I have done plenty of crazy stuff in my life, but a few adventures stand out.

Exactly 15 years ago, I was on what is called “the most remote place in the world”, an Antarctic island called “Peter I”. It was remote, even to Antarctic standards: three days sailing from the nearest South Pole base and 1,000 miles away from the nearest hospital. 1,000 miles of frozen sea and drifting ice bergs.

When we landed on Peter I, we were only the third team to ever put foot on the island. Imagine that: there had been more people and more landings on the moon than on that island.

15 years ago, to the date according to my diary, we had the roughest storm ever. I described it in this short story.

This was crazy stuff. The mere size and financial risk of the expedition, the logistical challenges, the nightmares in battling the snow blizzards hoping nobody would get hurt, and that (please God!) the tents would hold up…

But the real nutty stuff was that we had no clue how were were going to get back to the civilized world. A one way ticket to the most remote place on the planet, it seemed…

We had chartered a Russian research vessel to pick us up (see this short story), but they would only go as far as King George island, in the North of the Antarctic.

How we were going to get out of King George, was still a logistics puzzle we had not resolved when we landed on Peter I.

Desperate situations required drastic measures, so while still on the island, we chartered a C130 plane from the Uruguayan air force, through a company in Punta Arenas (Chili).
Over short wave radio, we made deals with the charter company to put day-trip tourists on the plane, splitting the charter fee with us. To cover the remaining costs, we had to sell all our tents and survival gear on King George island before the plane flew us to Southern Chili.

That was 15 years ago. Two months after I (eventually) got back to Belgium, I did my first mission as a humanitarian aid worker. And another series of crazy adventures started.

My three expeditions to the Antarctic and the Pacific are recorded in this eBook. It’s in Dutch, but try the translate widget in the side bar. Enjoy!

When the Akademik Fedorov, our Russian pick-up vessel (the largest in the Antarctic by the way!) arrived at the island three days ago, the sky was covered. After they landed their big Mil-8 helicopter near our expedition camp, we loaded it up as much as we could, but the mist came in from above the sea and in minutes. The visibility turned real bad. So bad that the pilot had to fly on radar trying to find the ship back. The evacuation was aborted then. Three days we are now waiting to get off the Antarctic. On the ship, a few miles off shore, hot showers and proper meals are waiting for us. But it could just as well have been thousands of miles away, so un-obtainable it seems to us.

And each day we wake up, we hope for the fog to clear up, but it does not. Luckily it does not storm anymore. For weeks on end, we have been fighting against the storm, the snow, the cold, and now, everything seems quiet outside. Dead quiet. Since we landed here, the only sign of life we have seen is a few birds which seem to nest at the bottom of the glacier, hundreds of meters below our camp. The only connection to the ‘other side’ of the world, the ship, we have, is our radio.

Willy’s voice comes crackling through the speaker. “Peter I, this is Fedorov, over”. Ralph takes the microphone, and answers the call. “Sorry, still no chance for helicopter flights”, says Willy.. Martin and him are the only two from our crew of nine who got onto the one and only flight we had to the ship. Three days ago. Three days. We are bored. After the excitement of landing on the island, building up the camp, setting up the radio stations, and in two weeks, breaking the world record – we made 62,000 radio contacts from this island, 10,000 more than the previous record- and the excitement of the first sight of the Fedorov, our pickup vessel, we have nothing to do anymore, but to wait. Wait for the weather to clear up. Reading a bit, making coffee, eating some of our survival rations, sleeping, reading, eating,… We can not do much else. But to look at the grey sky of course.

In the afternoon, as by miracle, we start to see a faint sun through the clouds. The cloud cover becomes patchy. Would there be a chance? Willy calls us on the radio saying they will give it a go. As if we were bitten by a snake, everyone jumps up, and gets dressed. Indeed the clouds are breaking up. At times we can even see the sea. Somewhere the ship is there.
Half an hour later, we hear the roaring noise from the big helicopter. We fire up a smoke signal, and turning the low hanging clouds into orange. The pilot spots the signal and very slowly descends, touching down onto the snow. As by magic, the clouds disappear. While the pilot keeps the turbine generators running, the back doors open up, and the heli crew jumps out. They make signs we have to hurry. We drag boxes, crates, bags towards the helicopter, and stuff as much gear as we can into the haul. Half an hour later, they lift off.

We take a break, hoping the weather stays clear. And it does. In no time, the gray-orange helicopter hovers above our camp again, approaching our landing site. Again we drag all we can, as fast as we can to the helicopter. Some stuff is too heavy to carry, so we drag it over the snow, pushing and pulling with all the weight we have, with all the force we can handle. If we don’t make use of this break in the weather, god knows when the next opening would come.

And we have plenty of gear. Tons of it. Masts, tents, antennas, boxes of radio equipment, personal stuff, left-over food rations, heaters, fuel barrels, gas bottles, generators, tools. All of it is carried, dragged, to the helicopter.
Three hours and several flights later, there is nothing left, but two tents and a survival kit. Now is the critical moment. If we take down our last two tents, we have no more shelter. If a storm comes up, we will have real difficulties to set it up in the wind. Would almost be impossible to put the huge heavy-insulated covers over the metal frames. Ralph, our expedition leader, looks at the sky. “Let’s do it. Let’s break it up”, he shouts. Like animals we ‘attack’ the shelters. In no time, the covers, frames, wooden floors are all dismantled and stacked up, bagged and tied.

The last helicopter flight comes in. We stack all material in it. The last things to go are the white trash bags, with our human waste. We promised the Norwegian authorities who gave us the landing permit for this isolated island, we would take everything off. And everything has to go. Even the human waste. The pilot looks at the bags we carry. He opens one of them and looks inside.. With a disgusted face, he says “Njet”, making signs as if we are crazy. We start a discussion. In the end, I shout, trying to lift my voice above the noise of the engine turbines, in my most simple English: “Shit no go, we no go!”.. The pilot smiles, and gives in. We dump the bags of frozen waste into the helicopter, and get on board. The engines rev up and the huge propellers start turning, chopping into the air. With a deafening sound, the huge thing lifts up, and before we know it, we hover several meters above the ground.

Through the small windows, we gaze at our camp site below. There is nothing left to witness our presence on the island. Nothing but our footprints and two square imprints of where our last two shelters stood, soon to be wiped away with the fresh snow. Soon our presence will be covered, erased from this island’s memory.

Is this symbolic to our presence in the world? Is all of it just temporarily setting our footprints on the earth’s surface, and the moment we go, the moment we leave this existence, those prints are wiped away, to be forgotten? We come, think we can conquer it all, but still, all is temporarily… As I look at the pensive faces of my companions, I smile… At least on this ride, we also took our shit with us! Hopefully they will not ask that from us when we go to heaven. And if so, would St.Peter at heaven’s gate have the same look on his face as the pilot? And would we answer the same to him too: “Shit no go, we no go?”

Continue reading The Road to the Horizon’s Ebook, jump to the Reader’s Digest of The Road.

I am not a happy camper. And that is an understatement. Before we left, I emphasized them to keep a watch for us on our monitor frequency. And now, I call them, and … nothing, nada, ziltch. The sun is already set behind the mountain tops. Even though the sky still has a hint of a dark-blue afterglow, it is already dark. And when I say dark, I mean pitch dark. There is not a single light. The headlights of the trucks in our convoy beam into a void as they negotiate twists and turns of this bombed road. They light up nothing but emptiness. And bomb craters. And little flags marked ‘Mines’. But for the rest, I can not describe it in any other way but “Void-ness”. Absolute empty-ness. There is nothing in this part of the world. There is nothing that grows. There are no houses. No-one lives here. There is only light brown dirt. Dirt and bits and pieces of mangled war-toys. A rusted tank, half buried in the sand. Or a rotor blade from a helicopter sticking from a pile of rubble. But for the rest, dirt. I can not believe this part of the world has been a battleground for the past twenty years. The last fierce battle was only four days ago. The Northern Alliance meets the Taliban. One-nil. Taliban lost and evacuated Kabul. And we moved in with the relief convoy.

