SATORI IN PARAMARIBO- part 2, the Stranger's Nausea

So I blew off French Guyane all together, given the fact that it’s not a real country anyway- merely an overseas department of France- complete with French prices. Add to that the fact that every mile traveled out means another mile I must travel back- the motto after all IS ‘backpack, don’t backtrack’- since interior roads are few and far between in this undeveloped wilderness. So I decided I’d maybe just go to the border and make an unofficial crossing, withdraw enough Euros from the French ATM’s at a savings good enough to pay for the trip- I need Euros for Cuba- then come back. But that’s still extra miles and Lonely Planet says the best thing to do in the border town of Albina is leave, which is very uncharacteristic of the usually overly optimistic crew there. So when the US dollar suddenly gained against the Euro and I realized that I could withdraw fairly large amounts of local currency from the Paramaribo ATM’s and buy enough Euros right there in the local cambios, then why make a butt-busting trip just to save a few bucks and cover my future Kountry Kount in the unlikely event that Guyane Francaise might one day secede from the union? France is not likely to give up the Ariane launchpad at Kourou any time soon I don’t reckon, and more important than a slight exchange advantage is the fact that my E-trade bank- since it has no ATM’s of its own- charges you no service charge when you use those of others, even when they’re halfway around the world. Yes! You heard it here first. Don’t abuse it.

Actually if you have a multiple-entry Brazilian visa and don’t mind some travel uncertainties, you can now loop through the Guyanas overland without backtracking (too bad you don’t get five-year Brazil visas- like Suriname- along with your ‘reciprocity charge’). For now there’s a bridge from northeast Brazil into Guyane Francaise and after the overland route through Suriname you can exit (British) Guyana overland back into Brazil at Lethem going to Boa Vista on the road from Manaus. From there you could even enter Venezuela- impossible directly from Guyana itself- and continue on through the Venezuelan Amazon, maybe even finding the legendary waters which link the Orinoco with the Amazon River. Imagine the travel opportunities there for someone with a canoe and no life. Otherwise you’d have a long loop through Colombia or even further down the line to re-enter the Amazon and Brazil. Such are the things backpackers daydream of, not seeing every sight listed on the tourist brochures. For the traveler with more time than budget, the broad sweeps are more important than instant thrills and a list of ‘sights’. Traveling becomes a Zen-like experience full of the ‘suchness’ against which life occurs, an end in itself, rather than a thing to be consumed, digested, and… filed away.

While many backpackers may find their little epiphanies in encounters with other like-minded travelers, that’s not the only emotional sustenance available. While encounters with the local population may by definition be short, especially where language is an issue, that doesn’t mean they have to be shallow. We all speak the universal language of smiles after all, and that can go a long way sometimes. Even in large Muslim populations we’re all people of the Book, remember, and even with Hindus and Buddhists we’re all people of religion, even the so-called ‘atheists’ among us. Like a vaccination spreading in the surrounding population whether you actually got the jab, we’re all Christians whether baptized or not. If Jerry Garcia said nothing else prophetic (he didn’t write the lyrics remember), at least he said that. Still the market ladies probably felt a sigh of relief when I finally bought something this morning, proof that I wasn’t just up to no good, stalking them or something. Like the difference between wolves in the wild and dogs that have been tamed, we’ve all been transformed by the power of love, likely to trust a stranger in our midst until given a reason not to. It not only works emotionally, but it’s good for business, and crucial to an expanding universe. A universe reduced to contracting will eventually crash in upon itself.

