This one in English. In the first place, because of whom it is aimed for. Also, because of whom inspired it. Finally, because I will translate it anyway.
There is this feeling though, I will not be able to transmit the message as well as I would in my mother language. But then, I remind myself… I could not transmit this one particular message in any language. No words can do that. Only (and maybe) a lifetime of caresses and melting kisses. Just one meaningful look into her eyes, could give an idea of how deep I want her to look into me. Of how far I want her to go with me. Again, I can only try.
Of course, the details. We shall move back to my volunteering experience in January. I booked a trip to Masai Mara during my stay in Kenya, to see some wildlife. It was January the 24th, when Charles came by my sleeping bag and woke me up at 04:00. ‘Hurry’, he said to me and Jisu, ‘the taxi to Migori will arrive any second. You must get ready.’ Me and Jisu were the only ones that had booked that trip. It meant some extra money to be spent, but there I was, watching that opportunity come and knock on my door. I had to take it :P. It was still dark when we set off in an old Toyota Corolla. ChaCha was also accompanying us. He had to go back to his studies in the city. Problems would arise soon enough, as the car was losing fuel. We stopped and waited for the driver to swap cars with some other he had, so that we did not get stuck on the way. After maybe half an hour of waiting, there we were again, flying across the country roads of Kenya.
We had to catch a bus to Narok in Migori. We were late, so Charles told us to wait for the 9:00 bus, because it would be safer for us than picking a matatu. The bus actually provided a seat for our own, which was very much appreciated. Top notch Kenya travelling, I even got to sleep in that rusty, noisy, old bus.
We finally reached Narok, where the safari guide would be waiting for us. Anthony was a bit annoyed because we were late, and the rest of the group had been waiting for us. We still had to grab something to eat and set off South to the Masai Mara reservation. We took the offroad kind of matatu after saying good bye to ChaCha. It was not four wheel drive, but at least it had a limited slip differential, which would help in some situations later, hehe. We headed north first, to go pick up the rest of the group and eat something.
The following is a scene I first did not acknowledge how important would be. I would later rescue it from my memory, to store it forever. And so I am doing. I see myself now looking around in a pile of old, broken stuff. Bricks, wood, burnt clothes, pictures. And there I spot, below a gray sky after a massive fire, a picture. It is a bit rugged and scratched. It even lacks some parts. I take the remains and hold it close to my heart before storing it forever. Let me try to describe that picture…
I entered the restaurant half running, and went straight to the food, all the way in. I turned to say hi to who I thought, would be the rest of the group coming with us to Masai Mara. There were five people, which I later would meet as Roy, Sinja, David, Anis and Sharon. They had already eaten, and were staring at us while we passed by. Sinja turned around while I was eating, to introduce herself and start some conversation. I tried to keep up while eating as fast as possible, now and then looking to the others. Sharon was there, sitting sideways with her arm in the chair’s back rest. She was wearing this light brown trousers, with a pair of sport shoes. She also wore a very light pink t-shirt. I remember the eye contact. She was looking kind of curious towards me. She had dark hair and dark eyes, contrasting with a white skin. She was asian (Chinese, as I would find out later). I barely remember now, her pose was suggesting me a way too relaxed attitude. I thought it was mysterious in a way, not common of asians to have that.
I would find out more about her later on, when we arrived in the campsite. I was caressing a puppy there, when she approached me and asked ‘What was your name again?’, ‘Gerard’, I answered, and went on: ‘You are Sharon, right? From New Zealand?’, ‘No, I am from China, but I live in UK, Gloucester.’. Yeah, I was told by Sinja the volunteering organization they were coming for was from New Zealand, so I made the wrong association. She had this really unmistakable British accent. I told her about Catalonia, and why I did not feel Spanish at all. Being a Catalan nationalist always rises curiosity everywhere I go, and I feel really proud and always willing to explain about it.
Of course it all seems a bit too centered in her now, but it is her who will make me remember this journey forever. By then however, I had a lot of walls set in front of me. I had been hurt before. My interest at the time was driven by attraction. And curiosity. And, I guess, instinct. Fate did the rest.
That day we went for a short evening tour into the Masai Mara reservation. A little taste of what was expecting us the day after. Lots of wildlife, landscapes. Earth at her best, it is sad though, to think animals have become completely used to the offroad vans around them, so that human beings can be amused. That night we had an excellent meal compared to what I was eating at the work camp. Lots of chapati, sausages (yeah, meat!!) vegetables… The quality may not be the best to an occidental, but it had, at least, variety. During the meals I tried to sit close to Sharon and Roy. I would find out about their lives, their jobs, etc. It was great to share our lives in words, there, where all of us were just people staring at wildlife. It felt as if we had completely let our lives behind forever, and were just reminding and laughing at how dumb we had been. Our personal stuff felt so small there.
