For the Love of a Water Cooler

This particular blog entry has been sitting incomplete for several months, so I will now post it!

My recent journey to the Netherlands and Poland (summer 2008) has taught me several lessons, the most important being how backward Europeans can be. Allow me to list their peculiarities, starting with the first and most evident:

1) The Curse of "Room Service" and the Infernal "Mini-Bah":

On our flight to Europe, I had the misfortune of sitting next to a passenger who hacked and spewed driblets of fluid into the air. I knew, since she refused to cover her mouth or to even turn that offending orifice away from me, that I would soon fall ill. Sure enough, I spent the first week in a hotel in Den Hague six months pregnant and full of self pity.

Now it's one thing being stuck in a hotel room, ill, as it rains outside. It's an entire new level of misery when you have Dutch room service. Hoping to rest, I stuck a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door and locked the deadbolt. "Do Not Disturb," in the Netherlands, translates roughly to "Please Disturb to the Extent of Your Capability." The next thing I knew, two employees were in the room itching to provide clean towels. "No thank you," I said firmly. They reluctantly left.

The next day a different employee entered the room. "Just clean towels," I said. "Yes," he said, and then proceeded to wipe the bottom of the shower dry, clean the sink and bathroom floor, empty the garbage, and provide, at long last, clean towels. I sat on the bed watching his efforts. It was awkward to say the least.

Relieved that I would finally have some privacy, I settled into sleep. Soon, in the distance, I could hear the cry of "Mini-Bah!" ring out. Again and again, I heard these words, and when the dreaded knock came to my door, I said, "No thank you!" Moments later, an eight-year-old barged into the room and repeated, "Mini-Bah."

"We haven't used the 'Mini-Bah,'" I said.

"I just check Mini-Bah," he explained, and counted the items within the Mini Bar.

"You no use Mini-Bah," he said, finally satisfied, and left.

I decided to avoid these overly hospitable intruders by lingering over breakfast during the "Mini-Bah" and bath towel checks--eating from 10:00 am to 11:15.

However, my plans were soon foiled. The straw that broke the camel's back came when, at 9:00 a.m. the next day, I was showering naked in the glass shower in the glass bathroom with no solid walls. In other words, my pregnant body was completely exposed, when the Room Service knock came.

"NOOOOOOOO! DO NOT come in!" I shouted. For once--and for this I am grateful--the Dutch understood English.

The list of European oddities will continue tomorrow . . .

A Child's Lullaby

These two songs are dedicated to the children of Fort McMurray:


Lump Dump

Lump dump
Lump dump
Bitumen mine.
Big truck, little truck
Everything's fine.


The Bear Went Over the Slurry Pile

The bear went over the slurry pile
The bear went over the slurry pile
The bear went over the slurry pile
To see what he could see.

And all that he could see
And all that he could see
Was a bleak and desolate wasteland,
A bleak and desolate wasteland,
A bleak and desolate wasteland
Was all that he could see.

Low in Cholestoral, High in Protein

Cuey before (top photo); Cuey after (bottom).

The Disconcerting Correlation Between Dirty Old Men & Trains, Planes, and Automobiles

Some guy named Shakespeare penned the following words (and I quote): "Hath not a dirty old man hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick a dirty old man, does he not bleed? If you tickle him, does he not laugh? If you wrong him, shall he not revenge?"

Shakespeare may have been saying that dirty old men have some human qualities. What he really should have mentioned, however, is that if you provide public transportation, dirty old men will use it. Yes, even in Peru.

I have countless dirty old men stories--and a few stories about dirty young men (though I have always maintained my virtue, Mother, in case you're reading this). A seedy African man asked me, when I was an innocent of fifteen years, to marry him. (Incidentally, I did say yes; my bride price--40,000 head of cattle--simply proved to be too high a price to pay for a scrawny white girl with a bad perm.) A street person asked me, when I was but nineteen, to meet him for a date in the men's washroom at Princess Island Park in Calgary. And in Romania, I was unwittingly foisted upon a young man by his overeager mother (though he had an uncanny resemblance to the Fonz in Happy Days, forcing me to decline the offer of marriage).

Going to Peru, I believed that the ring on my finger would magically clear all traces of dirty old men from the world. But even my rose-tinted sunglasses could not save me.

In order to experience something entirely new and different, Rod and I took a first-class train from Cusco to Puno. The agent who sold us the trip keep insisting that we wanted the less expensive train "for backpackers." However, since we hoped to secure a few hours' sleep and the safety of our luggage, we persisted.

We were, indeed, out of place. We boarded to discover old men and women, and a few eccentrics (like the Asian lady who carried an umbrella everywhere to prevent a single ray of sun from kissing her porcelain skin). At this point I had no concerns about dirty old men: the train was so luxurious that in addition to the quaint dining car, an indoor parlour encouraged mingling and an open end car gave tourists fresh air and a view.

The servers served meals in unison, first standing in a long line and then simultaneously placing plates in front of guests. When our tablecloth had a slight crease, the staff went to every effort to amend the imperfection so as not to spoil our appetites.

My gut clenched: how great was the divide between rich and poor. My anxiety increased when Rod returned from a stroll with news that an elderly woman had been startled by a Peruvian local who gave her the finger as the train passed. We engaged in a lengthy discussion on disparity--the sheer injustice that most Peruvians could not afford to ride this train through their own country!

Then the entertainment began. Three models--two beautiful Peruvian girls and a thoroughly uncomfortable young man clutching a plastic llama--did the catwalk. They paraded up and down the cars, the women in tight, seductive clothing, and the man clearly wishing he could jump onto the tracks.

