Scribbles

We called him Kadee, though his real name was Lash vom Amselhof. He was fierce, ruthless, nervous, and aggressive at first. A big, dark muscled body with a massive head and piercing brown eyes. He would look people in the eyes and keep staring without blinking, until – almost in embarrassment – people would look away. He was only six months old, when he killed one of our full grown sheep with one bite. It was then we realized our German shepherd needed some serious and strict discipline. We trained him as a defense dog and he turned into the sweetest dog we ever had, unless someone tried to lay a hand on anyone from our family.

When Lana was born, we were a bit wary at first. Would Kadee get jealous? While Tine was still in the maternity clinic, we laid a cloth next to Lana in her little bed, and then let Kadee smell it, so he could get used to the odour of the baby. When Lana and Tine came home for the first time, we let him sniff the baby too. He did it very carefully and then, put himself beside the crib. He understood Lana was now part of his herd. For years to come, he would protect Lana, was always around her, looking from the background. When we had visitors, he would put himself between them and the baby. He would not growl, just stare at the visitors. If they wanted to touch the baby, he would look nervously at Tine or me first to see if it was ok.

When Tine and Lana moved to join me in Kampala, they brought Kadee with them. The locals feared him. Not one of our house staff dared to go near him. Dogs are either feared or ignored in Africa. There was no way anyone could ignore a big black dog like Kadee, though. He passed most of the day playing tricks on people walking past the fenced gate that locked off the compound. He would hear them coming from behind the corner and as they passed the gate, he would come running from behind the bush, jump up the fence and bark fiercely, scaring the hell out of them. Just for fun. He loved this game. It was good though, as our house was one of the few in the neighborhood which was not broken into.

One night, when we were in Belgium on holiday, burglars had skipped the wall, and opened one of the windows. Kadee, who was in the house, must have scared them off, but they still succeeded in grabbing some stuff reaching through the metal bars protecting the window. Yet it seems he got hold of one of them, as there were traces of blood on the ground in front of the window. There was also blood and bullet holes on the compound wall, as the police guard had emptied his machine gun on the burglars. Two of them died on the spot. A third was found dead on the way down the hill, but the fourth got away with a laptop minus its power supply. One old laptop left three dead… We only heard about the story when we got back from holiday.. Namayaa, our house keeper, said the policeman was part of the plot. She explained that he was standing next to the burglars when a neighbor came out of her house to look why the dog was making all that racket. Only when the guard saw her, he started shooting at the burglars. The next day, the police guard did not show up for duty and we never heard from him again. Guess he was looking for a computer power supply.

Despite that single mishap, we felt safe with Kadee around. Lana loved him. She could crawl on top of him, throw things at him, pull his fur and he would never lose his patience. The worse he would do was sigh with a deep breath. As if he was saying ‘Kids.. ah, kids..’.

When Hannah was born in Belgium and we brought her as a 2 week old to Kampala, Kadee lost it for a while. All of sudden he had two kids to look after. He would run shuttling between the two. I guess it became his full time job now, having two kids.. It did not take Hannah long neither to learn the furry dark thing loved being around her. She would not like Kadee to come too close though and would smack him on the nose if he did, making him sneeze violently. When Kadee sneezed, Hannah looked at him half scared, half amazed, with a finger in her mouth..

As Kadee turned fourteen, his hips started to give in. It was sad to see him crawling up and down the stairs, still trying to shuttle between the girls.. Within a few months, he could not do anything but drag his hind legs.. He suffered, often yelping as he tried to move. Painkillers did not help anymore. It was around that time, I was reassigned to Kosovo. Tine and the kids moved back to Belgium, and I sold off our belongings. The last night, it was just Kadee and me left. I called the vet and slowly, carefully, we put him to sleep. It was no use to take him back to Belgium. He suffered too much. Late at night, I dug a hole in our garden and buried Kadee in it. John, our gardener, did not want any part of it as he said burying a dog in the garden, would bring bad luck. But I still did. I also buried a drawing from Lana and Hannah with him, and a flower from Tine and I. He had been our family’s guardian angel.