I curse, check another frequency they sometimes use, but still nothing. The radio room is not answering. It is Ramadan, and this time of the day, the radio operators in Kabul, twenty kilometers away, are probably gone praying, or are already at the Iftar, breaking their fast. We just flew in a C130 cargo plane full of food, and I went with a convoy to pick it up from Bagram airport, few hours truck-drive from Kabul. We can’t use Kabul airport yet, as a one ton unexploded bomb sticks out of its runway. And we don’t have any deminers in yet. Nobody is allowed to come into Kabul, except twenty expatriate aid workers. I am one of them. And the only one on this road. The only one outside the Kabul safe haven. I must be crazy to do this. At any time, I expect to see the flare of an RPG coming straight at us, as rumours say there are still rogue Taliban roaming in this area. We desperately need to get hold of “someone” in Kabul to inform them this convoy is on the move, and that “someone” needs to monitor us, just in case something would go wrong.

“What to do? What to do? How on earth can I get hold of Kabul.. Hmm let’s see.” I dial another frequency on the HF radio in the car. No UN frequency, but a ham radio call frequency this time. One push on the auto-tune button and in a few seconds, the radio beeps and displays: “14.195.0 – Antenna Tuned”.
I push the button on the microphone and ask “Frequency in use?” Not a beep. I wonder if this radio is receiving or transmitting at all. Maybe that is why the radio room did not copy me. Even though all worked well before we left.
- “Frequency in use?”. Nothing again. Hmm.. Ok, well… let’s try.
- “CQ 20, CQ 20, YA5T/m YA5T/m YA5T/m , CQ 20 and by.”, I launch my call. “YA5T is my callsign in Afghanistan. With the prefix “YA”, the hams will know what country I am transmitting from.
And the world explodes on this tiny radio. Dozens of hams answer my call. From Europe, North America, Asia. Shivers run down my spine. I can not believe this. Here I am sitting in a car, driving on what once was a road, with probably dozens of Taliban waiting to take a shot at me, in the middle of bloody nowhere. And still, with this small piece of hardware, I have the world talking to me… You have no idea how this feels. YOU HAVE NO IDEA…!

It takes me one minute to get ‘ON4WW’-Mark, my friend in crime on frequency. He is at home in Belgium, I am in a car in Afghanistan, but his radio signal booms in. I pass him the satellite phone number of the control centre in Kabul –just in case something would happen- and he remains on standby for the next two hours until we safely reach Kabul.

Even though in the middle of nowhere, we were not alone. I had hundreds listening in. From all over the world. Weird stuff, hey, ham radio? How do you explain that to outsiders? How do you explain not only what ham radio is, but also what it meant to you, in your life? How it changed the course of my life in many ways? Last year, I started to write down some of these stories in my eBook.

Ham radio. A sharp bend on the road of my life.

As I wrote down these stories, I started to realize – it does sound rather melodramatic, but it is true to state – that “ham radio has changed my life”. If no ham radio, I would not have done the Clipperton expedition in 1992, I would not have experienced the adrenaline kick that operating from a remote Pacific island gave me. I would not have done the expedition to Howland the year after. Then I would not have met Paul, F6EXV. Paul as co-operator then, and as one of my ham contest partners at John-ON4UN’s home. He would not have received the telephone call –during that contest- offering him a job at the UN in Congo. He would not have explained me what that work was all about, which raised my interest.

Less than year and one expedition (Peter I island in the Antarctic) later, I flew to Angola, for the Red Cross, on my first humanitarian mission. My job had nothing related to my education – I am a graphical engineer – nor with my professional experience – I was an IT manager in my last ‘normal’ job-, but I was to install radios. I did work which was solely based on my experience as ham operator. In the end, there is no difference between going on an expedition, fiddling around with generators, debugging antennas and raising masts, if it was on Peter I island, or in the middle of Africa. Well, true, they did not shoot at us on Peter I… But for the rest, there was no difference.
Angola, where I operated as ham with the calls D2TT and D3T later on, was my first mission in the humanitarian world, to be followed by hundreds of missions, to over a hundred countries. Never kept count how many. I did keep track how many countries I operated from. 85 so far…

Over the past 14 years, there were many exciting and memorable moments. Many are explained in stories on my website, and often have a mix of an exotic location, work and ham radio. Being the first to transmit ham TV signals from Zaire (now DRC), during the midst of the Kisangani refugee crisis. And a few months later to be the first on ham TV from the Vatican City. Or the 60,000 radio contacts I logged from our home in Kampala as “5X1T”, in between power cuts, baby sitting, bombings and evacuations. All the friends I made when on mission, and hooking up with people I have spoken with hundreds of times, but never met. I met them while on mission, and they welcomed me in their homes. Be it in El Salvador, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Nepal, South Africa, Tajikistan or dozens more)… And even more so, they often gave me a head start for my work, providing me with much needed connections to the local PTT officials or trustworthy local telecom repair shops where I could find that long-sought-for cavity filter…

There is not one single memory that stands out. They are all different in their own way. But if there was one time where I felt *really* lucky I was a ham radio operator, it was that one night, in the midst of nowhere, in Afghanistan, just a few weeks after 9/11 !

Peter, ON6TT

Continue reading The Road to the Horizon’s Ebook, jump to the Reader’s Digest of The Road.

I kind of wake up. I don’t really want to wake up. I just want to sleep. My body and mind are tired. Tired of days on end working, battling against the snow, wind, cold. Fresh snow slips through the small opening I make in my sleeping bag, trying to take a peek at the inside of the tent. I see the dim light through the tent cover, but that is no indication of time. It is always light this time of the year on the Antarctic. My watch tells me it is 5 o’clock. I have to think a while if that would be 5 AM or 5 PM.. Hmmm, AM it is. Soon my shift will start. I have to get up, but my body refuses. I stare at the side of the tent.

The storm started yesterday evening, and is still blowing in full force. It pushes and pulls violently on the sides of our Weatherhaven tents as if it is trying to get rid of it. The thick nylon cargo lashes we pulled over the tents vibrate in the wind as if they were huge strings. The storm howls and roars as if it were nature’s way to say “you guys don’t belong here”. It is true, we don’t belong here. It has only been 60 years since the first people set foot on this godforsaken island near the Southpole. There have been more people on the moon than here, on Peter I island. People should not be here. Living creatures don’t belong here. This is a land of ice, an Antarctic desert.

I pull one hand out of the sleeping bag and brush off the fresh layer of snow which was blown into the tent. No matter how much we tightened the tent cover, the snow always finds a way in. The two meter high half-cylindrical frames move with each new violent pull from the storm. Most of our clothing hangs lined up on cloth hangers. They swing slowly on the frames. It looks like a line-up at the dry cleaners… We are far away from the nearest dry cleaner. Apart from our group of nine expeditioners, we are more than one thousand miles away from other human beings… I pull myself up, and sit on my cod. It is freezing. Must be minus five or ten degrees Centrigrade inside the tent. We don’t dare to light the heater anymore, after the small fire we had a few nights ago. Shivering, I unzip my thick thermal underwear, and put on several layers of polar fleeces, thermal longjohns, and then the Goretex outerwear, thick socks and my leather boots, a cap and a hat, ski goggles and two layers of gloves. There is no part of my body uncovered. With the wind blowing that hard, the windchill drops the temperature down to minus 80 Centigrade outside. Any uncovered piece of skin freezes in no time. A few days ago, we had problems with one of the radio antenna masts. Trying to fix some bolts, I was stupied enough to pull off my gloves so I could fit the nuts onto the bolts. I grabbed hold of the mast with my bare hand and instantly, my skin frooze to the mast. It took three of us breathing onto my hand to melt it off the damned metal.

