brighter excerpts

Some more cheery excerpts from my journal, to leave you with a better taste in your mouth than snake venom.

18 October 2009 - Off the coast of Gansbaai, South Africa

It's not until the great white's teeth are wrapped around the tiny cage you're in, the cage shaking wildly, you doing your best to keep your face out of the hulking beast's gaping maw, yeah, that's just about when things start to get seriously nuts.

19 October 2009 - Cederberg, South Africa

We drive into the mountains further and further, and the road gets smaller and smaller, as we wind our way back and forth slowly up the seemingly sheer faces. Across the plains are wheat fields upon wheat fields stretching far until they fade into distant misty mountains. We drive until the road becomes a dirt track, leaving a rooster tail of dust trailing behind us. We drive until the road becomes nothing more than a scarce rocky path, the car barely clambering up the slope. We drive until the end of the road.

At the end of the road a pale orange house sits, far from civilization. The house is ranch-like, low and wide. Completely off the grid; solar and gas powered, and fed water from a mountain stream. Nearby rock pools provide fresh, natural, swimming. The peaks surround us, the African scrub our carpet.

Even though we're pretty high up, a warm breeze keeps our company well after dark as we cook our simple evening meal over the fire.

16 November 2009 - Nkhata Bay to Chizumulu Island, Malawi

Yet another lazy day spent in the lodge, but as evening fell, we packed and escaped. We made our way aboard the Ilala, a steamship over one hundred years old. The bowels of the powder-blue beast were frenetic with human bodies and cargo of every variety, crammed into every cranny until not even a breath could pass. We crawled and inched our way through with out unwieldy packs, slowly ascending the mountain of humanity and its infinite creations. Upon reaching the top deck, the air was clear, the crowds thinned. We sprawled out for the journey.

A four hour steam through the dark waters of Lake Malawi, under a star filled sky, brought us to our destination. We crept our way off the ship in the dead of night.

21 November 2009 - Chizumulu Island to Likoma Island, Malawi

A blistering hike with all our gear took us over the mountain to the other side of the island to catch the local boat over to Likoma. Parked in the shade and waited for favorable winds as local children harassed us (marveled at our strange hair and my tattoo and piercings). A few hours of waiting, and we joined a small local boat with about forty others for brutally shadeless hour-long ride in the heat. Songs broke out initially, but as the unrelenting scorch of the sun set in, the huddled masses became more subdued. Upon gaining the far shore, we sought shade for a brief respite. If the morning walk was blistering, then the afternoon was fatal. Matters did not improve when we ran out of water half way along. The midday African sun and no water. Fucking brilliant. We arrived just on the brink of death, gasping for water. A bit of furious gulping and a quick swim, and humanity was restored.

25 November 2009 - cruising on Lake Malawi

Me: "Are we driving through that?"
Captain: "It's too big to go around."

-----

I'm well, spirits high. The current plan is to head to Namibia shortly, where I should be able to upload some more photos. Hope you're all well, and I miss you so.

48 hours

26 November 2009 - Liwonde National Park, Malawi

22:20 - Walking back to camp from the showers that night after dark, I feel a strong prick on my left foot. I pause, dismayed, and shine the light down to see what sort of mischief has transpired, to find a single bead of blood growing on the inside arch of my foot. A quick flash of the light back to the scene of the crime, and laying there tense is a thin black snake maybe two centimeters wide, and a meter long, no pattern. A black mamba.

<definition>

Black Mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis) - Among the most venomous snakes in Africa, known for being very aggressive when threatened and will not hesitate to strike with deadly precision. Reputed to be the fastest moving snake in the world. If the victim does not receive medical attention, symptoms rapidly progress to severe abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, cardiotoxicity, and paralysis. Eventually, the victim experiences convulsions, cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, coma, and then death. Without anti-venom, the mortality rate nears 100%, the highest among venomous snakes.

</definition>

22:40 - After a mad scramble to wake the appropriate people, I get hoisted into a car off to the first of what will turn out to be many stops. I apply a tourniquet above the bite and keep it lower than my heart. (Later discovery: a tourniquet is not the correct first aid for a snake bite.)

