Just about to start packing for San Pedro de Atacama.
I’ve been there before, so it’s a relatively familiar spot, though I didn’t spend long in the town. So this time I’m going to explore the locality a little more. I’m even thinking of sticking with it for a week or so and treating as a relaxing holiday, with a trip planned to Salar de Uyuni for a few days (if I can find one) as well as other shorter jollies.
I had been thinking of heading to La Paz, but I’ve been warned that Bolivia’s a bit of an unstable place right now and, just two weeks ago, a group of travellers were stranded in Uyuni for 19 days due to a blockade by local protesters.
As a consequence, I feel that I may be better off not spending more time than strictly necessary in the country. Although I’ll miss out on La Paz and some other sights I’d rather make sure I can get home in a timely manner and without stress or hassles.
Anyway, one highlight is that because this is an El Niño winter it has rained in parts of the desert and that means the chance of seeing a so-called ‘blooming desert’ when all the flowers come out.
If that’s the case I could be returning for a day or so to Arica. This isn’t a bad thing as one piece in my father’s puzzle still needs to be researched, and I will be able to attend to that on my return. It’s not a big thing, but something I’d like to do if possible.
Then it will be on to Lima for a night or two depending on flights, and home. Can’t wait to get back to the family, to be honest, and it’s just 12 days away now!
So, tonight, after another little spell at the English Institute giving students some practice, I’ll hop on a bus for a twelve hour ride to San Pedro. Of course, this brings up people saying that I’m a hard core traveller. But really, this is what you probably think I’m riding on http://www.contemporarynomad.com/2008/09/ whereas the reality is that I’ll have a semi-cama seat as shown here: http://www.turbus.cl/servicios.html and riding in a modern, well maintained coach. It’s not so bad!
I’m staying put while I wait for the headstone to be finished and fitted, and consequently got to see an Arican weekend.
There’s not a lot for me to do in many ways, so yesterday I spent some time going through all of my father’s papers and notebooks. I found evidence of one email address he’d used from five years ago, but it no longer existed. So I returned from the computer and continued… until I found painstakingly detailed notes on how to use Yahoo mail. Including a password.
Bingo!
I felt that if he had e-mail perhaps he’d been in touch with people and I could work out more of his life. I ran down to the computers they have here in the hotel, logged in and… he’d only ever emailed one place – the Department of Work and Pensions. It was all about his pension, along with a couple of emails explaining that they had his address wrong (and which they never seemed to correct!) and that was it. Nothing else, nothing in the sent folder to anyone else. It was a dead end.
Ah well. So I went back to the notes and worked out a fair few things. I’ll note what I’ve learned in full at the bottom of this post, as the whole day taught me things.
The Letters
One of my disappointments was to find no detail of any personal life, anywhere. But I did bring with me all the letters he sent me from 1988 to 1991. These covered his crisis period. I decided to get them in order, photograph each one, for posterity, and then read them one after another.
Ouch. This caused another period of getting down, because I realised some things. I remembered how, in the letters, were statements which were essentially threats to commit suicide. The incredible emotional blackmail. His feeling of injustice over what he thought was some kind of inheritence. In part that my memory hadn’t formed a perfect impression of the order of events (although I wasn’t too far out) and that his crisis had clearly been real enough, but largely because towards the end of the letters he stopped being so demanding and so hard on me. In fact, the very last letter was more about caring for me than himself. He was almost upbeat and looking to the future.
That was the moment. He’d realised what he’d done and he was trying to repair it. Problem is, he was too late. I was still upset at him, and I’d now rejected him completely. At the time I couldn’t forgive him for what he’d done. The letter is in quite a sorry state as I’d crumpled it up ready for the bin, but interestingly it looks like I changed my mind, flattened it out and put it with the rest.
Page one of the last letter.Page two of the last letter.
And so I found myself wondering. Should I have forgiven him sooner? I’d certainly have stood far more of a chance of finding him, and maybe he’d learned. But at the same time I do believe I was still scared of him. I never told him I’d moved, and I never checked again with the neighbour who’d been taking my post in.
