my name is mama joel

our time in the villages has been very special. i had hoped to go to the villages to watch the health groups being conducted but had thought i would stand at the back and be anonymous.

lesson no. 1 you cannot be anonymous in an african village. did i think they might not notice john and i? it's not just the colour of our skin. our mannerisms, probably the way we smell the way we sit and eat are so strange that have proved to be better than television. John and i have had to get used to having a row of children sit in front of us and stare at us or, more distressingly, have a child scream in terror at the sight of us so that we have had to step back while the child is comforted by the parent

lesson no. 2 it's hard to get even the simplest of things right. did you know john and i are hilarious? we have been practising the simplest response to the basic greeting and have rarely got it right. our pronunciation, the order of the words and our inappropriate sequencing (we often answer that we are well before we are asked) are cause for hilarity. i think the word gets out that there is great entertainment going on at the teaching and the more bumbling our efforts at courtesy the more people turn up to experience us saying good morning

lesson no. 3 despite our differences there is more that binds us together than keeps us apart. everywhere we have gone mothers have wanted to care for their children the best way they can. they are hungry for information that will ensure a healthy future for them. the easiest way to establish something in common with people is to share something about our family. people are very interested in the fact that we have 4 sons and 1 granddaughter with another one on the way. parents take their name from their firstborn child so in the groups i have been introduced as mama joel and john as baba joel. being introduced that way certainly drew a different response than being introduced as kristine and john. it seemed that if we could identify ourselves as parents they could make more sense of us as people.

the naming can become a little confusing because after the child's initiation (which we will explain to you in more detail when we get home joel) the child takes a new name and the parents are then known by that new name. hmmm. what shall we call joel. i've always favoured felicity

it has been great to watch the way the mothers care for their children. they have their babies and toddlers at their sides continually. they are breastfeeding for long periods and the kids look healthy. we've taken some great photos of babies at the breast. one of my favourite moments was when mama dave slung her baby onto my back and tied him on with the cloth. he rested with me for quite a while and it felt perfect.

how to spend 20,000

kwacha in one day. we are now in malawi and are being looked after by our friend robyn. first job in any new place is to get some local currency. john is now carrying around wads of money because even minor items cost hundreds of kwacha and our favourite question "do you take visa?" is usually met with blank looks. 140 kwacha will buy 1 australian dollar so it is very easy to spend thousands of kwacha at one time.

we have visited some great markets and bought some lovely carved goods. not enough to turn the economy around but enough so that we have had to buy a new suitcase to bring our treasure trove home in.

we arrived in blantyre on saturday afternoon and spent overnight there. sunday morning found us at the markets and the supermarket to get some supplies for our week in mangochi. we took the scenic route there and had afternoon tea at the resort above the town of zomba.

first impressions of malawi are of a green country, with great outcrops of mountains which add drama to the landscape. as we are here at the end of the wet season the lakes and rivers are full. the burning season is not in full swing yet so the air is very clear and we are enjoying the views as we drive around.

we've walked to some villages. the grasses are still very tall so we walk in single file often with a group of children following. one time they accompanied us singing as they went. they had just learnt a new song stressing the importance of washing your hands and face and not peeing in the river.

in contrast to the villages we had a little taste of luxury on wednesday when we had a ginger ale by the pool at the makokola resort on lake malawi.

tomorrow we are off to a game park for a river cruise where we will see postcard africa.

many times on this holiday i have said to myself "in all my life i never thought i would see this or do that". tomorrow i think i'm going to have another one of those moments

friends along the way

before i leave the camino permanently in this blog i want to mention and describe some of the people we met along the way. we became a kind of fellowship of pain at times. we were also a group of outsiders who were all equally lost and often needing help from each other to find the way. for a group of relative strangers the joy we experienced when we found each other in the next village or at the next albergue was out of all proportion to the length of time we had known each other. similarly, the sadness when we said goodbye was with us for a while. i don't want to forget these people and i want you to know them a little too.

