Beyond the Vapour Trail Read online

  It was a harried week. We visited departments at every level of government, NGOs, local communities right near the border with Indonesia, and met with groups of children. On a lighter note I had brought with me some little bottles of bubble mixture which I shared with delighted kids, who chased the bubbles as children do anywhere. They loved it, so I left the bottles with them. In one small village I saw the parents immediately confiscate them, because detergent has more important uses than blowing bubbles when you’re poor. The children looked a little disappointed. So did I, probably.

  Here I was, approaching the inevitable end to my freefall of depression, but I was to surprise myself and survive. Within a few weeks of this trip I called a therapist because I couldn’t make it through another day. Within a month I decided I didn’t want to meet anyone new; that it takes a lifetime to love someone properly, especially with all that history we shared. I loved my wife. I began reaching out, but this wasn’t going so well. I vividly recall a particular meeting with my therapist.

  ‘She wants me to give her space. So what is this “space” thing that women talk about? It seems to me if she doesn’t see me she will only remember what I was like a few months ago, and just become more comfortable with the idea of living without me. It just seems like an incredible risk.’

  ‘Yes, it is a risk. But the certainty is, if someone needs space and you continue to crowd them, they will continue to withdraw. There’s nowhere else for them to go.’

  OK, that made too much sense. So I just went overseas, put myself on a very long trip with work, and stopped communicating. I gave her space and just focused on resolving my inner world. I ever so slowly began to find steps that led the way out of the suffocation of chronic depression. It wasn’t simple. But I did overcome it. That was nearly a decade ago.

  When I returned from that long trip, things began to change. Perhaps I had some wholeness to bring to the relationship. I hadn’t contacted my wife in weeks and weeks. When she saw me, something apparently was different – she wanted to be near me, and has ever since. I courted her all over again, and it took time, but we built something far stronger than we’d ever had in the past.

  But that was all in the future. Timor Leste was one of the hardest weeks of my life, my mashed inner world in a crowded, relentless work schedule. Finally we reached the last day. Task done.

  We drove out of town that evening, somewhere eastwards, to a stony beach. The heat began to ease off marginally as the sun slid down to be swallowed in the sea. There we sat, exhausted, chairs propped awkwardly on the stones, proving to ourselves that cold beers never taste better than after working hard in the heat. A local beach cafe vendor brought us some large, freshly caught fish to choose from – all new species to me. They looked up open-mouthed from the bucket. I looked back. Some had teeth that might take a finger off – they told me these were coral eaters. The fish were cooked over hot coals on the ground nearby. The sea was almost a flat plane and we could see Atauro Island across from us, lights flickering on in Indonesia. They said the channel between these islands is deep enough for submarines to pass through, which they apparently do. Women and children wandered the shore in the shallows with woven baskets, picking up limpets or other shellfish. Soon we couldn’t make out the faces of those around us. The stars began to punch through.

  The fish. The salad. The sea lapped the stones on the shore as gently as a kitten’s tongue. The stars hung like a thousand million LED lights over our head. Sensations. Taste. Company. No thought. No emotion.

  Just stillness.

  Then the tide moved quickly, not like at home, but almost in a single wave. Yet for the life of me I can’t remember if it came in or went out. It was just a turning point for the tide, and for me. And the breeze picked up and finally brought the subtlest of relief from the heat of the day.

  Four years later came a high-tide moment. My marriage restored, my depression a memory. A meal under cherry blossom and vines, on the side of a hill in Yerevan, Armenia, 2009. Fresh produce, hot food, good wine, punctuated with conversation and pomegranates. Colleagues from Bosnia and Palestine were exchanging stories of living in war, of the terror as a child of having bullets firing through your bedroom wall. And everything that follows. But today they celebrated life with an intensity that perhaps you rarely see in those who have not faced death.

  Humming inside me was the breakthrough I had witnessed that day. It was that journey I had begun in PNG to make child sponsorship work powerfully within communities. It wasn’t until I reached the airport I could find a moment to share it with her.

  From: Brett Pierce

  Sent: 09/06/10

  To: Kathleen Pierce

  Subject:

  It’s been so long apart. I miss you.

