The map of my life: arrivals & departures James Francis Duignan

The map of my life: arrivals & departures

James Francis Duignan46

If your life was drawn into a map47, how would your journey be? I can talk a bit about mine by dividing it into three life-changing places with their routes and connections. I was born in Halifax to Irish immigrants, I studied in Cambridge, worked in London, ran away to France and emigrated to Brazil. What the future holds... nobody knows; but for sure we will find out at the end of the road.

The first flight I ever took was from Dublin to Bradford. I think all journeys start not from when you leave home but when you start the planning. My grandfather told us that, unlike normally, we wouldn’t

46 A construction worker with NVQ Diploma by The City and Guilds of London Institute, UK. He participated in the IX City Fair, in 2019.E-mail: jfduignan@googlemail.com. 47 The maps added to this text have been made3 by the author and belong to his personal archives. To check the map in a full digital version, go on: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1_qyHFNbZJRNgpzdqwHhJht37LcqzzfZW&ll=16.960554396048625%2C-36.95535709188131&z=3. 146 Que falta faz uma viagem

cross the sea by ferry but by plane. The start of a journey is the embarkment of an adventure. My journey was just starting and, thank God, I had no idea what life had mapped out for me.

At that moment, in Ireland, I was filled with excitement and joy; for me, it was a little sad because we were leaving the first home I had ever known. The night before leaving our home in Cashel, famous for having an abbey on a little mountain where my ancestors are buried, we packed our bags, and my grandparents said that I was about to start a new stage of my life with my single mum.

Time of departure… it suddenly felt heavy on my shoulders when I was told to stroke my dog goodbye. He was a furry mongrel with white and brown spots, a beautiful chocolate colour. He was my best friend. At that time cars didn’t have seatbelts, so I kneeled on the back seat waving to the dog, he chased the car until the start of the motorway.

James and Mossy in Cashel, Ireland, 1990. Source: Author’s personal archives

When we arrived at Dublin airport, we had a great lunch of stew. The atmosphere was electric with people coming and going. I was so small, so young, only six years old – the exact age of my daughter now – then my grandfather said he wasn’t going on the flight, and I should be a big boy and look after my mother.

When we left the terminal and walked onto the runway towards the plane, we could see it was a beautiful white with shiny propellers. We climbed the stairs and got into it; it was super exciting. Inside it had around 20 seats and I could see the captains. As it taxied to take off, my

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mother said: “Don’t be scared, this is just like the Flintstones, yabba dabba do”, and we were of into the sky. During the flight, they served juice for me and coffee for my mother. I just couldn’t sit still and banged her hot coffee and it spilt all over her white jeans. Poor mum, she cried.

After landing and after all the bad things that happened before the flight, I was hooked on the intensity of the adventure we had had.

A 17-year-old man boy. My mum had just died.

The first thing I did was to travel. Now in a very different context, with so many feelings bouncing around my head. Death brings sadness, which brings change, and the best thing for change is travel.

With the Iraq war looming, t a negative effect was descending on the UK economy and construction work dried up. One day, I went to the job centre searching for a job; when I was finishing the search, there came onto the screen options for jobs worldwide with choices for specific countries. I was there thinking what country I could choose: well, I liked French classes as a schoolboy, so I opened ‘France’, then it gave options for construction jobs, alleluia! I was studying construction, it was a win as I was already taking ‘safety in construction’. I started scrolling down the list and then something popped out, and one of the telephone numbers was for my town, how could that be? A French job with a Cambridge number? It was crazy, but I called them and had a short interview straight away. They arranged for me to have a full interview that evening. Everything was moving super fast; that same night I was waiting for the man to show up when a beautiful brand-new-Audi-A6-colour-turquoiseblue-green stopped in front of me. Wow, I had an interview with the boss, and he talked directly to me; he explained that the work was immensely physical, but the pay and bonuses were top. I said yes to France.

This adventure was slow coming but fast in the execution. I went to a different neighborhood in Cambridge with a duffle bag and £100 in my pocket. Waiting for a car, but instead what arrived was a great big lorry. As we drove south to the ferry terminal of Portsmouth, I can remember the noise and smell of the diesel engine with full excitement. At the port, we booked our places on the ferry; suddenly, the boss man arrived with his wife, taking us to lunch. Leaving England for me started on entering

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the ferry: it was colossal, with a ramp leading to the bowls of the ship, which had multiple decks. Jesus, I was living the life.

James in Nantes, France, 2003. Source: Author’s personal archives

As an Englishman in France, I will never forget the end of the first week - pay day. Lots of money, nothing to do. That was the start of a completely new lifestyle, I was feeling like a weekend millionaire. The workers asked me what I was going to do and if I wanted to go to Barcelona to watch the football team play. In an hour and a half, I was digesting the speed of the Spanish language without understanding one word.

Over the course of 2 years, I flew to many different cities and islands in France, Spain, Holland, and back and forth to my grandparents’ home to eat full English breakfast and, as the Brazilians say (and the English don’t), matar a saudade.

So, travelling for change, well, it certainly did that. I left a skinny boy full of hope and no direction. I returned to England stronger, taller, and muscled, with hope and something completely new: I knew exactly what direction I wanted life to go; I knew how to get there and what people expected of me to be successful. Thank you, travel.

Ten years later, the biggest one, the trip that defined my life today.

After travelling so much, I realized that there is no place on the planet that is inaccessible. Just one month after getting married, I emigrated to Brazil – a country I had no idea about. I was very excited with a new chapter of my life being painted, and in one month flat I sold every possession I had – even the knives and forks.

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At the time, you could carry two suitcases at 32kg. Jesus, they were bloody heavy! On the way to the bus station, I worked out my grandmother had terminal cancer… that was one of the saddest days of my life. I left my grandmother at Cambridge Trumpington Bus Station. Heart broken. Doors closing. She said: “you must go into your new life with your wife”. So I left her.

Heathrow airport. My wife met me to go for departures with four seriously heavy bags. At the check in, I was in serious doubt about choosing a new adventure or securing maternal family love. It was the saddest flight I ever took. My entrance into Brazil started in the least happy way possible.

My life in Brazil has been an uphill battle with pepperings of happiness. But with rain comes rainbows: I have a beautiful amazing little girl who brings tears of joy into my heart.

James and Lina in Gramado, Brazil, 2020. Source: Author’s personal archives

Seven years now. Seven years in Tibet. Well, Brad Pitt had a life changing event, so have I! Seven years later, travel into the Americas has given me a family, a house, a business and even a dog, plus a second language, which is cool. The locals still call me ‘the gringo’, and sometimes I have the feeling I will always be a foreigner, and I belong not to a place, but to a family only.

Through travel, I have evolved from an international globe trotter to an immigrant. At 36, I can say life isn’t over, and I am happy in the knowledge I am a hardworking man, a provider to my family and others. These things I have learnt here in the back waters of Gravataí, Rio Grande do Sul, the gaucho land of Brazil.

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Travel in the past wasn’t just an adventure but a hope: a hope of finding a home, the one I had lost so many years ago in Ireland. Now, as we are here looking into future travel, I have the pleasure of planning, not as an individual anymore, but as a family. It is pure adventure without the negatives. We, not I. We are the globe travellers, between arrivals and departures, on the road to discovery.

Travelling still gives me the greatest feeling of freedom. Since the roots of Halifax, Yorkshire, I have travelled to 14 different countries and eaten a vast variety of food. Today, I am a legal alien living in a small town of Latin America and yearn constantly for the adventures of life.

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