16 day check-in on the Grande Buenos Aires

I rode on the Grimaldi cargo ship The Grande Buenos Aires from August 13 to September 18, 2012. I embarked in Zarate, Argentina and disembarked in Antwerp, Belgium. The ship called on the ports of Santos, Brazil; Vitoria, Brazil; Dakar, Senegal; Tilbury/London, the U.K.; Emden, Germany; and Hamburg, Germany. This post was written on August 29, 2012.

Waiting outside the port of Vitoria, Brazil.

By now I have been on the ship for 16 days. When I checked my calendar earlier today, I was a bit surprised: indeed being on the ship feels like inhabiting a timeless space where the day of the week matters less than the schedule of ports of call, yet I feel like the past two weeks have stretched into countless frames of mind and periods of personal growth that temporally feel much longer than 16 days.

It wasn’t until we were about halfway between Brazil and Senegal that I truly adapted to ship life. Before that there would be false starts of feeling good, but good days were usually followed by bad days. Bad days in this sense usually meant not feeling physically 100%. Typically my stomach would be upset after a meal or I would lack appetite—food just didn’t taste great and most of the courses of my meals would be sent back to the kitchen, only a small portion having been consumed. Also there were mental and emotional adjustments to make: dealing with loneliness was one, and dealing with my sense of self—how I portrayed my personhood to those I met on the ship, especially when there were no other native English speakers aboard—was another. For the first few weeks I felt like I was a person without a history: I could be anyone, and even when being “myself,” I wondered who is this. Do I contain an unalienable kernel of personality, of being, of self?

One night I showed pictures of my life back home in San Francisco and some of my travels last summer to the passengers’ steward, A Ukrainian living in Italy for 3 years, who I had befriended and to whom I was teaching English slang. After I returned to my cabin, I continued scrolling through the photos on my iPad, going back several years. There I was at Ocean Beach with Colin, on Halloween 2010; there we were with our cat Indigo, playing with him on our bed; there were Kai and I, on a street corner downtown after attending a Switchback launch party; there was my dad and Tommy at my apartment for Thanksgiving 2010. I put down the iPad and a wholesome sense of relief washed over me. I had been denying all this history in my attempt to, in some sense, reinvent myself and avoid home sickness, but in reality I needed to embrace it all. Life is a continuum. I needed to be grounded, I needed to remember I am a person with a rich history—a life well lived despite the yearning for the present period of travel that constantly overlaid all the experiences captured in these pictures. This history informs the present moment in which I find myself sitting in cabin 1215 aboard the Grande Buenos Aires, a few hours away from the coast of Senegal.

We’ve now been at sea, without a glimpse of land, for about 6 whole days. The captain, a kind man without disregard for decorum, recognized how important our last port of call before crossing the Atlantic is to his crew. Therefore, although we were only in Vitoria, Brazil for less than 24 hours, around 9 pm he authorized us all to go ashore, telling everyone to be back by 11 a.m. the next morning at the latest. I ventured onto solid land with the steward. We grabbed a taxi, picked up 4 of the Italian crew at the Manila Discotee located right outside the port’s gate. They subjected the strange taxi driver to Italian, Spanish, and English directions in a fruitless quest to find a money changer at the late hour, all while poking and rough housing with each other the whole drive. We spanned the industrial side of the city, on which our ship was docked, across the bridge over to the old city, and then to the commercial district where a large mall holding many American chain restaurants was located, then back to the Manila Discotee, which I quickly realized was a prostitute bar. So, some stereotypes about sailor life are true.

Coming into port at Vitoria, Brazil, under a concrete bridge.

We spied a photography session of a wedding couple on the banks of the river.

Looking ahead into the port, up the river.

Looking back, the way we came.

Looking back, there's the bridge we came in under.

Tiny glow of sunset.

Panorama of the port of Vitoria, Brazil.

And the two sides of the city, at night. There is a taxi boat but we took a cab across a bridge.

Some of the crew taking a break ashore.

