Juan Villarino ist ein Tramper aus Argentinien, unterwegs seit 2005. In der Zwischenzeit hat er Länder wie den Irak, Iran und Afghanistan per Anhalter bereist und ein Buch über seine Erfahrungen dort geschrieben. „Vagabonding in the Axis of evil – by thumb in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan“ beschreibt das Leben und die dort lebenden Menschen aus einem anderen Blickwinkel, anders als man ihn aus den Medien kennt. Die 275 Seiten werden demnächst als Buch und E-Bock auf seiner Website zur Verfügung stehen

Für alle Tramper des Tramprennens 2010 ließ er uns dieses Gedicht zukommen! Vielen Dank & Happy Hitchhiking!

Mindfulness. Recovery of your inner self through the act of hitting the road.

We have been told over and over how to be productive,
We have been given all the instructions
To be economically useful, socially correct, to match a certain type of fate in a catalogue…

We, road creatures, should complain,
we have been denied –through silence- the allowance of time
to mediate and learn from the world
as a shortcut to meet the different possibilities of ourselves
few friends, maybe a few books
have smuggled their advice into our minds,
to empower our senses with real unmediated experience,
not with soulless barcode marked fast food,
Or media manipulated fast thoughts

Where is depth and dignity?

From within the die hard Babylon,
from the glass and steel hearts of our cities
the world remains untouched.

The villages on the shores of Napo River in Ecuadorian Amazonia,
or the Kuchi nomads who graze their camels across dusty desolate roads
become an abstract piece of information,
an unborn ray of sun.

Fear, angst, miedo,
Is the building ingredient of sedentary sapiens.
Time as perceived by banks,
Only there t calculate interest and mortgages.
Money, as compulsory synonym for happiness.
Education as a formatted gestalt
To foster an insensitive breed of specialists
Are other ingredients.

But how to achieve wisdom, self-domain, peace and empathy?

Fellow travellers I don’t know,
-and therefore part of the caravan, of the big family of hitch-hikers-

There is an invitation for you
It’s not an invitation coming from Facebook
But coming firstly from inside you.

The invitation to navigate the harmony of chaos,
To hitch the world,
To taste the hospitality of people from over 190 countries,
To extend your thumb on the road from Lhasa to Katmnadu,
To leave your footprints on Road 40, on the southern Andes, between glaciers and lake,
To jump in the roof of the cargo train that crosses the Mauritanian desert…
The roads are there,
The cars are there,
The fantastic drivers are there.

It’s your choice .
You can stay working hard to buy a car.
But remember. You are a hitch-hiker
You are the owner of the totality of the cars.

Don’t dream it.
Dreaming is the first step.
And it will be only a dream until step 2:
When you realise that you actually deserve it.
The next step is trusting the universe:
(Everything happens for a reason, the universe always takes care of you)

And finally the third step: finding power.

As Kinga said:
“Every dream is given to us with the power to make it come true”

And remember,
Every untraveled road is an invitation to dance with a Godess.

Buenos caminos,
Juan Villarino
www.
acrobatoftheroad.com