Something Optimistic

Well I'm back in Lima and it looks like I've left Tumbes for the last time. I think I can leave any place, no matter how mundane and boring it was or no matter how little time I spent there and still feel a little wistful, melancholic, sad that I won't ever see this place again. I think I am programmed for it.

My time in Tumbes was okay. The social and cultural part of Tumbes lacks stimulation. Regardless, it's easy to be happy. I ate what I wanted, slept just fine, worked a good job and spent mere pennies. My sentences in Spanish grew in length and depth. I got my camera charger fixed (for pennies), which wouldn't have happened in Canada (the technician hooked up a cell phone charger to the existing case, ingenious). I even had guitar lessons with a nimble fingered old carpenter where I learned boleros and other romantic Spanish styles that make the ladies swoon, I hear. Being happy is simple. But being optimistic is different and Tumbes didn't help.

The questions that have no answers keep piling on. And I'm losing the "everything is going to be fine" attitude that has kept me afloat in the past. Maybe it's being a tourist and a resident on this continent, and seeing the poverty contrast with the affluence in my pocket. Or maybe it's the beauty of these places that I'm seeing that shows me the full import of our problems. Maybe it's lack of someone argumentative in my life who would jump on the flaws in my arguments and dismantle them, and ridicule me mercilessly for thinking humankind and the planet earth is on the brink. But maybe it's just not true, maybe everything is not going to be fine.

They say it's about what you focus on. But at what point does focusing on the good stuff pretty much equal sticking your head in the sand, avoiding the reality of things? Enlighten me. Science, good science, is about not overstating your conclusions, not letting your data outstrip your conclusions. Not saying anything to a degree overboard. And science is telling us we're in trouble. And it is scary to hear, and hard to understand and so we find wool to pull over our eyes. I know I do. We focus on the things we can understand that aren't so scary, that aren't so hard to understand. Like big plans for the weekend. Like The Hills, NFL, NHL, Facebook, UEFA, Grey's Anatomy, Brad Pitt. And leave the change up to Obama.

This moment above, Pisani scoring the game winner in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals meant the world to millions including me. Hearts exploded, the city went crazy. Front page news. But what does it really matter? I'm as guilty as anyone and that just makes me lose more optimism. If I can't even change, how can I expect anyone else to. The system makes it easy to lose yourself, to spend your time and money in a bubble that in the scheme of things, means nothing. Haha, the 'system.' I sound like a radical. Maybe someone needs to do something radical.


I look for optimistic things. The hole in the ozone is shrinking. We've made gains in education, women's rights, malnutrition, democracy. I hear education is the only way forward. But the root of the problem seems too fundamental to human nature to overcome. That we're all looking out for ourselves as people and this problem needs us to look out for ourselves as a species. I look for optimism and the only places that I find it - babies and Obama. Seriously.


Baby steps?

It's Time

And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

- Barack Obama. 20-01-2009

Full text

Control Alt Delete

New Years Revolution: Quit technology.


(Train Graveyard, Bolivian Altiplano)

I think almost everyone reading this has experienced in some way the frustrations of technology, especially when it malfunctions and you have no idea why. Part of the exasperation is that with no knowledge whatsoever of how to fix it, you're at the mercy of the mechanic or technician you go to for help. My computer hard drive, Ipod and camera charger all failed on me together leaving me with no computer and no music, pictures, work files. My annoyance (with HP, Apple and Olympus) eventually wore off but as I survived a month without my Things, I realized how dependent on them I had been and that maybe it was all a little unnecessary. Didn't someone once say something poignant about the pointlessness of accumulating nice things because we all die in the end?

Well okay, I'm not going to quit technology. That was just me being over-dramatic to get you to read this. But after a month of dealing with warranties and computer technicians, I have my laptop back and a firm resolve to not become overly attached to digital things, especially things that I can't fix myself. As resolutions go, we'll see how well this one holds up.

(Laguna Colorado, pink with Flamingos and algae)

I tell you what though, this blog would be a lot more difficult to write without pictures.

So with the last reserves of my camera battery, I went to Bolivia for Christmas and New Years. Compared to Peru, Bolivia is poorer, landlocked, colder, higher in altitude, more extreme in geography; in general a harsher place to live. We took a tour of the Altiplano in southern Bolivia, a sea basin that 8 million years ago got uplifted 3000 metres into the sky and then dried out. The beauty of the salt flats, deserts and lagunas make up for the lack of comfort. I felt like I was on the moon as we drove for miles and miles in this weird land with no horizon or forms of life visible, with only gravity as a reminder that I was still on earth, until we ran into other groups of tourists kicking up dust, stirring up a racket. Between long spurts in the car, we'd arrive at an isolated pocket of vegetation or a laguna that exploded with colour and we'd all ooh and aah and snap pictures. I predict outer space tourism will feel very similar after we get over the initial thrill of the whole outer space thing and space suits.

We tourists were dependent on our guides and gas guzzling SUV's filled to the roof with supplies, sunscreen, sunglasses, food and blankets to survive out there. The few other species that manage to survive on the Altiplano are a tough crowd. Generally thick skinned and very spikey. Centuries of struggling with the harsh conditions have forced all life to evolve ways to deal with the salt-and-sand-filled torrents of wind ripping across uninterrupted flatland, the quick transition from desiccating heat to below freezing temperatures and the chemotherapeutic UV rays that barely have to cut through the atmosphere to reach us at this altitude and latitude.

On the trip, I finished a book called Wolf Totem. It's the story of a Chinese intellectual sent to the Mongolian grasslands for "re-education" during the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 60's-70's. Living amongst the indigenous nomadic herders, descendants of Genghis Khan, the author recounts the tough lives of these communities who lived independent of technology in an unforgiving environment bordering the Gobi Desert. They weathered sand and snowstorms, fought off wolf packs and mosquito plagues, but gained an innate hardiness from living the hard life. The horses, dogs, people and wolves of the grassland became mentally and genetically stronger, fiercer, more robust, over hundreds (thousands?) of years of natural selection.


On our last day on the Altiplano, our car broke down. Obviously none of us except the driver had a clue about how to fix it so we played 'throw little rocks at the the big rock' while we waited. It was fun, but we were pretty useless, dependent on our driver to fix the problem and dependent our car to get us out of there.

I know I'm a bit young to start raving and ranting about the good old days but doesn't it follow that our increasing dependence on technology is making us weaker as a species. What happens if one day, our grand network of technology that keeps our civilization afloat fails us? Say electricity stops working, just stops working and we don't know why. What happens if one day the only thing we can depend on is ourselves and what we have inside us?

I'd like to think that it'd be hard but we'd adapt.