05-JUL-A-8

DELIVERY OF THE NEW MASTER BEDROOM SUITE FROM HECHT’S, I PRE-PAY AZERBAIJANI TRIP,

AND SCRAMBLE FOR FURTHER ARRANGEMENTS

(STILL WITHOUT PASSPORT OR VISAS),

A MORNING BOAT TRIP TO FISH OUT OF THE MAGATHY RIVER INTO THE CHESAPEAKE BAY, PICKING UP SURGICAL SUPPLIES FOR THE MISSION

FROM CROFTON, MD, THE ROCKVILLE TWILIGHTER

A WET RACE RUN IN A DELUGE,

AND FURTHER ERITREA TRIP PREPARATIONS

WITH PRE-SUBMISSION OF ELDP PAPERS

IN LAST MINUTE PRE-DEPARTURE SHUFFLE

OF COMMITMENTS AND TICKETS

July 17, 2005

I am now in a pre-departure scramble, having re-ticketed both trips to Azerbaijan and Eritrea so I can combine the two. I have been mistakenly calling the first a mid-Asian trip, but I am right at the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus Mountains looking at the Ural Mountains that mark the boundary between Europe and Asia—but I am as far East as I can go and still be in Europe, looking out over Asia. There is no doubt about Eritrea being in Africa, though along the Red Sea it has the Mid-East influence, and having been an Italian colony, there is a European influence there also. I have been plagued by a barrage of phone calls form a number of “ignorant experts” in the family of one of my GWU medial students who is an overprotected daughter of a Gujarati Indian family whose uncle is informing the mother and farther that their only daughter is being carried to her certain death in Africa, citing any number of instances in which young women are pulled off buses and raped, tortured and left for dead using several examples of the South African publicized events as many as twenty years ago. I have told here that it is time for her to look into trying to fix problems in other parts of the world rather than being distantly worried and terrified by them as well insulated from them as she has been, and if she is already being pulled back into the insulation of a group that has made up their minds in advance on the basis of what they know for certain, never having been there, it is probable that the leader who has been there over a time span twice as long as she has lived would be better off not carrying someone so petrified of being raped by the people she has said she would be coming to help. We even have a Howard resident in surgery who has just finished her training and is studying for her Boards who is Gujarati born—just like Avni—and she could talk to the family in their own home language about her experiences from repeated trips to Eritrea, but they already have their minds made up and want to be heroes in saving the life of their virgin daughter—presumably, under their home care in perpetuity.

So, it would be better that I not have that to deal with, since I was asked if she would be with me at all times to watch out for her—“No.” She would be in a group of two dozen with a lot of people looking out for her, since as a freshman she would not be very useful in a surgical mission, but I will obviously have to turn my attention to other needier people for much of the mission. This “pre-screening” may unfortunately eliminate the only GWU input into the mission, except for a non-working contingent that is coming over to sign an agreement in principle to affiliate with GWU—the kind of “MOU” (Memorandum of Understanding” that involves a three-day trip on the part of administrators who never get their hands dirty but have a great time in frequent travels, while the workers of the world have to deliver the goods.

I went to the Azerbaijani Embassy after a struggle finding it on Friday (following a heroic effort on Chris Tate’s part to try to hook up the phone cable to the laptop computer so that I might have a phone connection for emailing—the fourth failed attempt at getting the right cable and software to make this advertised feature actually work). There was no hope for my visit there, since I still do not have the renewed passport with the blank pages, although it was submitted for renewal in early June. In the space of only a couple days it needs to get two visas, probably impossible. But, George Sevich asked me to help in retrieving the passport and visa form a fellow named Steve Rush, who is going to hunt Tur in Azerbaijan just before me, and after a scramble that involved being kicked out of the embassy to the Consulate, which is only open from 10:00 am to 1:00 PM on the days they find appropriate to work—and then require three working days to stamp the visa into it after cashing the forty dollar certified check. The same process is necessary for Eritrea—and for neither do I have a passport for the completed applications and certified checks to clear this hurdle. When I am hammered on the door, and told them I was picking up a passport for someone whose name I do not know, they simply handed it to me without a signature or any other information required. So, I retrieved Steve Rush’s passport with visa, and made it back to have it Fed Exed to New Jersey so that he can take off on Monday as George will as well. I am booked to leave through London the following Sunday if I can get all this paperwork completed.

