Free Fresh Air Fiend by Paul Theroux Page A

were left out. We stayed awhile, and then we left them. And yet, I would do it again. At an uncertain time in my life I joined. And up to a point—they gave me a lot of rope—the Peace Corps allowed me to be myself. I realized that it was much better to be neglected than manipulated, and I had learned that you make your own life.

Five Travel Epiphanies
    I WAS IN PALERMO and had spent the last of my money on a ticket to New York aboard the
Queen Frederica.
This was in September 1963; I was going into Peace Corps training for Africa. The farewell party my Italian friends gave me on the night of departure went on so long that when we got to the port, a Sicilian band was playing "Anchors Aweigh" and the
Queen Frederica
had just left the quayside. In that moment I lost all my vitality.
    My friends bought me an air ticket to Naples, so that I could catch the ship there the next day. Just before I boarded the plane, an airline official said I had not paid my departure tax. I told him I had no money. A man behind me in a brown suit and brown Borsalino said, "Here, you need some money?" and handed me twenty dollars.
    That solved the problem. I said, "I'd like to pay you back."
    The man shrugged. He said, "I'll probably see you again. The world's a small place."
    Â 
    For three days in August 1970, I had been on a small cargo vessel, the MV
Keningau,
which sailed from Singapore to North Borneo. I was going there to climb Mount Kinabalu. While aboard, I read and played cards, always the same game, with a Malay planter and a Eurasian woman who was traveling with her two children. The ship had an open steerage deck, where about a hundred passengers slept in hammocks.
    It was the monsoon season. I cursed the rain, the heat, the ridiculous card games. One day, the Malay said, "The wife of one of my men had a baby last night." He explained that his rubber tappers were in steerage and that some had wives.
    I said I wanted to see the baby. He took me below, and seeing that newborn, and the mother and father so radiant with pride, transformed the trip. Because the baby had been born on the ship, everything was changed for me and had a different meaning: the rain, the heat, the other people, even the card games and the book I was reading.
    Â 
    The coast of Wales around St. David's Head has very swift currents and sudden fogs. Four of us were paddling sea kayaks out to Ramsey Island. On our return to shore we found ourselves in fog so dense we could not see land. We were spun around by eddies and whirlpools.
    "Where's north?" I asked the man who had the compass.
    "Over there," he said, tapping it. Then he smacked it and said, "There," and hit it harder and said, "I don't know, this thing's broken."
    Darkness was falling, the April day was cold, we were tired, and we could not see anything except the cold black chop of St. George's Channel.
    "Listen," someone said. "I think I hear Horse Rock." The current rushing against Horse Rock was a distinct sound. But he was wrong—it was the wind.
    We kept together. Fear slowed my movements, and I felt quite sure that we had no hope of getting back tonight—perhaps ever. The cold and my fatigue were like premonitions of death. We went on paddling. A long time passed. We searched; no one spoke.
This is what dying is like,
I thought.
    I strained my eyes to see and had a vision, a glimpse of cloud high up that was like a headland. When I looked harder, willing it to be land, it blackened. It was a great dark rock. I yelped, and we made for shore as though reborn.
    Â 
    We were driving in western Kenya under the high African sky, my wife beside me, our two boys in the back seat. Years before, not far from here, I had met this pretty English woman and married her. Our elder son had been born in Kampala, the younger one in Singapore. We were driving toward Eldoret. Sixteen years ago, as a soon-to-be-married couple, we had spent a night there.
    The boys were idly quarreling and fooling,