A Trucker's Life
Truckers on the job live pretty much within the confines of their cabs, stopping approximately every four hours or so as dictated by the universally-abhorred European Working Time Directive, venturing out only occasionally for a shower at their favourite service station or for a coffee/tea/stiff drink. Proper meals are a luxury, so fast food – and its attendant problems – serves as a substitute.
An epidemiological study of a truckers’ colony would probably reveal an alarming tendency towards coronary heart disease. A good number of risk factors are present: a sedentary lifestyle, a diet high in saturated fat and the constant stress of frequent travel. The pay is not good, and they’re at the mercy of their multiple mobiles (one for each country) and radio phones throughout the drive.
Family cannot travel with them – they’re usually hundreds, even thousands of miles away, perhaps even on a different continent, as in Eduardo’s case. Each visit home is a cause for celebration, something to look forward to, that ‘final’ destination on their meandering route along the autopistes and motorways of Europe. It’s a lonely life.
Noel summed it up well, “I want to go home to see my children! But Brussels says I must stop for an hour every four hours so I won’t be overworked! I get upset just sitting here!” Eduardo showed us photo after photo of his wife and two children, while sharing his rations of bread rolls with ham and cheese, all of the very cheapest variety – I think the photos helped the food taste better – after all, every penny he saved was several pesos closer to his family being together again. The sole female trucker we met the entire way had her entire cab plastered with photographs of her four-year-old daughter – at play, asleep, in the arms of her avo (grandmother). There was no mention of the girl’s father.
And keeping sane is important, as our Spanish trucker friend demonstrated, by singing along to every other song on the radio, along with pointing at random items on the horizon and telling jokes in Spanish that only he laughed at.
So it might seem that the trucking life is for those politely termed as “dull” or “undereducated”. Why would a perfectly intelligent person with qualifications ever put themselves through all this? Yet people make their choices, take George as an example.
George loves playing Devil’s Advocate – he asked us why we were raising money for children’s education in Africa when equally valid causes in our very own backyards were being starved of funds. We told him we considered ourselves citizens of the world and that a cause on a different continent was no less pertinent. He laughed and told us that he agreed, and that he was happy that people gave a damn about other people. His face hardened as fingers cocked to imitate a gun, he described with a depth of emotion his matter-of-fact delivery could not disguise, his experience as a sergeant in the NATO campaign in Kosovo – he had to kill or be killed. The trucking life, though hard, provided the numbing stability he needed to move on. He is happier this way, he whispered, smiling to the strains of Duran Duran...
And as I try to make my way, to the ordinary world...
I will learn to survive.
Hats off to all the truckers we’ve met. My deepest respect for their strength, perseverance and most of all for their kindness despite it all.