One of our guys here, a poker friend of mine, has been around in Sudan awhile leading much of the charge on this mission. His time has come to head home and we’re doing a farewell this weekend. I thought my two cents in goodbye would be written in verse. I took a couple lines from one of my post’s quotes below…but I think it speaks about his/and our journey here.
The camp’s built strong on hill and plain,
On sand, with sweat, and skilled constrain,
A mission, grown, to reduce local pain,
And to steer a ravaged land.
Led by will on loyal ground,
With watchful eye and firm surround,
The framed pen scratch, a familiar sound,
And the orders a resulting stand.
He’s a resolute achiever in a desolate plight,
And he sips on his work through the African night,
A long lonely journey, fear no end in sight,
But a day’s well finished work in his hand.
In the land of the Sud there’s a timeless old tick,
The desert will whisper to those in the thick,
We’ve each gained respect now hang up the stick,
My darkness has taken many a man.
So at dusk on the bare thorn tree above,
Sadly calls the mourning dove,
Good bye dear friend, from your brothers with love,
Your permanence is held in our sand.
So last year my birthday celebration in this place of wonder was minor….a toast with peeps. This year I told one or two folks and it turned into a multi-day affair. Last night we had a BBQ. I brought out the S. Texas Deer sausage I smuggled in…full of mold at this point…but nothing a little water and an old tooth brush couldn’t scrape off. We of course had the imported ‘Johnny Walter’ bagged whiskey, and the Russian pilots offered the Jalapeño infused vodka, colored brown, which turned out to be a late night party killer, tasting as bad as it sounds. The second round for most was thrown over the shoulder rather than down the hatch. The folks from Zimbabwe cooked ‘fried hamburgers’, something you must try once or five times, and mixed drinks with whatever we had, including coke and locally brewed Red Hibiscus Tea. As the night drew on, people began dancing with the stars and we caught a gem of one of our employees and myself on video…youtube… for which I hope you click on and can get a kick out of.
Yes, this go around’s theme needs to be exercise and diet but it’s a birthday so I’ll indulge.
Today brought on the B-day lunch, where locally cooked pizza was served with leftovers from the previous day’s BBQ along with spicy pasta. A cake was discovered locally, where a little flair was included. The medics were short on candles, instead opting for tongue compressors, wrapped in lighter fluid soaked cotton swabs. They brought the cake out singing grand but I didn’t notice the song because the cake was literally on fire that took me several minutes of breath to blow out. The first pic didn’t turn out, so we tried again after eating half the cake with q-tips this time, result below.
Overall, it was excellent birthday in the bush…28 strong…here’s to something new every year with good people who make it worthwhile!
I spent the rest of my break hopping cities through Texas and back to NY and DC. It was a whirlwind tour which was a much needed break from the grind of Sudan but probably too long. This is my last leg on the tour as I’m planning to end in May and I expect it to be another challenge.
Texas was fulfilling. Between trips to San Antonio, Austin, and Corpus Christi, time flew, but I enjoyed hashing it out with friends and family. I had an excellent day in Austin where I played a muddy, wet, and cold football match with 16 of my college buddies followed by a night of debauchery.
In San Antonio, I caught my favorite musician, Bob Schneider, live at Floores, the most authentic Texas bar I’ve run across. I saw my team, the Horns, win sloppy at the Alamo Bowl and had a good X-Mas night party with the friends.
In Corpus I caught up with the family, laughing over Christmas gifts, defending my travels, and generally recharging my roots, a time I look forward to every year.
New Years was spent in New York. I did not go to Times Square, as battling the crowds did not warrant the check mark of been there, done that over new years, but I had a good time chatting and people watching over free booze at a private party none-the-less.
The next day was sort of surreal in that it was chilly but not cold and a dreary mist covered the city, blanketing Manhatten with an eerie silence as most people huddled on the first day of the new year indoors. Despite the silence, walking through West Village and Soho alongside my friends spoke volumes to me. There was no traffic, no city noise, and no pedestrians out as we treaded past still green trees gripping the resident streets and independent shops closed for the holiday. I couldn’t help but think that during this unique moment, the four of us slowly meandering down the middle of the cobble stone, bs’ing about nothing, the city was ours alone to enjoy. I’ve felt a lot of things in NY but never silence. It’s almost as if we were privy to a rare and lonely vulnerability of the city.
