worst couple of days

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the head nun of the YMCA told me never to trust a man from the street,
i'm not sure because i met hassan on the street. i have decided to
continue on continuing on the way i have been, trusting good men as
they seem and hoping the best of them. if they turn out to be crooks
then it is much more there own loss than it is mine.

another interesting turn has taken place. i have been searching for
film for my leica camera, before i depart south on my motorcycle. i am
down to only a few rolls, but something else, my leica has
malfunctioned. the focusing mechanism has gone haywire, i tried to fix
it with what my german friend in vancouver tought me, to no avail. the
focusing mechanism is two degrees off upwards and three degrees off to
the left of where it should be, it means that with this camera i can
no longer count on images in focus. and my L-CA, the little camera
that i was fixing at the dining room table before i left calgary,
refuses to catch the film and pull it to the next frame, something to
do with the pressure plate. i have tried to fix this as well but the
small spring that keeps the pressure plate tight in order to advance
the film is old, it will not push the film into the wheel with enough
steam. there is nothing i can do, and in dar es salaam there is no
chance of fixing either of these two cameras.

i am going to send the leica to vancouver to ben, who can take it to the german and hopefully
send it back to me in maputo, which is 2000 km from here, when i
arrive. it has occured to me that, with all of these seemingly chance
happenings and breakdowns, and that also i am out of good pens and
moleskines, and that there is no internet between here and maputo that
is known, i am destined to ride this motorbike of mine in complete and
total radio silence, no cameras, no film, nothing at all. i have been
forced into a position, by the will of god himself, to have none of
the comforts that i brought along with me from the start. so i will
go! if this is what it comes to, then this is what i will accept! i
will take the challenge, the only thing in my bag were pens and film
and cameras and books, if i can have none of these things, then i will
have none, i will be riding south with just myself. my bag is empty.

it is so strange, it is the worst couple of days, maybe it is africa,
but i know it is not, it's me. i let myself worry and with the worry
came these things, crooked cops, broken cameras, sad sickening
feelings, the end of everything i counted on. when i head south i won't
have anything, it seems to have all been taken from me. it seems to
keep finding its way deeper and deeper into my small life that i have
on the road. the only thing i have left now is a bag, nothing in it is
fuctioning, the bag now serves only to carry day to day things.

this is all complaining, i have to say through all this i am secretly
having the most fantastic time of my life! anything can happen out
here, and it all is happening, and much more will happen, and i'm glad
a million times over that i am not safe right now somewhere in a
classroom where everything happens as it is expected to happen.

instead things are happening and i am learning everything and beyond
multiplied a million times over, the whole earth through direct
experience. the entire world and everything it knows is coming down on
me and i am doing my best to hold steady as it does, when the dust
settles i will be back where i started and wishing for more, i know
it. so this is not complaining, it is the story of it, how it is
happening! it is definitely happening.

love jasper

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