Monday, 3 April 2023 // Poland & Pain
8:04 AM
Poland
I am sore as fuck. I am reminded by the day and the minute that I’m not the young man I think I am. I wake up, shoulders sore, and painful, as if being stabbed in the joints, due to “frozen shoulder.“ Something that hit me less than three weeks before this trip. Certainly something that could not be remedied before the trip, considering the years waiting for this very adventure, and then the years postponed due to the pandemic. Then there was a matter of arriving on the island via sail, which only happens a couple times a year. My window of arrival via sail was very small.
None of the pain meds worked at all. The steroid pack I took before I left and the one I brought with me and took a month later, absolutely relieved the pain. Most times it only troubles me when I am supine, stretched on my back, or side, when I’m trying to sleep. So there’s a bit of a conundrum right there. Trying to find meaningful rest, while very much being in pain.
Today when I woke, even my legs were sore and stiff, which is rare. What is not rare is the arthritis* in my hands, now to the point where I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to play guitar again. Unless I switch to playing 100% bottleneck, and that would just not be cool.
I can’t even make a fist with either hand. My right hand is still good enough to twist a throttle, and my finger dexterity on that hand is fine. But my left hand, my fretting hand, always has a numbing pain and dexterity is not what it should be. It is difficult to button a shirt, or any kind of maneuver that requires finesse. My prime tools are not as they should be.
I love a good coincidence. As I’m dictating, I hear my name called and I see it is Iou and his wife on their motorcycle. I’ve only been to Poland twice before, first time a couple weeks ago with Iou, days ago with Rodney and Angus. I already know people here and they recognize me. Iou has seen me sitting here, on the platform of the kia-kia, my motorcycle beside it, St. Stanislaus Catholic Church to the east of us.
Iou, 60, is coming to town to the clinic for his pain medication. There’s the Coincidence! He talks of being sore after that all the manual labor he does as caretaker at Paris, maintaining the property. I’m 100% certain that’s exactly what happened to me regarding my shoulders, as I spent a good deal of time in December and January felling trees, trimming limbs with a chainsaw overhead, working the upper back, shoulders and neck for too long. I’m closing in at 65 and dammit, in my mind I’m still 26. Or maybe even 46 or 56. But that’s not the case.
I think of the pain the little girl felt just an hour ago, her dad chasing her with a switch, her mom, smacking her with a plastic bucket. Throwing the bucket at her. The girl in tears. All within shouting distance from where I’m siting. I can’t begin to say how irate I was, witnessing that abuse.
I saw the little girl a moment ago, in her pristine red and white outfit, hair done up neatly and beautifully, on her way to school. I saw her mother pack her backpack.
I’m off to the sole preschool, to introduce myself, say hello to the teacher, one educator to another. Tell her I plan on sending her some books. They are teaching English, and as coincidence would have it, my name is English. One hundred years ago an English had “control” of the entire island, had his “neuralgia,” his own pain to deal with.
I’m not alone in being able to write about the many kinds of pain I’ve felt over the years. Most pains can be imagined, but there are a couple that you may not be able to imagine. I wrote a postcard to my estranged daughter, to whom I’ve been sending postcards her entire life, and my hand is in pain as I write, try to scrawl neatly or as neat as I can. Physical pain and emotional pain. Decades of a stiff upper lip.
At this moment, I hear children walking on the main, dirt road about 30 or 40 yards in front me. I’m not paying attention to them, but I hear the phrase “I-Matang,” and I know they is talking about me. It’s now 830 in school bells have rung. Time to get going.
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5:05 PM
90°
Paris
Just finished a nice warm-water bath along with soap, courtesy of Iou and his big empty cracker bucket. One thing I have to say about the people here is they are always bathing.
We had just finished snorkeling over the reef, less than 100 yards from where we sleep. The last time I snorkeled over tropical coral was off the Yucatán, on my honeymoon back in 1986. That’s long behind me.
Last time I stayed with Iou he also brought me my “bath,” offering up the same white cracker bucket, with a bar of soap, directly from the box. I’d wander to the shore, then follow the white sands around the point, westward, making sure I was out of sight, hidden by palms and salt bush. There are any number of times when my bath has only been salt water, but the soap and fresh water, naked but for the breeze, in the middle of the Pacific, is sublime. Once soaped and rinsed, I pour the last of the bucket over my head, then I air dry.
I can’t believe I’ve been here a month and it’s taken me this long to get out over to this reef. The other day Rodney told me snorkeling here was good, as he knew I was heading over this way. He made sure I brought my mask.
I bought a newfangled mask back in January or February, looking for the latest, so I didn’t have to have a damn snorkel in my mouth. Covers your whole face and you can breathe through your nose.