The kids asked about Kadee when I joined them in Belgium the next day. I told them Kadee stayed behind in Africa, as he wanted to look after the family who moved into our house after us. They had kids too. And those kids became his new job. Just like daddy sometimes worked abroad, now Kadee was working abroad… It took years before they found out the truth.. Even now, Hannah sometimes makes drawings of him. She would picture him as a huge black dog, much bigger than herself. She forgets that as a nine year old now, she would stand much taller than him. To her, the dog still remains in her memory as this huge thing, which always looked after her. And maybe he still is…

From: Peter Casier
To: Els
Subject: Wapi Yo?

Kampala, October 14 1999.

Elske,

End of last week, I spoke twice to Saskia over the phone. Each time for over an hour.
There were some work related problems we had to straighten out.
She was our logistics officer in Bujumbura, but also the focal point for my team. It was late in the evening. Everyone else had already left the office. I had opened the window to let the fresh air flow in, bringing with it the typical tropical evening smell. Smoked a cigarette, with my feet on the table. We started talking about life in Bujumbura, what it meant to be living away from our families, work, what we wanted to do in the future. We reflected what it really meant for us, working for a relief agency and about life in general. We laughed, saying to each other how we enjoyed Africa, how it added to the quality of our lives. Saskia….

And now she is no longer with us.

Saskia was on an assessment mission with other UN officials in the south of Burundi yesterday. They stopped at a new refugee camp, and armed men were apparently there waiting for the mission. At first they were seen as Burundi military, but they were not.
As the UN workers got out of the car, shots were fired, killing several people. The attackers then put the rest of the relief workers against a wall, and stripped them off all their belongings. Then they started walking away.
All of a sudden, one of the attackers turned around and walked back to the group, still standing against the wall. Without any obvious reason, he put his gun against the head of the UNICEF representative, and shot her. He then put his gun against Saskia’s head and shot her point blank too. In the confusion, the other UN workers escaped.

Saskia was a young Dutch woman, working for us since about four years. She was transfered to Burundi beginning of the year. I met her several times since then. Tall, blond, energetic, full of ideas and dedication, commitment. She was an enthusiast worker, trying to make a difference.

As I write this, ‘Wapi Yo’, a song from Lokua Kanza plays in the background.
‘Wapi Yo’ means ‘where are you’ in Swahili.
Wapi Yo, Saskia? This makes no sense.

Peter

Our office in Kampala-Uganda had many drivers. Two of them come to my mind: Abby One and Abby Two. First there was only ‘Abby’. A thirtysomething short guy, who did not really stick out of the driver-crowd. Our team used him a lot, as we could rely on him. That was the main challenge with the drivers: we would often see them as unreliable. They would say ‘it was not their fault’. It was not their fault they could not come over and pick us up at 7 am to drive us to the airport, as it was the fault of their neighbour’s wife’s niece. Hoping for at least a spicy story to justify why we missed our flight, we would ask for more details. The story would often go something like this: They could not come over to pick us up at 7 am,because for that, they would have to wake up at 6 am. Unfortunately, they had not woken up, because their alarm had not gone of, reason being because their neighbour’s wife had invited her niece at home to iron her hair, to get the curls out. Apparently there was something wrong with the iron. It had made a short and the fuses blew. Not the fuses in their homes – they did not have any – but the fuses from the mains where all the neighbours illegally tapped electricity from. So the whole neighbourhood fell without of electricity yesterday. So the alarm clock did not go off. Totally reasonable: we were not picked up because of the neighbour’s wife’s niece.. If maybe I could talk to her so it does not happen again..? Anyways, we’re drifting away from the subject.. The point was: ‘Abby was not like that’.. And I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that maybe he did not have a neighbour’s wife’s niece or maybe he did not have electricity at home. He took honour in his work.

