Lose Some, Winsome

July 14, 2016July 14, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’ll pick up from right where we left off two posts ago with the dissertation.

I didn’t get it.

I should have seen it coming, I suppose. 2016 has been a bit like my last Maths exam: full of wrong answers. It’s been an odd year. A very odd year. A year where Donald Trump actually became first a viable and then the only Republican candidate for the US presidency. A year that saw 51% of Britain actually give in to race hate and fear-mongering and leave the EU. A year that brought us a Pokémon-inspired traffic jam, Boris Johnson elected as Foreign Minister, and the deaths of Prince, David Bowie and Alan Rickman. And now, just to top it all off, I’ve been thrown back onto my second choice dissertation.

In perspective, mine is a very minor problem. It still smarts, though.

Granted, radically changing my modules at the last minute may not have helped matters. But after all of the hard work I put into chiseling out a wholly original dissertation topic (not so easy, when Google contains the abstracts of almost every dissertation imaginable), I’ve been thrown back on my second. Small mercies, then, that I put just as much time and effort into making my fallback as enjoyable and challenging as the first.

Oh wait, hold the phone. I’ve done a real Benjamín here. It turns out I played an old hand this time around, one that’s never failed me before: that is, I deliberately made my second module broader, a little less original and closely linked to my TLRP, so that my university would be forced into giving me my first choice. The old ‘Second-best’ maneuver.

It’s a good trick, and it’s worked before. Only, this time I was outmaneuvered. And now I’ve been put into such a position that, if I stick to my original title, it would be almost impossible not to plagiarize myself. That’s without mentioning that the dissertation I intended to write (my first choice: memories of al-Andalus in Spanish literature) was the one I’d been planning on writing since I was in Year 10 in secondary school (I was an odd kid). It’s essentially research for my novel, the best there could have been. Gone. So that’s a six-year dream squashed underfoot. And no room for maneuver either, since they’re fixed now, and also as somebody else got the al-Andalus dissertation this year. Not so winsome now.

What a diss-aster. Thanks a lot Durham. Thanks.

On the bright side, my dissertation supervisor is possibly my favourite lecturer, so I can’t really complain. I’ll just have to swallow my six-year pride and do the best with what I’ve got. And what I’ve got is still good. Very good. Only, it looks to be a little bit harder to spin twelve thousand words of this one. Without plagiarizing myself, preferably. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

To commiserate, we went to the Med this afternoon to soak it all off in the sun. Katie has plenty to say about her equally unfair diss-missal, but the sun and the sea saw to our anger, and a couple of rounds of Psychiatrist killed any bad feeling remaining. I’ve come to love my Dar Loughat droogs as much as I did my Ali Baba babes if not more, which is a tough task. Balancing the time between them and the host family remains a tightrope walk, and one of these days I’ll have a bad fall if I’m not careful, but for now, the peace lasts.

But that’s it for today. I’m back in bed, I’m recharged on data (5€ for 5GB is a stupidly good deal) and I’m ready and waiting for the rest of the misadventures 2016 has in store for me. Global financial meltdown? World War Three? Another friend-zoning-of-the-century? All equally possible.

Here’s to another hike this weekend. The way things are going, hiking is probably the most hassle-free activity left to me.

But then again, this is me we’re talking about. Who knows what madness I’ll get up to next? BB x

Don Quijote soup – when the rim is larger than the meal itself

Blaming the Wind

July 12, 2016July 12, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

“My country lay within a vast desert. When the sun rose into the sky, a burning wind punished my lands, searing the world. And when the moon climbed into the dark of night, a frigid gale pierced our homes. No matter when it came, the wind carried the same thing… Death. But the winds that blew across the green fields of Hyrule brought something other than suffering and ruin. I coveted that wind, I suppose.”

Ganondorf’s speech, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Have you ever tried to write an essay in summer, when your friends have all gone to the beach and the humidity is fiercely high? Let me tell you: it’s brutal. I have nobody to blame but myself for the panic, having left it this late to really knuckle down and get working on this essay, but the Levante is an obstacle I confess I had not counted on. It tires you out and yet at the same time it holds you back from sleep. On a regular day when the skies are clear it might just make you a little woozy, but when the clouds push the current down to earth it acts like a greenhouse. The very wind saps you of your energy and leaves you hot, sticky and lethargic.

Not the best environment to tackle a 5,000 word research project in a foreign language.

The Levante reminded from the very first of Ganondorf’s final speech from Nintendo’s Zelda: The Wind Waker. Until then he’d been a fairly standard videogame boss with awesome power and not much personality. I don’t know whether it was an act of mercy on the designer’s part or a simple desire for a more human villain, but he was a new man in WW, and that last speech always stands out in my head. Maybe after a thousand years of imprisonment in the Sacred Realm he’d had time to mull the whole world-domination thing over. So Zelda supports cognitive behavioral therapy. Who knew?

Alright, so the Levante doesn’t exactly bring death. But lying here in the heat and the stickiness and the fatigue of the night, it certainly isn’t the kind of wind I associate with green fields.

Fortunately, at least as far as the essay is concerned, I planned well: more than 365 days later, the topic – bandit mythology in Spain – is as exciting as it sounded when I first came up with the idea on a whim last year, when my mind was likely otherwise occupied by British Council anticipation and the next Northern Lights gig. So, whilst the others at Dar Loughat spent a jolly old time at Ceuta, or Ain Zarqa, or watching Grease, I managed to bust out a decent thousand words or so; decent being a liberal term, dependent entirely on whether you can stomach my shamelessly flowery essay-writing style. If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been run down to my last megabyte of data – quite literally – I might consider going for another thousand this weekend too… But that’s not what the year abroad is for. Besides, I need more data or I’m going off the grid. I think I’ll check out the Three Armies after class.

