Life

Precious memories of trekking France and that first taste of Pastis

Re-living her niece Kate’s thrilling trip to Africa third-hand - as Kate’s mother relates the adventurer’s Skype updates - sparks Nuala’s precious memories of trekking France, the beach of Biarritz and her first taste of Pastis...

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

A tour guide in Africa warned Nuala's niece Kate and her friends not to hang washed underwear outside their tent because hyenas would `steal' them
A tour guide in Africa warned Nuala's niece Kate and her friends not to hang washed underwear outside their tent because hyenas would `steal' them A tour guide in Africa warned Nuala's niece Kate and her friends not to hang washed underwear outside their tent because hyenas would `steal' them

A FRIEND told me about a retreat she had taken during her time in America.

She was awakened in the middle of the night and gathered with the others in a hall where a monk clashed a set of cymbals and cried: “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

Wake up to your real life, was the message. You know you have two lives... the one you have now and the one you live when you realise that you only have one life.

And on such strange and wonderful thoughts, I’m travelling vicariously with my niece, Kate. She could write a book called “Travels with my Aunt” but Graham Greene already did that.

And I’m living her wild and funny and thrilling life, third-hand. Her mother relates all the stories of Kate’s summer elective in the wilds of Africa as told to her via Skype.

It is a sober thought that in some countries they don’t have money for Plaster of Paris. So when you break a limb, you could be patched up with cardboard and such fractures do not heal so well.

Another friend said that her daughter was in a hospital where there was no money for CAT scans and other hi-tech tests. She had seen three people come in and die in one day.

There were lessons learned that would have us all blessing Aneurin Bevan and recognising the strengths of our National Health Service despite all the pressures upon it.

But after the hospital, it was what our Katie did next that made me smile. She and her pals boarded a bus bound for Dar es Salaam and then on to the Serengeti.

It was 11 hours on the bus – and the idea of the heat and the sweat and the dust summoned thoughts of that old magic bus trundling all the way from Athens to London. What hell is this?

They were far from swanning it in the Serengeti, but the trek was worth it, Kate’s mum told me.

She had seen a pride of lions roaming the plains, she had walked up close and personal with a zebra and she had met a Masai tribesman and entertained a troop of his children. She had also almost met an elephant.

But the tour guide said that was madness as, apparently elephants are not to be trifled with; they’re not all frisky as Dumbo or sweet as his mummy.

Sure, the conditions were primitive. She and her friends slept in a tent and, if you wanted a shower, you went into a special tent and a man stood outside with a bucket.

When you wanted more water you had to shout: “More water” and the man poured it in. Twas far from the five-star spa.

When the girls decided to wash their underwear and hung their frilly knicks outside the tent, their guide warned them that this was not a good idea.

“Don’t do that, the hyenas will steal them,” he advised.

And Kate’s mum and I laughed at the thought of a bunch of wild hyenas roaming the plains sporting itsy bitsy, teeny weeny frilly girls’ knickers. We’re not over it yet.

It sounds real fun. The kind of real fun that our young fella James had in Barry’s on the big dipper this summer.

He loved the sweeping highs and the sudden plunges even if he nearly lost his glasses on the loop the loop.

“Auntie Nuala, it was real fun,” he announced.

Almost as much fun as those days spent trekking France so long ago.

In the hostel run by the orderly but welcoming German, the bell sounded at 6.30am and a voice boomed over the tannoy: “Wake up now.”

In the hostel run by the kind but somewhere eccentric Frenchman it was a different wake up call. He came to each of us individually, tapped us gently on the shoulder and whispered: “Time to get up.”

There were highs and lows to the trip – you meet some scary monsters along the road and you meet some wonderful human beings who go the extra mile and bring you into their homes and even offer you a glass of cold white wine on a hot day – so grown up when you are 19 and far from home.

I remember the day we went to Lourdes and my best friend asked: “When shall we see the grotto?”

And I laughed because we’d just walked through it.

“Remember the cave with all the crutches hung up on the wall?” I said.

“But it’s so small,” she replied.

I remember the day we spent on the white sandy beach of Biarritz and the cold shudder of that first taste of Pastis.

The poet, Mary Oliver, wrote: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

That monk in America cried: “Wake up!”

And moments and memories are precious as water spilling through cupped hands from a tap in a sunlit courtyard long ago.