How did I get here?
[i-Direction signs]
Sometimes, you get sucked into a situation. It is like a hole in the sand your in. While trying to climb out of it, you actually make the hole wider and deeper.
And as things progress, your efforts get more frantic and in the end you have a bloody deep hole.
Don't we all get 'sucked' into situations without even realizing it... And then, one day, you wake up, and look at it all with fresh eyes... When that happens to me, my AHA-thought concentrates around two things only: "How the hell did I get here?" and "How is it possible I have let it slip that far?"
An example, on a more lively and cheerful note: When I lived in Uganda, one morning the driver did not pick up my on time, and I nearly missed my flight.
I asked why he was late, and he shrugged:
- Not my fault...
- Why not?
- It was the neighbour's wife's brother fault.
- Why?
- I have an electric clock with an alarm, but it did not work.
- ...
- My neighbour had connected his electricity line to mine. He had locked up the connection in a box with a padlock.
- ...
- The wife had visited her brother.
- Whose wife?
- My neighbour's... She had visited her brother.
- ...
- She had left her keys there. The padlock key was amongst them.
- ...
- In the evening, she returned home. There was a shortcircuit in his electricity connection, which also shut off my electricity. They could not repair it, as they called the wife's brother to come with that key. But he did not.
- ....
- So my electric clock did now work, and I overslept...
To get up in the morning, the guy had to resolve the electricity problem, but ran into solving problems which were related to problems which were related to other problems which somehow related to the original problem...
And that is a problem, you see?
The LRA: unresolved questions
[i-LRA child soldiers]
Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) was founded back in 1987 as an armed opposition against the Ugandan government. At that time they based themselves in South Sudan, but operated mainly in Uganda.
They became mostly known through their numerous abuses and atrocities against civilians, including the abduction, rape, maiming, and killing of defenseless people. They regularly kidnap children to enslave them as child prostitutes and soldiers in there so-called "army".
Since they were pushed out of North Uganda in 2005, the LRA has been terrorizing civilians in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), South Sudan and Uganda, hopping over the borders.
In February this year, the Ugandan army - apparently aided by the US - tried to root out the LRA from DRC. The LRA retreated, killing 900 civilians in the process (Full)
Even just a few days ago, the LRA kidnapped around 135 villagers, including children, during two attacks in DRC's North East. (Full)
I invite you to look at this excellent video, one of the very few interviews ever made with Kony, the LRA's leader.
It stroke me how the LRA seems to be mostly a loosely knit group of bandits, clearly with a wide network of informants, held together by the Thuraya telephone network. There is no clear goal nor ideology behind the LRA. When Kony was asked "why are you fighting?", he answered "for democracy", but it did not go any deeper than that.
Add to these impressions that their overall troop strength is estimated anywhere between 500 and 3,000 soldiers (half of them estimated to be women and children), I am left with only two, but fundamental questions:
- How come nobody has been able to smoke out this gang of bandits (wanted by the ICC - International Criminal Court by the way)? In this day and age where technology exists and is routinely used to track the movement of people using satellite phones? Why is there an apparent unwillingness of the international community to make an end to these atrocities, which, to top it all up, continue to contribute to the instability in Eastern Congo, one of the longest lasting conflicts in Africa?
- Who supports these rebels? They would not be able to operate without the financial and logistics backing of an entity. What entity? Who would contribute to an instable South Sudan, Uganda and DRC? Khartoum?
Robbed. Or not.
[i-Flower on Lake Victoria]
I had a dream last night. I had just arrived in a country on field mission, and had left my computer bag and suitcase in the car while having a quick bite in a restaurant on the way from the airport. When I came back, the windows were open and everything in the car was stolen.
Made me think of the times I have been robbed. Knowing I have been to the world's worst (and poorest) places, only few times actually:
Once my attache case was stolen from the car in Goma. In Kampala, they opened a window on the ground floor and grabbed everything they could get hold of through the safety bars.
In transit from Angola to Malawi, they stole $1,000 from the double bottom in my camera bag in Zimbabwe.
And in Rome, they robbed the house I was living in, and nicked the GPS out of my car.
