III.II.I – Gearing Up
III.II.I
GEARING UP
Islander lifestyle be damned. Something much better was in store for me. Something my friends and I had been planning for months on end was now just around the corner. Something… Okay, I’m done with all the suspense. As soon as exams were done and dusted, we were gonna fly off to Nepal! But it wasn’t just for fun this time round. We were a group of six med students off to do some volunteering; a first in my books (or blog, rather).
Nepal; just 6500 kilometres away from Malta. This was nothing. The anxieties that had preceded Colombia were now a thing of the past. I was now a veteran. I had flown to the other end of the world all on my own, I had trekked and hiked, peddled and waddled, rowed and quad-biked. You name it, I did it. I was friggin’ unstoppable. At least that’s how I felt before we started planning. But then, as my friends started looking into it… “The air’s no good, the water’s even worse, reception’s dodgy, power cuts are the norm and oh, beware of snakes and earthquakes!”. I was expecting a culture shock, but this? This all seemed too much. I was now back to pre-Colombia mode.
And so, we were gonna go at it the hard way. We harassed and barraged the volunteering agency with an avalanche of questions and made sure to cover all our bases. We each got an eighty-litre backpack with as many features as you would expect a Ferrari to have. Wind-tunnel back system, padded and aerated hip and shoulder belts, hydration system compatible, secret compartments I to this day keep on discovering. You know, the usual. Kinda wish I didn’t stand there feigning interest when the storekeeper kept on outlining the bag’s many virtues.
We loaded our truck-sized backpacks with anything and everything that would possibly fit. By the end it was basically a portable supermarket. Vitamins, probiotics, antibiotics, analgesics, antacids, steroid creams, water-treating tablets, DEET. You name it and it was there. World War II grade anti-pollution masks, battery chargers that could double as a power plant, wet wipes and disinfectants so we could shower on the go, head-lamps so that no snake could sneak up on us. And medical stuff of course. Our trusty stethoscopes, scrubs, gloves and masks. Light clothes, travel documents, and the ever so indispensable sewing kit (seriously, those things are life-savers!). And that was it. Impressive no?
Extremely so. Especially once I got around to lifting it for the first time. I slid my arms right under the straps and slung it upwards from the floor with one mighty swing. Only that didn’t really happen. It wouldn’t even budge. I stood next to it, scratching my head with my tongue lolling stupidly outside my mouth like Homer Simpson. “How the hell am I gonna do this?”. It was like Wild all over again, but this time I’m talking about the ‘bag’ scene, not the ‘finding yourself’ part. Everything in my backpack was either indispensable or indispensable-er. Try and try I did but try as I might there was no lifting it.
And so, sacrilegiously, I unpacked everything. “Do I really need eighteen pairs of underwear? Isn’t one battery charger enough? Do I really need two boxes of amoxicillin?” With my crazy-o-meter now in check, my backpack was finally ready for lift off. And so was I. Finally! Screw Malta, screw the Mediterranean, screw Europe! I could finally be out there, chasing the same high as I did back in Colombia!