If you were ever to consider travelling to Europe from Sub-Saharan West Africa don’t do as I did, and look at a map. In the foreshortened scale of such things (it happily fits within the scope of both eyes) there seems to be but one important decision to make: when to turn right. Especially when you’re making the journey in a standard family four-door sedan. Leave the decision too late and you’ll be forced to take a longer detour. Go too early and, you’ll be taking on the jungle and swamps. Is what I thought before setting off. I’d gone about two hundred miles, before I wrote it off as a bad job and came back to base to wait for a whaling ship to come by. Which, when it did, chose a route no less simple – it went to the southern tip of Africa, then back up the other side.
Again, I made a novice’s error, this time, by having read too many books, which in the case of international travel over long distances by non-standard methods, is made to sound a) a laugh a minute; b) easy; c) quick; d) free/inexpensive; e) bearable. It is none of those things.
The choices presented to you, were you to be discovered as a stowaway, by one of the temporary, stateless, minimum wage, guns for hire, that run such vessels, are: to be thrown over the side; to have part of you eaten, in case you are tasty; or to be anally violated round-the-clock, until you are dropped off, and only then, if a new supply of porn can be brought on board.
The conditions of employment as a freelance deckhand with no skills working his passage are only slightly better. I eventually limped and hiccoughed my way down the gangplank a stop or two short of the final destination, Athens. It seemed like the preferable course of action at the time.
It was no picnic, but after a while, I ceased to be terrified for every minute of every day. They were pretty hardcore sea dogs, but they eventually issued me with a firearm and provided me with entry-level training. And so, with that, I began to sleep for four full hours in a row each night.
Looking back on that time now, in those few months spent chasing aquatic wildlife, I found a sort of peace, that until then had eluded me. What was once a creature to be feared, becomes a cohabitee – whether water-based, or wearing plimsolls. Obviously, only retarded people see a significance and spirituality in death, but for the rest of us, given an opportunity to reflect, we might slowly come to look upon ourselves as essentially similar creatures, born to wander around, looking at things for a while, until one day something makes us die.
As I said, I had them drop me off in Turkey. The only previous time I’d been there was when Nobber Doi dropped out of what would have been the one and only holiday I spent with a friend. He claimed to be suffering from a trial version of Covid, released twenty years or so before the real thing, meaning that, at the last minute, I either had to cancel, or go alone. In the end I went, and I spent an unhappy week avoiding gentleman courters and carpet salesmen – gullible, yet gorgeous, I like to think.
This time, still incapable of heeding past errors, I allowed myself to be dropped of there again, instead of staying with them until Athens. From Athens you can find your way this way and that, all roughly falling within recognisable territory. Right-side Turkey, on the other hand, lands you straight in the middle of a less familiar place. And it’s a hard slog back from there.
Dickie White's Diary 