The title is the name of a song of a Spanish music group, Combo Linga. It means “I didn’t make the trip, the trip made me”
I have already visited around 15-20 countries, and I have travelled all around my own (yeah, I’m a very lucky person, even if I don’t feel it most of the times…silly me) and I can say that this title is, in many aspects, right. When I was young I thought that all my problems came from being in Spain, especially in Madrid. I felt as if I were in a jail, doomed to repeat the same routine over and over again, with that awful feeling every morning that the bed sheets retain you and you don’t have any reason to put a foot out of the bed. Then, I grew up a little and started to travel on my own. That was quite useful to discover what was really caused by the environment and what was an inherent feature of the system (a.k.a. me). During my travels I learnt that half of those feelings were, certainly, caused by my situation…however, the other half always travelled with me. I learnt that my worst enemy was me. Fortunately, the new perspective that being far away from “home” gives enabled me to isolate my problems and, even though I’m f&%$ing slow solving them, at least I know them, that it’s more than most can say. Kilometres have made the enemy inside me weaker, and this last destination (Morocco) has, definitely, given it a deadly kick (I hope!!).
As I said before, coming here was a dream become true for me. Coming to an African country to study animals, even if it’s more northwards than I had rather, was my main fantasy about future when I was a child that turned stones on the garden to see what invertebrates were underneath and studied the capital of African countries in her free time ( I told you, I was a repellent girl!). Of course, I’m not exactly the person I wanted to be: my English is still clumsy, my French is pretty much non-existent, I haven’t learnt more than a couple of words and grammar rules of Swahili, my martial arts knowledge is poor and I’m weaker and fearful than I expected…However, given that most of the people I know are enclosed in lives that are pretty much the opposite of what they wanted I should be happy (and I am!!...at least for the next month, let’s see what happens next…sigh).
I cannot tell that Morocco is a beautiful place (Sorry!!). I know that there are a lot of people that are completely in love with this country, actually, some of my friends. Maybe it’s because I haven’t visited the most tourist places that are, presumably, more beautiful, and I’m only living a “regular” (i.e. non-holydays) life a couple of thousands kilometres away from where I was born. Nonetheless, what I can say is that is a very attractive place. In my opinion, being attractive is better than being beautiful, at least when talking about places and people. When something is beautiful it’s kind of boring, it doesn’t require any effort to see the good side, and I’m a girl used to challenges. And this time the challenge was hard (sorry Azrou, it took me a long time to see your weird beauty)!
As I said in the post “Firsts times: “, Azrou is pretty messy and dirty, so the first couple of days I couldn’t find anything beautiful on it (but of course the forest and the monkeys!). Nevertheless, one day coming back from the field I could see something that opened my eyes; the dusk over the Atlas mountains. Since then, one of my favourite moments in the day is when we are going down from the field and I see the coloured mountains on the horizon. Depending on the hour you can find a paint of bluish and greenish hills, different tones of orange or only shadows; but always amazing. Sometimes, I escape on the weekends in the afternoon just to go to the observation deck (?? Non even English-speakers know to tell me how to call it) that is near the main Mosque to see the sunset…
Through the mountains the light came to me. The light here is different, though I wasn’t able to see it at the beginning. It has corps, it’s dense, not like in Europe, where is transparent; you can see it blurring and staining the horizon, embracing you... I guess words are not enough…and less when this is not my mother tongue! Let’s summarize saying that, when I started to feel the light I finally felt at home. The mess became an interesting non-routine where everyday, even if the schedule is the same, you know that none day will be like the day before…and now it seems sad to come back to the grey and cold environment of Madrid; as I’m expected to do as soon as I’m able to cross half Morocco from here to Casablanca in a coach that is supposed to leave at 3:30 in the night (morning?)…argh…and I have to wait a couple of hours more here in silence, trying to don’t disturb the PhD student and the Californian…though I think I’m too much noisy anyway...poor guys.
So, let’s go to the point, ‘cause I’m hanging on the branches more than my dear macaques (I don’t think that this is an expression in English, but in Spanish someone that goes through the branches is someone that doesn’t go to the point). The topic was how travelling make you grow as a person and how this one in particular is changing me.
Well, first, I proud to say that I have proved my master advisor to be wrong. He told me that I wasn’t going to fit into the field work; but I have been here two months and, even if it’s true that I’m slower in learning this than in the lab, I haven’t had big problems nor fears, unlike others that came before me. Even when I was pretty scared when I arrived, because all the stories that people tell, I overcame it fairly soon (though this night is an exception). If you have read “The Innocent Anthropologist” by Nigel Barley; you know that when he goes to Cameroon to study the Dowayos tribe, everybody tells him awful stories and ask him to be careful with everything…exactly the same that the chief of the tribe tells him when the author has to come back to Europe! Fear to others is a common place, and of course, in many cases you need to be cautious, especially because when you are an outsider, many people try to take advantage of you if not worse; but as a general rule, never is as bad as people say (…I really hope it for tonight!!!..f&%$ck!).
So, one of the two most important things that I’ve learnt from me for now is that I wasn’t mistaken; I like field work, I like to be in Africa and, at least for now, I can cope with it fairly well (Let’s see when I had to face tropical diseases…).
The second most important thing is that I’m not dead inside and I still have a chance (maybe a couple) of being happy, not only with the “professional life”, but personal (the “” are because the definition of professional is being paid for something and…) . I don’t know exactly why, but being here I’ve realized that I have spent to much time doing what I thought that I had to do and excluding so much the things that I really wanted to do that, at the end, I thought that I not longer wanted them. I was in a jail of fear and now I’m about to break the bars and see what is on the other side…I’m scared, sure…but whatever happens cannot be worse than the night that I’m gonna have!! (again, f&ck!). So, thanks to this experience I feel brave enough to fight for me, once again, and recover those aspects of my life that I had abandoned long ago and, the most important of all, being honest to myself; I owe me that, don’t cheat on me again and follow my guts…Let’s see…
Well, th-th-th-that's all folks! I still have to wait another damned hour to get out of the house and wait for an hour or more on the street to, if lucky, take the coach ( if I’m lucky I’ll have a seat and don't be rapped, killed, kicked or whatever other awful thing) and in other 6 hours I’ll be in Casablanca…where I will have to find my way to the airport…Sorry for this mess and because it has little to do with biology… though probably it has lot to do with a field biologist way of life, I guess. Wish me luck, I’m gonna need it…
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