"You must begin by knowing that you have already arrived ..."

When I was a child, my father would raise me on his shoulders as we would walk, and fill my head with stories of adventure and friendship. The stories revolved around two characters, a seagull and a doll I owned called First Love. While the house was empty, the seagull would come to call on First Love, she would climb on his back and off they would go on their great adventures to far flung corners of the world. Of course, when I would return home, I would go to check on First Love to see if I could catch sight of a sign of life or movement in her, but, ultimately, she was unyielding, laying in the same spot where she had been abandoned when we last played. Nonetheless, the magic of these stories would fill my head and the dreaming began.

As I grew older, Dad continued to build on his 'reach further, fly higher lessons' with simple lectures while we drove around the countryside in our old car. "Why be a nurse when you can be a doctor? Why be an air stewardess when you can be the pilot?" During one of these conversations my younger brother, not much more than 9 at the time, piped up with "Yeah! Why be the jockey when you can be the horse?" I remember us laughing till we cried, but you know, regardless of how funny the analogy sounded, the message remained the same. If you can think it, you can do it!

Until my mid-twenties, I believed that my father had created the character of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Imagine my surprise when he said my idea to put the stories to paper might be a copyright infringement. Shortly thereafter, and by pure coincidence (if you believe in coincidence that is), a fleeting acquaintance handed me that understated little book by Richard Bach. It's message was simple yet powerful, and one that had been informing my philosophy on life long before I ever turned the pages in the book itself.

Over the years the paths I've taken and the choices I've made have ultimately led me to becoming a kind of outcast in my own right, the black sheep. I am no-one special, I'm just a dreamer. In the process of following one dream, I discover another and follow it. I think people just don't get that sometimes. Why don't you settle? What about a family? What about your career? Why do you keep taking yourself further and further away from home? How can you build a life like that?

When the mountaineer, George Leigh Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he answered simply "Because it’s there!" Jonathan gave a similar response to his mother, when in the book, she asks him why he cannot be like the rest of the flock, why he was so obsessive about testing his flight abilities.

"I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know
what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just
want to know."

I may never be a doctor or a pilot but then, those are not my dreams. My dreams are much simpler than that. I want to see, I just want to experience and see. This summer, after some 10 years of dreaming, I finally found myself in Outer Mongolia. I rode a horse, I fired a bow, I lived in a Ger, I met many wonderful people and, while my pockets may be empty, I feel full. Another level has been reached in my understanding of how things work and of what I can do, and a new dream uncovered in the process.

My brother hit the nail on the head when he was 9. Why be the jockey when you can be the horse, riderless, unfettered and free. It's not the easiest of choices to make. Nothing about climbing mountains is easy. Your legs can let you down, you can stumble and fall along the way, altitude sickness can ruffle the feathers a little, but if you follow Chiang's advice to Jonathan and begin like you have already arrived, it can be conquered. There are no limits. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing more beautiful in this world than silently brushing off your bloody knees and enjoying that view from the top when you finally reach it.

A Very Good Brain ... Or Just Another Lost Soul?

For some time now, the subject of my head, or the apparent ever decreasing contents of it, has been a cause of obsession for me. Over the last few years, I have become increasingly frustrated by the continued disintegration of my memory and command of the English language. It has been the cause of some considerable frustration, worry and embarrassment, which has ultimately led to my seeking medical advice.

While I knew I was too young to be seriously in danger of having some kind of degenerative disease, I simply couldn’t fathom what else could be the cause of my struggling to find basic words in conversation, remembering peoples names, remembering how to do things and explain it, even struggling over basic pattern driven games or a simple general knowledge quiz. It irritated me. I used to be good at this stuff, really good. The competitive side of me, that somewhat over proud and stubborn aspect of myself, was not impressed.

So now, here I lie inside the tight, pulsating tunnel of an MRI machine, eyes tightly shut so that I don’t have to deal with the claustrophobia of it all. With the sound of the giant scanner pulsating in my plugged ears, I can’t help wondering how I got here.

***********************************************

I arrived in Dubai a little under three years ago, a broken heart on the run. I had spent the previous few months between Switzerland and the Czech Republic trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered 6 year relationship. When things fell apart in my home country I ran. At the time I justified it as finally doing what I had always wanted to do, but the reality was that I just couldn’t deal with my broken life face to face. So, I walked out on my home, my family and and some 7 odd years of an archaeological career, got on a plane and refused to look back.

