La gente viene y la gente se va

A smokey watering hole, cheap beer, and that second of contented silence when the laughter subsides and before the next joke is told, it hits you: the pure happiness of that moment, and the significance lent to that moment in knowing that it won't last forever.

Or, maybe it isn't smiling around a table in a faraway bar but instead, sitting on a faraway beach, or on a dusty faraway pavement looking up at the stars, when you experience that sensation which, for me, defines what it is to travel. Suddenly something which felt so normal is rendered with near palpable importance in an abrupt and bitter sweet realization that you are experiencing something unique. You will never be in this place again, sharing a cigarette with this person again, thousands of miles away from that life you call home.

And in that moment you make a memory.

We live this life because we love the transitory, we love to travel, reveling in the unexpected; we are addicted to '' being on the road'', to the idea of weaving our way down the winding path into a sun setting on the distant horizon. The existence you chose when you live on the other side of the world is exciting, it's intoxicating, it's challenging and presents you with the extraordinary privilege of meeting people you never dreamed existed.

But, by choosing to be someone who is always seeking something new and different, you also make the choice to say goodbye. Which hurts. Every time. Each goodbye becoming a goodbye to every person you have ever said farewell to. Sometimes it seems that it would be easier to avoid making attachments all together and treat those you meet as you would ships in the night, content in never knowing what could have been, rather than getting a glimpse of something before it disappears into the impossibility of distance.

But what is the cost of not daring?

The answer is, to forfeit something beautiful.

There is nothing quite like the intensity of a connection made in an elsewhere. There is nothing quite like the beauty of sharing a storm with stranger. There is nothing quite like the pain in watching someone who has become part of who you will be forever, shrug on their backpack and walk away, not knowing how or if you will meet again.

Amoebas ate my brain...

Dried Papaya seeds, Secnidal, Flagyl, Perricon tea, cloves of raw garlic, part time Veganism, chlorinated vegetables, wearing green underwear when the moon is full, braiding the pubic hair of a mountain goat whilst performing an Irish folk ballad : I've tried almost, if not quite, everything to shift them. From the hardest the Mr Miyagi man in the pharmacy can provide me with, to the most unlikely sounding whimsical shite-bags Google can muster, still they thrive.

I have become au fait with such terms as ''host'' and ''incubation period'', I spend a lot of time boiling herbs and I discuss my bowel movements with people I've met moments before. I have become one of the stricken, one of the damned, one of the people you see despondently propping up the end of the bar with a fizzy water and a sachet of re-hydration salts, glaring enviously at ''The Healthys''.

Amoebas: they aren't funny, they aren't clever and they certainly aren't sexy but, they have now formed a large part of my life for the past three months and it's time to talk about it. Before I share my experience with you, please forgive me for any vulgarity, it is written in the spirit of honesty and openness. Having said that, I continue with the full understanding that it is likely I will lose any residual street cred which still lingers from the days before I become someone who perpetually wailed about abdominal cramping and, with the article that follows, knowingly relinquish any future hope of romantic/ intimate relationship with anyone stumbles upon this post...

I'll begin by saying that I've almost forgotten what live was life pre-parasites. These days I seem to exist in some kind of godforsaken, low budget, Alien sequel. The little bastards have resisted numerous extermination attempts, coaxing me into a false sense of security as they lye low for a period of weeks only to sally forth with renewed gusto. I am evidently somewhat of a catch in the world of single celled organisms, providing this potent breed of flesh eating buggers with a rollicking good time as they merrily chow down on my innards. With apparently no regard to the laws of traditional (and not so traditional) medicine, maybe the only solution is to shave my head and throw myself into a ravine of boiling lava, Pacaya is only 45 minutes and $10 dollars away after all.

In all honestly, however, I am semi-worried that I might be heading to an early grave thanks to the little critters. If you look them up on the net, which I don't advise if you are a sufferer, you will encounter many many gruesomely disturbing images, a great deal of scary statistics, and numerous news stories from the States regaling you with various individuals who fell victim to one terrifying brain eating Amoeba or another and died a slow and painful death. Heartwarming stuff eh?

Living with Amoebas not only tests your patience and your immune system, but it examines the limits of friendships. Where do those relationship boundaries lie? How far would you go for a mate? I am pleased to say that one of the things to come out of this continuing and sorry episode is that my friends have fared pretty well on this count. An example: one day, unable to get back from the city in time to make it to the laboratory with my ''sample'', I gave it to a gal pal of mine to deliver on my behalf. The mission was ultimately unsuccessful as the confounded container leaked its contents into her bag and later, onto a shelf of her fridge (where she had, for some bizarre reason, placed it for safe keeping). Despite the fact that I almost died of embarrassment when she told me about it the next day, particularly during the part where she explained how she mistook the mystery brown substance seeping through her backpack onto her hands as coffee, if anything I feel the incident brought us closer together. She may, however, not agree.

Conversely, the issue of finding an appropriate vessel to serve the purpose of ferrying ones business is a complex one. It rarely seems to be the case that the moment you need to go the bathroom correspondents with doctor opening hours or having an appropriate container to hand. You find yourself looking around the house for things that could be used to llevar your latest passing to the hospital for analysis. Ironically, I once resorted to the use of a Sabe Rico jar, it even still had the label on. Presumably the staff of San Hermano Pedro Hospital now consider me as some sort of sicko fetishist.

