The thing is weird the way my thinking is going right now, it is going all over the place, odd eh?
I set out to deny something, and instead I say “yes”, it is all over the place my language.
I look at men my age (that is 82) who apparently have thoughts that are clear, and I compare myself to them, and I despair, my thoughts are so muddling and chaotic. I have real problems talking…. My talk is chaotic and problematic.
I have coffee every week with a mate, and I have real difficulty communicating with him… My talk with him is broken up, and I realise that he wont be meeting me every week soon, as he gets really impatient with my long silences. I have a creative and solid conversation with him in my mind, but not out loud which is trying and not fair to him!
Towards the end of our stay in Angola I was unlucky enough to catch malaria one day. It seems there are two types of malaria, the one that most people get, and which reoccurs at regular intervals for the rest of your life, or the other main sort, cerebral malaria, which basically kills you in about 72 hours of it kicking in.
Being me, I of course had the cerebral variety.
If you live in a malaria area, after about three months, you have to stop taking anti-malaria medicines, as they will wreck your liver apparently, so you are then dependent on insect repellant to protect yourself. And as I discovered, if you leave even a tiny part of exposed skin uncoated with this repellant, the very small and totally silent Anopheles mosquito will find it and set too to slurp up your blood, and as payment, will give you a good vein full of malaria parasites.
As chance would have it, when the malaria struck me, I was up country in Huambo, visiting and supposedly helping the Halo Trust deminers with various computer problems. As it turned out, this was extremely lucky for me, as I was in an area where malaria was horribly common, and all the local Angolan doctors knew all about it – unlike the worthy western doctors one tended to see in Luanda who habitually treated people with malaria symptoms for flu, as a colleague who was infected on the same day as I was, and who as a result of the misdiagnosis almost died and had to be evacuated to South Africa when it was belatedly realised he was on the point of dying from cerebral malaria, and not simply suffering from a bad go of flu.
The first I knew of my infection was when I developed a nasty head ache one evening, and a general feeling of illness.. Nothing very specific, but I felt lousy. So I took to my bed and thought to simply sleep it off and be better the following morning. Not to be.
As the night passed, my head ache got worse, and I had bad stomach aches and dizziness attacks… But I managed to sleep more or less. However the following morning I told the others that I would spend the day in bed, assuming that a day’s rest and lots of paracetamol would fix me up.
But as the day went on, I began to develop a serious fever and started to hallucinate, and began to feel sicker and more lousy than I had ever felt in my life. One minute I was unbelievably cold, shaking violently and totally uncontrollably, the next I was boiling hot and sweating. And all the while feeling sicker and more awful by the minute. My head was aching fit to bust, my stomach was bloated and hurt like hell, I was dizzy, so much so that there was no way I could stand up, but even lying down the world was spinning around me.
I have never felt so bad in my entire life, and it simply kept getting worse, so when I was in the cold phase of my fever, I was scared I was going to break my teeth as I was shaking so hard and my teeth were chattering so hard.
Luckily Nathanial came back to the house in the early afternoon, took one look at me, and grabbed his malaria test kit, and stuck a pin in my finger to get some blood for the test. It showed that I had malaria, so he picked me up and slung me in the landrover and off we went to the nearest hospital were in no time a large and friendly Angolan doctor saw me, he also took one look, didn’t bother with any tests but simply gave me some medicine or other which was apparently for malaria, and amazingly and miraculously, in a matter of minutes most of the symptoms had disappeared and I felt almost human again.
Once I was more or less back in the word of the living, he explained what the prognosis was if I hadn’t managed to see a doctor before another night had passed – simply put, I would have been dead.
A very sobering thought believe you me.
Anyhow, thanks to whatever the medicine was that he had given me, I didn’t die (you may be surprised to read), and he prescribed some medicine that I would have to take for the next month or so, and told me the worst possible news as well – no beer for at least a month!
Amazingly enough, by the following day I felt well enough to get back to the work I was in Huambo to carry out for the Halo Trust guys, and in due time returned to Luanda and my normal daily life in Angola… None the worse for my malaria experience. But I do have an enormous sympathy for the millions of people every year who are not as lucky as I was, and who die because of malaria. And thus I am a supporter of the Gate’s Foundation’s work in anti-malaria studies in Africa.
And of course, extremely glad that Nathaniel was there to save me as well!!!! Quite literally his prompt actions saved my life, for which I am eternally grateful to him of course.
Nationalism is rubbish, as an idea, and as a way of thinking. The idea of feeling proud of your nation is silly. The idea of being proud of your nationality is absurd too.
I wonder why they feel obliged to have a national flag flying on their property. It is silly and a waste of a flag having it fluttering above your property, unless it is the Angolan flag, which is a curious mix of a communist flag and Angolan.
The Angolan Flag… In all its glory!
