THE TIMES THEY SURE ARE CHANGING!!

YES, MY FRIENDS, THEY ARE BUT WHETHER THEY ARE GOOD OR BAD CHANGES IS THE CRUNCH, IS IT NOT? Post No.37 (A 10 minute read) 

Hello and a very good morning from me here in Almería, Spain, Europe. I am so happy to say that I have been joined for the first time by a reader from Pakistan and Germany. How I am found is the mystery to me? But that was in truth, all part of my thinking. I had thrown my baby out to sea as far as I could. Only deep sea divers would even see her, but they would need to understand that, whilst this craggy, old shell maybe looked pretty unordinary, there could be some real gems being cultivated and polished within.

Therefore, they would have to be patient, INTROVERTED, INTUITIVE, FEELING, JUDGING kinds of divers (INFJs). Who would on finding this lonesome shell of quite heavy volume, understand that all they needed really was to understand where the pass key lay! They would not have to force the opening of this very tightly closed CLAM, NO, not at all. Just find the right words, the key words, my key words, that would have me wish to invite them in!!

Any who strike a blow to that exterior shell, will most surely find themselves with a permanent exclusion warning! I do not wish to go for all out exposure at this moment in time. But I would so like to welcome others within and share my accumulated treasures of life. My knowledge stores! So, each time I see that any deep sea diver has found me, I know that they have a peek within. I am open to casual swimmers by! But maybe that is who they are. They are swimming in that area of seabed where I lie and are just swimming by, take a quick peek and then swim on.

Maybe it is the INFJness that provokes curiosity but then provokes a recognitive reaction whereby the swimmer feels uncomfortable. The TRUTH has ever been a NO GO area. The TRUTH, is my area! Anything else is a waste of my and your time! We have to tell our minds as they really are and not always be pretending to FEEL how we do not really!

MY NEW LOGO!

Today I am reviewing chapter thirty-four of my first book of truths, my own and the accumulated ugly truths of MAN-KIND. ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN is the title and this chapter is titled THE TIMES THEY SURE ARE CHANGING! In the last chapter I explored the eastern Sahara Desert and went clambering about the rocks in search of ancient rock art, which was a truly magnificent experience for me. All good things have to come to an end and my budget was tight from day one.

This had been a must though, as part of this adventure and it had exceeded all my expectations, it really had! It was time now though to be moving on and I made my way westwards to Tamanrasset, one of the last towns in southern Algeria and a place to pick up lifts for desert crossings. I have already told in an earlier post, of my meeting with the local cinema owner and the Tuaregs and the John Wayne film, so I will not repeat myself again here. 

This is when that incident occurred. I stayed here for a few days getting cleaned up and rested, as well as checking out the possibilities for travel heading south now, across the Sahara and into neighbouring Niger. I found myself a seat in a lorry with two Algerian men and off we went. What a week! I actually changed lorry and driver three times.

The first driver came on to me so heavy the first night sleeping out, that I began to question once again my wisdom at coming out here alone. A passing lorry stopped whilst we were stationary and resting and without hesitation, I climbed aboard this second lorry with a mature Tuareg. I continued with him right down to the Algerian border control point at Ain Guezzam.

Next day I changed lorry again and joined a large group of young Tuareg and had an absolute ball with them. It was they with their European sunglasses and watches, that gave this chapter its title. They, just as the mature Tuareg, talked to me of their lives and memories of older family members. Omar, my mature Tuareg, had as a young boy, travelled with grandfather and father on camel trains.

These young Tuareg had been taught to drive lorries, not camel. They had trained in mechanics not salt production or sandstone production. They were the new generations of Tuareg. They had a sense of purpose yes! But their purpose was taking considerably less time to carry out by comparison to their elder´s generations. TIME! And our perception of time!

That is one of the concepts that we talked over. TIME and how we use it, what do we want it for, what do we want to do with it? In the westernized world we have devized so many ways to use our time, have we not. First just like the Tuareg, we need to earn money from somewhere and that means giving a set amount of time to an occupation most days of the week. Those hours have to be given therefore, and without that occupation, we would be without money.

In our westernized world of the RAT RACE and the treadmill designed for all the world´s rats, it is what we all begrudge giving our time to, none the less we accept that as a necessary evil, do we not? We live for our spare time do we not? Therefore, this is all about how to use those precious hours of spare time. As peoples in Europe, we are mature at work and immature at play. We need to let our hair down, be ourselves, make choices for ourselves, be our own boss, make our own decisions about something.

But we have a million and one ways in which to spend our free time do we not? Not so down Sahara Desert way, hence the cinema and John Wayne seeming like an extraordinary event!! What do they want free time for you may ask! Well, if you were LIVING, WORKING, BREATHING as these Tuareg peoples did prior to motorized vehicles, you would see that time has a very different quantity. It is precious, they know that. Each minute of the day and night is precious!

It is another minute in which you could be learning something and improving your mind. TIME, MINT TEA, COMPANY AND THE GREAT OURDOORS. My perfect classroom, where so much learning has been done by me personally. You can do what you can do each day between sun rise and sun set, from there on you have no light except the glow from the fire.

Verbal communication is the source of all entertainment. Human voices speaking their thoughts aloud and sharing them with others. Music, chant, song and hand clapping, all give another element to communication. So ethical, so positive, so integral, so natural and all under those Saharan stars. That is to live. You are living all the day and night, you are working just by day and you are breathing all the day and all the night too.

Health, happiness and harmony are attainable but only by communal will to live that way. This is why these indigenous peoples really do not want to be sucked up into the MAN-MADE world. They want to continue to run on their time. Targui TIME (their name for themselves in their language of Tamashek), not MAN-MADE time.

They have been adapting through the centuries though and there are few now who herd animals of any kind, there is no pasture for them. A contributing factor of course, to the desertification of the Sahara Plateau. Meat eating, the bane of the whole human world. We should never have been meat eaters and have got to find a way to some serious reductions in meat consumption.

I had got my arms fair punctured from vaccines prior to travelling, which as you may read further on, I was later so thankful for that protection. Vaccines for diseases and sicknesses that have been eradicated in the west but are still major killers in the south and east of the world. Our sickness in the west is to be non-human and non-caring for any other than ourselves. Like we were important in some way. HOW?

Crossing into Niger and coming in to Arlit, it was time to say FAREWELL to my Tuareg travel companions and this was one of the most painful partings of my whole life time lived. What beautiful men, what beautiful men! 

Having been surrounded by Arab peoples for the last few weeks, as a white skinned female I was noticeable, even with my head scarf covering my blonde hair but when I crossed the Algeria - Niger border into sub-Saharan Africa, WOW!!!! I FELT just how it is to REALLY stand out in crowd. That may seem to you as a case of BLACK and WHITE but you could not be further from the truth!

Have you met indigenous peoples? If you have, how did you get on? Have you travelled in sub-Saharan Africa? Do you know how it FEELS to have a complexion that has you stand out in a crowd?

Chapter thirty-five is entitled YING and YANG and I will give you all an insight into that in the next post. Thank you very much for reading. Please FEEL welcome to comment, there is a space below for your thoughts. Every day I wake with the same hope, "Today someone, somewhere has FELT that they would like to comment!" 

Maybe today or tomorrow will be that day, I will keep hoping! Or send me your e-mail via the contact box in the right-hand panel, there is a follow tab if you would like to keep up to date.

Until then, have a very good day yourselves and happy learning. These are the Amazon links to my first book: ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN Paperback and ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN e-book