But once, I was really lucky. A few years ago, I was driving around in Kampala, trying to find a place that sold galvanized nuts and bolts - a rare commodity back then. After parking the car near the matatu station I sped out of the car to a shop, only to find that... I had no wallet. Went back to the car, and recalled I had put my wallet on my lap while driving. Probably it had fallen out of the car as I got out.
I was sitting in the car, my heart in my shoes (Flemish saying) while thinking of my wallet's content: National and Ugandan ID card, credit cards, cash, drivers license, debit cards... God, it would take me ages to replace it all. And many phone calls to block all cards...
A guy knocked on the side window. He said "Are you missing anything, sir?". "Yes", I sighed. He asked: "I think I know where to get it, how much is it worth to you?" I answered: "Two hundred shilling".
"Wait", he mumbled and sped off.
A few minutes later, which seemed like hours, he re-appeared and gave me my wallet. I could not believe it. Everything was still in it. All credit cards, all papers, even the cash.
I could have kissed the guy. I gave him 300 shilling. He returned my gesture with a big smile. I waved and drove off. Thinking of how lucky, and how blessed I was that day.
Acute hunger spots in the world
[i-Drought in Karamoja - Uganda]
Myanmar faces food shortages in many parts of the country, largely because of last year's cyclone Nargis destroyed most of the delta's harvest and a rat infestation wiped out most of the remaining crops.
A total of 2 million acres (800,000 hectares) of rice paddy were submerged saltwater waves and 85 percent of seed stocks were destroyed. A shortage of labor - 130,000 were left dead after Nargis - higher fertilizer prices and lower rice prices have dissuaded delta farmers from planting, causing about 185,000 tons of emergency food aid needed this year. (Full)
There is a general alert going out for an upcoming wave of hunger due to a drought in the Horn of Africa:
In Uganda's Karamoja region 970,000 people are heading towards starvation. The Government declared the whole region as an emergency area and said "food must [quickly] be distributed to this area to avert this problem." Drought conditions will cause conditions unlikely to improve before October when the next harvest is due. (Full)
The same regional drought also hit Kenya hard. In the South-eastern regions, the third consecutive bad crop will force 3.2 million people to resort to food aid. (Full)
Since August last year, WFP, the UN's main food assistance agency, has lost 4 staff in Somalia due to security incidents. Last week they said if the situation does not improve, they will be forced to cut their food aid, which will affect 2.5 million people. (Full)
In Zimbabwe, the hunger figures are even worse. The prolonged political turmoil has turned Africa's former breadbasket into one of the continent's poorest countries. Currently 4.5 million Zimbabweans are fully dependent on food aid, a figure expected to raise to 6 million in the next month.
Due to lack of donor funding, WFP has been forced to cut core monthly maize rations from 10kg -already 2kg below the recommended ration- to 5kg a month for adults. That is just about 600 calories a day. (Full)
News discovered via NewsFeeds and AidNews.
Picture courtesy James Akena (WFP)
News: North Uganda - The Worst Place To Be a Child
Mother and child in Karamoja[i-Mother and child in Karamoja]The remote Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda has such poor health indicators that up to 100 children younger than five die each week, many of preventable illnesses.
UNICEF said the region was "off-track in meeting health and nutrition-related Millennium Development Goals. Karamoja is the worst place to be a child, with highly elevated levels of early childhood mortality and morbidity." (Full)
More posts on The Road about Uganda
Picture courtesy Glenna Gordon/IRIN
Rumble: Uganda Flooding
In a previous post I reported on the airlifts of relief goods to North Uganda assisting with the flood emergency.
[i-link][i-link][i-link]Pictures courtesy Hugo van Vuuren
For updated humanitarian news, check out The Other World News Read the full post...
Rumbles: Writing Friends
Two of my friends started writing down some of their stories. Both work in the same "business" as I do. Our paths, our roads, crossed many years ago, and continued to overlap since then.
link[i-link]Ladies first: I met Marie-France (who features as the mysterious "MF" in some of my posts) about eleven years ago (in 1996) in Ivory Coast. We were first introduced by a common friend, in a bar, said "Hi", and that was it. We met two weeks later at a party, where she said "Hey, I am leaving next week, and will start to work with the World Food Programme!". I answered: "Hey coincidence, so am I!". (MF remembers me because that night I was wearing a fluorescent T-shirt saying 'Save the coral'. "You always have a soft spot for designer clothes", E. would say... hahaha).
