring Spanish songs.
We are camped at the edge of a huge lake; we walked here from the town of Otavalo, which is full of
Indians, having travelled three hot cramped hours by bus from the frontier. I hated the countryside, dry dusty, sharp
mountains. The lowest, hottest places are inhabited by blacks. Modernisation is everywhere, with not a square
inch anywhere we've passed through as basic, scruffy or lush as where our farm is in Colombia.
I am completely depressed about immigration, rain and tents. This is definitely better however than my
previous mood of near nervous breakdown at the state human beings have reduced the world to; and a nervous
breakdown was mildly preferable to dying of body-flu and diarrhoea in a wet field; and the wet field was a million
times better than the three days spent on Colombian buses.
29th November 1988
We moved from the very public side of the large lake where there was absolutely nowhere to go to the toilet, to a
marsh on the far side. We camped on a bit of land half an inch above waterlevel; it was covered in pigshit. In case
you are unfamiliar with pigshit, it smells worse than any other, except human and dogs.’ However, none of this is
as bad as the company I am forced to keep. Bill is going through a particularly lengthy women-opause, so I
produced a tragically loving dream about my dead father who was going off in uniform to the war in a train-truck
and I was saying goodbye through the bars and my love was pouring out to him like blood.
Next day, we looked at a map to see how we could escape the treadmill of the main North/South highway
and saw a lake marked high up in the mountains. So we took off on a deserted road and kept walking in delicious
countryside till evenings when we were lent a barn for the very wet night, a wonderful relief from the tent, with
room to swing a violin bow, walk with unbowed head, room to put distance between self and unwanted comrades
and an indoor fire. But the night is cold and hard on an earthen floor. Luckily Bill roused himself two millimetres
out of his latest sulk to establish physical contact, so I was able to fall into a deep warm sleep and produce a
passionate dream about Gilberto.
1st December, Malchingui, Ecuador
We carried on up the mountain road, walking all day, reaching colder levels and eventually stopped the only vehicle
that passed us, an open-backed van with a young touring couple in the front. We froze in the back of the van as we
climbed to higher and higher levels, through cloud and mist and rain, till suddenly the road ended, and there was the
lake. The couple took one look, turned around, and left us, in belting rain. By the side of the desolate lake, called
Mojanda, there was a smashed-up, pissed-in, hideous concrete rabbit-warren of a building, scrawled all over in
charcoal with the names of dozens of previous travellers; a comfortless, derelict blotch on an otherwise untouched
horizon. There was not a pane of glass left in the metal window-frames and several rooms had been burnt out.
The building must have been some bureaucratic Bright Idea for the advancement of tourism.
We ran through the shelter whooping with excitement, tinged with hysteria at our predicament. We had
just enough food for one day, very little bedding, we were very high up and it was extremely cold and wet. The
water in the lake was pure and clear however, and our survival instincts were highly stimulated; our situation was
not quite fatal. We selected one of the windy, burnt-out rooms where some hapless predecessor had gathered straw.
Bill erected our plastic sheet as a pathetic little wall of protection against the draught, and I played “Away In A
Manger” on the violin in the echoing hallways, my fingers freezing in the mountain air.
As night fell, we lay down on the hay with our very thin duvet over us and a very wet poncho over the kids.
I dressed them up in all they had, but trousers are in short supply and in the morning, Alice's feet were red and cold.
I rubbed them back to life and the kids are as healthy as ever.
We got up very early because we didn't know where we were going, how we were going to get there, how
long it would take, or whether ‘anywhere’ existed. However, Bill has this irritating habit of knowing which is East
and which is West and which way Quito lies and which bit of mountain we're supposed to cross as if he's lived here
before. So I shouldered my bag, grabbed the kids' hands and marched off in the direction he indicated and we
walked as never before, through entirely uninhabited mountain moorland, with half a day's food left. Katie had to
be carried by me a lot of the way across slippy slidey muddy mountain paths with drainage streams constantly
crossing them. The countryside was bare; deforestation has been taken to the limit in Ecuador. Barren moors,
nothing and nobody. But with morning energy and a reasonable determination not to die of hunger or exposure, we
forced ourselves on, and on, and on, the whole day long. After some hours, we saw our first farm and the only two
human beings we were to meet till late afternoon. They pointed us towards the next bit, which 'bit' was a colossally
long descent through beautiful mountains, overlooking valleys much as you might overlook them from an aeroplane.
Bags and kids were heavy, adult relations not good, but general co-operation functioned well, and the children's
stamina is phenomenal. Louise doesn't touch the ground at all, so the odd twenty-mile trot leaves no scar on her.
Both she and Alice carry their own bags and Katie carries one furry monkey in a bag around her neck. I carry
Katie. Till I nearly drop, then Bill takes over and I get a second wind to lead us on the enormous distances ahead.
We ate our last food - one egg between the five of us, one spring onion, and two spoonfuls of cooked rice
each.
Towards evening, I had pushed on well ahead of the others. Suddenly a jeep appeared on the track behind
me and stopped. It was full. With the rest of my family. They drove us the very long way to the first little
village, called Malchingui.
There was 'nowhere to stay.’ But Bill kept asking till he found a woman who agreed to put us up for 1,000
sucres (about £1.25p) in a bed so short I couldn't straighten my legs - there was a wall at the end of it, in a miniature
room with standing room only. I made up a bed for Katie and Alice on a cupboard, and Louise slept with the
landlady and her three sons aged 17, 11 and 14 in an equally tiny bed. We washed piles of clothes and I collapsed
half way through with shooting pains in my head and ear from the strain and tension of the journey, and spent a
dreadful night cooped up in bed with someone I would at present prefer not to be cooped up with.
3rd December 1988, Alchipichí
Dear Ned,
I'm writing to you by the side of a semi-desert road under the small shade of a cactus. We are heading in
the general direction of Quito on an old Inca road.
Later
The Inca road continued its barren sandy rocky way for a shadeless while and then it disappeared. We
were faced with the rolling round edge of a round mountain. We had reached the edge of the world and there was
no way down, or out, or back. While Bill stared at the drop, I scouted around and discovered that by turning sharp
left, we could make out a tiny track carved out of the rock, so narrow that often I couldn't carry the violin and guitar
at my sides. Katie was not amused and was kicking up a fuss and I was bone-weary from the previous day's
marathon, so we decided to stop the moment we found a tree and some water to camp by. But tree and water found
we none, and the dusty track went down, and down, and down forever. After several hours, we espied below us,
not a green, cool valley running with streams, just asking to be camped in, but instead row upon row of
suspicious-looking enormously long modern factory buildings and a - deserted - main road. 'No good is going on
there' quoth I. Battery chickens, billions of them, 200,000 in one establishment alone as we later ascertained.
Once on the road, it was another hour's bone-creaking walk wearily dragging one foot after the other to the
nearest village. We camped as night fell in a field opposite a school in a well-to-do battery farm village with
breezeblock houses. We were given eggs, and the kids were given bread and lollipops and oranges, and then when
we had fallen asleep exhausted, we were woken up by local people delivering us a large plate of rice and potatoes
and tomatoes and fried eggs which we ate wearily by torchlight.
In the morning, we spotted a waterfall above the village and spent half the day trying to reach it so that we
could camp and rest for a couple of days from our long journeys. But there were battery farms everywhere and
every bit of land was dry, steep and covered in prickly vegetation. We were just about to leave in disgust, when a
man showed Bill the only six inches of water you can actually reach, and I found a piece of woodland floor the size
of one small tent. Bill spent about three hours clearing it, pulling up bushes and shifting earth. I collapsed on a
sheet-sized piece of grass in the sun, giving the mosquitoes their best meal in ages.
To my back is the huge mountain range we have just crossed; to my fore, above Battery Farm Valley, is
another range, which we have decided not to scale as it is bare, barren red dust as far as the eye can see. Beyond
that lies Quito, the capital. And in my mind is only one thing: how can I get back into Colombia away from the
barren boredom of the Socialist Republic of Ecuador. A street in this village is called ‘Che Guevara’ and his face
appears on all their lorries. I hope he would be horrified.
3rd December 1988, Puellaró
It was murderously unbearable in the tent with Bill last night, so this morning when we left Mosquito Waterfall, I
gave it away so that I will never sleep in that cage with him again.
We are still passing through chicken-battery Andean villages.
It is terribly peaceful.
I prefer the
turbulence of that psychopathic country up North.
Two hours later
I couldn't stand another minute of the mildew forming on Bill as he made us cheese
rolls, so I split our money up, gave him the violin and left with the children, immediately feeling more energetic.
The road was hot, however, and no traffic was moving, and I noted we had acquired a Shadow that kept trailing us
that we could not shake off. So we walked back into the shady village and asked the transport lady for somewhere
to stay the night. Unfortunately, she had already seen me with my ‘esposo’ (husband) and asked about him, so to
avoid social embarrassment, I went down to the drooping figure huddled in the square and told him we had a nice
place to stay. “Phew, saved by the bell”, was his comment.
We moved into the airy room offered us and did our washing. Half an hour later the young daughter of the
family came and told me that seven relations of theirs were about to arrive and that the mother had 'forgotten' about
it, and that they needed the room. 'Indeed?' I said, and gaily packed once more. I have no idea what got up their
nose. Bill then found us a bare wooden-floored room for 100 sucres (12p), large, airy and warm. He borrowed a
newspaper, we spread it on the floor and lay down our bedding. I rehung our washing washed at the snooty house,
Louise had a shower, and there is even a loo that works. Bill is preparing vegetables to cook on an open wood fire
in the courtyard and the 80 year old proprietoress just asked me how old he is. 'How old do you think?' I asked.
“About 70” she answered. Sweet unsolicited revenge.
Later
I'm sitting on my 12p balcony in the warm windy late afternoon. One of the only free chickens in this
valley is crowing nearby. In the distance is the distressed sound of his several thousand incarcerated brothers and
sisters.
It was definitely a good idea to give up the tent. It is also vital to give up Bill, regularly. The old woman
who thought Bill was 70 guessed my age right, the first time in my life this has happened. I must have aged
terribly.
Next day
All is peace, the soup is bubbling. A man gave Bill a cabbage, some peas and beans and a
bag-full of bread and cake. I moaned at Bill half the night and told him to sod off about a hundred times until he
turned into a mediumly human being. It won't last, but it makes a break.
6th December 1988, Quito
We have landed in the middle of the 554th year foundation celebrations of Quito, so Bill had to spend three hours
looking for somewhere to sleep. There are a lot of gringos here, all tall, ugly, blonde and I hate them. They never
say hello. We had to pay 1,800 sucres for a room - £2.10p., a colossal sum here. The room was cold, the shower
was cold, the whole place smelt of disinfectant and they kept the rows of lights in the corridor on all night - our door
had a large frosted glass window, so like battery hens we were forced to sleep in the light. One double bed, one
camp bed, Katie, wrapped up as best I could, on the stone floor, and I bullied Bill into having sex as a comfort in the
cold universe my mind and body were inhabiting.
Quito is generally more colourful, relaxed and festive than paranoid Bogotá, but - a uniformed park
attendant in the main post office square blew a whistle at us just now because we were about to sit on the grass.
7th December 1988
Next day we found a boarding house made of wood for 1,200 sucres, and I awoke acutely depressed about what to
do next. Then Bill and I both had the same idea separately: to walk up the steep streets of Quito, on and on up to
the steep green hills above. Our landlady said if we stayed another night, we could have the room for 800 sucres
(£l), but we left, walking out into the piss-drenched, refuse-covered, dilapidated streets and stepping over the drunks
littering the ground. Everything in me wanted to run, run from Quito. Bill had to drag me up the shockingly steep
inclines through the mists of my depression. He's very good at approaching people and asking them anything from
'where's there a toilet'? to 'do you have ice jollies?' (private houses make them for 10 sucres - 1p), to 'we're looking
for accommodation.' Almost immediately we were offered a little three-room apartment for 12,000 sucres a month.
We declined politely and walked upwards another fifty feet, asked again and were offered two rooms for 6,000
sucres a month. Then I asked a man by the public water-tap what one would pay per month here for a room, and he
said 'four or five thousand sucres.’ And on we walked, like flies, up the steep concreted mountain.
We then arrived at what must be the most hideous monument in the whole world: a gaudy mosaic and
concrete monstrosity commemorating freedom or independence or some such, perched on a green hill dominating
the whole of Quito. Bill kept on making his enquiries, and we were offered a tiny room for 2,000 sucres a month.
Then there were no more houses. Above us was greenery and trees, and we both agreed to go on up. The family
who had offered us the last room said they had a farm way up there and they sent their daughter with us to show us,
saying we could have it for nothing. Exhausted, we climbed up and up steeply till finally we saw it: an old
farmhouse surrounded by agricultural land and just a few trees where we could scavenge firewood, a sparse
commodity in Ecuador.
So now I'm looking over Quito from a great height. There is smoke in my eyes from the eucalyptus wood
fire in the hallway. I'm leaning this letter on a windowsill to write as there's no furniture here. And today we saw
our first llama, being used as a pack animal. I am freezing cold, and we are terrifyingly short of bedding. To the
farmer's horror, the room we chose was the only one with a wooden floor and no electric light bulb. The floor is
caked with old guinea pig droppings. I spent hours scraping and sweeping and washing it, mainly to stay alive in
the cold while Bill was three hours away getting food and our luggage from down below in Quito. The kids
meanwhile have played energetically and happily ever since we arrived in the farm courtyard.
An Indian couple and their baby and starved dog also live here, but they only come home to sleep.
They lend us their cooking pot during the day. Bill has ascertained that the water goes straight down the plughole,
and swirls neither to left nor right, which according to him confirms that we are on the Equator. Tonight, we sleep
on the floor with the barest body necessities, the kids dressed up in all they own. And they've never complained
yet.
Next day
Good morning. We survived the night. And as I stood in the patio washing up with numb fingers, I looked across
at the view and magically, the whole of Quito had disappeared. The countryside returned for a while to the desolate
beauty that must have reigned before the Spaniards came to wreck everything.
All signs of Man’s ant-like
existence were covered by morning clouds with only the mountain ranges left, the tallest of the peaks capped with
snow.
In Quito, they sell little packets of polystyrene globules as artificial snow for Christmas, and in November,
the shops were already full of Christmas trees, decorations and Father Christmases.
I washed our duvet cover, Bill's trousers, the kids' poncho and clothes and trusted in the sun. But the sun
never came. The mist descended, the rain began, the temperature dropped and then it started to hail. Bill said, let's
collect wood. No way, I said, that stuff falling out of the sky is dangerous. Minutes later, bead-sized hail changed
to large marbles, and then to walnuts. Louise has fallen into a fever. I sat sewing just so that I had something to
wear. Bill went shopping in the rain, getting drenched; he now has no legwear.
8th December 1988
5:45 a.m. It's dark, I'm writing by candlelight.
I had to remove Bill from the bed as he was giving me
stomach-ache. Life with him is not warm. He did, however, manage to improve the room temperature somewhat
by putting plastic bags over missing window-panes, shutting broken shutters and wedging the non-closing door.
You have more firewood lying around your kitchen floor, Ned, than all the gleanings of this whole area.
Later
Bill has gone to town in mud-caked floppy pyjama trousers. They suit him. Louise is still in a feverish
silence; I am trying to keep spirits up by lighting and relighting green 'firewood.’ Bill was shocked to find we have
spent over £40 since leaving Colombia, but if we lived at any lower standard of living, our survival would be in
doubt. Anyway, freezing to death makes a nice change from having your face burnt off on shadeless highways, and
even this meagre abode is better than a claustrophobic tent or a concrete boarding-house you pay for and hate. And
being alone here with the kids trying to scrape together some kind of life is better than aimlessly wandering the
highways. And my own company is definitely better than Bill's.
9th December 1988
Dear Ned,
There is something strange about today. Everything feels absolutely delicious. It might be because Bill
got a large blanket for 30p in Quito, or it might be because I rather enjoyed the midnight entertainment last night Bill indulging his fantasies about getting off with the football captain's (i.e. Fred's) girlfriend. Or because I
managed to find all the notes of ‘Midnight in Moscow’ on the violin, a tune I haven't heard for over 20 years. Or is
it because my washing, wet for three days, has at last dried? Also, Louise has recovered and I just collected two
sackfulls of minute twiglets, eucalyptus pods, leaves and tiny pieces of bark - firewood to us. This was a minor
tragedy in Bill's life as it removed one of his chief daily excuses for a moan. But the biggest reason for ecstasy is
that the good Knight Sir William bought a bag of charcoal for 18p and invented a miniscule stove - we place it under
the window so that the fumes go out the many cracks. So now we have a large room at slightly-above-freezing
temperature, warm coffee and a home-made clothes-drier. Added to this, I have the satisfaction of having managed
to piss Bill off in bed more than he managed to piss me off, which raises my tolerance for his intolerability a few
notches above zero. The feeling that life isn't entirely impossible does make things a little more pleasant.
This break, however chilly, is doing me the world of good: just to be able to move about without luggage,
to wash, sew, sit, sleep and play the violin, is repairing my worn mechanism to the extent that I can bear to
contemplate further travel.
So dear People at home on the farm, I hope the carrots are well. Think of us when you look at trees or
wallow in an abundance of firewood. Alice just asked me sadly if we can go to 'Ned's house' tomorrow please, and
this morning came rushing in crying to tell me men are chainsawing down one of the last remaining big trees on this
barren mountain; she wanted me to go out and stop them ...
Ned, we miss your lovely blackberry drinks, your fantastic rice and veg. meals, and Tom your stories of
Dinosaurs for the kids at night. Who knows, the Lord of All may yet grant that I be returned to you in one piece
next May - all the best, Jenny.
PS
The Indian woman in the room next door who feeds her starving dog on dead beetles, just caught a little
sparrow, put a string round its neck and gave it to her ugly little daughter to torture; then she killed it to eat.
15th December 1988
I am sitting in the Quito Immigration Office where Bill is extending our visas. On the wall opposite me is a notice:
“If you stay in Ecuador for a longer time than you are authorised to, this is reason enough to pull you out of the
country. Please come right on time for your enlargement of permanence…..”
Same day, from Bill
Dear Ned,
This morning I cut off in the middle of sex and immediately got a bad headache. Later I was walking in the city
with Jen and she nudged me to look at a car sticker. It said, 'Sex Cures Headaches.' I find that I can stand feeling
sexual a lot more these days. I can now stand feeling sexual for at least three seconds a month.
20th December 1988
Dear Ned,
Yesterday I stayed at home in bad weather with no charcoal fire while Bill went shopping. He returned
with no food and no money. He’d been robbed in the market of £40, when we are already worried about our funds
lasting the six months and have been skimping painfully. On the steep climb home with Louise, Bill was then
attacked again by a man who attempted to stab him. He yelled he had no money, it had already been robbed, and
the man ran away.
No food, no fire, and now Bill has gone completely mad. I was up all night trying to cope with him, but he
was determined not to grow up. So I was forced to make the usual decision, to split up.
My heart sank as I carried my heavy bag down the hill towards Quito and said goodbye to the family who
had helped us; they were very sad to see us go. I couldn't tell them the truth as to why I had to leave, nor why Bill
was still at the farmhouse packing. I was heavy with depression.
Later, sitting in the square in Quito, I had to get rid of a drunk who asked me to marry him and have a black
baby with him. Why the baby would be black, I don't know, as he wasn't and nor am I.
Then Bill turned up, all bloated and puffed. He’d been crying and announced he is not going to leave us.
There was a music group near us but gradually we were attracting a larger audience than the musicians. I'd
organised separation of the luggage down to the last toothbrush, but Bill said NO and helped us quit Quito.
21st December 1988, Salcedo
We arrived at the hideous breezeblock town of Latacunga and quickly got a short bus-ride out to a bearable small
town called Salcedo where I sat for two hours in the market square surrounded by huge friendly crowds who
watched fascinated as I poured milk for the kids or ate a banana. They fed us grapes and one fellow asked proudly:
'Do you espeaka Espanis?
Bill meanwhile was running round nuns' houses and the one hotel looking for
somewhere to stay. The crowd told us we should go to the 'Casa Campesina’ which was 'del pueblo' - of the
people, and free.
We went there and were shown to a room with three wooden platforms with straw mats on them, one
already occupied by a very sweet Indian man who'd just had an operation and who hardly understood a word of
Spanish. His wife joined him, they talked quietly in Quechua and slept together. My heart ached at the contrast
with the cold lump beside me.
On the wall, it says: Tuqui runacuna tandanachush pani cuenta, cay huasita rurarcanchic, which is Quechua
for “All the peasants united like brothers built this house together.” But the Indians look terribly out of place in this
horrid square featureless building which they use when they come down from the hills. And the toilets smell so
bad, I feel sick. Louise is sweeping out the bedroom and my two youngest are playing in the dust with some Indian
children.
22nd December 1988
We travelled on to a very beautiful little town called Baños. It was a long bus-journey downwards to get there, so
at last we were back in a warm climate amidst breezy mountains. We then walked a few kilometres to a lovely
little river in a perfect climate with plenty of firewood, privacy and safe, clean water, the best place we've found
since leaving home. A tent would have been handy, but I looked at the clear sky and trusted we could sleep outside
for the night, which we did. Bill was lovely in bed and I wondered what all the fuss had been about and thought we
might stay here for a long time,
Then around 4:00 a.m., I woke up freezing cold, not because of the weather, but because of the stone lying
next to me. From then until 1:00 p.m., the stone did not speak, however much provocation I provided, but hung
around, hovering over me like a heavy black cloud. I tried many tacks and ploys to return him to humanhood. In
vain.
So I painfully packed my bags and left the idyllic children's spot with the lovely little river and the safe
playing places and the perfect climate, and walked off with the children. We immediately felt better. We bought
ice lollies and walked and walked and walked. This valley is beautiful, a deep cleft between mountains, a narrow
dusty road with a sheer drop below. Sometimes lorries pass one another, a nerve-wracking spectacle. Waterfalls
spurt out of the sheer rock face and cascade down hundreds of feet into foaming pools; others fall from rock
overhangs above the road, so that traffic has to drive underneath them. Often, wide, shallow, stony rivers cross the
roadway. Hours and hours of trotting along with the kids, then a car stopped, not to give us a lift, but to hand us
two bottles of orangeade. Later a van stopped and took us a long way perched on bags of flour.
At all times, there was a shadow dogging us. Sometimes, we would stop and force the shadow to overtake
us, but then later we would pass him sitting with head bowed in some private tragedy we were expected to respond
to. We felt happy, and breezed on.
In the evening, we arrived at a misty settlement called Rio Negro and found a woman who let us have a
bare little room reeking of Cuprinol with one small straw mat on the wooden floor. Bill had all our bedding as it is
impossible for me to carry it.
Having settled in, I went to breathe the evening air on the balcony. Straightaway, I spotted a dark figure
arriving in town. I disappeared quickly inside.
Towards four in the morning, I was freezing to death, but too exhausted from so much bag-carrying and
Katie-carrying and Bill-escaping to wake up properly to search for socks or a towel to wrap round me. Somewhere
in Rio Negro, there was someone snuggled up warmly in our duvet, sheets and woollen blankets.
In the morning, I received a visit from a lovely plump lady interceding for someone called Pobre
Guillermo, (Poor Bill) who was evidently ‘mi esposo’ - my husband - and who had dined with her and her husband
and had told his Sad Story and was ‘sufriendo mucho’ (suffering greatly); he knew he was guilty, that he had been
bad to his senora, but he wanted to be back with her and the sweet niñas. Meanwhile, he had played guitar to them,
had been given work with them, and they had invited him to stay and live with them. The lady was asking for my
permission to let my ‘pobre esposo’ come up and talk to me. I shrugged acquiescence. The kids cantered happily
off with the lady. Bill came up. I had my back to him, carried on writing and spoke not. He just stood there in
silence while I did my best psychically to cut out his foul vibrations. I failed. Eventually I said, ‘You can go,
thank you very much.’ And he went, having won his little social suck-up game. I packed, trembling with the rage
that he had efficiently dumped in the room. I gathered the children together and we walked along the road and out
of town, passing Bill’s new home. A grey figure stood staring, surrounded by his new family.
We got a bus immediately to Puyo, with the accent on the poo, a flat ugly last-stop on the edge of the
jungle. Then I had to make a choice between a five-hour busride South to Macas, the next town, or a country-bus
route which simply ended after a while, petering out into jungle.
The country bus took us down to a huge wide river where it stopped, bibbed its horn, and from across the
river appeared a platform, on to which the bus drove. The rest of the route was along narrow stony tracks which
sometimes deteriorated into roadworks, with thick jungle on either side. But there is either something wrong with
me, or something wrong with jungle: I found it entirely depressing. Flatness, I can't bear it, whatever’s growing on
it. Mind you, there isn't much I don't find depressing at the moment.
The bus-route ended in a horrible one-street town called Palora. Notices announced ‘Edén Amazónica’ Amazon Eden. One stony dusty street with ugly rundown wooden houses and shops either side; a flat landscape; a
feeling of entrapment.
I bought some disgusting bananas and some even worse ice-lollies. My heart fell out on the pavement. I
just kept repeating, 'Oh God, it's horrible.' The children couldn't understand: they liked the ice lollies. I was rotten
to the children, and they retaliated in kind. It was 3:00 p.m. in insufferable heat.
I sat there at the roadside close to psychic death, without an idea what to do next. I forced myself to move
enough to get a map out, in case I ossified on the spot, and to make a brave show of pretending to know where we
were going.
“Where are you going?” The question in Spanish broke through my haze of misery. It came from a
lovely-faced woman. “Er, I don't know, oh yes, Sangay”, I answered, remembering the name of the next place on
the map. “Come on, that truck there,” she said, and we crossed the road, me in a daze, and got into the back of the
open truck with a lot of other bodies.
