FEB-C-2
FOREVER IN
TRANSIT:
FROM THE FAR SIDE
OF THE WORLD IN THE EAST,
TO GOING TO THE
FAR SIDE WEST:
ENROUTE FROM THE
PHILIPPINES TO WASHINGTON AND
ONWARD THROUGH
AMSTERSDAM AND NAIROBI
FEB.
17—19, 2002
Aloft---and again!
I have completed the long trip over the circumference of more than half way around the world, and have stayed intact while planning the rapid transit from “Mission to Mindanao” to “Mission to Malawi”—with the important milestones in between at GW and Derwood—like a rapid run through the mail, email, voicemail, while paying bills, reviewing the remodeling plans for Derwood with architect Ivan and builder Dale, paying still more bills, sending messages, dropping off film for processing, re-packing medical equipment, and two check-in bags—all of which will be making a one-way trip to Africa—did I mention paying more bills? Oh, and I also paid bills—from lawyer’s fees, to architects fees for plans revision, to photo development, to accountants fees, to insurances, to AT&T Wireless (the foolish continual phone fixation while I was enroute to Cumberland was billed at over four dollars per call for almost a hundred calls!—to electricity, fuel, and other expendables that keep on expending, whether I am home using the facilities or not, even the tuitions I may not be using as well as the fitness center fees that keep on whether I am there or not. Each of my banks except for one have been sold and changed names—and more significantly for me—checkbooks in the interval since last trips, so that I have to reorder the accounting and check service on them—even as bill payer services on-line are set up—whether or not the computer allows them to boot up or accept the passwords already confirmed but unhonored. So, yes, it has been a busy less than 24-hour day (or, was that night?) interval as I made the mid-globe transit into DCA and out the IAD from Far East Asia to Southeast Africa.
Just to remind me that this is the Northern hemisphere and not the balmy tropics it felt like at my leaving, a cold snap came through just as I was getting suited up in my safari outfit, and a series of old shoes and clothes—all of the outfits selected for their “suitability “ to remain behind in Africa—as the prior outfits are now being sported around in Malaybalay—another developing world “closet cleaner” location. So, between my wardrobe and luggage, I look like the recipient rather than the dispenser of foreign aid—and if I am examined very much more closely, I might seem to be zoned out on entry into a drug detox program. Actually, I am getting into drugs rather than coming out of them—antimalarials in this case, since I am enroute into rainy season Malawi, the season of feverish death to young children, pregnant women—and foreign visitors.
The Derwood plans have been finalized, revised to accommodate each of the designated specific trophies in their measurements for which the dimensions have been called in from three taxidermy shops---Knight’s Taxidermy Service in Anchorage which just sent me a notice and a bill to announce that the Russian Brown Bear had arrived and I sent them (another) check and the plaque lettering for the trophy as that rug will not be arriving to grace the game room. The full mount of the snow sheep will be occupying the place of honor in the inside wall, whereas the greater kudu, Idaho elk, Siberian stag, Quebec Territories James River Caribou, Brooks Range Dall Sheep will occupy tailor made niches between outside windows in a hexagonal series of cathedral ceiling widow bays expanded by an additional two feet more to give the extra room for the size of the trophies which were not appreciated at the time the original smaller plans were made. This also allows extra room for a grand piano and a possible additional joiner or two—like an Alaskan moose, pronghorn antelope, and another sheep or two—perhaps the in-your-dreams Marco Polo?—not to mention any additional African specimens, like the long-awaited Congo bongo, or the Zimbabwean sable. But, those are future addenda—perhaps. The present accommodations are for the residents that are already here and now, with a few still to come to be accommodated by shifting around a bit. A few intrusive room space users might include the boar and wild turkey as well.
The addenda also include an additional amount of square footage in the expanded library, and a completely finished in garage underneath the game room, with an enclosed extension of the basement currently called “storage” but probably to be finished later as part of my adventure equipment room—perhaps al the gear for hunting fishing climbing and outdoor adventures. The inner walls of the foyer will be knocked out now that we know they are not weight bearing to expand the long open room upon entry from the front door, and the new breakfast nook on the northwest side is now being designed to accommodate a deck. Remember that this whole remodeling thing started with the thought of a deck and perhaps a hot tub at the corner of it. Now that deck is a shrunken after thought, to be built at some future time if the overall remodeling project does not bankrupt before then—not to mention the even more costly settlement of the buyout of the usurpers’ claims—about which I have heard nothing at all, as they are maneuvering to gouge even deeper than the generous offer they have been sent through their lawyer, rejected as an “insult.” I can think of a few more insulting responses if that is what they are counting on receiving.
An interior designer has been contacted and will be making a walkthrough in May to make suggestions as to interior space re-design. And that leaves the matter of the complete gutting of the kitchen and the selection of all new appliances and counters and cabinets, planned for just before construction actually begins—now tentatively booked for June (as I leave for the Himalayas—with a target date for completion of Thanksgiving Day. Who knows? At least with a plan like this, we can make some estimate of variation from this theme.