The idea of nationalism is absurd, as all peoples in the world are consumed with the same ideas – earning a living, rearing their kids and enjoying life, universal ideas and needs, and being bothered about your nationalism is absurd. I have lived in a number of countries, 10 to be exact, and I am convinced that nationalism is absurd, I can’t imagine what it is based upon. Is your country better than another one? Nope, they are all the same, people trying to earn a living, rear their kids and so on.
The idea of Nationalism as it is based on nothing really apart from a mixed up idea of “My country, right or wrong”, which is really not really an idea.
“I hope that people will come to realise that there is one race – the human race – and we are all members of it” in the immortal words of Philosopher Margaret Attwood.
Chicken racing…… An attraction in Outback Australia.
About a year ago, we discovered a really odd thing in Tambo (A town in the outback which we visited). A hotel there advertised Chicken Racing, which was unusual enough, but they also added free showers to this… So we were fascinated by the free showers (Travelling around Outback Australia we were seriously attracted by the mention of Free Showers) and also by the idea of Chicken Racing and also the idea of eating there…..
What fascinated us was the idea of Chicken Racing, we were intrigued and curious about this… The idea was really strange. So we went and set up our camp (by a river as I recall) and then walked back to the hotel where it was all happening.
So, we went in to the hotel, had showers and then went down and walked through to a back yard, where a lot of people were already gathered, and we sat down by a sort of chicken run, but one that was arranged in a style reminiscent of a Roman Chariot racing circuit (but small). In due time the various chickens were introduced to us, one by one. And they were introduced to us as heroes, one by one. They were variously talked up. The various “heroes” were introduced to us. Their pedigrees were discussed and their various races were discussed at great length.
In due time the way that the races where held were discussed. It appeared that they chased a remote control truck which ran around the course and the chooks chased it.. There was food in it, which was why the chooks chased it.
In due time, the race began, after a load of preparation and bets were laid, some of the bets were amazing! Up to $400 in one case!
The chooks raced around the course, following the truck, except for one, that simply stood still and waited for the truck to come around again….
In due time a winner was declared (not the chook that waited for the truck), and the winner was declared and then the various bets were collected.
And that was it……It was a fascinating event, and finished off with a supper in the pub, which was delicious!
I am noted for the length of my beard, which is HUGE! I have never shaved (apart from once, when I shaved my beard off, on that occasion I shaved, and met my younger sister in the kitchen, and she was aghast at my appearance, thinking I was a stranger!).
I have had a beard for all my life, well from about 15 or thereabouts.
In my youth……
As my beard now……It is white now, not red…….
In a pensive mood………
So I have had a beard all my life, well, since puberty, in fact. I have never shaved, so my beard is really looooong. And messy!
I cut it, well, Lotty does that, so it isn’t horribly long, but it is full. So I wear it long, as I see no point in trimming it short. Beards are supposed to be long, not short – see the Viking’s beards – they are really long, as is mine.
I was not in Greece for a long time, as the famous “Colonels Coup” had happened, and all of the prisoners in camps all over Greece were exchanged for others as the politics changed. This coup (which was organised by the CIA) caused an exchange of prisoners, the original prisoners were changed for a bunch of people who against the “Colonels”. Which included me.
Greece suddenly became a much more fascist state, reflecting the current state of American politics, and so it was really difficult to express yourself about all manner of issues and avoid being bunged into prison. Ah well, all good things end.
For a while, Greece became impossible to visit. Or at least if you were aware of politics. The “normal” tourists still went to Greece, but politically aware ones avoided it like the plague.
After the coup had softened its grip on power, Greece once again became possible to visit, and the Greek nature showed through once again, and the political prisoners once again changed back to the ones that the “Colonels” had imprisoned life became once again possible.
In other words, all changed back to the way things had been before the infamous coup, and Greece once again became Greece!
Prince Phillip was born in Corfu, in the most unlikely named place, which was in Corfu town, It was called Mon Repos. Yes, really it was! So in fact, he was a Greek and not British. Just felt like saying that…. Not any reason, merely I felt like saying that.
When Greece was anti-British, as Britain was being horrid about Cypress and looked like Greece was about to go to war with Britain over Cypress, I found myself in Greece, to my horror, and I was really nervous about admitting that I was British. And a Greek said a most remarkable thing to me, when I did admit that I was British. He said, or words to that effect, “Their argument was with the British Government, not the British people, and that therefore I was OK”. I was overwhelmed by this……..
As I said in another post the other day, I used to see the women carrying water to the cafe on the beach at Glyfada, when I was on the beach there. These women used to carry water on their heads, not simply a bit of water, but about 50 litres! They used to carry this on their heads as they walked down the hill (the village they lived in was above the beach at Glyfada). Can you imagine the strength of these women, water weighed 50 kilos, and they walked down the hill with it! Amazing!