What I saw next made my skin crawl. Countless dirty old men emerged from the ashes of what had been classy gentlemen. Disregarding their wives completely, the old men gawked at the Peruvian girls, their eyes crawling up and down the tight, black jumpsuits. Their reaction was an instinctive appreciation of female sexuality, perhaps, but what made the scene so loathsome was their condescending approval. Here, Peruvian beauty was on display to tourists. Young women served no other purpose but to fuel the fantasies of vile men with flabby bellies and a thick bulge of cash in their pockets.

I was ashamed to be a tourist, ashamed to be exploiting a beautiful country because I am one of the privileged. My sole consolation? --that I have never been, nor will I ever be, a dirty old man. My one regret? --not taking photographs of the dirty old men who have earned an entire entry in this blog.

How many roads must a man walk . . .

When I was young (e.g. two months ago), I believed that the Lares trek would turn me into a real woman. I've never wrestled with gender identity, but I have aspired to be a woman of substance, a woman of fortitude, a woman who scales mountains without whining about blisters. At the very least, I hoped the obstacles faced on the trek would entitle me to assume a knowing air amongst those less traveled.

How foolish are the aspirations of a city girl!

A good deal of the Lares trek was uphill, certainly. We were forced to contend with the challenges of altitude. Most harsh of all, I wasn't allowed to pet the dogs (or sneak them scraps of food) because of the threat of rabies. [I wasn't even supposed to pet a cat, even if its name was Tina and it didn't froth at the mouth and it lived in an idyllic home with guinea pigs in the kitchen and sheep in the backyard.]

But the truth of the matter is, we were pampered. At the beginning of our journey, for instance, our cook (seen in the photo with our guide and porter) served us each a steaming bowl of soup. "Good," we thought. "What a nice bowl of soup. Now we will walk." Little did we know that the soup was the first dish in an elaborate four-course meal!

It gets worse. Each morning we received a wake-up call that consisted of a steaming cup of coca tea served through the flap of the tent. Outside, a basin of warm water and a towel awaited each person. After breakfast (steaming porridge, pancakes, sausages, omelets, etc.), the cook and porter took down the breakfast tent and our tents as we began the day's hike.

Within an hour or so, the cook, porter, horses, and llamas passed us on the trail (the llamas spewing obscenities, of course). By the time our bag 'lunches' had been consumed, we arrived at a tent set up in the middle of nowhere for our enjoyment. A hot lunch was served: we sat at a table with lawn chairs and used nearby a washroom tent when the need arose.

Then the cook and porter would clean our dishes, pack the tents, herd the angry llamas (who would hurl abuse, of course), pass us on the trail, and proceed to set up camp for the night. Frankly, it was unbelievable.

What was perhaps most surprising was, when we said our good byes, the cook thanked us. He was relieved, he said, that we had finished the trek--that he didn't have to carry us. He spoke, sadly, from experience.

So, although I didn't whine about blisters even though my hiking boots were new, I have many a road to walk before I'm truly a woman.

One of Life's Sweeter Moments

To many, a flat tire on the road of life is an annoyance--an obstacle. To me, the flat tires--and everyone else's resulting irritation--is a source of free entertainment. Which brings me to the flat tire incident . . .

Part of the Lares trek involves a steep climb up a winding road, the sort of drive that wreaks havoc on one's stomach, not to mention inducing a state of vertigo. In the middle of this stomach-churning ascent, we had the good fortune to have a flat tire--an interesting predicament, to say the least.

The scenario did my heart good. A few years back, you see, I attempted to change a flat tire on a slight incline. Upon removing the tire, I noted that the entire car was beginning to shift at an impressive rate onto my leg. In a moment of common sense (so rare to me), I removed my leg from the proximity of the vehicle and caught the sliding vehicle instead with the spare tire. There the car sat for the next few hours, the jack pointing to two o'clock and the spare bearing the weight of the vehicle, until my friend Ed showed up to rescue me. "You shouldn't change a tire on a gravelly incline," he said gravely.

I'm not sure what Ed would have advised in our current predicament, for there was ample gravel, a steep incline, and a precipice over which the van could have rolled, had it chosen to. Fortunately, I was not in charge of changing the tire, and I was eager to see how our Peruvian driver would fare. Rod, Linden, and I, and our porters and guide, each jumped out of the car. Within moments, the flat tire was replaced, as if by magic.

My heart was as flat as that first tire, now stowed safely in the compartment beneath the back seat. Here life had thrown us a wondrous challenge, stacking the odds against us, and our driver had prevailed. In fact, he had not even broken a sweat!

Fortunately, Fate had a pleasant surprise in store. As we piled back into that hot, cramped vehicle, my dear husband, the last to return to his seat, realized that he had a mound of fresh dog feces sealed into the treads of his boot. It was the perfect consistency, like an alarming shade of icing, and it was smeared across the floor of the van.

I laughed . . . perhaps harder than I ought.

For a few delightful moments, chaos prevailed. The Peruvians, normally so composed, flew into action. The porters jumped from the van to collect handfuls of grass and leaves to serve as rags. The guide, gagging at the smell, pulled out a strawberry air freshener and ripped off its plastic wrapping like a warrior pulling a sword from its sheath. Rod, muttering apologies, tried in vain to remove the traces of excrement from his boot treads with a rock.

I learned an important lesson that day: When the flat tires on the road of life fail to create enough havoc, don't despair. There just might be a pile of fresh doggie doo around the bend.

Faces of Peru