I have dust in my hair and dust up my nose. I hold a hankerchief there in case it will help. It doesn´t really. I look around the bus and no one else is bothered. Oh yes, there is a dainty looking Irish girl doing the same thing. I could be worried about other things...the relative speed of this rickety old Bolivian bus, the fact that the driver has come to a screeching halt several times and reversed back through a tunnel cut into the mountainside, the fact that the side of the bus I am on seems to be held on with little more than a few screws, it wobbles so much.
But no, I worry the dust.
I feel so dry. I feel like I haven´t had water for months, barely seen a cloud and certainly haven´t had a bath or a swim. How I ache for a good bit of rain.
I realise how much I need my little friend H2O.
Not just on a biological level but in a comforting, spiritual, fertile way. No water = no life. My lips are kept supple only by the constant application of a dwindling tube of pawpaw ointment. I have cracks in my nose and in the corner of my eyes. No amount of bottled water seems to slake my thirst. O dream at night of rainfall and gently flowing rivers and freshwater lakes.
I think how in the first desert place I visited, I asked if people have gardens. the answer was no cos of the water requirements. But they watered the roads in front of their houses... I realised after a while that if they didn´t do this, more road would be up their noses and in the air than on the road. Dust. All turning to dust.
How I went over the Andes, hoping for green, and saw snow as dry as dust and air with no humidity it ached cold in my lungs.
To the coast, dreaming of jungles and dampness. Forgetting that a desert meeting a salty salty sea would have little hope of real wet damp humidity. Only salt. Dusty salt and salty dust.
I´ve loved the desert...its colours, its silence, the miraculous life that manages to survive there. But I feel so dry. So dusty and dry.
We reach our destination and I am handed my backpack that was blue and now is the same colour as the road, the air, the walls, the sides on the bus, people´s feet, people´s faces, all the stray dogs and inside my face: dust.
I hit the pack a few times, and clouds of polverised dry earth rise up to meet my aching eyes and nostrils.
It´s time to go somewhere wetter, I think.
I am over the dust.
