End of Summer, then Spring, then Fall

A friend had asked for suggestions on camping long-term.  I’ve never camped before longer than perhaps a week, but my two months in a tent flew by.

For one thing, my tent was my sanctuary. It is the one place that can be insect-free, organized, and personalized. Bucket showers leave you vulnerable to sun exposure; mosquitos hang out around the drop toilet; hissing cockroaches take over the eating area at night.  But my tent was an escape from all the petty annoyances and gripes, where I could lose myself in a book or journal in peace.

For another, I tried to maintain perspective.  Cold showers became refreshing, especially after a day of walking under African skies (yes, I had Paul Simon in my head quite a bit, as well as the intro to Lion King every time I saw a sunrise).







Night walks in the forest were spider traps, but also a unique opportunity for photography using headlamps as a light source, lighting the canopy layers from below like a Toulouse Lautrec painting.

Even though the area was infested with bugs, it also allowed me to watch the sunrise on the beach, go to the most beautiful island-forest by pirogue, and dance in the rain during the local bush party.  And where else could I claim having taken the only pictures of a gecko in its natural environment?



But the part that was hard to come to terms with was the lifestyle of the people around our site, whose lives are twisted into a downward spiral.  The lack of education was heartbreaking – the local teacher didn’t show up during my two months there because the state wasn’t paying him.  Malaria took a number of young lives.  The heavy rain washed out crops, leaving people desperately hungry.  The painful deforestation in the area is a concern for everyone in the area, yet it’s difficult to judge when any rational person would do anything to feed their starving children.  A mining company is going to displace the entire community in the next year and tear down massive swaths of forest – just so we can have whitened toothpaste and paint from the extracted ilmenite, luxuries the residents of Sainte Luce will never have.

Elie, one of the volunteers, lent me Shantaram, a book about an escaped convict that joins the mafia in Bombay and lives in the slums, and oddly enough it brought some sense to the incomprehensible plight of the community.  For as desperate and hungry as everyone was, they were generous and positive.  Kids would offer bits of their food when we were around.  Church choirs and bands practiced spiritedly at night.  And as serious as people seemed at times, all it took was a cheery “Salama!” (“Hi!”) to wake up their faces into vibrant smiles.

One of the things I mulled over during our long walks stemmed from a rather ridiculous conversation. A volunteer was discussing the difference between counter-clockwise (American) and anti-clockwise (British). While counter-clockwise indicates the exact opposite of clockwise, he argued, anti-clockwise can be in a different dimension entirely, much as someone can be anti-war but supportive of a well-trained army.

That got me to thinking about losing loved ones, as well as the injustices I saw in the torn clothing the children wore day after day as I hung my clothes out to dry.We have a perceived idea of happiness that is tied tomaterial and immaterial things.  Abrupt changes throw this off-kilter, but over time we create a sort of “happiness otherwise”, for lack of a better term, an anti-clockwise rather than a counter-clockwise that encompasses the old with the new, the memories with the reality. Humans are amazingly adaptable, finding comfort in friends and family, and that is what keeps me hopeful for the community in particular and everyone in general.