I think, to me (and maybe to others) that this is a valuable lesson in the dangers of losing the trust of those closest to you. If you want to get it back a letter isn’t enough. You have to earn it. Really work at it. He could have forged the connections once more, the stupid bugger, but he couldn’t stop me walking away. My own instability at the time meant he had no chance of finding out where I lived…certainly not from South America.
It’s also taught me that communication is everything. Sometimes those around you know little about what you do and what you think. For example, he didn’t really understand the repossession of my grandmother’s house or the intense solitude I felt at the time.
Maybe if I’d simply told him? But I needed to protect myself as well.
I did originally plan to place the letters online in their entirety, but that will have to wait. I saw some things there that could cause real issues for some people and which need to be cleared first. Maybe in the future. But it’s a thin maybe.
At 9pm, after the terror pizza, I headed to the pool hall to meet more of my father’s friends and acquaintances. There was Oliver (or Oscar, my notes aren’t clear on this and I need to check tomorrow) who met him over ten years ago on the La Paz-Arica train. Or Pablo, who’d known him since 1991… from the time of that last letter.
Obviously I had questions. I asked if he’d mentioned family and they only had one mention… a daughter, in Quito, Ecuador, who died in a road traffic accident at the age of about 13. But I couldn’t find any more detail than that. No names, no known addresses, and there’d been nothing in the notes. Back home we suspect he may have been using this as a way of blocking conversation about family, but who can be sure? He gave the story consistently, everyone reported it as the same, but something occurs to me… it’s an old story. If he was reporting this 19 years or so ago, then the age wouldn’t be possible as I’m not aware of him having been to South America prior to around 1983.
So, after all this, and without the help of an interpreter, I only had vague echos of the man. Nothing so firm other than that he was, it seems, generous with friends, selective about his company, and a creature of habit. I sat where he sat, chatted with his friends, enjoyed a beer, and learned to spell ‘jote’, the red wine and Coke mix, correctly.
This all cheered me up. Apart from the odd mentalist (my father did hang around with a diverse group) I found that these friends he had were pleasant, intelligent people with things to share. We drank to my father, I tried to explain the story in as sensitive way as possible, and we laughed and joked.
And so it came. In a way it’s weird… I always felt there were only two likely things to happen.
First, I would find my father (or he would find me) and a period of reconciliation may take place. Closeness, perhaps never, but reconciliation would be fine.
Second, I would never find him, and that would be that. Finito.
I’d actually come to the conclusion a few years ago that maybe he’d died some time ago. In some ways it was an easier conclusion… it stopped me feeling guilty for not continuing a search or trying harder.
I don’t think I was ever ready for this. And this morning I woke up very early at around 5am. Partly because I went to bed very early, but also because my mind was spinning. I decided to put some music on. And this piece came up:
And I took a moment to try and remember what was really good about my father. I’ve told the story that shows the negative in him. The curious thing is that our negative moments in life tend to be far fewer in occassion than our positives, yet they often define us.
So I remembered:
Football in the garden when I was very young.
Him teaching me pinball – and his pride when I started to beat him, and most people, from the age of about five. I still love pinball and if I ever have the space, I’ll have one!
Going to watch Liverpool play at Anfield on several occassions.
Learning about different cultures through him, that there was more to the world than the area(s) I was growing up in.
When I was 16 I met a girl in Oostende and, late in the evening, him quietly handing me enough money to take her clubbing. He then made his excuses and dragged away others to give us space. He continued in this vein all week. It was just a holiday romance, but hey…
There was more… but those are what sprung to mind. And I had my first ‘moment’ there in bed at about 6am this morning.
The next came during the funeral. But first, a little about Chilean funerals…
Culture Shift
Chile doesn’t feel wildly different to Spain, in so many ways. The climate, the landscape even… at least, when I compare it to Alicante where my family lives. Culturally it’s similar enough that you expect things to be reasonably similar. And I suppose they are. But that’s still quite different to Britain.
