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OLIN |
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| Its funny how some things keep coming back to you during your life. More often than not these are fairly significant events or themes; maybe bouncing back more out of choice than fate, if we were to be totally honest with ourselves. Every now and again, however, something inconsequential happens - something that at the time may be significant enough to make a strong impression, but which is unlikely to bear any great meaning or effect in the long run. Yet this thing, whatever it may be, every now and again, through coincidence or accident or whatever rears its head in one form or another to remind you of its occurrence. |
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| Jon was talking about Egypt. I asked him if he went to the Sinai, knowing full well that people like him don't go to the Middle East without stopping off at Dahab, the western Goa. We got chatting about it; the Coloured Canyon, St Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai. Then I told him the story about the dolphin. |
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| I was in Rurrenabaque, in Bolivia, in October 2001, relaxing in a hammock in the garden of my hostel, soaking in the tropical humidity. There were a few other people there and we were all talking about the usual stuff: where we'd been, what we'd done, mountains climbed, rivers rafted, adventures, scrapes, and the like. |
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| Three and a half years earlier, in spring 1998 I did a 100km walk for charity in the Sinai desert. At the time this type of event, in which the participant pays an entry fee and must raise a minimum amount of sponsorship money, be it through coercion, theft, blackmail, fraud or whatever (I found a student loan to be a great help), was still a relatively new idea. The charity I was walking for organised the first event of its kind in 1995, I think. In recent years this kind of event has found itself receiving quite a lot of bad press. Concerns have been voiced about how much of the money raised ends up going to the country that hosts the walk, never mind the actual charity itself. Added to this are the usual issues relating to long distance walking holidays in the third world: conditions for porters, wages for locally employed staff such as cooks, drivers and the like. None of them questions for which there are any easy answers. |
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| I never kept a diary of the trip, and sadly many of the memories are starting to fade now. Being the only time I've gone anywhere on a package tour type format, though, the whole experience of not having to do a single durn thing for myself was pretty memorable - as if flying to Israel isn't a memorable enough experience in itself. There's the El-Al check in desk at Heathrow for starters, which is crawling with armed guards. Everywhere you look, some bastard dressed head to toe in Kevlar is pointing a bleeding AK-47 at your head. Then there's the interrogation. After check in (yeah, after - you think they'd bother to try and find out if you've got a bomb in your bag before they go and stick the damn thing on the plane) you file through to a room on your way to the gate where there's four or five members of El-Al security staff waiting. One by one they pick off the passengers like hungry frogs in a plague of locusts. |
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| It is my belief that somewhere in the upper echelons of El-Al's management hierarchy there is some greasy pervert who gets his kicks from watching unsuspecting holidaymakers enduring total and utter character assassination. I say assassination, maybe annihilation, or perhaps obliteration would be closer to the actual truth. I can picture him quite clearly, in an immaculately tidy (minimalistically decorated, of course) office, wearing a tailored suit. Beads of sweat glisten on his forehead as he peers at the CCTV monitor on his desk, eyes bulging, wheezing the gaspy breath of a very excited man who's indulged too much in this lifetime, right hand mercifully out of site below the desk. His pulse quickens and a little trickle of drool seeps from the corner of his mouth as he watches the nervous looking teenager approach his employee on the screen. With his free hand he reaches to turn the volume up as they begin to speak. |
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| "Passport!" (Um, please might be nice.) "Name?" |
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| "Paul Bamford" |
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| "FULL name!" |
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| "Oh, erm, do I have to?" |
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| "Yes!" |
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| "But it's a little embarra..." |
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| "FULL NAME!" |
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| "Paul David mrrsshllls Bamford." |
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| "Speak clearly!" |
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| Awww, shit... "Paul David Marcellus Bamford." (I can't believe I've just put my full name on the internet) |
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| "Why didn't you say so in the first place?" |
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| "Well, y'know..." |
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| "What colour socks are you wearing?" |
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| "I beg your pardon?" |
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| "Something wrong with your hearing? I asked: What - Colour - Socks - Are - You - Wearing?" |
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| "I'm sorry, but I really don't see wha.." |
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| "DON'T INTERRUPT! I ASKED YOU A VERY SIMPLE QUESTION, NOW ANSWER IT!!!" |
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| "I've got grey socks on." |
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| "Hmmm." One eyebrow raised, the interrogator gives his victim an unconvinced stare before continuing, "Where are you flying to?" |
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| OK, lets get this straight, I'm in El-Al's one and only departure lounge, next to El-Al's one and only gate at Heathrow for their one and only flight (direct flight) that evening, who's destination happens to be Israel's one and only international airport, being interrogated by the staff of that very airline. I don't think a sarcastic "Timbuktu" will win me any friends here. |
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| "Errr, Tel Aviv?" |
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| "I'm asking the questions, young man! Where are you flying to?" |
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| Oh great, so now I'm getting points deducted for grammar, too. I straightened myself up, looked my interrogator directly in the eye, cleared my throat and said in the deepest, most confident authoritative voice I could muster, |
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| "Tel Aviv" |
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| "LOUDER!" |