After a few months in Europe licking my wounds, and as a result of a cold call from a teaching institution in the Middle East, I decided to run a little further. I was one of a large number of Irish, British & Americans recruited by an international school to work as English teachers. My shared accommodation was reasonably comfortable and well contained behind a large curtain wall that surrounds the entire school complex, which itself sits in the middle of the industrial area of a city about an hour and a half in the nearest traffic jam from Dubai.

My arrival in the UAE, while not my first experience of an Arabic country, was somewhat of a cultural slap in the face. Far from being a conservative pinion of all things Islamic, sky high steel girders, pyres of glass and spinners on Hum Vs bounced the sun’s rays off each other like ping-pong balls, lighting up a city which had it’s very capitalist eyes set on the west. Long legs and pumped up breasts glided through the malls, their diamond encrusted fingers clutching Gucci & Armani embossed shopping bags, the flickering fabric of their black abayas always leaving a waft of sandlewood behind them. That smell seemed to be the only authentic thing about the place sometimes.

My original plan when coming here was to use the bulk of my modest tax free salary to pay off a not inconsiderable debt that had been carried over from my failed relationship. It was sound at the time. I estimated 12 months would do it. Unfortunately, as I began to become overwhelmed by the place, things changed very quickly and my landscape of plans began to fade.

My life back home was one that was comfortably spent outdoors, sleeping in tents, playing in dirt, loving the fresh summer air or the cold winter rain in equal measure. Day by day, my time behind the school walls in dusty Sharjah started to bring me down. I soon found myself seeking the familiar to try and abate the sadness. That ‘familiar‘ became an involvement in the expat drinking culture of Dubai.

Alcohol is illegal in Sharjah, and, generally, one needs a license to purchase off-sales everywhere else in the country. However, as with all illegal substances, where there is a will, there is a blind eye. Ten minutes from the school, across the border into the next Emirate are a number of ‘Offies‘, where one can purchase as much as the car can carry for next to nothing. It’s interesting how many ‘dish-dashes’ you will see in joints like this. Monthly, the fridges and cupboards were filled with cases of beer, and bottles upon bottles of spirits. This was just for the tight weeks, when the money would run a little low. When the pockets were full, it was a taxi straight to Dubai as soon as the last school bell rang on a Thursday, for liquid obliteration at the nearest ‘All You Can Eat & Drink’ emporium.

I remember my first Friday (Muslim Holy day) well. The Waxy’s brunch, then a mere pittance which translated at that time to approximately 10 Euros, involved 5 drinks of your choice for 50 AED. By 7pm I was onto my second batch of tokens, beaming from ear to ear and loving the fact that the whole night was still ahead of me. Every Friday that followed that one however, seems to be a blurry mash of declining self-awareness and dignity.

It’s funny how you seem to find yourself mixing in like-minded company in situations like this. Not everybody is lost but many are. Everything is lived on the surface, the lives are 2 D, thoughts are finite, hopes are never really discussed with any seriousness, and if they are, they are always somewhere off in the distant future. You know that there is a story there somewhere, festering beneath the surface, an abused emotion of some kind which has caused them to leave their original pack, become an itinerant, and loose themselves in an endless party. I called it The Lost Soul Syndrome. I remember naming it a number of years ago with a friend of mine in Amsterdam where, as spectators, we watched the very same phenomenon from the sidelines. Diasporic, young Irish people on the run, filling their conscious hours with constructed highs in unconscious avoidance of the fact that they were actually running on the spot. No reason, and no destination. I pitied them then, little did I know that I would become them.

At the time I told myself that I was entitled to party, after all I’d been through so much hadn’t I? I would spend more than I should on transitory things and justify it with the thought that I could always make up for it by saving a little more next month. The job was mindnumbing, not at all like working in a real school, a prescribed system that the director of the whole organization philosophically preached could be presented by trained monkeys. Like a good little primate, I did my eight to four job in my sleep and took my paycheck at the end of the month, quickly exchanging it for liquid sustenance and transitory material pleasures. It was all about immediate fixes, and as time progressed I never really got around to saving a little bit extra that next month.

Now here I am, three years later still owing money and a credit card to boot, signing up for my fourth year in the zoo to do something I don’t care about. I’m lying in the middle of a contained magnetic field because I’m obsessing about the fact that my brain doesn’t seem to be working.

IDIOT!!!

***********************************************

There’s a guy in a white coat tapping me on my shoulder. He seems like a sensitive, intelligent man. Time to get dressed. Sitting at his screen he points out the various images and explains how the scans work. “It worked well. Hopefully we will have a report ready by Tuesday,” he says in his Indian infused lilt. I thank him and turn to walk away. “But I can tell you now,” I hear him call after me, "you have a very good brain!" I smile, and almost without thinking say, “Yes, yes I do!”