Lots of years ago, I spent a lot of time in Greece, wandering around, and learning how the Greeks did things, and how they lived. This was in the 60’s of the last century….. Long before everyone went to Greece!
A lot of time was spent hitching around Greece. One of my favourite things was the concept of Xenia, not as hatred of foreigners, but of welcoming them to their lives.
The concept of Xenia was to welcome foreigners (which meant anyone from a different place, not foreigners necessarily), but anyone from elsewhere – but not the neighboring villages, they felt about them as anyone in the world did….
That was different to our meaning of that word, which is xenophobia, which means hatred of foreigners, they welcomed them….
In the north of Greece, when I went into a village, everyone ran out the other side of the village, as I looked like a bandit (I had long hair and a beard, which only bandits wore in that time), so I simply sat down in a cafe and waited. The civil war was very fresh in everyone’s memories.
In due time the village priest came back, as he was untouchable for bandits, and sat beside me, to find out who I was. Once he discovered that I was a foreigner, he signaled the rest of the village, and they all came back – well, the men came back, not the women. I never saw any women at all.
I was then welcomed in the entire village houses…. All of them! Each night I had to stay in another house – and I never saw a woman! As payment, I brought the kids presents, as they would accept no other payment, as being paid went against the concept of Xenia. But I couldn’t take endlessly and felt that I should pay for things, as they were poor, poor, and – relatively, I was rich.
This soon stopped as Hippies abused this concept, and made use of it, and now, if you go to Greece, you will search for Xenia all over the place, but you won’t find it, sadly.
One of the other things I found with hitching around Greece was that I was given rides in the most extraordinary vehicles….. Given lifts on a donkey was not rare. I sat upon the donkey’s back and found myself in endless villages, and in army trucks was not a rare thing. I really enjoyed myself in Greece, and loved the Greeks, particularly the country ones.
So far I have lived a thoroughly good life! In all respects.
I have reached the age of about 81 without any major problems, and lived a good life generally – not many disappointments along the way, and generally it has been a really great life. I have been in a lot of countries and been busy doing all manner of great things, which I have enjoyed.
Me and my mother in Port Said
I went to Australia soon after the war, and loved it! I also loved the journey out there, as I did on all the various sea journeys that I undertook, well, it was passive as far as I was concerned, but I enjoyed them all. Both the huge journeys and the small ones… I also loved seeing the various places I went to…. The Suez Canal, and the camel that spat on me when I was attempting to come ashore in Aden, Columbo was enchanting as was Singapore (I lived there for about a year later), and Australia was a dream come true!
I learnt to swim in the middle of the Pacific Ocean…. In the boat I was on, the Orcades, it was called. I used to go down to the engine room in that boat, and all the others I travelled on in my various journeys around the world. With the exception of the Dutch one, called the William Reus, in which I travelled from Singapore to Germany, in which we were not permitted to go anywhere apart from our section of the ship.
Arrival in Germany made a HUGE impression on me, it was in about 1952, and we arrived in Hambourg, and saw for ourselves all the damage that had been done on the working class area of the city (not the middle class sections of the city, that was unharmed), the masts sticking out of the water and the damage that had been done on the harbour…… It was an eye-opener to be honest!
England was also a mess…. The war damage was amazing to see. Bombed houses all over the place. I saw it from a new perspective, as I hadn’t seen much of such things in my life.
All in all, it has been a very enjoyable life so far, and I will write about it again, as I was involved in all manner of things in my life…..
While living in Singapore, (I was about 10) I found myself in hospital with a Chinese resistance fighter, who had been condemned to death by the British government, and who was, apparently, in a really bad way of health, and so the British government felt that he was too ill to be executed!
He was in hospital to get him into good health and then the British would take him out and hang him!
As I spoke Chinese (I went to a Chinese school – that will be a subject of another post https://ozthoughtsblog.com/2016/02/03/more-colonial-life-singapore-again/) and his guard was a Sikh who didn’t speak a word of Chinese, so I found out what was planned for him and it has made a real impression on my ever since as a heartless example of how governments work.
He explained how the British had promised a bunch of Chinese to stay in the jungle as they were losing it to the Japanese and when the British came back (!) they would pay them handsomely to continue the struggle on their behalf.
So in due time, when the fortunes of war went around and the British came back to Malaysia, the Chinese came out of the jungle and went to the British to be paid……
But the British had no intention of paying them, and kept putting them off with all manner of excuses. So in the end, the Chinese simply went back into the jungle, and took up arms against the British Planters instead of the Japanese.
The Chinese Communists were not involved in the beginning, but quite quickly became involved, as part of their struggle against the British elsewhere.
It was a real introduction to the way governments work for me.
OZTHOUGHTS 