La Guaira, Venezuela, July 2025

I’m sitting in my Caracas apartment with the windows open to the sticky warmth of the afternoon, a mug of strong coffee growing cold on the desk beside me. The city hums in the background — not too loudly today — and my thoughts are travelling far.

It’s planning season: I’m looking ahead to the next few weeks and beyond. If all goes well, I’ll be heading to Portugal sometime soon, which excites me more than I can say. Óbidos has become a place of light for me — not only because of its sunlit hills but because of the history I now carry in my pocket: my Portuguese passport, finally used for the first time just weeks ago.

Other possible chapters are shaping up too: a regional humanitarian seminar in Panama in November, and maybe — if I’m really lucky — a short trip to Canada to visit Tahir’s family and other cherished friends before that.

But most of my energy these days goes into the book. Memoir of a Wandering Spirit is no longer just an idea — it’s a companion. A demanding one. It asks for time, memory, honesty. It keeps me up some nights and carries me through others. The project is far from over. There’s still a great deal of writing ahead… and even more editing. But the heart of it is beating strong.

I write because I feel I should. Because what I’ve seen — what I keep seeing — in this line of work, in these places, in this life, would otherwise overwhelm me. Writing doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t rescue anyone. But it allows me to bear witness. To hold onto truth. To protect myself, yes — but also to honour those whose stories have touched me.

So today, I wanted to share a few raw pages. Real ones. Unedited, perhaps imperfect — but written with care and gratitude. These are not mere anecdotes. They’re small windows into a life constantly shaped by motion, friendship, loss, and surprise.

📖 Extracts from Memoir of a Wandering Spirit:

❄️ Zakopane, Poland (1981)

When he woke, there was pain, but more than pain— confusion. A strange, underwater quiet filled the intensive care unit. He was connected to tubes, monitors, drips. Something hummed near his ear. His chest was tight. Breathing hurt. There were drains in his back, collecting blood. His body, stitched and patched, was trying to hold itself together.

And across the room, a nurse stood frozen by the television.

General Jaruzelski stared out from the screen in his heavy glasses. Tanks rolled across Polish cities. Martial Law had been declared.

The nurse cried. Not loudly. Not theatrically. Just a quiet unravelling, the way snow falls from a ledge when no one is watching. Kacper didn’t understand exactly what had happened. But he knew what war looked like. He had seen pictures. And now it was on every screen. A country sealed, curfews set, voices silenced.

🌆 London, United Kingdom (1992)

He introduced him to friends — mostly girls. Loud, smiling, kind Polish girls who spoke with a bounce in their voice and wore worn-out shoes from walking the city. One of them, Edyta, was especially sweet. She had three jobs — waiting tables in pubs and working in the kitchen of a boutique hotel near Oxford Circus.

One evening, after tea and laughter, she leaned over and whispered, “I spoke to the manager. They’re looking for help. Come tomorrow.”

Kacper did.

The manager — a wiry man from Sri Lanka named Mr. Liroy — looked him over for a long moment, then said:
“You can clean dishes. Scrub floors. But no one must see you. You limp. People will say we exploit the crippled.”

Kacper blinked.

He didn’t even register the cruelty in the words — not at the time. He just nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

Because there was money.

Not much. But enough.

Enough to buy food.

Enough to pay rent.

Enough to stop borrowing.

It was the smallest victory. But to Kacper, it felt like a continent.

So Kacper started working.

🌃 Delhi, India (1995)

Delhi came alive.

Shops lit up in pinks, greens, and pulsing neon. Bonfires burned in patches along the pavement — families gathered around, warming themselves, cooking food in tin pots. Children chased one another between tuk-tuks and carts. A man sold strings of jasmine flowers that smelled like memory. A woman in gold earrings sang quietly to herself as she swept the dust from her shopfront into the street.

It was light and dark. Noise and silence. Scent and shadow.

On the walk back to the hotel, Kacper looked at himself in a shop window.

He saw two black rings around his nostrils — soot from the city’s air, from the exhaust of buses and the open fires on the kerbs. He rubbed his face and laughed. Delhi had already marked him.

That night, lying on the narrow bed in a room that smelled of too many lives, Kacper stared at the ceiling and thought: this is paradise.

Not the paradise from travel brochures or Sunday sermons. But his paradise — strange, flawed, luminous with human noise.

🕌 Near Lahore, Pakistan (1995)

It was late enough now that the iftar — the breaking of the fast — had begun. The table was laid out richly: plates of marinated meat, yoghurt sauces, heaps of rice, piles of spiced flatbreads. Silja and Kacper were asked about everything — Denmark, Finland, Poland, their schooling, their bus, their thoughts on Pakistan.

The mood was festive, chatty, welcoming. And yet, beneath it all, Kacper felt a strange, slow cloud forming. He was tired. Foggy. His head heavy. He blinked hard, rubbed his temples.

Then came the tea.

Kacper tried to politely refuse. “I’m full,” he said, “I never drink milk tea. Really.”

But their hosts insisted. Firmly.

“No, no,” one of the women said. “You must. It is tradition.”

They were visibly upset when he hesitated. The smiles stiffened. Something about the room dimmed.

So he drank.

It was sweet. Too sweet. Thick. It clung to his tongue like syrup.

He remembers the light — a single bare bulb high on the wall of the guest room. It buzzed faintly, flickering once or twice. He tried to turn over, to switch it off. But his arms didn’t move. Or maybe they did. He couldn’t tell.

And then —

Nothing.

He opened his eyes.

Trees. Branches swaying above. Sky between them, pale and unmoving. His head throbbed, deep and dull like an echo. The air smelled of soil and petrol.

He saw Silja. She was on the ground, a few feet away. She vomited into the grass, her hair matted. She wore only part of her outfit.

Kacper blinked slowly. It didn’t register. He wanted to sleep. He turned his face into the earth and let go again.

🌁 Tehran, Iran (1995)

There was something in the air of Tehran that reminded him of home. Not Nowy Sącz, exactly — but Poland in the gloomiest years of its own grey winter. The dull ache of systems too large to fight. The coded jokes. The careful conversations. The quiet rebellions. How people found each other in spite of the noise. He had grown up in it. He recognised it.

They stayed in Tehran for three days. They visited the Golestan Palace with its glittering mirrors and mirrored lies. They walked the hills of Darband and tasted sour plums dipped in salt. But most memorable was their visit to the University of Tehran.

Through a local contact, they were introduced to a small circle of professors who had agreed — cautiously — to meet. The discussion was broad, almost evasive, but peppered with curiosity and candour. “You come to learn?” one of the scholars asked. “Then observe our contradictions. That’s the best teacher we have.”

They sipped tea together in a faculty lounge where a poster of Hafez covered a peeling wall. It was enough. Words were chosen carefully, but eyes said more. These were people who had not given up. Not on truth, not on learning.

When they left Tehran, the city receded behind them in waves of smog and light. But something stayed with Kacper. Not the monuments, not the markets — but the feeling of a people who had not allowed themselves to disappear into their own silence.

He thought again of the woman in 'Daughter of Persia', and the girl in the bookshop, and the driver who made him laugh. And he understood something new: sometimes resistance doesn’t shout. It sings, it whispers, it waits — and it endures.

This book is not finished. Not even close. The memories are vast, and the editing will demand patience. But the soul of it — the wandering, questioning spirit of Kacper — is alive and well.

Thank you for staying with me. For reading. For asking. For caring.

Writing may not change the world, but perhaps it changes the writer — and, just maybe, the reader too.

Sending you all my warmest regards, wherever you are reading this message from!