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| "TEL AVIV!!" |
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| "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!" |
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| "TEL AVIV!!!" |
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| "TEL AVIV WHAT?" |
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| "TEL AVIV, SIR!!!" |
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| "Why?" |
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| "I'm doing a sponsored walk in the Sinai desert, then I'm spending two weeks travelling around Israel." |
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| "How long is this walk?" |
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| !100 kilometres." |
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| My interrogator smirked, "You're walking one hundred kilometres all on your own in the Sinai?" |
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| "No, there's a group of us." |
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| "So, how many of you are going on this... walk?" |
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| "There's about thirty of us." |
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| "And you are all on the same flight?" |
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| "Yes." |
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| "I don't see thirty people in this room. In fact I don't see anyone at all in this room. How do you explain that?" |
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| "The rest of them have all gone through to the gate, because they weren't being cross-examined on the colour of their socks." |
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| "Hmmm," He gave me an unconvinced look, then peered down at something on my ticket, tutting to himself, "But you are not returning with the rest of the group?" |
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| "No, I'm spending a couple of weeks travelling around Israel." |
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| "Why?" |
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| Why? How the hell do you answer a question like that convincingly? I mean, why do you go on holiday anywhere? Because it's there, I suppose. Its his poxy country anyway (unless you happen to be a Palestinian, of course), maybe I should ask him what good reasons he would have for visiting. Certainly not the bloody hospitality, that's for sure. |
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| "Um, just to see it. I've heard it's a nice place to visit." |
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| "Really? And where will you be visiting?" |
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| "Jerusalem, the Galilee, Safed, Akko and Tel Aviv." |
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| "Not Gaza?" |
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| "No." |
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| "Why not?" |
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| "I dunno, I don't have all that much time, plus I've heard that its not terribly safe for tourists." |
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| "You're sure you won't be going to Gaza?" |
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| "Absolutely." |
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| "Let me see your socks." |
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| I was beyond wondering now. Obediently I lifted my trouser legs. I was wearing odd socks - one of them was a slightly darker shade of grey than the other. |
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| "You told me you had grey socks on." |
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| "I do." |
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| "No you don't. Your left sock is quite clearly charcoal black. Why did you lie?" |
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| "I didn't bloody lie. That sock is blatantly grey!" |
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| "Charcoal black!" |
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| "Grey!" |
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| "Charcoal!" |
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| "Grey!" |
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| "Are you a terrorist?" |
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| "No!" |
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| "Good, you may go." |
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| He thrust my passport back in my hand and marched back out the door he had come in through, leaving me alone and very bewildered. I picked up my hand luggage and the pieces of my head which were scattered randomly around the room, before going to rejoin the others at the gate. Somewhere in a dark recess of the airport, Fat Man leaned back panting in his chair, a glazed expression on his face, and sparked a cigarette. |
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| After a five-hour flight we arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in the wee hours of an Israeli spring morning. We transferred to a very small and somewhat antiquated-looking plane for the hour-long flight to Eilat shortly after dawn. The wide, open expanse of the Negev desert spread out, glowing bright orange beneath us in the early morning sun as we flew south. |
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| Landing in Eilat, we were herded onto a bus and off to a hotel for breakfast. I was finding all this being looked after business quite disconcerting by now. The urge to go and haggle with someone - anyone was almost overwhelming. it was almost all I could do to stop myself from shouting, "No, FIVE shekels with en-suite bathroom, or I'm staying next door!" at the hotel staff in the lobby. |
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| After brekkie we were herded back into our bus and through the Taba border control. Another questioning and a bag search later and I was finally in Egypt! We were carted onto a different bus, an Egyptian one this time, then driven down the coast to Nuweiba and the hotel where we would stay the night before starting the walk the following day. |
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| I found my room and after a rest reconvened with the group for lunch and a talk from our guide. After that we had the rest of the afternoon free to do what we wanted. I was hoping to go snorkelling on a coral reef, of which the Red Sea has some of the finest in the world. In fact, in places the Red Sea reefs have a higher level of species diversity than any other marine habitat, and most terrestrial habitats with the exception of tropical rainforests. |
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| Someone had been told that there was a place nearby where there were dolphins, and we could go and see them. It was a bit of a tough one, choosing between dolphins and reefs, but dolphins won in the end. We had a word with the bus driver who agreed to take us there, so a group of us filed back in the bus and we headed off again. |
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Taba border crossing. Welcome to Egypt, have a nice day! |