One day, a Ugandan lady walks into our office, and comes to me, introducing herself as ‘Abby Two’. Abby Two was a rather corpulent woman, but all smiles and happiness. You know the kind of people that, when they laugh, they not only pull up the corners of their mouth, no, they radiate happiness, eyes twinkle, the laugh comes from deep inside the belly, they clap their hands like you just told them the best joke ever. And they do that every ten minutes. One big happy person. “Why do they call you ‘Abby Two’?”, we asked. She explained that there was already one Abby. And rather than adding the family names, they had agreed amongst themselves to make it easy: go by number. She came last, so she would be number two. She used to be a police woman, but changed jobs as we paid more. Abby Two was the only female driver we had in the Kampala office, but as months went by, she stood her ground, and we got to know her as the funniest and most pragmatic of all drivers.

One day we heard her call over the radio. Abby Two had some problems. During peak traffic time, she was driving to the airport, passing the ‘Clock Tower roundabout’. That roundabout was known for huge traffic jams, as it was one of the main exit roads from Kampala. It was also located near the end of the Nairobi – Kampala railroad, and near a very busy matatu – a local taxi – station. When the Clocktower Roundabout got jammed, it would really get jammed. I am convinced the concept of gridlock-ing was not only invented in Kampala around that time, but was refined to an art. It was unheard off that in a traffic jam, one would not stand still in the middle of an intersection. If you stood clear of an intersection, all hell would break loose behind you, and the cars from the other side would hurriedly take the open space you left. Only to stand still in the middle of the intersection to make sure you could not pass neither. Kampala traffic jams were a mixture of cars, matatus with people hanging on the side and trucks dangerously leaning over, with their loads stacked as high as they could. Everybody and everything was hooting, with drivers and passengers shouting and laughing, and music playing as loud as possible. Actually, most of the time, the music did not matter, it was the noise level which was important. There was an honour in being the loudest. It was a status symbol. People would look at you and think ‘he must be someone important, as he is the loudest’. In between the vehicles, dare devils on motorbikes and bicycles would maneuver. At times bikes were chain-handed lifting them over cars, so one could just move. Any holes left in what would look like a wild whirling stream of vehicles, would be filled up with people on foot maneuvering in between all vehicles. People in suits and in rags alike. Mamas with kids tied in a cloth on their back, and a massive load on their head, beggars, hawkers carrying large cardboards with fake jewelry, umbrellas and snacks pinned on them. The rules of the road were very simple: vehicles always had priority. The oldest and largest of them first. Pedestrians had no rights, and often I would have the impression they were seen as targets rather than human beings.

Anyway, amidst this chaos, Abby Two got into trouble. Someone had, through a half open window, unlocked the passenger door, and grabbed her purse and walkie-talkie. She used the radio in the car to notify the security radio room of the incident and of the fact she would go ‘in pursuit’. It was rather difficult to imagine Abby Two, with her volume, to maneuver within the massive traffic whirlpool, but apparently she did it. Her massive presence and thundering voice had helped in getting the bystanders to catch the thief. He had been screaming wildly, she explained afterwards. I thought that it would be in the foresight of a couple of months in prison – the prisons in Uganda were not reputed to be very customer friendly, but Abby Two explained she had to keep the guy under control awaiting the arrival of the police. ‘So just to make sure he could not run away, I sat on him’, she said smiling…