The tent was also five stars compared to what I had been sleeping on lately (pure concrete). It had beds (beds!!) and a shower with hot water at certain periods of the day, and flush toilet! We even got Wi-Fi. Anyway, it was time to rest after a long journey that day, but the setting was promising, and so was the company. The day after a whole day trip to Masai Mara was waiting for us.
Sometimes I wish relationships were like material objects. I wish we could see them about to break and stop it. I wish we could store and believe in them as if they were just small common objects. I wish we could protect them when needed, and see, feel, touch them when faith would scarce. I guess, in this material world, this kind of material relationships could last forever.
There we were, the day after, looking bright after a nice shower and a great breakfast. I even had milk. We would spend the day in the van, flying low in that never-ending of landscapes. With every horizon we reached, new species appeared to be shot with our cameras like the tourists we were there. No matter how much you want to distinguish yourself as being a traveller. There, in Masai Mara, every fucking human being is a tourist. We even got to see how a mother cheetah was teaching her son how to hunt. To that end, they had captured a young gazelle, about the size of the young feline. He kept chasing playfully the unaware gazelle, as if it was just a kid’s game. Little did the gazelle know that, when the mother decided that the lesson was over, she would come and break her neck, emitting a rumble that would make us get goose bumps. As cruel as it gets, a taste of real mother nature. We were, in fact, really lucky to witness such an event. As always, animals could teach a lot of lessons to humans, for starters the acknowledgement that death comes, someday. Any day.
We had some more conversation with Sharon during lunch time, under a tree. A picnic in the Savannah was the setting. She asked about my journey, to which I answered I had few things planned, but I would set off on February 2015 and wanted to go wandering around the world. That was my next stop. Little did I know how things (or, at least, some of them) were about to change. Anthony took us for some more sightseeing through Masai Mara. I remember feeling like in a movie. In the middle of those documentaries. I remember telling myself: ‘So this place really exists, the lions, giraffes, elephants, rhinos, cheetah’s, etc, are not just fantasies in TV’. It is a bit stupid to think that, maybe. However, I am pretty sure most people have only seen those animals in a zoo. That was raw mother nature, the real thing. There I was, in the middle of thousands of square miles with nothing but low grass and some randomly spread trees, providing shadow to the proud lions, to which I could make eye contact with. Quite sad to think, not so long ago, the earth was all like this. How harsh it is, the last plague on land, human beings. They will exterminate even themselves. And yet wildlife will continue, and they will go ‘Those stupid men, they never learned the lesson… Always trying to get away from nature, instead of trying to be part of it’. Lots of thoughts, as always. And a great picture I took. At the same time I started to wonder about the mysterious Sharon. I felt deeply interested in her. Let’s damn face it… I felt attracted by her. I would now say it was intuition, knocking at my door, raising my curiosity.
We went back to the campsite not too late, as a visit to the Maasai village was awaiting us. We walked with one of them, who had come to take us there. The village was a few minutes walking. Once there, we were asked for a ‘fee’ to be able to see the village. It was not very nice of them to make us walk before telling us about the price… But anyway, there we were, in one of the last genuinely (although, of course, a bit too much monetized by tourism) wild shape of civilization. I could not say no. I cannot understand quite much why most of us got back to the campsite, because they would not want to pay for the visit. I think it was about 20 euros after some bargaining, something I found, Maasai people are quite used to do. Sharon, Roy and me stayed there and were showed the whole village, the way they built the houses, how they were in the inside, how did they manage to make fire with a stick of wood… And of course, at the end, we were flooded by a horde of ladies offering hand made goods for us to buy. I managed to bargain a Maasai blanket and some wristlaces for Sharon. I even got to dance with the Maasai people. I think I will definitely regret publishing this here, but anyway, here it goes:
You can see my face like ‘WTF am I doing here?’ when I see the first two of them jumping… But yeah, how many people can say they jumped with the Maasai? In thirty years, I am afraid it will not be possible…
During dinner, she told me her camera had run out of memory, and so I offered to store the pictures in my laptop and send them afterwards to her. We stayed in the dining room until we were the last ones, and as we were chatting I made a bold move and asked about her life. At first I was completely intimidated by the troubled past she told me about. We were caressing a puppy that lied on my lap, tenderly sleeping. We stared at the puppy as we talked. Correction: she was staring at the puppy while I watched her. As if it was easier for her to tell me about all those stories if we did not make eye contact. At some point our hands were shyly and randomly making contact. I remember now, the fire inside me at that point. I was, at every word she spoke, feeling more intimidated and attracted to her. I did not have the less troubled past, either. I felt something. I suddenly felt something. I cannot even after so long, explain. I just saw myself in her. As we were thrown out of the dining room by the lights going off, I suggested to go by the guard’s bonfire to have some more conversation.