  I’m in Vienna airport on my way to Albania. Had a couple of beers and breakfast (well, we went by the Vienna clock for breakfast and the Armenia clock for beer) with the Armenia national director.

  The project I visited in Yerevan was amazing. It’s everything I’ve been working for come true. It’s just perfect. The staff have a social work background and just grasped the whole approach. And took it further – with no background in sponsorship. It’s all come together. I almost can’t believe it is so brilliant.

  And I just … I don’t know … but on what was supposed to be happiest the night of my business life, it wasn’t complete, wasn’t nearly close to being in the same vicinity as complete, because I couldn’t share it with you. I couldn’t hear your voice, or laugh about it with you. I missed my wife.

  This pilot was my Wright brothers’ first flight. What I saw that day became part of the evidence base for changing the experience for millions of children in the way child sponsorship is practised. For me that project visit was a pivotal moment. That night in Yerevan I sat in the summer air in good company. Another course, another toast. And in the distance, the perfection of Mount Ararat was hanging in the sky, like a great soul, completely suspended between heaven and earth.

  Epilogue

  From: Brett Pierce

  Sent: 08/11/14

  To: Kathleen Pierce

  Subject: Re:

  Hey you.

  I’m still in Uganda, waiting for a meal, sitting outside alone in the dark by the little waterfall. I leave for Zimbabwe in the morning.

  I don’t want to go to Zimbabwe. I just want to go home … The materials aren’t ready. I don’t care about next week. I have neither the energy nor the inspiration. I just want to go home and finish my harp and make something beautiful without any interference. I’d like to change my flights. OK, yes, I’m pretty tired and have nothing left inside tonight. I wish you were here. I like being with you. But you’re far, far away, in another life. You’re like the antidote to any poison. Hey I’m sorry for this message. It’s probably a passing moment but I just needed contact and you’re asleep. I remember that meal at the restaurant. At one point you looked up at me. And the restaurant. Just. Disappeared.

  There were tiny, tiny hummingbirds floating like bees above the flowers when I went for a walk this afternoon. They had bright metallic colours that glistened in the sunlight. They hovered. Then they just … disappeared. Like all beautiful moments.

  From: Brett Pierce

  Sent: 18/04/15

  To: Kathleen Pierce

  Subject: Hello

  Hey monet. I’m at the first lounge with a nice pinot and no time. I’ll be looking forward to your warm body to hold close. My plane is boarding. Bye my love. I’ll cross the ocean to be with you. I will take to the skies and follow my heart to the one I love. Over the rolling sea.

  Xxxx

  Acknowledgements

  Often we look back at our best work and realise how much we have leant on the contributions of others. So it’s not surprising that there are people I wish to acknowledge for helping to bring this text together.

  Particular thanks to my wife Kathie, whose sense of story and literary intuition helped to reshape the drafts. No experienc
e I have in the wider world ever feels complete until it has been shared with her, and in the writing of this book her feedback was invaluable.

  Thanks to Barry Scott from Transit Lounge for his support, advice and encouragement. Thanks also to Penelope Goodes for her fine editing and the clarity of her suggestions.

  There are so many people who have helped to make my experience in international development an amazing journey. Suffice to say that I work with a profound group of people, particularly our small team of Samson Jeyakumar, Kombo Choga, Bradley Thompson and Andrew Simpson – whose passion and skills have kept us at the cutting edge of development. Also the many inspirational people I have met in communities, the frontline development practitioners, community members and children who challenge me with their earnestness for life.

  Finally a special acknowledgement to Betty Alajo, for the uncomplicated way she sat down and shared her story. It’s my hope that proceeds from this book can help translate Betty’s past experience into her dream of the security found in bricks and mortar.

  Brett Pierce works in overseas aid which has taken him to over seventy countries. His work has been instrumental in adapting and remodelling child sponsorship to empower local community-led care and protection and child participation, currently rolling out to over 4.3 million children and their communities globally. When he is not travelling, his home is on the Mornington Peninsula where he enjoys time with his family, harp-building, painting in oils, and the brewing of fine ales.