Us and them...

You definitely need to find a rhythm on a journey like this.  Boredom can hit pretty hard and, as there´s nowhere to go, you have to deal with it whilst surrounded on all sides by people.  Not thinking too much helps; drifting from one conversation to the next, a stroll on deck, a little reading, some daydreaming.  Anything to be in that mental space where you don´t have to do anything and there´s nothing to do anyway.  Bit by bit I see there´s a place for a Gringo on a boat like this.  The kids are the first to break the ice with their always-so-honest questions.  Ryan tells me his favourite joke in which a woman names one of her dogs the Portuguese word for ´defacating´.  When she´s on the toilet she calls her dog (for some unknown reason), which Ryan thought would be hilarious as everyone would know what the woman was doing.  His laughter suddenly stops when I offer my best joke.  His face turned to stone, he just repeats, "No. No."  Who warned him?

During the day, as we plunged ever deeper into the forest, I heard a chainsaw.  It sounded a bit like an angry animal chewing away at the trees.  A sad reminder that this jewel on Earth is under threat.  Despite its enormity, it too is suffering under human hands.  I mused on this for a while before realising the chainsaw was travelling down with us, inside the forest.  Just then, two macaws emerged, the source of the noise.  A more disharmonious racket passing as birdsong I´d never heard before.  Still, I was happy the trees were still standing.

Beginning the journey was me - ´I´.  An individual whose sphere of protection only extended to myself.  Then I met my Peruvian friends and suddenly the ´I´ had turned into ´Us´.  Now there were more of us to look out for one another.  To watch out for our belongings, to save spaces in queues, to fetch water.  But to ensure the `Us´ was always #1  we needed to see the others as ´Them´.  This ´Us and Them´ mentality brings so many problems; divisons we put in place as a result of our prejudiced views.  As the journey progressed, the `Us´ that constituted three of us enlarged to include others on the boat, eventually everyone.  The boat would then stop at a village along the way.  More people would get on to an already crowded boat.  The ´Us and Them´ mentality returned as people protected their precious space and their place in the dinner queue.  This process hapened a few times and, each time, the newcomers would be integrated; just like the tourists were, and the elderly, the young, infirm, workers, etc.  By the end of the journey there´s an unspoken sense of a shared experience.  If only we, as humans, could cut through the shit sooner and realise we are similar beings with similar needs, desires and dreams.