Willy gets dressed too. Our shift is about to start. A new day is born. The morning shift goes to work. Well almost, as the outer zipper from our tent cover is froozen. I can’t use my lighter as it would melt the plastic. Willy pulls some bags of active carbon from his pocket, shakes it to get it heated up, and holds it against the zipper to warm it up. It takes at least half an hour to move the zipper half a meter. As by miracle, all of a sudden, with a firm pull, the damned cover unzips, and a wall of snow falls into the tent. We are too tired to curse. We know this can happen. Our life here consists mostly of battling against the wind and the snow. The only thing we can see through the half-open tent cover, is a wall of snow. It must be at least three meters high. Trying not to spill too much of it into the tent, we delve into it, trying to get out. The snow is soft and provides no grip. We have to firm it up by kicking it with our boots. We can only “feel” we are out, but can not “see” anything to confirm it. The wind bites us in the face. Everything is dim grey-whitish in the faint light. Visibility is nil. Totally nil. Ziltch. The snow beneath us, the snow blown up by the howling wind, the sky, all white.

On our belly, we pull ourselves up, and slide down the snowpile which has formed around our tent. When I stand up, I sink up to my waist into the snow. It is light. The snow below is almost as air, so thin, so… well air-y. Walking is almost impossible. We wade through the snow. With some efforts, but at the same time, everything around us is almost psychedelic, making us numb of any physical feeling. This is what they call a white-out. The snow below, the snow blow up by the storm, the air, the ground. Everything has the same shade of white. I tumble over my own feet, and fall. But it is even hard to tell that I fell. There almost no difference in the density of the snow in the air and the snow on the ground. I fall like onto an airy cushion of white. My goggles get covered up, and my own breath sets moister onto it. Makes it even more difficult to see anything. I am floating. A light gaiety wraps around me, I laugh. I am floating. Unaware if I am laying down or standing up. Am I feeling the resistance of the snow on the ground, or the resistance of the wind pushing onto my body? The layer upon layer of special clothing keeps my body warm, makes a protective shell around me, making me even less aware of my surroundings. I float. I laugh. I am flying. Gliding through the whiteness. I could be meters up in the sky, or just wading through snow, I do not know. I.. I just float. Without knowing, I become desorientated. There is no trace of any of the crates we have stacked around our tents, nor of the cables. I see no tents, not even shades of them. Through the howling of the wind, I still hear the faint noise of the generators, and turn my head trying to find a bearing, purely on the noise, but the wind disperses even that. Even the noise comes from everywhere. This is surreel. A dream.

I start walking, wading through the snow to what I think is the direction of the kitchen tent. A dozen yards further, someone pulls me from the back. Willy. He pulls my head close to his mouth, and shouts ‘Are you nuts? Where are you going to?’. I can hardly hear his voice through the storm. I stretch my arm to give an indication of where I am going, but Willy waves his hand. ‘No! It is that way, come’. By myself, I had wondered a hundred meters from the camp, straight into the area we know is full of crevasses. If Willy had not stopped me, I might have disappeared. Nobody would have found me in time. And I would not have been able to get out by myself, tumbling down ten, maybe a hundred meters down the ice caves of the glacier we put our camp on.

Hand in hand, Willy and I make our way to one of the generators. In our efforts to keep them ice and snow free, we tried everything. Our latest experiment was to build a wall of crates around them, but still the snow getss into the sheltered hole. Luckily as we keep the engines running, their heat melts off anything. The disadvantage is that the heat also has the generators dig themselves into the snow. The glacier is hundreds of meters thick here, so they still have some way before they literally hit rock bottom. The disadvantage though is that it makes a hell of a challenge trying to service them, or fill them up with gas. I crawl over the wall of crates and jump into the hole. Willy hands me the jerry cans, and I flip the lid open, put the funnel into the generator’s gas tank and pour the gas in it. The wind sprays the fuel all over my legs, and hands. I can smell the fumes. I have to be careful as the generator is hot. If I spill too much, the whole thing will go off in flames. Willy crawls into the hole and makes a joint between the jerry can’s lid and the gas tank. “Pour!”, he shouts, trying to lift his voice above the wind and the deafening noise of the generator. And I pour. Thinking how much I hate this ‘morning duty’ to refill the gensets. And this is only one. We have four of them. But still, I love it. I love this challenge. I love to find my own limitations, I love to face my own fear and laugh at it, in the face. I love doing this, this expedition, that people said to be impossible. I love to laugh in their face. Even as a new blow of wind sprays fuel all over me.

An hour later, we unzip the opening of the working tent. In the small space of 2.5 by 2.5 meters, three guys are sitting, working on the radio. They have the gas heater on, and are sweating in their Tshirt. They are concentrated trying to decypher the radio messages, and only look up at the distraction of two people crawling into their oasis of heat. Willy and I look alike. All covered up with patches of froozen snow, mucus dangling off our nose, damped ski goggles and smelling like we fell in a petrol pump. We pull off our caps and goggles, and smile at our team mates. “Goooooood moooooooooooorninggggg Vietnaaaaaaaaaaaaam!”, we laugh… A new day is born on Peter I. The most isolated island in the world. How we love this life.

Continue reading The Road to the Horizon’s Ebook, jump to the Reader’s Digest of The Road.

]]> http://petercasier.be/writing/once-upon-a-fine-antarctic-morning/feed/ 4 http://petercasier.be/writing/doing-good-to-others/ http://petercasier.be/writing/doing-good-to-others/#comments Sun, 28 Oct 2007 20:52:00 +0000 Peter http://petercasier.be/writing/?p=272 We reef the sails, as we see the clouds gathering. While we are still sailing in the sun, the darkness packs at the horizon. That is how it goes in the Caribbean this time of the year: sunshine one moment, rain the next. Under the threatening clouds hurrying towards us, we see the white foam on the waves. The wind will pick up soon. We are sailing to Petit St Vincent in the Grenadines. Everyone calls it “PSV”, for short. An island barely one mile in diameter, covered with palm trees and bush. It is not far anymore, maybe another half an hour of sailing. But we don’t not make it in time. The rain catches up with us, and before we know it, we are engulfed in a dense curtain of water gushing down. I studied the pilot book this morning, and know how the anchorage looks like, by heart. The GPS guides me towards the entrance between the coral heads and the beach.

As we steer into the anchorage, we put the kids below deck, drop the sails, and start the engine. Tine goes to the bow, ready to drop anchor. I steer the boat right in-between the other anchored ships. The rain gushes down. Visibility is only ten meters, sometimes even less. We loose sight of the other boats. Even though we motor slowly, sometimes an anchored boat pops up through the curtain of rain, out of no-where it seems, when it is almost too late to avoid a collision. The wind is strong and gusty, shifting often 90 degrees. A sailboat, and certainly one like ours with a short keel, and very beamy – flat wide bottomed – gets easily pushed around by the wind. Once the boat starts turning with the wind, there is no way to stop the momentum. Then you just HAVE to turn.. It makes it difficult to maneuver between anchored boats, all swinging on their anchor chains, in the stormy wind… But we do well, find a proper spot, and drop the anchor in one go. Phew!

It storms and rains the whole night, but the next morning is bright and sunny, revealing the small paradise we are anchored in. Hardly any clouds left. The sea is clear light green-blue, several fishing terns are gliding high up in the sky, without moving their wings. A soft breeze moves through the leaves of the palm trees bordering the beech of bright white sand. Paradise once more.

In the afternoon, while having brunch on the deck of the boat, we spot two young local fishermen in the water, dragging what seems to be a white surf board. I get a bit suspicious as it does not look like they are having fun, rowing wildly with their arms, barely keeping their head above water. Through the binoculars I can see a black thing on their surf board. Maybe a large plastic bag or a net. As a rain squall comes closer, they seem the more anxious to get ashore. It is all a bit weird: what are they doing in a channel between two islands, on a surfboard? I take our dinghy, and motor to them, only to find that there is no surfboard, but they were dragging a small white wooden boat filled to the rim with water. The black thing I saw earlier is an outboard engine they had unscrewed and put inside the boat. “Mista, you help us, mista?”, they ask. I throw them a rope and tow them ashore. They drag their boat onto the beach, crawl onto the sand, and lay on their back, exhausted. Barely waving their hands to thank me.