ALL AGLOW,
INCLUDING THE GIANT EXCAVATION UNDER FLOODLIGHTS, WHERE ONCE STOOD THE WTC TWIN
TOWERS
Now, launched into my crossing of yet another of the world’s big oceans, I have struggled with the box, bags and handleless appliances through unopening doors, faregates, Metro, Washington Flyer and Dulles (where I met an interesting Ohio State linguist with whom I had a Starbuck’s coffee to stay awake until boarding this flight by NW/KLM to AMS. Just before I fade away as quickly as this computer battery does, I report the sight that I have just witnessed “under the lights”—even from the cruising altitude of currently (until later fuel burnoff) of 33,000 feet the giant wound in downtown Manhattan’s high rent district is quite apparent. If all the craters are added up from the daisy cutters dropped on Afghan mountains, they would probably mark the same kind of “excavation”—and who knows how much US ordnance is now being prepared for the like-minded Abu Sayyaf in the island I just left, despite the Philippine constitution prohibiting foreign combat troops on its soil. With a US missionary couple being held hostage—Martin and Gracia Burnham, whom everyone but I knew personally in the Nasuli and Malaybalay Mission complexes I just left---the US is not ready to pay 2 million dollars in demanded ransom, but just put 120 million dollars of heavy war equipment into “harm’s way” top eradicate Abu Sayyaf as surely as the Al-Qaeda and its Taliban front were—until the US eyes Iran, Iraq, and North Korea to similarly “sterilize.” Before long, we will have varmint catchers wandering the globe as completely and intensively as I have been!
ARRIVAL AT DARK
AND RAINY SCHIPHOL AIRPORT
AMSTERDAM, IN
TRANIST TO THE NAIROBI CONNECTION
I had watched a simple but rather well done movie of a San Francisco girl who is a spaced out Val Gal teen when she learns she is a Princess of Genovani—all a spoof, but for Julie Andrews and Ann Hathaway who did it. I stayed awake for the movie despite my trying not to and after the low ebb, at which I arrived at Dulles, propped up by coffee. But, this fits with the fact that I am on the exactly reverse side of the world I have been accommodating to this point, and will be passing through it so far as to be about right at the arrival in the Southern Hemisphere on the East African time zones.
I also tried to buy a few of my first Euros with dollars as souvenirs of this big change in the EEC, talked about since my stay in Europe in 1990. But, to change, for example $2.00 US (which is worth now about 1.131 Euros if selling, to buy, for example, a few postage stamps, would cost a minimum of three US dollars in commission. Besides, it seems that dollars are more acceptable everywhere in the Schiphol airport, and probably for good reason, since the prices are now designated in Euros, and the assumption is an equivalent Dollar to Euro—making at least 13% on each cash transaction thereby.
So, I have resumed my usual role ---now a highly suspicious one—in poking around any international airport carrying electronic equipment and trying to hide away in small corners where there may be no seating, as a dedicated “Juice Junkie” craving a fix. I need to charge up the computer battery to be able to use the time in the air, especially for a flight that would be gong by day. At night, I often try to sleep a little myself, and do not want to be a pest by keeping the very bright light on at a single seat while everyone else is wrapped up in a blanket with their eyes covered, trying to reduce the red eye of their transit.
This NW flight (in which both KLM and Kenya Air are partners) is a DC-10, which is perhaps one third full. The flights I took from SFO to STL and from STL to DCA the prior night in coming back from the Philippine Air connection were hardly making money: I was one of four passengers on the night flight and one of a dozen on the second flight into DCA. I heard that U/A was trying to negotiate a give back with its employees to keep going despite the bail out by the US Congress since Sept 11, as they are losing 10 million dollars a day. It is certainly not because I have not been supplying the airline industry with enough ready cash. In these few weeks of the first three mission trips, I will have been putting on more miles than the crew is allowed to fly, and have paid over a couple thousand dollars each for the privilege of getting whacked out of my circadian rhythm.
I will try now to surreptitiously re-charge this battery to get it ready for the flight “Into Africa”—the first time I have headed toward that usual destination in the longest gap of my professional life—the last entry flight being recorded in the opening part of “Out of Assa” in 1998. I will talk to you then, if the juices flow to permit the typing to flourish!