* * *

I never rang on Tuesday to find out the results, instead I sat down and started writing.

Remembering The Bus Journey

We arrived into Cambodia at lunchtime via Phnom Penh airport, from Vientiane in Laos. Time was tight, but we were anxious to get to Sisowith Quay to see if it were possible to catch a bus straight to Siem Reap. All indications were that we were chasing rainbows, but luck presented us with a wonderful Tuk Tuk driver who pumped his lawnmower engine to the max and tout de suite, took us to our destination.

Of course, as any guide or forum entry will tell you, our planned route was such a popular one that it was necessary to book seats in advance. All the tourist buses were full to the brim. Nonetheless, our tireless driver went from point to point around the Sisowith area to try to find us some seats. Ultimately, a spot was found for us on a local bus. While we knew it would probably take us anything up to 7 hours on one of these things, we were simply relieved to be on our way. We gratefully thanked our driver with an extra few dollars, worth it for the smile alone, and got on board leaving him with our names and regards.

Surprisingly, the bus journey was smooth and much quicker than anticipated. The vehicle itself was half empty, unlike the tourist versions that we had been trying to board. The leather seats were pockmarked and the faux Victorian-like fringed curtains faintly musty, but, ignoring the local persistently staring at us from behind his surgical mask, the passage was still surprisingly comfortable. The Cambodian countryside was a picture of quiet simplicity, peppered with farming fields and stilted houses under which families gathered to eat and socialize. After a while, it began to pass us by in a bit of a haze, as our heavy eyes fell from the exhaustion of our earlier journey.

We paused at a couple of road stops along the way where I was amused by Una and Ruth's horror at the boiled, upturned, kumquat decorated turtles, and locals chowing down on deep fried crickets. The toothless old guy sitting in front of us seemed to be enjoying the bugs as he turned around to gives us grin while sucking in and gumming down on a grasshopper leg.

People got on, people got off, fruit sellers advertised their wares and small children tried to get a dollar out of you for the pleasure of using the squatter, everything on sale was four times what the local beside you was paying for the same thing, but then that's capitalism for you.

Back on the bus I watched the world go by and its colour change as the day moved on. Motorbikes are the main mode of transport here and minute by minute they passed us by carrying saffron wrapped monks or complete families. Every house had a squared sump pond, some full, some dry, and in most cases a cow and some foul. Flowers decorated each garden, and every 400 yards or so was a blue banner advertising the Peoples Communist Party.

After 5 hours of counting the dates above the doors of the stilted houses, we arrived in Siem Reap, just as dusk was settling in across the sky. The bus meandered its way up and down the red dust roads of the town which was much bigger than I expected, eventually pulling into a gated depot of sorts.
The gates were closed behind the bus while we got off and reclaimed our bags. When they were opened however, a sea of Tuk Tuk drivers swelled in on top of us, each trying to take out bags and insisting we go with them. Like a ray of sanity within the madness, miraculously, a kindly looking man appeared out of the cloud holding a sign with my name on it.


What a clever chap our Phnom Penh driver was. As soon as we had pulled off in the bus, he texted his buddy in Siem Reap with the bus number and our names. Believe me, right then and there, surrounded by a herd of over-eager and over-heated Tuk Tukkers, our new friend, Kosal, was welcome. The familiarity may have been fake, but it quickly freed us from a very surreal moment.

Happily, Kosal did not have any interest in trying to sell us a particular guest house. On the night we arrived, the town was particularly busy, but he patiently drove us around to more than a few different places of our choosing to try to find a bed. Eventually, we found a spot about 10 minutes walk from Bar Street, comfortable and clean, where we threw ourselves into a much overdue shower.

Kosal ended up becoming our guide and driver for the next 3 days we were there, and a fantastically patient one he was at that.

An Age Old Question

I teach 99 kids English and History every day because their parents pay me to. These kids live privileged lives. And yet, their little faces light up because I simply stroke their hair or give them a lollypop.

My third graders keep asking me if I am married. When I say no they ask, ‘but how old are you miss?” and, “but why did your father not find you a husband?” Any answer will only confuse so I just smile and say, “Never mind that, let me tell you all about the time I climbed the Pyramids.” It works for a little while but then, before long they get distracted by their previous questions and ask again.