The fish are amazing. I counted at least a dozen species, tiny ones half the size of your thumb, two others a foot or so long. The larger fish are out deeper. For most people, myself included, this kind of view is only seen in a documentary, a Disney film, or a large aquarium in an Asian restaurant. I won’t wait so long until I do it again. The water was chest and shoulder deep, making it easy to come up for air, to orient myself, as the reef extends from the shore of Paris on over to Wood Island, one hundred yards or so away. The water just warm enough, with the tide slowly on the way in. No waves of any kind to contend with. The beauty made me momentarily forget some of the crap I’ve seen in the past 12 hours.
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9:40 PM
83°
The crap: at 3 AM a guy comes and sits on the platform of the kia-kia where I am sleeping, sitting less than 6 feet from me. He starts playing a video game on his phone, the sound, the music, waking me. What the fuck? The guy could be anywhere in the village, places where there is no one around, and he chooses this place? We don’t understand each other’s language, but he understands my tone when I finally speak up the third time. I don’t hear anything, but he is still there, and he finally walks away, under a waxing, full moon.
Upon awakening, witnessing child abuse. I wanted to march right over there and do something. But it would’ve served no purpose. I will be gone and things will go back to usual. Still, I was seething, seeing each parent take out their anger on the little girl. My mother never raised a hand to me, my father, a couple of times. Enough times to let me know I should stay more than arm’s-length away from him. No doubt that little girl was in one of the primary school classrooms I visited before noon.
Mid morning, I was working on a sketch, to later paint. A group of a half-dozen children gathered around me. This has not been unusual. In this case, they all kept telling me hello, and incessantly wanting to shake my hand. But I had a pencil in my right hand, the left hand holding my sketchpad. I could not do both. I did try to humor them for a moment, and break my concentration to shake hands. But only once, in spite of their continued requests. Aside from the hellos, I heard the usual chorus of “I-Matang!” They pushed and jostled each other, yelling, and I tried to get them to shush, all the while each of them still wanting to shake my hand, to touch me.
All would shush, but for one loudmouth, who kept at it, over and over and over. I looked out over the village, caught the eye of a couple other adults aware of what was going on. None stepped in. I changed my tone from convivial to irritated, and finally to pissed off. The loudmouth kept goading the others and harassing me. Were it not for a preschool teacher, whom I had met earlier that day, who finally intervened, I don’t know what would’ve happened. I haven’t lost my cool in a long, long long time.
Later, in the mwaneaba, many people were packing and getting ready to load themselves and their belongings into the back of an empty bed of a truck, to ride to London for Easter weekend. The church holiday a big deal here. Not only does the entire country take Good Friday off, but also Monday and Tuesday. There’s a big choir event happening in London, and all the different churches across the island have been rehearsing late into the evening for more than a month. I’ve often heard them, deep into the night, as I’ve burrowed into my laptop or book in London.
There is one electrical outlet at the Catholic mwaneaba in Poland, and I have a converter so I can utilize the Australian style current. I plug my laptop into the converter, keep the laptop closed, then charge my phone with that. The outlet happened to be right next to where a couple and their children essentially live.
Families, couples, often live at the mwaneaba, instead of in their homes in the village. Communal living is part of their culture, and people do not hesitate to set up their hammocks from the support poles around the perimeter, or lay out mats and hang mosquito nets, set up tents, again around the perimeter, under the wide roof.
While re-packing on my gear as I was sitting on a temporary platform set under the mwaneaba, a wailing mayhem broke out. I’m used to the sound of children crying on a regular basis in this kind of environment, an underlying cacophony that one learns to live with.
This time a young mother wailed. I had seen her just a couple of weeks ago, weaving coconut frond floor mats, while her newborn slept on a completed one. She was in tears, wailing uncontrollably, squatting down while doing so.
The young woman was a foot or two from me, dressed in her finest, hair up neat. It seemed her two children were packed and ready to go, ready to take the communal truck trip to London. Husband was one of two brothers** I had photographed, along with several other men a couple weeks back. The crying woman was being confronted by an older woman who was berating her, loud and angry, arms waving. The older woman was insistent, the crying woman was inconsolable.
All others stationed around the perimeter of the mwaneaba were aware of the family disturbance, yet kept to themselves. I packed my gear, loaded it, rode to Paris.
If you stay in a place long enough, you are bound witness unpleasant situations, the veneer of an exotic locale, unable to mask reality. These were public displays, with all involved unconcerned as to how they were viewed. It’s a cultural thing. My own culture tolerates mass shootings in schools, self-serving politicians, and the list goes on.
Sometimes you get lucky, can rise above the crap. Sometimes, if you are very, very, very lucky, you can wash it all away with a snorkel and water up to your neck.
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- Upon arrival back to the States, and orthopedic surgeon confirms that yes, I do have arthritis showing up in x-rays, the actual problem — the pain, the limited hand movement — is due to carpal tunnel syndrome.
** The other brother is the one who followed me around when I first arrived at the manweaba in Poland, and more than a month later walked several miles from Poland to Paris under a full moon to wake Iou, and ask him to take him to London. This brother is known to steal from homes in the village. It’s also known he has a mental disability.
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