#Mapping

FOR MY LAZY FRIENDS, THE FIRST 2 PARAGRAPHS CAN BE READ IN ISOLATION, kinda..... just for you!

Secrets. Mystery. Oracle. Magic.

Words often associated with Siwa.

The first time I came to Siwa it was the secrets of women that called me. It was even more difficult to get to Siwa then. It took longer and was probably, in relative terms, more expensive. My Aussie boyfriend Luke (one of the best boyfriends I’ve ever had), who I was travelling with didn’t quite understand it but knowing that with me adventure was guaranteed, humoured me. Approximately 30 years, 3 months and 3 weeks (the length of time I’ve been in Siwa this trip) later I am none the wiser on the secrets of Siwan women but maybe closer to finding the answers to my own secrets.

I was raised by atheists and trained as a scientist so I’m not particularly superstitious but, having been raised in Trinidad and educated at an Anglican school I couldn’t escape unscathed. When people hear that I came to Siwa in the days before it was a popular destination and that I have accidentally (my choice of words) turned up here again, many give me knowing looks and read meaning into the happenstances. They intuit, I suppose, that there is some higher purpose and reason for me being here. I, resist consciously and subconsciously, unsure whether having or not having control is more scary.

Last night, over sweet Siwi green tea with mint, cooked impatiently (obviously by me) in the characteristic navy enamel teapot my friend from Cairo who has moved to Siwa, she reiterates what many feel, “There’s something mysterious about Siwa”. I pooh poohed and agreed, simultaneously.

According to Google, Siwa Oasis: 10 km long and 6-8 km wide (not sure what their parameters are – seems larger to me but maybe I’m including the environs and satellite districts). Sahara Desert: 92 million km².

How on earth did anyone even find this speck below sea level (133m b.s.l. the second lowest point in Africa after a lake in Djibouti), amidst the Great Sand Sea? An inch to the left or the right, the top or the bottom and … you’d miss it! Apparently, birds led Alexander the Great to Siwa.

On my first forays into the desert around Siwa it was strange and unfamiliar and I wondered about the layers of meaning it held for someone who’d grown up in it. Like the magnitude of familiarity I have with Trinidad that I have with no other place or people in the world. My personal and national history. When I walk Lady Chancellor, I recognise the curves in the road, I know the stories of that whorehouse on the hill, I remember discussing Oonya Kempadoo’s book on this verandah of Joan Dayal’s house, I go through the seasons waiting for dry season to see that striking little yellow Poui tree on Poui Hill, I re-retell the story of the tree trunk that convinced a friend that it was a man with a knife in his hand, the house where on returning to Trinidad after the Coup I attended my first Coup party and wanted to go home in the wee hours of the morning but couldn’t.

Several film production recces, sunset safaris and visits to Moussa camp to hear Siwan music later, not to mention hours of being trapped at locations with no transportation back to Siwa and the desert becoming a prison and me strategizing my escape by foot, the landscape has taken on a different meaning to me.

There’s the spot where the film production, led on-site by the amazing engineer and art designer Marwa Nasser Megahed, erected a village of, I think, 9 Bedouin tents. There’s Mousa camp where I had a magical evening with a woman from UN Women, a fluent Arabic speaking Scotsman, our mutual Amazigh friend and a musical experience that I can only describe as having a similar effect on me, energetically, as did shamanic experiences in the Peruvian Andes and Trinidad’s Caura forest.

There’s our camping spot beyond Fatnas, about which my ‘imigree’ friend and I felt quite pleased and independent about finding by ourselves despite people calling us crazy. “Because we’re women”, we muttered under our breath before finding out no, it’s because it is the coldest winter anyone can remember and the spot is on the smugglers’ route.

There’s the area of the desert that I’ve discovered that I can get to by tuktuk and sit on the crest of sand dunes and experience the setting sun- Betbetak, or something that sounds similar (to me at least), the family name of the owners of the land.

And now that I can orient myself, I’m planning a walk through the sand dunes from our camping spot to Betbetak. I figure it will take about 4 hours – walking on/in sand is tough.

All this, situated within sight of the major landmarks of Dakrur Mountain which looks like the double-hump of a camel if you squint, Adrere Amellal (White Mountain) and another mountain further away that I have not visited and the name of which I can’t remember – stick a pin.

Although, ever-changing, the desert landscape has new meaning for me now just as the town does. I know I can’t get lost in the areas I know and if I get disoriented I simply walk to the top of a dune, day or night, and get my bearings. At night there are two tall and lit communication towers of some sort, in the town.

My friend and I talk about the powerful effect Siwa has on people. Some love it. Some hate it. I think of my Italian friend Piero Guerrini in Grande Riviere and my Scottish friend Louise Hawkins in Tobago. Both have grown children with Trinidadians. I think of the Germans I’ve met with Trini-German accents. I think of Nea Qha who misses Trinidad more than I do.

My good friend tells her story. She came to Siwa for a holiday, liked it, thought nothing of it and returned to Cairo. Two weeks later the idea of moving to Siwa became a seed in her mind. Another Egyptian friend told me he came to Siwa for a couple of months and hated to leave but wanted to earn enough money to relocate to Siwa. One Siwan young woman struggles with living in Siwa and the feeling that her freedom is constrained by the culture here. I feel that of Trinidad that I love and am frustrated by so much. The majority of the people I love most in the world are on those 2 dots in the Caribbean Sea but there, I didn’t feel I could fulfill my dreams. It feels small. Good for feeling loved and supported but not for me right now to soar high with a life ahead of me. I think of my father and his same yearning to explore the world and coming home to Trinidad in the later phases of his life. He always said young people needed to get out of Trinidad and explore the world. 50 is the new 30, I read. I am as old as I feel and that changes daily.

I feel an affinity with Siwa. It is not the lived familiarity I have with Trinidad but it is a feeling of ‘right fit’ that I have not experienced anywhere else. Not only do I imagine living here, I can actually see that it’s possible. It’s like a favourite sweater, it’s not beautiful (although this geography is) or special it’s simply comfortable. “I don’t know if I could move here forever”, I said to a new friend who’s been living in Siwa for almost 20 years. As soon as I said the words she articulated my thoughts with her words, “When I moved here it wasn’t, ‘forever’.” She knew I was scared. Could I live here? I’m living here now.

When I posted that I was learning how to get out of my own way, my friend Juanita Cox Westmaas typed,

“Why yuh wan tuh get out yuh own way? It’s led you all the way to Siwa, stars, desert sands, safety and the best hospitality in the world. Keep following your nose!”

Maybe, slowly, gently, I’m learning to surrender.

Photo: On the horizon Dakrur Mountain where in the height of summer people are buried up to their necks in hot sand to relieve them of their arthritic aches and pains.