First things first, you arrive at the hospital with all your paperwork a little before the funeral directors come to collect the body. In our case we then had an hour or so of waiting before heading to the cemetary. I’ve already mentioned that instead of burial plots, niches are used.
And in our case, as there were only two of us at the undertakers we could ride in the hearse, up front. I was disappointed, in a way, as the hearse was simply a silver Ford Taurus Estate. With BMW hubcaps. As a car geek I was disappointed! But then in the UK we use Fords for hearses as well, so I can’t complain… but I’d still prefer to head off in a Daimler, if anyone’s listening….
In the back was the coffin, wrapped in the skin of Bungle.
I realised that if we had an accident (not entirely unlikely) the coffin was unrestrained. It would be… messy, to say the least. Still, we made it to the cemetary where I met the kindly David Hucker from the Anglican Church, his wife, a singer he’d brought along, my father’s landlady, and several of his friends.
Given that funerals tend to be arranged very quickly here, and that he had no family at all here, it was a good turnout.
We then slowly walked behind the car to the tomb, where two rows of plastic garden chairs were laid out. The Bungle-Coffin was then placed on a support, and the car left. Nearby a bell tolled.
Rev. Hucker gave a simple ceremony in both English and Spanish with accompaniment and song from the delightful guitarist. And then the moment I was completely unprepared for. Everyone who knew my father stood up to say a few words of remembrance. When it came to my turn, I fell apart. I didn’t even start talking, just sobbed.
It’s so unlike me. A few tears, sure. But sobbing? Proper, wobbly belly, heaving chest sobbing? Nope, not since I was a little kid.
Every time I remembered the good parts of my father, I went again. More than in the morning which was a single burst of tears.
After a few minutes and a few tissues I managed to compose myself to string together a barely articulate sentence. It would have to do, or I’d just be off again. I patted the Bungle-Coffin, sat down, and the ceremony was then brought to a close.
Of course, the English bits didn’t make sense, entirely, in the context, but they were familiar, which helped, I think.
Then the next new part – the coffin was then pushed into the tomb, and we got to watch the workers carefully seal it up. The flowers were then placed in front of the stone, and we took turns to quietly pay our last respects.
My thoughts have also drifted to my brother and half-sister back in Europe. The five grandchildren my father never even knew about, and the joy he missed out on with all of them.
One day I’ll explain this whole story to my new born son (and any others) and maybe I’ll be back in Arica once more.
And when we come back, I’ll give Joaquin Alvarez, the British Honorary Consul, a call. He has been amazing, taking a lot of time and trouble to help me with arrangements. He came to the funeral with us as a friend of my father’s, and has touched me with his kindness and generosity of spirit. A true giant amongst men.
I’ve started writing this post in Amsterdam airport…I’m on my way to Arica in Chile where I’ll be (hopefully) burying my father, Chris, who died on the 19th of July. I say hopefully not because this is something I’m looking forward to but because I face a number of legal and monetary issues with the hospital where he died.
So, the backstory….
Chris Coveney in 1986
My father was born in 1944in Liverpool. He had a childhood disrupted by his father’s death while he and his mother were travelling to join him in post-war Frankfurt. At the age of 4 (I believe – this needs checking) it seems that this had a somewhat traumatic effect on his life. Whether it would have worked out any differently if his father hadn’t died so young is hard to know. It seems he never really bonded with his rather quiet and gentle stepfather, John.
John was one of those people that sadly get little praise in life…he didn’t have a rapier wit, good looks or intense charm. His predecessor, it seems, did. But he did do his best to provide a stable and comfortable environment for my father and grandmother (I later lived with them at different times of my life.)
Yet it seems that my father inherited his father’s flaws (a taste for women, good times and risk taking) without some key strengths (a disciplined and intellectually rigorous upgringing in particular) that would have helped my father excel. He was certainly charming, good looking and intelligent.