Anyway, long story short. MF went to work in far and remote Ngara (West Tanzania), I was a few hundred kilometers further in Kampala (Uganda), and we would not speak again for about a year. One evening, I was working late in the evening, and she called in to our radio room, asking for an Email exchange (see this post about the radio email system we developped at that time). Being the only one left in the office, I picked up the radio call, and we started talking. That was in 1998. After a few radio-talks, MF disappeared from the radar, and we met again, over Email, two years later, when she was posted in Rome and I was in Pakistan.. We have kept better contact since then... MF started two blogs, one with her stories as a humanitarian aid worker and one about her new role in life, as mum to Xinfa.
link[i-link]Mats (left in the picture), I met over the radio waves many many years ago, in the late eighties when he was travelling in the Pacific. He was a fanatic ham, just as I was at that time. One day he wrote me an Email saying he was interested to work in the humanitarian world, and a few weeks later, he joined us in Kampala. A classic annecdote I still pull his leg with, was just before joining, he asked if we, as UN humanitarians, were wearing uniforms... He has, we have, come a long way since then, and he features in many of my shortstories. We worked together in Uganda, started FITTEST, the UN's first emergency technical intervention team, we did many missions and emergency interventions together, to end up in Dubai together. We set up and run the WFP base in Dubai for five years. We have been complimentary in many ways. He being more the rational thinker, the one who put systems and procedures in the chaos I created, as the one running on feelings and impressions... Read Mats' travel stories here.
Rumble: Technology and Humanitarian Relief Work
I am a relief worker. Yet, I am not the one handing out food to the hungry, I do not help stacking bricks to build houses in remote villages damaged by floods. Nor do I work in a hospital taking care of those wounded in a civil war. I am a technical person and work in a technical area. I have a support function in the chain of things. Sometimes I feel far from the reality of the actual relief work (see this post and this one). Rewarding then are those moments when one of the technical products or services I am involved in, catches on, and is seen as having a direct and relevant impact on our relief work.
I just found back this article, written by Paul Harris in Alertnet (a Reuters subsidiary) ten years ago. It describes a system called DFMS, the Deep Field Mailing System. DFMS brought 'affordable Email' to the masses using 'free air waves', during the times where satellite communications costed USD 5 per minute at 9,600 baud...
This post might be a bit techy, but interesting for those interested :-) Allow me my 5 minutes of glory, ha!
UN TELECOMMUNICATIONS BREAKTHROUGH PIONEERED IN CENTRAL AFRICA
By Paul Harris
KAMPALA, Nov 16 1997 (Alertnet) -
Peter is an enthusiast. Peter Casier, a 38 year-old Belgian, has headed up the World Food Programme's Technical Support Unit (TSU) in Kampala, Uganda for the past two and a half years. Technical support may not sound exactly like the most exciting end of the aid business but, in fact, the Uganda-based operation has become the model for telecommunications operations throughout the UN: that's why Peter and members of his team flew out from Uganda Saturday night - destination Honduras on open ended assignment to set up telecomms for the Central American relief effort.
Telecomms are just three years old in WFP. They started in Kampala with Peter and his team. Today, the 15-strong team - 13 locals and just two internationals - handle satellite, HF and VHF comms, IT, computers, provision of power, and repair and maintenance of all electronic equipment right the way across a broad swathe of central Africa from Brazzaville in the west to Dar es Salaam in the east.
link[i-link]The WFP telecomms operation is based on high frequency (HF) communications which are both prevalent and familiar to UN staff. Kampala has integrated 82 stations (including ten e-mail carriers) into the network and, most significantly, has devised the technology whereby e-mail communications can be reliably exchanged using HF radios connected to a data modem: what is termed the Deep-Field Mailing System (DFMS). Currently, the system is handling more than 200,000 e-mails a month, representing three gigabytes of data, both within the region and to and from the Internet.
Peter is justifiably proud of the achievement. "The great thing is we can be totally independent of any public infrastructure - telephones, electricity or communications."