I am going through London, which is reeling from the Tube Stations and bus blowups, with the suggestion from George that I pack along ten boxes of 30-06 ammo, an idea that is a non-starter. The great thing about using a new Bennelli R-1 Rifle sent already to Azerbaijan is that I will not have the hassles going in with a rifle of my own, and the impossibility of coming out through Eritrea with it. It will have to be the case that the photographer coming from Albuquerque Patrick (Montgomery?) will have to pack out my trophy (ies?) to be sent to Gina Tyler at Eastern Shore Taxidermy to follow the paperwork I had sent to her on the Caucasus Tur. The “not great” thing about using a Benneli rifle may be that even though they are a potential sponsor for the TV tape and DVD, I have to RENT the rifle at $50.00 a day. At that rate I could buy it there. But the problem of an unsighted in rifle is that George said he would carry in the ammo since he is going through Moscow where they understand hunting more than in London—even though there is an argument now as to which Ministry should control hunting between Interior and Resources, which has suspended any Russian hunts just now.

So, I met George in the shopping area where we had previously met in a store called Galyan’s, no longer Galyan’s but Dick’s, and he got the ammo as I handed him all my itinerary and the check for the whole of the hunt. His son joined us as we hade a seafood dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack. I will be there in Azerbaijan from July 25 through August 5 in accommodations I do not yet know, but the TV cameraman will be there through this period and we will do some exploring as well as some “climbing and cultural” footage to accompany the time of our hunt, in which I am told the conditions are so unusually right that I should hold out for a trophy, since there are many of the Tur, and few have hunted them. But, it will be my “summer vacation” in the high country, following a hot humid period of homemaking here in Derwood, interspersed with long runs in the area, one of which was an unusual race last night.

I got out before dawn on Saturday morning, in the unusual season of the increasing and extra-early tropical storms (we are already up to the “E’s” of “Emily” for named Hurricanes, and it is not yet half way through July, when the September Hurricane Season is still in the future.) This has meant that there have been very stifling high humidity days, interspersed with heavy rain thunderstorms. My first job on getting home to Derwood is to go around picking up all the storm-dropped downfalls, one of which dropped a log right into the hammock! The drenching we have been getting followed by only two days the water-proofing and staining of the decks and picnic table and the setting out of the new park bench made of cast iron and treated wood—sop the timing has been good on that part of the home improvements. The next part would be the delivery and assembly of all the heavy new purchases to totally overhaul the as yet unfinished Master Bedroom—no longer a Store Room.

I was gone, but left the house open and unalarmed, for the assembly of the large “Vintage” bed with a leather embossed headboard, split box spring and special mattress, and the “bed in a bag” set of shams, comforter, sheets and pillow cases to go with the new pillows bought for it. The end table is a nice piece of furniture and goes well with the chest of drawers my Father made, which is now also all waxed up and shining. The new lamp form Great Indoors with the “Primrose Sprig” green shade that matches the paint décor is parked on it. It looks too classy to be used!

I went through Arnold MD to Ferry Point Marina to join Dan Kennedy on the Molly Cae, his big outboard twin fiberglass Bay Fishing boat. He had just had the twin outboard Yamaha engines (200 horsepower and 585 pounds each) overhauled, and we would try them out on a cruise out of the Magathy River, passing each channel marker festooned with ospreys in pairs and up to five in a nest. When we got out to where a cluster of fishing boats were chumming for Rockfish, a signal we were not monitoring went out, and everyone fired up engines and drove in a cloud of diesel smoke to go north to the mouth of the Patapsco River, leaving us in solitude. We could see Gibson and Kent Islands to our East and we were just north of the Bay Bridge. I thought of the times I have run the Bay Bridge in the Governor’s Bay Bridge Run always the first weekend in May—no more. In the interest of National Security, such a vital target is off limits to pedestrians. We did not catch fish. I watched the heavy shipping traffic, barges and container ships coming down through the shipping channel and threading the needle under the Bridge, and even one cigarette “muscle boat” roaring along, trying to chase fast enough to stay ahead of the coming gasoline shortage that will pump the price for a gallon over three dollars—right now under fifty cents to go. I also shot a few frames of the osprey crowd around us. But, just exactly like the computer crunches of my techno-glitches, the PORT engine” failed; it had been the Starboard engine that had been out before. With twin engines, the direction of the turn of the screw is opposite, so in running back on one engine, we had to go less than five knots—a good time for stories, of which we swapped a few.