23:05 - Liwonde Health Clinic. We arrive to a dead building. Five people running around banging on every door for several minutes manages to wake up a nurse. Meanwhile, I sit in a wheelchair in the deserted clinic halls, and light up my last cigarette, of the pack, and maybe my life. The pain is radiating up from the bite now. I can feel it coursing up my spine into my neck and out to my extremities. I ask for a beer. Because hey, if I'm going to go, I might as well go happy. No one takes me seriously, but they let me smoke in the clinic.

23:15 - I'm releasing the tourniquet every fifteen minutes or so for a bit to try not to oxygen-deprive whatever tissues down there are still alive. It does not feel nice when I do this; rather it feels like my muscles are being shredded slowly, tenderly, through a meat grinder, starting with my leg and up through the rest of my body. The local snake expert shows up. He's wasted. Completely smashed out of his mind. He none too gently prods me a couple times before I decide this is worthless and we better try the next place.

~23:45 - Tourniquet's off now, leg's raised, on the advice of the sober nurse at Liwonde. When we roll into the Zomba clinic, the entire staff is kneeling on the ground catching dragonflies. They don't move when we pull up. They don't move when I get wheeled up. They don't even get out of the way of the wheelchair until someone I'm with starts screaming at them.

The doctor ambles up and listens for a few minutes and then ambles away for a while. This one's sober at least, but is somewhat lacking an appropriate level of urgency. Community decision: we're gone.

~00:00, 27 November - We're back in the car racing for Blantyre, the largest city in the country. I pass out from the pain.

~01:00 - Mwaiwathu Private Hospital. Possibly the best hospital in the country, at least we've finally arrived at something that resembles a medical facility.

I'm screaming in pain now, but keep refusing painkillers until I can give the doctor clear symptoms.

~03:00 - I've finally delivered my medical report, and the Vicodin is kicking in. I drift off to the doctor saying they don't have the anti-venom on the premises...

Morning, ??:?? - I come to, groggy. I'm thick with pain meds, but I can still feel the dull ache of the venom pushing through the haze. I'm only now starting to finally truly realize I'm actually a goner if that anti-venom doesn't show up soon.

I'm in pretty bad shape. Even if the pain was light enough for me to move, I wouldn't be able to for all the tubes and wires they've got hooked up to me. All I can do it lie still, and wait.

Time passes.

~10:20 - The nurse strides up and brandishes the anti-venom like a trophy. In it goes. It burns, it burns through my veins and arteries. But as its searing flows through my vessels, it leaves in its wake nothing, no pain; peace, at last. My leg is swollen to the size of a tree trunk and still immobile, but I'm free again - I can curl my fingers and turn my head and twist my shoulders. I can even sit up. Redemption. At least for a while, since I'm blissfully unaware of the anti-venom side effects yet...

11:30 - I'm well enough to take visitors, and they're a welcome sight. They've been spared the sight of me through the worst of it (or so I think). We're having a jovial conversation about how I almost died when I start shivering. I don't really feel cold. But the shivering gets worse. I'm shaking violently and uncontrollably now, and my visitors' eyes are getting wide like saucers, which, let me tell you, is not comforting. My neck is so tense, I think it's going to snap, and my teeth are chattering like a wind up toy. I call over to the nurse, she takes one look and rushes to the phone. The doc is there a minute later injecting me with something that makes everything go dark.

Early morning, ??:??, 28 November - I barely come around through thick mist. There's a machine beeping loudly near my head, and it's distinctly not a friendly beeping, not a warm fuzzy beeping at all. The nurse and doctor are there, moving and speaking over me, but through the haze I don't understand anything. Again I drift off.

~06:00 - I wake up, possibly the first time in two days. I'm still a little cloudy, but I feel okay. Nothing weird in my body; no pain except for the leg. The machine near my head is beeping in a very soothing rhythmic way. I doze.

~10:00 - Doc stops in. He looks a combination of surprised and relieved to see me perky. I try not to think too hard about that. Apparently, I look good enough to be downgraded out of ICU. I spend the rest of the day staring at the ceiling, getting measured and prodded, and slipping in and out of sleep.

22:20 - 48 hours later. I've had dinner, and someone snuck me a chocolate bar for dessert, so I'm feeling pretty good. Almost all the tubes and wires have been removed so I can sit up and write this. I'm still weak - my hands shake and I tire easily, but I feel okay.

