The Camino is a solo journey, but the need to connect aches within you as your travel step by step. Connections occur when you find those who share your pace and your sense of humor.
All over the Camino you are greeted with “buen camino”. It is polite and courteous and gentle and respectful. But after six hours of hot sun Ginger, her son, and I moved towards that phase when the hum-drum is getting to us all. Today she decided to yell in her quintessential southern twang “where ya headin’?”. Now everyone is heading to Santiago…right? But the question can really throw you. I almost fell out of my backpack when a Spanish bike rider paused mid-pedal, looked at her like she was crazy, threw his head back and laughed heartily.
Yea, we are all going to Santiago but this meseta portion will make mere fools of men. She is the one who started directing traffic on the camino as if a 747 was right in front of her. She is the one who said the flower was forsythia which started a battle on a camino forum that it was broom, not forsythia…who cares, it smells like heaven. She is the one who surreptitiously takes a picture of the women two hundred pounds overweight walking into our mid-morning cafe wearing only a bra. And the one who doubles over with me as I tell her about the guy who fell out of the bunk bed at 4am…and again at 4:10am!
We are all going to get to Santiago. But it is the connections we make along the way that keep that hope alive and that keep us all laughing with pure abandon.
This post is dedicated to the teachers at Fanaka Primary School who keep the hopes alive for the beautiful children C2CKenya supports and who instill in the children whatever is necessary to keep them going in much tougher situations than any of us would ever encounter.
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