I left from the Magathy River to go to Crofton where I visited Chona Hamrock and her daughter Allison. I went to visit and pick up surgical supplies for the coming mission, filing the Audi trunk and passenger space. They live in a development named Chapman Farm—the name of the farm that was before it got planted in “starter mansions”—on little side streets named as courts after the farmer’s sons. On the appreciation of the house equity, Mike and Chona are getting loans to start a new restaurant of their own in Crofton. She is still collecting surgical supplies and that is what has kept us going in Sudan, and will contribute a lot to Eritrea as well.

I then drove off through the rural “Davidsonville” on the Western Shore, in search of a gas station. Testing the limits of the Audi’s gas tank capacity as thoroughly as the cigarette muscle boats had, I asked at the local post office postal box where a woman directed me to a convenience store which had two pumps out in rolling green countryside. So, I have found a rural green part of Maryland, but even there there were a few ten thousand square feet multi-mansion developments in the middle of green fields. The Chesapeake Bay has to absorb whatever heavy development it can handle the run-off form, and even if I have “developed” Derwood, I have not paved any of the acres to bypass the filtering effect of all the leaf litter and soil filtration before the aquifer takes all the flow of the heavy rains this unusual season has poured on us.

And I do mean DIRECTLY poured on me! I drove home and stocked up the medical mission store room, then changed into running shorts to go over to the Rockville Twilighter benefit race. It looked like the rains had just done all they could in pouring down upon my return trip form the Bay. A bit of sun came through breaks in the clouds, as I ran around Derwood admiring the Transformation of the rooms my sisters had worked on earlier and now appear to be nearing completion. When I got my packet pickup at the start, people were strolling and enjoying the first cooling breeze of another seasonal hot time in summer in the city.

At the 8:40 PM Twilight race start, I ran out through the neighborhoods of old historic Rockville, passing Cajun bands and celebrating crowds of onlookers. I was about two and a half miles in when a few spattering drops fell around me. Lighting was streaking the sky. Unbeknown to me, at the starting line, the race officials were puling down the scaffoldings and lowering the high flying balloons on wires all of which were deemed lightning targets. The event is always the occasion for a bi “block party” with rock bands gong all night and free Budweiser and lots of goodies for the registered runners. The first runner to cross the finish line (A Kenyan, of course, this year in 23 minutes) is supposed to trigger a cascade of fireworks—at least in every previous year.

This year as I approached the three mile point, the spattering came down hard. Sheets of water hit the runners hard as we splashed through puddles. I looked ahead only to see the water coming at me. At the start/finish line they had canceled the festivities and called off the party telling the crowd to go to shelter in the parking garages. But, you can cancel a race before the start, but cannot call back the runners once they are under way. Our gang was gone and digging in between police lines and making for the finish. I made it through he finish (no flash of photos since the cameras were all under wraps) and scored through my chip on the mats. A few very bedraggled spectators were still there, and all the food lines had been pulled under the covering arches, but the party was over—evident by the beer trucks having been packed up and sent away. It was actually cooler and more pleasant than the hot humidity that preceded the rain, and the runners did a lot better in the rain –but it is better now than in November to have such an amphibious running experience!

Now, I am going to meet with Haile Mezghebe to parcel out the surgical supplies among whomever he has who is going not discouraged by a group of over-protective ignorant families. In fact, Haile is likely to go to Eritrea in eighteen months permanently after a long career at Howard University and may be one of my continuing links to that nation as a site for surgical rotations, much better as an association than yet another “MOU” that is singe d and filed among a dozen free riding administrators, but real worker bees who will actually DO something with these affiliations.

They are calling for 100* temperatures this week, as I scramble through the final pre-departure details. Derwood is looking resplendent just as I leave it. The weather may be helped out from the impending hot and humid wave by the coming southern storms from hurricane residuals. Whether this is global warming or just the result of this “Kali Yuga” at the end of a ten thousand year post-ice age, there is a changing weather pattern notable form the days of my youth, admittedly at a more northerly clime, but here, that summertime is also pleasurable as I have seen it on the Bay and in the piedmont Derwood woods, and even on the streets of Rockville, all this weekend. I will remember these events from today’s “Heat Advisory” come the bleak and barren periods of February—but then I will be freshly returned from the tropical mountain rainforests of Mindanao, so I may not be the m reliable Stay-At-Home witness of such events!

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