Living in about 10 countries – as I have – makes one really immune to Nationalism, which is how I like it.
So far I have lived in the following countries:-
England,
Australia,
Tasmania,
England (again),
Singapore,
England (again),
Holland,
France,
Angola,
China,
The Philippines
Malaysia,
Australia (again),
And that is all…..
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!
I despair!
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.
My life is going upside down, as I live life here. My life in Australia is going upside down and frazzled while I watch. I am currently deep inside a language loss, which is really bothersome. My inner language is not effected, but the language I use everyday to talk to others is really deeply effected. I frequently find myself suffering from a language loss when talking to others.
Yesterday, I was at the library for a rather easy to solve problem (I was there to get my ereader sorted out), and I found myself completely speechless when I attempted to explain why I was there to the bloke from the library, I simply was at a loss for words when I tried to explain why I was there. Totally! I find myself at a loss for words frequently, even with my wife!
A lot of time I find myself giving the wrong answer to a question, I say no when I mean yes…. It is horrid!
I find myself in conversations with good friends, which go completely the wrong way, I want to say, ‘yes’, but I say ‘no……’
Also, I am having problems with spelling, I cant find words, which I know really well, I simply can’t find them, and I more or less forget ideas. The other day I was telling a friend about the Spooky Men’s Chorale, and could I remember what they were called…. Forget it!
All sorts of problems are happening to me, and I seem to be going gaga rather rapidly, which is really distressing!
However, it is absolutely my spoken language, my thoughts are still the same as always, in other words, I have no difficulty “thinking” thoughts, but expressing them is hell.
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.
We spent the last weekend, well, actually four days, in a splendid camp with a bunch of our friends. This camp site was a Hipcamp, which is a member of the organisation of Hipcamp (https://www.hipcamp.com/en-AU). We went there with a bunch of friends from our walking group, well actually all of them came to this campsite, so we were there with all our friends!We
This was the place and our vehicles are all over the place….
We had great fun here….. And we really enjoyed ourselves totally.
Our pooch, Gizmo, who always accompanied us in all our various camping exhibitions…. Plus the kitchen.
Local wildlife…. A Goana, this one was about 1 meter long…. This was the second Goana we saw.
We made a sort of rough Tent to protect us from the vicious sun!
We needed 4 wheel drive vehicles to get to the camp site, it was a really rough track.
So all in all, we had a REALLY good time there, all with our 4 wheel drive vehicles, in order to get to the camp site. We had an all wheel drive X-Trail – but we also have a Suzuki Vitara – As one does! But that is Lotty’s car, and it is really rough, so we don’t use it on these trips.
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!
Corfu is an island to the east of Greece, just where Greece joins Albania, where I spent some time. Well, actually rather a lot of time, I tended to rest there after having hitched from England, and it was the first bit of “Greece” I experienced
Corfu……. Near Albania.
I used to camp on a beach on the eastern side of the island, where I had all sorts of experiences, including the first time I smoked Marijuana! The last time I went to Corfu was a real disappointment as that beach I used to camp on, was full of Hotels and snack-bars and the village on top of the hill (where I used to watch the women carting the water to the one cafe which was on the beach. On their heads!) was full of tourists.
This beach was called Glyfada, by the way.
All manner of experiences happened to me, on that beach, apart from smoking my first joint, I was scared rigidly on one occasion as we experienced a thunder storm there, which came onto the beach we were sleeping on… Lightning was hitting the beach…. This was a first for me, lightning was landing about 20 meters from me!!!!!! Which was terrifying! We didn’t know where to go, as lightning was hitting the beach all over!
More about my time on Corfu later……….
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.
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…..
OZTHOUGHTS 