The car is you first home, first office.
You spend more time in the car than in the bed.
doesn't matter how close is a village in kilometers, in rural areas you can also spend seven hours to make 30 km.
That actually was my record, and that day I was driving. Rainy season in Tanzania.
You can imagine that, once arrived, was too dark to do anything.
I almost cried thinking on the way back.
It's never entertaining get stock in the mud in the savanna by night.
Alone.
With a water war ongoing.
And your car, white, with a huge logo of the organisation working in water.
Fucking visibility.
And a crazy elephant in the surrounding killing people, so that they were organizing patrols to kill him.
So everybody was already armed.
But that is a border case.
For example, Tajik people are not famous to be cheerful, so in the long hours to the villages listen to so much music that I could not stand silence anymore.
In Tibet we were chatting all the time, sharing stories.
In Nepal, so far, road are quite good, so I work. Reading stuff I've never time to read.
In Haiti, everything but watching outside. Half naked people living in moldy shelters and you knew that 70% of them had AIDS and almost the totality of women were raped since after the earthquake.
The car.
When it's broken you feel lost, worst than a tragedy. All your plans become ash. you held improvised and nervous meetings with the staff in order to get the car ready yesterday and try to stick with the plans.
Once I almost deliver some pipes with donkeys, just because the day before, after a almost violent arguing with a chairman, we ended up like this:
"I do not gather the people to dig the trenches because I do not trust anymore Mzungu (whites) who come here to help us"
"So tomorrow you will have your pipes and then you will explain your people why they are not having an aqueduct. I swear on my mom"
Of course the car brake.
And when I start to rave about donkeys, my driver told me about this car of a relative.
Saving a donkey.
Now I love to stay so many hours in a car. In Nepal I have a driver, I didn't drive yet myself, maybe because it's too crowded and messy, between cars, monkeys, cows and chariots, so I sit and think.
Hours a day to think.
About future and about past.
Missed opportunities and improbable developments.
And still I like it.
You spend more time in the car than in the bed.
doesn't matter how close is a village in kilometers, in rural areas you can also spend seven hours to make 30 km.
That actually was my record, and that day I was driving. Rainy season in Tanzania.
You can imagine that, once arrived, was too dark to do anything.
I almost cried thinking on the way back.
It's never entertaining get stock in the mud in the savanna by night.
Alone.
With a water war ongoing.
And your car, white, with a huge logo of the organisation working in water.
Fucking visibility.
And a crazy elephant in the surrounding killing people, so that they were organizing patrols to kill him.
So everybody was already armed.
But that is a border case.
For example, Tajik people are not famous to be cheerful, so in the long hours to the villages listen to so much music that I could not stand silence anymore.
In Tibet we were chatting all the time, sharing stories.
In Nepal, so far, road are quite good, so I work. Reading stuff I've never time to read.
In Haiti, everything but watching outside. Half naked people living in moldy shelters and you knew that 70% of them had AIDS and almost the totality of women were raped since after the earthquake.
The car.
When it's broken you feel lost, worst than a tragedy. All your plans become ash. you held improvised and nervous meetings with the staff in order to get the car ready yesterday and try to stick with the plans.
Once I almost deliver some pipes with donkeys, just because the day before, after a almost violent arguing with a chairman, we ended up like this:
"I do not gather the people to dig the trenches because I do not trust anymore Mzungu (whites) who come here to help us"
"So tomorrow you will have your pipes and then you will explain your people why they are not having an aqueduct. I swear on my mom"
Of course the car brake.
And when I start to rave about donkeys, my driver told me about this car of a relative.
Saving a donkey.
Now I love to stay so many hours in a car. In Nepal I have a driver, I didn't drive yet myself, maybe because it's too crowded and messy, between cars, monkeys, cows and chariots, so I sit and think.
Hours a day to think.
About future and about past.
Missed opportunities and improbable developments.
And still I like it.
 |
| limit case...but also happened. Tajikistan 2006. The car is a Niva. |
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