The truck dumped us by a disused school next to a little wooden church in a jungle village. Sangay is a
handful of houses round a green. Everyone was dressed as if for promenading in a Spanish town square. We were
taken to the house of a family who gave me an empty concrete room in an unfinished house with no loo. The house
of my benefactors was elsewhere in the village, posh, with ornaments and dolls and knickknacks and modern
cushion covers and my children behaved dreadfully fingering everything and putting lollipops on the furniture and
we all sat around nicely conversing as the world came to a violent end in my head. Then I was taken into the
kitchen and there were plates of pasta and meat laid out for us. Embarrassed, I explained that I could not bring
myself to eat killed animals. The lady of the house quickly swapped the meat for large slabs of cheese. I never felt
less hungry in all my life and my little beasts were happy outside cooing over a puppy and some chicks and wouldn't
come in and help me eat it up. So I ploughed my way through a plate of cold pasta and a large slab of cheese and
even managed to down a cup of water sweetened with some ghastly pink substance. Then they lent me one small
rug, two sacks and some newspaper to sleep on. And here I am in jungle suburbia in a concrete room with street
lights outside, dogs barking and motorbikes whizzing up and down, big cockroaches all about me and I'm dying.
I'm covered in bites from the idyllic river spot near Baños where Bill blacked out, my head is bursting with pain, and
I'm at the end of the road. Ahead is only jungle. I would like to say, 'at least it can't get worse.' Unfortunately, I
know it can. I wish I could cry. Maybe I should have stayed in Dartford suburbia and died of depression there
instead. Wouldn't have made quite the same impact as a story though, would it?
I've dressed up the kids in all their clothes and they sleep soundly on the comfortless concrete floor.
Louise has a fever and Katie coughs but they don't wake. I have noticed they are never unhappy. I am desolate.
It is Christmas.
24th December 1988
The cold woke me up in the night, but I slept a few hours. A fat lady came from next door and said please would
the children not play in her sandpit as the sand was for building. I wept, privately. Later I had the fantasy of her
turning up with a gift, and minutes later she reappeared with a plate of the huge tasteless maize seeds they eat here
cold, covered in cold meat. I said, 'Oh dear' and explained, and she took back the meat. I washed the maize, and
we ate it, saving some to carry to the jungle.
1:30 p.m. I am writing to you from a rock in the middle of a gentle river. We left Sangay on foot, travelling along
the road to Arapicos, a village three hours away. The kids were getting beetroot-coloured with the sun, so we
stopped in the sparse shade to eat white sugar on white bread. Now the kids are naked and delightedly splashing
around in the stream, one of those breathing spaces that make Grey Shadows fade. Last night, I could see only
Death ahead; now Life is struggling to reassert itself.
Soon a small truck going to Arapicos picked us up. It dived down into small rivers and up the other side
without slowing down and kicked up dust all the way to the village. I was happy. I was wearing shorts, the kids
were in knickers and tee-shirts, the people were friendly. Arapicos was not middle-class like Sangay, but a real
pueblo, the houses further apart and each one a farmstead. We got down from the lorry in the midst of great
activity - a netball pitch where tents were being set up to accommodate all the relatives arriving for Christmas. I
immediately bought the kids one sweet each and a packet of biscuits, leaving aside our normal frugality, to keep in
the spirit of things. Then viciously suppressing all surging feelings of embarrassment about what on earth was I
doing in this place and who was I? I immediately asked someone for a room for the night.
I was led from person to person till we arrived at the very end of the long village opposite the widest river
bed my English eyes had ever seen. We were given a wooden, upstairs room, overlooking the riverbed - not 'river'
because in this season the actual water-content was reduced to several swift streams in the middle of it. We
dumped our gear and went straight down for a swim. I plunged in and my blouse stuck to my breasts and there
were lots of friendly women and girls looking, but I didn't care, everything felt so good. I kept meeting people I
already knew from my one-day's residence in Sangay, all come for the Christmas celebrations as there is a dance
here tonight. Then I was told there was a lorry back up in the village centre that sold fruit and potatoes, so I left the
kids with other children and, damning all my money worries, bought a big bag of sweets and tomatoes and carrots
and mangoes and tangerines and a huge packet of cocoa and the ubiquitous Quaker porridge oats.
A lady with a lovely face accosted me then and insisted I come back to eat with her and her huge family
and bring the kids. I made sure to tell her, we DON'T EAT MEAT. Returning with river-wet hair and clean
dresses on, we joined the throng at her house. It turned out she spoke good English and had worked four years
illegally in California. Her kids were filthy and stank, her husband was the village teacher, her house was opened
to the whole village, and her father had just killed a cow. The huge kitchen was one vast meat-feast preparation.
While Alice stared aghast at the carcass hanging above us, I ate fried eggs and drank Coca Cola and was grateful. I
felt safe: I had the key to our room in my bag. Though as yet, nothing to sleep on.
We left the carnivorous carnival as soon as politely possible and I went to find the owner of our house to
ask him for sacks, straw, a mat, anything, to put on the floor to sleep on. He said, somewhat stiffly, that he could
give me ‘plástico.’ I suppressed a gulp and stood there. Someone across the room spoke to him and suddenly a
whole band of children mobilised and came with me through the dark village, and through the labyrinths of the
pitch-dark house where I was to stay. I produced a candle and they produced a key and then they opened a door - to
paradise: a whole store of beautiful mattresses. They lugged out a thick, soft one for me and then gave me a huge
thick blanket and quilt as well. Oh boy, am I going to sleep tonight, but first I am going to creep away from my
now sleeping children and go to the ball. Before she fell asleep, Alice asked me if Father Christmas speaks
Spanish……
I went to the village festivities. It was a present-giving celebration in which the huge numbers of children
in the village were given bags of sweets, donated by the Municipio - the council - and by various rich individuals.
Then suddenly I turned bright red. They called out and asked me how many children I had; I squirmed and
protested, but the women round me called out 'three!' and I was given three enormous bags of sweets and little
biscuits in the shape of animals.
Then there was a presentation of ‘sainetes’ - humorous little skits. Three of the grown-up daughters of my
landlord are midgets, fat, with very high voices and skin that ages prematurely. The fattest of them played a man.
Her 'girlfriend' in the play was a lanky lad twice her height and it was all bras and panties and dirty jokes and
everyone loved it. Then came 'El Indio y El Patrón' - The Indian and his Boss, a hilarious semi-political piece about
the Indian getting completely on top of his boss by acting 'stupid' innocently, letting the master's horse die, his house
burn down, and so on.
It was all fascinating, but I was wrecked. I staggered home, unable to stay for the all-night dance. I filled
three of my long socks with tangerines, sweets and biscuits and slept a delicious soft, warm, night.
Christmas Day 1988
Today is somewhat depressing, though I have my delicious spongy mattress to be lonely on. Louise is lying in a
feverish sleep beside me, a wet flannel on her face and I cannot leave her. An ill-behaved Alice and Katie have just
been taken off by our adoptive family to eat. Nearly everyone is nice to me, though yesterday I met the first studied
hostility since the blacks in Martinique: some Indian women deliberately turned their backs when I asked them a
question. I assumed it was a demonstration against white tourists, agreed with them, and didn't take it personally.
Later they would see me with the kids, integrated amongst the village people, so I felt gratified.
Boxing Day 1988
Still stuck here in Arapicos. I miss my violin as it rains constantly and there is little to do. The river is rising, and
we have to cross it somehow to move on. Enquiries about what 'on' might mean draw a blank - it seems hardly
anyone has ever travelled further on from here. Louise is better but it would be crazy to leave this comfortable
shelter till the rain abates. People keep bringing me food - raw plátanos (plantains). I can't cook here, either boiled
plátanos that I find inedible, or fried plátanos that taste nice but are indigestible.
28th December 1988
Yesterday we left Arapicos on a platform that had no sides, swinging wildly on a cable high, high above the wide
riverbed. The children thought it was fun. Their mother burnt out a few more fuses.
On the other side, we were alone. The flat, rocky dry river-bed continued on and on; this whole area must
be one wild waterway in the wet season. In the near distance was a solitary snow-capped mountain with a plume of
smoke coming out of it: Mount Sangay, a volcano.
We came to a narrow jungle-road, newly built. Eventually, there was a house, and a worried woman who
hurried out saying, 'You can't go up there, it's just troncos - tree-trunks.' But the road looked civilised enough; the
morning was fresh and so were we, and the children in great spirits to be moving again. So we walked on. A few
tree-trunks weren't going to stop me at this stage of the journey.
Several hours later, the road ended at a river. I stood there, somewhat alarmed. I waded in with Katie and
rucksack, got frightened, and promptly waded out again. Then appeared one of the only people we were to see that
day, a man on the other side spotted us from his shack and came across to collect Alice. I watched him tensely and
was relieved to see him walk across without either sinking or being washed away by the current. Then I followed.
He invited us into his shack. He was caretaking the place while the rest of a gang of road-builders went
home for Christmas. He was about fifty, very lonely, and was reading the Bible.
He shook as he handed me a
herb-tea drink. He told me his wife had died of cancer and his children were grown-up. He wanted me to stay
with him, but it was too early in the day to stop; we still had masses of energy. He had been alone eleven days. He
had a big tummy and gave us fried yucca. He asked me to marry him, I declined politely, rested for awhile, and
then we moved on. I identified with his loneliness, but didn't like the look of the Bible.
Later we came to another river. Twice I crossed it, carrying children, scared but steady. We stopped on
the other side for a picnic and to do the washing. A young Indian suddenly appeared, walking swiftly in the
direction we were going and said, 'Vamos' - let's go. Great, I thought, help with the children. So we packed
hurriedly and moved off with him. The road was steep at this point, so after a while, I gave him Katie. Very soon,
he complained of the weight and put her down. And in all the long hours that followed, he never offered to help
again. He told me he was a practicant of kwon-do, which I'd never heard of, but discovered it was Japanese for the
ancient martial art of not helping people carry their kids, especially those belonging to stupid gringa women
wandering like naïve idiots through trackless jungle with heavy rucksacks and tired children. I hated him.
I hated him more and more as the journey got worse and worse. The neat gravel road had long since given
out. Then there were just treetrunks, mud slides, swamps, paths that split and splayed out in all directions, each one
worse than the next. Now I knew to my cost what the frantic woman at the beginning of the trail had been warning
me about.
I suppose I should have been grateful that the Indian was there at all. At least he did occasionally indicate
by some vague movement of the eyelash which foul pathway to take. He also sat down every ten minutes. I don't
know if this was an extravagant display of relaxation, or a sarcastic demonstration to the suffering gringa woman
that she was going far too slowly and making a big meal out of a simple swamp; or whether it was the minimum his
conscience would allow him - that is, not to abandon us entirely to our silly fate. Still, the fact remains, I hated him.
I gave him sweets, hoping this might sweeten him up. It didn't. At no time did more than half a lip or
eyelid of the Indian move. I fantasised at times that he was some kind of Don Juan (Carlos Castaneda’s, not the
romantic hero) come to test me. Tested I certainly was, but not by him. At times, we were crawling across thin
trunks laid across murky swamp-water. There weren't actually crocodiles lolling in the shallows, but falling in
seemed rather unattractive nonetheless. I discovered my rucksack unbalanced me entirely, so I took it off and kind
of dragged it along beside me - not being an Indian, I walk the plank, when narrow, sideways.
Katie's shoes broke and were such a pain, getting stuck in the mud at every step, that after many hours of
struggling, I threw them impatiently into the jungle. Alice and Louise both had on Nice New Shoes bought by
Uncle Bill in Quito. At the end of the journey, they both had legs that ended in big blodges of mud; Alice's trousers
were stuck to her up to the thigh. Louise’s new clean white dress miraculously only had two inches of mud around
the hem - only Louise could achieve this.
I started to fantasise that the Indian was deliberately leading us up the wrong paths deeper and deeper into
the jungle to leave us there. This fantasy increased to alarm proportions when at one stage, he disappeared, along
with any clear indication as to which of the fan of mudslides facing us we should take. After some moments of
near panic, I suddenly felt so angry with our miserable guide that I was sure I could sense my way somehow to the
next village come what may, and I marched on determinedly. Then he reappeared. Was that a smirk on his face?
Suddenly, mercifully, towards very late afternoon, we met up with a whole family travelling in the same
direction as us. Evidently they come out to this mud hell every day to pick tiny ‘lulos’, a prickly jungle fruit used
for making drinks. Their 13-year-old girl immediately took Katie, who, being the smallest, had suffered most
because of the depth of the mud; and their young lads on horseback took my rucksack. Alice became the protégé of
one of the boys who walked, holding her hand, and life immediately improved.
But the paths did not, in fact they got worse; however, I was no longer frightened because the horrid Indian
had speeded off as soon as we met the family (did I mention I hated him?). Being with these people made the mud
seem almost friendly, even when I was falling off the narrow poles laid across beds of the stuff.
I looked at Alice at one point and noticed that she was enjoying herself, deliberately choosing the worst bits
to wade through, hanging happily on to her protector, sloshing and sploshing, and slipping and falling and being
yanked up by her new teenage boyfriend. Louise was, as usual, floating somewhere above mud-level. Katie was
deeply asleep. 'Thank god for women' I thought as I battled on beside the woman of the family, who told me that
her papa ran a boarding-house in the village.
For two more hours we struggled on, till evening was falling. And then we arrived, me half-daft with
exhaustion at the village of Pablo Sexto (Paul VI).
Katie woke up and played.
Alice had asked me for a bicycle for Christmas.
In the patio of the
boarding-house, there it was, a bicycle made for two. So after I had doused them and scrubbed the mud from their
lower halves, Louise and Alice played on it for hours squeaking and screeching happily round the concrete
courtyard. Their mother could barely walk.
Hospitality in Ecuador, like prices, varies enormously. Although this family let us have a nice room for
300 sucres a night (about 30p), they offered no refreshment of any kind after the ordeal of our journey which had
lasted eight hours. Luckily, I'd carried food, so we had oats with water and sugar, and biscuits and boiled potatoes.
The following morning, a neighbouring couple gave us a huge amount of free milk and some bananas. The son of
the boarding-house couple told me God was protecting me on my journey yesterday and must have saved me for
some purpose. I'm inclined to agree with him.
Next Day
After washing all our mud-soaked clothes this morning, I have spent most of the day recuperating on this excellent
bed whilst the children rush around somewhere unaffected. After immaculate co-operation during the trials of the
mud swamps, the kids have now returned to their norm - savages in social situations.
I've landed myself in a house of religio-maniacs. The pater familias is in the room next to mine, separated
by a thin wooden wall, reading sententiously out loud from the Bible to his family. Religion is like a disease in this
country. The Evangelists are very strong, all 101 sects of them, as of course are Christianity's original deviants, the
Catholics - over the way from here is a nun's house with a TV aerial sticking out of the roof. I'm not sure what for,
as there is no electricity.
Father in the next room has now switched on a tape-recording, of some religious freak. Why is religion
always so boring? In fact, boredom permeates this whole house and village. I feel tense when the kids shriek and
scream below (still on the bicycle), bringing life to the place. In this room, I desperately search for reading matter;
one photo-comic, and the rest, religion. Tomorrow we go! Whether the clothes have dried or not. Anything,
anywhere - well, perhaps not a mud swamp. I long for good old bad Colombia.
You can’t even buy bread in this village, yet these religious people have not enquired how I'm managing to
feed my children. The woman of the house resentfully cooked the packet of lentils I gave her with hardly any water
and no salt, they taste horrible and are too hard. So that proves it; hasta luego and sod God. Amen. I keep
thinking they're doing this to me because I told the son clearly this morning that I was born an atheist, and an atheist
I remain.
Now a radio is blaring behind the thin wooden wall of my bedroom. Ecuador is very middle class, even
the campesinos are bourgeois. They do have indios, not the type with G-strings and thick thighs and a blow-spear,
but ones in welly boots, Western clothes and with rudimentary Spanish; though yesterday on the trek we rested
outside a jungle house and the Indian woman inside didn't dare come out the door till we were well on our way maybe she was a real Indian.
30th December 1988
I went to the nun's house and asked if I could buy bananas. She gave me a handful of very horrible ones free and
some tiny tree tomatoes, for which I was very grateful. Then she said, 'Come back later and converse.’ I thought
this might provide some relief from the mean, tight Evangelical house, so went back with the kids, Katie barefoot
and with an injured toe. It turned out the nun's invite was a trick to get us fed properly! A huge table was set for
her little community - she said she knew I wouldn't come if she'd have told me it was for food. Good old god's
woman. My kids made me tense with their bad behaviour, but we survived the meal and had rice and beans and soup
and salty cheese and sugar water and a bit of god. The chief nun was lively and full of initiative. There seemed to
be all sorts of people living there: plump girls, an old man, and a nice free atmosphere. I sent up a private prayer
for shoes for Katie. The nun answered it: she went to a family and borrowed a pair for her to get us to the next
village, to be left there.
And off we set. It had been nice resting, feeling safe and dry and warm, but it was colossally boring. As
we were leaving, a neighbour who'd heard me asking to buy bananas came out and gave us a bunch. The sun came
out at last, not enough to dry my sodden plimsolls, but strong enough to make my bag heavy with discarded clothes.
We'd been told we'd be travelling on a much better path. But it was still awful. I fell in one bog, crashing on top
of Katie. At one point we came upon a disused jungle airstrip where there were the crashed and rusting wings of an
aeroplane and a pile of worried and unanswerable questions from the children.
It was just a few hours to the next village. As we entered, a woman approached us and offered us a room
free, upstairs in her wooden house. There is a thick foam mattress on the floor and we are open to the air; just one
thin blanket but it isn't cold at night. My kids are disobedient and happy and have loads of children and broken
plastic toys to play with.
I exhaustedly washed the latest load of mud out of our clothes and shoes. There was a man playing
billiards downstairs. He was absolutely beautiful. I stared at him and suddenly felt better-looking, younger and
not yet quite finished-off as I had been inclined to feel since the last antics of Bill. The landlady has a boyfriend, as
her husband got drowned in a river nearby. Everyone asks where my 'husband' is and the nuns had asked if he
helps support the children, an interesting concept.
In the evening, I lay on my mattress, very lonely, when suddenly everyone was there - the teenage boys of
the family came and lay on my bed, our girls romping and hitting and squeaking, completely in love with them.
Katie clung passionately to a 14-year-old. Then the mother's boyfriend came and sat with me, and so did the
mother, and her mother.
At four in the morning, we were woken by lights and chanting and the loud droning of a priest through a
megaphone answered by a chorus of chirping nuns. A procession of the devoted traipsed round and round the
muddy square imposing themselves on everyone and wasting candles. Pity they didn't have shovels and do
something about the road drainage. It's New Year’s Eve.
I dreamt I was in my caravan in the woods. I heard a heavy breathing and snorting approaching through
the bushes. I closed the flimsy tin door and bolted the inadequate bolt. “Is that you, Bill?” I called out. No
answer. I felt his violent anger coming towards me, but a part of me was glad he was coming because I was lonely.
I called out, “I don't mind if it is you, I just want to know,” hoping this would pacify him. No answer, the snorting
comes nearer, fear takes me over and I wake up scared.
The lady here asked me this morning, wouldn't I like to find another compañero (mate) now that my
husband has gone. “De buena gana!” I answered, i.e., Yes please.
We went to the muddy village square to get the bus for Macas. Piles of boxes of ‘lulos’ were all around.
To grow this fruit, large tracts of jungle trees are felled, helping to turn the whole area into more mud swamp.
The bus arrived and immediately the driver turned to me and said that ‘a friend of mine’ was looking for
me in Macas.
On the four-hour bus-ride on bad roads, we descended into small rivers and twice had to get out for the bus
to cross flimsy wooden suspension bridges. I spent the journey smothered in kids, some my own and some Indian.
The rate of reproduction in this country is terrifying. The whole area is chiefly Indian, the people speaking their
own language. The bus was suffocatingly full and had to refuse dozens of Indians on the road. But I noticed that
if ‘Spanish’, well-dressed people hailed it, the driver would squeeze them in somehow.
The moment I stepped off the bus in Macas, I was told that 'my husband' had been 'desperately' looking for
me. Everywhere I went, seeking a lodging house, people beckoned to me urgently informing me of my poor
‘esposo’ and his frantic search. Then somebody told me he had boarded the bus to the very village I'd just left.
New Year's Day 1989
At six minutes to midnight, there was a knock on my boarding-house door. I woke up and said, ‘Hello.’ No
answer. I thought I'd imagined it and settled down to sleep again. A more insistent knock. Then, ‘It's Bill.’ I
opened the door and complained that Colgate toothpaste costs 450 sucres in this town.
Bill said, “I've been all the way to Veinticuatro de Mayo (the name of the village). I got there about six
p.m. and thought ‘Ah, just in time for some music and then we'll go to bed. But you weren't there. And I had to
come all the way back to Macas.”
JJ:
“I'm terribly sorry to inconvenience you.”
Next morning, I washed his muddy trousers. Our boarding-house was called ‘Hotel Splendit’ (sic), which
it wasn't, so Bill found us a better place for half the price. The kids have their doll back, and I have my violin.
In our new boarding-house, Bill made a great speech on behalf of the Reasonable, Enlightened, Analytical
Party of the Well-Intentioned. And then immediately cut off again and spoke no more.
The door to our room is flimsy; and the bolt is flimsy. However, just as in my precognitive nightmare,
they have so far held the Monster without. I ejected him at 4:00 a.m. He is out there doing a silent unmoving vigil
in the patio, where we have to pass him to wash the clothes and hang them up, dripping all over his carcass.
I packed, deciding to keep the duvet, no matter what the carrying inconveniences: no more cold nights
while he snuggles in his pit; and the violin: no more boredom. Also the knife, spoons, cups and extra kids' clothes.
More weight on board, but a better standard of living. I could hardly lift the bag on to my shoulders.
We escaped. The half-hour wait for the bus to Sucua, the next town, was one of the tensest in my life,
horrified in case he came after us.
Sucua
And now I have to start once again, lick wounds, heal my head, fight unruly kids and solve the problem of how to
get some pleasure out of life. I don't feel up to any more jungle sploshes for the moment and will stick to the cold
comforts of small-town hopping. Food is a disaster area: we can hardly ever get milk. We live on oats and water,
cocoa made into chocolate spread, and bread. Occasionally I manage to get the kids carrots and tomatoes. My
body craves vegetable soup, but I think I'm going to have to wait six months for that - that is, if the Colombian
authorities ever let me go home.
I have just spent twenty minutes pouring water down the blocked, poo-ridden loos of the latest
lodging-house. I have also washed their hand-basin and turned off showers left running, The kids have gone to one
of Ecuador's thousand broken-down playparks with the daughter of a female hotelworker, a very nice woman who
told me simply, “Soy madre soltera.” I'm an unmarried mother. So am I.
3rd January 1989
Dear Ned’n’all,
Hello. I'm feeling slightly better. I prayed so hard, God didn't have a chance. I caught him in an
off-moment during his dinner-break and he inadvertently gave me an approximation of what I wanted. No sooner
had we stepped off the hot stuffy bus at Mendez, next stop on from Sucua, and sat down in the little green Plaza to
breathe, than a cowboy came up to me. Well, he had on a cowboy hat and beard, a bald head and long hair round
the edges, a broad smile and he spoke English, and within five minutes of meeting me, he took me to a little room he
has on the other side of the Plaza and gave it to me free. It is a little wooden box with one window overlooking a
river. There was a broom in it, a couple of posters of the neo-Nazi presidential candidate Abdala (“I admire
Hitler”), a small table, a bench, and a single bed with a mattress. Nearby, there are dirty public loos and a big sink
with taps and drinking water.
Who could ask for anything more?
I could.
I would ask that the bloody
bus-driver's mates when he put my rucksack with exposed duvet on the roof of his big posh bus, had done what any
country bus driver would do: put a tarpaulin over the luggage. It rained heavily. My rucksack is guaranteed 100%
non-waterproof, so we have a drenched duvet and soaking wet clothes.
This tiny town where you cannot buy fruit or vegetables has a shoe-shop and an American tee-shirt shop.
Also, along with every small Ecuadorian town, an IESS: a Social Security office. It seems that in Colombia where
'security' is thrown back on to the individual, there is more spirit and guts. I also regret to note that the high Indian
content here does not seem to be an invigorating factor, to put it politely. These could of course be catastrophic
projections of my own calamitous situation, but for now, my leftwing enthusiasms have died along with my
love-life.
5th January 1989
We spent a day in pretty little Mendez on a sandy river-beach where locals were panning for gold. Young boys
were throwing themselves into the rapid current so that they were whisked to the other side where they collected
giant wild peapods. These they tied to their pants and then they whooshed back to our side, swimming strongly,
and proudly offered us the foul-tasting fruit.
Next morning, we set off, hot, laden down and the children moaning about getting a bus. But I was
determined to alter the course of our Fate, which was getting a bit mechanical, by walking and hitch-hiking.
Our first lift of four kilometres was from a flirtatious fellow who told me I needed a boyfriend to help me
with the journey. I heartily agreed with him.
We walked a very long hot dusty way. Louise’s bag was too heavy, Katie's new boots hurt; we had to stop
many times. The sky was thickly clouded, yet the Equatorial sun still radiates sharply through, making us sweat.
Eventually, a lorry full of roadworkers took us up and up to cooler realms, what a relief.
On being dropped off, I immediately heard another lorry coming and had to have a row with Louise who
didn't want a lift as we happened to be at a little waterfall and she'd taken her shoes off. I was giving her a
mouthful of motherly love when the lorry stopped. It was going to the very large town of Cuenca, the one place I
swore I would never go to. But the driver was good-looking, the cab was very roomy, with two bunk beds, and it
was a journey that would last all day.
The route was exquisite, and the road so primitive that most of it had to be travelled at ten miles an hour,
which suited me fine. There were alarming little bridges, steep drops to the side of us, high wooded mountains, and
we climbed ever higher, stopping in a little town called Limon for dinner. The driver bought me lemonade and tea
and I fancied him like mad. He asked my age; I told him, and he said, ‘muy jovencita toadavia’ - 'you're still very
young.’ I didn't feel it. I wanted him to take us home, but he never offered, married probably; my heart sank as he
dropped us in pouring rain, late at night, in the horrible town of Cuenca.
6th January 1989, Cuenca
I am in the grips of the 'gripe', flu. Greetings from a squeaky bed in a small cold hotel room with no windows,
fluorescent lighting that has to be on in the daytime else it would be pitch-black in here, and noisy traffic outside. To
get out, I go down stone steps and find myself locked in, my way blocked by a chained and padlocked wrought iron
door. I have to ring to be let out; very handy in a fire. This is, I am told, 'because people steal the sheets.' And I
can't have a towel 'because it is raining.' I always carry candles and we needed them: there was a power-cut and I
had to supply the hotel staff as the whole place was plunged into darkness.