Abby One was two heads shorter than Abby Two, and about four heads thinner also. When driving one of the big Landcruisers, we would always tease him he needed to put two cushions on the seat, so he could look over the steering wheel. He was a well humoured guy also. Always ready for a joke and a prank. One day we needed to transport two dozen computers from Kampala to Kigali. Normally one would do that in a truck, but in Kampala, all trucks had their top open. Precious cargo like computers would be stolen before the truck had left Kampala, even if it would not have stopped along the way. The ingenuity of the thugs would not come close to those in Luanda – where they found a way of siphoning out fuel as you were waiting in traffic – but still theft was not only a reality, it was a given fact. Abby One suggested we would take the seats out of the large bus we had, and fill the space with computers. The bus had only one entrance, and the windows were too small to snatch anything through. We agreed, and filled up the bus with computer boxes. We took a picture of him, sitting behind the big steering wheel of the loaded bus, just as he was about to leave for Kigali. He gave the biggest smile into the camera. Proud as a peacock as he was entrusted this mission. Not knowing this was going to be his last trip ever. As we waved him out, we did not know this would be the last time we saw him. On the way back from Kigali, he had a head-on collision with a truck. The truck driver was drunk. Abby One did not survive the crash.

Abby Two kept the ‘Two’. She hung a printout of Abby One’s last picture in the office, and wrote on it ‘May my brother rest in peace’.

I come from no country, from no city, from no tribe.
I am the son of the road,
my country is the caravan,
my life is the most unexpected of voyages.

(From Leo the African by Amin Maalouf)

“I’m mad like hell and I am not going to take this anymore”
I remember it very well. Must have been somewhere mid 1991. I arrived home late from work one evening. I had a well paid management function in a respectable firm. I lived with Tine, my loving girl friend. We had two cars, two dogs, a flock of sheep, chickens and geese, on our villa-farm on the Belgian country side. The future looked bright. Nevertheless, that evening, as I sat in the car on the drive way, I did not feel happy. Some things were missing. It felt like at the age of 30, I had just finished my life. The plans for the future were all laid out so well. Autopilot from now on. But deep down inside, I hated corporate life and corporate politics that go with it. I hated wasting two hours of my life in traffic jams every day. And getting up every day at the same time, seeing the same faces every day, and dancing to the tunes of the people at work. Working my butt off until I could retire. I hated the limitations my job and life put on me.

African music played on the tape recorder, that night, as I sat in the car for what seemed like hours. I remember it very well. Just looking into the dark night. Listening to the exotic sounds, dreaming of exotic places. It suddenly darned on me: “This is not my life. Actually it is not a life at all”. Life is supposed to be creative. Variable. Free. Filled with the laughter of children, working with people one likes, working when one likes, doing what one likes. Going to places one likes. I wanted to do things so once, old and ready to die, I could take my grand children on my knee, and close my eyes, and look back on a life I could be proud of. A life that was filled with landmarks of what I had achieved, things I had done and seen. Things that would have an impact on the people around me, a positive impact.

As I got out of the car, I had made up my mind. “Something’s got to change around here”. I felt like on the movie “Network”, where a journalist encouraged people to throw open their windows and to shout “I am mad like hell, and I am not going to take this anymore!”. Well, I was not going to take this crap anymore!

Breaking the chains.
The first sign of madness was my spontaneous decision to participate in an expedition to Clipperton, a deserted island in the Pacific. Decided one day, gone on expedition three weeks later. It was a spiritual experience. For the first time since very very long, I felt deeply happy. I sat laid back, in the middle of the night, looking at the Milky Way in the middle of the Pacific, with palm trees waving in the moon light, listening to the music of Enya playing in my head over and over again. Completely sun burned to the second degree, dizzy because of the lack of sleep. But happy. I was doing what I wanted to do. I found part of my destiny, it seemed.

Once I got back to Belgium after the expedition, my job looked even more dull than ever. I needed another shot of adrenaline. The shot came one year later. Another expedition to the Pacific. This time, it was to an island called Howland. Guess you never heard of that one. Well, I did not neither. And what an adrenaline shot it was. A team of great people, each one still being a close friend today. A trip where I almost drowned in a stormy see. A trip during which I learned to love the Pacific. A trip where we lived on survival mode, using the very limited food and water provisions we had for almost a week waiting out the storm which made it impossible for us to leave the island with the small rubber dinghies we had. What more can one do to lead an intense life?

