Look, I try to say this all the time, whenever I’m called upon to
pontificate about walking and psychogeography and whatnot. I try to say, “Most of us in the West have
some kind of choice about whether or not we walk. It may not exactly be an
indulgence, and it’s obviously not a bad thing, but really you know, there are
people in this world, most of them women, who have to walk twenty odd miles a
day just to get water and they have no choice about it whatsoever.”
Not that this needs any confirming but above is a photograph (I actually
first saw it on Cat Power’s Instagram feed) from a recent French marathon. The runners run, the woman, from Gambia
apparently, named Siabatou Sanneh, walks with a jerrycan
of water on her head and a kind of sandwich board that says pretty much what I
always I says, “In Africa, women
travel this distance everyday to get potable water." The runners also appear to be getting sprayed
with water, which hammers home the message even harder.
My French is less than perfect, but I do like the word “parcourir.” It doesn’t just mean walk or travel, but also,
as I understand it, has the sense of to tour, voyage,
roam, range. Also I suppose it’s the
root of the word parkour (something I like a lot so long as I don't have to do it), as in the
picture below of picture of David Belle, the founder of the parkour movement.
That’s some fancy walking you’re doing there
Dave, why not make it really hard for yourself and keep a jerrycan of water on
your head while you’re doing it?
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