Next morning, I left the children playing at the boarding-house and went to seek dollar-changers. I made a
mental note of the name of the street, which was 'Secundaria.’ Strange name, I thought. Later I saw a road with
the name ‘Primaria.’ I noticed with sinking heart that every street in Cuenca was called either Secundaria or
Primaria: it was an indication of who had right of way on the roads. I searched frantically, discovered I was well
and truly lost and entered a state of controlled panic. I had walked myself into a concrete maze. I flagged down a
police car and tried to explain. They proceeded to use the opportunity to be rude and insulting, doubting and
criticising everything I said, but they told me to get in and drove me to Pension Suarez - I had at least remembered
the name of the hotel - which was miles away. I hoped they softened as they saw me fall tearfully into the arms of
my three waiting kids, whose existence they had for some reason doubted.
We left Cuenca on foot; just getting out of the town took all afternoon. It was impossible to carry Katie
with so much weight on board, so relations with her became very ugly as she drags behind and yells. A woman
stopped us, opened her little 'Cola' stall and gave us fizzy drinks, and wanted to keep Katie. She was nearly in tears
as she said, 'God has never permitted me to have children.’ She asked my age, and then pleaded with me
desperately to reveal to her the secret of what face-cream I used to stay so young. It's called sun, wind and warfare.
Eventually Katie could be dragged no further, so we sat in the shade at the side of the road; she
immediately fell asleep. Two women came across the road to ask us about ourselves, then returned with ice lollies.
I asked if I could use their toilet, and one of them, a beautiful young married woman, took me to her perfect little
suburban house fuel of gorgeous toys and swings and hoovers and a big gas cooker. ‘Ya es de noche’ she said, 'it's
already night-time. Why don't you stay here?’ It was four p.m.
She said her husband was a lorry driver and was away for the night, and gave us a beautiful little room with
bunk beds. The kids were in a Heaven full of swings and bikes and they drove around till dark and beyond, in the
rain, and then again next morning at 6:00 a.m. they demanded to be let out to go and ride some more. I spent the
night with a sneezing cold, and when I did sleep I had bad dreams about Bill. He was letting me down at every turn
and then confessed that what he wanted most in the world was that I should go and live with him and his mother in
Barnsley, to which I replied with such a horrified and resounding NO that I woke myself up.
The young woman didn't want us to leave. She wept when I told her I was separated from the father of my
kids. Her own husband, she now admitted, had left her a year ago and gone with a new woman who was now
pregnant. She clung to me as I said goodbye, saying she hadn't many friends in the neighbourhood and felt she had
a friend in me, and we could come back there any time. 'No se por que, pero Vd. me cayo bien,’ she said weeping.
‘I don't know why, but I've taken to you.' Our common sadness weighed heavily upon me. She packed us huge
quantities of food, far too much for me to carry, so we slipped down to the grassy banks of a river just out of sight of
the house and tried to consume as much of it as possible.
We walked on, passed a traffic police kiosk and were invited in. They gave us fresh milk, and asked lots
of questions out of curiosity. Then on we went, past the last suburban Cuencan villages to the open road at last,
where we sat down. Practically the first van I hitched stopped. They were going 30 kilometres to a village called
Cumbe. We were in the open back of their van, a treat until it started raining heavily. Then they covered us with a
tarpaulin and we saw no more scenery. Suddenly we were in Cumbe in pouring rain and they demanded 200 sucres
for getting us wet and bumping us around. I paid, feeling as if I’d been slapped. Bystanders noticed what had
happened and commented on it indignantly which made me feel a bit better. You can travel on a bus for several
hours for 200 sucres.
It was only 2:00 p.m. but the rain was pelting down, so one of my commiserators said, why not stay in
Cumbe the night? Where? I asked. There! said he, pointing at the Church. I gulped with embarrassment, but he
insisted, so I went over and knocked at the door indicated.
Inside were four normal-looking young lads sitting around a table. They immediately helped me with my
luggage and gave me somewhere to hang my wet washing and served us coffee and pasta soup. Katie wanted to
take all her clothes off, including her knickers. I wanted to murder her. We were in a monastery.
The young acolytes were all exceedingly friendly. The main priest was a different kettle of fish altogether,
sharp and attackive: what was I doing and why and etcetera. The Head Boy told me life has no meaning if you’re
an Atheist, which suddenly made me recover my raison d’être for the first time in ages. The younger lads are kind
and human and I’d swear this Quechua-speaking Indian one sitting here is flirting with me. And the others are
certainly flirting openly with my daughters, saying, “Quedate conmigo” - stay with me - and putting them on their
knees.
In the evening, they lit a smoky fire in the common room and I played 'Silent Night' on the violin
accompanied by one of the apprentice priests, a brilliant guitarist. In an adjacent office, a. chubby young acolyte in
plain clothes is lecturing on religion to a group of Indian parents who have brought their babies to be baptised.
Another Brother, in very short shorts, with massive thighs and obviously well-donated, is cooking our supper. It is
freezing here, cold and damp, and the fireplace is so smoky we have to have the windows and doors wide open.
Suddenly, I looked up in amazement to see one of the Brothers bashing the kids' doll on the stone
mantelpiece. I gasped, wondering if some violent passion about naked dolls had surfaced uncontrollably, but the
lad explained sweetly that hed just rescued it from the fire, where dear Alice had just thrown it.
The lads told me I could lay out all the lovely soft cushions on the carpeted stone floor for the night, but
then two others came and whisked us away upstairs. They gave me a monkish room with no door to separate me
from where they were sleeping. The unpleasant Head Boy came and checked on us and the other Brothers when we
were in bed, forcing a frosty smile.
Next morning, an awkward breakfast with the smooth-looking priest presiding. He is from the south of
Spain, has steel-blue eyes and icy vibrations. They all sang grace before sitting down to eat; the lads sing
beautifully and are full of life and very natural and play noisily with the children. Only the Indian acolyte is
goody-goody: he bowed and practically kissed the hand of the padre to say good-morning. The Padre asked me
what year I had been studying in Spain and I said grinning, 'Oh, a long time ago, before Noah.' The fattest, jolliest
boy burst out into a splutter of laughter. The atmosphere turned to broken glass, as the Padre sent the head Boy
telepathic orders, and the laughing culprit was removed from the table.
The Head Boy enquired when I was leaving. 'Immediately', I said gaily, and went to do my washing. My
guitar-playing friend went to Mass with the Padre and filled the church with music. After Mass, I saw one of the
young lads counting a huge pile of money, presumably given by the poor Indian congregation.
Upstairs, I put Katie's boots on her, preparing to leave. She screamed. “What's the matter?” I asked. “I
don't know,” she cried, clutching at one boot. I yanked it off her and out dropped a very large spider. Her toe had
a spot of blood on it, where it had bitten her. I grabbed her and ran down to the young priests' kitchen. One of
them ran up with me to see the spider and said, 'It's alright, it's not dangerous. Then he killed it. And then….. he
went to get some matches, a newspaper, and a tile. He scooped the squashed spider on to the tile, wrapped it in
newspaper and set light to the spider. ??? I asked. 'So that the bite doesn't hurt the little girl any more,' was the
answer, 'It's a secret. Me lo conto me mami - my mother told it to me.'
I turned away to hide my grin and wondered what the frosty Spaniard downstairs would say about his
young acolyte squatting upstairs in the bedroom performing black magic on the floor with a pagan woman.
As I passed through the church hallway on the way out, I noticed a poster showing two tiny tots, one male,
one female, holding hands. It said underneath: 'It doesn't matter who you love, as long as you love.'
We walked a few hundred yards out of Cumbe and sat down by the side of the road. The sun shone, a
rarity on the Equator it seems, and I spread out our large quantity of wet washing to dry. I cautioned the children
not to fall down the sheer drop next to us into the fast river below, and settled down to sit and stare and just Be for a
long time. The kids asked me charming questions like 'Was I going to die before or after we get back to Ned's
farm? and repeated their favourite story of an incident in which Ned once put dinner plates in front of them with
nothing on them as a joke. This seems to have made a deep impression on their young lives! I wish I could make a
deep impression on them: I have run out of threats. Except that last night I mentioned I felt like dying and all three
started crying. I was amazed. Now I know why Bhagwan threatens to leave his body when his disciples won't buy
him his 93rd Rolls Royce. Threatening to end the kids' lives doesn't seem to have the same effect.
A man came up to me, ascertained that I was ‘solita’ - alone - and asked if I would take him with me.
Several people asked if I would sell them the children. Then a man stopped and asked if 1 would like to buy a
mirlo, a blackbird, and opened a cardboard box to reveal a cowering distressed animal. I said NO in horror. This
man was the teacher of the local village school and was going to Cuenca for the day, but would we like to spend the
night in the school-house and he had a spare sleeping bag? I accepted the offer gratefully.
A van stopped and a middle class couple got out; they stayed talking to me for so long that the children got
suspicious, thinking one of my regular threats was about to be carried out, and came down from the sand-piles where
they were playing to make sure Mummy didn't leave in the van. The couple tried to give me money. I refused, but
accepted their offer to take us back briefly into Cumbe to buy ice-cream. I could hear the priest droning through the
church microphone, dominating the little market town. Louise asked me: “Does God live in the country or the
town?”
Our ice-cream benefactors gave us their card, said they were jewellers, that they were very well-off and that
we could stay with them in Cuenca any time. Then they drove us to the tiny village of San Francisco and left us
outside the school where we were to stay. The village was deserted except for a tethered sheep, which Alice
promptly set free. We managed to catch and retie it just before the first villagers came home.
The teacher who invited us to stay at his school never turned up. We waited all day, me feeling like an
out-of-place idiot, till dark when it was freezing cold. Some lads came over and demanded I play the violin, which
I did. Then some young girls came and demanded a repeat. By seven p.m. I was in a foul mood whilst the
villagers had a ball with their new pet gringo monkeys, nicking golden hairs out of the kids' heads, whilst we
became increasingly exhausted, hungry, thirsty, cold and fed-up. No-one noticed. Most of the population were
under twenty and no-one had any sense. In the end, I marched off, found an older woman and asked strongly for a
floor to sleep on. They then galvanised into action, gave us a straw mat and a rug and brought rice and hot milk and
beans and cheese. We sat wrecked on their floor longing to sleep, but the whole of the woman’s large family
proceeded to sit in rows to Relate to us, with the kids behaving hideously through tiredness, and all of us sunburnt
and freezing cold. Eventually I had to politely ask the family to clear out of their own room. In the middle of the
night, going out for a pee, I spotted the teacher arriving at his school and cursed him to death.
Everyone here is well-meaning, slow, and ill-organised. In the morning, we were treated exceedingly
kindly. I suppose if ET came down, people would naturally take some time to tune into his needs and desires.
Oh dear! All the little girls just came over from the village school and handed me a huge wad of grubby
notes. The teacher had organised a collection for us! It came to 160 sucres, that is, 16p.
I sat at a distance watching the school ‘disciplina’ - assembly; it involved the Raising of the Flag, then a
half-shouted delivery of the bloodthirsty national anthem, then a very long lecture from the teacher about us, and
different languages, and ... Immigration Problems! After which I took Louise across to the school with schoolbag,
pencils and notebook for one day in school, as I was very much in favour of a bit of Disciplina for her.
I've just spent 1½ hours doing the English homework of the 18 year old daughter of this household, feeling
ill and tired from a terrible night on the floor. Then I put Louise and her sisters in ecstasy by handing her the whole
wad of collected notes for them to spend in the village. Their gobs are now full of gob-stoppers and their hands full
of bags of sweets, and I don't care, I just minded my own business coping with the diphtheria or pulmonary
thrombosis or whatever it is I have. I had plenty of company at night anyway - rats, who were chewing up the
stores of the shop we were sleeping in. I invented a novel way of coping with them so as to get a few minutes’
sleep in between the cold waking me up and my cold waking me up: I threw my pee down a hole in the wall whence
I’d seen them disappear. This was partly pure aggression and part theory that it might deter them. It did.
Next day, my lady hostess in San Francisco (adult population about 12) gave us rice and beans and a bunch
of bananas and sweets and biscuits for the journey, and off we set. The sun came out, and we got a lift immediately
for about 20 kms. Then there was: nothing. Just cloud and the road going higher and higher. So we sat at the
side of the road. I was completely happy. It was about two in the afternoon and I didn’t care what happened or
how far we got. My rucksack was very light - it had nothing in it as we had all our clothes on, so high up were we.
Then the sun went in and we had to walk to keep warm. I walked ahead of the children so that Alice and Louise
would have to deal with Katie and her moaning. I looked back and saw a man telling the children to get on his
horse. He then tried to get off his horse himself, and fell to the ground, his foot caught in the stirrup, and just lay
there, not attempting to move. I assumed he was drunk and called to the kids to hurry up and join me.
The road that passes through the centre of Ecuador and is marked on the map as a main road is jagged and
scoured and made of clay and rubble and puddles and the little traffic there is has to weave from side to side to miss
the worst bits. We were in a very bleak, high area; so when a bus came, we got on.
The road was so bumpy, even I felt sick. Katie changed colour. There was a little old man across the
gangway from me who sat on the edge of his seat gripping the seat in front of him, his eyes glued to the road. I
thought this was a bit neurotic, even by my standards. It wasn’t. The driver started to take several right-hand turns
up dreadful-looking little roads, leaving the better-looking main route. I wondered why; but not for long: the road
we had left was blocked by mountains. New mountains, that had recently deposited themselves there. Then the
man across the gangway got even more nervous and mumbled something about a ‘bridge.’ Suddenly the whole
geography of the road became indistinct. We were taking a long winding route around the mountainous edge of a
valley, and the road continued to deteriorate until it simply disappeared into the gulf below. I have never been so
scared in all my lifetime of many scares. At this moment, I definitely favoured flying. At least in an aeroplane
you’re supposed to see only clouds below you. The inordinate amount of rain here recently has destroyed the
central Andean road system. The ex-road was broken up with gulleys and water running across it, and boulders,
and a long, long drop. And the bus was huge, and on the right-hand side of us was a cliff. The bus-driver was
young and very calm. I prayed for him to tell the passengers to get out and walk the worst parts, but he didn’t. He
had to manoeuvre that bus round hairpin bends with the road falling away into Eternity, and then across a tiny
narrow bridge over a river far below. I was so scared, I found myself standing up, clutching a sleeping Katie.
Quite where I thought I could go if the road gave way, I didn’t stop to think.
We were just a modicum glad to arrive in the little town of Oña. I had tasted Death. It can only be a
matter of time before a bus goes down that cliff.
Oña is pretty, high up in the mountains, and I am happy because for the first time on this trip, I have some
company. On the bus, I had seen a nice-looking gringo with very long blonde hair who actually seemed friendly. I
spoke to him as we got off and found out he was German. And when he discovered we weren’t going any further
that day, he decided to waste his ticket to Loja, the next large town, and stay with us. We found an old wooden
‘pension’, quite the seediest and grottiest yet, but only 30p for me and the kids. Alice fell in love with Markus, who
is 23 and I had to ask for her whether she could sleep in his room. At the moment, he has all three kids in with him
dressing up in his clothes.
11th January 1989
Next day, Markus joined us and we all set off walking out of Oña in lovely sunlight, on something which remained a
road for a few hundred yards, then deteriorated into a river. The kids were full of energy and running ahead, even
Katie - a miracle. 'It won't last', I predicted. Immediately Louise went flying, and fell so fast she had no time to
put her hands out, ending up on her nose which is now devoid of skin, and her knee one bloody mess. We were
washing the blood away under some falling water coming off the cliffside, when a lorry stopped for the driver to
warn us that the whole area was unstable and that a landslide could happen at any moment. As the landslides here
tend to be massive, we moved on quickly.
The sun was hot, Louise was sore, Katie started moaning, my rucksack was heavy and I felt sick and weak,
so we rested in a tiny bit of shade. I took out my violin and played for a while, till a van stopped and took us all the
long way to Loja. It was terribly uncomfortable, full of people in the back, but I was happy. I liked talking to
Markus, or just having him there in silence.
We arrived in Loja in pouring rain and I became instantaneously depressed: a town again, and no post from
home, the only reason I have come here. An airless pension costing 1,000 sucres in a claustrophobic town. I can't
breathe, the room is so small; there's nowhere here to hang clothes and no table. I'm ill and sick and weak. I
played some Irish tunes with Markus in the evening, he on tin whistle, but then, next day, he was gone.
12th January 1989
We walked all the way through and out of Loja, praying to see a friendly face who would offer us a homely place to
stay. I have to give the post a few more days, but refuse to face the deathly loneliness and expense of a pensión.
At the very end of Loja was a monument. I stopped there and sat on the steps. Eventually I plucked up courage and
spoke to some young lads, telling them of my problem of finding somewhere personal to stay. After a very long
time, they found their sister and she took us home. I watched TV all evening, delighted. I bought loads of food for
the family, they cooked for us and I slept happily on the floor with the kids on armchairs.
But next day we were moved. Patricia, the girl who is helping us, took us to a smaller house, where
cousins of hers live. It seemed her stepmother hadn't wanted us to stay. I was given a large double bed and was
settling in with Katie asleep in my arms when someone banged irately at the door. I opened it to an angry older
brother, whose bed I was evidently in and who was not expected home. I was unceremoniously evicted to another
room where the girl looking after us quickly turned round the bodies of Alice and Louise who were sleeping with
her so that all five of us could sleep sideways, with chairs at the edge of the bed for my extra leg-length. In the
same tiny room on two further chairs slept a tamer brother.
We stayed one day. There is a very young baby in the house. I was horrified to see it was bound from
neck to ankles so that it couldn't move. I asked why. “Es costumbre aquí,” I was told. It's the custom, here.
As I write, I am assailed by ear-splitting music being broadcast over the whole area. This is also the
custom here: it is the local administration's idea of improving the quality of life of the people. There is no escape,
not even inside the houses.
Today I asked a man to marry me. I was at the Post Office: he was a half-negro Colombian, beautiful. I
was telling the post-office lady of my Immigration Woes when he came up to the kiosk. I turned to him and said,
'You wouldn't like to marry an ‘inglesa’ would you?' He smiled and said politely ‘thank-you’, but he had other
plans. And yesterday, walking into town without luggage or children, I was somewhat lifted from my urban
depression by noting that a mad travelling granny still gets whistled at; and a mestizo taxi driver told me I was ‘muy
bonita’, which I think is stretching it a bit (very pretty?!) and he said I would get ‘robada’, which means seduced not
robbed, but no such luck so far.
15th January 1989
It's no good. I do not like Ecuador. In the family I'm with, everyone tells lies; they don't keep appointments;
they're disorganised, and they're very middleclass, however poor they may be. Patricia, the girl who originally
befriended me, removed me once again, with averted eyes and indistinct speech and no explanation, to yet another
house, this time in the centre of Loja.
We entered the kind of lodgings I would associate with Tokyo: a
rabbit-warren of rooms, a network of hanging washing, a musky patio smelling of urine from the many - padlocked loos. The water comes only intermittently. We went upstairs to the tall windowless room of a very pretty
eighteen-year-old and her two little children. She is separated from their father. We slept on her floor. At least it
was warm.
In the morning when she fed her kids, she put an electric iron with its cord attached, but not plugged in,
next to them. I asked what it was for. “To beat the children, otherwise they won't eat,” she said. Her eight month
old baby was forced to sit on a potty; her other little girl, aged two, was smacked after using her pot; I never
discovered why.
After one night, I was moved again. I just let them do it. I didn't like them enough to mind that I was a
nuisance, and I always more than paid for my stay with gifts of food. This time we got a bus out of town. There
was some kind of mad festival going on, the streets and bus-station were alarmingly packed and everyone was
bursting plastic bags of water on everyone else. This was supposed to be funny. I resolved to kill anyone who did
it to me. Luckily for them, they got the message.
We travelled to the tiny hamlet of San Lucas, back up in the mountains, a lovely spot. I was taken to
Patricia’s mother who lives in a little wooden house by a river. It is on the road, but there is practically no traffic.
There was a dark kitchen where they cook on a wood-fire. I made a rice and vegetable meal and chatted to the
mother, who was about sixty. Then I dared to ask a few times where we were going to sleep, and received the usual
Ecuadorian answer: upstairs/downstairs. Eventually, I was taken upstairs where a padlocked room was unlocked.
It was delightful, with a bed, a table, a tiny chair, and a straw mat under the mattress which I laid on the floor for the
kids. Patricia tried to tell me to sleep all four of us on the single bed. I ignored her. There was a second door in
the room: if you opened it, there was a sheer drop down to the river.
That night, I dreamt I was in the middle of a nuclear war, back in Ireland. I was amongst my people, and I
had a lover. The nuclear war was limited: they were letting off only small bombs at isolated points, but rather a lot
of them. It was something we were getting used to, but it was definitely The End. After an initial painful
resistance to the inevitability of Death, I came to accept it. The rivers were drying up and everything was being
poisoned. The sky was unnaturally streaked with red and orange and pink as the intermittent small H-bombs
exploded. We would all be showing signs of radiation sickness soon. The dream was, would you believe it,
pleasant, because of the friendship and solidarity and caring amongst the people, and the sharing of life and death.
A nuclear war preferable to being on the road alone in Ecuador?
On waking, I was feeling positive. I had talked to Patricia about staying in this village, teaching English
and learning Quechua, as all the locals are Indians. I liked her mother and her simple lifestyle, and I felt we could
live together. But at 9:00 a.m., Patricia entered my room and started having mini-fits. Louise was playing very
nicely with some shells found in an old box full of rubbish on the table. Patricia immediately took them away from
her. Then she picked up a small mirror on which I had placed a candle and started stumbling in her speech in the
way I've grown used to when people aren't saying what they mean. The house really belonged to the mother's sister
who is ‘muy fregada’ - very fussy, and wouldn't like her things touched or her room used. So we had to take our
things out and close up the room for the day.
I was extremely fed up. Only waiting for post from home is keeping me in this area, and whether these
people are kind or not to give me a roof, I am still fed up. Now, they say, the mother is going into Loja to ask her
sister if I can stay in the house for a week or so. I don't believe them. I asked Patricia, what if she says NO? and
Patricia said “we can go back to my niece” - that's the pretty girl who smacks her babies in the Tokyo lodgings with
the chained monkey, the caged parrots, the constant TV which is left on when everyone is asleep, the locked toilets
and the no-windows.
Patricia and her mother talk in whispers. They won't let me move around freely: the mother tells me the
exact spot to place the basin to do my washing - at the edge of the road. Patricia tells me to eat bread with my black
coffee; I actually got annoyed at this. I went round to the back of the house to wash my hair just above the river. I
knew Patricia would come and try to stop me. She did. Why don't you wash round here? That is, on the effing
street. I said No. She is keeps doing too much for me, making too many promises and then she can't keep them.
She told me the mother had invited me to come here; it is an obvious lie, as the mother doesn’t want me.
Just to complete the happy picture, a word about the Indians. They're horrible. There were drunken heaps
of them, men and women, on the veranda of the house well into the dark hours. Patricia’s mother tolerates them
completely as they buy a foul cheap liquor from her that is wrecking them. One of the young Indian was kicking
his woman in the stomach and pulling her hair. I intervened, and so did the mother. We tried to get the female
Indian to move away, which she could easily have done; but she didn't display any incentive to do so, so we left
them to beat each other up.
Patricia keeps asking me, really seriously, if I'll leave her one of my children. These people are all mad.
It's about as exciting here as Wales.
Well, of course, when the mother got back from Loja, the answer was NO.
16th January 1989
So we left. The kids and I walked for an hour along the lovely country road, then got a lift all the way back to Loja
in a private car. The driver bothered to mention to me as we arrived that he would never have picked me up, but for
the children.
We spent one last night in the rabbit warren. They didn't want us, but said, Yes. There was sport on the
TV. And then a horror film called ‘Too Scared to Scream.’ I’ve lost count of how many people were murdered in
it. I was so scared that every time a murder was about to happen, I went downstairs to the toilet. Louise watches
avidly and there are NINE little kids, all under five except for her, in this room watching it too. Meanwhile the
eighteen year old mother threatens to beat her child if she takes any of her dolls off the shelf - they are evidently
only for decoration. And having held a strap to her two-year old and shovelled unwanted food down her throat, she
then piles more of the foul stuff on her plate and forces her to eat that too. Patricia’s brother comes in, in the
middle of all this, sits by my side and asks me to play the violin - at the same time as the murder movie is on - and
wants to know what this letter I'm writing says, and wants me to write out a poem in English and in Spanish please.
Also he is smoking, and as I say, there are no windows in this room. The murdered woman on the screen has just
been put in the washing machine and now the detectives are coming in. The young mother, dropping with
tiredness, fell asleep in bed with the TV still on. A neighbour stayed watching it till the bitter end. I woke up
several times during the night with the film replaying in my head.
Next day
I just found a big live flea in the bag of boiled sweets I bought for the kids. We're sitting in a park under grey rainy
skies waiting for an hour to give the post one more chance, then we're off to a small town near here called
Vilcabamba, where Patricia tells me some gringos live. Post is like sex, very nice when you can get it, but a bit of a
bummer to wait around for, and sometimes just not worth the shite you have to swallow in between.
In the passageway leading to the warren full of women and children (I never saw any men), an Indian sells
nylon clothes. He asked me to teach him English and he'd teach me Quechua. “What in one day?” I said. Yes, he
insisted, so I sat down with him for an hour and began to revive my Quechua. Gradually, the whole passageway
filled with women from upstairs, all crowding round. Everyone is bored, dying. We're off.
Vilcabamba
We walked out of Loja and got a lift easily - but were charged 500 sucres for it. The bus would have cost 150. In
Vilcabamba, a man we spoke to gave us a place to stay in an orange-tree, coffee-bush, tangerine, plantain and
pineapple jungle.
I'm sitting writing on the broken steps of our little two-storey house with church-shaped
windows. A couple of minutes away is a river where the kids just cooled off, and I did our washing. Tomorrow
the man is going to introduce us to the Americans who live near here.
