That necktie felt like a rope around my neck. I had been a lawyer for over two years and that tight rope was taking the best out of me. I was not happy. I could not breath. So I quit and started my plan to move out of the country and have a new start somewhere else.
During those weeks of transition between my old and my new life something terrible happened in my country. A massive oil carrier split in half pouring out tons and tons of toxic matter into the waters. The livelihood of thousands of fishermen and their families were about to be destroyed. The economy and ecosystem of one of the most beautiful regions in Spain was going to be inevitably hit as that black monster approached the coast without a chance of being stopped.
Every single major city in the country had an immediate response. In just a few days hundreds of buses full of volunteers came from every corner to help clean Galicia. I was one of those volunteers.
I spent most of the 15 hours of the bus ride trying to figure out what I was going to encounter in Galicia. I didn’t get to sleep at all. At dawn we arrived in the small village called Muxia where I was going to be working. It was 5am and we were taken to the sport center where we would sleep for the next days. The place was dark and silent, every inch of it covered by people in their sleep. It was a living painting where each stroke of color was a sleeping bag. I remember thinking “where the heck am I going to sleep?”... well, I didn’t. We just dropped off our bags and after having a light breakfast we were taken to our ride: a line of military vehicles that would drive us to the coast. The ride was bumpy and cold. All the volunteers were dead quiet.
I will never forget what I saw when we reached our destination… as far as the eye could reach, north and south, all the rocks were covered with a black layer of dark oil. The ocean was also covered with chunks of floating oil of all shapes and sizes. It was horrendous. Just horrendous. And that smell. That chemical smell was just unbearable. How in the world were we going to clean that? It was impossible.
We put on our gear (some astronaut suit out of a low budget b movie) and went down the rocks. It was slippery, sticky and smelly and the waves were hitting hard. We spent the next 6 hours scratching that thick sticky thing with our hands… filling bucket after bucket. Our team had a volunteer whose only job was to give us water, scratch our faces when they were itchy and watch for big waves. Every time that person shouted out “WAAAAAVE!!!” we would climb up the rocks as fast as we could to find a safe place before heading back down to the stinky mess. IT-WAS-HARD…
And yet I felt so light and happy. So much happier that I felt just two weeks before wearing that tie in my small office.
When it was time to stop we were taken back to the village. Our little section of the coast was not completely clean by any means but it looked a lot better than it did first thing in the morning. And we had the rest of the week ahead of us. We could do this.
We were taken to some kind of big open military tent where I got naked in front of dozens of strangers and got to enjoy a 2 minute shower (really… 120 seconds and that’s it).The women of the village cooked a stew for us in huge pots and we ate together. The men of the town took us to the bars and gave countless free shots of Oruzco (the Spanish version of Moonshine). By the end of the night I was drunk and best friends with everybody. I found myself a little corner for my sleeping bag and went to sleep really happy and, yes, proud of myself.
The next day we were taken to our very same spot on the coast very early in the morning.
I almost fainted when I got out of the military truck.
Everything was completely covered again with that black stinky oil. Every inch of the coast. As far as the eye could see. North and south. Like the day before never happened.
The same thing happened day after day. The morning I left Galicia new volunteers came to find the coast just as black as the first day I arrived. And when a new group replaced them everything started all over again.
Learning a second language is like cleaning the oil off the coast of Galicia. You are going to get up in the morning and, so to speak, find your progress covered in black matter. Students make most of their mistakes with areas of the language that they have already studied. Your brain is not a computer where you press save and the information is there next time you need it.
You are going to forget.
You are going to stumble.
Just keep cleaning that stinky mess over and over again and watch for the big waves. Be proud of your work and never stop. There is no quick fix. There is no “Learn a second language in 10 days”. It’s gonna take a while but it is well worth it. And don’t forget that, eventually, your beach will be clean and pretty just like Galicia’s coast is clean and pretty today. Learn to enjoy the journey and never (NEVER) stop fighting.
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