There we were, in the middle of the night, joking about hyenas, flying from past to future, telling each other our story, and how that changed us over time. And we pictured our ideal future. Have you ever had that feeling of completely matching? I am not talking about plans or desires or hobbies. I am trapped in that night because of what our hearts shared. We were talking about simple stuff, there, with a million stars from the unpolluted sky in Maasai Mara as witnesses. With a bonfire that was heating both our bodies and our hearts. With an electric storm going on between our hands every time they touched, sending electricity to our hearts and making them speed up. They were, at the time, racing from the past towards the future. We were getting away from the world. We escaped time and reality, and the setting just gave all the situation a fateful feeling. As if it was written somewhere, in god’s planet, millions of light-years away from us, a long time ago. Some being had been whimsically writing about that situation. And this being was so good of a writer that he managed to hide so many unsaid things in a conversation. He put all the ingredients, loaded the dice, and everything was set for us to just meet and play the script. We stayed up long after everyone had gone to sleep. I think it was about half past three when we finally went to bed. I walked her to her tent. I remember she grabbed my arm. I did not want that night to end. I did not want that walk to end, but it did, in an endless hug. In a ‘so many things I am feeling inside, I do not know how to explain’ kind of hug. Yes, we ended at high. And I will always remember.
Only memories are left now. They are always there to torture me. To make me ask questions endlessly. Like an open wound, hurting with every heartbeat from the moment I wake up, and chasing me to bed.
Next morning I was devastated. My mind was trapped in the night before. I went to sit by the bonfire, only ashes left. Headphones on, I needed some music to conduct my thoughts. But there I was, staring hypnotized at what was left of the bonfire. Yes, that had gone out, but my memory was still burning. Sharon -or Zeyuan, her beautiful Chinese name- eventually came out of her tent, and went to the dining room. I did the same shortly after. That morning there was a strange feeling in the air. As if doubting whether it was only a dream. I remember asking myself then, if it had meant the same to her it had to me. I was devastated also because that was the last day in the campsite. I was heading to Nakuru, while she was going back to Nairobi, to the work camp where she was staying. Again, the world was at my shoulders, both too big and too small at the same time. We went for our last tour into Masai Mara, at sunrise. The views were amazing, and wildlife was more active at that time. But my eyes were always looking at that front seat. Wondering if she was going through the same as me. All the walls I had set in front of me were falling apart.
That was it, we set back to the campsite, to load our luggage on to the van, and we were ready to set off. We stopped in Narok, to have something for lunch. I remember feeling so weird then. Like there was an elephant in the middle of the room each time I made eye contact with her. A couple of times we looked at each other, and said nothing. There was a one thousand kilograms stone on my heart. There, in the backside of the restaurant in Narok. Watching something I cannot remember. And there she appears, on top of the stairs. I look at her, she is watching me. Thousands of words are stopped from coming out by this lump in my throat. This mixture of feelings I had inside me, could not longer fit in, and I felt about to explode. I had to let that out, but I guess, I know, I was a coward at the time. We took the van again to continue our way further north. I was retaining so much inside me I could not stand it anymore. I did not feel like speaking, because just to open my mouth would mean the risk spitting all the fire inside. This is why, I think now, I could not say more than a word or two when I said goodbye to her in a hug… Roy and Zeyuan disappeared in another van, heading to Nairobi. David had been dropped off on the way. Gishoo left in Narok, as he was not coming to Nakuru either. Only Sinja, Anis and me were left.
I could not resist anymore my body’s urge for crying. And I cried. I felt so stupid. There I lied, with all the self-confidence I had gathered during the last months, escaping me in the shape of tears. Sinja noticed, and she turned around to give some conversation, in an attempt to distract me. But I just could not help it. I just felt like no one. I felt like nothing. I put my headphones on the first chance I got, and lost myself in any music that could treat the pain. I knew exactly which song I wanted to hear, our song. You know which one.
Everything rushed after that. Late conversations, lots of more songs, the feeling of missing. Guilt, then relief. A flight ticket. A dream that keeps chasing me every night. Then love. And then, suddenly, we were out of songs…
You left me without any song. Since you, I have not been able to share any music with anyone. You are just in every one of them. All the sweet music I gathered over time, I gave it to you. And so it is now, I am left with no strength to gather any new songs. I just keep picturing you, us, when listening to them. You are a long gone dream eclipsing any other I might try to find. Deep inside I still hear a tiny voice telling me ‘It’s gonna be alright…’. I sometimes find peace… When I listen to that song, that first promise I made. And hope, by chasing fate, it will do the rest.