New Years night began hot because we were trying to smuggle five people into a four person taxi and my job was to distract the driver with conversation as we fit the 5th inside. I jumped in and immediately looked at the driver and asked the basic, overused, apparently inappropriate question of “Where are you from?”, noticing he was black with an African accent, thinking I could find a common ground for distraction. He flipped out and immediately became offended, saying he was from the Bronx and why do I care where he’s from and would I even know geographically if he answered the question? I told him I worked in Africa and cared about the place and was curious about accents, etc etc trying to both strike a real conversation and distract at the same time.
I was bombarded with a 15 minute lecture of the ignorance of the American public and how he and other NYC taxi drivers from the continent find it offensive for passengers to pretend to understand or relate to his motherland or background based on movies and news.
The sheep in the backseat ineffectively suppressed their laughter at the abuse I was taking. Whatever, my job was done.
On that note, in DC I caught up on the new African movie flicks, Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland. Both were well done (according to my apparent uninformed, Hollywooded, commercialized standards). I thought DiCaprio’s role in Blood Diamond was played excellent and many of the one-line generalities that outsiders may think as cliché spoke truth to me from my time in Africa and my conversations with the Sierra Leonean’s on our contract. And yes, I think his Rhodesian/Zimbabwean accent was spot-on based on the numerous Zimbabwean’s we have working with us.
The second flick, The Last King of Scotland, was about a Ugandian warlord in the 70’s, played brilliantly (I hate using that word, but it holds true in this case) by Forest Whitaker. It’s more of an independent flick, but it really dives into the mentality of abusive, misleading, self-centered, African power that you so often find leading any war torn African country.
I took a flight back through Dubai into Khartoum and I must admit even after spending a year in the Middle East/Africa, I still find myself battling with mild xenophobia during the initial travel, being flooded with scores of smells and regional attitude from Chinese, Indian, and Middle Easterners, among others as I navigate the airports and aircraft. There’s something about leaving the comfort of your own backyard that still gets to me, even after being seasoned. Or maybe it’s the crying babies in the row ahead that sets the initial tone of the trip.
I hashed that out with a couple cold Kilkenny’s at the Irish Village in Dubai and then arrived in Khartoum to a swarm of traditionally dressed Arabs, men robed in white garments, women in floral veils and pungent purfume, arms filled with sack luggage, all pushing in one failed attempt at a line to get through the airports lone carry-on screening machine, aimed to detect illegal incoming alcohol and banter.
Upon leaving the airport I was swarmed with all the family members of these travelers, having to push through tiny passageways of people, feeling somewhat comparable to a mix between a red carpet entrance and the crowds at a packed Arabian rock concert.
Turns out the mass number of Arab travelers at the airport was due to their return from Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage taken to Mecca, in this case during the second religious holiday of Eid.
I’ve started a book, The Zanzibar Chest, which I highly recommend for any adventurist. It’s the story of a British journalist, born in Africa who’s compelled to remain on the continent, roaming around for Reuters news agency during all the crisis of the 90’s. Fascinating writing and insight, among which several paragraphs have stood out:
“What do you need to start a guerrilla war?” my friend Buchizya once asked the Marxist Congolese rebel leader Laurent-Desire Kabila.
“Ten Thousand dollars and a satellite phone,” replied Kabila. “You use the dollars to recruit enough fighters to raid the local police stations for their guns. The phone you use to call the world’s press after the attack.”
“Editorial interest in foreign news had been declining for years across the board. The wags used to say that as far as a Western Editor was concerned, the death of a single white American equaled five Israelis, fifty Bosnian Muslims, or fifty thousand Africans.”
“Back on the plains of the Bati Dad sat down by himself and wrote:
The camps lie broken down on hill and plain,
Skulls, bones, and horns remain,
No shouts, no songs of fighting, or of love,
But from the bare thorn tree above,
So sadly calls the mourning dove….
Was this your raveged land,
The work of God, or was it Man’s own hand?
For me this just about sums up what happened all over Africa in the twentieth century.”
It’s a good book for which I’ll probably read several times. It’s makes me want to write more often.