When I get back to our sail boat, Hannah, our youngest, stands on the bow of our ship, shouting and dancing “My dad is a superhero! Superdad in action! My dad can do anything!..” Lana gives me a hug. “Dad, I am proud of you. The people on the other boats were just watching, but you DID something… Did you those guys give you anything to thank you?” I tell them when we do good to others, somewhere we will be rewarded by something good ourselves..
In the afternoon, when we scuba dive, and find some astonishingly beautiful cone shelves, Lana says “You see, we are rewarded now. We did something good, and now we are rewarded with these beautiful shelves. We will take them with us, and put flowers in them. As a reminder to do good to others!”.

I guess my kids learned a lesson that day.

Continue reading The Road to the Horizon’s Ebook, jump to the Reader’s Digest of The Road.

Clipperton, a deserted island in the Pacific, one thousand miles off the coast of Mexico. We traveled for weeks to reach this forgotten piece of land. I don’t see much of it, in the darkness. The ground is covered with a thick layer of grinded light coloured coral. I can see the shades of the palm trees a few hundred meters from where we pitched our tent. I can see a few stars in the moist sky. Clouds are passing by regularly. In a distance, I hear the waves braking.
This scenery could have been from anywhere. Somewhere in Africa, the Caribbean, or Mediterranean. But this is much more exotic. This is the Pacific. We are the first people to set foot on this islands since months. Years probably. And that makes it special, exotic, exciting. A deserted island called Clipperton.

Jay sticks his head out of the tent.
“Shit, I can’t sleep”, he sighs.
“You know, Jay, what we could do? We could go to the landing spot, and get some of the sleeping bags, and cushions. I just can’t sleep on this cod without covers.”, I wisher softly not to wake up the rest of the landing party.
“Cool, let’s do that. Here is a flashlight. Let’s go”.

I put on my wet shoes. It was a pretty rough landing on the island, this afternoon. There is no port nor jetty here. We had to steer the dinghies through the surf and jump in waist-deep water to offload our gear, wading through the water, trying not to trip over coral heads and not to step on sea urchins. My shorts are still wet too, making it difficult to walk.

The beam of the flashlight veers left and right, lightening up the hundreds of land crabs crawling over the broken coral, in between the boobies, sleeping with their beak tucked in their wings. Most birds don’t even move as we walk close to them. They don’t know these big creatures, called humans. The boobies are not conditioned to be scared of humans, that is clear. One flies straight into Jay in a typical booby-clumsy attempt to land. The more gracious these birds are in the air, the more silly they behave on the ground. Their way of landing and taking off, often involves tumbling upside down, tripping over their own feet. Nature can’t be perfect in everything.

We get close to the palm trees, lining up at the beech.
“I hear the sound of rain coming closer”, says Jay.
“Hmm, rain, and all we have is T-shirts and shorts..”, I mumble.

As we negotiate our way inbetween the palm trees, the first drops fall. Big drops. Platsh, platsh, platsh. Warm drops. The strong smell of ammoniac cuts off our breath. As we sway the flashlight to and fro, the beam catches the side of Jay’s head for a moment. I hold his hand, take the light, and shine it onto his face. It is covered with a white thick glue-y stuff.

“Jay”, I can’t catch my breath from laughing, “that ain’t rain, man, that is bird shit”.
Jay shouts “Oh shhhhit”, as he starts running to the beach, from under the trees. “Oh shhhhit”!
“Yeah, shit indeed!!”, I laugh.

We shine the light in the trees. The palm trees are full of boobies. Dozens of birds sit on each branch. Hundreds of boobies in each tree, thousands of them in the small bush we just walked through. And it seems like they don’t do anything but shit in their sleep. The palm trees, the leaves, the ground, is covered with white smelly guano. And so are we. From top to bottom.

Welcome to the deserted island of Clipperton! Welcome to paradise!
Continue reading The Road to the Horizon’s Ebook, jump to the Reader’s Digest of The Road.

Mpulungu, you said?

Once upon a time, Mats and I went to Mpulungu. Mpulungu? I have to admit, I did not know where that was neither. Well, it is a town in North-Zambia, at the most southern tip of Lake Tanganyika.

El Nino had washed away most of the railway system in Tanzania, and we needed another route to bring in emergency food supplies to the refugee camps in West Burundi and Tanzania. We thought of trucking in the food cargo from Southern Africa using Mpulungu as a transit point before shipping it by barge via Lake Tanganyika up to Burundi.

We did not have a base yet in Mpulungu, so we had to fly in the equipment to set up mobile warehouses, electricity and communications systems. As there were no commercial flights from our regional headquarters in Uganda to Zambia, we used a Belgian Air Force C130 Hercules plane, to pick up people and equipment.
So off we went, with a plane filled with cars, warehouse tents, generators, masts, and communications equipment. The C130 crew just came off a long tour of duty working for us doing food drops in Southern Sudan. Our delivery was the last trip they made before heading back home to Belgium, so there was a bit of a party atmosphere on the plane. They played 1960’s rock and roll music over the internal PA-system, as we flew over Rwanda, Burundi and Congo, heading south. The crew had rolled up the sleeves of their T-shirts, and were dancing on the cargo-deck. It reminded me of a scene in ‘Apocalypse Now’, minus the sound of the machine guns and shelling.

As we flew on a military plane, we did not get landing clearance for the military airstrip near Mpulungu, and had to fly to other side of Zambia. We landed at Ndola, smack in the middle of the “Cupper Belt” as the southern part of DRC and North-West Zambia is called. It is always interesting to land at an airport where they have never seen a UN plane before. And certainly not one operated by the Belgian Air Force. But they were good guys, so immigration and customs formalities were a breeze.

Mats and I loaded a Nissan Patrol 4×4 full of equipment, and headed off for a full day’s drive from Ndola to Mpulungu. We had bought some cheap tourist road maps at the hotel lobby in the morning, so we were in good shape. But the roads were not. El Nino rains had damaged the tarmac really bad, and we made it a point to fly over the potholes rather than negotiating our way around them, trying to make good time. Even so, we arrived in Mpulungu at two in the morning.

Mpulungu City.

Mats and I were still rookies in ‘the humanitarian world’, as this story will show in many ways. One of the mistakes was the planning. We thought to arrive in the late afternoon, and meet up at the port with Louis, one of our logisticians who arrived a couple of days earlier. But we had not counted on arriving at two in the morning… The port was closed, and the lights were dimmed all over Mpulungu, which had more of a village than a real town. As we cruised ‘around town’, trying to find a place to stay, we cursed ourselves not having noted the name of the hotel where we should stay. We asked a guy we saw strolling alongside the road, but he was clearly drunk and stumbled in the ditch as we were talking to him. Not much use to us. But sometimes luck favours the unprepared.

We saw a distant glow of light in the pitch dark town, and headed towards it. It was a camping site with a couple of tukuls, round huts for guests, called Nkupi Lodge. The music was playing loud as it turned out they were having a party for two girls working for FAO, our sister organisation, who just finished their two years’ tour of duty. As we shouted our questions over the music, we came to understand Louis was actually staying in one of the tukuls. What are the odds, hey?
There was no more room for us in the lodge, but the two FAO girls suggested we slept in one of their spare bedrooms, so off we went. After many drinks, and at 5 am.

The next day, three hours later, we headed for the port to set up the equipment. By the time Valerian – a Ugandan technician from our team- and Zeff, one of our super duper logistics wizards arrived with another truck full of other equipment, a lot was already installed.
I was quite used to the heat, living in Uganda for several years, but the Mpulungu temperatures surely beat the Uganda ones. And the humidity! As we were working outside in the sun, rigging up masts and dragging stuff in and out of the office container, we had to take regular breaks, bathing in sweat.