19th January 1989
I have met Martha, an easy-going American woman of my age, and she has given me a huge old barn to live in for
as long as I like. Her farm is tucked away in the greenery in a warm valley between pretty hills. The barn has a
straw-roof and is tall and dark with an earthen floor; there is a platform with foam on it and a spare eiderdown and a
river far down below - we have to carry our water up a very steep hill. Next door, hidden by greenery, is a round
house with a straw roof where Charlie lives. He is a tall blonde handsome young American who makes and sells
Andean pipes. Further down lives Dennis, who lives by selling orchids. A few steep slopes away lives Martha,
who’s been here for twelve years and she lives by making green vegetable salt. Martha’s husband lives by singing
songs on the beaches and making musical instruments.
I did the washing-up for Martha in the chaos of her lively kitchen and she's delighted that I'd like to do
gardening for her. And now I have a huge clearing job to do on my barn. Work, real work!
20th January 1989
A handsome American traveller arrived here today and I've invited him to share my barn-house and do a bit of
carpentry for me. It seems all Americans are very cultivated, knowledgeable and democratic. They all speak
Spanish with atrocious accents and don't seem to mind, or notice, and they all love listening to our Cockney accent.
21st January 1989
Michael, my Aries American lodger, is sawing and hammering in my barn to complete the bed platform before night
falls. Martha just made me try some carrot juice. It was ghastly. So she tried me on beetroot juice. It was
worse. I’m just too conservative to match up to these New Age Americans. The garden is so stony I had to break
the earth with a pickaxe, and I thought longingly of my sandy soil and tools back home in Colombia. Yet I have
here more than I could have wished for.
22nd January 1989
I’ve spent the whole morning with Michael, listening to him, talking and teaching him Spanish. He’s nearly 40 and
was a therapist in the USA. Now he grows marijuana there for vast sums of money. He knows everything and has
done everything and his voice is tired. All these Americans are herb-cure and health fanatics. He ingests all kinds
of unpalatable substances ‘because they’re good for you.’ I drink milk, put sugar on my porridge and give the kids
sweets to shut them up. These people smoke pot and think that’s OK. I don’t. They are all very talkative and
have depressed voices and use strange words and expressions and think the way the kids and I talk is cute. Often
we can’t understand one another. They don’t call loos loos, bums bums, torches torches, or porridge porridge.
And they call a group of women and girl-children ‘You guys.’
Martha gave us a kitten; it is curled up purring inside the hood of Katie’s poncho which she is wearing.
We’re about to go out visiting and Katie thinks we’re going to ‘Ned’s house.’ Michael fixed and slept on our bed
platform. He looked at my palm this morning and didn’t say anything except that I’ll die in my 50’s if I don’t
‘change my eating habits.’ American sense of humour is very different from ours, in fact it is undetectable by me.
And my jokes are definitely not funny to them. I tried to read some American magazines in bed last night but
found the English almost incomprehensible.
Above us on the peak of a hill is a house where a mad American Sikh lived. The people here say they
don’t go up there because it has ‘funny vibes.’ Michael says he’s going up there to ‘burn some incense and fix up
the vibes.’ He has short hair, is immaculately clean, well-organised, proper and accomplished. He didn’t have
kids because he didn’t like any of the children he ever saw in the United States and prefers the ones he sees in the
Third World. Helping him with his Spanish, I said, ‘Let’s see, what can you do for me in exchange?’ He said he
could align my spine for me. I said, ‘Yes, I’m sure you could, but I was thinking of something I’d enjoy.’ He
laughed. I like him, though of course, he is American, which means laid back, extremely relaxed and nicely
behaved and generous and full of information and terribly tired of it all; nothing makes him sparkle, and he is far too
good-looking. I keep wondering if he’s got false eyebrows or wears make-up.
24th January 1989
Michael is ill. He says it’s ‘giardia’, and that I will get it, and that he can’t understand why I haven’t got it already.
I advised him to give up healthy living. I live on white rice, black coffee, ice lollies, sweets, sour lemons, white
sugar and cane sugar, with the occasional carrot thrown in for the show. The children’s diet is even worse, but we
all have plenty of energy. Michael rattles with vitamin pills and put my indoor wood fire out because he said he’s
seen people in Nepal with tuberculosis.
26th January 1989
I went into Loja by bus as Martha had told me there were about ten letters waiting for me. All the way into town, I
felt so nervous, my heart was in my throat, and I didn’t know why.
When I got to the Post Office, I was told that an ‘Americano’ was looking for me. He’d been there just
one and a half hours previously, about the time I’d felt sick with apprehension on the bus. I asked if the Americano
had a black beard…. then I collected my huge postal packet and went straight back to the bus station to discover that
one Bill Dickinson had bought a ticket for Vilcabamba.
It took me over two hours to read all my letters, and I got off the bus in Vilcabamba with news streaming
out of my earholes. I got a lift up the hot dusty road to home, which is otherwise an hour’s walk. Halfway there,
sitting comfortably in the front seat of the little van, I saw a tired and dusty gringo reorganising his luggage at the
side of the road, and said to my driver, exaggerating somewhat, “That’s a friend of mine.”
I got out and helped Bill with his luggage and showed him the way to Martha’s. At first, he couldn’t see
me. He stared straight at me and thought I was someone else. He hadn’t slept for 48 hours and had come all the
way from Macas, where he’d stayed, stuck, since the last time I saw him.
When we got home, Michael was just about to leave for Peru. One of the first things Bill asked me was,
was I pregnant? I said, ‘I’ve actually got rather thin lately’, Bill: ‘Is that one of the symptoms of pregnancy?’
Letter from Bill to Ned
Dear Ned, It’s hippie heaven here in Vilcabamba. The American feller Jen was living with came home after a day
walking in the mountains and said, “Are you cooking?” in such a masterful and authoritative manner that Jen spent
the next hour struggling, at the end of a working day, to make the feller a meal. I’m booking us all with him for
assertiveness training. Meanwhile, she has promised to cook for me on days on which she has orgasm.
30th January 1989
Dear Folks Back Home,
Now Bill is back, I can take it easy. He slaves over a smoky fire all day and is very happy.
5th February 1989
Dear Ned,
I was walking to the shop with Louise the other day when she turned round to look at me and said, “Bill,
now you’re ugly like that, you can never get nice-looking again, can you?”
11th February 1989
Bill has spent all day mending shoes as we’re leaving soon for Peru - our Ecuadorian visas are expiring. We have
constantly been warned about the dangers of Peru, but have no choice.
16th February 1989
We left the haven of the American farm, in bright sunshine and were given a lovely send-off by Martha who took
photos while the kids splashed naked in the river. We spent the night in an 'expensive' hotel: £1.20p, with warm
showers. I felt happy, beautiful and optimistic, until two in the morning that is, when I woke up and noticed what
was in the bed with me. He's very big and strong and helpful and capable and hardworking; but he doesn't like any
depth of emotions especially not in the you-know-what department. So the sky is very grey over Loja today.
We travelled on to the grotty little mountain town of Catacocha, and Bill went round to about five
lodging-houses, but they all asked too much for narrow beds and no water, or even more for beds and water. He was
moaning about this to a shopkeeper, who offered us a floor and a straw mat for nothing in a dark little room, on a
mucky balcony above a muckier patio. If we want the loo, we have to ask for permission and be led through the
dark shop downstairs and have the door to a stinking hole unlocked.
Upstairs is bedlam with about seven
runny-nosed children, plus our three, all rushing around. We sent Katie and Alice to go and play in the town square
and they came home wet through and covered in mud. But there's something about laying all our gear on a floor
and just managing, and Bill playing his guitar for the balcony audience and everything being right down at the most
basic level.
17th February 1989
However, after a dismal night at Macará, the last town in Ecuador, with the guitar-player, I dumped him, and
crossed into Peru alone with the kids.
CHAPTER 10
PERU
18th February 1989
We are in a new world. This country is different. The man who stamped my passport was not officious and nasty
like the Colombian bureaucrats, nor sneaky and intrusive like the Ecuadorians; he was plump and relaxed and within
a few minutes asked me to marry him. Then he put a lot of energy into trying to sell me more time, the full 90
days, for ten dollars for each of us. I refused. And then he kept coming back out of his office after me offering me
a night with him in Piura, the first big town.
Bill caught up with us briefly at the frontier, long enough to boast that he'd been offered two extra months
in Ecuador for a small fine and 60 days in Peru for £l. From this, I deduced that my Peruvian passport man thought
Bill was poorer, didn't fancy him and hadn't offered to marry him. Nor did I. I ignored him and proceeded to
travel on alone.
There is no bus service at the Peruvian frontier, but a bevy of little vans are there selling lifts. We
eventually found one for a reasonable price and sat in the open back being jolted around for hours through hot
lowland scrub, on sandy tracks with a delicious feeling of Air and Escape from the black presence that had been
hovering around me at the frontier. We had to go into a further half dozen passport control offices en route, all very
friendly.
The Peruvians are different. They are all much darker-skinned - Colombians are positively white in
comparison. They are extroverts, they have characters (I failed to discern any in Ecuador), and, so far, they are all
warm and welcoming. But we had been filled with so many horror stories about Peru, that I couldn't help feeling
tense and paranoid; it seems that every place with soul has a bad reputation. As I sat in the bumpy van, my arm
gripping uncomfortably onto the side so as not to be thrown around, I suddenly noticed my watch had disappeared,
and was immediately dashed into a state of rampant paranoia, retracing my footsteps in my mind, - had anyone
brushed up against me? Had someone been so clever as to spirit it from my arm without me noticing. I tried to
talk sense to myself, insisting that the vibrations of the van must have loosened the strap and that no-one had been
near me. We finally arrived in a dusty little settlement called Las Lomas. The driver had quoted me 4,000 ‘intis' at
the beginning of the ride. I now asked him again, 'How much?' “2,000 intis”, he said - about £l. Perhaps it was
because he saw me not buy a meal when everyone else stopped to eat at a farm restaurant in the middle of nowhere.
Las Lomas is extremely hot. The people are black. There are no rooms to let, but a young negress
working in the hot café I enquired in offered to take us home to her family. So I sat gratefully at a café table
waiting for her. Then the owner came up to me and said, 'Te buscan' - 'they are looking for you.’ And there stood
a singularly unattractive Bill with accusative vibrations, and in this situation it was too socially embarrassing to tell
him to sod off, so I sent him shopping for fruit and food to cook instead.
So now we are at the black people's shack, with the three kids playing in a water tank and me at a
fly-covered table writing. The family say we can cook here. I am looking at the floor, which is earthen, uneven,
and dirty. I can't imagine where we’re going to sleep.
People in Peru relate. It is a much poorer country than Ecuador and Ecuador is poorer than Colombia, and
Colombia poorer than Venezuela. Ecuador was full of pigs. Peru is full of goats. I have never seen so many in
all my life, thousands of them, in beautiful condition, all wandering around free. There are no crops anywhere in
sight. Just lots and lots of wooded hills, and everything bigger and wilder than Ecuador. The goats don't seem to
be doing any damage because there is so much vegetation. We are evidently only a hundred or so metres above sea
level. That would account for why there is so much dark skin around - as in Colombia, the black people stick to the
coastal lowlands. Peru is fascinating; there is so much of everything - like, flies and heat and people who want to
talk to you. The Spanish spoken here sounds normal to me, after the odd cross-breed Ecuadorian variety, heavily
influenced by Quechua. And here once again, I get asked the intimate questions I came to expect in Colombia - it's
embarrassing, but it's human.
The black family that have adopted us just put a thin piece of foam on the dirt floor and told us it's here we
sleep, unless it rains in which case we move over there - to another bit of the floor where the roof doesn't leak.
19th February 1989
I felt tighter and more rigidly opposed to Bill than ever before as night fell and we were forced to spend it
together. I clung carefully to the knowledge that my body doesn't go rigid for nothing and repeated to him every
foul thing about our relationship that came to my mind, determined to break up straight away the next day if I
continued to feel oppressed, encaged, or ego-tripped by him. Bill's giant-size Ego hadn’t previously worried me
much, as long as it was counter-balanced by a giant-sized excuse-me, but for some reason lately it has started to
Stand Out, the ego that is, and blight my horizon. Anyway, I must have got my point across, as I woke up in the
night to find Bill fast asleep but wrapped tightly around me as if hanging on for dear life. I discovered I felt quite
soft towards him, so I must have achieved to return unopened the latest garbage-dumping from him. Then I kicked
him till he woke up and I won't tell you the rest, but later I felt clean and clear and better able to concentrate today
on the important things of life like sewing patches on trousers and writing to you.
This is one of those shacks where a great number of people live, the roof leaks, you pee and poo in the
yard, and the place is empty of furniture. Rambo, Coca Cola and Jesus Christ cohabit on the walls and everyone
sits around endlessly doing nothing, and this is their life. The mamma of the house is an enormously fat negress.
Everyone is fascinated by my kids who spend half of their time behaving like pigs. I gave away my blue Indian
dress to a daughter of the family and they gave us two kids' dresses. And last night Bill and I played to them for
hours on violin and guitar with the audience growing ever larger till the whole room was full.
During the night, having given up on manoeuvring our floor-bed so as not to be under water pouring
through the roof, we were told to move into the ‘kitchen.’ Here water was also pouring in, but a channel had been
dug for it in the earth, and there was just enough room for us to lay our gear down on the very dirty smelly floor
amidst the dog-fleas, empty fish cans and ash from the wood fire. Meanwhile the whole of the large family slept in
various mysterious ways in a small room opening off from the kitchen with a paraffin light burning all night. In
that room were an ancient crippled grandmother, the big fat negro mamma, her married daughter and young soldier
husband; an unmarried grownup daughter and half a dozen children ranging from a teenage boy down to a
one-year-old baby girl, plus, on this occasion, my three children. I wondered how the young couple engineered
their married life in these conditions as they were obviously in love and had only a large mosquito net draped around
their bed separating them from their huge family.
In the daytime, apart from a couple of meal-makings, everyone simply sits or stands around. They did not
seem exactly unhappy, nor even particularly lethargic, just rather relaxed about the passage of Time and the purpose
of Life. Also, they were certainly not hungry, though I never discovered how they managed.
20th February 1989
Night-time in a big airless boarding house in a foul town called Sullama. Urban Peru is absolutely filthy. Sullama
could be smelt on the bus long before it could be seen - for more than a kilometre outside of it, there was foul
smelling truck-dumped garbage strewn thickly along the edges of the highway into town. The bus stopped on the
edge of a hot crowded marketplace, which smelt like a cross between a mouldy slaughterhouse and an opened
graveyard. Everywhere there are water shortages, that is, a shortage of water delivered in taps. There is no
shortage of water from the sky, just a shortage of any kind of water-organisation as in Bucket Under Drips from
Roof for example. The roads of Sullama are mud-pits.
It's midnight. Katie just woke up, thought it was daytime and said, ‘Can I draw?’ I have the light on
because of Bill, the oppressive airless heat, the narrow bed that sinks in the middle and the mosquitoes. But mainly
Bill. On the bus to Sullama, I had to bat off his stuck-tape nonsense for hours; then eventually he said a few
sentences that made sense, mainly about how to reorganise the large sexual discrepancy that dominates our
relationship, as it does that of most of the wives in the world, wherein he takes what he wants, gives nothing and
wonders 'what the problem is' and why I have to be so 'awkward' and why I have to keep “making a fuss’ and why I
can't just 'accept him as he is', that is, as a repressive, neurotic pig. Anyway, he cleared the air enough for life to
continue for a few hours, until bedtime when he suddenly urgently had to do a lot of nose-blowing and sweating,
especially the latter, which as you know is a good old male anti-sex standby. At first, I managed to sleep, but
eventually had to do something about the mosquitoes, namely, cover the children with saris and kill a few
(mosquitoes). Count Dracula, draped in black, lay on our narrow cot and pretended to sleep with one eye open.
This wasn't attractive so I woke him up and he is now moaning about 'having had a nice feeling this afternoon' or
some such impenetrable male logic. This remark has exhausted the dying remnants of my good mood, so I'll put
out the light now and hope that these few details will put the many separations, past and to come, into a bit of
perspective.
21st February 1989
Today I noticed Louise walking with her hands folded behind her over the bag she was carrying and I asked her
why. She said, “That's so that if thieves slit my bag open, they'll have to cut my hands as well and then they'll have
to pay me lots of money.”
24th February 1989
We travelled on to Piura, a hell-pit of heat, bustle and the commercially well-to-do. And not very Pure-a in its
toilets. This southward route along the coast is a trap. There is no other, not for normal people anyway. We went
to a crowded bus-station and asked about routes up into the mountains - I had seen on the map one of those dotted
lines that means a road that sometimes is and sometimes isn't. We were told that we couldn't go to the mountains
because ‘esta lloviendo’, it is raining. We were assured that whatever we tried to do, we'd have to come back to the
hot hell of Piura to travel further south. With maximum gringo arrogance, I said, “Hah! they only say that because
they don't know what feet are for!” And we boarded a bus for the mountain settlement of Canchaque, which we
were told was three hours away. The busride was a nightmare, hot and crowded. Alice was sick several times. I
suffered horribly; it seems that after anything more than one hour on a bus, I automatically develop hepatitic
symptoms. I felt sick, my head hurt, I got body pains. And the journey lasted five hours. For the last two, I was
in extreme misery. The rains came. The roads were flooded. Villagers gathered at their doorways as the bus
passed, and between them and us was a wide stretch of water. As the bus travelled, it threw up a muddy wall of
clay-coloured water, obscuring all. Bill was completely cold and cut-off the whole way. I died.
The nightmare ended when we came to the end of the road, the sweet mountain village of Canchaque, wet,
misty, lush, banana-growing, a cold relief, but very wet. We took a freezing pensión, thirty bob for the lot of us.
One thin blanket, and a room full of beds we hadn't officially paid for, but used.
As always, we were saved by the
fact we carry bedding with us. I feel venomous towards the people I have to pay to use my own bedding. I was
very ill. In the morning, I lay dying, including dying to leave Bill. But I can't move anywhere, geography and ill
health prevent it. So I swore at him for several hours on end till I found some kind of peace. He is useful on the
practical level as always. I suggested he go out and find a house for free in the countryside where we can cook.
He was directed to the local radio station to put out a message, but meanwhile was given several suggestions and
took the first one. It is a large empty modern house, which is unfortunate as it has only stone floors and no place to
cook. But it's free and the owner, an old man, lets us have a few bananas thrown in. There is no way to dry
anything, we have no socks, I have been laid up with diarrhoea for two days and Katie has become ill. My feet are
permanently freezing to the point of Bill having to give me a heated brick wrapped in rags to warm them. But the
kids are very happy, and Louise is the nicest I've ever known her. The area is very beautiful, though you can't see
much because of the mountain mist. 'It is raining' takes on a new meaning here. Rain is strong in Colombia, heavy
in Ecuador, but here it is relentless, total, dominating everything. But it is better than the killing heat of lowland
Peru.
There is an unresolved historical dispute between Ecuador and Peru. According to our Ecuadorian map,
we are still on the borders of Ecuador. According to the Peruvian map, we are well within Peru. According to me,
I'm stuck up a mountain with Bill and his nauseating roundabout. I wish men weren't so emotional. Must stop
now to rub some life back into my feet.
26th February 1989
Dear Ned, Tom and Alex,
I've instituted a new regime: the good old Atlantis system of Slave Labour Rewarded, occasionally, by
Violent Confrontation. I had to find an alternative to the Get Up and Go system of dealing with Bill's sulks, not due
to any Spiritual Enlightenment on my part, but to the fact that I can neither get up nor go, being ill and weak with
diarrhoea and there being nowhere to go as we are at the end of the road and are receiving negative reports about the
possibility of moving on by foot. And, presumably feeling secure through my immobility, Bill is indulging in a
bumper bundle of bad behaviour, going from bad to worse, enough to shock the mind of even the weathered
observer: cutting off nightly, making absurd 'affectionate' lunges, speeches and promises by day, and being tragic
and cocky by turns. He spent last night sitting outside the house on cold concrete, at one point attempting to steal
an old curtain by grabbing it through a window, to make his sulk a little more comfortable. The attempted theft
made such a racket that I awoke, marched out, retrieved the curtain - and the curtain rail still attached. In the
morning, at a moment of extreme provocation, I poked this object at the thief, whereupon he sustained a small
scratch upon the arm and tried to threaten both myself and Louise with very nasty violence. I stood my ground and
looked him in the eye, something his family have not accustomed him to, and he then attempted to bully me with a
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, to which I responded by looking at him womanfully and saying I knew exactly
who I was, why? Did he have a problem with knowing who he was? This did the trick and gradually the hairy
situation calmed down with a great deal of creative work on my part backed up by delighted taunts from the kids.
When I was dealing with him during the night, I noticed very clearly all trace of illness leaving my body - my
disordered stomach popped, rearranged itself and settled, the previous horrible swollenness subsiding and all
gut-mechanisms returning to normal. By dawn, after a good night’s sleep, in spite of Himself breaking back into the
house and having the nerve to try and sleep with me, I was zinging with health and have been ever since.
HE insists he wants no sex - interspersed with insisting that he does - so I decided to give him all he
desired, namely, a eunuch's role of cook, baby attendant and travel arrangements organiser. Since then I have felt
much better. I have also forbidden him to play music with me as I always find myself mysteriously stunted as soon
as he joins in, and ordained that he must not speak to visitors when I am already dealing with them - this to
counteract the Mr. Oppressively-Normal syndrome.
There were a few bumps while we accustomed him to the new regime, but generally things have been
swinging. Yesterday I played violin for about four hours starting in the morning at the request of the old fellow
who’s lent us this house, my playing taking off on a new leap - it seems my creativity was in chains along with my
ransomed soul. And today, Bill unaccountably seems to be in a Good Mood, being Kind to Kids and humming and
ha-ing about a Renegotiation of Contract which met with a firm No ThankYou from me. Bill is a person to utilise
at a distance and not to meddle with at close quarters, as most of womankind seems to have realised for most of his
life till Yours Truly Stupid came along.
So I am spending these days of rest sewing, knitting, encouraging Louise’s ever-flowering art, reading and
eating all the vegetables we can cook, in preparation for inevitable future vegetablelessness.
We have now
ascertained that we can walk out of here southwards by mountain paths and that it takes fifteen hours to the next
road, about five days travel at our speed.
Evidently there are settlements along the way, so we have decided to
leave in a couple of days. To celebrate, the sun shone yesterday and dried all our washing; we had practically
nothing left to wear.
27th February 1989
Good morning good folks.
Progress report on the newly instituted system of polite slavery and no sexual
interference: difficult, but bearing up, and definitely preferable to going under to the cynical minute-ly changes of a
lumbering butterfly.
This morning, I woke the staff at five a.m. I'd been awake an hour and saw no reason for further dalliance,
therefore ordered coffee from the snoring cook whom I generously allow to sleep on the red shiny plastic sofa (I
sleep on a tiny narrow camp bed, the kids on mats on the stone floor). This breezy request on my part was met by
one and a half hours of Trouble, involving quite a lot of energy and noise on my part in order to suppress an insolent
Rebellion. I had cause to reprimand severely, liberally accompanied by threats, as I was told in limp-lipped
Northern English loutish manner: ‘I just want to get as much out of you as possible' and 'I never agreed to be a
slave.’ For the innocently bystanding reader, it needs pointing out (1) that there never was any problem in getting
anything out of me whatsoever and (2) that he himself repeatedly grumbled that he wanted to be a slave and not be
bothered with relating. After great efforts, I calmed the violent vibrations down to a manageable coffee-drinking
pitch.
I have just been requested to share this letter with the staff. You may imagine my indignation. You
simply can't get good house-boys these days. Being a woman of generally smaller frame than the eunuch in my
service, I have to hone my wits most finely. Thanks be to Allah that I had eight years' intensive training with an
unruly Celt.
28th February 1989
Dear Neddie and Mates,
Last night the serfs revolted. I have to admit that it wasn't entirely revolting, but the voltage was certainly
down to near zero on account of the long recent blackout. However, it has the effect on Himself of making him
sing loudly without cease and take forever getting ready to go - we’re leaving today. The kids are down at their
boyfriends' house no doubt getting muddy. I'm trying to dry the washing in a drizzle.
When I awoke at dawn in the tiny narrow metal campbed shared, as I say, for the first time with the other
member of the expedition, I had just produced the following dream:
Sitting on the end of my bed, which I am about to enter, is a very large soft tabby tomcat. He has a
huge head, slanty eyes and is generally a very nice-looking tom, but is definitely not supposed to be there on my
bed. He looked very comfortable, but belongs outside. I don't like the look of his tail, which is thin and scraggy.
I am sure he will drop fleas and probably poo on my bed. So I go over and pick him up with my left hand and
attempt to open the door with my right to eject him. He is colossally heavy, huge and floppy, and as I pick him up,
my arm is aching and I sense an unpleasant churning of liquids in his stomach - I am sure he will do diarrhoea all
over me and my bed, and I'm in a great hurry to get him out. Puss is passive throughout.
I woke up with both arms aching, Bill lying on my left one; the other jammed against the metal bedframe ...
3rd March 1989
Hello my friends in Colombia,
The past few days have blurred in my memory into one massive long WALK. On our first day out of
Canchaque, we found out that country people are not universally hospitable. We only just managed to get to a
village by nightfall where there were people reasonable enough to allow us to sleep on their veranda - and they later
changed the offer to a tiny storeroom, which was bliss as in spite of having to squeeze the children in like sardines,
there was a lovely fat foam to sleep on. And they gave us food, and next day Bill asked the lady to cook rice for us
to take on our journey: it was a shop, but they only sold rice and white sugar and absolutely nothing else.