And where do they come from these Amoebas? I am not sure if this is the same resilient batch, or if I keep catching them, which admittedly seems less likely. More likely is that they never went away and the lotions and potions entrusted to me at various pharmacies around Antigua have failed miserably to perform. I have spent a long time trying to work out the source of my current plight. And everyone seems to have a theory. The trouble is, the most likely one is the one I don't want to be true, involves swimming in lakes and rivers which might not be one hundred percent sanitary. I kind of think you really have to decide if you are going to be one of those people who bleaches the fuck out of everything you eat before you eat it, wearing closed toed shoes through a heatwave and generally opting out of life, or, you just press on through and hope for the best. I have opted for the latter. Perhaps unwisely. Indeed, when I am on my deathbed having failed to shift the blighters, please don't quote this paragraph to me.

A disputed issue around Amoebas and the consumption of the various medicines used to counteract them, is for how long alcohol should be avoided. Some say that it has little negative effect and you should jump back on the liquor wagon within 24 hours of your last dose, whilst others warn that the whole business of taking these various lotions and potions will be spectacularly and unequivocally negated if so much as a drop of four percent beer passes your lips. Erring on the side of caution I have actually been pretty strict with myself on this count, and have decided to heed the advice doled out by advocates of teetotalism. I was rather annoyed, therefore, when on my third visit to the pharmacist, having ascertained that I had stayed off the sauce (his expression suggested he wasn't convinced), the guys tells me that the reason the first two batches of pills failed to the job was that I must have drunk a Coca Cola. Coca-bloody-cola?? They just make this stuff up as they go along. Um, come on Sunny Jim, I think it is much less likely that having a class of Coke brought the house of cards tumbling back into a parasitic puddle, than him peddling me a placebo at some extortionate cost. Plus, if these drugs really are as susceptible to carbonated drinks as he seems to suggest, it may have been worth giving me a heads up on their respective Achilles Heels before I started forking cash, almost literally, into the toilet.

It is now just moments before I commence with my next tranche of treatment. The aluminum on the foil wrapped capsules, my latest pharmaceutical offering, glisten seductively from where they lie on the table next to me... little pellets of false hope winking seductively a promise of more wholesome times to come. Please forgive me if I don't crack out the celebration Moet just yet...In the meantime, if you are a fellow carrier, pop over for a cleansing cuppa, I've just boiled a fresh pot of Jacaranda.

All change

So i'm pretty lazy with the blog these days, however, this is a piece I wrote for a magazine here regarding my leaving Camino Seguro. Emotional times, emotional times...they like a tone which isnt necessarily 100 percent mine, but you get the gist...

Every day at 7.15 a.m, a bleary eyed group of Westerners gather on the pavement outside Antigua's San Francisco Iglesia. Clutching banana bread and paper cups of steaming coffee, they soak up the early morning sun. Preparing to make their way into one of the infamous Red Zones of Guatemala City, they are a diverse bunch, comprising people from all over the world; their ages and motivations vary, and each of them has a unique reason as to how they came to be waiting for this particular bus. Yet, they all have a shared destination: these are the volunteers of Camino Seguro or ''Safe Passage'', a non-profit organization which aims to provide hope, education and opportunity to the Basureru community of the Capital.

Basureru is the Spanish word for dump, of which Guatemala boasts one of the biggest in Central America. Taking up 40 acres of a huge ravine which runs through the City, the dump receives over 500 tons of domestic, chemical and medical waste daily. The people in the surrounding neighborhoods make their living by harvesting materials from the landfill for recycling, gathering cans, paper and metals in order to sell them for a few Quetzales, and it is this community that Safe Passage was created to serve.

Since it was conceived in 1999, when a young woman called Hanley Dening opened the doors of a small rented apartment in the heavily populated margins of the tip, offering the children who were foraging in the rubbish a safe space to come and do their homework, the organization has continued to grow. Today it works with around 300 families, providing refuge and educational reinforcement to over 550 at-risk women and children.

Whether you are a Classroom Assistant, a Teacher, a Tutor in the Adult Literacy Program, a Social Worker or a Kitchen Porter, there really isn't such thing as a 'typical day' at the project. In my last eight months as an English Teacher, every day has offered something new. I have been given the opportunity to work with a demographic I wouldn't ordinarily have access to and have experienced almost every spectrum of emotion possible, from the intensely negative to the euphoric. It has been this diversity and intensity which has made the experience rewarding in such a way that only a true challenge can be.

The kids and mums typically come from backgrounds which can make it a struggle to push past their streetwise exterior. After arriving on my first day expecting to be greeted by smiles and open arms, I quickly learned that building relationships with individuals who exist in the harsh reality of an inner-city slum can be tough and unpredictable. Trust is an issue in these barrios policed by gangs, as is violence and substance abuse. There is an educated suspicion and distance towards new people, unsurprising in a context where life is anything but easy and people learn quickly the art of self-preservation in order to survive.

When those moments of breakthrough come, however, those moments when you make a real and meaningful connection with someone - when a normally aggressive student seeks you out for help, or when a kid passes their grade against the odds and thanks you for trusting in them – these are the moments which shall forever define my experience here.

The volunteers, whether they are short-term (minimum of five weeks) or long-haul, are expected to treat their commitment to the organization as they would a job. This means ten hours a day, five days a week, and a clearly defined set of responsibilities with no bunking off for a hangover. It's a tough schedule but it makes for a collection of dedicated and close individuals, who take what they do seriously. Spending so much time together in such an emotive environment forges strong and long-last connections between the folk of Safe Passage, and to an outsider, ''The Camino Crew'' may seem a strange phenomena, displaying pack-like characteristics and tending to travel together as a unified mass, hosting parties where they take turns picking lice out each others hair.

I am now coming to the end of my time with the project. Although I fear that this was probably lost in translation, I have been trying to explain to the kids how they have affected me so much more profoundly than I could have possibly have hoped to affect them. If I have managed to give back, even one percent of what I have taken away from this overwhelming experience, I can hold me head up high. It is with a heavy heart that I remove my signature green t-shirt for the last time and say farewell to a place which has changed me forever.