City of Hope

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God has sent another angel on my path and her name is Jenny. As soon as I see her, I notice her dark complexion, her fragile posture, her long, curled black and white hair, her soft eyes, and the teeth missing from her smile. Jenny welcomes me into her home. She offers me a bedroom with TV, the use of her laundry machine and unlimited access to her veggie-stuffed fridge. She´s so generous, I can hardly bear. Jenny is Rennie´s mother in law and while her husband is away working in the mines, she is fond of enjoying some overseas company. There is a catch though, I have to teach her all I know about photography. A task I´m more than happy to take on. After Rennie and I had a beer and chat near the beach, he takes me to see her. Once there, I instantly start apologizing. I´m worn-out and the beer I had fell on my empty stomach. I need to take care of myself and get some sleep. But I feel guilty because Jenny’s kind enough to take me in and I don’t feel capable at all to even have decent conversation. When Jenny notices my fatigue though, she just waves both hands through the air and loudly exclaims I shouldn’t worry about anything. ‘You’re tired, I get that. Get a sleep, have some rest, we’ll talk tomorrow.’ I could just hug her. I go to ‘my room’, slip straight into bed and sleep for 10 hours straight.

Today is blissfully boring. It’s beautifully sunny outside, so I put on my running shoes and head out to explore Esperance. I run towards the harbour Jetty, right along the beach. Again, the colour of the turquoise and azure blue, bright water is striking, softly falling upon the white beach in gentle waves. There are small, 1,5 metre high dunes after which a twenty metre wide stretch of grass land follows that borders the town road. Norfolk fern trees are planted here and there on the grass. They’re huge. Their trunks have a metre wide girth and on their branches grow thick, green, baby-corn shaped leaves. Once I get to the jetty, I finally meet Mickey, the fat and spoiled town seal that begs a fish from everyone that passes by. Mickey has been hanging around the jetty for at least twenty years now, although many believe that today’s Mickey has had at least four predecessors. When I get back, I get some writing done, sort out some photos and chat to my family back home. It’s five pm when Jenny returns home from work. We finally get a chance to catch up. Soon enough, the topic lands on my trip through Australia and my father’s death. I tell Jenny all about what I’ve been going trough. I still haven’t found an answer to my main question. How do we live our lives, knowing terrible things can happen? How do we go on living, with such uncertainties, without becoming paralyzed by what we know? ‘The key is to turn around the negative experiences you had’, she explains. ‘If you can do that, then perhaps you can hang on to the innocence we were all born with and take on life with the excitement and enthusiasm you once had.’ Born in a Maori family in New Zealand and being given up for adoption made Jenny’s life an emotional challenge. And if it weren’t enough, Jenny faced even more personal life tests as she was adopted into an abusive New Zealand family (I checked with her whether I could write her story in my blog. She was fine with it, believing, as I do, that everyone has their own rock to bear and we should stop trying to bury our secrets and instead, share them so others can learn and be part of it). Both her adoptive parents have now past and she has been through many of the Maori mourning rituals. She knows death well enough and still lives with such passion, bubbliness and energy. I admire her. It are her typical mannerisms that make me grow found of her. Her loud laugh, her excited hand gesturing and the twinkle in her eyes all disarm me from any reservations I might have towards strangers. We talk about God and spirituality, we talk about life challenges, we talk about society’s pressure on one’s emotional state, in fact, we talk for two hours straight and completely forget about dinner. It’s not until we both start feeling faint that we realize it’s time to eat. ‘Society will not want you to be so open about your negative emotions. I don’t know why, but people just don’t like being confronted with sadness or fear’, Jenny says while she gathers some plates from the cupboard. ‘I don’t know either Jen. I know some people are excited about my story, while others feel I’m putting myself out there a little too much.’ Jenny looks at me and frowns her dark eyebrows. ‘Nonsense!’ she almost yells. ‘Everyone goes through this, why do we want to try and pretend it’s not there! You do your thing, you do what feels good for you. It’ll work, you’ll see.’ Jen and I make a tuna, feta cheese, mushroom, avocado and sundried tomato salad. It’s absolutely delicious. ‘Should I set a table?’I ask her. She pulls up her upper lip, flaps her right hand through the air and says ‘nah, let’s just eat on the couch in front of the tv, like lazy, naughty people.’