Personally I like playing (carefully) with the dogs I find enroute, many of them homeless and living off market scraps. It’s not exactly ‘Dancing with Wolves’ or ‘Dog Whisperer”, but certainly better than ‘Sleeping with Dogs’, an unpublished screenplay I have yet to write. We’re a crucial part of their evolution. They need us. So I’m stuck in Nieuw Nickerie waiting for the ferry. Fortunately I allowed an extra day of snafu time so I should be okay. If I hadn’t stayed an extra day to change one last batch of SRD into Euros I might be there already, but that would mean three nights in Georgetown, hardly a thrill, and almost certainly costlier than where I am now. A hundred here and a hundred there can add up quickly, especially in a region that’s not especially cheap to begin with. All’s well that ends well, so I’m optimistic that there’ll be a ferry tomorrow as promised. If not, I’m royally f%$#@d, and hundreds of dollars of travel plans are at risk. I’m not surprised, having been stuck on the other side for three days- but that was Xmas and Boxing Day- still I might’ve planned differently had I even THOUGHT the ferry might take the day off. I persevere; it’s a Zen thing remember and this is a sesshin. The Chinese will build a bridge soon; mark my word.

Nieuw Nickerie is a nice enough place, but there’s not a lot to do here, just wander the market and nibble the local snacks and play with the dogs. The crappers here are the same as in Indonesia, presumably Dutch, but a strange design. They don’t drain from the rear, which seems logical, nor continually downward, but from the front with a shelf-like platform level for most of the area not so far under you. This means that as you take a crap the fruit of your labors is continually piling up under you, and when you finally flush, the water must actually lift the entire mess up and move it forward enough to plop it down the hole. Does that sound complicated enough? It’ll definitely leave enough of a smear to give my wife a hissie fit also. Maybe Europeans are stool watchers; I don’t know. If that’s the case, then Dutch toilets are just the thing for you. As you inspect the details of your internal life and digestion process you can even hum along the lyrics to the old 60’s dittie ‘I’m a Stool Watcher’ (“here comes one now, da dah da dah”). Anyone need a life besides me?

Then the bad news comes. The boat isn’t going tomorrow, and the next day… well, who knows? How can you really predict these things? I’m pissed, and I’m not even British… or drunk. Turns out the boat isn’t even the problem; it’s the road, a twenty-five mile stretch of pea gravel and sweat, a monument to uncertain ambitions and inherent reticence, as a bastard country enters the modern world walking backwards. How can a country be so lame and inefficient and incompetent that they can’t even keep a 40km. stretch of road- one of the country’s only two overland links to the outside world mind you- open and navigable? I could take one of the small boats that shuttle locals back and forth illegally, but there’s no guarantee I could get stamped into Guyana. The nice ladies at the Guyanese consulate suggest I get Suriname immigration to stamp me out and have them contact Guyana about stamping me in. I get a sick feeling like when a condom broke and shriveled up into a rubber band much faster than its over-zealous sponsor. It’s time to scramble, so I contact a travel agent and plan a tentative escape route. The best laid plans gang aft agley… sounds Dutch.

So that’s what I do, drop back and punt, changing travel plans as fast as I can. Fortunately the Christmas season is over or I’d be screwed. As it is I get my life back for under $300, so it could be worse. I go back to Paramaribo to catch a flight out, wanting nothing so much as to just leave, and never come back. I’ve seen some sloppy operations in my life but this is a cake-taker to be sure. To make it worse the mini-van driver has 80’s pop-schlock greatest hits playing at a full gigabel all the way back, over and over, grinning like some mongrel cretin from an Asian prison camp, eating noodles while barreling down the road at 130 clicks, dodging potholes the whole way. It figures, after watching the Indonesian crap MVDO’s that filter over here to nourish the Javanese diaspora. It’s not as bad as the bus driver in Tierra del Fuego a couple months ago, though. I swear he played some song by Marco Antonio Solis approximately twenty-seven times in succession until I almost memorized the words, though I still don’t know the title, something about ‘Poema de Amor’.

So I wake up in the middle of the night to go to piss and go to the airport, alternately angry and glad, check in and pass la migra like ringin’ a bell, then settle in here to check my e-mail. Then in a little while the damndest thing happens. The plane takes off a half hour early! And I thought I’d seen everything. So it’s not that the people are slow or uncaring; they’re just imprecise! Now I get it. I feel better.