On The Other Side

 
I read this memoir a few years ago called The Sisters Antipodes by a woman named Jane Alison. Jane was born in Canberra, Australia but spent most of her childhood living in different parts of the world because her dad was a diplomat. At some point when she was under 10, her family (mom, dad, older sister, Jane) were back in Australia and became really good friends with an American family whose dad was also a diplomat (mom, dad, two daughters). The parents ended up switching partners, and the daughters ended up losing dads as Jane and her sister moved to the US with their new stepfather and their mom, and the two other girls stayed in Australia with their mom and Jane's dad. Read it - it's really good! (The amount of similarities between the families are very strange. Both women/moms end up getting pregnant again and both had sons born within a few days of each other.) But why this whole story is related to this post is because Jane returns to Australia a couple of different times during the book and she always talks about the plane rides and drawing maps of the voyages and trying to cross off all the time zones she was travelling through on the back of the Qantas napkin. I loved those parts of the book. I wish I had my copy of the book here (it's in Toronto) to give the exact quote but she wrote this line I just loved about always wishing she knew or could tell the exact moment the plane crossed the equator, so that she could know when she was back on the other side.

It wasn't until I was in Santiago that I realized the word (and country) "Ecuador" means equator in Spanish. C. visited Ecuador once and told me how the equator passes right through the country. She even went to a place where you can stand with one foot on one side of the equator and one foot of the other. So cool! It's like when you can stand on a state/province line and have your feet in two different places at once. A long time ago when we were at school together, N. told me how in Basel, Switzerland, France, Germany and Switzerland all meet. He showed me a picture of himself standing in the exact spot the three countries meet. When I did my exchange to France in the winter/spring of 1999, my dad came to visit me at one point and we went to Switzerland. At N.'s recommendation I made us visit Basel and I also have a picture of me (wish I remembered where it is) of me standing at the place where the three countries meet.  Going back to Ecuador, I really want to visit the country, and specifically the equator one day.

In Paris, I knew this guy named P. who was from Bogotá. His sister J. came to visit during the summer and I hung out with them both a few times. I was telling them how much I loved the long long days and she told me that in Bogotá, because it's so close to the equator, it gets dark around 6 pm (give or take) the whole year. She said the dark would make her tired, and that sometimes she'd go to bed at 6:30 pm and sleep 12 hours until it got light again the next morning. It was so interesting to me that for her, being in Paris in May, June and July was not only an adjustment for the language, etc. etc. but also for the long long days when she was used to darkness by early evening. Having long days in the summer and short days in the winter is so engrained in my mind I don't think I could ever get used to the length of day and night being more or less the same the whole year through.

I like how Jane Alison called the Northern Hemisphere "the other side." It does sort of seem like the two hemispheres are other sides. At the end of our semester in Santiago, Chile, C. and I took a 2 week long trip to Argentina, with a 3 day side trip to Uruguay. While in Montevideo, we went to this museum about an Uruguyan artist named Joaquín Torres García. In the gift shop there was this amazing poster (see picture below this paragraph) of an upside down (to me, but not to some people from South America) map of South America. You can't see it in this picture but there was a quote on the map that said "nuestro norte es el sur" (our north is the south). I've always liked that because it shifts the accepted centres of power and says that just because people in the Northern Hemisphere believe something does not mean those in the Southern Hemisphere necessarily believe it too.

I have new found affection for the Southern Hemisphere. I think my dislike of Chile in 2005 caused me to not like the Southern Hemisphere in general that much, mostly because I pretty much only knew Chile in the Southern Hemisphere and because June was such a dark, cold and awful month in Santiago, so different from June in the Northern Hemisphere. But now I like the Southern Hemisphere so much more. I've realized that just because I don't like Chile, I love Argentina (especially Buenos Aires) and it is also in the Southern Hemisphere. I've been there in its winter (July) and I still loved it. I also really liked New Zealand and it is also 'on the other side.' I'm glad to discover the great things about the Southern Hemisphere. I think it's so fascinating that the globe does have these two sides that are opposites of each other. And I still really want to go to Ecuador (and Bogotá, and look below in Uganda too!) and see the middle.