Reconnaissance

Zeff thought of also using another port off the Tanzanian side of Lake Tanganyika, and suggested Mats and I did a road reconnaissance along the lake’s shore to find a suitable landing site for the barges.
We agreed to leave very early in the morning, but when I knocked on his door at dawn, I was greeted by the pale remains of my old friend. His face all white. Bent over slightly, both hands on his stomach, he just said ‘Food poisoning’ before speeding off to the loo again. Still, Mats did not give up. Armed with a couple of water bottles, he got in the car, and off we went.

We used the same map we bought at the hotel lobby in Ndola, which showed Zambia on a scale of about ten inches. Not much detailed roads there.. But, after regular stops to ask the way to the Tanzanian border, we felt we were in good shape. The border itself was not much. Up on a mountain pass, in lush green fields, the road diminished into a dirt track.

The border was nothing more but an iron pipe over the track, with an old rusty sign “CUSTOMS” on it. Nobody in sight. We hooted a couple of times, and guy in torn pants and the remains of an official’s kaki-shirt showed up.
“Hallo”, we said.
“Eh, hello, Karibu! Welcome!”, he answered in half English-half Swahili. He looked with wide eyes at our 4×4 with “UN” painted in big white letters on the side.
“Are you the customs officer?”, we asked.
“No, but he is not here, can I help?”, he said.

We learned that the customs officer had gone on a walkabout many months ago, and had not come back yet. Since then, our good friend, had been ‘guarding’ the border post. He was helpful though, and chatted happily about the facts of life as he walked us to the customs’ office, nothing more than a hut in the middle of what looked like a small settlement. He chased the goats out of his office, and looked frantically for his papers and stamps. We wrote our entry in his logbook. The previous entry was from a few years ago, some overland-trekkers passing by. No wonder nobody had noticed the customs officer had disappeared, with all that border traffic!

After an hour, we drove off. The vegetation was so dense it looked as if we were driving between walls of greenery, towering three, four meters high, on both sides of the track. Sometimes the track was so overgrown, we just hoped we did not speed off it. Several times, we had to hit the brakes as a herd of cattle appeared smack in the middle of the “road”, most of the time guarded by a young boy. Time and time again, the youngster would grab all his belongings and run off into the bush, shouting “Muzungu”! Muzungu!” (“White man, White man!”), leaving us stuck surrounded by the cows. It was clear cars were not a common sight there. Leave alone UN cars, driven by a couple of muzungus… Probably the poor guys thought they were invaded by European military troops or something.

The GPS indicated we were on the right track. Gradually, the bush cleared out, and we came in more open fields, driving through small villages until we reached a marsh like area. According to Mr.Garmin, we were just a few miles from our destination, but in front of us, the road was flooded by the water from the marsh. We carefully negotiated our way through the potholes which were probably half a meter deep. Until the unavoidable happened: the side of the car sank in the mud, and the car heeled over. The more we pushed on the gas pedal, the more the wheels spun, digging the car in deeper. Dammit. When we stepped out of the car, our feet sank into the mud, ankles deep. Only then we realized how badly we prepared this trip. Never again would we go on a road reconnaissance without a shovel, a decent bush cranking tool, and towing cables… We really left Mpulungu like we would go shopping in town.. Argh.. All too late now.
And one thing was for sure: on our own, we would not get out of the mud. Not even with the help of the three-four guys who appeared from the fields, and tried to dig the wheels out. The more we dug, the more the car sank in the mud.
Luckily we had a shortwave radio in the car, so we called Zeff in Mpulungu. Zeff said to stay put and he would come to get us even though we were at least five hours drive from our base.

Meanwhile, Mats had taken refuge in the ditch, still throwing up. He was exhausted. It must have been a hilarious sight. Two muzungus, in their big car, stuck in the middle of the swamp, miles away from any sign of civilization. One sitting in the shade of the car, with his legs and clothes full of mud, the other one laying in the ditch, emptying his stomach for the umpth time.

As the sun was setting, we heard the distant sound of an engine. Could not be Zeff, too early. As by miracle, some locals appeared out of bloody nowhere, on a tractor. I had never been so happy to see a tractor. And sure enough, they had towing cables with them. In less than half an hour, they pulled the car out of the mud, we made a U-turn, and followed the tractor up to the next village.
I always wear a safari jacket. And in the back pocket, I keep a paper bag (actually an air sickness bag from ‘Virgin Atlantic’ – but that is a different story), filled with ‘funny money’, left-over money from my previous field trips. I found some old Tanzanian banknotes, and the guys from the tractor were all too happy with them. They invited us to stay with them for the night, but we could not, had to drive back.

How to fix a broken axle using a computer bag.

We tried to call Zeff on the radio again, to warn him we were ok, so he could turn around. In vain though. Boy, he was going to be pissed off to discover he did the trip for nothing.. As we were speeding back, in between villages, cows, goats and other unidentified moving and/or flying objects, the night fell. After each bend in the road, we thought seeing the lights of Zeff’s car, but each time it was a distant camp fire from one or the other village. Villages we had not seen during the day, as they were hidden behind the bushes. But all of sudden, Zeff’s car came steaming out of the jungle, right in front of us. We both hit the brakes and stopped inches from eachother. Reason the more for Mats to throw up again. Poor guy…

Nope, Zeff was not pissed off. He was happy to see us again. He gave us a walkie-talkie so we could keep in contact as we drove back. Three hours later, we reached the Zambia-Tanzania border post on the mountain pass again. Somewhere along the road, we had lost sight of Zeff though, and even looking down the slope, I could not trace any light.. Guess we drove a lot faster than him. We tried to reach him on the walkie-talkie, but nothing.. Meanwhile, the customs official was nowhere in sight. In the light of our beamers we walked to the small settlement and banged on the doors of the mud houses. After half an hour, we found our man, who clearly had passed the evening boozing. He probably had good reason to celebrate, though: two cars with muzungus passing his border post in one day must have been THE event of his life… A pity he was nearly unconscious for the third passage of the muzungus that day…

While he stood there negotiating his balance, I filled in the log again, stamped the passport ourselves, and passed the border. We drove up a small ridge and tried to spot Zeff again. Nothing but a pitch dark night dotted with campfires for as far as we could see. A nice sight though, the pitch dark. Had not seen that since a long long time.. In Belgium, or where we lived in Kampala, there was always light around, but this, this was pitch-pitch dark. Dark like hell. Or heaven.. The starry skies reminded me of those during our expeditions in the Pacific and the Antarctic. But we did not give much room to these romantic thoughts.. Maybe Zeff had an accident.
In the end, we got onto the roof of the car, and opened up the squelch of the radio, and only then we could barely hear Zeff call us in the middle of the radio noise. We understood he had some car trouble.

So off we went again. Back into Tanzanian territory. Did not bother to go through customs again. Figured they would not come chasing after us ‘illegal immigrants’ neither. It took an hour to reach Zeff. It was not a pretty sight. We only saw a pair of legs sticking out from underneath the car. Legs belonging to a guy who cursed like an old seadog. Apparently the cross axle connecting the front and back axles of the car got stuck, so his wheels were blocked. Zeff had disconnected the cross axle already from one side while he was waiting for us, but could not connect it from the front axel. So what to do? He had no power going onto his wheels, and we could not tow him as the cross axle was dragging over the ground…
Luckily Mats – who had vomited his last fluid hours ago – was back into intellectual shape, and came up with the bright idea to tie the cross axle onto the bottom chassis of the car… with the strap of his computer bag… I guess that is not what Mr Dell or Mr Targus had in mind for a computer bag strap, but it seemed to work. Next challenge was that Zeff had a tow cable of two meters only… Ever tried to tow a car through the bush, potholes, over mountain ridges, and through streams with a two meter long towing cable? I tell you, that is SHORT, leaving barely one meter between the two cars ! So short, Zeff was on the walkie-talkie all the time, giving orders to us, in the front car: ‘faster, slower, ease off, go left, go right’. And sometimes ‘stop’ as the computer-bag-strap got disconnected again and the axle dragged over the ground. Each time we had to walk back in the light of a handheld flashlight, trying to find the strap in the mud.
It took us the main part of the night to get to the customs post again. By then, we did not wake up the guys anymore, we just stamped our passports ourselves.. And down the mountain we went, hoping Zeff’s brakes would not give up, having him crash into the back of our car.