INTO AFRICA: BY
WAY OF A USUAL ENTREPOT—
NAIROBI, KENYA
I arrived just after dusk in the Kenyan capital at the Thika plains altitude of about 6,500 feet, but still equatorial hot. It was 26* C when I got off the KLM plane and climbed up the fixed ramps of Jomo Kenyatta International, and walked “Into Africa.” There were the usual crowds of Africans milling around, waiting for something to happen. There were a few European tourists---very few, compared to former times of a busier trafficking—and a very unaccommodating transit area. I had called the travel agent and canceled my guaranteed late arrival hotel room which he said he would set up for me—a nice quiet easy and close by accommodation he would recommend, since I would have almost twelve hours in Kenya until the morning flight of a Kenya Airways flight to Lilongwe, just after dawn. When I saw my itinerary, I exploded---he had booked the Intercontinental Nairobi—at almost $300 for the night, that would not see me there until around ten or later at night, departing around four in the morning to get through the Kenyatta Airport in time. That would be over fifty dollars per hour of what would not even be good sleeping time, so at best would be a very expensive shower. So, I thought (correctly) that I could either book a room at the Mayfair Guest House, or stay in the terminal, which would allow the much easier arrival in the morning, even if it did not promise to have a very commodious place for the night. I busied myself in trying to get a GPS fix, which I could not, and went around tot the “Transit Lounge” of Kenya Airways. Besides, I did not have, nor want to purchase, a Kenyan visa, for a few hours entry and the hassles of a new check-in and security search. I spent the night there, lying on a hard bench, trying to escape the lights and noise of a TV set attuned to “Survivor’s” program in Kenya. I could do without the contrived model, having endured the real thing.
I overnighted surprisingly well on the hard bench with my head on my zippered carryon bag. Without special ceremony, I went to the Transit Desk, and signed in for the Lilongwe flight, and went through the security, which was minimal compared to the US hypertrophy. I still could not get the GPS fix inside the building and would have to wait until I was outside to get the full benefit of my Equatorial satellites. That chance came when I got to walk outside just after dawn, as I recognized the raucous calls of the Hadeedah Ibis in flying from their roosts just after dawn. I learned at that time that I was not flying just to Lilongwe, but was actually making a large “V” flying down to the embattled capital of Harare, Zimbabwe, a flight on Kenya Air that I had taken before when I had flown all three Downings out of Assa and down through Harare where we toured the pictorial rock art in nearby suburbs to which I had driven in a car that I had rented, and then on to Namibia for the Greater Kudu Hunt. I have also lived in Harare for a fair amount of my Fulbright year, and since that time the country has had the fastest decline of any nation under the “President –for Life” Robert Mugabe, now under sanction from the EU for his not opening his rigged elections to outside observers, impounding some of his large private wealth having been skimmed from the people, while he foments against the white settlers, encouraging his disaffected black population to rebel against the colonials, and to shoot white farmers and take their lands. He is a very unhappy example of what you can expect in Africa among indigenous tyrants that makes colonialism look far more benign.
NBO, HRE, LLW
NBOK IS 01* 19.14 S, 036* 55.37 E. This IS 6,103 from BETH which I just left when I was working last in the Philippines at Bethel Baptist Hospital @ 83*, or 7,548 miles from HOME @ 312^
HREZ IS 17* 55.42 S, 031* 05.31 E This is 6,649 miles from BETH at 93*, and 7,952 miles from HOME @ 315*
LLWM IS 13* 47.10 S, 022* 46.26 E This is 6,437 miles from BETH at 89*, and 7,922 miles from HOME @ 313*
I am arriving in Malawi at the peak of one of their best rainy seasons in many years, with abundant cash and subsistence crops in place (83% of the 10 million are subsistence farmers) and at a time when no crops have been brought in, a time of very severe malnutrition, when all the poor people are at the end of their food stores, and without even any seed grain to eat. Moreover, what seed grains they have are not from Malawian seed, but require cash purchase, since they are hybrid seeds from abroad, as must the fertilizer be shipped in, which means borrowing. The debt service on the staggering indebtedness is greater than all of the GNP of the nation. Now, debt forgiveness would be a positive reinforcement to once again, borrow up to the hilt and get the cycle started all over again, with no disincentive not to get into debt. This is the same sequence as I had just seen in the Tboli area of the Philippines, as they have mortgaged their lands to buy chemical fertilizer in order to sell corn, their cash crop, for less than the price of the production, and fall further behind, losing all their lands and hope for a future with nothing to trade the outside world of any value. Malawi, is no longer the poorest nation in Africa—that honor probably now goes to Mali, but I was in Mozambique when it was the world records holder in the “Human Misery Index” as the cellar of the world’s bottom dwellers. As I circle over and into it now, it looks beautiful, even if destitute, and it could be a picture post card, unless you are immersed in what I will shortly be dealing with—a population where ---get this----
40% OF THE PRODUCTIVE CHILD-BEARING POPULATION (CHILD-BEARING IS LARGELY FINISHED AT AGE 36) IS HIV +
50 % OF
THE POPULATION IS LESS THAN 15 YEARS OLD
1.2
MILLION OF THE NATION’S 10 MILLION CITIZENS ARE ORPHANS (>10% OF THE
POPULATOIN) WHICH IS DEFINED AS HAVING LOST ONE PARENT AT LEAST.
Stay tuned—there is much more of this to come!