Walk to Olhão, Portugal

 

Walk to Olhão Portugal

The rain has stopped so I don my shorts and head out to soak in the rays instead of the rain.  It is less than a ten minute walk to my intended destination, where I will sit and wile away half an hour over a coffee and a pastel de nata. I am accompanied by my pretty, leather bound journal that was empty for a long time for fear of spoiling it.  I intended to scribble my muses over that coffee, but as I strolled I realised that there is so much to see and the expected ten minutes turned into an insightful half hour of the lives of those I passed. There are no signs of life on the yachts that are moored in the expensive marina by their owners.

They are too busy to enjoy the spoils of their success, so delegate the task of flying the flag of their wealth to the masts of their 40 footers.  I wondered, as I watched the morning sun ripple so eloquently on the water, what was their point.  I can enjoy what they think they have, for free. A squat woman in her 60’s works out in the open air gym, dressed in the clothes that she wore to the market, her shopping waiting patiently for her to finish. The backdrop to my heroine’s activities is the five star Real Marina Hotel and the dozen whitewashed fisherman’s cottages that sit incongruously next to it.  This juxtaposition of wealth and poverty in a single photographic frame is striking.

The young unemployed, who waste away the hours and the indulgent hotel guests, will never witness what I do if they only ever co-exist adjacent to each other.  As I flick from one scene to the other I wonder how we can justify a world where the price of one cocktail could feed the family of one of the youths for a day. There is talk of the town council demolishing the site that those little cottages sit on, at the behest of the faceless corporate owners who argue the need to protect the sensitivities of their clientele. The council, as the town’s cultural and moral guardians, should ask the old lady on the cross trainer for a lesson in fearlessness, so they can stand firm against the money men. I head towards the palm tree lined avenue with its distinct colonial aura that compliments perfectly the extravagant ironwork of the town’s buildings.  The now dilapidated houses, with their rotting ornate doors and neglected facades remind me of the Portuguese bourgeoisie, desperate to maintain their dignity in these harsh economic times. Sitting beneath the cooling respite of the palm fronds, a group of elderly men talk animatedly and I hazard a guess that it is to do with the demise of their country’s wealth.

But on closer inspection they are betrayed by their weathered skin and I conclude that they probably never had any money to lose.  Their wealth is the companionship of the man that sits next to them, which costs nothing yet is priceless. Not wishing to interrupt their flow, I hurry past.  I stop at each of the picture tiled benches that gather around the Fisherman’s Garden and although I cannot translate the written word, the pictorial language speaks of the importance of this old fishing port.  Scenes of invasions and expeditions to foreign lands and men battling against a sea that does not want to part with its inhabitants. Sometimes they win, but tragically not always.   A statue sits to the right of the garden, of a mother, head bowed in despair, cocooning her child in her shawl.  It is simple yet sad.  I imagine the fisherman’s wife, desperately waiting for her husband, wondering what will become of them if he does not return. As I reach the café outside the noisy fish market I notice a silver bearded octogenarian respectfully allowed to sit and people watch without needing to buy anything.  He extends a handshake and toothless grin to acquaintances as they pass by, the loneliness descending as quickly as they move on.

Real loneliness is a point in time when even you, does not want to be with you and I can empathise with. As the markets begin to close and the seagulls screech and beg for any grateful scraps, the old man moves on, his respite from being alone briefly satisfied until tomorrow. I am grateful to the inhabitants of this little town for reminding me that the real treasures of a place are not the physical elements but the human ones and to really experience life, you need to listen to the lives of the people that you are passing by.

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