Castaway thoughts

I am have been trying to think through what it means to be a castaway. For the most part none of us has ever had that experience and as part of my "research" for the piece I am trying to access part in my history that might mirror that experience as well as try to find physical or geographical reference points on which to hang the initial thread of narrative. So far I have found the main tension is the tension between the myopic, neurotic self preservation of such a situation vs the vast openness of solitude (geographical and emotional). It is the hugeness of a desert or a sea scape or a planet vs the neurotic self obsession over how long the pencil will last and how many drops of water are left. To some extent I think this echoes more philosophical points about the futility (or not) of human progress against natural forces. If we we were to really, really think about "the human condition" the futility of our daily struggles and obsessions in the vast inevitable, unfathomable universe we wouldn't bother to try. This is why astronauts suffer from Post Orbital Depression. The sight of the earth from space reduces our lives to a nonsense. So, in terms of the castaway- what is it that drives this person to survive, even prosper? Why does the shipwrecked man, beaten and fragile, continue to try and light a fire? Why does the marooned astronaut on a far off planet try to find a way of sending messages back to earth? I suspect it is one or a mixture of these 1- basic animal survival, we are biologically programmed to seek out life 2 - hope, our human selves (be it quasi religious or humanist based) has taught us to hope and 3- habit, we wake up and move and breath and eat because that is what we do, that is what we have always done.
Last night I watched a documentary on Darfur. Years later, it is still a place of unspeakable suffering. There are emaciated families living in a pile of rubbish in a raging desert. They have escaped murder in the name of ethnic cleansing an survived rape and torture to come to this there is no reason to think this will improve. There in this dustpan of misery women are cleaning clothes and digging for roots and combing their children hair. Why? How?
I watched the Darfur program partly because the idea of a political castaway interests me hugely. Of being a refugee or an illegal migrant worker. what does that mean? to have no home, no country, no identity as "citizen" and all the rights and protections that affords you? One angle I am exploring for the assignment is that of a fictionalised diary of Winnie Mandela during her political isolation which involved over three months in solitary confinement in a cement room 3 meters by 2 meters where she was tortured almost daily, she was released only to be put under house arrest in a town where she was the only black person in a tiny farming town called Brandfort. No one spoke her language and no one spoke to her. The political aim was to isolate her "strand her", cut her "adrift" from the main land of ANC resistance. Here torturers and interrogators would tempt her with freedoms for her and her children and and offer her privileges no other black person in South Africa at the time would have had. While she was confined for more than the mythical/biblical 40 days in the desert there are parallels to th e temptations that Satan used to sway Christ. Christ is one of the original castaways during the 40 days and nights, Satan provides the trigger pojnts to move the narrative forward and we are then offered the redemptive homecoming. So I am playing with ideas around the temptations of christ and Winnie Mandela's political physical, geographic isolation. Yes I have thought about Nelson Mandela on Robben Island as an obvious alternative, but thats the point, its obvious and as less is documented about Winnie Mandela there is more scope to move from a fictional account.
Time for a dog walk across hill and vale, which I find good silent time, and the time when I do my best thinking.