It’s eight in the morning when I close the door behind me. Jenny’s in the car already. We drive to Ollie’s, a small diner near the waterfront. Jenny orders a thick, hot chocolate and I stick with tea while we take place on a comfortable sofa. Another car pulls up. Rennie, his wife Nicole and their five month old girl Lani get out. Rennie waves through the window while Nicole carries Lani in and joins us on the couch. We’re all getting together to share breakfast. I order some poached eggs with – sorry to the poor piggy! – bacon and sausage. Jenny gets a waffle with hot fudge sauce. Rennie orders the Eggs napolite with smoked salmon and Nicole gets the polenta with fried mushrooms. I feel so comfortable among all these sweet hearts: Rennie with his sense for adventure and continuous smile, Jenny with her generous and giving personality, even Nicole whom I just met and who works as an architect and loves to go out and surf. We sit there, having breakfast and chatting away like we’ve been doing it for ages. Just good friends that go way back and are catching up over breakfast. How remarkable life can be. And how I needed these people to cross my path. I needed some time to recharge the battery, to unwind and spent some quality time with friends. In fact, I now notice that for these last few weeks, I have been getting everything I really needed. I’m not talking material goods here like ´hey, I need a TV´ and smack-bam there it is! I’m talking about spiritual needs and emotional fulfillment. Felicity in Robertson was there to tell me exactly what I needed to hear when I broke down in tears. Chris showed me I’m not so controlling after all, when I was really doubting myself. A fur seal visited me at the pier in Port Lincoln when I was desperate for a sign that would tell me my father was on my side. I met James right when I was thinking about crossing the Nullabor but didn’t want to do so on my own. I had an island to myself with a star shooting through the night sky when I finally started feeling stronger, which felt like a reward, a pat on the back. And after two weeks of hardly any sleep and nonstop travelling across south and west Australia, I meet Rennie and his family who offer me a place to catch my breath and spend some quality time with lovely, new friends. It looks like God, in whatever form you like to think of him/her, really does look after his/her children. You just need to see it and open up to it. All too often do we get caught up in our ambition, trying to live our lives the way we think it is supposed to be. We really hardly ever give fate a chance to be there for us, to unfold itself and amaze us on a spiritual level. I decide that I should let go of my anxieties over getting a job or what step to take next. God will provide. And if my last experiences weren’t proof enough, I become aware of all of this in a town named Esperance – French for hope.

On a cloudy Sunday morning, I take Jenny out to shoot some photos. Actually, Jenny turns out to be a wonderful, but sadly very insecure, photographer. She has a very distinct view on things which is reflected in her beautiful, retro and vintage type of work. She mostly shoots stills, like flowers or buildings. So teaching her what I know is challenging as I focus on mostly wildlife and landscapes. But we’re having fun, and that’s the main thing. After we’ve wondered around Cape Le Grand national park and visited a local bird sanctuary, we head back home and make another salad for lunch. ‘So, Jenny, I hope I’m not crossing any lines here, but, could you tell me something more about the Maori funerals?’ Jenny shakes her head as if to say I’m not being impolite at all by asking and she starts talking. ‘The tangi – the Maori word for the funeral ceremony – is held for three days. People do not leave the body at that time, and all relatives gather at the Marae, a sacred open meeting area where the body is put on display. It can be very confronting if you’ve never seen it before. Not just the body, but all present express their every emotion. It can be very dramatic and very overwhelming. After three days, the body is buried and we have a hangi.’ Jenny pricks in her salad with her fork, seeming not at all uneasy about talking about this subject. ‘What’s a hangi?’ I ask. ‘A hangi is a meal. Stones are put into a sand pit and heated by fire. Vegetables and meat, usually chicken, all are put on the stones and the meal is buried. It’s left there for eight hours until it’s ready to be served.’ Jenny has a sip of water and I look down at my plate. ‘Is the hangi a meal used especially for funerals?’ Jenny looks at me in surprise, eyebrows and left corner of her upper lip lifted. ‘Nah!’ she cries. ‘Maoris have hangi all the time!’ We both laugh. ‘So, what do you prefer? I mean, what do you think would be more healing, a western funeral or a tangi?’ Jenny doesn’t know. ‘It all depends on your background I guess. I don’t know which one is better, it’s what you’re used to.’ I feel that she’s right. Although I would have liked spending more time with my father’s body, just to get over the shock of it all, three days (that’s 72 hours!) seem really long. But perhaps, if you’re a Maori, three days is normal. And if you were to be a Chinese Buddhist, you might be involved in funeral rites for as long as 49 days. So, it’s a matter of relativity, of customs and culture.