There are several advantages to DFMS, which became fully operational during 1997, as usage was extended to WFP's Implementing Partners and sister UN agencies. The cost savings have been substantial; field security has been improved and operational effectiveness enhanced. Additionally, remote locations and field workers have been connected to the Internet. DFMs utilises a standard e-mail programme which can carry any type of attachment, be it Word document, digital picture or, even, sound. Each station - office, car or mobile HQ - has its own unique Internet e-mail address; all are connected by HF radio, or local telephone lines, to an e-mailserver which is, in turn, connected to the Kampala nerve centre by HF radio, local telephone lines or the Internet. Kampala is connected to the Internet via a dedicated 64 Kbps full time dedicated link to a local service provider "direct into the dish" to go around any local failures.
The monthly running cost of regional DFMS is just US$10,400 comprising landline and Internet link costs. if this system were still to be running on conventional fax traffic, it is estimated that the monthly cost would be in excess of US$1.5 million and the annual saving in the region is reckoned at round US$20 million ! The saving on using commercial e-mail at $0.30 per Kbyte is still very substantial indeed - around US$8 million a year.
There have been some dramatic and successful uses of DFMS. HF e-mail stations were set up during the East Zaire emergency and an air ops base to cover evacuations from Uvira was set up at Entebbe within just six hours. WFP was among the first UN agencies to enter Congo/Brazzaville after the civil war. The TSU team entered Brazzaville armed with a mobile HF radio e-mail system installed in a car and a digital camera (Ed: see this shortstory). As the report observes, "Digital pictures were taken from Brazzaville town, the remains of our former offices and UN compounds, and emailed to WFP Kampala and Rome, as well as to UNICEF HQ while they were still shooting in the streets next to us...".
link[i-link]TSU in Kampala have also developed the '141',as it is known. Not just a Ugandan-registered WFP heavy duty Landcruiser, Peter says "it is a concept": a complete mobile emergency communications centre. TSU has equipped it with extra batteries for powering telecomms equipment; an e-mail station using HF radio; HF voice comms; VHF mobile radio; air band radio for communicating with helicopters and fixed wing aircraft; satellite telephone; computer, digital camera and printer; and radio masts. The vehicle is kept in a constant state of readiness: emergency kits are put in the back, it can be driven onto a Buffalo aircraft and landed in the bush. "All the main communications features are up as the car drives out of the plane, with full features deployed within the next five minutes. You can send/receive e-mails and photographs to and from anywhere in the world, telephone to/from anywhere in the world and support handheld radios to a radius of 30 km."
The concept has been well received further afield and a '141' will shortly be operating in Honduras. The Kampala-based unit has been favourably reviewed by UNSECOORD (the UN Security Coordinator's Office) and World Vision plans to equip several vehicles similarly. So successful has DFMS proved, a commercial imitator, Bushnet, set up by two 'breakaway'members of Peter's team, has established itself in Kampala and is working with both commercial and NGO clients providing deep field e-mail connections. They, in turn, have been so successful, two other companies in Uganda are preparing similar services. The NGO Uganda Connectivity has set up e-mail postal services in remote areas using the TSU's technology and manufacturer Codan, a name familiar to all NGOs and IGOs using HF radios, uses the Kampala TSU for consultancy work in exchange for equipment.
As Peter says, "The UN has developed a system that has been picked up commercially by big companies who want to exploit it. I believe this operation is unique."
His claims are graphically endorsed as the telephone rings in his office. It's the WFP Emergency Response Centre in Rome. He listens intently. "I guess we could be on a plane tomorrow," he asserts. And then, covering the 'phone with his hand, "Right, everybody. We're off to Honduras !".
The humanitarian relief work is a weird world. Check out this post if you want to have a clearer insight.
Rumble: One Thing I Didn't Do This Sabbatical
As I said before, there was no set plan what I wanted to do during this sabbatical. One thing I did think off was to write a novel. A love story partially set in Africa.
I wrote the first twenty pages in the Caribbean but never completed it. Oh, and I wrote the ending too.
I don't have a plot. Not written anyway. It is all in my head. That, and the title. Here are the first lines:
At last the sun rose, in a veil of pink, orange and red, bright, and vivid. The clouds forming a low mist ring around the hills, tried to hold on as long as they could, sheltering the valleys from the warm sun to come. Wrinkles of smoke coming from some huts and villages in-between the hills mixed with the mist, creating the unique intense smell of humid wood fire –almost sandalwood - he always linked to this place. The leaves from the banana trees, the palms, the mango trees in the garden would be dripping of dew by now..