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| It didn't take long for us to arrive at a beach where a group of Bedouins sat by a thatched hut. I could taste salt and sand on my lips in the hot dry air. Behind me the mountains of the Sinai reared up, while across the Gulf of Aquaba I could just make out the Saudi Arabian coast through the heat haze. The bus driver explained that the Bedouins had snorkels, masks and flippers for hire, then helped us to haggle a price with them. |
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I was first in the warm water, wading out to waist height before submerging the rest of my body. I was slightly disappointed not to see coral beneath me, though I had been told not to expect any at this beach. The seabed was sandy with a few rocks scattered around. I floated idly for a few minutes, watching some small fish and occasionally paddling a bit further out, enjoying the sensation of flying weightlessly over an alien world. I looked around for the dolphins, but did not see any sign of them. I raised my head to see if any of the others were in the water, to ask if they had seen a dolphin when suddenly, just as I broke the surface, I saw a blue-grey fin cutting through the waves right in front of my path. |
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| I put my head under and sure enough, there was a dolphin - right in front of me! I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it sooner, it was so close. So close, in fact, that I found myself retreating a little bit. Having heard that dolphins can give a pretty nasty bite if they want to, I wasn't about to take any risks. Not that I need have worried, as I was soon to find out. |
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| The dolphin was pretty dolphin-like. It had a slightly plump-looking torpedo-shaped body, tapering off to a tail at one end and a mischievous grin at the other, small beady eyes twinkling above the final curve of its mouth. Just as you'd expect a dolphin to look, really, but it was a lot more besides: it was a beautiful wild animal in its own environment and I was there, witnessing it where it belonged. As if seeing it wasn't a big enough thrill, the fact that it tolerated my presence, swimming about seemingly unconcerned by me made it a hugely special sensation. |
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Bedouin children |
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| I'm not going to romanticise the encounter, even after 6 and a half years of adding coats of rose-coloured paint onto the glasses of memory. There was no bond, none of this sense that people talk about of having an understanding, a sense of mutual awareness and shared consciousness with dolphins when they swim with them. The rationalist in me would put all that down to a facial expression which is easy to anthropomorphise, along with the fact that most people who swim with dolphins do so with captive individuals who are trained, like dogs, to react to people in a certain way because they depend on them for food. I was just one living being and the dolphin was another living being and I was sharing its space for a little while, that was all. Of course the romantic idealist in me thinks I'm an utter bastard for saying that, but that's life. Ain't it a bitch? |
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| Still, there I was, floating away with a dolphin, which - regardless of what deeper significance you read into the experience - is a pretty amazing animal to get really close to in its natural habitat. The others were all swimming about around it too, yet despite my initial worries it reacted with neither fear nor aggression towards anyone, it just hung about. Eventually I found myself swimming side by side with it, I was even able to reach out and touch it, at which point the dolphin rolled over on its back and let me tickle its belly for what seemed like forever. When it dived I followed it down, trying to keep up as it glided along the seabed, but eventually having to come up for air. |
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| I may be wrong, but as far as I'm aware, Dolphins are not solitary animals. Like most cetaceans, they usually hang around in family groups, called pods. The fact that this dolphin was on its own, and seemingly unconcerned at the prospect of being surrounded by humans led me to assume that it was a captive dolphin which had been released into the wild, but had been unable (as is often the case with many captive wild animals when they are released) to come to terms with the fact that it should reject human company and join its own species. Ever since that day I had always wondered about the story behind the dolphin, but never found out. I asked Jon if he knew anything about it. He did. |
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| "She's a female dolphin who was evicted from her group," He told me, "She was beaten up and gang-raped by the males, then left to die. Eventually she turned up at Sayadeen. There was a kid who had learning difficulties and for some reason the dolphin befriended him. He called her Olin, which was his way of saying dolphin. Ever since then she's stuck around and doesn't mind human company at all. Now she's one the most studied dolphins alive. Scientists from all over the world go to see her. Apparently recently a male turned up. They mated and now she?s got a baby." |
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| It actually made me feel really glad, not just to find out some kind of history about the dolphin and to know that it was indeed a wild animal, but also to find that it was such a wonderful fairytale. Even after peeling back a few layers of what I assumed to be a fair bit of elaboration, the bare bones were still pretty amazing. |
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| Earlier on this year the dolphin swam back into my life, yet again by chance. I had submitted a story to a travel writing competition in BBC Wildlife Magazine. The story that won the competition was about the same dolphin, Olin. I was amazed to find out that her story ran pretty much as Jon had told it. Olin had been rejected by her pod and, as I'd already been told, turned up at Sayadeen in 1994. The child who befriended her turned out to be a fisherman called Abdullah who was deafened by an accident when he was five. His inability to communicate made him an outcast within his tribe, but it also was what brought the dolphin to him, apparently attracted by the high-pitched noises he used to make in place of speaking. |
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| With time the dolphin came to accept other members in Abdullah's tribe, and then strangers as well. Word soon spread about the tame dolphin and tourists came to see her, bringing with them a new source of revenue for the Bedouin fishermen. The story has a happy ending for everyone involved. Not only has Olin found a home and a pod, albeit a very strange one, but her popularity and the money it has brought in has reinvigorated a small fishing community and restored Abdullah's position from being a sidelined member of the tribe to becoming a central figure in the community. |
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Me in Nuweiba - adventure hat(tm) in action! Photo by James Gosling |
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