‘Come Jenny, we’re going!’ as a way of thanking Jenny for taking me into her home, I decided to take her out to a restaurant that night. We wind up at the local Chinese, the only place open on a Sunday. Jenny orders the honey chicken and I go for seafood stir fried in black bean sauce. ‘San, you don’t need to do this’, Jenny says, obviously uncomfortable about being treated to a meal. ‘I know I don’t have to, but I want to. It’s my way of saying thanks to you, so let me be and please accept it.’ Jenny gives a faint smile. I’m not too sure whether I´m doing the right thing by taking her out. She seems so uncomfortable with it all. ‘It’s just that’, she continues, ‘I do things to help others from my heart, things that I feel are right, and I’m sure somewhere down the line, all good deeds are reciprocated.’ I put down my glass and look at her with a smile. ‘You’re right’, I say. ‘And it’s being reciprocated by means of a fancy dinner in town.’ Jenny and I spent the night talking about all sorts of stuff. We’re two of a kind, down to earth with a whim of spirituality, both strong, both creative, both anemic and going faint every now and then due to a innate iron shortage. We take a stroll by the beach after dinner and drive home where we crawl onto the lazy sofa in front of the television. ‘Thanks San’, Jenny says. ‘I had a good time tonight.’ I smile at her. ‘So did I Jen, so did I.’

Rennie pulls up in his white pick-up truck and a trailer carrying a yellow speed boat. It’s 5.30 in the morning and Rennie and I are bound for Sandy Hook, a small rock framed island in the Recherche archipelago. The rocks are too steep to land the boat, so instead we head for a 100 metre long, sandy beach. Sandy Hook is the island of death adders. Snakes are fascinating to me, and when I heard the story about Sandy Hook, I just had to go. In a nutshell, many pirates used to roam the Recherche archipelago in the old days. They mostly hunted for precious seal skins which were of great value on the market. But, pirates being pirates, as soon as one group managed to gather a nice pile of seal skins, another group of pirates would steal it. At one point, a certain captain of a pirate fleet, Black Jack, was robbed of his skins. The raiders took shelter on the hard to access Sandy Hook Island. The captain was fed up with being robbed and decided he had to find a way to get rid of the other pirates. So, he introduced a venomous snake, the death adder, which he planted in the pirate huts in Sandy Hook one night. The death adder was the perfect snake to release. It lies in waiting, curled up and almost invisible, ready to strike at any by passers. One bite is fatal. The captain waited a few days after releasing the snakes and came back to find that all the thieves were dead. Since death adders lie in ambush, these snakes won’t take off upon approach which made it easier for the captain to pick them up and toss them outside so he could take back his precious skins. The captain left, but the adders are still here, thriving. When Rennie and I pull into the bay, we see a pod of over thirty bottle-nose dolphins playing in the shallows. I’m so amazed, I clap my hands together and give a little, excited cheer like Cinderella trying on her ballroom dress for the first time. I’m absolutely taken by the scene. Rennie hits the gas and steers the boat high speed across the bay. Instantly, the dolphins change course and head towards us. They take turns riding the bow wave, shooting underneath the boat or jumping out of the water. ‘Buggers can’t help themselves, can they’, Rennie mumbles with a smile. We spend a half hour or so playing with the dolphins before we anchor the boat and swim to shore carrying our gear above our heads. We get dressed again, put our shoes on and head out to find ourselves some death adders. Rennie quickly shows his true, Steve Irwin side, chasing after all kinds of geckos, spiders and lizards and catching whatever he can just to show to me. We spot barking geckos, marble salamanders, rock lizards, Hansman spiders and a tiny scorpion. We never find any death adders but that doesn’t spoil our fun while crawling through the dense bushes and flipping over rocks. After two or three hours, we decide to go back to the bay and see from there. When we set foot on the beach again, the dolphin are still swimming in the shallows. It´s a swirling soup of dorsal fins. ´Rennie´, I begin cautiously, ´have you ever swam with dolphins?’ Swimming with dolphins has always been a dream of mine. I tried to do so many times while travelling but either the dolphins weren’t there or I got put off by the idea of hundreds of tourists chasing them around in speed boats or swimming with them in captivity. But these dolphins are free. And wild! ‘You wanna go give it a try’, Rennie asks. ‘No worries, I’ve done this many times. It’s great!’ I look at him, look at the dolphins and look at Rennie again. ‘Okay, but you’re coming with me!’