anya a german girl we met on our first night who wisely reminded us to take food with us over the pyrenees (who would have thought there were no shops anywhere along the way)

henning and his son thomas we met them on our first night. they were from denmark. thomas was walking with his father for the first week only then returning to denmark but henning was planning to walk all the way. we met up with henning all along the way and he became a companion whom we always enjoyed seeing. we last saw him in galicia. apart from the walk we had an extra connection with henning because his wife is australian, actually visiting her mother in frenchs forrest while he was on the walk. his favourite meal was his wife's roast lamb

our german friend who we shared breakfast with in pamplona and bid farewell to in carrion de los condes. he was such a cheerful energetic friendly person. i almost cried to say goodbye to him there.

after roncesvalles we walked in tandem with two spanish couples who were very friendly to us. the first was a couple who we seemed to bump into regularly for the first week. they were very proud of their heritage and told us all sorts of things about whatever town we were in, most memorably los arcos. the other couple was older. the wife was canadian and the husband spanish. the wife was particularly interested to talk with us because their daughter is studying in sydney later this year. she wanted to know things about Sydney like "is it safe?" and "what about the spiders?". they were having a roaring good time on the walk and we realised they were doing a few things differently to us. they drank beer on their stops or wine from their wine skins (it seems to dull the pain), smoked during their breaks and they had their packs taxied every day. both these couples also slept in good hotels every night rather than the pilgrim hostels. in time we adopted a few, but not all, of their strategies.

shin yu bin from korea. she was studying at university and took the walk to improve her spanish but also spoke english. shared some food with her early in the walk and overlapped with her throughout. last saw her early during our walk through galicia

aussies we met antoinette in los arcos and last saw her in a cafe at portos in galicia. it was nice to have a chat with her from time to time to exchange news about the family, the blisters and the aches and pains. we met another aussie, an older man from balmain, in a cafe in oncina del camino. we had a coffee with him, dinner together that night in villar de mazarife and morning tea with him the next morning in villavante. he was taking things slowly. different members of his family came to walk with him from time to time and he would take occasional weeks off to go to madrid and recover along the way. he was full of stories of people he had met along the way. who knows, we may bump into him again in sydney some time. we met a polish couple from canberra for just one day when we walked from barbadelo to hospital da cruz. we were saying goodbye to hinnley and when he had gone they leaned across from their table to tell us how good it was to hear an aussie accent. and we thought we had turned into europeans. they were doing well. they told us that st james had told them to taxi their packs every day, stay in hotels and not to walk more than 25 kms a day. when you have the saint whisper in your ear, what else are you supposed to do?

the french we first met this threesome in calzada del coto and waved goodbye to them on the path approaching molinaseca. only the wife spoke english but she was so warm and friendly that it was a pleasure to be with all three of them. they were older than us and suffered more than us but just got on with things.

we met another french couple in ventas de naron. she was very friendly and we enjoyed the last few days meeting up in the cafes and hostels along the way. we found ourselves in trouble together as we were chastised by one on the cafe owners for eating some of our own snacks with our coffee instead of buying her produce. that does sound like poor form but in our defence i should say she didn't actually have the things we asked for even though they were advertised. as things happened we walked into santiago with them, attended the mass together and kept seeing each other as we walked around the city that afternoon so it was nice to see some friendly and familiar faces that afternoon.

the break out

we walked into Santiago from sante irene, a 22 km walk. we were aiming to arrive by 12md for the pilgrim mass so planned to leave our albergue at 5.00 am. this is a little against the rules as most hostels specify that people don't start getting up before 6.00am so as to allow people to get a good sleep.

we planned our break out carefully. our bags were packed the night before and our clothes were arranged at the end of the bed in the order in which we put them on so as to make as little noise as possible. we picked up our packs and finished our packing and put our boots on in the toilets.

we couldn't get out the front way and snuck out the back then had to climb over the wire fence at the front and we were on the open road.