One day they asked if I had any children …………. of course my response was “Yes, I have 99″.
The look of shock and the intake of breath in the room made me laugh so much I had to put the text book up to my face. One little boy with a great look of concern in his face said, “Miss, 99 children, how is it that you are still alive?”

*********

These past few weeks I have been teaching them about Ancient Egypt. They, much like I did many years ago, have been soaking it all up like excited little sponges. The mere mention of pyramids and Tutankhamen has had them bouncing in their chairs like it was Christmas (though that may be a bad analogy considering their religious persuasion!).
Anyway, they have a tendency to get a little boisterous sometimes during these classes so I have to bring them back down to earth somehow. I usually manage this by telling them some juicy story about my work as an archaeologist or my travels around Egypt.

We happened to be learning about the pharaohs and the subject of Tutankhamen’s tomb….

‘Let me tell you something cool.’

They hushed up immediately.

‘You know’, I said as I held my hand close up to my face, ‘I stood this close to Tutankhamen’s death mask!’

The room echoed with a low ‘Woah, really Miss?’

‘Yes, really…’

‘…and, I was inside that very tomb too!’

I was unprepared for the response.

Zinah, one of the clever ones, lifted her bum a little from her chair and leaned across the table with a look of awe in her face and said, ‘Miss, you were there with Howard Carter?’

‘Really, Zinah, how old do you think I would have to be to have been there with him?’

Three little angels up the front were suddenly beavering over their books and copies and soon turned around and said, in all seriousness I might add, ‘Miss, you’re 85!’

I choked slightly on the water I was drinking at the time and replied, ‘I’m looking pretty good for it these days too aren’t I girls?’

At that I gave them an ‘I’m magic at math sticker’, and we carried on with the lesson.

Out of the mouths of babes as my mother would say.

MagzB.

The Armenian Adventure

So our plan to ski in the mountains in central Armenia kind of fell flat. Every guide book and internet reference seemed to say it was an excellent idea. We were assured from every angle that skiing was good into mid-april and I was desperate to finally put all my skiing lessons from Ski Dubai to good use on a real mountain.

As we flew in over Armenia my first views of the snow covered mountains made my belly hop. In hindsight, the mocking laughs of customs officials when explaining the reason for our visit should have deflated me. But no, I wasn’t ready to accept the inevitable that quickly.

We arranged a driver at the airport to take us directly to Tzaghkadzor ski resort, famous for having been used by the USSR olympic team for training. As we drove out of Yerevan towards the mountains, the barren brown slopes began to dampen my enthusiasm. Even still I kept trying to persuade myself that the snow was ‘just over the next hill’.

When we got there we found a ghost town. Its funny now of course, but at the time I was very disappointed. Yup, ski season had long since ended, everything was shut, and the mountains, were snowless. We managed to find ourselves a place to stay for the night, and someplace to eat and grab a beer. The ghost town was our first insight to poverty stricken, post-communist Armenia. The only real sound was the whistle of wind in the trees. The occasional plastic bag tumbleweed broke that sound as it flipped over itself all the way down the street, which was flanked on either side by deserted and often ramshackle concrete buildings. Snuggled up in 70’s style blankets with two fizzing ancient bar heaters keeping us warm, we managed to make it through the night.

One of the other complications we came across was the fact that no-body, not a single soul, spoke English. Armenian and Russian are the languages here and there’s no in between. So we had a great deal of frustration and fun honing our sign language skills in an effort to communicate with the locals. It must have been hilarious for them to watch us waving our arms and contorting our faces in the most ludicrous of ways, in an effort to get our point across.

The next morning, after a breakfast of ‘Spaz’ (a salty porridge like soup that I ended up with by default because no-one else would eat it), we decided to leave the ghost town and head further north to Lake Sevan and into the mountain villages. A little bit of exploration was what was needed to rejuvenate our trip. It was fun and, for the most part, we met some generous and helpful people.

Apart from some cowboys who wanted us to pay 100 dollars for a two-room cabin with no running water that is. The cabin guy, also the owner of the local shop/restaurant/petrol station/souvenir shop, got very upset with us when we said we would have to pass. He kept pointing at the light and flicking the switch on and off as if the perk of having electricity was the cause for the cost.