At 5 am the next morning, two UN cars drove, ever so slowly, one closely behind the other one, into Mpulungu town. All passengers Muzungus, covered with mud. As we got out of the car, Zeff gave us an evil eye and raised a finger: “Next time, next time!”… We knew: Next time, we had to prepare better, take proper bush equipment, drive slower in a convoy, and and, and, and…

But the story does not end here.

A week later, a small Beechcraft twin engine plane was to come over and fly us back to Kampala. This time, we had received a landing permit for the military airport near Mpulungu. For hours, we monitored the agreed shortwave radio frequency where the plane would call us as they approached, but heard nothing. As we drove off to the airport, we heard a strong interference on the radio and found the aircraft was transmitting slightly off frequency. They answered our call with: “Ah there you are! We have been circling overhead for an hour already, as we don’t have the VHF frequencies for the military control tower. Go and get it! We need to land fifteen minutes, as fuel is running low!”.
I still don’t know how we managed to negotiate our way through the military checkpoint at the airport, but somewhere waving my blue UN passport and using a lot of important words got us into the office of the base commander in no time. Sometimes it helps being the only muzungus in a radius of a hundred miles! By the time the plane landed, the pilot said he was ‘flying on fumes’ already.. Anyway, the guys at the airport were all too helpful, invited us over for tea and a chat as the plane was being refueled. They even gave us a discount for the fuel.
On the way back, we zigzagged in between towering storm clouds filled with lightning, with the pilot of our small plane going ‘Oh my god’ and ‘Oh shit, shit!’ the whole time. Not a pretty sight.

Hours later, many hours later, we finally landed at Entebbe airport. We parked right next to Airforce One, as apparently President Clinton had just landed. But that was minor news, compared to the stories of our adventures in Mpulungu we told our families that evening!

Continue reading The Road to the Horizon’s Ebook, jump to the Reader’s Digest of The Road.

My home is a set of bags. Four bags to be exact. Packed after one year of sabbatical. The full inventory of my life for the new start of my professional life can be summarized on two sheets of paper…

One computer bag, one small backpack. Both carry-on luggage. One duffle bag and a backpack with my clothes, toiletry and some basic medical supplies. All together maybe 30 kg. My life compacted to 30 kg…

Here is the deal: after my sabbatical, I am starting my professional life as if it were a white sheet of paper. You can look at the white sheet of paper in a negative, or in a positive way. You can say ‘empty’, ‘no information’, so.. ‘worthless’? ‘Lacking something’?

Or you could say ‘virgin territory’, ‘potential’, ‘opportunity’.. After all a white sheet of paper could become an item of high value if Picasso drew something on it. Or if Monet painted one of his summer landscapes on it . Or if Tolkien had written the introduction to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ on it.. Or it could just become a worthless piece of scribbled notes. Folded a certain way, it could fly. Or propped to a ball, it could be kicked into a wastebasket.

I look at the new start of work in the ‘potential’ way. I start afresh. When I left home after my sabbatical, I had no clue yet as to what job the organisation I work for, would ask me to do. Nor where. Could have been anything, and literally anywhere in the world. Only one thing I knew: I will come home early July to go on holiday with the family. Between now and then, the space is filled with blanks. Blank pages. Blank sheets of paper. Could be I was off to Darfur in a week. Or Colombia. Or Cambodia, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Timor or Nicaragua. Or I could be asked to stay in our HQ, in Rome for two months.

So how do you pack for something like that? Not knowing where you are going? What did I pack?
Well, it is the normal stuff I usually pack. My personal “secret” supplies, and some multi-purpose clothing. Plus one pair of sandals, one pair of shoes, one sweater, a rain jacket, and oh, I packed my sailing gloves too. You never know…

All in four bags. My life. Packed in two hours. I did not loose the habit, the touch to pack fast, even though stuff was spread over all the closets in the house this time. Different from the previous times I was at home, in my “two months work, one month break” regime. Then I did not bother to unpack when I arrived home, as each time I was only in Belgium for a few days before going on holiday with Tine and the kids. So I literally lived out of these bags for.. how long now? Since Kosovo, 1999. No, this time, I was properly unpacked.

I know the contents of my bags by heart. I packed these bags hundreds of times already, as of years, I was on the move all the time. During certain trips never staying anywhere for more than a couple of days. Phnom Penh one day, Vietnamese border town the next, transiting in Bangkok two days later, Vientiane after that, and then Jakarta. Hotel in, guesthouse out. These bags have been hauled into cargo planes, trucks, 4×4s, boats, and long distance commercial passenger planes. They have been checked in, lost in transit in Cairo, thrown off trucks in Albania, attacked by mad monkeys in the Kenyan bush and pulled out of my hands by bell boys in the New York hotels.

As I packed this time, I took the trouble of going through the contents… I amazed myself by the ‘small habits’ I have grown to have. Small things I counted on, to have with me, and who have saved the day so many times already. These are my ‘secret supplies’. The things I assembled along the way during tens of thousands of miles, hundreds of trips. And so many countries, I do not care to count anymore…

So what are my secret supplies? The things that make the life of an aid worker, a “globetrotter by necessity”, sustainable? Here is a grab of them. Just the tip of the iceberg:

Music – my iPod and Bose headset.
Music soothes my spirit. It lifts me up when I feel down. Pumps me up when I am low on energy. Calms me down before going to bed. Or lifts me up when taking a shower. Most of my memories in life is connected to music. To songs, to artists, to tunes. And my iPod is the core of my musical existence. All the music I have, is on this iPod (plus the full backup of the most critical data on my laptop!). It is a 60 Gbyte iPod which I bought in Dubai some years ago. It has 4,000 songs on it. From hardcore dance music to classical. From weird ambient music, to pop music. Reggae, R&B, soul, oldies and newbie’s. I dig it all. I have not many accessories for it. Just the power supply and USB cable. A plug-on gimmick that has the iPod broadcast music on the FM band, so I can pick it up on a car stereo or a portable radio (I don’t carry speakers with me, so sometimes need a bit of volume), a car charger for those long road trips, and that is it.
Plus my secret weapon, a must for each iPod fan: My Bose headset (www.bose.com/), the QuietComfort 2. It is an expensive piece of kit, a bit bulky to travel with, but worth it. Works on batteries. If you don’t play music, and just switch it on, it kills all the ambient noise. Practical on a plane or anywhere where the surrounding noise annoys you. It sits really comfortable with soft air pads. The Bose headset has a set of adapters fitting almost any audio plug and a switch-able high and low capacity input, so you can use it with almost any audio device. Plus last but not least, the audio is really high quality.

Crocodile clamps
Going from hi-tech to low-tech. I always carry a set of wires with crocodile clamps. Easy to make connections between incompatible cables or ways to bridge video/audio/telephone connections, or to test almost any connection. Last time I used them extensively was on the boat trip we made from the UK to the Canaries, where lightning took out most of the electronics. I used the crocodile clamps to test the shortwave transmitter, the radio fax receiving software, and the boat’s antenna tuner. Don’t leave home without it.

Power supplies and cables, cables, cables…
And these, I could do without. Power supplies and connecting cables. Those take up most of the space in my computer bag. Why does each device come with its own power supply, each having its own voltage, and connector? I have one for my laptop, my GPS, my iPod, my digital camera, my digital video camera and my mobile phone. Plus a computer connector cable for each. Except for the video camera which comes with three cables. Plus one cable for my Palmpilot. Oh, and of course a 12 volt cigarette lighter adapter cables for my mobile phone and GPS too. Pfft. It is time for a digital revolution favouring the frequent traveler: one adapter cable and one power supply for all. Please!