our difficulties then began because all was dark and we had no torch. the way to find your way on the camino is to follow randomly placed yellow arrows marked variously on tree trunks or buildings or fences. you have to keep your eyes open for them all the time. even in the day they are not easy to find.

we decided to eat breakfast and wait a bit so we ate our yoghurt, banana and bread under a street light. still no light and with our guide book telling us the way led into a forest path we found a yellow arrow and headed into the forest

it's not a good idea to walk around in a dark forest and i found it very scarry but we did it. it was with mixed feelings that we noticed someone following us. his torchlight was casting some light in front of us which was good but on the other hand... who was this person?

turned out of course he was a fellow walker who quickly passed us and left us in the dark again this time with our night vision diminished. thus we walked for about an hour and a half. sometimes in the forest sometimes on the road. sometimes alone. sometimes with a bit of light.

the light came and we got into normal walking making good progress for our entry into Santiago. our first glimpse of the cathedral spires was from mount gonzo (the mount of joy) but there is quite a long walk into the city ofter you get your first glimpse of it. Santiago is a beautiful, dramatic, hilly city with the usual modern outer ring and an older core. the cathedral square is huge and the age of the cathedral is emphasised by the ferny vegetation that is growing all over the front features of the cathedral. the growth softens the effect of all those gargoyles and monsters.

we arrived in time for the mass. the church was full and they swung the big incense censer (there is probably a clip of that on youtube). after that we had a good lunch and walked around the city,visited the cathedral museum and bought some souvenirs.

i felt so free. there was no more pressure. just for that afternoon i had nothing i had to do. i could have just sat on the steps of the cathedral watching people and i would have felt as complete as i could possibly be. i'd arrived. it's a pretty good feeling.

rewind one week

blogs are supposed to be current and not accounts of everything i did last week but i could not get an internet connection for the week leading up to santiago and i want to at least give you some account of our last week of walking.

for our last week we walked through the region of galicia. galicia is a rural area dotted with small hamlets. it is a very lush area with a celtic heritage. it takes pride in its difference to other regions in spain and cherishes its relative isolation.

in some ways we felt plunged back into our first week in spain as the hamlets we walked through were so small that they frequently didn't have any kind of shop. we had to plan our food (and toilet stops) very carefully for the day and although the villages were frequently close enough to see the next one from the one we were passing through we didn't see many people except for our fellow walkers.

during the last week we were a little kinder to ourselves than we had been up until that point in that we had a pack taxied twice and we took double rooms when we could. we also stayed in some very nice pilgrim hostels where, although we were still in rooms with other people they were designed more thoughtfully than others so we felt very rested.

despite the fact that our walking was drawing near to an end and we might have hoped to be getting into our stride with the walking we still found ourselves almost always the last to leave the hostels, the last to arrive in the afternoon (sometimes early evening) and still frequenting the farmacias to keep up our supplies of anti-inflamatories and bandages. juan's shin and ankle flared up awfully in the last week

along with the weariness there was an additional sense of poignancy to the last week when we started to say goodbye to some people who we had come to know a little as we had walked together. it's strange to feel loss when you say goodbye to someone whose name you don't even know but that's how it felt.

so there you have it. the last week was a blur of weariness, injury, sadness and farewell accompanied by the mounting anticipation of completing one of the world's great journeys. some on the camino have talked about the addictiveness of the camino. they are already planning to return.

it's a once in a lifetime event for me. it's been a great adventure. a time when i've had to accept the dominance of the landscape. i've absorbed the impact of the human story on the landscape and on culture and i've been a stranger in a culture for the first time in my life.

i also learnt, yet again, that there are very few things i can do on my own or even want to do on my own. thank you john for all the help, for all the way-finding, for all the care, for all the encouragement, for all the lifting and tending that you gave me during our long walk together.

thank you also for all the ridiculous moments, for never giving up on your non-mastery of spanish, for always being confident that there would be just what we needed in the next village. in some of the really dire hostels we really were the only 2 laughing and that's a great thing after nearly 32 years. thank you