At some point over the next few weeks I’ll get around to braving new territory and filming a grand sum-up of the year – mainly because I have to, it being part of my contract with the Durham blog. Not so good for this particularly camera-shy blogger, but you never learn if you never try, and it might be a fun little break from routine, anyway. You might even call it a swan song, in light of recent events.

It’s just gone four minutes past midnight, post-Ramadan time. I’ve got the Corrs’ latest album playing as I write – specifically, Gerry’s Reel. This evening, between sweating like a pig and drinking like a fish, I’ve got a decent amount of novelling done, too. Never forget, BB, that that is the crux. University, the year abroad, Arabic… It’s all a passing phase. The book is eternal and if you don’t work on it, nobody else will. It’s really blossomed this year like never before and I’m quite excited to have the time to work on it without any guilt in September, before dissertation season and the travails of Finals year set in.

Speaking of which, we should be finding out our dissertation choices this week. Scary, much. Especially so when it’s a 12,000 word commitment. Fingers crossed, eh? BB x

Time Lords and Holy Water

July 11, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Two seasons of Doctor Who in as many weeks. That’s getting dangerously close to an addiction. Fortunately, it was as much a memory run as it was a time-filler; the buck stops with the last of the Tennant episodes. For some reason I never got into the Matt Smith series. Maybe I grew up.

Yeah. Like that’s ever going to happen.

If my last post made it sound like Eid was one long endurance test in the kitchen, this one ought to shed some light on the matter. If the truth be told, I spent both Eid itself and the following day very much out and about, purposefully burning off any and all calories gained over the weekend. With all those sugary Ramadan sweets, I had plenty of energy to burn.

True to form, I messed up. The calories got burned, well and truly, but so did my back, my neck and my legs. Talk about splash damage. But when splash damage comes in the form of an entire day on the shores of the Mediterranean, who’s really complaining?

I confess, beach days are not really my idea of a day well spent, but for once it was nice just to kick back and relax by the sea, happy in the knowledge that last week’s conundrum was, finally, resolved.

Spot the Italians (hint: it’s got something to do with the Sun)

The Dar Loughat team has exploded from six to eighteen over the last week. The result is that the gatherings have got louder, cheaper and perhaps a little less personal. And perhaps for that reason I’ve been pulling away a bit this week, loner that I am. Curiously enough, that led me to spend the day after Eid with the Host. I didn’t have much of an idea as to what, where or why. The father simply knocked on my door in the morning and asked if I was coming with them. He didn’t say where. But aren’t they the very best of plans: the one that you have no idea about?

Hello Africa!

The destination, as it turned out, was Moulay Abdessalam, a holy site and place of pilgrimage for the Sufis of Morocco, sat high atop a mountain in the Bouhachem range. If I hadn’t twigged that I was in Africa yet, I certainly did when I saw the shrine. At the top of a flight of rock-cut steps, the shrine – a small white building with a green door cut into the side – seemed to grow out of the rock, sheltering a huge cork-oak sprouting from its centre. The floor, too holy for human feet, was nailed down with smooth cork-oak bark, and men walked to and fro across it barefoot, chanting and praying and bowing before the tree. It was mystical enough a spectacle, but add to that the swirling mists, sometimes thick enough to obscure everything ten metres away and more from sight, and it was almost otherworldly.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

I suppose cameras aren’t particularly acceptable in such situations – I’m still stinging from that run-in with a couple of camera-fearing Chaouenis back in May – so I contented myself with a distant shot and resorted to sketching it instead, though how that is a less offensive practise than photography continues to escape me.

Continue up the mountainside a little way and you come to a telegraph mast, from which one of the locals willingly leads you to a metre-long fissure in the rock. According to local tradition, the rock is a test: those who can pass through the fissure will be blessed, and those who cannot will be cursed. Something like that, anyway. The words bendito and maldito were clear enough. As for the test itself, it revolves more around technique than skill: the nature of the fissure is such that there is a way to get through, though it requires keen observation and no small amount of manoeuvring.

Claustrophobes beware

Yours truly made the cut in less than a minute. I put that down to a staunch refusal to grow fat on Moroccan cuisine than any skilful footwork on my part, though I have to say it seems a rather sexist challenge: I just about managed to squeeze through with the rocks grazing my back and chest. Any amount of gym, good eating or femininity and you’d have no hope in hell. I’m blessed, then – but at what cost, I wonder?

Scarce Swallowtail – GOTCHA

We stopped on the way back to fill up on fresh water from for a sacred spring. To dispel any myths there, we were filling up industrial-sized plastic water bottles by the bootload, although I did suffer to drink straight from the well by means of a smoothed-out bark ‘cup’, as Moses and his followers might have done in the stories of old. Pretentious, much, but I was loving every second of it.

How to drink, oldie-worldie style

We took a late lunch in the misty forests. I was in one of my strange, quiet moods and contented myself with watching the mists swirling through the trees. It was a pretty magical sight. This time last year I was dodging traffic, crawling into a hole with Henry Rider Haggard and steadily losing my mind in the dusty streets of 40ºC Amman. To think that at the same time of year I could be standing in a cold, misty forest with the wind in my hair and the sound of birdsong… It’s everything I wanted and more. Morocco, you’ve done me such wonders. Thank you.

Africa, forest, mists, but no gorillas (there might be some macaques about, though)

Everybody’s heading out today; half for the mountains, half for the beach. As for me, I’ll be staying right here. Our Fes plans fell through due to illness, which isn’t so bad a thing, as I have a lot of work to do today. Essays – the bane of our lives. The sooner I’ve got some more of this work done, the sooner I can get back to enjoying my time out here. A target language research project is all well and good for assessing one’s advancement in a language, but it doesn’t half cast a shadow over your enjoyment of the year abroad. Just a thought, and not even mine, but one I adhere to. Katie certainly had the right idea there.