Some more crew letting off steam/chillin. The dang naked mermaid on the wall was my view for a long time.

That night was special despite a slight feeling of not belonging that I couldn’t shake. Many rounds of beer were ordered, deals were made with the establishment’s Madame, and many cigarettes smoked, the Italians pulling from each other’s packs one after another. The spirit was lively and became even livelier when the next round of crew got off their shift and rolled up, still donning their blue and silver reflective jumpsuits emblazoned with the Grimaldi logo. More rounds of beer, more packs of cigarettes flung open for all to partake, and the chief mate had even brought his walkie-talkie and flashlight, which he turned to strobe and shone in people’s faces to annoy them as his loud voice exclaimed in Italian inflection above the din of the celebration. There was an air of frenetic energy and liveliness punctuated by yelps and responses in high pitched Italian, and the famous Italian inflection wrung clearly throughout the whole neighborhood. The steward chaperoned me back to the ship around the time the party was really getting going, but that was fine with me. The crew had welcomed me as one of their own for a few hours despite the fact I could barely communicate with them; I had drank a few beers and my feet had traveled on solid ground. It had been a good night. 

We were invited up to the bridge to have a look around once we left Brazil. In the middle is the one and only female crew member. This picture of her, the other passenger, and me is a picture of all the women on the ship (out of about 35 total people).

I suppose this evening embodies the answer to the question I keep getting: why travel alone on a cargo ship all this way, for all this time—why not fly in an airplane or at least take a passenger ship? Traveling by any other method would not have opened up this slice of life to me: one night of freedom before 6 or 7 days surrounded by water for a group of men (and one woman) who make their life at sea. Usually: 4 months on, 2 months off the ship. As conversations with crew members have revealed over time, this is a type of work that is skilled, offers channels for promotion, yet also consumes the laborer whole. When they are in port, it’s work, work, work nonstop, which is especially exhausting to the older crew members. The majority of the Italian crew seems young, in their 20s or early 30s (I imagine them as children at their parents’ dinner table when forced to eat with the captain), and for them, there may not seem like much alternative at the moment. Put in the context of Italy’s current economic status (worse off than what we hear about the U.S.’s unsavory job market), they perhaps feel locked in, like this is as good as it gets at the moment.

Some—no, many—get out after a few years, judging from the overwhelmingly young crew. However, I had the pleasure of hearing the oldest crew member (besides the cook, who is retiring once this tour concludes in Antwerp) complain about his salary. He is Italian contracted, and receives gross monthly income of 3,500€ (net: 4,800€; apparently the Italian government eats up 1,300€ in taxes, which is a 27.1% tax rate). Considering the grueling nature of the work, he was not satisfied with this salary. By contrast, the Indian workers on the ship have a different contract, and are paid in US Dollars: $6,000/month. One Indian I spoke to is on a 8 month contract. Can you imagine spending July – March nonstop working on a cargo ship, but at the end you have a cool $48,000 waiting for you. Without a family to support, or assets like real estate to maintain, that’s pretty good money—take the cash and hit the road for a 4 month vacation, or rent a short term lodging in your hometown, enjoying a leisurely 4 months of hanging out with friends and bumming around, or perhaps working on a pet project or hobby. But, for the older crew members, or ones with a family, I can see how that money would get eaten up fast when a house, car, and children are taken into account.  

This is part of a series called Photoshoot with myself at sunset on the deck.

All this, to me, is a main impetus to travel: not for the theater of a resort-spotted white sand beach or expensive guided tours in ancient castles and museums, but for the glimpse into what surviving entails for people all around the globe. How do others make a life, make a living? If nothing else I feel less alone in my struggle: indeed I have a family to support while I travel, and likewise I have a family network to return to once my year being abroad is up, similar to the families I imagine the sailors returning to once their tours have finished. Maybe we are content in our work, maybe not; maybe we are searching for something more fulfilling or that feels like a better fit during all of this. No matter what, it’s all authentic human experience, a struggle of survival that spans all of history.