Modem cable with a twist – eh with a spring-…
A cable I would not want to loose is a small extractable modem cable. I used to have a normal modem cable, but the plastic clips of the connectors always got hooked onto another cable as I pulled it out my computer bag compartment full of power supplies and cables. Do you curse those small RJ jacks too? Once those plastic clips break, you can never make a reliable modem connection anymore or the connector would just drop out of the wall plug. Argh. Until I found this small gimmick from Targus, which rolls itself up onto the central coil, up to the point where the connectors slide into their small holders.

My converter power plug
Most of my power supplies and accessories have European power plugs. Well, there is no European standard, but let me call it the power plug that works in most European countries. This little gimmick converts the ‘European’ power plug to any other standard, fitting my stuff to 95% of the power outlets in the world. Just plug the European plug in the middle, turn the dial to the output you want and plug it into the wall. The plugs which are not used, are not life, so no chance to get electrocuted. A must for any traveler.

Stone Age technology: My Palm Pilot III.
You won’t believe this. I bought my PDA back in 1997. Yep, my Palm Pilot III is ten years old this year… And I still could not live without it.
It stores ALL data for my personal and business contacts. I don’t keep business cards.. Just enter the relevant data and throw the card away. I think there are 2,000 contacts in there. It is the ONLY calendar tool I use.
In 10 years, it never hick-ed up once. I always keep it in one of the breast pockets of my safari jacket (see tomorrow’s post). So it has been handled rough. Several times it fell on the ground, its cover unlatching, flying all over the ground. I lost the stylus three times, so wrote on it with the back of a ball point for a while. And it kept on working.
Does anyone else still use this Stone Age Technology? I would not be able to do without it.

The jacket… ahhh.. the jacket!
And then there is this trusted companion. My safari jacket. It is a custom made model with our organisation’s logo on the front and the back. It has 13 pockets. Most of my valuables are in it. Money (protected in an air sickness bag from, lemme see, Virgin Express, so it can not get wet). Plane tickets, business cards, my PDA, passports, ID card, yellow fever vaccination card, an envelope with pass photos, sunglasses, peppermints, a lighter and cigarettes, the keys to the mini locks on my luggage, access badges, pens, a small notebook, a set of earplugs and a little cord to fix my glasses around my neck. That is all still pretty normal. But then we have the weird stuff: a whistle on a cord. Not only to be used to annoy traffic cops when drunk, but it is also an excellent tool in case you get into trouble anywhere. And a small mini flash Maglite. Always handy when the power is cut in your guesthouse. And a small piece of rope. Dunno why. Had it in there for years. Mats used it for a while when we went sailing when he forgot the safety cord for his glasses once again
Yep, when traveling, I wear the safari jacket ALL the time. Once I had a jacket that got repaired so many times, stitched up to the max, cleaned until the linen almost became transparent with small holes from battery acid, and stains from engine oil -or was it that mean ketchup they used to serve in Macedonia?-. That jacket became an icon. Guys in the office used to make jokes about it, but I kept it until I found a suitable replacement. It is not easy to find a jacket with 13 pockets. When I finally found a new one, I dumped the old jacket. My guys secretly retrieved it from my waste basket, framed it, and hung it on the wall in the office…
I guess that jacket went through more countries in three years than any normal person would do in three life times.. And somewhere, it does deserve a spot on the wall, as it stands as a symbol for our life as an aid worker. Worn to the bone. Stitched up and repaired to get going again. A soul stained with memories.

More bags anyone?
Apart from my big four big bags, I also carry some small bags with goodies. Mostly stuff only to be used in emergencies. One small bag with sterile syringes and plastic tubes, in case one needs a blood transfusion in not so hygienic circumstances. One with my spare glasses and sunglasses, a compass, a mirror (a mirror is a great way to attract attention when u are stuck somewhere and want to signal a passing car or plane), a small roll of strong nylon thread (to hang up a mosquito net in a hotel, or to block the door of your hotel, – yeah, I know what you are thinking, but it works though!-). Another bag with matches, a small toothbrush, toothpaste, spare ear plugs, bandages. And the last small bag has some medical supplies.

In the computer bag…
You think I am weird? Probably I am.. What if I told you of the secrets I hide in my computer bag? A permanent marker, pens, spare AA and AAA batteries, tie wraps (to secure bags for all too curious luggage handlers at Kenyata airport in Nairobi), diplomatic cargo stickers to put on my luggage (for those nosy customs people at Kigali airport), a bag of funny money with left over banknotes from my previous field trips (and in case I encounter anyone who collects funny money), my digital pin pass for electronic banking, a small notepad, all my power supplies, connecting cables. And some small pins I use as a gift for people who do me a favour, in places where pins are rare..

Conclusion: Now that I summed up most of the goodies I travel with, I have two thoughts:- how did I ever fit all of that into thirty -only- kilos of luggage and hauled it so many times around the globe?- from the whistle in my safari jacket to a pair of test wires in my computer bag and funny money in a air sickness bag.. I seem to be very rigidly emotionally attached to the weirdest things.

Continue reading The Road to the Horizon’s Ebook, jump to the Reader’s Digest of The Road.

The iPod played some random music and stumbled upon Eva Cassidy. In a flash, everything around me stopped, and the music pulled me back four months when we were racing across the Atlantic delivering a sailing yacht, the Persuader Too, from the UK to the British Virgin Islands.

Eva Cassidy. About the only music both Pete, my watch mate, and I liked. Most of the other stuff I played on the boat -I have a weird music taste, I agree-, Pete did not digg. And vice versa… But Eva Cassidy, we did agree upon.

So often, when we had the sunrise watch, we became close friends with Eva. In thoughts… Her music playing through the speakers on deck. A nice stiff breeze filling our sails. The pitch dark night disappearing and the sun climbing up through the orange-red striped clouds, lifting the mystic veil of the night, and displaying an ocean of emptiness. A total void, filled with clouds, wind and water. And a yacht smack in the middle of this infinite splendor.
The stories of this Antarctic crossing, you find here. They are displayed in reverse order, so you might have to read them from the bottom up. It is strange, now that I re-read them, it seems the stories go from very ‘business like’ through a stage of happy-madness, to an almost mystical mood. That is what eight weeks on a boat does to you..
Four months ago it was. Seems a life time ago.

Anyways, here is the story about Afghanistan I wanted to share with you:
Often we put up our radio-boosters (VHF repeaters for the techneuts amongst you) in remote places. We pay local people to guard them, otherwise the equipment disappears as fast as we can put them up. These guys in Chagcharan (Afghanistan) took their job a bit too serious. We did not really mean they had to deploy an anti-aircraft gun to guard the equipment.

Afghanistan picture: Aramais Alojants. Picture Persuader Too arriving in St.Lucia: Tim Wright

Kabul. The Afghans pronounce it with a long, closed ‘o’, making it sound like ‘Ko-obel’. Most of the a’s are pronounced like an ‘o’ here. Ko-obel. Kabul. It is afternoon. The late-summer sun descends low over the horizon, giving the yellow scenery a golden glow with long exotic shadows. During this time of the year, the temperatures are nice. Really enjoyable. In between the battering dry heat of summer and the biting cold of the long winters, are those short periods which tourist brochures would define as a ‘moderate Mediterranean climate’. The tourist brochures for Kabul must date back to the fifties and sixties most likely.

We are sitting on the stairs of Kabul airport, facing the tarmac looking over the airstrip. Kabul International Airport. There are a bunch of us, all relief workers and reporters. Two from a Pakistani camera crew for the Deutsche Welle, a tall blond Danish demining expert, an Australian water drilling expert from Unicef, a Bangladeshi seed expert from FAO and myself. We are waiting for the UN plane to pick us up. And the plane pretty much has its own time schedule, defined by the “Chaos Theory” dominating Taliban air clearances, weather patterns and the number of people getting stuck at immigration each time the plane lands.