Well, three weeks remain. This time in three weeks I’ll be on a plane bound for Madrid, and then for home. But whilst it’s the end of the story for me, the story is just beginning for so many others (ugh, how crass a line is that). So, whilst you’re here, don’t forget to see how things are going on with fellow bloggers Alice Abroad and the dream-team at Langlesby Travels. Doesn’t everybody need a breath of fresh air from time to time? Blogging can seem a pretty solitary activity, but in actual fact it brings you so much closer to people by opening a window on a world you might never have seen before. It also keeps your writing muscles very well flexed. As an exercise, I couldn’t recommend it more highly. Which is odd, really, because I don’t go in for recommending exercise as a rule.

Until the next time, I’ll try to keep you posted as often as I can. The end is so near I can taste it, but I’m not about to lose sight of the goal with the final line in sight. Let’s smash these last three weeks, ya3ni. Positive attitude, that’s what it’s all about. That’s what it’s always about. BB x

Halfway There

July 2, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’ve crossed the halfway mark. As of five minutes ago, I’ve been in Tetouan for four weeks. Four weeks exactly remain. It’s strange to think that the year abroad, essays outstanding, will be over soon. It feels like I’ve been away from home for so long. Jordan dragged, but Spain was over and done with in the blink of an eye and now I’ve only four weeks left at this Arabic game, inshallah, before I can return home at last and, for the first time in over a year, not have to think about where my next placement will take me.

At least, not for a month or so.

Victoria left for home this afternoon, which leaves me as the last of the old guard, if four weeks makes a veteran. I think I’m going to miss her, and I don’t say that about just anybody. She’s bound for brighter and better things and I can only wish her all the best wherever she goes. She’s been such an inspiration whilst she’s been her. It’s not every day you meet somebody who speaks nearly fifteen languages to varying degrees.

Goodbye Victoria!

Inspiration is so very important to me. I had an English teacher once who once complained about a parent asking her to motivate her child; her response was that she was ‘paid to teach, not to inspire’. I’m pretty sure I’ve used that example before, but the argument still stands: she was so very wrong. Inspiration is fundamental in teaching. When the pupil is ready etc. You know the phrase. I won’t repeat it. Inspiration is essential, especially for a subject as challenging as Arabic, and I’ve been so inspired by the people here at Dar Loughat. By Dris, the man who seems to know everything; by Jamal, the diplomat; Alex, the adventurer; Victoria, the original polymath; Katie, the courageous. For somebody who was dragged out of Spain by his heels, it was absolutely essential that Morocco delivered the goods and got the job done, and so it did – and how!

Relations with the host family have got significantly easier, too. That’s probably because I’ve been going out less of late, but maybe my rising confidence in Arabic has dealt a fair hand in that. The library in my room is a gold mine of information, the food every day and night is amazing (and much too plentiful) and the conversation is fantastic. That the father has a firm naturalistic understanding from his palaentological hobbies is just an added bonus, really.

Oh, I’ve been spending my time wisely, I have…

We had a few teething problems, I admit, but I discovered recently what I had guessed to be true: my predecessor was a bit of a social recluse, prioritizing a rapid mastery of Arabic over any and all gatherings. He rarely left the house, spent every spare hour out of class with the family and was constantly asking questions. The family just kind of assumed I’d do likewise, I guess. Is it any wonder, then, that they were a little confused by my silence, preference for books and long, long walks at the weekend? I reckon they’ve got the hang of me by now – insofar as anybody ever can – and my deep attachment to my own freedom. Maybe I’m more British than I thought.

I think I’ll go for my own apartment in Villafranca next year. BB x

Exile

June 25, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’ve deliberately waited to pen this one. Being both out of the country and out of WiFi meant that I didn’t get the news until I got to class this morning, by which point I’d already forgotten yesterday’s referendum buzz. I had more important things on my mind, like how many men were really killed at Covadonga, and what kind of a world would Spain have been had Navas de Tolosa gone the other way. Stuff like that.

Waiting has also meant that you’ve been spared the knee-jerk, bloody-hell-it’s-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it attitude that I spent most of this morning suffering from. In fact I was so shocked by the news that I could hardly talk for the first twenty minutes or so of class. And whilst I was a little tongue-tied for the first two weeks, the last few days’ confidence boom has brought out the chatterbox in me, and therefore it felt quite odd being left with suddenly nothing to say.

I’m talking, of course, about Brexit. About my country’s decision to ignore sanity, common sense and all basic human emotions besides fear and to rally behind some of the most sinister British politicians in living memory.

It smacks of Weimar. It smacks of Trump. It smacks of the start of pretty much every slow run-up to fascist mind-control. I’m not going to start spouting nonsense about the end of the world – it’s really not – but it was a knock I was certainly not expecting this morning.

And that’s the strangest thing of all. I simply never saw it coming. It always seemed so… laughable. Oh, I’d be the first to confess that I’ve barely looked into the consequences or the data. I got most of my updates from Have I Got News For You. In the end, if the truth be told, I simply let instinct and common sense decide my stance on the matter. Perhaps that makes me no better than anyone else. But if my Facebook page is anything to go by, the Brexit voter is a very rare beast indeed – at least, amongst my generation. I’m told it’s the fault of the older generation; they voted for Leave in their droves, apparently. Personally I have no idea. I have no grandparents, no great uncles or aunts, and therefore no contact with that generation whatsoever. I don’t have the foggiest how they live, or how they think. Therefore I refuse to buy into rumours or make claims about what I don’t know. If only some of my countrymen had done the same.