When get to the boat, we take some goggles and start sailing towards the dolphins. I’m so nervous. I don’t know whether this is a good idea. These dolphins are still wild animals and there are a couple of babies in the pod. If we do this, we’re taking a risk for sure. Rennie is so confident though, it reassures me enough to stick with the plan. When we get close to the pod, Rennie stops the boat and yells ‘Jump!’ We dive in, staying very close to the boat. I try to peer underwater, but the salt is stinging in my eyes. Wait a minute, where are my goggles? I hear Rennie laughing loud. Apparently, my goggles are on my head, but in my own fear and excitement, I completely forgot about them. The dolphins have moved on. ‘Okay, let’s go for another try.’ We climb back on board and head towards the pod again. As soon as the engine halts, Rennie jumps in. I go in there after him, but I’m too disorientated by all the bubbles swirling around to see anything. Rennie is pointing left and right, but I can’t see a darn thing. He surfaces clearly amused. ‘Okay, let’s try again, but this time, you get in first and don’t jump in, just slide in.’ The thought alone gets on my nerves. I’ll be in the water with wild dolphins by myself, even though it’s just for a short while. I climb back on board, but I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing. The result is that, even though I have both feet in the boat, I still manage to lose my balance and fall overboard again. I can hear Rennie´s amused giggles, even under water. Okay, that was really stupid. Slow down, breath, feel.We sail towards the pod again and Rennie shuts the engine. I slide in from the back of the boat, calmly this time, and peer into the blue depth. I see the pod of thirty, big and small, passing underneath. They look at me, moving their heads around, rolling on their sides as they glide by. I can hear their clicks and squeaks. The dolphin language. The dolphins keep their distance, there’s no air of aggression or threat at all. Just reservation and caution. I can imagine they must be thinking what are those silly creatures up there? The whole pod passes by and Rennie and I give it one more try. We drive to catch up with them and slide in again. The dolphins are coming a bit closer this time. They seem curious, as we are. I’m amazed by their size and their agility. Even the little ones seem so interested and strong already. This is an amazing experience. I see them disappearing in the blue distance. We get back into the boat. Feeewwww! Rennie and I look at each other and just start laughing. ‘Put it there.’ Rennie says as he holds his hand up in the air and I give him a high five. ‘Let’s go have some food.’