The next day, we arrived at the nightmare settlement of Piedra Grande (Big Rock), in perfectly beautiful
mountain scenery, and inhabited by a small-tribe of cretinous pigs. I'm sorry. I'm supposed to say that country
people are sweet and hospitable and give what they can. They were cretinous pigs. The village itself was so small
that I missed it: I was halfway down the next mountain when Bill's voice boomed from above saying: ‘You just
walked through the village.’ This was the place we'd been seeking all day where we were told we might get
‘hospedaje’ for the night. We did not. We had arrived in the village around 4 p.m. with three hours to go before
dark. There were about half a dozen houses all together. In some, they were just downright rude to Bill; in others,
thick and unhelpful. Our only hope of food or accommodation was the ‘tienda’, shop, a largish house - but the man
was away in the mountains seeing his bulls. We waited for him till dark and then gave up. A scruffy, friendly,
woman said we could sleep under her roof overhang on her filthy house-surround. We then faced the most horrible
night of the journey - not counting all the horrible nights Bill has provided for us deliberately.
The señora had bred a large brood of offspring, a goodly handful of which were standing around
near us. I thought it was the local teenage gathering place as I witnessed courtship games, hittings and chasing and
gigglings and body-handlings. Only after some hours did I establish that they were all brothers and sisters, the girls
very well-built, sexually developed and completely thick. They just stared at us. They never answered or smiled if
spoken to but just stood around endlessly or sat gathered in huddles in the dark about two feet from us, while we,
exhausted and completely freaked out like overcrowded rats in a cage, attempted to clean a space on the few feet of
filthy concrete to lay out our wrecked children. When I had a candle on and we could be seen, the situation was
entirely intolerable; so I blew it out, got our kids under some sort of violent control, and sank into a huddle under
our poncho, trying to protect myself psychically by becoming as zombie-like as our torturers.
Their main
occupation in life was spitting, which they all took it in turns to do, without cease, for several hours, very near us
indeed. The mother spent the evening standing staring into space and rocking her latest contribution to the
Universe, a four-month old girl. The teenage gang continued talking and giggling in whispers. Their jokes were
sexual. Then they rolled around in quiet hysterics at their own jokes. Eventually, the most forward of them asked
us questions like, ‘What race are the people in Colombia?’ and ‘What language do they speak?’ and ‘Do you cross
the sea to get there?’
It wasn't really what we needed after a day's gruelling walk living on white rice and boiled sweets. Bill
escaped it slightly by bullying the woman into selling him one pound of rice and getting her to let him cook it in her
kitchen. When I discovered that menstruation had been added to my pleasures, and that I had no way of caring for
myself hygienically, things became so bad they were almost funny. Bill and I had to sleep on our duvet because of
the hard concrete floor; this left us three thin saris and a small poncho to combat the mountain air.
At first peek of dawn, we aggressively and rapidly packed our bags, grabbed our kids and left in
double-quick time before too many of the cretinous teenagers could start staring again. We left in the foulest of
moods and it took several hours for our aggression to subside.
The journey continued to be extremely difficult; we were already aching from travelling too much without
proper sleep or food. At midday, we collapsed by a lovely stream. Bill and Katie slept. I washed and dried
everything in the sun; the children played and swam, and then we climbed the incredibly steep hot side of the valley
and walked on for hours and hours, beaten upon by the sun until we came to Tunas, a tiny hamlet in the mountains,
where, we had been assured, we could find food to buy. Our bags were heavy, our limbs aching, the children
sunburned and Katie suffering a lot. We were confronted by a row of stony-faced men sitting on benches outside a
building, who proceeded to claim (1) that there was No Water anywhere - the children badly needed a drink, (2) that
there was No Shop. We had lived on white rice and a few heaven-sent bananas which we managed to buy off a
little girl crossing a river with donkey.
We set down our luggage and sat on it in front of the welcome party, weathered travellers now, versed in
the art of passive confrontation. I told Bill not to argue, just sit and wait. This is Peru.
Quite soon, a more energetic fellow rode up on his horse and dismounted. I told him a name we'd been
given of someone who sold food, and he responded with a sarcastic smile, from which I gathered he was the
shopkeeper. He was enjoying the power-trip. We were beyond minding.
Eventually he unlocked the room outside which the people were sitting who had said there was nothing to
buy anywhere, and revealed a very well-stocked shop. The man had just come all the way from Canchaque by
horse, a journey which had taken us three days. He asked me if we were religious missionaries, and then if we were
selling anything. I settled his suspicions in full and his twisted smile relaxed a bit. So I asked him, “Are there any
people with a room who'd let us stay the night?” and he immediately said we could have his storeroom if we paid
him, and I said of course. The room was warm and dry and had a proper bed in it, and blankets; bliss.
Bill built a fire by a rock and when the people saw we were well-organised with cooking-pot and all, they
relaxed still further. The shopkeeper’s kids were sent off to get us some murky water for cooking and we had a
lovely time buying everything on offer in his shop. We established which part of the banana plantation was the
'toilet', I made up kids' beds on the floor of the storeroom and then lay down for a very very long time..
Bill displayed amazing energy, rushing around organising and soon produced a magic cup of tea, some cold
cocoa and other marvels. I was flooding blood and they did not sell sanitary towels. I didn't dare to ask the rather
sullen senora what the women do round here, but went and tore up one of our precious handtowels. And this
morning out of a shallow puddle full of tadpoles, I scooped enough water to do a massive wash of stained sheets and
clothing and peed-on bedding (thank-you Alice), all of which dried very quickly in the hot sun, any woman's instant
route to ecstasy.
Bill continued next day to provide food without end, which we needed to stock up our bodies after a hungry
time. The area we are in is beautiful, range after range of wooded mountains and, lower down, endless streams to
stop by, play by, bathe and wash clothes. But the people. Oh dear.
7th March 1989
We stayed two nights at the shop in Tunas, then walked a not-too-long, not-too-difficult way through lovely country
to the next settlement, Tolingas, where we were immediately given the schoolhouse to camp in. It was all I could
have asked for - a chance to cook in peace, unobserved. There was nowhere to buy anything, but we've got used to
this by now and were carrying beans, rice and porridge. I moved dilapidated schooldesks to make a little platform
for the kids to sleep on, and Bill swept, with branches, a little square on the dusty concrete floor for me to make a
bed. Bill lit a fire outside to cook on. There was no glass in the windows of the huge schoolroom, but we have
just enough bedding to keep warm. A few well-behaved passers-by came and Bill played guitar for them, then I
joined in on violin and enjoyed it as the acoustics are good in a big empty room. When the kids were in bed, I went
to cover them up on their desk-platform and saw a brown scorpion very near to them. Bill's unique way of dealing
with this was to cut its tail off with our sharp knife, a singularly dangerous and inefficient way to kill a scorpion.
The insect fell to the floor and walked round and round in circles, tail-less, while I yelled at Bill, who had shoes on,
to put it out of its agony.
Could this incident really be the cause of what followed?
I felt completely happy. We had everything we needed and had heard that Huarmaca, a small town, was a
reasonable day's walk up the mountain and that there'd be shops and maybe a place to stay. The kids are strong, we
are all well-seasoned and the countryside is uniformly lovely. You'd think, wouldn’t you, that in this situation,
nothing could go radically wrong?
Wrong. Bill is infinitely versatile. He can effortlessly turn the simplest enjoyment to utter shite. He got
into the bed I'd made. I bit him - a friendly bite, as I was feeling good. But I noticed I'd bitten into a stone. I do
try not to notice these things, and to enjoy the sunny spots in between the mud. But the stone continued to be a
stone, so, as I don't like stones in my bed, I kicked it out. It then sat all night in a thin tee-shirt in a cold
schoolroom, non-verbal, as stones are wont to be. Several times I had to insult the stone loud and long in order to
get a few hours' sleep, but again and again, the vibrations would wake me up. About seven times, the stone rolled
meekly across the room and without the barest attempt to reduce or alter its stone-like nature, dared to attempt
re-entry into my bed. I kicked it aside, which was not difficult, given its basic inert nature. These attempts at
re-entry usually occurred when I had just fallen asleep, from which I deduced that the stone's intentions were not as
meek and weak as its overt behaviour.
Come morning, nothing had changed. By now, the bruises of the Quito-Macas-Canchaque circuit were
well overdosed with re-injury and my hatred-level was very high indeed. I was stuck up a mountain and knew we
had an uphill climb ahead. But no way could I proceed lugging a huge viciously negative stone as well. So I
packed my bags, how boring, and I packed them heavy, taking our own bedding and my violin and prepared to go it
alone under the most difficult physical conditions so far.
Bill took about four hours to make porridge and I was going barmy with anger at the nerve of him
reproducing this whole silly game of his all over us, so I took his guitar and bashed it on the wall. I wasn't going to
have him poncing around being everybody's pet performing poodle while he treated his own family in this way; he
makes three-year old Katie look like a tower of maturity. I then poured half a gallon of used washing water into the
guitar's carcass, and we left.
The climb was steep, muddy and in permanent mist. The kids are brilliant in the worst conditions.
Louise carried my violin a lot of the time and Katie kept going, though suffering. I gave them ten-minute stops at
short intervals and kept talking to them to keep them going. And I always carry a large packet of boiled sweets
with me, a wonder-worker. The worst disappointment was that the dense mountain mist never once lifted, so we
could not benefit visually from the enormous climb we were making.
We went on, up and up. Up and up again. Some places were very difficult. We occasionally met people
coming down - Yes, Huarmaca is 'two hours away', 'one and a half hours' away and the track is muy bonito - fine this from a man who claimed Huarmaca was half an hour away. It was about midday, and we'd left at 10:00 a.m.
The track did not get at all bonito, it got considerably more feo (horrible). Eventually I heard vague sounds of
radios in the dense mist below us and thought, ‘Ah, Huarmaca.’
We came to a cross in the paths, one going down, the other up. No-one to ask the way. The up path
looked far more used, so we took it. At long long last the endless climb flattened out, but the narrow flat path went
on and on. And on. We met no-one. I was worried. I suspected we'd taken the wrong turning. The journey
was taking too long. Then the mist started turning to rain. I put on my light plastic cape. I can’t remember when
it was that we met someone who said Huarmaca was still ‘a couple of hours’ away.
At last the path started going downwards. But this was awful. The rain had turned the track to sticky
clay-ey mud. Down, down. Then it stopped. My heart sank and I must have turned grey. Blocking our path was
a swollen rushing muddy river where once, presumably, a ford had been. I knew a local would know the way
across. We didn't. Three little girls, a heavy rucksack and a violin. These countries are full of reports of river
deaths through flash floods. But there was no way we could go back now.
I went very calm. I felt an extraordinary degree of love for the kids. There was a narrow rushing part of
the river with a thin tree trunk across it. Is that the crossing point? I wondered. But I could see no obvious way of
getting past the brambles to the log, and no way of crossing it if I did get there, and the water looked very deep.
I knew I was going to have to test the depth of that muddy rushing river myself. I was sick with fear and
weakness. I felt just a small sense of betrayal to be faced with this situation alone with what now looked like tiny
children. I turned to Louise and knew it had to be her and me together that sorted this one out. Then suddenly I
realised that she is not a frightened person like I am, she's a physical daredevil, carefree and careless and that her
instinct as to where to cross would be far superior to my own. I said, 'Lou, where would you cross?' 'There!' she
said immediately, pointing to the widest part of the river where the water was rushing and gushing amongst large
rocks. I could see she was right. Fear had blinded me.
I tied a string round her waist. It was only a psychological string. It wouldn't even stretch across the
river. It didn't feel very nice to be using my seven-year-old child to test the crossing of a river in flood. But I
knew that in this situation, scatterbrain Louise had a lot more intact natural sense than I, ruined by my own terrified
mother.
She crossed easily. She was on the other side! This did nothing to abate my fears. I couldn't copy her,
springing from rock to rock; I had a heavy rucksack and a precious Katie to carry.
I took Alice first, led her as far as I could by stepping into the rushing water, encouraging her onward, then
handing her over to Louise. Two across.
I picked up Katie, my heart in my mouth. Louise met me halfway and we got her over. By now I was
finding out where there were underwater rocks to help me. Then Louise returned halfway again for her bag, the
muddy shoes and boots all tied together.
She fell. She slipped off the wet rocks midstream, into the rushing water, but held on and got back up,
badly frightened, blood pouring out of her many-times-reopened knee wound, shock on her face, her clothes soaking
wet.
Then it was my turn, all the way this time carrying some of our possessions. Then back for the violin.
Then back for the bedding rolled up in plastic, and then back for the rucksack. I don't know how many times I
crossed that river. The physical experience was nothing compared to the tortures going on in my mind. I knew a
local would have walked it blindfold. But I am not local to anywhere.
We were all on the right side of the river now. A round of sweets. I loved the kids so much, I was in
tears. A friendly young man with donkeys came down and sploshed across, too late to save us our experience. But
there was a certain elation in having done it alone.
The man told me Huarmaca is two hours away. And yes, we had gone the wrong way at the crossroads.
We had done a huge detour, hours out of our way. He showed us the extremely muddy path to the carretera, the
road the buses use in the dry season. In this season, the fish use it. Now the rain really came down, more and
more and more of it, until we were out in a South-American sky-flood. Even on this flat road, there were rivers
crossing it that I had to help the kids through. How far to Huarmaca? One and a half hours. How far to
Huarmaca? One hour. Half an hour. But the road was endless, and all of it was unnecessary suffering for the
kids because we hadn't known the way.
Parts of the road were near impassable. The kids were wet through. I daren't slow down for them, and we
couldn't stop to rest, we'd die of cold. I was worried, Katie was badly frozen and soaked to the skin, and my
rucksack was decidedly non-water-repellent, so no dry clothes. Finally the kids were so far behind, I had to sit in
the rain and wait for them. And then I had to carry Katie the rest of the way, on top of my heavy rucksack. ‘I’m
dying’ she quietly informed me.
How far is it to Huarmaca? ‘Solo unos minuticos ya.’ Just a few very short minutes. But the road went
on and on, and the rain got absurd. Then I saw an electric cable. 'Look!' I said to Katie, but she was in no state to
appreciate its significance. Then the road got so bad that I knew we'd arrive very soon, as these roads always reach
a peak of dreadfulness at population centres. I struggled through the deep mud, down through sheet rain to what
must once have been a street. At every doorway, under their corrugated iron roof overhangs, as far as the eye could
see, people were grouped, staring at us. I slipped and slid down to the first possible shelter, put down my rucksack,
sat a blue Katie on it and rushed back to find the other two - Louise was still carrying my heavy violin - violins are
very heavy after the first few thousand feet upward. The kids were miraculously near, Louise struggling, Alice
plodding along almost unconscious, she just keeps going.
A pensión please? Yes! Several lads crowded round giggling, took the violin and led us on. The steep
sidewalks were mudslides, some of the steps to them too high for man or beast, the road a rushing river, slipping and
sliding down through the town, friendly curious faces everywhere. Then an authoritative voice from a balcony:
'Step inside please!' Oh no! the local cop wanted his kilo of flesh. ‘Documentos?’ ‘Yes, certainly,’ I said, ‘but these
children are freezing, I have to get them to a pensión.’ He took no notice and was settling down to a meal of my
passport, so I said: ‘Keep it! I’m going.’ He was absolutely delighted, a whole gringo passport for dinner. He
stank of alcohol. ‘Su esposo?’ Your husband? 'Somewhere in this town,’ I guessed. ‘Send him to me!’ ‘Yes,
gladly, I said.
The town was endlessly long. Pensión, please, pensión. ‘Yes, down there!’ I was taken triumphantly to oh NO! a tiny corrugated iron shack in the middle of the street stinking suffocatingly of paraffin. So small and full
of people we could hardly squeeze in. A table filled most of the space. Men chewing on animals’ bones. WHAT
IS THIS? I asked, horrified. ‘Pensión!’ they answered, proudly. ‘Pensión’ dear Readers, so as to save you this
pain, in Peru means FOOD, and not boarding-house.
NO NO NO NO, I said.
I want a cuarto, a room.
‘Cuarto???’ said everyone. NO HAY. There Is Not. What do you fucking mean, no hay? said I, or words to that
effect. I gathered the remnants of my drenched, quaking children to me, ready to do battle. ‘Nadie tiene cuartos,
nadie tiene camas. No hay.’ No-one has rooms or beds. There aren’t any.
I got very bad-tempered indeed. Quite rude one might say, not that anyone noticed, they were all so
delighted to have such an amazing diversion on a torrential Sunday afternoon in winter when no-one ever comes to
Huarmaca, least of all gringos.
I insisted.
I said we had blankets (wet).
I said as long as the floor was
wooden…… A cross-eyed meat-eater said severely to me, ‘Señora, didn’t you know that ESTÁ LLOVIENDO?
IT’S RAINING.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘down in Tunas they haven’t got water even to wash and we got burned by the sun.’
Finally they sent a boy off to look for a room. I dared to breathe the paraffin-laden air. Some of the eaters
left. I relaxed two millimetres, but held tightly on to the kids, as if scared they could still die on me. The cabin
then started to fill with a huge flock of gringo-watchers, mainly little boys. The lady who was doing all the paraffin
cooking was very nice, reminded me of Maria of Gomera. I relaxed one centimetre and got over my indignation at
being offered food when we desperately needed a room, as I suddenly realised that hot coffee could equally well
save the kids’ lives. We moved round the table, the overcrowding was incredible: it would have made a stress-test
in a rat cage look like a picnic. I wrapped the children in damp blankets over their wet clothes. I was told off by
the woman for this; she said I should take off their wet clothes and put dry ones on. I could have cried. I knew
there was not a shred of dry clothing left in my rucksack. But I took the layers of wet clothes off and wrapped the
kids in the damp duvet and blankets. Then I realised I could buy them food - the ordeal had numbed my brain. No
meat please! Certainly. A huge plate of macaroni and potatoes was put in front of Louise and she fell upon it.
Food for all of them, I didn’t care what it cost.
I needed to take my wet things off too. I asked her please to shut the door, so she shooed all the men and
boys out, and managed to hold the corrugated iron door closed just long enough for me to strip to the skin and put on
a thin Indian shirt. Everyone was over-the-moon with delight at every additional piece of entertainment of this
nature. I relaxed a whole metre. The crowd piled in again for the next instalment, so I suggested to the cook that
she charge staring-fees for the gringo show. This joke was hugely appreciated by all. Whenever new faces
appeared, I asked if they’d paid for looking at the monkeys. Then I asked if we could possibly have some AIR in
the place - my eyes were smarting from the kerosene fumes and I thought the whole cooking process was downright
dangerous.
We were in there for several hours. The message came back that no ‘cuarto’ could be found, but by this
time the cooking lady had already decided that she wasn’t going to let anybody else have her pet gringos and would
take us home with her. I let myself relax completely into her hands. I had enough on my mind with a huge pile of
muddy clothes and no end of the torrential rain in sight. Everyone said it would go on raining till APRIL. Alice’s
lips were still blue with cold, and Katie was trembling all over, but they ate their way through the soup and on to the
rice and eggs and two rounds of coffee. This lot cost me thirty bob; I was shocked, but it was no time to be caring
about that.
Meanwhile, no news of any other gringo in town. Strange, he should have been two hours ahead of me.
Perhaps he fell in the river.
Ojalá - I hope so.
(The word actually means: Would be to Allah, though
Spanish-speaking Catholics don’t realise this!). Then he arrived. Not that I set eyes on him, but I was given a
running commentary from the boys at the door as I snuggled in my warm hidey-hole and he passed bedraggled up
the street. I said I hoped he fell over in the mud. They said he was with the police. I said I hoped he got put in
prison.
They all found this hugely funny and accepted my feelings without explanation.
"Claro", said the
cook-lady, "of course, he left her to come all alone with the children." This I had not told her, but to her it was
self-evident.
Eventually she closed shop and took us home. Katie had fallen asleep under an ample woman’s poncho.
Heavy little Alice was carried by another woman. I bundled our huge pile of wet everythings into my muddy
rucksack and followed them down the street.
Housing everywhere in these countries is miserable. Why do people live like this? It is not poverty, nor
lack of materials. It is some kind of lack of initiative, imagination, organization, precedent perhaps. I have not
seen a single housing unit since I left Inishfree that I would like to own, except for a German’s self-designed
wooden house in Vilcabamba.
We were led into a dark muddy shack with a black kitchen at the back. I couldn’t see any space for us.
The very kind, fat husband of the cook was pushing a huge pile of wood-chippings to one side of a tiny
earthen-floored room and later was seen bashing boards together to make a bed.
A mattress was leaning
promisingly against a wall. They had loads of blankets but claimed to have no spare clothes. I wrapped the kids in
blankets and fitted into the situation as best I could. Absolutely everyone was completely lovely to us, so I just had
to feel at home. I told them of the bad treatment meted out to us in all the little villages and they tossed their heads
knowingly and said, ‘Ha! We from Huarmaca get treated the same by them!’
The kids were happy, Katie still asleep in someone’s arms, Lou and Alice fighting and flirting with all the
little boys. I was just settling in completely when OH NO, they brought me a big ugly gringo, too tall for the low
ceiling. I was massively uncharmed. He came in a borrowed poncho looking EVER SO NICE and friendly and
open. He sat beside me and said not a word. The very sweet-hearted little man who had brought him in, most
delicately and artistically ‘introduced’ Bill to me and pleaded for ‘Peace, Patience and Understanding.’ The injustice
of the situation was too much for me. I thanked the sweet man briefly for his diplomatic efforts, said a few caustic
words about his protégé and left to wash the huge mound of clothes. Bill then left, without a squeak. I felt like a
butch lesbian being cruel to my poor little girlfriend.
I continued to receive ‘pleas’ for Bill, to all of which I replied, ‘It’s up to him. You don’t know him.’
They asked me for a message for him. I said, ‘Certainly. Tell him I hate him and don’t want to see him ever
again.’ I wasn’t going to compete with Bill in his dirty nice-image game.
I felt weakened by this encounter, but concentrated on survival. Katie was still frozen through. I took her
to bed early and held her all night, putting all my warmth and love into her. I’d done this before whenever my
children were sick as babies and I knew it couldn’t fail. The two bigger girls slept with the plump daughter of the
family and were completely happy.
I awoke at midnight besieged by thoughts of all that had happened and awoke again before dawn, lying
there in mental and emotional pain. I was being haunted. The place I was in was a pit. However kind the people
were, the place was a dead-end pit. It is a couple of days’ slosh-walk to the next road, and everyone says it takes a
week for washing to dry. I needed to cry. I fantasised being at home with you all and lying in your arms and
crying for days on end. I hated both Bill and Fred to death. I tried to work out how I could get away from Bill
completely so that he can’t keep doing this. I wondered if I could force him to leave Huarmaca first. But he won’t
leave me, he’s like a dog. In the end, I could see no way except to get him in harness, let him see the damage, pick
up the pieces and use him.
So in the morning I went to find him. He was living opposite the police station where I had to call for my
passport. The policeman didn’t smell of drink this morning and was extremely civil and pleasant and we discussed
agriculture. He told me Bill was still asleep. I went across the road to see Bill’s little old Christian peace-maker
landlord and found Bill sitting on a bunk in a dark room staring into space. He was about as dynamic as a beached
codfish and I found myself entertaining the idea that there might be something pathologically wrong with the guy. I
had to be fairly militaristic and efficient, which hadn’t at all been my mood on waking, but was the natural response
to being faced with codfish energy.
I breezed off, having settled that he would Catch His Cut-Offs before they became guitar-destructive.
Some hopes.
The sun shone as I skipped home. I felt good. I do after all survive and my children are happy and loved
by all. And now I could get the clothes dry!
Bill eventually turned up and moved into the house with us. His energy was LOW, constipated and limp.
I played violin without guitar accompaniment.
That night Bill had terrible diarrhoea and had to keep getting up. Not the most pleasant way to let one’s
feelings out. He died on me in bed, so I bashed him in the face, and he tried to get violent with me. I forced him
to answer the 20,000 dollar question: WHO IS THE PERSON HIDING BETWEEN THE LIMP LETTUCE AND
THE VIOLENT MANIAC? Luckily the rain was crashing down on the tin roof so the rest of’ the household
weren’t disturbed by these goings-on - the rooms are tiny with walls that don’t reach the ceiling as there isn’t a
ceiling, and only old curtains for doors. I had no alternative though, but to push things with Bill, as I was caged,
cornered, captive, caught. I was thrown back into my old profession. Therapist. I threatened to break his fingers
and rip his hair out if he didn’t use his body, all his body, to push his energy through to find out what the hell was
going on in him. I won - if you could call having to fight so hard winning. He cracked. He is actually very near
his feelings, which is perhaps why he blocks so heavily, so regularly, so cynically at such a primary level. He cried
a great deal. He was saying, ‘I want you to break, I want you to crack, I want you to crave me.’ So that is the
message of his loutish behaviour. He’s got a long wait.
He later subsided into diarrhoea and I slept fairly blissfully. During, the night, Bill had to fight his way
past the huge sheets of corrugated iron leaning against the back door and slither up the mudslide of a back yard to a
tiny hole in the ground behind, but not under, a very small piece of plastic in torrential, punishingly cold rain. Or
use the kids’ pot and fill the cabin with embarrassing noises and disgusting smells.
Next day
The sun is shining and we’re moving on tomorrow.
Today I was wearing white Indian trousers and a white Indian shirt and passed a group of men sitting in a
dingy front room. One of them said to me: ‘Madre, madre, quiero bautizarme’, which means, ‘Mother, I want to be
baptised.’ It seems the only the gringos previously seen in this area were some Yankee nuns.
The following day the sun continued to shine and the whole of Huarmaca turned out in the streets to see us
off. We walked in sun all morning amongst fresh green hills, the kids skipping delightedly along the country
pathways. At midday, we rested by a rocky waterway and dried the day’s washing on the bushes while Bill tried to
cook porridge with muddy water and damp eucalyptus leaves. A passer-by once again came up to me and said,
‘Buenos dias, Madre’ - Good day, Sister. My new role in life: a hippie nun with rucksack and muddy plimsolls.
We walked on and in mid-afternoon came to a tiny hamlet of a few houses, some two-storey cottages and
neat-looking agriculture, unusually civilised-looking. There was even a shop where Bill managed to buy the kids
some socks! The shopkeeper seemed friendly, the afternoon mists were descending and we were quite tired, so we
asked for a place to stay. The answer came like a mantra: NO HAY. So we walked on and on till we came to the
next tiny hamlet where we decided to stay no matter what. It was now pouring with rain, high up and chilly. The
houses were perched on a ridge with the land falling away steeply either side. There was absolutely no-one in sight
and all the shacks were padlocked - the peasants in these parts travel long distances to work in their fields. A local
traveller turned up and sheltered under a roof overhang from the now-heavy rain and this helped us to feel a little
less out of place.