It still shocks me, though. How did it happen? It was just a joke, right? Everyone and their tabby cat was against it: Patrick Stewart, Alan Sugar, Ryanair, James Bond, David Attenborough, the Prime Minister… The list was endless. Who was supporting Leave? I mean, apart from Trump, Kim Jong Un and IS, who naturally all want what’s best for us, of course. I was baffled enough by the Trump campaign. How could a man faced with such a fierce backlash ever get to be the Republican candidate for the President of the United States? And yet he did. It was tempting to think ‘only in America’… and yet, here we are. Severed from the European Union by another silent majority who – if the rumours are true – won’t have to live with the results for even a breath of the time that we will. We, the generation who came out so strongly in defense of the Union… Ignored.

To say that it swayed my mind on moving abroad after university would be heresy. I’d already made that decision many months ago, and I’m proud to say that I made it out of love, not fear. My decision stands. Only, perhaps now there’s a sense of urgency, a feeling of Cortés landing in Mexico about it. My plans were laid, but somebody went and burned the boats. It may take all of ten years to obtain my Spanish citizenship, or – if that old Hispanic obsession with blood still stands – it may be less, but the way things are going, I’m bound for exile no matter what happens. BoJo and Farage and their silent worshippers have made it just that little bit harder now, as my road is now fraught with VISAs that had never been necessary before, but I won’t let that stop me. They can try, but they’re not treading on my dreams.

The way some of us Brits have reacted to this – myself included – you’d think that war had just been declared. That’s the worst part of it all: the fear. It’s fear that has got us in this state. Fear of what? The unknown? The migrant crisis? I would pay handsomely to send the average Leave supporter to one of the refugee camps in Jordan or Greece for a couple of months, if just to see if there really is a right answer. Familiarity: that’s the obvious solution. Once you know that which you’ve only seen and heard in the news, it’s suddenly a great deal more than a number on a piece of paper (Would Stalin have sent so many to their deaths if he’d had the chance to get to know them all?).

Of course, I’d go for the laughter route myself. Laugh at your fears, laugh at the world and especially laugh at yourself. I almost walked into the same lamppost twice today, and I had to count the hours between nine o’clock and twelve just to be sure there were three of them. And yes, I just did it again to confirm. Yours truly has some remarkably oafish tendencies. But I revel in my bouts of stupidity. It’s what made the Greek gods so much more interesting than the Abrahamic belief in perfection. None of us are perfect, nor ever could be. We’ve as much hope of being ‘perfect’ as a Jack Russell has of explaining quantum physics to a nursery group. But we try. And that’s kind of funny. We should laugh at that.

J.K. Rowling had it down: laughter really is the best cure for fear, but familiarity is the next best thing.

Where am I going with this? I’ve literally just got home. My phone wouldn’t make the connection to my host family for some reason so I ended up sitting in the doorstep for an hour, as I’ve done in one way or another so often in my life. I’m quite used to it by now. Waiting is no bad thing. It gives you time to think, to muse, to watch the world go by. Life goes on. Britain may have decided to leave the European Union and we may or may not be headed for troubled times, but it’s business as usual in Tetouan.

I’ve been waiting my whole life in one way, shape or form: the right girl, the right moment, the right place, the right language. Patience: birdwatching taught me that. I can wait a little longer. One day, when of all of this fear and hostility has blown up and/or over, we’ll look back and have a good, long laugh. No matter how dark it gets. BB x

Life on the Road

June 22, 2016June 22, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Oh thank heaven. The air con has just come on. I’ve been sitting here on the bus for the best part of an hour now, under the mistaken belief that it was the 11:30 CTM service to Tetouan, but of course it’s the local equivalent, complete with irregular timings, sleazy touts and the train of peddlers, preachers and beggars, all of them out to make a quick buck to a captive audience. This was an unexpectedly cheaper alternative, but right now I’m wishing I’d walked that 150m more and made for the pathetically-small CTM station just down the road. Rabat may be Morocco’s capital, but it’s bus stations are about as inconveniently located as its humanely possible to be.

Rabat this weekend. The opportunity presented itself and I took it, motivated more by my desire to see the old pirate republic of Salé than anything else. Sadly, despite its dark and fascinating past, there’s nothing to tell you about the city’s pirates. No museums, no street names, not even an information board. Just a few scraps of evocative graffiti.

I might have known. Google didn’t turn up a thing. I was inclined to disbelieve that, but as is so often the case, Google was proved right. No sign of Murad Reis or his pirate republic anywhere. And there was me hoping that it was still possible to view the Web as a pack of lies. Perhaps that’s human history.

Salé itself is a pretty seaside town. I’d say it’s a welcome antidote to the bustle of Rabat, but even Rabat isn’t a very hip-and-happening place. And that’s good. Maybe it’s antidote to Marrakech or Fes, then. The capital of Morocco just seems to shunt along at its own pace, unhurried, unharrying. True, Ramadan could have something to do with that, as ever, but compared to Amman, it’s a relaxing city break. And I’ve learned a fair few things for the book just from wandering around, so that’s good. It’s what I came for.

It’s been a rather human weekend. What do I mean by that? I mean that I’ve spent most of it talking and making new friends, so much as is possible on the road. They’re always fleeting encounters; most of the travelers you find in Morocco are the spit-and-sawdust kind, the ones who bought a flight out and are musing along at their own pace; free spirits without a care in the world. One such wanderer, a New Zealand trader, had been wandering around the country for five months and more, learning Dārija, trading his belongings and doing odd jobs here and there to get by. The social skills of the Gods, truly.