Family Life
My father, to the best of my knowledge, had three children… myself first, David, in 1969, Miguel two years later, to his first wife Ruth, and Maria in 1981 to his second wife Ann.
It’s fair to say that neither marriage went well. To paraphrase my mother:
He was a drinker with a vicious temper and a long arm. He couldn’t understand the word no.
There are other things I’ve learned recently which I won’t share…but the picture was of a man who couldn’t take his responsibilities seriously and, when confronted, would lash out at anyone around.
The Consequences
I’m going to skip forward now to 1985… by this point my father had been divorced twice and no longer had custody of any of his children. He’d kept me close for years, but even I tired of his temper, his constantly failing relationships and the occassional humiliation of a beating. It’s a curious thing about being smacked around by your father…the physical pain is nothing. It’s the betrayal of trust that hurts and damages you. No parent should resort to violence when faced with the annoyances of raising a child. Nor, of course, should a child ever survey a trashed kitchen following violence between their parents. Ever. I could go into the reasons why violence breaks out in domestic settings, but that subject deserves better than I can give right here.
Since 1971 my father had been working his summers as a tour guide in Oostende, Belgium. This suited him fine…a steady stream of giddy girls on holiday, few responsibilities, and plenty of nights out left him, it seems, relatively contented.
South America
By this point my father, always a keen lover of all things Spanish, had started to spend his winters in South America where he could travel around enjoying himself whilst maximising the money he earned in his Belgian summers.
This was actually a fairly calm period… I lived with my grandmother and rarely saw him. Generally I did enjoy his company, but there was always a nervousness over when he might kick off but, in general, he seemed to have mellowed.
Unfortunately, in 1987, everything changed again. I was living with my grandmother and had done reasonably well in my A levels. I’d gained a job at ICI on a trainee developer program. For me, at least the future looked good. However, like all good things in my life there always seemed to be trouble waiting for me.
Loss
Just a couple of weeks into my new job, my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her decline hadn’t been pleasant to experience and before she was diagnosed she’d been struggling with shoulder pain that left her crying until the doctor could come and give her a shot of painkillers. Eventually it became too much for both of us. She was booked into hospital in a few weeks time… but that was too far away. I learned then a painful but valuable lesson.
The doctor could do nothing to have her admitted more quickly. I visited the hospital. No, they could do nothing either…it was a non urgent case of painful arthritis. Yet it was all too much to bear…I was in tears when a male nurse took me to one side and explained something…
They’re letting you look after her. She’s dependent on you. You want to know how to get her into hospital quickly? Refuse. Just tell the doctor you’ve had too much and you’re moving out.
Basically, I was going to have to play poker with my granny. But I went straight from the hospital to the doctor’s surgery and insisted I saw him. Three hours later, an ambulance arrived.
The next day they discovered the pain was caused by secondary metastasis (I think that’s the correct term, I’m writing this on a plane). She had advanced lung cancer that had spread through her body. She had less than a week left.
There was a dull, hollow ache inside me. I wasn’t close to my mother since I’d not lived with her for 14 years and besides, her and her new family had moved to Spain two years earlier – something that at the time had left me less than impressed.
I had my friends, Linda and Peter especially who were wonderfully understanding. And that weekend, my father’s summer job finished and he was able to arrive.
So he signed over everything. It was down to me to deal with the estate. There wasn’t much there, to be honest, and a lot of debt.
My father had his tickets for South America booked a long time earlier…in this time air travel was still relatively expensive and inflexible. I later learned that airlines usually aren’t so bad in cases of bereavement. I think he could have changed flights.
But he didn’t and just a few days later he was gone. Two days after that I buried my grandmother.
What’s crazy is that in all this I even managed to redecorate the lounge in time for the funeral, thanks to my friend Linda. It was important that in death everyone saw the best in my grandmother…
Losing Trust in Everyone
Soon after the vultures were circling…I couldn’t take over the mortgage or I’d have to pay off all debts, and I couldn’t get a new mortgage at such a young age and such little credit history…especially on a shared ownership house like this.
