I spent yesterday simply walking around Naval exploring and waiting for the charm of the town to reveal itself. The exploring was interesting, as always, but the charm remained elusive.

I had had enough of riding my bike through congested streets, so I set off on foot with my pannier bag converted to a knapsack. I had my camera with me, intending to make it a day of photography. However, I never even took the camera out of the bag. All the scenes seemed the same as the scenes in all the towns I’ve been in, and I wasn’t inspired to take any pictures.

My boarding house is located on one of the main streets, called Vicintillo. It had been converted to one of those annoying one-way streets, and it led straight down to the waterfront. I walked along the edge of the street, dodging tricycles and potholes and other dangers and looking out for spots of interest or spots of luxury. I found neither. So far, Naval has none of the charm of Tacloban and certainly none of the luxury. I didn’t see a single nice place to sit and relax anywhere in town. Of course, I didn’t expect to find any, but it would have been nice to find at least one place where I could sit in comfort and have a drink and gather my thoughts or read a book. I didn’t find any, and all I could do was wander the streets and cower from the heat and the noise.

I found a number of large bankas down at the waterfront loading up with people and getting ready to depart for somewhere. I have no idea where they were going or why so many people had to get there. It would be interesting to just hop on board and see where I end up. The problem would be coming back again…

I stood on the dock area for a few minutes just watching the activity. To my right was a short stretch of rocky beach with some slum-style housing directly behind it. I started to move in that direction thinking that it would be interesting to walk down the beach, but the second I started to move, I spotted a young child squatting on the rocky sand and taking a dump. If there was one child using the beach as a toilet, certainly there were many, many more and the beach area was largely a sewer. I decided not to go in that direction. In a disturbing way, this often happens to me. Thinking as a photographer, I am always heading toward cliffs and the edges of things in order to get a better view. But it is always these places that serve as the outdoor latrines for the nearby people. I’m constantly standing on the edge of some slope and taking in the view when I suddenly smell shit and I look down and see large piles of shit everywhere on the slope below me.

I went for a walk through the neighborhood beside the water, but I didn’t manage to get very far. I came to a dead end in the maze of alleyways and saw no way to go forward without going right through the houses. It isn’t easy to walk through these areas. It feels weird for one thing. Everyone is very puzzled why a foreigner would be walking there and looking around. Plus, the houses are just makeshift dwellings made out of bits of wood and plastic and whatever else can be found and the alleyways are extremely narrow, so you see all of life spread out around you. It is like walking right through people’s homes and looking into their lives.

The rest of my walk around Naval didn’t reveal anything much of interest, and I popped into a likely looking Internet cafe to check in with people back in Taiwan. A friend of mine there has a new career as a translator, and she asks me questions from time to time. I spent some time working on her questions and doing other things.

Interestingly, I got a short message from Peter Gostelow – the fellow who rode his bike from Japan to Britain and then from Britain to the tip of southern Africa. He is currently working for the British Council in a small town in Tanzania. He has a holiday coming up and he wants to cycle from Ethiopia back to Tanzania through the Sudan and Uganda. He asked me for any advice about cycling in Ethiopia and a route to follow there.

He mentioned that he’d heard about the rock-throwing children of Ethiopia, but didn’t think that would be a big problem. This inspired me to do some online research and I found that this is still a big problem. I got tons of results for a search about this and many of the stories date from the last two or three years. All the kids who had tormented me are grown up now, so all the rock-throwing children must be a new generation. Keeping the tradition alive. I loved reading the accounts on all the cycling blogs of the troubles people had had. People listed all the things that they had been attacked with – machetes, bullwhips, gravel, and rocks of all sizes. Amazing that this happens to such an extreme extent in that one country. Of course, it is the one country in which I plan a big cycling trip.

 

 

Tags: bike, Biliran Trip, Ethiopia, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Sudan, Tacloban, Tanzania