Immigration. The Immigration Counter… All speaks straight to the core of one’s imagination. The airport is heavily damaged. Probably already since twenty or thirty years. Traces of shrapnel and grenade explosions. Bullet holes in windows and walls. Some of them nicely lined up as maybe one of the last Russian soldiers emptied his AK47 while sinking through his knees, shot in the back of his head, spraying the bullets in a nearly perfect curve over the wall. War graffiti. As if saying ‘Alexander was here’, and ‘Alexander was here and never left’. ‘Sacha’ for his friends. ‘Alexej’ for his wife, who will never see him alive again. ‘Alexander was here’, 20 odd bullet holes in a row. The last ones disappeared in the ceiling, where most of the off-white square cardboard tiles have gone and one can see the building skeleton through the aluminum frames of the false ceiling. Cables run left and right in metallic gutters, now rendered useless as it has been many years since Kabul International Airport had its last spark of electricity.

That is probably why everything is so quiet. It calls for religious silence. Respectful silence. Or are sounds just absorbed in the vast empty space which is now left of the airport? It seems people do speak more softly, move more discretely through the different parts of the airport which are now nothing more but ‘remains’. The remains of the rubber belt which once delivered luggage. Torn up, cuddled up in a corner. Remains of counters, half removed, half torn apart. The most inspiring I found the remains of the mechanical displays above the check in counters, and the large display in the entrance hall. You know the kind which click-clack showing the flights, one small metal plate for each letter. What was the last regular flight which left Kabul International Airport? The flight 1203 at 10:15 to Tblisi, it says in Cyrillic on check-in counter 5. I am sure it is counter 5, but the display is dismantled, and two wires stick out of the metallic tube. Wonder if it was shot off or someone just took it with him. Maybe one of the last Russians leaving here has it on display in his living room in St.Petersburg or Kiev, as a war trophy: a plastic yellow square with the black number ‘5’ on it. Would any of his friends believe this was the ‘5’ of the Kabul check-in counter ‘5’, leaving for Tblisi at 10:15 somewhere in a dark past?

Through the entrance hall windows, you gaze onto the main space in front of the airport, filled with rubble. Stones, sprouts of yellow-dry grass. A shot-down primitive watch tower made hastily of metal rusty frames, probably once was the seat of the referee at the tennis club at the Kabul Intercontinental. In the corner, on top of a pickup truck, a guy leisurely rests his arm over a heavy machine gun, bolted onto the roof of the car. Some low scrubs of trees survived the third year of drought, and decades during which people had other priorities than the esthetics of the vegetation at the airport entrance.

Some Taliban officials sit outside the door of ‘Gate 2’, through which we came. One of them, I recognize. He has a turban with Scottish tartan squares, and a sleeveless vest over his long traditional coat and pants. He has the most amazing friendly blue eyes. Many Afghans have. Or green. Many have a light skin and ‘European’ features. My guy talks German, I remember. ‘Der UN Pilot has kein Uhr’, he smiles at me pointing at the sky. ‘The UN pilot does not have a watch’. He is a hydraulic engineer, and studied in East Germany many years ago. He traveled around a fair bit of the world, and right now, he is a ‘Taliban’, watching over the immigration procedures at Kabul International Airport. He cracks some jokes with the custom officials while putting his thumbs in the small watch pockets of his sleeveless jacket, once a part of a stylish Western suit.

He shouts a few words at the two Taliban guards, who are laying on their side on an iron bed frame on the side of the stairs, a bit further up. They are young men in their late teens or early twenties. In deep brown traditional clothes, with a dark gray-brown turban. All their turbans have one long end hanging down from the back over their shoulder up to their waist. Rather attractive. I honestly bet you it will come up one year in the ‘haute couture’ shows of a fashion designer in Paris. Their AK47’s loosely lean against their shoulders. – of the Taliban soldiers that is, not of the Paris models. -. Many of these guys live, eat and sleep with their gun. It looks like it is part of their dressing code, almost part of their body. Most of them actually grew up with their gun, to help protecting their tribe, their herd, their family, and now their nation. The gun is worn out, no more varnish on the wood pieces. The dark spray paint on the metal parts, is rubbed off by the constant handling. But like an old car, it is probably a reliable piece of machinery.

Golden yellow, golden brown, like a picture on a postcard. Remains of summer, a beautiful early fall evening. The mountain range around Kabul is dry. Not a single tree, just some yellow bushes. ‘Amazing’, says the demining expert. I agree. While sitting on the stairs right at the apron, we have a 180 degree sight of the landing strip, taxi runways and hangers around the airport. With the dry yellow mountains, under the fading yellow sun, with small yellow dust devils whirling up small yellow tubes of sand and dust here and there, in between the wrecks of literally hundreds machines of war. Shot down, missed the runway, blown up, or just dumped and stripped of spare parts. MIL-8 Russian helicopter gunships with big dark ragged edged holes in their light yellow and green camouflaged side. Pieces of old artillery and tipped over radar equipment. Antonov and Ilhutsin cargo planes sticking their tail or wing in the air. Hangers with caved-in roofs, with crashed fuel and supply trucks underneath their vast concrete weight.
Three Boeing 727’s from Ariana, the official Afghan national airline, have their cockpit windows covered with a large cotton sheet, and their engines are closed off with red orange shutters. These are the last remains of the Afghanistan national fleet. They still fly within the country, but maintenance and spare parts becomes a pain. The sanctions do not allow the import of plane parts, nor do they allow international commercial flights. A few times per year, one international Ariana flight is allowed to transport children for treatment in Frankfurt, if I remember well. I met the German orthopedic surgeon who accompanies the children on these trips. Was it Frankfurt or Munich? A long flight, he said. And adventurous! But a good opportunity to have maintenance done on the plane while on the ground in Germany.

This is a magical moment. Italian opera music with a full mezzo-soprano voice plays in my head. ‘In Pace’ by Sarah Brightman. Try it, and then picture this scene from what will once have to be part of a movie: ‘In Pace’, ‘In Peace’ playing with nothing but the soft wind on the background, the camera makes a slow, very slow panoramic 180 dgrs pan. A gracious gesture of cinematographic perfection, starting at the left from the hangers and the few MIG fighters left intact, over the yellow specks of grass in between the runways, slowly over dumped or crashed Russian trucks, helicopters, planes sticking out of the low scrub bushes like a mechanical war grave yard, all covered with the yellow dust. The camera moves over the tarmac and in between the soprano voice, the microphone picks up the very remote and soft roar of the white Beechcraft UN aircraft approaching. The camera pans slowly over the old Ariana Boeing 727, with the edge of the cotton window cover sheet softly waving in the wind. The camera slowly slowly zooms out to show the emptiness of the apron, the voidness of the airport, the absolute acknowledgement of existence and persistence in this war torn airport, in this war torn capital city of this warn torn country, which is the center of a war torn region, terrorized by draught and the playing field of the big international powers-that-be.

The camera zooms out, and from the left of the screen, one can hear a noise. Weet-..-weet. Very softly but sharply. Weet-..-weet. A repetitive metal squeak. Slowly. And as the camera continues to zoom out, a Taliban with his Khalashnikov over his shoulder, on an old Chinese bicycle rides into the left of the picture. Weet..-..weet. He has a bundle of hay on the back of his bicycle as he slowly cycles off the runway, over the apron, between the parked MIGs, the Ariana planes, and the taxi-ing UN plane. And at his own pace, the cyclist moves out of the picture, but the sound, you can still hear for a while. Weet-..-weet-..-weet. The plane neutrals the pitch of its propeller blades and shuts off the engine. (I always found that an appealing noise) ffffff-rrrrr-wwaaaaaaattt.. And before we know it, the plane has integrated into the yellow scenery, of a perfect afternoon in Kabul. The soprano voice fades out, and so does the picture. In Pace. In Peace…

Exactly one week later, at almost exactly the same time of day in Kabul, the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center.

Top picture courtesy of Carl De Keyzer , Taliban picture courtesy of Hashmat Moslih

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