“oh, this bloody solo journey is giving me the shits right now.”

An excerpt from an email of mine, to a girlfriend living in Sydney. It’s true. While it is a blessing and an adventure (living life on the road from the contents of a suitcase), trying to maintain the façade of being a “together”, 30-something, career-focussed individual is like a day at the circus - Hollywood B-grade film style. And I, fail at all three…

It started at Lynda’s house – over seven months ago. Or, to be more accurate it probably started a little over 3 years ago, on the advice of a friend ("...stick a spare pair of knickers in your bag in-case you don’t feel like going home"). Or, if I am to be totally honest, having begun to reflect, it has to have been inherited. Passed on in the genes. Sometime around 1920, Alesandre – Sandre for short – along with his cousin/close friend, having walked from a small village near Bitola to the port in Marseille, boarded a boat bound for America and wound up in the industrial working-class steel-producing city of Newcastle, Australia. One generation later, his tomboyish daughter departs suburban Canberra for the wild jungles, untouched wilderness, remote islands and everything in between, only to wind back up in that same city eight or so years later. Skip another generation and, trying to right the wrongs (or so she believes them to be) of an unnecessary return to a so-called capital, the daughter of the tomboy traveller plans to head for Berlin. Only, her mother beats her to it. And just when the daughter decides to unpack the suitcase for a short time, her mother announces immanent departure to middle Africa somewhere, asking aforementioned daughter’s advice.

Unfortunately holding up the façade has occupied all of the daughter’s limbs and probably there is something clasped between her teeth too (you never have enough hands – particularly when travelling) preventing anything coherent to be uttered. Maybe that’s fortunate. The romantic notion of backpacking through Africa (note: southern hemisphere warmth) clashes with the basic day-to-day survival chant of “must find money”. And repeating this ad nauseum isn’t very fucking romantic is it?

I wonder if their journeys gave them the shits?


TO BE CONTINUED…