Turn of the World – a poetic and heroic journey
by Michael
(London, UK)
Kitty on Guillaume's backpack as he walks 15,000 kms.
MAY 3rd 2010: This is an extraordinary story of a Frenchman and a Frenchwoman, Guillaume and Laetitia, and their rescue cat, Kitty. They are 23 an 26 years of age respectively. Kitty looks a young cat.
On 27th September 2008, Guillaume and Laetitia started walking from Miami in the USA to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, South America (see map). Laetitia abandoned the journey on 1st September 2009 or thereabouts. Guillaume continued alone with Kitty.
Link to Guillaume’s website: Turn of the World
Amazing as it seems, Kitty sits on top of Guillaume’s backpack as he walks these thousands of miles across a continent. As this is a three year journey, as I understand it, they are still on the journey at the time of this article. The first part of the title to this article is the title of the website that chronicles their adventures.
I am amazed and frightened at the same time. Kitty is amazing. She was found at the side of the road in Louisiana (as far as I remember). This is towards the beginning of this long walk so she has behaved in an astonishing way, a very beautiful way I think.
Kitty’s bond with Guillaume is astounding and outstanding. You can see in a couple of videos below how this cat just sits and sleeps on Guillaume’s backpack and shoulder as he walks along the side of the road. This looks dangerous but the cat seems very settled, unafraid, calm and confident and he appears to have no intention at all to get down. Actually, it is dangerous, not just from traffic but from bandits, rouges etc. who will know that Laetitia and Guillaume are Europeans or at least not from Central or South America.
Their many fans are as concerned and as amazed as I am. The concern has mounted recently because there has been no news updates on their blog since 18th November 2009 as far as I can see. On 1st October 2009, Guillaume reports that he has lost 12 kilos and that he feels weak and thin. He decided to have a break. This may account for the fact that news has dried up.
As Guillaume is walking 15,000 kilometres this beautiful cat has to be confident, calm and patient because the journey will take 3 years and he is living off one Euro per day! He is travelling through 13 countries. The objective seems to be to explore, in a money obsessed world, the concept of money in relation to the wide range of people that they meet, the poor to the rich.
It is a poetic and heroic journey, fraught with danger. Guillaume says that he has to accept it – it’s life.
Guillaume has a camera attached to his shoulder and he also has a camera attached to a lightweight fame that is attached to him so that he can film himself as he walks. These cameras show a point of view picture and a view of him at the same time.
Caption to the above video: After they have been walking for more than 1 year having covered 7400km on foot, Guillaume and Kitty arrived at a town called Cali in Colombia to try to find a place to sleep but also a time for sharing some gossip with the local people. This time nothing goes to plan. The idea is that William knocks of the doors of the local wealthy people to ask if he can pitch his tent in their garden for the night and have a chat to find out a bit about the place and the people. Everyone turns him down. He is very persistent and eventually, just before it gets dark finds a strange concrete home occupied by poor people who say yes!
I hope these videos don’t get pulled. Sometimes the person who uploaded the videos decides to delete them. This leaves black blobs on the page!
Videos though are a great way, certainly in this case, to get the feel of this amazing journey. This journey seems to be a journey of self discovery and enlightenment which at the same time provides an insight into the world. It is the sort of thing you can be indifferent to if you are obsessed as he says with chasing money. Or you can love. I love it because I see the need to find a better way to live. The current system is not working very well.
From what I am able to glean from Monique Magnard’s response above is that Guillaume started a production company in Colombia with the idea that he and Kitty would one day resume their trek to the end of the earth, tierra del fuego. That was 4 years ago. Does anyone know what has happened to them since that time?
Hi Yaya, I’d love to know what happened too. I may do some more research on this and try and find out. I sense that it all went pear shaped and he stopped. The obvious answer is normally the correct one. Thanks for visiting and commenting.
Keep us posted if you find out anything. I can’t keep from wondering how Kitty fared through all this. Humans do strange things, but for a cat? What an adventure!