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| Heavyweights: hefty reading for rainy days. |
In order to avoid dwelling on the ever-present feelings of hunger and thirst one becomes adept at staying active and avoiding idleness. During my first Ramadan, this quest to elude tempting thoughts combined with ubiquitous and cheap French internet access led to the development of my Wikipedia Reflex. That is, the instinct to look up and find out more about any topic you are even vaguely interested in. Why settle for a surface understanding of a concept when you can explore it to ridiculously profound depths? And besides, what else was I going to do on my lunch break? Rather than dwelling wistfully on all the fresh baguettes and delicious cheeses I was missing out on, I instead devoted myself to the diligent study of whichever esoteric topic took my fancy.
On one memorable day this topic took the form of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. Those unfamiliar with such a mouthful might be more acquainted with the 1993 film Alive!, which tells a dramatised version of the UAF 571 plane crash and subsequent miraculous survival story. The topic had come to mind this particular lunchtime because of what I had seen on television the night before. Arte, the outstanding French/German channel had screened a documentary that revisited the UAF 571 story and interviewed the survivors more than 35 years after the actual incident. Being the first time I had encountered this remarkable tale, the next day I couldn't stop thinking about it. As soon as lunchtime hit, I bypassed thoughts of baguettes and went straight to Wikipedia to verify the unbelievable facts.
It was extraordinary. Wikipedia confirmed what the documentary had intimated. If I thought the suffering I was experiencing during Ramadan was hard, this was unimaginable: 72 days stranded in the mountains without food, medical supplies nor adequate protection against the freezing temperatures, harsh weather and extreme altitude. Time and time again, the group of survivors were tested with catastrophic setbacks: failed radios, deaths of loved ones and even an avalanche that engulfed the remaining plane wreckage two weeks after the crash. With Wikipedia giving GPS co-ordinates of the crash site and using Google Earth, I was even able to see the exact terrain they were trapped in, and navigate the eventual route taken by survivors to find help. At such an altitude, it would have been a difficult feat, even for an experienced and fully equipped mountaineer, let alone two tourists without even boots suited for snow.
Although UAF Flight 571 made the whole broken bed incident seem utterly insignificant I couldn't help but empathise slightly. Experiencing and surviving our own mini-disaster seemed to sensitise me to the sheer miraculousness of this story. And I recognised familiar elements... when I finally finished devouring the entire Wikipedia article I recognised that although sacrifices were made, without the cohesion and cooperation of the group none of them would have stood a chance.
My curiosity for the raw facts sated, I was almost ready to change topics, but just as I was about to click away I spied a seemingly insignificant link that was about paint a very different picture of humanity.