As we had trouble getting off the island, I arrived back at work one week too late. My boss schmuttered some remarks like “that is typical you again, is it not? Always trying to do the unconventional.”. Well he was right. And almost on the spot, I asked for 2 months leave without pay, for the next year, as I wanted to go to the Antarctic. He said no. I did the only sensible thing to do: I quit my job. That was June 1993. Since then, things have only been improving. Ha!
For one year, I did not have a paid job. But I enjoyed working home. I wrote a book. About past expeditions. Mostly for myself. And worked on the preparations for our expedition to an Antarctic island called Peter I (rather appropriate name, don’t you think?). Only then, I started to feel what the word ‘freedom’ meant.
We did the “Peter I expedition”. When I left home for the Falklands, where a Russian icebreaker would pick us up, I told Tine: ‘I do not know when I will be back. Might be in two or three months, but do not worry!”.

We are now fifteen years following that one night when I took my decision to quit my well protected life and to go on a totally different route, Since then, I have done several missions for the IFRC – International Red Cross: twice in Angola, twice in Malawi and one in Ivory Coast. Later on, I took over Paul’s job in Goma, Zaire –now DRC-, working for UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The first two years I worked as a consultant, spending half of my time in Belgium, with Tine and Lana, our first born.

Early 1996 I was offered a job by one of the UN humanitarian agencies in Kampala, Uganda. Kampala became my base for four years. First I worked as a telecommunications officer in the regional office of our organisation. Later I was promoted as the head of the regional Technical Support Unit. We looked after a vaste area covering Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Congo-Brazzaville.
After a second expedition to the Antarctic in 1997, Tine and Lana joined me in Uganda. Hannah, our second daughter joined us too. Two weeks old and already in Africa, probably marked her as a life long traveller.

Mats, another fellow radio amateur, joined our team, and together we founded FITTEST, which over the years grew to be the UN’s fast intervention support team. Side by side we have assisted in most of the humanitarian crisises in the world since 1997.

In 1999, I moved to Kosovo, and then to Islamabad, Pakistan. Tine said ‘she would rather be alone in Belgium than alone in some remote country’ and moved back to our home base. I started to work two months on and one month off, shuttling between home and work. A good decision it seemed afterwards, as with its global coverage, the work with FITTEST took me to well over a hundred countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Pacific, South and Central America. The funny thing was that once I got home, my ‘girls’ wanted to travel, so I was never really ‘home’ in Belgium for the past ten odd years.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we started our office in Dubai, where I worked until 2006.The office grew into one of the main UN humanitarian fast response facilities. Be in the midst of the Balkan’s crisis, the 9/11 fall out in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the tsunami, the refugee crisis in Darfur, or the Pakistan earthquake, we were always on the frontline of the activities, calling ourselves the ‘special forces’ of the humanitarians. ‘Fast is good, First is better’, was our motto. Work was always presenting new challenges and had many sudden twists and turns giving us sleepless nights and exciting days, to say the least.

In 2006, I decided to take a thirteen months’ sabbatical, so I could spend more time with my family, and do a bit of sailing. Taking that distance, I realized that as years flew by, my path crossed that of many people. Many situations came up unexpectedly, leading to funny, sad, moving or weird stories. I started to write them down. Some were published in magazines, some I wrote as Emails to friends, some I just jotted down for myself and some stuck in my memory.
During my sabbatical, I started this blog as an eBook, as a string of these stories.

Mid 2007, I started my new job, still as a humanitarian, but this time working in our Rome headquarters. But the blog continued. I added some stories of the travels I did with the family, sailing stories, and later on expanded with news items. All of them form “the tales while travelling The Road”, my “Road of Life”, my “Road to the Horizon”.

I dedicate these stories to Tine, Lana and Hannah, my “three girls”, under the motto: ‘It is easier to be a nutcase than to live with one’. Their love has kept me going.

A sincere thanks to Els and Ekram for the work they have done on the short stories, for their relentless editing, their encouragement and tips.

Peter.
peter(at)theroadtothehorizon(dot)org