The first campesinos drifted home, and we went through the usual litany. Posada? Somewhere to stay?
No, of course not. We continued to relaxedly sit under the roof overhang, collecting water in cups and bowls, as
there was bound to be ‘no water’ either. There was nowhere to go and evening was coming on, so we felt almost
secure in our situation, simply sitting there waiting for someone to give in. It happened quicker than usual this
time, as we had the liaison of the local lad we’d been chatting to and who must have assured the old campesinos that
we weren’t terrorists from Mars after all. An old fellow beckoned to us after only about half an hour and took us to
his tiny shack. It was the poorest and smallest we had ever stayed in. An Inishfree cowbarn would have looked
luxurious in comparison.
There was an uneven earthen floor, a load of guinea pigs that ran squeaking into the corners (they are used
for meat in these countries), and absolutely nothing else. The man told us there were fleas but ‘not too many.’ I
hung up my damp washing and viewed the floor space trying to work out how the old man and his temporarily
invisible wife could get past us to their even darker pit if Bill and I were lying on the floor with our feet in the
guinea-pig hay.
The man’s wife was hiding in the tiny kitchen shack squeaking like the guinea-pigs, overcome with shock
and excitement at Martians arriving. She peeked at us through the slats of the kitchen, which was just big enough
for four bodies to squat in. In spite of the physical conditions, this turned out to be one of our friendliest stops in
the Peruvian mountains. We gave the man and his wife cup after cup of cold sweet cocoa, a total delight to them as
they’d never come across the stuff before; and we gave them some of our two kilos of cooked potatoes and a plate of
rice, and a pair of Bill’s underpants, the only remaining item of clothing we could possibly afford to give away.
When it was pitch dark, Bill and I played music inside the hut, and played really nicely together. Outside
was a reverent silent audience of invisible campesinos huddled together against the chilly night, listening to Irish
music.
Our lives were saved that night as I found a couple of dilapidated old heavy-weave ponchos in the dark hut
which I laid out on the floor for the kids. Bill and I lay down, frozen, our thin duvet over us; then the old fellow
came to us as we lay there and covered us with another heavy woven poncho, a sweet gesture which prevented us
from dying of cold. Even so, I hardly slept as cold seeped up from beneath us and I had constantly to shift to
relieve my frozen muscles. The kids as always slept blissfully, dressed up in every item of clothing we had, though
Alice got attacked by diarrhoea and soiled herself in the night.
The morning sun came blessedly hot and early, I had all our washing dry in twenty minutes, and on we
travelled. The way was long, the mountains beautiful and the bags heavy, and always the problem that Katie cannot
walk as fast as us. There were no villages and no food to be bought anywhere. We arrived at stopping time very
tired indeed in a tiny hamlet of half a dozen houses. It was called Suro and of course NO HAY posada and of
course NO HAY food to buy. We sat down outside a house where the man told us NO NO, and just for variation,
NO. This one was really unpleasant. So I said to Bill: you stay here with the luggage, I’m going scouting. I
walked off up the 200 yards of road which constituted the whole hamlet, to the last building, which had no roof, the
mud bricks of the walls were beginning to disintegrate and which had a flat, but very wet, floor. ‘Right’, says I,
‘sod this miserable lot, we’ll show them.’ We carted our luggage to the ruin and made as if to spend the night there.
At least it gave us something to do while the war went on. ‘Is it going to rain tonight?’ I breezily asked our
miserable contact. ‘Parece que no’- 'I don’t think so', he lied.
The children collected wood, Bill made a tiny inadequate bed platform out of the half dozen dry mud bricks
which had been blocking the doorway; I hung washing on the rafters and continued to feed the kids on boiled
sweets, practically our only remaining food apart from some half-cooked broad beans - half-cooked because rain at
our lunch spot had stopped cooking. A kilo of these went into all of us that evening, and we loved them.
The firewood was wet and we had no paper. I lit the fire by holding a candle - we always carry candles under damp straw till it dried. After half an hour I ended up with a blazing fire. Bill meanwhile bullied our
villager into selling him two kilos of potatoes and some salt, a medium-sized miracle.
Voices, and a group of campesinos appeared on the road with shovels, returning home from work.
‘Quick!’ says I to Bill, and he leapt out of our door-hole and engaged the group in an explanation as to why a group
of gringos were sending smoke signals from a roofless hut with night impending in the cold wet sierra where no
stranger walks. Halfway through the explanation, a man called Jesús said, ‘I’ll give you a ‘cuarto’ and led Bill back
to a tiny dark room just opposite the misanthropist. Quietly triumphant, we removed bags, baggage, instruments,
muddy shoes, children, half-cooked beans, a pot of nearly-hot water, wet washing, armfuls of firewood and then the
fire itself smouldering in gourd-shells I’d found, to our new accommodation.
Meanwhile, something was wrong with me. I started passing blood and mucous out the back end. Sorry
about the details. I think it’s called amoebic dysentery. The whole gut strains and hurts and there’s nothing there.
The hut was very very cold and completely dark. Three stones on the floor were the fireplace. We lit the
fire and the place filled unbearably with smoke. We moved the fire to another corner to change the draught. I was
numb with cold and working on overdrive, and ill.
For beds, there were two miniscule broken-down exceedingly
narrow platforms of canes, one the width of one thin adult, the other half that. Bill and I shared the first with me
lying half on top of him, with Alice sleeping at our feet and our legs placed somehow around her. On the
eighteen-inch wide platform, I lay Louise and somehow squeezed Katie in with her feet to the side of Louise’s head.
The kids slept solidly, were not cold and did not complain. I was so ill and exhausted that I slept solidly too,
eventually even getting warm. Bill is a very good hot-water bottle if you can accept him having the energy of a
hot-water bottle as well. It was a very difficult night, but in the morning, we gave Jesús 500 intis (25p) though he
said he wanted nothing. We would certainly have died of cold in the roofless ruin.
We stayed at the hut till nearly midday - our first ‘own home’ for ages. The hot Andean sun came early
and then it’s difficult to remember having been frozen so recently; washing dries and the sun is too hot to sit in.
Well, I’ll tell you one thing, there’s no problem passing time in Peru, in fact the two months left seem
short. And I’ll tell you another thing: you could never be bored, not if you’re walking miles and miles and miles
and miles round mountain roads, as each bend brings you something new, for example another dozen landslides to
cross, holding your breath and rigidly refusing yourself permission to look down.
At first, this was the best day’s walk so far - dry country, the usual landslides to cross, but in between a nice
road, downhill all day, impressive scenery, mountains higher than anything I saw in Colombia. Absolutely no
‘habitaciones’ though, nothing, just on and on, feeling strong on potatoes and cocoa and endless cups of tea - we
always carry teabags! and a packet of pasta Bill cooked - I couldn’t understand why I’d never liked the stuff, it was
the most wonderful meal in the world! I ate it with my fingers as we’re down to three spoons between five people.
We walked till 6:30 p.m., a lot of the way very hairy indeed, with slippy gravel and sheer downward paths.
At one point, I took a wrong path and ended up pushing my rucksack upwards over near-vertical loose chalk on all
fours, terrified. I sat down afterwards when I’d reached the top to cry with weakness and fear. Louise tripped up
this incline like she was crossing a road in Hampstead.
Every hamlet we came to was closed, locked, deserted. No water anywhere. We left the green mountains
and travelled then through desert mountains. A mule-train passed, and we attached ourselves to it: if we hadn’t met
them, we’d be up there still, turning all the twists in the road, unaware of the short cuts - difficult to recognise as
they were practically sheer drops. There were about six mules with no-one on their backs. It must have been
obvious we were suffering, but no lifts were offered: these people treat themselves rough and they aren’t going to
treat anyone else better. Eventually, after several hours of travelling along the same track with them, I just handed
them Katie; if they hadn’t carried her for us, we’d never have made it. No water, no food, but the climate was
lovely, breezy, dry and warm; our faces got very sunburnt.
Towards the end of the journey, I was falling down with exhaustion. Once I slid - plimsolls are not the
right shoes for dry gravelly steep mountain slopes - and my leg buckled under me, twisted into about three
impossible angles. I must be made of elastic, as nothing broke. At another point before she got a lift, I suddenly
had to throw Katie on to rocks and hurt her; a horse’s hoof was about to tread on her head as we descended a rocky
drop.
The track dropped down till we joined up with - a road! With lorries rumbling along it. By this time, my
legs were moving automatically, I couldn’t feel them, and I’d been scared to stop to rest in case they wouldn’t work
again. I didn’t dare to think about Alice.
But I needn’t have bothered: when we finally got down to the settlement of Hualapampa on the main road,
and I couldn’t walk across a room, the kids wanted to PLAY. And Bill fairly sprinted along the road to tell me he’d
found lodgings. A lady at the point where the mountain track meets Hualapampa said disapprovingly to me: ‘Por
qué tanto sacrifico?’ Why so much unnecessary suffering? I was too tired even to attempt an explanation.
We were happy! we were in yet another fascinating piece of Peru: open minds, friendliness, hospitality.
We have been given free the cellar of a restaurant that mainly caters for passing truck drivers. We tried one of the
meals when we arrived exhausted: nearly-cold rice, one half of one small potato each, some inedible yucca, and
coffee: coffee here means you are served a cup of hot water and on the table is a bottle of liquid coffee and some
sugar and you make yourself a foul, expensive, cup of coffee. For the delights of this meal, it cost our little family
thirty shillings, which seems to be a standard price.
The cellar we have been given is reached through a hole in the floor of the restaurant kitchen-area; there are
some crumbling steps and you descend into a urine-laden atmosphere. The cellar is very big and there are a couple
of metal bed frames and a mattress slumped in a corner, which we wrapped tightly in two sheets to keep in anything
that might already be living in it. The restaurant people have nine children, and some of these were sent down to
bring us chairs and a table and offer to let Bill cook in the restaurant kitchen! I threw my washing water all over the
floor of the cellar to try and quell the smell, and then I suggested to Bill that he light a fire to fumigate the place.
Our hosts’ children immediately brought us armfuls of wood. Now at least the place smells of smoke instead of
pee.
In the restaurant kitchen above us, they are killing chickens, holding them over a bucket, cutting their
throats and giving their blood to the chicks to drink, whilst the next victims lie trussed on the floor able to see it all.
Alice watches very closely.
In the morning, we were awoken by the sound of, ‘Hey, gringo, tiene fosforos?' - Have you got any
matches? coming from the kitchen hole above us. We duly supplied the busy restaurant with matches. Bill went
upstairs, and the old lady said to him, ‘Hey, gringo, pump this!’ So Bill set to work to get their stinky paraffin
stove working. And now he’s off to help fill a huge mobile tank with drinking water for the restaurant. They say
we can stay a year if we like. We’ll probably move on tomorrow!
14th March 1989, Chiclayo, a large town
We have travelled for two days away from the mountains and are back in dusty, hot country where you can buy
anything, for example tough radishes, tough lettuce, tough tomatoes and tough spring onions. Urban life with Bill
is a brash, brassy, heartless circus and doesn’t suit me one bit. Urban Peruvians are brutish, hardened, ugly people;
life has been hard for them and they see no reason to be sensitive towards anyone else. My aggression is ever
uppermost, mainly to protect us against staring children crowding around us.
Pacasmayo
Hello Ned and Lads,
This is a little port and seaside resort. We are travelling on the flat coastal desert roads, a life of buses and
boarding houses, spending money and not being able to cook. Peru is a very dilapidated, excreta-covered country,
and the lifestyle in general is exceedingly unattractive. The people here make the peasants we know in Colombia
seem positively cultured, civilized, hygienic, educated and philosophically elevated. Here, conditions have caused
the people to slide a long way down the scale to no standards at all.
On the bus coming from Chiclayo, we passed through real desert, the first I’ve seen since I was in Tunisia
years ago - flat sand, dunes and desert mountains. And like the occasional oasis in the desert, every so often Bill
does just enough to keep things going between us - just enough to keep me moving on through the next phase of
barrenness. I’ve accepted a kind of wooden depression as a general basis for life; it makes a change from rebelling,
fighting, hoping or leaving……
Bill just came in with our bucket full of cold greasy chips and five boiled eggs; it cost 1,500 intis (75p), a
colossal sum in these parts. A feature of our latest hotel - price 4,000 intis - is our own ‘bathroom’ in which the
light doesn’t work and you have to crawl under the basin to sit on the loo, which you flush by filling a bucket.
16th March 1989
That night in Pacasmayo, Bill settled in for one of his all-night stands - that is, standing up in the room all night,
silent and immobile, making sleep impossible because of the violent vibrations. So I got him to pack at 1:00 a.m.
and to agree to return home to Colombia to work on the farm. He packed, with me militarising every detail, but at
the last moment, ‘couldn’t bring himself to leave!’ I couldn’t actually pick his body up and put it out. Living with
one person is complete and absolute torture - communes are a basic life-necessity!
Trujillo, a large town
Our present pensión smells heavily of urine. This is because their idea of cleaning the toilet areas is to drag an
already urine-soaked broom lightly over the soiled areas and spread it around the corridors. They did give us three
beds for the price of two, but sheets for only one. A flea bit me immediately and there weren’t enough bedboards to
support the mattresses - we had to ask for more just to be able to lie down.
We’re in this big town to get my visa extended. Big towns kill me quicker than Bill does. I don’t think I
have ever seen anywhere so ugly as urban Peru. Yesterday we saw the Pacific Ocean; it just looks like sea, with the
ubiquitous Peruvian smell of human excreta dominating one’s senses.
I miss you all painfully.
17th March 1989
We just had to spend another night in this urine-be-drenched hostel as the man who does the passports was away
yesterday. To pass the time, we went to the Municipal Theatre where a kid-entertainment company from Lima put
on an hour’s show. It was so bad, slow, ill-organised and unimaginative that I was cringing with embarrassment.
But I liked the music, rhythm and spirit of the Evangelist group singing in the street outside! That is, until their
leader started exploding violently into the microphone, screaming at all the passers-by that their lives were shit and
that they had to turn to Jesus. The women in the group were all negroid and moved sensuously to the music and
kept waving to someone in the sky (I had a look, but couldn’t spot anyone). They were rigidly separated from the
male members, who were pale, repentant masturbators clutching their Bibles and looking blankly at the world.
The whole area is pockmarked with ‘Seventh Day Adventist’ huts, and to counteract the onslaught,
everywhere on shop and house-windows one sees this notice, ‘Este Hogar es Católico. No aceptamos propaganda
de ningun otro secto’ - We are strict Catholics and want no propaganda from other sects.
I can’t imagine how anyone manages to focus on the Above - personally, I feel more gripped by the
problem of the Below, mainly Peruvian excretory habits, as in shop doorways, on public steps, along walls, outside
the swimming bath, in the showers of boarding-houses and just about everywhere else physically possible. They
also have a habit of street sellers rushing around shoving toilet rolls in your face - is this to make it more convenient
for Peruvians to poo wherever they happen to be at the time?
But no external aspect of Peru is anything compared to the violent situation I have upon my hands: one
loutish dolt spraying his arm-flapping, mouth-frothing lunacy all over me. Shall I break his guitar again? Shall I
pack to travel alone? Shall I smash the pensión up? Shall I risk getting smashed up by attacking Bill? Shall I call
a psychiatrist? The police? “I just want you to like me” I am informed, delivered like diarrhoea from a baboon’s
bottom. “I just want to make things better,” delivered like a wet fart. I informed him I was rather finely tuned
today and would he please desist. “I want to make things enjoyable for you,” delivered with puke all over the floor.
The image of Man my girls are receiving is quite simply appalling. Even little Katie bashes him and reprimands
him in an enlightened, grown-up fashion about his behaviour.
Chimbote
An ugly sprawling fish-smelling port. On the bus here, I hated Bill. Then, three quarters through the two-hour
journey, I looked up briefly at him and felt an astonishing surge of love. I was taken aback; he looked so tall and
distinct, standing in the gangway. At that moment, he suddenly knelt down beside me in the bus and said he really
did want to ‘be normal’ and make things better and stay together. There was some meat to the words at last and
immediately I was able to joke and he was slightly physically affectionate and I thought wow! Humanbeinghood
for a while.
But now it is dark and he is, yes, lying on the other bed preparing to cut off for the night and I am miserable
as hell. When I get home, would you please form an intensive care unit and go on shifts so that I can lie in bed and
constantly be held by male arms with some feeling and desire in them, just lie and lie till I am cured of this long,
cool torture.
18th March 1989
That night, Bill finally agreed that it would be best for me (nice of him) if he went home to Colombia. I attacked
him and bit into his spongy arm. He complained that I ‘had it all my way’ - can’t say I’ve noticed! - so I asked him
to tell me what to do. Finally, after much machination on my part, I manoeuvred him round to giving me ‘help’
about my profound unhappiness in being with him alone. I was able to cry enough to get some relief, and to release
what has caused me most pain: the memories of how beautiful he often was in Colombia and how I used to be able
to love him, until our relationship got too deep for him and he reverted to smashing up the commune kitchen and
hiding in caves.
I went to sleep sweating alternately hot and cold and then woke up two hours later, full of misery, and
somehow Bill helped again and this time we had sex and it was nearer to how it used to be between us, but I
couldn’t stand the pain of opening up again just to face the usual from him. I felt I was going mad; I forced him to
hold me tightly, instead of like a damaged butterfly, and instantly I felt completely calm, and slept.
In the morning, the kids were annoying us in our room; then annoying the pensión manager when we sent
them out; so we sent them into the shower-room, but they didn’t have anyone to annoy there, so came back to us.
Then Bill and I went to the shower-room, he to wash and me to wash the clothes, leaving the kids in the bedroom.
After just a few minutes, Louise started shrieking and screaming, it sounded really bad. Bill went to sort her out. I
carried on washing, but heard a general commotion, someone banging on our room door, a lot of conversation, then
Bill called me to come quickly. I opened the shower door - wrapped in a pensión sheet as they wouldn’t give us a
towel - to see Bill towering over a cowering Peruvian whom he, Bill, was threatening to beat up; he had him pinned
into an armchair. Bill told me the man had stolen money from our room. I assumed Bill had flipped and was
going barmy after so many days of acting the Sugar Plum Fairy. I recommended rather strongly that he did not beat
the man up. ‘No-one will see,’ says Bill. I was shaken and wondered what the hell kind of energy had assailed us
all today.
It turned out that in the brief moments when Bill and I were in the shower, the cleaning-boy had gone into
our room ‘to sweep up’ - not a very likely story. Louise saw him bend down over our bed and start to go through
Bill’s trouser pockets. He immediately found the secret pocket Bill had sewn inside where he keeps our last few
precious dollars, and was busy stealing a hundred-dollar note, when Louise began shouting and crying and yelling at
him and bashing him on his bum. He gave up his attempted theft and ran out of the room. Bill at this point had
rushed in and attacked Louise, not knowing what had happened. Then the thief himself knocked on the door and
came out with some garbled rubbish Bill could make neither head not tail of. Louise finally got through to Bill
what had happened. He checked his money and discovered the hundred dollars was missing, ran out, pushed the
guy into the chair and started going through his pockets. The money wasn’t on him. The manager intervened and
gave a completely phoney lecture to the boy about going into people’s rooms, from which we immediately deduced
that they were in league.
Meanwhile, the room boy walked back into our room and said, ‘Look, there it is!’ “There” was behind the
mattress where Bill found the missing note crumpled up and stuffed out of sight. Bill commented to the manager
that he should employ more professional thieves, and I praised Louise for being the heroine of the day.
19th March 1989
We travelled on southwards to the coastal town of Barranca, arriving in darkness in terrifyingly crowded streets.
We scampered into the nearest cheap pensión, bundling kids and luggage through the narrow door into a dark,
near-deserted café. We piled our luggage against a table and I went off to see our room, calling back to Bill:
“Guard everything!”
I accepted the room which, as usual, had a washbasin, toilet and shower, all without water in them, and
went back for kids and luggage.
Immediately I saw my violin was missing. Bill hadn’t even noticed, but did remember a woman engaging
him in nonsensical conversation. While her accomplice stole my violin.
So Louise saved our hundred dollars in the morning and Bill facilitated the theft of my instrument at
nightfall. Quote of the day from Bill: “I don’t feel it as much as I would if it were my guitar.”
I felt physically beaten. I felt part of my body had been ripped out. In the night I woke up with the
sinking pain of bereavement. I induced some comfort from Bill and determined to learn the guitar to annoy him.
29th March 1989
We travelled on to Huacho, a large town not far from Lima, the capital. I sat with the kids on a huge wide beach in
the evening sun watching local men play football while Bill, in gloomy mood, spent hours away looking for a
pensión. The football game ended, the sun was sinking low, and some of the men came over to me, worried for our
welfare, and gave me an address to stay the night. Bill returned, and I reluctantly took him there, but I knew it was
The End.
I kicked him out at 3:30 a.m. At 4:30 a.m. I went out to the outdoor, communal loo (shared by dozens of
families) and Bill was still sitting on the doorstep ‘waiting for morning’ as he said. I kicked his rucksack and told
him to suck no more.
At ten in the morning, the kids and I went to the bus-station to get the bus to Lima. We heard a familiar
droning sound, glanced across the road, saw a tall grey-faced gringo singing for his supper, and jumped quickly on
the bus.
In Lima, I treated myself to a taxi from the bus-station straight to the South American Explorers’ Club to
collect a huge pile of beautiful post from home, and sat there for hours feasting on precious news.
The South American Explorers’ Club is a very pretty house in a nice area with nice pictures and nice South
American handicrafts on the nice clean walls. They give you Cold Tea. They have nice armchairs and a nice
shiny bathroom with nice bogrolls. The children were allowed to play with beautiful toys belonging to the little
Peruvian boy who lives there with his mummy. Nice.
I was completely miserable, disappointed and never want to go there again. It was all very Nice, but the
things one needs after months on the road with three kids were definitely NOT available; somewhere to sleep, to
rest, to leave luggage and kids, a home for a while, food or the chance to cook it, a warm cup of coffee, a warm
scruffy, not-so-nice atmosphere perhaps. They have Hours when they are Open, Days when they are Closed.
They’re terribly efficient and will phone expensive hotels for you to make bookings if you like. I felt lonely,
empty, in an unreal world of beautiful photos of a beautiful Peru. So far, I have seen no beautiful Peru. I saw the
names of ghastly towns that I have been in that smell and are hot and waterless, and read that they are famous for
this or that ruin or relic. It’s usually all I can do to hassle the kids into a pensión for the night. I’ll never make a
proper tourist. Our main interest is how much the ice-lollies cost.
We left the South American Explorers’ Club and went off to explore the long hot crowded way to the
Central Post Office where there was loads more post from home, including two one-hundred dollar notes from you
Ned! THANK YOU.
In the Post Office, I mentioned I needed somewhere to stay and a lad took me to a very unusual
boarding-house.
It is called the Hotel España, and is in the very centre of Lima, a few minutes from the
Government Palace. The hotel is a magnificent old building, clean, with immaculate toilets, high stone hallways, a
rooftop garden and a young beautiful woman running it who speaks civilly to you and tells you not to bother about
paying till you’ve settled in and had a shower! And it costs only 3,000 intis - the same as many a flea-bitten sewage
pit. How can this be? Because it very sensibly has communal dormitories containing both sexes. I am in a room
of six beds which are quite close together; a French girl is inches from me; the men are Bolivian, Italian and
Austrian. My kids sleep on the floor on a straw mat, so we are paying for a piece of floor, but it is a very posh
wooden floor!
23rd March 1989
Hello Ned,
I changed a hundred dollars this morning in a Cambio - Exchange. Then I found out I’d have got more on
the street. I do everything wrong. I nearly fainted at the huge wad of notes I was handed, which I somehow had to
stuff into my waist-pouch. Katie was with me, and she wanted a 50 inti ice-lolly. Then I wanted to buy envelopes;
they are sold singly; and the glue to stick them down with is sold separately; and the ice lolly was running down my
wrist, and somehow I had to get out these tiny sums of money without having the thieves of Lima chase me and my
bursting money-pouch.
But I’m such a mess, such an obvious case for robbery, such a vulnerable heap of
disorganisation that any self-respecting thief would turn away in disgust.
This morning, I did the Right Thing, just as an experiment: I handed my money-pouch and passport to the
hotel administration for safekeeping. I returned later from a failed attempt at being a Proper Tourist in Lima
(everything was shut) and was treated to a heart-attack as I walked in the hotel door: my precious pouch and
passport were hanging on a string in the hallway, within easy reach of anyone. I stopped open-mouthed and stared,
my brain gone; then slowly I recovered as my intelligence knocked on the door of my instinct and told me
respectable hotels don’t hang people’s money on strings dangling over balconies in their posh hallways for nothing:
it turned out this was their way of hoisting the valuables from ground floor to first floor level to a safe without
walking through the street, as there is no internal stairway. I had arrived in mid-hoist.
This morning also, I did the Wrong Thing: I allowed my paranoia to victimise a poor depressed
cleaning-lady who was innocently making beds in our dormitory. My temperature rose, my blood boiled, my
interfering mother lurched out of her grave, recent memories of room-boy thieves in Chimbote clouded my vision,
and in my bubble of indignation, I hallucinated that everyone in the room felt the same as me and that I was
speaking out bravely for us all as I declaimed that we had all paid for a little Space and Peace and Privacy. I was
high on my horse of outrage, attacking this poor old woman who was neatly tucking in everyone’s sheets. I dared
her come anywhere near my shambolic bed and the kids’ glorious mess. Then, my steam gloriously spent, I
enquired of the Italians in confidential English as to whether I was not right that they too objected? But Italians
don’t speak English. So I had to say it in Spanish, and great was my chagrin as they bore testimony for the
opposition and said they didn’t mind. I then enquired of my French friend, sure that she was silently applauding my
aggressive intervention. She defended the hotel staff and said no-one ever stole here…..
Such is the life of the Lost-Cause Aries Crusader.