You see, what happens with a debt secured on property is that you hand over all rights to the lender. If you fail to keep up repayments the lender can take possession. The lender will then sell it. If a profit happens to be made then that’s great for the lender. They keep the money.
In fact, some even have a policy of quick repossessions during a buoyant market.
In retrospect I believe I was badly advised. But lacking support just trying to hold down a job and simply live right was enough to occupy me. When I was evicted from the house I lost my faith in society, my parents (sorry Mum…but you later won it back, so that’s ok, trust me) and everyone except my friends.
The council couldn’t help – I was told a single male would be at the bottom of the waiting list for social housing.
I didn’t want my fathers’s help and, by the dubious measure of taking out a loan to pay the deposit on a tiny studio flat, I had a place to live. While this was happening my father was made redundant from his summer job and announced he was going to stay in South America.
Having discovered financial wizardry I even managed to buy myself a niceish car I couldn’t afford on credit. Life had been hard, but now, I felt, it was improving.
Two months later I received a letter from my father asking for help – he said he’d been robbed of all his money and needed the money I owed him (I think he believed there was money in his mother’s estate) and could I send £1500 as soon as possible.
I had about £30 in the bank.
The next six months were hell as I sent over dribs and drabs in response to his increasingly strident letters, but I remember one triumphant moment. I’d been caught at work calling the Chilean embassy. I was in trouble until the reasons were explained to a senior manager. He put me in touch with the right people and before I knew it the Foreign Office offered a loan to help repatriate my father.
I’d done it. He was going to be ok. I’d sent as much as possible to him, borrowing money, trying to sell what I could legitimately sell… but it amounted to no more than around £600 over the months.
I went out and bought a £15 phone card to give the good news.
Son… I thought you had a good job? I need the money why don’t you have any?!
I told him it was no problem… I could get him home! I explained the loan.
What use is that? I’d be in the same situation, but in England…it’s much cheaper to live here
He was angry. And I remembered all those times he’d been angry before. The card ran out cutting him off mid-sentence. It was over. I was never going to speak to him again. I realised he hadn’t been asking me for help…he’d been asking me for money, that’s all.
Since then I stopped responding to his letters. I’d been struggling with the flat so I sold up and moved into a room. We lost contact.
Update 29-08-2010: I was reading through his letters yesterday and realised that I’d found the solution of a loan for repatriation earlier than I thought I had. I’d simply brought it up again during that last phone call and he essentially repeated what I’d said. I also think I’d continued to send him money for a while, but remained mute.
In 2001 I managed to find out that he’d renewed his passport in Quito in 1997, but that was all I had. In 2006 I was invited to a wedding in Lima, Peru, and took that as an opportunity to try and find him. I got close…searching the town of Arica in the far north of Chile. But if he saw the notices he didn’t respond. If he’d even searched Google he’d have found me for years and years. I even put a page up about him which was good enough for my estranged sister to find me with this year. In the end I reached the conclusion that he no longer wanted to find me.
And then the knock on the door in the early morning. I don’t know why the police do it that way. The officer was perfect…knew exactly how to break the news. Quickly, succintly, followed by the detail. He’d died on the 19th of July in a hospital in Arica, Chile.
I’m going to wrap this up now…it’s an awfully long piece to type entirely by phone and my fingers are aching. Hopefully I’ll be able to post it up on arrival to Lima. More soon… my plan is to document this trip, my feelings and my need to find reconciliation wherever possible. Sharing helps.
Over at Interconnect IT, where I work, we’ve found that demand for our WordPress Training Courses has shot up over the past year or so. And it’s certainly interesting to see where the work comes from.
I’ve been thinking about why there’s such a big dip in the middle of our client base – 90% of our business is groups with over 500 staff or with fewer than three.