“Turn it off then! We’ll sit in the dark and pay you 10 dollars for the night,” was Ian’s response. Oh, the cabin guy was not pleased then!
We left that venue fairly quickly when the dogs started barking and we saw his pudgy bald head start to turn peuce, fearing that he was about to call his band of brothers and come after us with a shotgun and the hounds! A sometime taxi driver with a back seat full of freshly caught fish helped us out in our endeavour by getting us to

the next town. We were able to gather that he was from Russia. For some random reason, I decided to try out a little Czech on him. He looked at me like I had two heads. So the rest of the journey involved him slowing everything he said down or shouting it thinking we would understand better. We obliged by pretending we did, nodding and smiling all the way to a place called Dilidjan, a mountain town just north of Lake Sevan.

We found a really nice guesthouse run by an Artist and his wife. The artist was also the Director of the local art academy and dabbled in restoration. His living room was filled with a combination of his own work and older paintings by Russian masters which he was slowly restoring for the local museum. He spoke French and his wife had a smattering of English so, between the two, we got on very well. They filled us with sweet Armenian tea and a sweet flaky pastry bread that I couldn’t get enough of, while the artist showed off this new digital clock that had been brought to him from Germany.

It showed the outside temp, the inside temp, humidity level, time of course and on the left hand side stood a man underneath the clouds and sun who, to the great amusement of our host, produced a “parapluie” when it rained.

He very kindly drove us around the mountain valleys taking us to some of the medieval monastic sites that seem to pepper the landscape. I quite enjoyed that. Apart from the shape of the buildings, the general architecture was very similar to some of our own examples at home. The sites and random hilltops were full of flat slabs with crosses carved on them in Celtic-like knot work and animal motifs. Little shrines were being kept up by the locals in some of the church nooks and crannies. At one site the oak trees and tall grasses were being strangled by hundreds of cloth strips, handkerchiefs, and in some cases children's underwear. A kind of modern pagan offering identical to those at the holy wells and rag trees in Ireland. Doubtless prayers for an end to some kind of hardship in the lives of the people who put them there.

Armenia is famous for 3 things. Cognac, being the first country to accept Christianity as the state religion, and stony resilience. That stony resilience is everywhere and chiseled into the faces of the people in the streets. They are not a handsome people. They are hard and battered looking. Men and women both have mouths full of gold teeth. Their features seem to vary between two forms, long and angular, or wide and bulbous. Our first impressions were to be a little wary of them. They all had that Ukranian mafia look about them, not that I actually know what that looks like, but I can guess. Ian seemed to recognize every second guy that passed as a resident of Southhill, in Limerick City or some other northside ghetto back home. Poverty and unemployment was rife there.

Everywhere we went outside the capital, through the villages and in the mountains, groups of men with ‘hard life’ written all over their serious faces seemed to be gathered in random corners, standing for hours on end. Our guide told us this was because there simply wasn’t any work for them. Many of the younger men went to Russia to work, those who were lucky enough to find work in Armenia usually had to leave their families and move to the capital. Along the roadsides the rest stand waving their arms at passing traffic to try to persuade it to stop so that they can sell the few fish they had caught, or the bundles of scallions they had hand grown and picked that day. Subsistence living in the extreme. Meanwhile their homes and villages remain either half built or falling down around their ears.
One would assume that the money for public works simply isn’t there. I suppose it makes some sense. Public works requires money, usually taken from taxes. You can’t very well collect tax from an unemployed nation.

So, we eventually returned to Yerevan, the capital. We had about four days there. We walked around the city hoping to enjoy some of the sites that the book I bought was gushing about. Thing is though, the city does not have a focus towards tourism and all of these sites were a let down in one way or another. They were either undergoing reconstruction or restoration, or were simply completely run down and overgrown, or, as in the case of Mt. Ararat, not there being, completely obscured by smog. Bad Mother Nature! How could you be so inconsiderate? Visiting Armenia was definitely a worth while experience, working on both our ingenuity and our survival skills as underprepared travelers.Lessons were learned, and in fairness it was generally safe and enjoyable. I only managed to loose my shampoo, moisturizer, toothpaste and travel toothbrush to thieves. From now on the side pockets of my back pack shall be packed with dirty underwear. Let them take those instead!

The rest of our time in Armenia was spent propping up a bar, sampling Armenian beers and playing cards. I ended up losing my Lonely Planet Armenia book to Handsome Bob in a game of cards. Best use for it in the end. I did consider using it as toilet paper, but decided it wasn’t even up to that job!

I spent my last day in bed because I drank altogether too many of those Armenian beers. I have a vague final memory of being thrown around an empty dance floor by an Armenian ex-boxer with a somewhat squashed nose and no English, who wouldn’t let me leave without presenting me with his cigarette-smoke scented handkerchief as a gesture of his affection. I had to give him 10 AMD for the pleasure though. Tradition apparently!