The mango tree. ‘The big one’, she called the one in the corner of the garden in his house. ‘You know, Jack, the big one, is one of the reasons why I always come here, to your house’, she once said laying with her head on his chest on the deck chairs on the terrace, ‘Him and you.. The big one always gives me shade when I want to sit here on your terrace, and you… you… give me everything else.. almost..’ Her mouth had curled into her typical mysterious smile.. Sometimes she was so difficult to follow, to understand, to grasp. Spoke in a symbolic language one moment, and was so direct in her remarks and questions at other times that it hurt. Jack remembered that moment. He had kissed her forehead and stroke her hair. The moment, that weekend had been perfect, and there were no needs for words.
The sun climbed fast, and he got out of the vehicle, looking at the sky.. ‘Where were they?’ Wagonga, from the air control tower, called him on his walkietalkie. ‘Jack, channel 14, HF’. He jumped back in the car, switched on the shortwave radio, and tuned the antenna. The background noise disappeared and he heard clearly ‘Roger Entebbe Control, runway 14, approaching and switching to VHF 118.2. United Nations UK95 out’. Good old Sam’s voice… He did not see the twin engine plane yet, but he knew which direction it would come from, and tried to focus his sight on the horizon. Once again both Jack and Sam were connected to her. Both of them had, without hesitation, taken control of the situation and done what needed to be done. ‘Lisa, my god, Lisa.’ He looked over Lake Victoria at the end of the runway, trying to spot the approaching plane, and imagined how the fishermen must be making their way for their daily catch of Nile Perch, the local delicatessen, and then tie the fish over the back of their bicycle and ride them to the market later today.
The Beechcraft plane had switched on its bright white landing lights, and for a while this was the only thing he could see, those lights, as it approached. Sam made a perfect landing, idled the pitch of the propellers and turned onto the tarmac in front of the airport building, coming to a standstill fifty meters from Jack’s car and the Red Cross plane next to it.
For a moment, there was no more Entebbe airport, no more people rushing about, getting the Red Cross plane ready. No more friends and colleagues standing around him, no more doctor and nurse walking to Sam’s plane. He just focused on the door of the plane. It swept open, and Sam, good old Sam, pulled the stairs out, and started to give orders to the ground crew. Sam came up to him: ‘Jack, come with me.’ and snapped him out of his daydreaming. No more shouting now, but a soft, considerate, determined voice. ‘Jack, she came to conscience just for a minute during the ride. She called for you. Go with her, you have my blessing. Take care of her, she is in a bad shape.’. As he turned away his head, not to show his tears, his voice broke ‘Please take good care of her, she is now in your hands. Yours and God’s.’
Jack’s mechanical and practical mind took over, as he walked to the stairs of Jack’s plane. He instructed the handling crew to take her stretcher slowly and horizontally. The nurse held the plastic bag of serum up, and slowly they moved her to the waiting plane. Before he knew it, the engines started up, and he was sitting next to her.
‘Lisa, Lisa’, was all what his heart said, whispered, shouted, cried. It was weird, she did not look different from the last time he saw her, about two weeks ago, when she left for her usual one month tour of duty in Gulu, about one hours flight north of here. A normal goodbye, a hug, a kiss, a ‘be careful’. But he forgot in this line of work, each goodbye might mean two people might never see each other again. ‘How much we all had taken life for granted. Did I really enjoy every single moment I shared with her? To the fullest? It might have all been past now, with no more future. Never a word again from her, not a glance, not a touch, not a breath’, he thought, as he touched her hand and moved a brush of her long black hair way from her face. Her face felt hot, but it looked like she was sleeping, in a soft deep sleep, resting. The doctor lifted the white sheet covering Lisa, and only then Jack saw the wound in her side, and the blood on the sheet. The deep cut from the machete.
Maybe for the next sabbatical? Read the full post...
Rumble: Others Do It So Much Better Than Me #1: Pernille in Uganda
link[i-link]While writing for my blog, and doing research for some of the stories in the eBook, I came across some interesting material. So interesting, it actually made me a bit jealous. "There are a lot of people out there that Do It Much Better Than Me", I'm thinking.
