FEB-A-8
IN THREE GIANT JUMPS,
LEAVE ON THE
WINGS OF BRITISH AIRWAYS
FROM
February 2, 2004
Despite
misgivings on the part of all, most especially the thoroughly employed Security
guards of the TSA at Dulles who watched us like hawks and searched all of our
surgical equipment in six large duffel bags, we cleared the security searches
and boarde our Boeing 777 for London Heathrow.
It turned out as I discovered later in London by reading their
newspapers here that there were verified threats of the stashingof a dirty bomb
on one of two carriers on the Super Sunday when attention would be distracted
of at least half the citizensof America in a football game! Air France and BA flights were canceled, but
the earlier flight was not targeted.
Each person at the check in, however, got a large note that marked
"Search" on each boarding pass.
So each of us got the third degree in personal searched. When the two duffle bags each of three of
us—I, Kevin, and Juan—were brought over to the security search, they opened
even some of the sterile packs to see if any of their chemical probes detected
anything
. WE were
standing under the large soaring windows of Aero Sarinen’s Dulles airport terminal
which let in the slanting rays of the winter sun creating an oven. I sympathized with the TSA inspectors who
were broiling under the bakery. They
said they could not hang any kind of shade since it was a registered historic
structure. Then, they figured out from my appearance and the letter from the
Somaliland Ambassador and the bill of lading what it was that we were doing
with all this stuff, which would have seemed peculiar in ordinary
circumstances. All the TSA guards came
over and inspected us, and putting in overtime in a high tension special day,
they were at first very alert about what might be a threat represented by three
guys carrying the limit of 70 pounds each in six duffel bags, but when they
figured what the drill was, they talked with me about Africa and humanitarian
missions and were fascinated. One by
one, they came around and helped us load each of the cleared bags into the
loading web and wished us well, shaking our hands and congratulating us. Even the hard-hearted and cold eyed security
staff can warm up when they uncover something suspiciously that turns out to be
a good thing happening under their eyes.
BA FLIGHT TO
I had
completed most of the paper work and other small busy stuff by the time I got
on the plane, so all I did was drink the wine and eat the dinner, and went to
sleep, watching with half interest a part of the “Intolerable Cruelty” film
about marriage settlements and pre-nuptial agreements in California divorce
lawyers, who, of course, were the winners in each of the struggles they
entered, sometimes winning not just the money but also the bereaved
divorcee, (Michael Douglas’s wife
Kathryn Zita-Jones). We arrived earlier
than expected in London and since it was a cold rainy day for which we were not
prepared (having jettisoned our heavy winter coats in DC) I suggested against
the train run into London to see the sights of the West End, as I had with
Virginia both coming (by design) and going (by reasons of having to procure a
new passport to replace a stolen one) from Africa last year. So, we simply
spread out on the benches and tried to get some fitful sleep. The newspapers report the crushing deaths of
244 Hajj pilgrims in Mecca in a stampede, a lot of soccer hooliganism and the
British version of Reality TV featuring two very large assets of a British Page
three tabloid girl named Jordan. In
other news, the Patriots won 32 to 29—in another world in a game also called
football.
JAY MAGUIRE
COMPLETES OUR FOURSOME,
AND WE BOARD AN
AIRBUS 320 ENROUTE TO ALEXANDRIA
As I type
this, we are being buffeted around a bit by some turbulence that has caused me
to look out the window after having rather dingy overcast weather in the UK
after our Heathrow take-off. We had
rolled past the mothballed and decommissioned Concorde of BA with cordons
around it, and I looked up at takeoff to see the name and number on the
supersonic machine—the same one I had flown on return from my stay in London
when I was in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to attend a meeting
in San Diego in early 1990. Now it is an
obsolete souvenir.
But, why
this high altitude turbulence now? I
looked out and felt the same dazzled wonder as I had exactly 36 years when I
looked out the left sided aircraft window and saw spread out 6 miles below me
the snow capped winter Alps! I was on my
way to Nigeria on my first African medical mission, and I was elated to see
this spectacular view of the Alps on my first flyover of the Alps in the heart
of Europe. It is exactly at the same age
and stage that the students now accompanying me are called to my window to see
for the first time what I saw for the first time then—this is Jay’s first ever
trip abroad and Juan’s first view of Europe and Kevin’s second trip to Africa,
since he was with me in Malawi last year, but now he is flying over Europe in
mid-afternoon. So, we can all go “Ooooh”
in wonder, like little kids with their noses pressed against the windows of
Daddy’s car as we pass by some wondrous sight. I hoe there are many more of
such sightings, both for me and those I can show to others!
We are
heading down across the continent to the rift where it had separated from the
Greater Africa, to create the Mediterranean.
I had often visited Alexandria, having lectured in many of its institutions
and visited many of its sites, most notably, and the subject of one of my
unpublished papers on the “Pharos of Alexandria”—the lighthouse that was one of
the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The Pharos fell into the harbor which was made by filing in a causeway
to the island that had been the site of the founding of the city and from which
the Ptolemaics ruled. Now one can scuba
div e the ruins of the Pharos as they are “preserved” under water. I should resurrect that finished manuscript
and send it out again.
INTO AFRICA:
BOTH IN THE
OUTLET OF THE NILE—IN EGYPT—
AND ITS
ORIGIN—OVER THE RIFT—IN ETHIOPIA
It takes a
long time to get eight time zones East and along the northern rim of the
Equator into the furthest Eastern projection of the African continent. I have been under way now for well over 24
hours on my watch, and will add the eight hours from the clock to arrive around
three in the morning in the Ethiopian capital.
About two in the afternoon we leave from Addis to Hargeysa, capital of
Somaliland, and Air Ethiopia will be our last steady diet of American and
European technology for a while. We
begin on a high note with an airport reception by the officials of the Ministry
of Health and then a Presidential reception and other forma ceremonies of
thanks, and then operate until our eight duffel bags of supplies we are
carrying in with the four of us are used up, buttressed with whatever we can
find in the Somaliland and Ethiopian resources.
It is exhilarating and exhausting, when one spends over a pair of full
calendar days getting to the area to get to work (although the earlier
explorers who had reached these areas under sail would not agree---but they did
not have to concern themselves with jet lag and accommodating rapid changes in
altitudes, latitudes, climates, water and drug intake such as Mefloquin etc)
and then smile amiably through many public appearances strained through a
language that is unfamiliar and much cultural fast track adjustment. But, that
is what I do—and have been doing that the exhilaration clearly outweighs the
exhaustion!
We came
into Alexandria for our refueling stop, and I could see the city laid out under
the Ptolemaic plan looking very familiar from my frequent visits, having
entered it several times by train down the Nile to the delta and several times
by air over the Mediterranean. It is a
Middle East crossroads like Beirut more than it is an African outpost, despite
the continent on the verge of which it is perched. I am going to the other end of the Nile, that
thread of water that accounts for al the life that crowds its banks along the
desert of Egypt. The Semian mountains,
fourth highest in Africa, catch some of those rain clouds that can give the
water of life to not only the Ethiopian Highlands (the capital at Addis is over
a mile and an a half high) but the spill of that life giving fluid has
nourished the very ancient human civilizations from the earliest of recorded
time along its route in the Rift.
I am headed
in, once again, into the Unknown of the Dark Continent, now 36 years since my
first entry in to do the same. And each
time has been unique and thrilling. I
wonder what the wonders of the African Continent will be serving up to me this
time. I have three senior medical
students from GWU with me who are at the same age and stage when I made my
first African discoveries, and on that intellectual and emotional capital I
have been living and returning here regularly and still:
“Ex Africa veni semper aliquid novi.”