Thanks to Doctor Leo Vigna, Peter and Maresca and everyone at Chinguni Hills, Stephan, the random french guy, and Tavis, the wandering Aussie, for driving me all over the country in the middle of the night, and of course Nadine who was there for all of it. I would be dead if not for them.

time for reflection

It's been almost two years since I left home, left everything behind, abandoned material bondage, to stroll out into the world to see if there was anything worth seeing. It turns out there is some worthwhile stuff out here.

I've seen the most beautiful sights I've ever seen. From lush green jungles to pristine, indescribable blue ocean horizons. Pitch black new moon night skies filled with more stars than my feeble mind could encompass. Thunderstorms from ten feet below the surface of tumultuous, gray, rain-splattered seas. Dawn's mist caressing silent red clay mountaintops.

I have sat on planes while the Earth and familiar things spun away carelessly below. I have ridden rickety old buses through treacherous hairpin cutbacks, white-knuckled and making mental promises to sort out that final will and testament if only, please dear precious bus driver, if only I could make it through with my vital organs intact. I have floated down the most foul stenched rivers tolerable; from my journal, I quote, "...the river smelled like ass. Fish ass. Dead, rotting fish ass."

I have learned some unexpected lessons: Always carry toilet paper. Don't drink the water. Every nation in the world has translated, re-recorded, and filmed a karaoke video for the Macarena. This is as bad as it sounds.

My hair has changed color.

I have ingested some, um, interesting things. And further, I have quenched my parched throat with some dubious concoctions. One such evening was spent cavorting with Cambodian gun traffickers.

I have negotiated stupendously new levels of motor vehicle congestion insanity, and I have found quiet peace, alone, in thousand year old ruins. I have wandered far, far out of the warm little centers, out to where no one could ever find me. And it was nice, for a while.

I have seen the inescapable trough of unfathomable poverty. And I have seen happiness blooming therein.

I have saved four lives.

I have lost one.

I have several scars I didn't have before.

I have a journal full of writings, and very little of what I started out with still remains, but after all this, I have found nothing to temper that empty spot inside me, the vacuum of you, the people I've left behind. I wondered [worried?] in the beginning whether I'd miss you less and less over the passing hours and days. It turns out that no, my ponderings were groundless, after all this.

So I think of you fondly now, as I look out at an immaculate white sand beach crowned with a crimson sunset. Don't worry, it's been too long now, and it's time; I'll see you soon.

twenty five

This is absurd 1982 chain letter nonsense that earned the USPS a pile of cash and made a lot of people think they were going to die within the week. However, this particular one is actually an interesting exercise.

<chain letter nonsense deleted>

1. I have never wanted a pony. A unicorn or a mermaid would be pretty cool, but better would be a box of infinite monkeys. Except for the poop problem.

2. I like sunsets better than sunrises.

3. I celebrated xmas for almost 10 years straight with someone else's family.

4. After 9/11, I seriously considered joining the marines.

5. I wish my French was better. (So I'm practicing.)

6. I made it 31 years before someone close to me died.

7. My favorite response to a posed, unanswerable (by choice or philosophy) question is, "I am a very small dog."

8. I can tell time by the sun.

9. If I were a vegetable, I would be a pineapple. My favorite color is blue, no, yellow.

10. I'm atheist. Really. For real. A lot. Seriously.

11. I'd like to know everything a doctor does, but I don't want to be a doctor.

12. I wear a compass on my watch band. I use it often.

13. I think about suicide at a rate of around once a decade. Thankfully, the rate of attempts is far lower.

14. I don't like sharing.

15. I think dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight sounds exquisite.

16. I'd like to go to Africa next.

17. I can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

18. I lie sometimes.

19. I tell the truth most times. Especially when it's inappropriate. e.g. "You are an idiot and the best thing you can do for the human race is sterilize yourself."

20. I learn more through hardship and failure than through success. I think success may make me complacent. Who's the cliche now, eh?

21. Living room fight club is amazingly cathartic.

22. My jaw really really hurts right now.

23. Living out of a backpack, lo-fi, is extremely liberating. Electricity and running water are expendable. Candles and mosquito nets, on the other hand, are invaluable.

24. I've lived the American Dream and won. Now what?

25. I honestly don't think there's an answer out there, but I'm going to keep looking anyway.

And there you go.