An account of travel in South America is supposed to tell of adventures like walking a tightrope between
Andean peaks in a thin tee-shirt trailing a llama. I’m sorry, but for me the main trauma is how to grow three hands to
hold three country-bred kids when crossing the crazy street outside our hotel, and how to untie the knot in the bag to
get the plastic bowls out before the ice-lollies melt in the sun and cover us all with sticky red drips.
Yesterday night I was frantically dashing along in the dark on the main street trying to find something to
buy the kids to eat having left it late through reading all the delicious post, when someone called out ‘Beautiful’ in
English as I passed. I looked all around but couldn’t see anyone beautiful, so I looked enquiringly at the male
speaker, who repeated it, grinning. He must have been practising a difficult English word as anyone could see I
was a half-dressed, half-mad, out-of-place gringa granny with a sun-scarlet face clutching paranoidly at my purse
trying to come to terms with the fact that the horrible white loaf I’d just bought had cost 900 intis. Nine hundred
anythings is too much for one loaf of bread.
I just read in today’s paper that the Canchaque area we were in has been declared an emergency area as the
roads are ruined and the people need food. I also read the story of some tourists who did things the Right Way:
they got a charter plane to go looking at the Plain of Nazca. And ended up dead, eight of them plus their pilot and
co-pilot, mangled in the wreckage of the plane on some Lima rooftops.
I also read that Mickey Mouse has beaten Lenin, Agatha Christie and the Bible as the most translated of
world "literature".
The tourists in our hotel are shocked there is no hot water. I am shocked that they should want such a
thing in this hot sweaty climate. I was also shocked to find the French girl letting her cooking gas out of the
window as she’s going on a plane tomorrow.
I was aghast at the waste, stopped her and made a cup of tea on it
instead with the last of Bill’s teabags. I had no milk, but it was the best cup of tea in the world. She also gave us
the remnants of her apricot jam. Jam!
24th March 1989, Good Friday
My two youngest are sleeping on the mat, beautiful kids, shiny, sweaty and bare. Everyone else in this dormitory
has left. Louise’s drawings adorn a screen; I’ve made a tangerine drink of the foul sour tangerines Louise made me
buy. My stomach is bloated and I am sick from eating foods other than those I want, but there is no way of getting
the right food.
Today I tried to ‘do’ Lima, but Lima did me. I saw the outside of some posh art-galleries and museums all closed - and all around them is human excreta. The parks of dried yellow grass smell of the same. In amongst
the droppings lie courting couples - it’s a national pastime (another one, that is). They always love each other very
much and I always wonder: don’t any of them turn out like Barnsley Bill? Obligatory adjuncts to the full-length,
lie-down kissing scenes are (i) they get hassled by ice-cream vendors, and (ii) when they’ve had enough of kissing
each other, the female grooms the male by squeezing his blackheads. This evidently detracts in no way from his
manhood as he relaxedly lets it go on in full view of the passing public.
The kids found a slimy green pond of stagnant water and splashed around in it with local boys. Their new
knickers came out green.
Back on the streets, I heard some beautiful pipe music and moved in its direction, to find a young, legless,
hump-backed little thing playing the exquisite sounds. Then I heard little tinkling notes and it was a tiny girl, about
four years old, playing a native instrument. Then another sound, haunting, unusual; I looked for the source and
came upon a man who had arranged a row of Coca-Cola bottles with varying levels of water in them; he played
brilliantly. I could take no more, my tears overflowed with the painfulness, the ingeniousness, and the utter futility,
of living in a money economy. And I could give nothing as I’m too worried myself about stretching what I have to
feed the kids all the way home.
25th March 1989
As you walk into Lima railway station, notices everywhere announce: Zona de seguridad en tiempos de sismo:
Safety area during earthquakes.
Trains are definitely the nicest form of modern transport. We travelled on one out of Lima and up into the
Sierra. It is the highest railway in the world and the train goes very slow indeed. A lot of the journey is in pitch
darkness as there are so many tunnels and they don’t bother to turn the lights on. My biggest surprise was that you
don’t notice yourself going UP. The journey is utterly smooth. This is achieved by the train zigzagging up the
mountains: you go one way for a while, then there’s a clunk! then you’re going the other way; then another clunk,
and you’re going back the first way - and the river you were just alongside is now hundreds of feet below you.
Many of the train windows have no glass in them, and at the beginning of the tunnels, a guard comes
rushing through the carriages pulling down the sunblinds. Why? I was not comforted by his answer: “because
often great chunks of rock fall down the cliff faces into the train.”
I made one mistake when I left Bill: I didn’t take his warm tracksuit trousers. It is very hard to think when
you’re sweltering in Huacho on the coast that just 2½ hours from Lima in a little mountain village called Matucana
it will be very cold indeed, and raining to boot.
We found a tiny wooden room to rent with one bed and a bit of floor and ne'er a nail to 'ang your 'at on. I
took the kids to a café and bought spaghetti soup, a plate of lettuce, three fried eggs, six halves of potatoes and a bit
of rice for all of us and it cost 3,000 intis, which is ridiculous. I worked out we can survive a further two months if
we only spend £25 a week. If we find people who’ll give us a roof for nothing, I might not have to end up singing
on the streets or worse (what could be worse? did I hear you say). So after realising I can’t get through the two
months on the money anyway, I went to the shop next door and bought the kids twelve coloured pencils, plasticine,
coloured chalks, a plain-paper drawing book and a tiny set of paints with a teeny brush. Alice is singing, drawing
with her jacket-hood up because of the cold. All the kids are sniffing and sneezing and Katie and me coughed half
the night. But I’m enjoying being ill in safety on this rainy Easter Saturday afternoon with a drip falling on my bed
and happy sounds from other guests coming through the walls, and the kids can go and watch the telly if they want,
but they only stay ten minutes for a cartoon and then come back to their drawing, saying it’s boring.
There’s a cinema in this tiny town. The film this evening is ‘Después de la Bomba’ - After the Bomb. I
won’t be going.
26th March 1989
We’ve been in the train all day, for the second day in a row. The highest point we passed, in snow, was a place
called Ticlio, at 15,681 feet up. No. I haven’t learnt to convert metres: the heights are written in feet because the
railway was built by Englishmen! So you are treated to sudden huge notices in the high cold Sierra saying: CUT
OFF (?!) and bits of railroad bearing unlikely names such as 'G.W. Ramsbotham'.
We saw llamas grazing in
flocks like sheep and as varied in colour as goats. But it is not exotic up here, just common or garden patches of
snow lying miserably around the place and snow-capped peaks in a high bleak plain. We had to wrap ourselves in
blankets in the train at the highest points and our clothing only just eked out: we wore every stitch of it.
Today’s train journey ended at the most horrible place in the world. It is called La Oroya and it is a
mining town and consists of one railroad and one lorry-road squeezed between cliffs in the mountains, so you
breathe fumes constantly. And oh god, I feel ill. It seems I can’t come up mountains without immediately getting
a fierce head flu.
We found a freezing-cold lodging-room, tiny, and I am locked in here with three crazy monkeys. The only
peace is when they go to the loo. They are completely happy! How do they manage it? I am huddling, hurting
and frozen, my ears and head are cold as I write to you, and I’m getting funny palpitations high up in my chest - it’s
probably soroche, altitude sickness, caused through lack of oxygen.
These kids are fantastic, just happy to have a little home for the night; their games are: 'swimming' on the
floor; “ugly beggars”, wherein they take off the various modes of hideous begging they’ve seen in Peru; and “Oh,
qué bonitos sus ojos” - ‘Oh what lovely eyes’, accompanied by grabbing hold of each others’ faces and pinching
cheeks, something they are subjected to wherever they go. In the game, they collapse laughing. In reality, they
have learned to kick, bash and shout at strangers when touched or surrounded too much. And I have a psychic wall
around me since the violin theft: if I’m approached, I find out straight away if the person is going to give me free
accommodation, and when I find they’re not, I close off immediately.
27th March 1989
On the way to La Oroya, we had the train practically to ourselves. The next day was a nightmare: the train was
already overcrowded when it arrived, and all three children were screaming as they were pushed on to it by other
passengers. We squeezed into the tiny space between the loo and the door and couldn’t sit down, had to smell the
toilet throughout and were constantly trampled by the lunatic food-sellers who rush up and down the trains
ceaselessly. I couldn’t see out of the windows. So I decided our Sierra trip was Over. We are in the cold little
town of Jauja at around 13,000 feet.
My headache is constant and all of us have flu. Katie is very ill indeed. I’m
in a cold room with a narrow single bed and private bathroom with water so freezing we are all simply staying dirty.
The kids are camped on the floor.
At 9:00 a.m., there was a knock on the door: ‘Your sheets please.’ An hour later, another knock: ‘Please
turn your light out’ - the room is dark without it. At 11:30 a.m., just as I was zipping my rucksack, knock-knock
again: ‘Are you staying another night?’
Once you discover you are well and truly up a gum tree, really the only thing is to come down again, even
if on the descent you have to get stuck on some of the same branches. We are going to start returning coastward.
28th March 1989
We waited two hours in Jauja for a bus. When it arrived, it was so crowded that Katie was squashed and crying and
Louise and Alice fighting. I decided to get off at the first village. The driver couldn’t understand it, and didn’t
charge us for the very short ride.
The village was called Parco and we were told we’d have to go to La Oroya - oh no! - for the nearest hotel,
or back to Jauja. I said the magic words: ‘We have our own blankets, all we need is a floor’ and an old woman
immediately said, ‘Come to my house.’ It was two yards away, a pretty well-kept, well-laid-out little house, with
mountain water running in an irrigation channel over which, unfortunately, the loo was placed.
We were consigned, with typical Peruvian hospitality, to a little bit of the open-air patio, but just as dark
fell, so did the rain, so we were shown a little bit of wooden floor indoors where I laid out our pathetic bedding. At
the last minute, the daughter of the family gave us a thick blanket, which saved a us a very cold night.
Conversation with the old woman was difficult as she was Quechua-speaking, and in any case I’d never have dared
ask why the empty bed in our room couldn’t be used.
They let us cook some potatoes, but took them off the heat too soon so they were hard, and they gave us
boiling water to make drinks. I gave their baby a Fair-Isle woollen hat I’d made.
29th March 1989
The rucksack is heavy and Katie is ill, but I decided we should walk as this is a lovely high valley, very wide, with a
fast-running river and lots of villages.
We spent the morning by the river with the sun burning down on us as Katie was too weak to move. She
slept under a heap of clothes; I hoped the deep heat would cure her. She had awoken in the morning covered in
diarrhoea.
We moved only one kilometre out of the village; the moments when I carried Katie on top of my rucksack
felt like a pilgrimage of suffering, so we sheltered her, now roasting with fever, under a white blanket propped up
with little sticks and just waited for her to get the strength to move, or me to get the strength to carry her.
We spent the whole day just trying to get Katie a few hundred yards along the road at a time. She kept
having to lie down and sleep. At the moment of deepest despair, I gave in and wept a silent tear. It took all day to
travel three kilometres. Towards late afternoon Louise brought a big fluffy reed to Katie as she slept by a stream
and we said it was a magic wand and would cure her. Soon after that, Katie said something normal and could move
on her own legs.
We arrived at Mata Chico, a pretty village. There was a large house at the side of the road and a young
man bringing in the cows. I asked him for accommodation and immediately he said we could stay with his family.
They were very welcoming: the one-eyed father was proud to have gringos staying with him and kept boasting to a
friend: ‘La señora conoce cuatro paises’: the lady has been to four countries! They cooed over the awful photos of
me and Louise taken by the Bogotá police, so I left them as presents. They were making a meal, and I made a
common mistake of mine, giving them all the foodstuffs we were carrying and buying more, then spending hours
bitterly resenting them as they took an absurd length of time to make a simple rice and vegetable meal and then
covered it in chilli pepper sauce so the kids couldn’t eat it.
Katie and I were falling asleep from exhaustion, freezing cold in the dark kitchen, with Alice and Louise
behaving like pigs. Meanwhile, the owner and his son were actually doing their utmost to give us the best: they
cleaned out a room, put two beds in it, brought two thick blankets, a candleholder and a potty, and then, as we were
foreigners and like cleanliness ... they sprinkled the whole room with PETROL!
1st April 1989
In the morning, we hitched a lift: it was an armoured car full of armed police. They were exceptionally kind to us,
but it was living death being roasted in their entirely sealed vehicle with no chance to see the lovely scenery. And
where did they drop us but La Oroya, my favourite place, which this time had turned from a cold hell into a
sun-baked inferno. I was staggering through the crowds with the miserable kids when a young man approached me
and said we could go and stay at his house. He was twenty, learning English, and his parents were teachers. He
lived high up in La Oroya and carried Katie and then my rucksack as well as I was very ill and weak; I could hardly
see or breathe or speak and just collapsed into bed very early, Katie sleeping, ill, beside me while the other two
stayed up playing till late.
In the morning, I was in such pain, I went to their bathroom and just cried and cried at how ill I was, and I
knew I had to get out of the Sierra in order to get better. The family were extremely kind and I felt terrible to be in
no state to relate to anyone. The young lad carried Katie and my rucksack back down to the town, where we found
the trains were indefinitely cancelled because of landslides and derailment and the buses were all booked to
capacity. The lorries were full too, as masses of local people lined the roads hitching lifts. My young helper,
Freddy by name, took us on a local bus to the outskirts of his hideous town and there we sat for many, many hours,
till two in the afternoon, with me and Katie very ill. I had on every stitch of clothing I owned including two pairs of
socks, my pyjama trousers and a woolly hat, but the cold was deep inside me and I was being tortured with head
pain.
Eventually, two young women came out to us and took us into their tiny room and made us weak cocoa.
They were obviously very hard-up, so I gave them our packet of porridge. They started putting huge pressure on
me to give the kids paracetamol and were most offended when I absolutely refused. They were also mystified as to
why I had left ‘bonita Inglaterra’ - lovely England - to go ‘andando por la Sierra’ - wandering around the Sierra. At
this point, I was a little horrified about it myself.
Further on, a woman sent her son to make me ‘aguita’, a pleasant herbal drink, and gave us some
foul-tasting cough sweets. Then the sun came out and I could feel it seeping into my bones, helping me. I was
getting quite used to life in my roadside hospital when suddenly, it happened: a lorry stopped. And the driver was
going to Lima. I couldn’t believe it. He had been driving for sixteen hours already and Lima was another half day
away. He wanted me to talk to him to keep him awake; but not even my fear of him having an accident could bring
this about: I was far too ill and had one of the worst headaches ever in a life-time of Aries headaches. As we passed
the 15,000 foot level, the road surface was destroyed for miles on end and we were jolted around the cab. I felt
sick. I was deeply frozen. But then we were going down, back to Earth, and we would be safe. We left the bleak
mountains and started winding down through exquisite woodland till we reached sea-level at sundown, it was hot
still and my bones recovered.
I peeled off layers of clothing, changed into summer shoes and the driver said what
I most wanted to hear: You can stay at my house; my wife will look after you.
My lorry driver lived in a tiny concrete house built on the flat roof of a posh block of flats in a very smart
district of Lima. They were the caretakers of the building and were very proud of their address. His wife was a
teacher and terribly neurotic, but very kind to us. She never stops talking and can’t listen, but I like her because
she’s leftwing and makes all the right noises when the TV news is on. She gave us her bed, dad slept in his lorry,
and she slept with Louise on a single bunk bed with her grownup son above her. I slipped Katie and Alice to sleep
cosily on the floor in my room when she wasn’t looking as she’d prefer to see us squeezed into her single bed.
Sitting in the shade on a hot flat roof with a warm breeze blowing, decent vegetarian meals, water, a
washing line and a toilet that works and has toilet paper and soap - I can almost love Lima! Cesar, the son of the
family, carts me around town, puts me on the right buses, finds the right queue at the Post Office, and phones the
South American Explorers’ Club for me to see if there’s post; and they say we can stay as long as we like.
Last night, I watched the news on TV and suddenly found myself staring at a very familiar face: Mario
Vargas Llosa, my professor of Latin American literature from London University; I knew him nearly twenty years
ago. Peru was a military dictatorship then and he a young exiled left-wing writer. Now he is the presidential
candidate - for Peru's rightwing. My jaw fell open as I listened to him praising Maggie Thatcher, and saying how the
Peruvian rural guerrilla army - terrorists he called them - had to be destroyed. I had just been round his Peru. He
is a middle-class intellectual and that’s the only class he could ever represent, and there aren’t many of them!
Also on the news was the case of a young father who’d killed his three little children, and then killed
himself. He poisoned them. He had told his wife he was going to do it and had practised using the poison a month
before on their pet dog. It worked; the dog died. The mother had been to the police several times, but they had
laughed at her. When the husband locked her out, she went to the police again, but they dismissed her. The news
showed the dead toddlers and the mother falling to pieces crying, ‘mis hijitas’ - my little girls - with women
comforting her while she grieved inconsolably. I thought of England and how it is supposed to be immoral to show
grief resulting from disasters. I failed to see how it could provoke anything but the softest and best of human
emotions.
Incidentally, every person we meet says, ‘Where is the father of your children? Does he help you support
them? Has he no heart? How can he bear to be away from them?’ When I receive this unsolicited reaction, across
my mind parade the refrigerated Swedes of SV Gullmar and their Irish friend.
2nd April 1989
Peruvians, when they reach middle-class status, do what all the other middle-classes of the world do: make their
lives completely boring. The eldest son of this family is a police lawyer and has a very posh little house. We were
taken there by taxi one Sunday and everyone was incredibly nice to us: Europeans for them mean Intellect,
Education, Culture, so I was treated as an honoured guest, and the tremendous prestige the blonde hair of the
children carries means everyone is proud to be seen walking around with us, scruffy as we are.
We sat at a huge round table with a bottle of wine in the centre, and one tiny glass was passed round from
person to person - that is, from man to man, and then to me, as the women were in the kitchen cooking, and the
children dispatched upstairs where there are lots of excellent toys. As soon as I could do so politely, I joined the
children.
On the way home from his son’s house, my lorry-driver pinched my arm as he helped me out of the taxi in
some fit of passion; sadly for him, the only reaction he got from me was a loud OUCH.
Back home, I heard a broad Cockney accent emanating from the television and went in to see yet another
well-known face: Cliff Richards being handed the British Musical Award of the Year.
I stared, riveted, suffering a mild attack of culture shock and time-warp, then returned to the kitchen in time
to catch my kindly, neurotic hostess throwing some grapes I had bought out of the window to feed her dog, who is
the fattest dog I've seen in Latin America and who lives an entirely stimulus-free life on a bare roof and is not even
allowed to greet his masters without getting beaten. She also threw out some of our tangerines to him. I noted that
the dog did not eat the tangerines and resolved not to buy any more fruit for this family.
I think the TV in this house is specially rigged. Years ago in the 1960s, as Secretary of my local Youth
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, I went to see a showing of peace films for hire in London. There on Peruvian
TV, put on on behalf of the government, was one of them. It shows two men in deckchairs on neighbouring lawns,
no fence separating them. Suddenly, a flower grows exactly on the dividing line between their properties and they
begin to quarrel over who it belongs to. Then they start to fight, then to use weapons on each other, their faces
turning all the while more and more monstrous. Eventually, they kill each other. The government message comes
across the screen: “Fighting, everyone loses.” I don’t think the pacifist makers of that film intended it to be used by a
violent capitalist government to tell its poor classes to shut up.
Yet in one sense, there are fewer class barriers in Peru than elsewhere: there isn’t that cold snobbery and
social ‘iron curtain’ you feel in England; and Colombia is a lot more snobbish than Peru, rigidly and disdainfully
separating the lives of the well-off from that other reality, poverty. In Peru, the economic crisis is felt by everyone
and there is a tremendous feeling of concern for all. In Europe, all we hear about Latin America is violence,
robbery, war, coups, torture, drugs, repression; and these certainly exist. But I can’t remember seeing in England so
much love, gentleness, unashamedly shown emotions, caring and awareness of shared difficulties.
This is the final joke of a comedian on TV last night: there are lots of clocks on the wall, and he explains
that each one represents the number of mistakes made by the various political parties of Peru. Their hands go round
at different speeds according to the errors committed. Finally he is asked, “And what about that one over there?”
“Oh that,” he says, “that’s the clock belonging to APRA - we use it as a ventilator.” APRA is the ruling Government
Party.
Meanwhile, César, the son of this family, has shown himself to be a psychiatric case. He is having a
violent breakdown, insulting me, storming round the house and turning up the television to ear-splitting pitch when
religious programmes are on. This is because I explained to him that I am an atheist. Then he came in shouting
‘fock, fock.’ I was a little surprised at this, but it turned out he was practising English, calling the warm Lima
evening mist ‘fog.’ And his father has moaned at me so much about sitting out in the ‘fog’ and not wearing shoes
on the ‘cold’ roof, that I have decided my rest is over: back to freedom, insecurity and the open road tomorrow.
7th April 1989
Leaving Lima was a trauma, ‘helped’ by my sweet Mrs. Neurotic and her mad son who wrangled fiercely the whole
time and put us on expensive, unwanted taxis, wasting all my savings.
I stopped off at Barranca just in case the impossible had happened and the police had recovered my violin.
As I walked through the streets, I was stopped in my tracks by a gory film poster of a skeleton playing a violin,
dripping with blood, with the caption, “If you think you’ll ever get out of here alive……”
Fleeing Northward, and Homeward. Tension, trouble, toothache. Katie wet the bed of the horrible
pensión in Barranca. The man in charge tried to bully me into buying a new mattress. He caught me a few years
too late. Once upon a time, I might have been stupid enough.
We travelled on up the deserted coastline and got the bus to drop us at a point where we were told
there was a coastal resort: Tortugas, a mile from the main road. Katie moaning, ‘I want to lie down’ all the hot way
to the sea. No sand, plenty of rubbish, dust, ugly buildings, all empty. We were told it was a holiday resort for the
rich of Lima, but now, being in the Southern Hemisphere, it was autumn and no-one came. I stared at the shanty
shacks. Rich? I felt sorry for the poor ‘millionarios’ of Lima and asked for a floor to sleep on. We were given
one in a disused bakery - disused because ‘flour is too expensive’ so they’d closed down. All the water of Tortugas
is brought in tanks, so we could drink but not wash. We slept as soon as dark fell, exhausted and ill.
In the
morning, I had to bathe Alice’s eyes open with a wet flannel. Then an hour on the beach for the kids. A local man
came and moaned about the Government, the difficulty of getting a passport, and everyone’s desire to get out of
Peru. The headlines as I left Lima were: "SOS to Government: 20,000 leave Peru ‘por falta de todo’" - because of
the lack of everything.
A hot walk out of Tortugas, then we hitched a van. And then wished we hadn’t: we were in the open back
and the driver drove at over 120 km per hour the whole way to Chimbote, dealing with other road-users by
accelerating and leaning on his bibber. I was terrified and furious. Fuss, heat and people in Chimbote; a coach to
Trujillo, toothache all the way; arriving there, unfortunately a kind lady walked us - horrible, tired children, and me
with heavy rucksack - for miles to show us a cheap pensión, but she never found it, and we were left to walk for
more miles in an area entirely devoid of boarding-houses, till I wanted to murder Katie and Alice who didn’t want to
move another step. Finally, a not-cheap hostel with a tarted-up entrance hall and inside the usual conditions: the
water stops, but the toilet leaks all over the floor.
8th April 1989
Chiclayo, a room besieged by traffic noise. Town to town, with nothing in between but desert, hours and hours on
buses, I can’t remember what it is like not to have a headache; each evening I collapse exhausted at 6 p.m. and sleep
twelve hours. The days fly by. Headlines yesterday: “Eight Peruvians die of hunger in hospital.” Walking along
the streets, a passer-by says: “Why don’t you stay in Peru?” The answer comes quickly from an older fellow
walking behind, “Because they’d die of hunger.”
Peru is ruled by a desperate concern about money. The whole country is engaged in madly buying and
selling, the streets are a madhouse of people shoving Gillette razors, fluffy dogs, six-foot balloons, paper-serviettes
or horrible pastries at you.
I’m hungry - we’re going to Ecuador for a meal!
9th April 1989
We stopped off in Las Lomas to stay with the black family who put us up before. We arrived exhausted and
drenched in sweat; this time I had no violin and no Bill and was intensely miserable. I went to the river with the
kids and stayed there till dark doing all our washing and swimming in the slow-flowing water. Mosquitoes ate us
during the night, and Katie soiled her bedding; so back to the river to do all the washing again. In the kitchen of the
‘poor’ black family, I noticed their wiping-up cloth. It was the torn-off sleeve of the beautiful Indian dress I’d
given them as a present. They had tears in their eyes as we left in the morning, but I was delighted to get out on to
the dusty road and to flag down a van to take us the last kilometres to the Ecuadorian frontier.
CHAPTER 11
GOING HOME IS SUCH A RIDE
At the Ecuadorian frontier, the man said I could not re-enter Ecuador until 1990. I got a chair, ready to
faint. He said they had ‘directives.’ He rambled on, and when the shock waves cleared, I realised it was all an
elaborate preparation for asking me for a 3,000 sucre (£5) ‘fine.’ I paid my fine.
We were starving.
I went straight to the market and bought two tree-tomatoes, two oranges, three
radishes, four tiny onions, two small cucumbers - which Katie crunched straight through at one sitting - six
miniscule sour lemons, a pound of carrots, a lettuce, some milk powder and three long-promised sweet lollipops for
the kids.
Homesickness is like a pain gnawing at me night and day. I am a one-woman walking headache, ageing
rapidly, traipsing three strangely happy small girls round a disintegrating Continent, scared to spend money, not
knowing if I’ll ever be allowed to go home again, semi-blinded by the tension of my situation, still finding
occasional kindness, being reminded via the miraculous apparition of Letters from Home of a distant, dreamlike
entity called Community, Friends, Farm. I have lost all view, concept, philosophy or even rationalisation of
anything I am doing. It is all a nightmare modified from time to time by perks such as food, sleep, sun, moments of
friendly contact or seeing the children happy. I would absolutely not recommend to anyone ever for any reason to
do likewise.
We travelled all the way from the frontier to Vilcabamba, an 8½ hour ride. And this time I didn’t focus on
how few trees there are, or how thin the soil is, or how uncultivable the steep peaked mountains, I just saw prettiness
after the relentless ugliness of Peru.
