I’d be interested if they could go really far back – right back – so they could show me a photo of an ape, jellyfish or slug and say ‘Karl, this is the earliest Pilkington we could trace. This is your great great-great-great-great-great-great-grandad.’
We ate some chicken, and I asked if anyone had any questions, expecting to be asked about what food I like or what hobbies I have, but they kept asking questions I didn’t understand or know the answers to about their prospects and future.
KARL: You don’t need to worry. Everything’s gonna be good, I’d say. Everything’s good.
JJ: (translates to rest of village) Thank you for the message you give us confirming us not to worry, everything will be OK. It is a time when our elders have to decide on what they will do, but we depend on you now that you have promised everything will be good.
KARL: I think it will be. I think it’ll be alright. Things change, but, I think, I think it’ll be alright. I’d carry on as you are.
I was guessing, but I do think they’ll be alright. We then danced to some chants to celebrate the good news. It started off with a type of conga before moving on to some foot stamping that caused dust to fill the air from the dry ground like a natural smoke-machine effect. The men danced as the women sat and watched, some with their faces decorated in splattered colours as if they’d been to a paintball event.
If Suzanne wanted to do this to her face I’d have an issue with it, as she’d make a right mess of the pillowcases when she went to bed, but here they don’t have pillowcases, so they don’t have to worry about stuff like that. All the bright colours must attract wasps though, which must be annoying.
Albi and JJ wanted to take me to see Grandmother, so we got back in the van and travelled quite a distance. We ended up staying over at another village for the night. I ended up sleeping in a treehouse, with a headache from hunger, as I didn’t bother waiting for tea after they showed me what they’d be serving up. It was fruit bat. It’s a bat, and adding the word ‘fruit’ to it doesn’t make it any more appetising. I don’t think I could count it as one of my five a day, either. I asked how long a bat takes to cook, a question I never thought I’d ask. I doubt Ask Jeeves or Google would even know the answer. I said I’d skip tea, as the smell of the dead bat didn’t grab me, and went to bed. You’d think they’d go to bed earlier, with them having no electricity, but it didn’t stop them singing and dancing well into the night to the same song over and over and over again. I kept waking up, but I couldn’t tell if I’d been asleep for hours or just a few minutes as the same song was being sung. It was like when Bryan Adams was number one with ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It For You’. You couldn’t escape it.
I was woken again when Albi and JJ came into the treehouse to sleep. The good thing is, they wear so little, there was no messing around getting undressed. They just got straight into bed. It felt like I’d just got off to sleep again when the next thing I knew Albi was waking me up to go and see Grandmother. It was 4 a.m.! Why so early? Are we helping her do a paper round or what? I felt sick from tiredness as I tried to get dressed in total darkness.
As we drove up a mountain I could hear explosions and see a red glow in the sky. JJ pointed and said, ‘Grandma.’ It was a volcano.
It didn’t really surprise me that they call a volcano ‘Grandma’. Remember, I was in a place where Prince Philip is god. As we got closer, the road we were driving on had steam coming through it. The volcano was acting like underfloor heating. The noise of the explosions got louder as we got closer. Funny how their grandma makes a lot of rumbling noises; it’s my auntie who is known for her explosions. She once broke wind for five minutes. She said it doesn’t happen anymore, but I just think her hearing isn’t what it used to be.
It was difficult to know if we were in any danger as Albi continued to smile. He seemed so relaxed with it. My car insurance costs a bomb just ’cos I have on-street parking. What would it cost me if I had one of these on my doorstep?
We made our way up a makeshift path with a handrail that had been battered and broken in places by smouldering rock spewed out from the volcano. I asked JJ about safety and which way to run if this thing started getting more active. JJ explained, ‘If you are running, you keep on talking or speaking to her (Grandma), telling her to be careful and to take care of you.’
This place has got enough languages without me having to learn to speak Volcano. I was worried about a lump of it landing on me as I can’t be doing with burns. I was always burning myself as a kid on kettles and hot plates. I don’t like frying an egg as I don’t like the way it spits out hot fat at me. This was like that but on a bigger scale. It was like one big dodgy firework that was unpredictable. The longer the silence, the bigger the explosion seemed to be. Standing on the edge, looking down into the churning red magma made my heart pound more than when I was on the edge of the bungee platform. It didn’t seem to bother JJ and Albi. The loud echoing booms didn’t even make them flinch.
Apparently Angel Falls was named after a US aviator called Jimmie Angel who was the first to fly over the falls in a plane. Even though it already had a local name, Kerepakupai Vená, he re-named it. I think the name Angel Falls works better to attract the tourists as it’s a lot easier to remember so it was a worthwhile change. I don’t know why they ever bothered changing the kitchen cleaner product name from Jif to Cif though.
I had an empty plastic bottle I’d been drinking from all morning that I wanted to chuck into the bubbling lava, but JJ said I wasn’t allowed. As far as I could see, this would be the only advantage of having one of these things on your doorstep. It would be great to get rid of old sideboards and mattresses by just tipping them in. Surely much better on the environment than landfill. If we had one of these in the UK they probably wouldn’t allow tipping either, but it would have nothing to do with upsetting Grandma, it would just be because they’d lose money, as it’s £25 a time for them to come and collect big pieces of rubbish. It would also be a good place to put dead bodies. A lot more efficient than burying, and each time you heard it exploding it would remind you of old family members who had passed away. Their ashes would eventually go back into the ground.
JJ said they don’t throw anything in out of respect for Grandma as she fertilises the ground with ash for good produce. Then he said we should move. The wind was changing direction, and there was more chance of the big hot rocks coming our way.
He wasn’t wrong either, as moments later, while making our way back down, we saw two huge big steaming rocks the size of cooler boxes land where we had been standing. We got back down to the van. Then Albi and JJ got out two bits of wood and asked me to go back up the side of the volcano with them.
JJ explained the plan, ‘Karl, you must struggle to survive in hot places like this, in the desert, and learn to enjoy yourself, so arse boarding is one of the things that can make you happy when you are in the desert.’
Arse boarding was something they used to do when they were younger. They’d sit on a type of homemade ski and then slide down the side of the ash-covered volcano as if it were snow. I thought JJ and Albi would be the last people up for this kind of activity wearing