We pull up into a sheltered bay, throw out the anchor and relax a while. We lay down on our backs on the carpeted floor of Rennie’s yellow speed boat, while we eat some fruit and stare at the overcast sky above. ‘You know, I gotta tell you something, Sandy’, Rennie says while he rubs his forehead. I’m trying to stop fruit juice from rolling down my face, still with the dolphins in spirit. But then Rennie goes on. ‘I’ve never felt so comfortable with anyone in my life before. It’s really nice just chatting with you and being able to be myself. I’m never that much at ease with strangers that quickly’, he continues. ‘Likewise Rennie!’I reply. ‘You know, sometimes you just become friends with someone in a heartbeat. No questions asked.’ Rennie looks at me and smiles. Spot on! ‘You have some life there, Sandy’, he remarks. ‘I sometimes wish I did more stuff like that before I got married, or that I just could go away sometimes and travel, like you do.’ I look at him and put my chewed-up apple to the side. ‘Now, wait a minute Rennie. Maybe you’re over-idealizing this whole thing. Every lifestyle, whether at home or travelling, has its ups and downs. Yeah, I get to see the world, but it’s hard to keep relationships when doing so and even harder when it’s Christmas or something and you’re showing up alone again at the dinner table. You’ve got a great wife and kid, you never have to feel lonely, because when shit hits the fan, they’re right there and so are you. That’s good.’ Rennie laughs. ‘Yeah, I reckon I would get lonely if I did what you do. But it’s so nice to just wake up in the morning and decide that you’ll have bacon and eggs and do whatever that day.’ Now I’m the one that’s laughing. ‘So make yourself bacon and eggs if that’s what you need. What the hell is stopping you?’ I recognize what Rennie is saying though. It’s all too easy when you’re at home to get stuck in a certain routine. You’ll have the same yoghurt or buns for breakfast, read the paper, do you chores or go to work, all on the automatic pilot. It’s nice to break that routine sometimes, make some bacon and eggs instead, but you first have to become aware of it all. ‘I guess nothing is keeping me from doing so. Not really. But, I believe in fate, and doors get closed sometimes, and I’m stuck here, trying to get by on diving. I mean, I try to follow my passions, but things in life happen for a reason, doors close on ya. Maybe it’s not meant to be.’ Rennie sighs, and silently stares at the sky. I feel for him, I really do, even though I also really think he’s wrong. ‘So, you think everything in life happens for a reason, eej?’ I’m not really asking. ‘If that’s so, why do you think I came into your life, and we become good friends, and I keep telling you to never stop doing what you really dream of doing. How do you explain that?’ Rennie looks at me, serious at first, but then he starts laughing again. A pale sun breaks through the clouds and the boat still gently floats on the slight swell. Rennie sighs. ‘Jeez Sandy, you should become a life coach!’

We head back to shore and go for a hot chocolate. Rennie drops me off at Jen’s place again and I head in for a shower. What a day! I’m so fulfilled, so relaxed, I’ve had some really blessed and dreamy days this past week, going diving, swimming with dolphins, seeing all kinds of eagles, chasing geckos. It’s been great. In fact, it’s been so great that I start wondering why I’m the one receiving all these good things. I mean, what about Rennie, what about other people, why do I get to have so much fun? I bet it’s all temporary, I mean, what if... Oh my, here goes. Fear sticks its ugly little head around the corner. What if it ends? What if I start feeling miserable again? What if this whole mourning process isn’t over yet? What if I take another emotional fall? To be honest, I have no idea! I don’t know why all these blessings are crossing my path right now, nor do I know why all the bad things have crossed my path before. Perhaps it’s not just the dire moments we learn from or that withhold lessons, it might be that good things can teach us as well. So, what’s to learn from blessings? Perhaps one of the things is not to ask yourself whythis and that happens, but to just take things as they come and be accepting and thankful. Yes, I might feel unhappy again one day, but as we grow old, we grow strong. We learn to deal with things in better ways. And as Franklin D. Roosevelt, thirty-second president of the United States, once said ‘the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself’, because the fear itself may cause us more suffering than any, actual event. In regards to the mourning over my father, I sort of feel he’s up there putting in a good word for me so that I can kick back and rediscover how wonderful life can be. I will never stop missing him. EVER. Jenny told me, in one of our so many chats, that the pain of losing a loved one never dies. Instead, you learn to cope. You learn to carry the pain. You learn to live with it. I guess that’s what I’m doing. I still feel the pain of losing my dad, I still often wish he was around and that I could tell him I swam with dolphins or whatever, but I’m also realizing again what a great place our Earth is and how much fun you can have with just a good friend and a little boat. I’m learning to move on, carrying the pain and accepting it as a part of me, as a part of my life as it is now. I’m learning that even though intrinsically sad things happen, life is still beautiful and able to amaze you if you let it. Life needs opportunity to unravel. And opportunity does not come from stuffed agenda’s and hasty days, it comes from a profound connection with your very own core and with all and everything that surrounds you.

I spend one more day in Esperance. I gather my stuff, get some work done and buy a bus tickets out of here. I’ll miss Esperance. I’ll miss the city of hope. And I’ll miss my new friends. But in life, everything changes always. That’s neither good, nor bad. It’s life. I move on again, heading for the next adventure, heading for the next decision, heading for the next challenge. But this time, a little more certain, a little more confident and a little more reassured. Fate will look out for me.

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