We arrived in Vilcabamba after dark. It is a long long way to Martha’s, so I enquired after the price of a
taxi. I was quoted a staggering sum and stood there stunned, whereupon the man halved it ‘if we got out where the
road gets really bad.’ Fine.
We bundled out of the taxi into a magic world of beautiful smells, mint and herbs, and the river pounding
alongside us. Then we came to a huge new tree-trunk bridge - Martha’s old bridge was smashed into the river.
The new bridge was rounded, placed high above the rushing water, and had an absurdly high hand rail.
My heart pounded as Louise and Alice tripped happily across it without a thought. There was no way Katie or I
could follow. I yelled to Louise across the noise of the racing water to get Glenn, Martha’s husband, as I’d heard in
the village that Martha was away. He came, grumpily, but with a torch and carried Katie across.
11th April 1989
It is my birthday, I am 47 years old.
I returned to our barren earthen-floored barn where I had lived with Bill for one month. No water,
no containers and Bill had the cooking pot; the river is at the bottom of a sheer hill. The trees I had planted had
died. We ran out of toilet-paper and Louise trekked twice the long walk to the local shop, each time finding it
closed. Finally, she had to walk nearly to Vilcabamba, bribed with promises of ice lollies and sweets. I washed
the soiled bedding in the river, put up a washing line, and fell into a psychological black hole, the one where they
won’t let me back into Colombia.
At five p.m., my birthday was saved from being my psychic death-day by the return of the women: Martha,
gaunt and coping, making dinner, talking to everyone, bringing a thousand goodies; Barbara, an American woman,
worried, thin, kind, with two very small children and just split up from her husband; and Marulda, a tally dark,
friendly Brazilian woman, who’d just left her English husband.
Next day, Barbara came up to my barn to ask me to move in with her to her one-roomed house by the river,
just as I was planning to go down to her to request the very same thing. I now have a comfy piece of foam on the
floor, and neither of us can stop talking. She tells me there is a network of gringo immigrants in Ecuador that I can
visit, so no more hateful hospedajes on the way home.
My jubilation at new-found female friendship soon mellowed however, as I was confronted anew with my
need for a Man and with my lifelong role of Misfit. I simply fail to get excited about green juice or intestinal
worms. I am a messiah of impatience and intolerance, especially in dealing with spoilt children and violent
husbands; I fight to the death with my children and they shine, never cling, sulk or feel insecure. I have noticed that
children will behave precisely as horribly as you let them. When my blood is boiling at the way the four-year-old
boy here talks to his mother, I am told how tired he is, that boys are 'different' and 'just have to do that', and that
‘later’ they ‘mature.’ I presume Bill’s mother thought that forty years ago,
I offered two different women psychic readings; one said she was scared, the other, an Italian Catholic
warned me about black magic. I was astonished.
17th April 1989
Yesterday, all the gringos of Gringo Hill assembled at the beautiful wooden house of an Argentinean called Orlando
who works as a guide on the Galapagos Islands. We went there to watch a video of the life of Mozart, a stunningly
good film called ‘Amadeus.’ Also stunning was my discovery of what these health-food vegetarians do on their
day off: eat meat and drink beer. And then I was treated to a brain-bashing by Orlando about God. I can’t
remember the last time I met a decent atheist.
20th April 1989
Time to move Northward to try my luck at the Colombian Consulate in Quito. We said goodbye to Martha and
Barbara, stayed a night at Orlando’s on the way out - he’s a wonderful host even if he did bully me about God - then
on to Loja where Martha had blessedly given me the key to a little room she keeps there, with electric cooking ring,
a tiny balcony with lovely hills in the background, the market nearby and masses of warm, soft bedding. Arriving
at four o’clock, we kept eating for hours, the kids devouring lettuce and cucumber, a pound of farm cheese,
tomatoes, eggs, potatoes and milk. In the street, I passed the young girl from the rabbit warren that we’d spent
unhappy nights with months before. No longer feeling like a beggar, I greeted her politely and walked happily on.
22nd April 1989
We travelled seven hours from Loja by bus, passing Patricia’s mother in St. Lucas, but she didn’t notice us as she
was busy selling poison drink to the Indians. We saw the steeple of the monastery where the young priest did black
magic on the spider; we passed the heartstopping bits of road north of Oña - they had mended it minimally to just
the width of the bus; and we crossed The Bridge. Louise glanced out the back window of the bus and said,
‘Mummy, we just passed the most dangerous bridge in the world,’ ‘I know.’ I said, just about breathing.
We arrived in Cuenca to test the hospitality of the rich couple who months ago had given us their card
saying, ‘we have a big house, and are very well off. If you come back this way, do come and stay with us for a few
days.’ We turned up at their jewellers’ shop in the evening, in the rain, in the most well-to-do part of Cuenca. They
were not there. The woman in the extremely posh handicraft shop next door phoned them for me. Oh, the tension
of keeping Alice from elephanting all over the precious breakables in the shop. The phone-call itself was like
broken glass: the couple were just going out and obviously didn’t want us; they said they’d come and ‘put us in a
hotel.’ I backed off in alarm, whereupon they decided to come and pick us up and take us home after all.
Cross-eyed with the tiredness of travelling, burnt by sun and cold, dirty from the buses, we were ushered
into a small stiff square room with a table in the middle and a television blaring at us from one corner. A maid
served us cold milk. Oh the murderous feelings when my savage offspring pouted and said they wanted hot milk.
It was Louise’s birthday and our host sang ‘Happy Birthday’ for her which was nice of him considering that he
hated us completely and I hated him.
His house was so posh you sunk into the carpets that lined even the hallways; so big I only ever saw part of
it; so anti-life I felt it was rude to have a body at all; and they were at such a loss as to what to spend their money on
that there were glass cabinets full of little glass animals on the landings - imagine shepherding Alice past that. A
big squishy double bed in an unhappy bedroom, and another mattress which the man dragged out of a wardrobe for
the children, all performed in his posh suit after informing me he was in a hurry to go out.
But hot showers! We stayed in there till even our black pagan souls were clean, then sank gratefully into
the soft warm beds of Hypocrites-Ville. In the morning, I got two hours’ religion at the poshest breakfast table I’ve
sat at since dining with Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia on an anti-Vietnam War mission. The milky coffee was nice,
but the price was sky high; I had to suffer the man lecturing me on how he'd never dream of having people in his
house, he 'did it for Christ'. Katie, probably feeling the icy vibrations, kicked up an immense fuss, and his wife
busily cleared everything away under our noses so that I hardly had time to eat. My bruised brain then received the
information that the Christian plan for our day was to dump us in the centre of Cuenca at 9:00 a.m. and pick us up at
6:30 p.m., that is, after dark, to stay another night. I said I thought I’d better go and buy bus tickets for the
following day, praying that I’d find a way to escape and leave. God was on my side: he ordained a transport strike
so that we had to grab the last available northbound bus quick. The Christian could hardly hide how pleased he
was.
He drove me back to his house with the high iron railings to collect children and luggage. Outside on the
street was a broken-nosed, drunken, hideous, dirty old tramp who lumbered up to me begging; a type I would never
normally give anything to. I gave him 55 sucres in front of Mr. Christian out of spite, as he was just telling me he
was ‘scared to walk out of his house’ for fear of attacks but that he ‘put himself in the hands of God.’ I’m sure God
was bloody delighted.
At the bus-station, it turned out he had ‘accidentally’ forgotten his purse, so all he could buy the kids was
one apple each.
Safely on the bus, I had to repeat out loud for over half an hour: I DID NOT LIKE THOSE PEOPLE. The
kids couldn’t understand it.
23rd April 1989
We arrived in Quito and began our search for Jean, an English friend of Martha’s, who lives in a huge labyrinth of
modern flats, and ended up camped outside her door awaiting her return. She’s a lovely big friendly Hertfordshire
woman and her plant-hung ample flat is as beautiful inside as the building is ugly outside. She speaks real English
and handed us a cup of tea instead of carrot or beetroot juice. The kids are ecstatic.
25th April 1989
I went to the Colombian Consulate this morning, but they won’t even let me apply for re-entry until May 15th when
my six months’ exile is officially over. Jean suggested we spend the waiting time out in the jungle at the farm of a
friend of hers called Meredith, an American woman. She says there are trees in Ecuador, ‘you just have to know
where to look for them.’
2nd May 1989
The first part of the journey to Meredith’s is an eight-hour bus-ride to the end of the road, which lands you in a
muddy little settlement called Saguangal. This journey did indeed show a very beautiful, leafy Ecuador. Half an
hour after departing, the bus stopped for a tyre change: all the tyres were terrifyingly bald, and all the country roads
unsurfaced. At one point, the driver got all the standing passengers to leave the bus as we were approaching a very
narrow plank bridge over a river. Halfway across, there was a sickening, crunching sound, and a sinking feeling in
the stomach, and I found myself propelled from the back of the bus where I was sitting to the front of the bus - not
by any movement of the vehicle, but by fear. Several planks of the bridge had broken under our weight, but
somehow the bus made it to the other side, whereupon all the passengers except me started laughing, which I assume
is a hysterical reaction to the passing of total terror. The worst part of this story I am ashamed to tell: in my
moment of panic, I entirely forgot I had three children. Alice was asleep on the back seat, and the noise of the
crunch woke her up; then the other two kids came yelling after me, thinking Mummy was getting off without them.
Mummy was!
When we finally arrived in Saguangal, we were able to rent a tiny room over a shop for 50p, but in the
morning I was told there was nothing I could buy for breakfast, not coffee or tea or anything. So I asked them for
hot water and made some cocoa. Meanwhile the man of the shop ate a large meal in front of us.
Jean had told us it would be an eight hour walk to Meredith’s. It was not. It was a gruelling two-day
mudslide. I was carrying heavy dried food, beans and peas and rice and flour, and couldn’t carry Katie even the
first 100 yards of deep slippery clay. We would certainly never have survived the journey but for the help of people
passing along the same way who gave her lifts on their mules.
On the first day, I got lost. Local people who were carrying the kids had moved on fast ahead, out of sight,
and I took a wrong turning. I climbed a mountain. I reached a farm where I could ask the way. I was crying and
sobbing. I had to go all the way back down to where the path had forked. The local people were sitting by a river
with the children waiting for me.
There was never a break from the mudslides, up and down for two days on end. Alice’s shoes disappeared
in the sucking mud, my plimsoll soles came off; I tied them on with laces. On the afternoon of the first day, a
blonde American appeared coming towards us with mules. It was Meredith’s husband Jim. How could he know we
were coming and that we desperately needed help? He didn’t, he was going to Quito.
A little Ecuadorian woman who had helped with Katie took us to her house in the middle of the jungle. I
sat, staring, exhausted, upset, and kept eating and drinking everything she generously offered. I gave the family a
lot of the food I was carrying in payment. We stayed the night. The ‘bed’ was some hard, bare boards in the same
tiny room as the couple who took their own children into bed with them to make room for us, I slept with all three of
my children, my body aching painfully.
The next day, the woman strapped Katie to her back, put the rest of my heavy food supplies into mule
packsaddles and my two eldest girls on the mule. But many places were too dangerous to ride and they had to keep
getting off. One river was bridged by a broken bamboo pole for one’s feet, with another pole in mid-air for a
handhold. But red ants were also crossing the river, travelling head to tail all the way along the handhold. Later,
another, wilder, river, with a thin rotting piece of bark as a foot-plank. Louise, on mule-back, crossed through the
water. Alice and the Ecuadorian woman, carrying Katie, walked the plank. I watched, swallowed hard, and
followed.
Then the woman lost the way. Drenched in sweat, she led us up a terrible slope to the wrong farm, And
back down again. No stops, nowhere to sit or rest. Just mud. I didn’t know what mud was till I came to Ecuador.
Even Louise cried at one point, and it takes a lot to snap her.
Late afternoon, taped music blaring through the jungle. Meredith’s house. I just sat and wept with
exhaustion. Meredith, a tall, strong, blue-eyed woman in her forties, was hugely welcoming, and indignant that we
had not been warned how terrible the trail was. I paid our brave little woman guide and then just let myself
collapse. Meredith assured me everyone takes about two days to recover from the journey. Not so the children:
they played for hours on end whilst my sight was nearly gone from tiredness and I couldn’t walk downstairs
frontwards - my thighs were so sore from two days’ fighting for a foothold in mud.
Meredith’s house is beautiful, a paradise for the kids as her own children have a wealth of books and toys
and dressing-up clothes and an inflatable dinosaur, a beautiful river and an enormous natural deep swimming pool.
The house is open with no walls; we sleep under mosquito nets; it’s hot country but you have to wear socks and
trousers always against the insects; and it’s very American, with a chainsaw and fluorescent lighting run from
solar-powered batteries in the awesome jungle. The bananas are enormous, the butterflies as big as my two hands
together and they grow papayas, though no vegetables; they buy their food in Quito. Meredith is talkative and
communicative, but she has a very unhappy visitor on her hands: I am heavy with the depression of homesickness,
and I have a terrible problem about food. I know and recognise nothing they use. Alfalfa shoots depress me, and
the children get upset at not being allowed to eat what they like until they’ve eaten what they hate, a custom utterly
unknown to them. I was coughing in the night and Meredith greeted me with a foulacious substance which she
herself said had the consistency of squashed slugs; it is called slippery elm.
I cried in bed at not being able to fit in anywhere and feeling trapped because no way could I get out to buy
the things we needed. But the next day the conflict of food customs softened as I asked for hot water and made
some milkless cocoa and a bowl of banana and guayaba for the kids. And good conversations are very nourishing:
I spent nearly all day talking to Meredith while I did her family’s mending for her and she mended my plimsolls.
She has a dulcimer. I played a few notes and she said I was gifted musically. I was embarrassed and put it down
and didn’t dare touch it for ages, as she is a real musician, a guitarist and singer with a beautiful voice.
In the evening, Meredith came to my bed-tent and taught me to consult the ‘runes’ - it’s a divination
method using little stones with symbols on them. I asked what to make of my present ghastly situation, and drew
stones. The first was called ‘Harvest in One Year.’ “Receiving this Rune encourages you to keep your spirits up
and to be aware that no quick results can be expected.… You have prepared the ground and planted the seed…. To
those whose labour has a long season, this Rune offers encouragement of success.... Continue to persevere…. There
is no way to push the river…”
My second stone was ‘Warrior Energy,’ and the interpretation read: “This is the Rune of the Spiritual
Warrior... the universe always has the first move, Patience is the virtue of this Rune... The moulding of character is
the issue... you are asked to delve down to the foundations of your life itself... to tap into your most profound
resources... it calls for single-mindedness and the willingness to undergo your passage without anxiety and in total
trust. If the issue relates to your devotion to a cause, an idea, a path of conduct, the Warrior Rune counsels
perseverance. It is a Rune of courage and dedication.”
The third stone was ‘Messenger: “The key note here is receiving - messages, signals, gifts, new
connections, surprising linkages that direct us into new pathways. Be especially aware during meetings, visits,
chance encounters... A new sense of family solidarity invests this rune... You are reminded that you must draw
first from the well to nourish and give to yourself. Then there will be more than enough to nourish others... You
may feel inhibited from accepting what is offered. A sense of futility, of wasted motion, of a fruitless journey may
dismay you. This rune is saying: Consider the uses of adversity.”
The final stone represented the Future and was called “Strength.” “This is the Rune of termination and
new beginnings... change may involve passage into darkness... Events now occurring may well prompt you to
undergo a death within yourself. Remain mindful that the new life is always greater than the old. Prepare for
opportunity disguised as loss. Seek among the ashes and discover a new perspective and a new birth…”
10th May 1989
I was never depressed again at Meredith’s after throwing the Runes. The days flowed smoothly one into another.
One afternoon, Meredith organised a kind of ‘unbirthday’ party for the kids and they were all given wrapped
presents. Upon opening hers, Alice burst into tears of wounded indignation howling, “That’s not a pwesent!” It
was a beautiful dress, but evidently union rules have it that that does not constitute a present! I had only a second to
consider how to handle this dreadful piece of social behaviour when there was another howl: this time from Katie
who had opened her package and had the same reaction. I stared horrified at the situation, then looked at Meredith
and we both burst into uncontrollable laughter, and the more we so cruelly laughed, the more they yelled, and the
more they cried, the more hysterically we laughed, and there we were, an uproar of hoots and sobs and the table a
riot of beautiful clothes that were not pwesents.
I learnt to like alfalfa shoots and ‘tempeh’ - a kind of hairy mouldy soya paste, and to drink lemon grass
tea. I didn’t quite manage to share Meredith’s enthusiasm for the virtues of ginger, but learned to behave so well
that on my last day I sat dutifully sipping some black coffee which had something very nasty-tasting in it. Then
Meredith herself took some and gasped, “Oh gawd!” She had made the coffee in the pan the Chile peppers had
been cooked in.
Before leaving Meredith’s, I threw the Runes once more, to see what the future held. I received “Fertility;
New Beginnings.”
“A Rune of great power: drawing it means that you now have the strength to achieve
completion... you will experience a release from tension and uncertainty... being centred and grounded, freeing
yourself from all unwanted influences, freeing yourself from some deep cultural pattern and seeing the humour in
your situation, you can await your deliverance with calm certainty.”
14th May 1989
Jean was very welcoming when we arrived back in Quito after yet another gruelling journey out of the jungle. Her
handsome forty-year-old boyfriend from Derbyshire was there, very upper-crust. They cooked for me, a great relief
as the floor was still spinning from all the travelling. And after dinner we played Scrabble. I hadn’t played this
word-game since I was twelve and couldn’t even remember the rules properly. I was so scared of being a nuisance
that I had my word ready each time so that I didn’t keep anyone waiting, flinging it down without thought. The
boyfriend spent ages over each word, coming out with obscurities I’d never heard of, dubious entries I had to believe
in as he was a Very Serious Scrabble Player. I won the first game by one point. We played again. I was half
asleep and half drunk on a glass of wine and three-quarters dead from so many journeys.
To my undying
embarrassment, I won Game Two by a staggering majority. I could see it was quite good for the gentleman to have
this happen to him, but did it have to be me?
15th May 1989
The Colombian Consulate in Quito is situated in a very posh touristy road. The park nearby has Clean, Free toilets.
Lots of very ugly unfriendly gringos wander around the place. I don’t know what has happened in Europe, but all
the females have shaven backsides to their heads.
I arrived at the Consul’s office just in time to have to wait two hours for his dinner hour. Then he asked
me why I wanted to go to Colombia. I said to get married. He wrote it down and told me to come back in Three
Weeks’ Time.
On the way home from the Consulate, we got tear-gassed. One minute the kids and I were coping with
traffic and crowded sidewalks, the next there were armoured cars, soldiers, rock-throwing students, and we were in
the middle of a riot. Next, all three children were screaming at top pitch, not knowing what was attacking their
eyes, throats and lungs. The soldiers were laughing. We rushed in the direction of home, but people were running
towards us with handkerchiefs on their faces and their eyes streaming, so we rushed in the other direction and made
a huge detour. Hours later, we still felt sick.
22nd May 1989
We left Quito to spend the waiting time on a beautiful farm called La Florida, a few hours from Otavalo, belonging
to two more families on the Ecuadorian ‘gringo circuit.’ The farm is at 1,900 metres, comparable to our farm in
Colombia, enclosed by hills and a pleasant hour’s walk across country from the road. The moment we arrived,
Connie, one of the two American women there, fell into my arms crying and telling me all her troubles, and her
secret joys; her marriage was breaking up. In the lovely old farmhouse opposite were Carlos, a forty-year-old
Cuban exile, and his young American wife Sandy, and it was with them I lived.
23rd May 1989
I don’t notice time passing on this farm, there is so much to do, to read, to talk about. I have a teach-yourself guitar
book and am surrounded by musicians. The food is great and there is lots of it. We’re all interested in the same
things: gossip and people and psychology and love affairs and psychic phenomena. Talking and relating to Carlos
is pure maturity, his Earth energy is good for me, but it cracks me up as he reminds me of Gilberto and everything in
the world I am starving for.
25th May 1989
They have a large number of servants on this farm, in particular a Servant called Juana whom they have had - as
they see it - or who has had them - as I see it - for many years. Juana is Indian and wears full Indian costume and
comes up to my navel. She watches me all the time and I feel I have no right to be here, although Sandy, Carlos’
wife, and everyone else, have made me wonderfully welcome. Juana does not like me eating, getting water from
the sink, washing my teeth, washing dishes - especially not washing dishes, washing my own clothes, or chatting to
Sandy and Carlos. One of Juana’s feet is fixed on backwards which means she can’t wear shoes; and she has only
half a face. I don’t know what happened to the other half.
There are many other servants here, and all of them are silent. They come at 7:30 in the morning and ‘go’
at four o’clock in the afternoon. ‘Going’ consists of knocking off and hanging around. I could do everything they
do alone before midday. I like it best when they are told to ‘descansar’ (that is, take a rest from taking a rest).
Then at least I can get to the sink, wash up or give the kids a snack without being Watched. I am very glad we do
not have Servants on our farm in Colombia.
26th May 1989
Last night I lay awake half the night thinking about Immigration and Men-migration and then I strained my mind
trying to understand a National Geographic article on gravitation, black holes, anti-gravity, space travel and space
curves, and today my gravitational pull is disturbed and has gone into wobble. There is something the matter with
my inner ear fluids, or the Servants have poisoned me, or I am suffering from a galloping degenerative disease. I
cannot maintain a straight course along the paths and someone has put the washing line at a strange angle to the sky
today and the floor is unstable. I think this is what happens when I am attacked by rampaging desire for members
of the family not available to me. I think it’s time to go.
2nd June 1989
Connie took me to visit a friend of hers in prison in Ibarra, a quiet little town near Otavalo. In the prison, we met a
very fanciable fellow called Diego who was in for murder. He’d been in six years and had another six to do. He
got married last month and his wife is allowed into the prison three times a week to sleep with him.
In a room housing 70 men, there is one man bringing up his two little girls. In another room live a man,
his wife and entire family. He was sentenced for transporting cocaine in his lorry. He has a big weaving loom and
the whole family work for their living. Next door to the tiny cubicle of the man we are visiting, there is an old
priest awaiting trial for suspected theft.
In the prison there were ice-cream vendors, kids, women selling cooked food, prisoners hassling to sell
their handicrafts; a few gringos; visitors milling around the central courtyard where inmates were playing handball.
There were no cells, controls isolation, cold disdainful treatment, limited visiting hours or any of the deliberate
mental cruelties that I have encountered in all British and European jails without exception. There may well be
terrible jails in South America, but Ibarra jail exists; I spent a very enjoyable day there.
3rd June 1989 Jean’s flat, QUITO
Last night around 3:0 a.m. I was woken from deep sleep to a standing position in two seconds flat by giants having
sex somewhere in the building. The cupboard doors were shaking. “Jean!” I cried. “Yes,” said Jean, very
calmly, “that was an earthquake.” It was very violent and 'very short’ Jean said, about Force 5 and 10 seconds long her last boyfriend was a vulcanologist. I felt seasick and must have had a green face. Trembling all over, I lay
down again while Jean told me that four years ago there were big tremors in Quito in the night and all the lights
were fizzing and the whole city a mass of fireworks as the power cables went. And a whole village disappeared
under a landslide of mud.
4th June 1989
Around 10:00 p.m. last night, I dreamt I was in a small car, kids in the back, driven by a man. We were
approaching and attempting to climb an enormous mound of a road, so steep the car was nearly vertical, the engine
already down in first gear, spluttering and choking and threatening to give out at any second and send us sliding
backwards. I had my arm round the back of the driver, praying and sweating with him that the engine would hold
out. Then at last we climbed over the awful mound at the top and I leant in relief on his shoulder to say thank
goodness… But wake up to find I am sitting bolt upright in my bed with a wave passing under me. I jump out of
bed. This time Jean is not in the flat. Meredith’s husband, Jim, is asleep in another room. I wake him up, “Jim, it
happened again, but this time it was a gentle wave. Last night it was like the judder of an explosion.” Jim nodded
and went back to sleep.
I felt sick and scared, aware how tall the building was, how narrow the streets, masonry everywhere and
nowhere to run.
In the morning, Jean came home and said she had been sitting in her maid’s house when the wave went
under her feet at 10:00 p.m. Her maid didn’t even notice it. I talked about my dream and wondered if my body in
sleep had felt the gathering tension in the Earth’s entrails, then the relaxation at the peak, and the wave of the
earthquake, the Earth’s release. Jim thought it very possible as he said animals are known to sense the onset of
seismic tension and react by fleeing.
5th June 1989
But it was today the earthquake really happened, though only on the bit of ground where I was standing. I have
been refused entry into Colombia.
Forever. I asked for a reason for the refusal. I was quoted some law about the sovereignty of nations and
their right to refuse entry without explanation. I asked if I could apply for a reason. No. I asked if I could apply
for a visa in another year. No. I asked if a Colombian could marry me outside Colombia and apply for me. No.
Thank you, I said, and left.
I found a toilet and cried. Then I got a taxi home. My Ecuadorian visa expires in four days’ time. There
is a nationwide transport strike. I read that hundreds of people have been killed in demonstrations in China.
6th June 1989
All alone in my room in a cold empty house, I felt so happy, I jumped for joy, up and down, on the carpet. The
torture is over. I have tried the legal way and nearly died doing it. Now I’ll do it my way.
There’s no denying what goes on in a room alone in a cold quiet flat in Quito on a rainy day. Jumping for
joy I was.
17th June 1989, COLOMBIA
I was happily planting carrots on the farm with Ned, when a familiar figure came shuffling up the pathway.
“’Allo,” it said.
Some environments never change.
Epilogue
September 1990
A dream, dreamt by Becky, Jenny’s eldest daughter.
Jenny dies, and I go to her funeral. She is laid out in a coffin. Her blue anorak
is covering her body.
Suddenly she sits up and says: “You can’t use this anorak, it’s far too useful.”
The funeral director says, “Well then, have you got an old sheet?”
“Goodness gracious no!” says Jen, “A sheet is far too useful.
Anyway why on earth can’t I die naked?”