suddenly, singapore
November 21st 2008, 5:21 pm
And so suddenly, it’s all over. As we plunged into a week of action, time telescoped in both directions – crawling while waiting for something (anything!) to happen, but also hurtling forward to the abrupt end of my time on the Esperanza. Where the hell have the last six weeks gone?
A few brief snatches from the memory banks: dashing across Dumai harbour in the inflatables to scrawl slogans on the side of palm oil tankers; the agonising waiting, first for our ship to come in, and then for the big finale to kick off; eyeing up the blackboard in the mess for news, some news, any news!; the pervading smell of rancid palm oil which coated me for hours after hauling the mooring lines into place and being plastered in rancid palm oil mud; standing on the bridge deck watching our ship battle two tugs to return to the dock, while a huge tanker was moved into place, a real race against time and all I could do was watch.
There was also a growing realisation that, on the ship, we’re pretty much isolated from what people on the ground really feel. But a couple of incidents – one of the land team based in Dumai being threatened; a man on the dockside standing on one of the mooring lines to prevent the ship from moving, and being extremely angry in the doing of it – brought it home. I’m an outsider and, while I get caught up in the excitement of being all daring on a Greenpeace ship, I’m just here for the duration of the campaign. I have a grasp on the situation as seen through the lens of reports and press releases, but no on-the-ground experience.
And so to Singapore. As someone said to me, it’s like a theme park, or one of those alien civilisations the Star Trek crew beam down to with immaculately manicured lawns and no litter. We’ve been stationed in Little India which is great from an eating and drinking point of view, and it actually smells like India. But along with the incense and spice, now I know what to look for the sweet waft of refining palm oil still comes through.
Leaving the ship was, for a few hours, like having a limb cut off. Along with the realisation that I was no longer encased in a floating steel bubble and had the freedom to do whatever the hell I liked (in accordance with Singapore’s many legal codes, of course), I’d also lost the social circle I’ve had for the past six weeks. It was made worse by working in a chilly, air-conditioned hotel lobby on my lonesome all day Monday (not to mention the cack-up with my immigration papers, or lack of them, causing endless fun when I tried to get into Singapore), but one last bout of shore leave had some of us reuniting in a dingy backpacker pub.
(Technically, I was the only one doing the reuniting, but it’s my perspective that counts here.)