The Gap
Small, one man companies tend to involve highly motivated individuals. They understand the important of their skills, and they know that in the tech sector they have to always stay up to date. Large corporates tend to understand this too, and have allocated training budgets to make sure they keep up to date. Government departments are often a little slower with new technology, but they too need to keep efficient or tax payers will kick up a stink.
And WordPress is a very efficient platform for running many informational websites.
But why are medium sized companies not coming to us in nearly such large numbers as micro enterprises and large corporates? Let’s see…
Budgets
I’ve noticed that medium companies often have people who are extremely good at what they do, but I do find that there are often significant skills gaps. I’ve dealt with someone from a school (medium) who didn’t realise that you don’t have to close an application in Windows in order to see another application. Each time she cut and paste she’d open one document, select the text, close the document, then open the receiving application and paste the text there. Productivity, as you can imagine, was pretty poor.
I think a lot comes from budgets – many firms around the 50 people size aren’t always able to make good money. They have to be careful where they spend it – they’re not big enough to have training departments who make sure everyone is up to date, and they’re usually busy.
Culture
Another thing with smaller firms, I believe, is that they’re often started by individuals with a lot of skills – these are flexible folk who can teach themselves and learn quickly from books and the internet. As they grow they try and hire similar people, but eventually there comes a point where a lot of staff are there for the job. They need training because they aren’t going to go to the trouble of autodidactism. They have a job to do, and they’re going to do that and no more or less.
At best, they’ll get on-the-job training.
Our Marketing
We don’t do a lot of it, to be quite frank. But perhaps our website, approach and costs simply don’t ring true with people in medium sized companies looking for WordPress training? Do we need to get advertising in business magazines, such as those sent out by the FSB?
Summary
I suspect that the truth is that a company always needs to look at the skills of staff, but as they reach a certain size they have too much going on to give it much thought. Once they break through that difficult 50 man barrier things seem to start to change again.
But how do we change this? I’m not sure we can, easily. Governments often give generous grants, and around here we have Skillworks which helps a little, and we do get local approaches – however, the person paying still has to pay a significant contribution and specialist training is never all that cheap.
Do you have any ideas of how skills can be improved in small to medium sized enterprises? Should we be marketing our courses more proactively? What about scheduled classroom courses that keep things at a lower cost, albeit needing more time from the attendees? I’d love to hear your thoughts – especially in the field of WordPress.
I expected more ice, it has to be said. I also packed my thermals and it turned out to be warmer than home. But, I also know how bitterly cold it can get in countries like this in Winter even if the thermometer doesn’t show it as looking so bad – driving rain, strong winds and pervasive dampness can chill you to the bone where the same temperature on a sunny day in the Alps could feel positively balmy.
This was my 40th birthday present from Romana. The hope had been to see the Northern Lights, something I always wanted to witness. Sadly the weather and conditions meant it wasn’t to be. But I still appreciated the trip and the unique experiences – it was a great gift!
I’m not going to extol the virtues of Iceland too much here – it’s a small country, with a rich culture and heritage. It’s definitely one of those places worth visiting if you get the chance.
One note, though – I expected to be hungry, but it turns out there’s six vegetarian restaurants, and most (but not all, by any means) restaurants offered fairly decent vegetarian options.
PS – some pictures are rather grainy as I had to push the camera somewhat. This is one dark country!
I’m no fan of gruesome videos, but sometimes they’re necessary because otherwise we forget just what can go wrong and fail to plan for the worst. In the UK at least marshalls are some of the best – this is what happens when the marshalls aren’t well trained.
When I first saw this accident I felt sick. However, I didn’t see the subsequent marshalling and safety disaster. Once I saw the full video, and learned that the driver, Tetsuya Ota had survived and recovered then I decided it would make a good instructive video.
It took another driver to actually attend to Ota, which is one shock. The other was that people were standing around and completely failing to deal with the injured Ferrari driver.
Marshalls are hugely appreciated by the competitors – especially in Britain where we know that marshalls are well trained, professional, and devoted to their sport. They really are the stars that make our sport possible.
If you have a nervous disposition I recommend you don’t view the video:
