So does freedom start here, when we are no longer in charge of events? I’m starting to share Bruno’s sentiment that to be free you have to let go everything. One week later. I’m walking back to “A la Belle Étoile” in intense rain after the umpteenth session. I stride over pigs lying down in mud when a kid comes screaming in the middle of my path “Kwai! Kwai!”
It may sound weird, but I don’t feel anything special at the arrival of the Kwai. Not relief or excitement, or disappointment neither, but I am aware that this arrival takes away from us the chance to get to know each other deeper. Like Keserling says: “The shortest path towards oneself first leads around the world.” So a forced stay on a lost island would have helped.
Two days later we leave through the pass. 36 hours later, in 35 knot winds and pouring rain, we make it to Christmas islands in a poor state. Carine faints from too much vomiting. Because Shadé still did not want to get out of her dad’s arms (who is the boss again?) I couldn’t help her from falling head first on the deck!
After recomposing ourselves with 15 hours of sleep and a good shower, I re-connect to the digital world. On the first page of the web site I am checking is another Syrian refugee drama, illustrated by a photo showing fifty of them, distraught faces and frantic looks, drifting on an overcrowded and unseaworthy boat. Lou slowly wakes up next to me, looks closely at the photo and says “we were not so bad on the Kwai… those people look terrified”. SUP
