Two contrasting experiences on a round-the-world trip give TCD graduate Richard Molloy some insights into global beauty and injustice
The motor boat comes to rest on calm Pacific waters beneath the softly radiant sky. A beautiful Icelandic girl asks if I am diving or snorkelling. Snorkelling, I say, failing to suppress a smile. Snorkelling indeed - I cannot wait. It has been almost three weeks. Bless me, Father.
At the boat's edge, I wrestle with my flippers and slip into my mask. The others are already in the water, adjusting their snorkels. I stand up, allowing the gentle breeze to wash over my body, savouring the sight of the vast syrupy ocean. With a jubilant yelp, I launch myself from our rocking vessel. I launch myself as I did the first time, in Thailand, at the beginning of this wonderful trip.
Only this time, I know what to expect. Don't I?
Shoals are suddenly scudding at my feet - fish that I didn't know existed, of colours unimaginably astounding. They are going about their mid-morning routine - feeding at nearby coral, shifting from nook to cranny with balletic grace. Some loll in demure isolation. Others dart and flurry in hundreds, thousands even. I arch my neck to the right. Beneath the surface of the water, the sun slats dance, brisk and constant, the ethereal strings of some celestial marionette. This could be heaven, Father. If it weren't for that shouting.
I re-surface. Six other be-snorkelled heads burst back above the sun-glistening blue. The dive instructor is seeking our attention from the boat. "We meet back here in 45 minutes," he says, slapping the hull.
"And hey," he continues, in an uncommonly dulcet German accent, "enjoy your Monday morning." Monday morning - I hadn't realised. Miserable Monday, ha - the traffic jams, the working week ahead of us, and here we are, in the Pacific Ocean, and I'll be disappointed if I don't spot a reef shark. "I'm gonna shoot the whole day down" - not I, Sir Bob. This is the best bloody Monday on record.
******
The little girl can hardly be 10 years old. In one hand she clasps that of a smaller child, a boy, probably her brother. The other hand is outstretched, in supplication for some small change. The unofficial backpacker code urges me to pass her by - this incomparably beautiful child - but I falter. As I look into her watery brown eyes, she speaks to me. "Para comida," she says, in a voice most tender, almost wounded. Para comida: for food. There is no way on this Earth that a 10-year-old girl should be begging for food. I give her whatever useless change I have. Walking on, I arch my neck back toward her. She fingers the coins in the palm of her supine hand. Her brother stands beside her, bobbing about expectantly, staring up into her eyes. They move on.
For a middle-class Irish youth, a round-the-world trip is ebbing to a close. Any moment now, there will be another little girl.
*****
THE dive instructor is from Berlin. He used to own a business there - some kind of industrial equipment plant. He sold it seven years ago. He left Germany and discovered diving. Now he spends half the year in Fiji and half the year in another part of the world. He dives almost every day.
He seems like a wonderful, interesting person. He is happy. The little girl is from Cuzco in Peru. I don't expect she will ever experience snorkelling. I don't expect she will ever spend half the year in Fiji. She may never even leave Peru. I wonder if the little girl is happy? Will she ever be happy?
Unimaginable beauty and unjustifiable poverty exist side by side in this world. The reasons are beyond my comprehension. Having visited 12 countries in the last six months, the world now seems larger and more inexplicable than ever. In a period of war and hardship, I can only feel lucky to have the opportunity to get lost, physically and metaphysically, in the largeness and the inexplicability.
If I have learned anything from my travels, I hope it is the capacity to unlearn. Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that "convictions are prisons". They ought to be used up, not succumbed to. And so, belatedly, I discover that there are Americans who realise the inherent failings of George Bush's war on war; there are Israelis who do not want to kill Palestinians.
There are probably sublime moments for all to bask in, amidst those we wish would speed away.
It is a sad and beautiful world. It is a world worth discovering.