People often have me down, falsely, as a die-hard globetrotter. Perhaps that’s because of my self-professed love for the world more than my aspirations for a life on the road, per se. A firm knowledge of the world and its people is a great start for any adventure. But in truth, I’m nothing like these shaggy-haired, baggy-pants free spirits I so often meet on the road. They’re the ones who are quite happy to let go; to set out from home with no desire to return. There’s a fair amount of that fire in me, I guess – at least one of my ancestors was a merchant sailor – but I know where I belong. Some people spend their lives looking for home, a place that calls out to them, a special space. A sanctuary.

For me, that’s Spain. I’ve known that for years. I think I found my home too soon.

Ignorance is bliss, but if I could look into the future, I might just risk that knowledge on a whim. Will I end up in Spain? Or will the hurricane of life carry me elsewhere, far from the lighted path? I’m my very good at putting my heart and soul into something and then watching it sail away on the waves, quite beyond my control, sometimes through no fault of my own, and sometimes so. Clubs, dreams, relationships… So many of them float away on the tide. Perhaps that’s what’s so captivating about sunsets: the end of one dream, the beginning of another.

The air con has got me musing all over the place; the air con and my frustration at the speed of this bus. Travel at one’s own leisure is a wonderful thing, but when you have a time limit it’s such a stressful endeavor. Here’s to that day when I find myself on the road again with no plans to return, at least for a month or two. Here’s to freedom. BB x

Perseverance

June 10, 2016June 10, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Gave you all a bit of a fright with my last post, didn’t I?

Since Wednesday’s minor breakdown – the apotheosis of a very shaky start – I’ve eased in at last. It’s as though somebody’s holding up a mirror to last year, when the first few days were whimsical, light and carefree… Well, I’ve bounced back. It was only a matter of time and effort. I owe that to several factors, not least of all the Corrs, C.J. Sansom and a very inspirational young lady – and, of course, to my dear friends for all the support they’ve given. Thank you.

I’ll start backwards. I mentioned a couple of posts back that my Parisian classmate was streets ahead of me in linguistic and thinking ability. From her wealth of vocabulary, maturity of thought and clear sense of direction in life I had her down as at least a couple of years older than me. That’s a major sin right off the bat; false assumptions. The revelation that she was actually several years my junior took the wind out of me. I’ll not say how much… just that for her age, to be equally comfortable in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Russian, English and French (and goodness knows what else) is nothing short of inspirational. Age really shouldn’t have anything to do with it, of course, but it’s always a wonderful thing to find someone so young so very keen, and I’ve always been a sucker for charismatic individuals. And this one’s a real star. I guess I could learn a lot from her.

Jeez, she’s just come back with a newspaper and is reading it as though it were in French. Life goals right there.

Concerning C.J. Sansom… I’ve had Dominion on my bedside table for the last three years but never got around to reading it. It’s like Pavilions or just about any Stephen King novel: the writing is brilliant, top-notch even, but would it really hurt to write a little less? (My brother’s the Stephen King fan in the family… the rest of us use his books as highly convenient door-stoppers). That’s where iBooks came to the rescue. Much as I am loath to accept them as a genuine substitute for the feel of a good hardback book, their convenience as far as travel is concerned is second to none. Especially when the book concerned is over six-hundred pages. I’ve not gone a week since being awarded my iPad last summer without having at least one book on the go, but it’s been a long time since I could hardly put the damned thing down for the quality of the novel. Dominion‘s had me putting off sleep during Ramadan, it’s that good. To write with his grit, his flair for realism… More life goals.

The crux of the matter is the book’s firm focus on England and the spirit of British independence. Churchill. That sort of thing. I needed inspiration and I found it: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts“.

Thanks Winnie. I owe you one.

Lastly, what I really should have done sooner was to pick up my iPod and treat myself to some serious music therapy. It’s a failsafe I always forget to fall back on, provided I’ve got the right track. And the Corrs’ Forgiven not Forgotten – every song on that album, in fact – is always the right track. I’m not sure what the first album I listened to was. I suppose it may have been Spiceworld, but my parents are both music teachers, so the scope there is enormous. Certainly the first one I remember clearly and the one I associate most with my childhood is Forgiven not Forgotten. I still have the cassette, stashed away with other precious mementos of my childhood: the Jubilee medallion, a vulture feather, a bundle of love letters…

The Corrs were, and still are, my favourite band. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there’s a serious hustle for that top spot between Beyoncé, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson and James Brown, with the latter usually taking the top spot purely because of his legendary stamina on stage, but there’ll always be something special about the Corrs. I grew up with them. I listened to them on the way to school and every time we went on that long car journey to the Lake District. I think they even had a hand in giving birth to the novel; Erin Shore, in particular. And after all these years, I still treasure that album above all others. There’s just something about it that never faded.

If it weren’t so expensive (comparatively speaking), I’d up sticks and travel to Ireland every time the songs come on. Forgiven not Forgotten, Someday, Erin Shore, Runaway… There’s real Irish magic in there. Green hills, glassy lakes and stark cliffs. Gorgeous accents and black hair. Resilience. The north. Oh, to be Irish!

I’ll be honest. The older I get, the more attached to my home country I become. And for once I’m talking about England. The pink, fluffy clouds of a winter’s morning over a hard, frosty ground. The cawing of a rookery or the song of a lonely woodpigeon. The wind in the trees in summer. The symphony of colour in the woods in autumn. The first chiffchaffs singing from the blossom in spring. Footpaths and country lanes. Skylarks. These are things I associate with home. My choice of a path in life is destined to lead me further down the path my grandfather took, back to my roots in Iberia, but – how does it go again? – there will always be that part of me that is forever England.

My apologies for grossly paraphrasing you, Brooke. I know that’s not exactly what you meant. But the words have a real magic, a real meaning to them. And I couldn’t agree more.

I think that’s the most important lesson I’ve learned this year, above and beyond standing on my own two feet, learning to ask for help, perhaps even knowing when to shut up… No, more importantly than that, I’ve learned to love who I am, what I am, where I come from. Not in some glorified, nationalistic sense. Only, I’m no longer ashamed to be British. Quite the opposite, in fact. Perhaps I’m even proud to be so, dare I use the term. But whatever Britain stands for, what matters most is that, at last, I am happy with who I am.

World, I’m ready. BB x

Ramadan Dreams

June 8, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I slept pretty much all afternoon yesterday. That’s what you get after a two o’clock suhūr, I suppose. The result was a slew of very vivid dreams, perhaps not uninspired by the few clips of Inside Out! I’d been watching (I really must see the whole film. It looks amazing). This morning I could have spun the whole bizarre sequence out for you, piece by piece, but like so many dreams it’s been carried away by the morning light. All I remember clearly is standing aboard a gigantic galleon with vast, green sails, floating high above the earth like something out of The Edge Chronicles, and hurling myself overboard with my camera bag into the sea below as an alarm sounded and the ship slowly tilted sideways, stooped and then plunged into the water. And I was mainly concerned about keeping my camera dry.

I don’t think the family were all that impressed by my walking to and from school yesterday. I was. I found my way there and back in forty minutes apiece and it felt so good to get out. After all of that palava over Moroccan table manners, I really needed to get out on my own. To think. To breathe. Homestays really shouldn’t be this tough, but I am a bit of a loner. Sometimes what I really need is just to be left alone for four or five hours to read, or to think, or just to be. That was last year’s trouble, too; always rushing about.

It’s been a hard first few days. I knew it was going to be this way, especially concerning the Arabic language itself, but I didn’t expect it to be quite this hard. Leaving behind the friendly routine of the best year of my life to march straight into a two-month overhaul was always going to be difficult. Had I not gone in so positive I’d be on the brink of tears right now. I’m so behind. My classmate takes in the stuff like a sponge and I’m sitting there leaking. Grammar goes in, gets jumbled up with a million other unconscious thoughts, mistakes come out. It was so much easier in first year, when I was ahead of the game and vocabulary was all that really mattered… But then the grammar caught up, I burned out, and like so many track events, I fell back and back and back until I found myself a whole lap behind the rest. What a joke.

And here’s the punchline. In my brief spell at home, I found a folded sheet of paper covered in red scribblings I’d penned during that five-hour church service-cum-auction in Boroboro. University plans, mostly. I wrote them just weeks before I was offered a place at Durham. In amongst the scrawls there’s a four-year plan, detailing my plan of attack vis-a-vis studying French, Spanish and Arabic.

Apparently I’d never intended to take Arabic past the second year at all. There’s a question mark by that one as it is.

The question is, why did I take this road? Jordan was trying, but then, so is this – for want of company, this time. But for that one Monday class, last year was a dream. I belonged. Just speaking Spanish made me happy. And now I’m here… It seems very silly to be doing something you don’t really enjoy, and less so when you’ve no intention whatsoever of making any money out of it. Neither use nor ornament, and that’s probably the first and only time I’ve used that expression perfectly.

I suppose… I suppose I simply followed my heart. I tend to do that. I fell so very much in love with Arabic in first year. In fact, I scored more highly in Arabic that year than in either French or Spanish; undying proof that, if you put your mind to it, you can surely do it. It was, as we say, in my interest. Then came second year, the Northern Lights, the Gospel Choir fracas, another failed attempt at a relationship and the entire juggling scenario. I fell apart. I like being busy, but that was something else. I was balancing far more than I could feasibly carry. And I was also supposed to be studying Arabic.

Arabic is one of those languages you simply have to devote a lot of time to. I did in first year – almost every evening – and hey, it showed. I only became disillusioned when the lingering gap-year cabin-fever adrenaline rush petered out and I realized that there was more to university than endless study. It was thanks to that that I made so few friends outside my Arabic class that year… and that was one of the main reasons I decided to keep going. Arabic 1B wasn’t just a class, it was a real community in the way that the seven or eight French and Spanish groups could never be. United in fear. That was the magic.

What I really need right now is to escape. To be alone, without having to worry about grammar, about the family, about what my next heinous foodie faux-pas is going to be. Fortunately, I’m in the perfect place for that.

I’m turning twenty-two this weekend. Last year I spent a good deal of the day stretched out under the shade of an oak tree in the hills high above Durham, listening to the skylarks and feeling at peace with the world. That’s what I need to do. To get out. To the country. To be free. BB x

Veni, Vidi, Victus Eram

May 31, 2016May 31, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

And that’s that. My last working day in Villafranca is over. I only just got away with crying out of my final class. 4°A are total angels, the lot of them.

What other class could handle Hobbes vs. Rousseau in another language?

I should make it clear that it’s my last working day of 2016… because I’ll be back. Sooner than I’d originally planned. The truth is that I’ve had such an amazing time this year, I don’t half wonder whether it would be difficult to top elsewhere. So I’ve burned my boats and taken advantage of the British Council’s four-year cap by deciding to return to Villafranca independently in 2017, leaving me another three years to wander about Extremadura, Spain and/or the rest of the Spanish speaking world if I so choose under the British Council. Maybe then I’ll be ready to train as a real teacher. Don’t call it unadventurousness on my part. Think of it as happiness found. Villafranca has been a wonderful home for the last nine months. And now, I suppose, I’d better do it justice – peppered with photos of some of my favourite moments of the year…

…starting with this.

The hardest thing here is knowing where to begin. How do I possibly sum up what has been the very best year of my life? Do I start from the beginning – from touchdown in Seville airport? But you know the story from there. And if you wanted to know the details, the entire year is spread out across the blog. Just go back to the 23rd of September and follow on from there. I don’t think I’ve ever been more faithful to a diary in my life.

Where it all began… under Alicia’s bridge in Seville in September ’15

It took the British Council all of eight months to provide me with the name of my home for the following year. Eight months that would have dragged immensely had it not been for my intense extracurricular existence. Protocol. But I spent a good part of my childhood as an avid birdwatcher, and that taught me that patience – even vain patience – always deals its own rewards. And that’s as good a metaphor as any to begin with.

Hanging on a few hours in Badajoz and accidentally finding a vulture is a good example

Villafranca de los Barros is not exactly what you might call ‘buzzing’. If you were to tell anybody else that they’d be spending the year in a town of some fourteen thousand inhabitants with no nightlife and a lively farming scene, they’d probably jump ship in less than a week and make a break for the nearest city. That’s what the last applicant assigned to Extremadura did, or so I was told by my concerned supervisor before leaving Durham. But Benjamin has strange triggers, and is nothing more than a simple country boy at heart. I could spend my life traveling the world, but if the truth be told, I want nothing more at the end of the day than to come back to some quiet, village retreat that I can call home. After Amman, anywhere with a pop count below twenty thousand would have done for me. As such, Villafranca could not have been a better place.

Spain does do some pretty spectacular skies on a regular basis

It’s been a formative year. You do all sorts of growing up when you strike out alone for the first time. Over the course of the year I’ve tried my hand at a whole range of new and crazy experiences, including:

Mobile data and WhatsApp. Frankly I don’t know how I’d have managed this year without the tech, as Spain as a whole seems incapable of functioning without it, but it’s proved absolutely invaluable as a last-ditch traveller’s aid. Except HERE Maps, possibly. Deceiving trickster.
Drinking. Ron Barceló isn’t so bad after all, but rest assured I’ll be back on the dry wagon when this is all over, if just because it’s a lifestyle I know and love.
Skiing. And I discovered that I am singularly useless at it.
Flirting. Likewise, useless. Try as I might, I’m just not the casual type.
Interpreting. Specifically, interpreting a spiel on Dadaist techniques. Talk about a challenge.
Olive-harvesting. Trust me, it’s really quite technical.
A (surprise) foam party. God bless Spain’s laissez-faire attitude to risk assessment.
Being the person that starts a conversation. Radical.

The last point is probably the most poignant of the lot. When this year began I was the kind of person who happily let others get the engine running first. Striking up a conversation with fellow travellers, calling the waiter in a restaurant, starting an essay… I’ve never been very good at starting things. It’s a running theme in my life. But this year I’ve seen myself talking to strangers on the road, setting up a bank account and even asking for help when a certain primary class got simply too much for me. These basic things were well out of my reach when I got off the plane back in September 2015. By hook or by crook, I’ve made it.

Proud to say I’ve done my bit for the local cooperativa!

Of course, it’s not all been roses. When I say it’s been the very best year of my life, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was flawless. There have been lows. Getting misdiagnosed with herpes was one. Getting the friend-zoning of the century on the night of what was supposed to be a romantic break in Madrid was another. And I seem to remember spewing my guts out for an entire twenty-four hours in a hotel room in Andorra, manacled by an ever-increasing tab from the mini bar; though it did spare me from more skiing fiascos, that was a definite low point too. And then there’s that primary class, a weekly nightmare that I’ve somehow survived. But my attitude to life is that balance is the most precious thing of all: life would be no fun whatsoever if there wasn’t the occasional crippling blunder to make things interesting. Not that I wouldn’t beg not to be given that lot if I were to go through it all again, but if they’ve done one thing for me, it’s left me in very good stead to be the father of Spanish children. I reckon I know all the necessary vocabulary after a year’s stint with that bunch.

It’s largely thanks to this little star that my Spanish has come so far this year!

Now comes the most difficult part: listing the highlights. Since each and every one has its own entire blog post somewhere along the line, I’ll be as brief as I can. I’ve forced myself to choose only ten, though I could quite easily go on to make twenty-five. Still, ten it is.

A close encounter with a lost griffon vulture in Badajoz
Taking time out beneath the stone pines in El Rocio
Seeing El Rey León from the best seats in the house, Madrid
Accidentally getting the best views of the Semana Santa processions, Seville
Olive-harvesting with Ali and the family, Olvera
Sitting beneath the Monfragüe cliffs with the vultures flying in overhead
Spending the weekend in Cantabria with the wonderful Brocklesby
Getting a surprise party from one of my bachillerato classes
Discovering that simply speaking Spanish makes me happier
Hearing the first bee-eater calls of spring from my own bedroom in Villafranca

Tough call. And yes, I’m aware that two of those ten are vulture-related. If the number really had been twenty-five, there’d have been plenty more feathered highlights.

Specifically for Cantabria, climbing Watership Down Hill was a high…. geddit?

As for what this year has meant in the grander scheme of things, it’s pretty much laid out the road beneath my feet. I was pretty hooked on this country before I came here. I was even pretty certain already that I’d be living out here someday. Somewhere in the back of my mind I always knew. I guess that’s why I never quite managed to lay down roots with a girlfriend or even a best friend per se. Perhaps I always knew I’d be leaving England behind.

A ready-made fan club is also a major reason for coming back

Well, now it’s fixed. I won’t be swayed. I’ll be back for another two or three years of this auxiliar life, garnering experience as I go, before throwing myself at the notorious oposiciones and trying to carve a space for myself in the Spanish education system as a fully-qualified English teacher – without robbing the places of my friends and colleagues here, of course.

Reasons to live abroad: a risk-assessment free foam party courtesy of the fire brigade

It was a remarkably easy decision to make. I’ve enjoyed teaching since I took my first class in pure spite of my flustered English teacher way back in 2007. Despite years of my parents warning me not to follow them into their trade, here I am, teaching, and loving almost every second of it. Being an auxiliar is all of the best parts and none of the bad, granted, but I reckon with another few years under my belt I’ll be ready to take on the homework and the discipline. It’s not like I haven’t been asking to help out all year.

I also owe Concha Velasco Band for introducing me to Escuela de Calor. Tune!

Just before I go and christen the end of the Spanish stretch with a severe haircut, here’s a few goals for next time:

Learn to drive (car or motorbike)
Apply to work afternoons at San José
Share a flat with people roughly your own age
Likewise, find friends your own age in the area
Pack less… or buy less books

Just five. That will do. All of which would be a lot easier if I had a clear idea of where I would be living – which is one of the chief deciding factors in Villafranca Part II. And after that… Who knows? As of 2016 the British Council offers teaching placements across Spain, but also in Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador. I think I could afford to be apart from my grandfather’s country for one year. Especially now that I know I’m coming back – and coming back for good.

Oh, and one more goal: get inside the goddamn Alhambra again. It’s been too long.

So today it’s neither a ciao, nor goodbye, nor even adios. It’s hasta pronto. Muy, muy pronto. Que te lo pases bien en mi ausencia, España. Y sera breve. Te lo prometo. BB x

Island

May 27, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s going to sound strange, but one of the hardest things about working in a school for me is seeing so many groups of children buddying up, being the best of friends and generally having a wonderful time of it. It’s heart-warming, soul-stirring… and also a little sad, when I stop to think about it. It makes you reflect a lot. Of course, there’s the odd kid like me in the ranks, but they’re (fortunately) very much in the minority.

Let me tell you what I mean.

School is a transitional stage. A crucial stage in life, granted, but a fleeting moment in the blink of years. The friends you make at school are, in all likelihood, bound to slip away into the ether over the years, like treasured childhood toys. Those that stick around are the fruit of a particularly strong friendship, and I don’t think it would be too far-fetched to state that that kind of friendship is slipping away too in the digital age, when anyone and everyone is attainable at the touch of a button. Nothing that’s precious is that easy.

Like I said, transitional. Your classmates are seldom your friends for life, especially if you move away. So it’s hardly practical to feel a little envious of the friendships your students have… Right?

Nonetheless, I confess that I do. Teaching brings you into contact with so many amazing, bright young things. Kids that make you laugh. Kids that make your heart melt with their kindnesses. Kids that blow your mind with the things they know. There’s more than one student of mine I’d point the finger at and say to myself ‘I would definitely have hung around with him if I went to school with them’.

This attitude is more than partly my fault. I’ve been a solitary individual since I was tiny, knowing myself better than I ever knew anybody else. That was probably born out of stubborn selfishness, but it’s developed into a keen understanding of my limits, my desires and my needs that I’m truly grateful for. That, paired with a blunt adherence to the honest truth, no matter how painful, doesn’t necessarily make for good friend material. But then, neither does the mindset; the constant searching for a best friend, that most unattainable of treasures. I don’t half wonder whether, like I did with my Princess, I set my standards too early on with the equally fictional Gabriel.

Growing up in a village was a major roadblock, unassisted by the fact that I went to a grammar school miles away, with the result that all of my friends lived on the other side of the county. My little brother managed it. I didn’t. There were certainly no kids in my village that I knew well enough to call ‘friends’; the few that I did know vanished one by one in an absurd streak of bad luck, and those left closest to me in age were the ones who chased me out of town once when they saw me out and about with my camera.

I wasn’t a loner. I always did have a large circle of friends, about whom I could flit easily. But I don’t know whether I ever truly fitted in. A social chameleon with a painful self-awareness. In those circles I usually played the role of second-fiddle, third wheel, the one on the outside looking in. The tag-along to a pair of solid mates. The boy in an otherwise all-girl friendship circle. The singleton in a group of couples. A constant crush of ‘Do you ever feel left out?’, ‘Is it them or me?’, ‘What am I doing wrong?’. I was doing a lot of running away back then. What I needed was a male role model, a camaraderie. Something to glue the works. My dad’s operatic circle and disinterest in outdoor activities hadn’t left me with the best preparation for the masculine environment of an all-boys school, even a long-haired, arty grammar school for boys.

Estranged at the age when sex, cars, football and a dozen other deeply uninteresting things became the talk of the day, I gave up on men and turned to women in search of a best friend. My justification was that the conversation level was generally better. I stand by that.

I guess I messed up somewhere. I surprised everyone by dating a girl and ‘not being gay after all’. I lost her for reasons beyond my control. In that year and a half – two, if you count the moping – I managed to ignore my former companions and lost out on the solidification of lasting friendships. I was left floating and I had nobody to blame but myself.

Here I am, seven years later, still floating. I’ve met so many wonderful people and made so many amazing friends, but that mythical best friend continues to elude me. That person who is always there. The one that makes me laugh. One I can always rely on. One who understands my passions and my many idiocies and can counter them or let me learn from my own mistakes when needed. There are at least three people in my life who answer to that description, and one of them is my mother, but my life choices have separated me from them for the foreseeable future.

My problem is that I think too much. I know me, and so far knowing myself has led me to distance myself subconsciously over the years in the knowledge that one day I’d be leaving England for my grandfather’s country. It’s made me isolate myself for my own good and prevented me from ever desiring or even understanding any kind of relationship that lasts less than forever and involves less than total trust. I’d like to blame a handful of people who openly told me they couldn’t trust me as a kid for that last one. But I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses. Take it away, Gloria Gaynor.

I expect it’s the final hurdle that’s brought on this wave of introspection. What I should really be doing is packing, or better still working out what I can chuck so that I can feasibly get everything else home. Stuff. It truly is the bane of our lives. BB x