Crossroads (of the Britney Spears variety of course)

Do we all want a special place that is just our own, somewhere that we love more than anyone else thereby giving us some form of ownership over it, and it in turn some sort of ownership over us?

I use the term ‘place’ loosely. That could be a person, a concept, a location, an activity, or whatever.

This little post might not make much sense, it all kind of fell out of my head – as the posts usually do – so expect the same level of coherence and structured thought….

Whenever I hear people talk of planned travel to South America I am stung with something, I don’t know if it’s jealousy or some other emotion sprouting from the concern that they won’t see the South America I saw, that they won’t speak to people and take the uncomfortable option, or more accurately the option that the South Americans are forced to take because they can’t afford the ‘luxury’ option that tourists take. That was a long sentence. I fear that if they don’t learn the language and stroll into that continent speaking English and waving money around it is going to ruin such a beautiful place. It is something that I was very aware of while we travelled through it, the impact that we were having by being naïve and comparatively wealthy was minor in comparison to what had gone before and what was to come. I felt twinges of resentment to those people who pigeon holed us as wealthy tourists (we were wealthy in comparison to the poverty of course, but not in comparison to other travellers), but you can’t blame someone with very little for going to every effort to part a tourist from their money – whether it be through dishonest means or otherwise. I blame the people who wave their money around, eating wherever and whenever they want, staying in comfortable accommodation, catching taxis because it is too much hassle to carry a suitcase on a crowded train or they feel ‘unsafe’. If people want to shove their wealth into the faces of people who’ll never have the opportunity to take the luxury option then I don’t think they deserve to taste a culture other than their own insulated greed. I’m not saying I’m perfect in this regard, anyone who thinks they can live up to the virtues they extol are obviously not extolling enough, and have no ideals to strive to live up to. I’m going on a tangent now. I’ll get back to my point.

There is a possibility that I will be faced with a cross road in the near future. Lucas’s job with Visa looks like it might open a door to employment in the Middle East – Dubai to be precise. There is a chance that he’ll be offered a job there starting in September, which, if the terms are right, he will accept. And fair enough too, the chance to live and travel through the Middle East and learn Arabic for a year is not one to be passed up.

So if the job is offered and subsequently taken I will be at the aforementioned crossroads. There would be options galore - where would I go and what would I do. Well, anyone remember the WHO plan? Something I looked into a few months back was the chance to volunteer or work in Africa. As it happened I found a program based in Zambia (and other countries) educating the local community about health (with a specific focus on AIDS). I won’t go into the details but it would be an 8 month position in a community working with another volunteer (a Zambian national) to deliver the program, finishing in August next year – about the time that Lucas’s 12 month contract in Dubai would apparently finish. I haven’t committed to anything, it is just one of many options.

I keep going on tangents. Anyway. I have been reading what these volunteers have said after they get back from their time in Africa. The two main themes shining through is the lesson they have learnt that life in the West is too complicated, and so wildly and unnecessarily overdeveloped, and secondly the love they feel for Africa and the desire to go back and keep contributing to that society there. The first lesson is not something that I think I would need to learn – there wouldn’t be many greater advocates than I of razing every city to the ground and moving the world forward to a community based agrarian society, with an evolved ethical outlook of course – now that is development. The second one struck a nerve with me though and is the reason for this little soliloquy. As I mentioned, I was smitten with South America – almost certainly in a different way to how these volunteers feel about Africa, would I feel the same way after such a program? Or would I feel the same as I do about South America, despair at watching something you cherish be destroyed. But I refer to my opening words now and wonder, am I looking for my place, that only I know and knows me?