That is why I am starting a new Blog-thread called just that: "Others Do It So Much Better Than Me." This is the first one in a series pointing to travel-jewels I found.
I lived in Uganda for four years. I wrote a few shortstories for the eBook about it: The Ugly Duckling, Kadee and Abby One and Abby Two. There are some more in the making.
However, I found a blog-site reflecting exactly how I always wanted to write about daily life in Uganda: I've left Copenhagen for Uganda.
It is written by Pernille, a Danish lady working for the MS (the Danish Association for International Co-operation) in North Uganda.
It is the ONLY blogsite I visit daily, being curious for updates.
Pernille writes fluently, witty, inventive, sometimes cynical, mad, disillusioned, happy... about both daily life in Uganda, her work as development worker, and the issues of development and Africa in general. And she does it in an appealing well-presented blog.
She often inserts amazing pictures in her blog, pictures you can find back in the Flickr directory she links to. The images are often very simple, but -especially the shots of people- have a lot of weight and depth. Just superb. My 2nd-hand-printed-then-scanned-it-on-my-old-nineties-scannerthingie-pictures have no comparison with her magnificent stuff.. Really.
And I wished I could write like she does.
She Does It So Much Better Than Me. I've left Copenhagen for Uganda. If you like stories of daily life in Africa, visit her blogsite and bookmark it. I did.
Please fill in the local poll and give me much needed feedback about my blog.
Rumble: My Head Fell Off the Cabinet
link[i-link]
Things I have to say, part 1:
I got this hat in 2002 as a good-bye present from the staff in our Afghanistan and Pakistan offices. It is an Afghani Chief's hat.
A colleague of mine kept on referring to it as my 'ead. I understood 'head', and had no clue what he was talking about. "Nice 'ead!". "Gee, well, thanks, I had it all my life!". "No, the 'ead, not your 'ead!" Anyway, since then, I referred to my hat as my 'head'. This morning, it fell off the bookshelf, where it had been sitting quietly for the past few years. My 'ead fell down.. (and was nicely dented).
Anyway, that is besides the point, also besides the point is that I got this 'ead at a party the Islamabad staff threw for me the evening before I was to fly to my new duty station. That was just before Martin and Robert thought it would be a good idea to have a 'last one' in the Islamabad UN club, and they introduced me to a bottle of "Skone Aquavit". I could not remember much anymore after that. I do remember, I missed my plane the next morning, and had the worse hangover ever! I went back to the office. Martin and Robert looked at me with a real wide grin, and C. turned her head away... I must have had a look with question marks on my face, as Robert said "You don't remember anything anymore, do you?". Well I did not. Apparently, we got pretty jolly, started to dial everyone who was so unlucky to have their number stored on my mobile phone. 'Last numbers dialed' revealed we called all over the world. Once again my public apologies to all!!! I know it must have been late in Sydney, and early in California! And sorry if I said anything to offend you!
During that 'dark' period, we seemed to have run into C. plus husband who had a late dinner in the club. I must have made a disgrace of myself, as since then, C.'s husband does not want to talk to me anymore.
Martin also told me that the traffic cop did not think it was funny when we stood at the crossroad on the way back home, and I pulled out a whistle from my pocket too as I claimed to do a better job than him.
I think that was the last time I got drunk.
Anyway, that is besides the point! Besides the point! THE POINT IS: I took "my 'ead falling off the bookshelf" as a sign. Now we are getting serious here: I started this 'The Road to the Horizon"-blogsite as a way to publish the short stories I wrote in the past years, months. I started the blogsite three weeks ago. It was the first time I published a blog, or published anything -for that matter- on the Internet myself. Little did I know that I was going to get so much response and readers... In just the last two days, I had 436 visitors from 24 countries. (thanks NeoCounter and Clustrmaps for the figures!). Scary!
While writing and publishing the articles, I also found that 'merely publishing' the eBook (that is what I like to call 'The Road to the Horizon': a dynamic eBook - dynamic as I publish the stories as I am writing and editing them), was not really taking advantage of the blog features:
- I started to add pictures, video and music links, links to other websites
- I could get interactive feedback on the articles
- Could connect to 'equally minded' bloggers
- Writing a short story takes a week from start to finish. That is too long for blogs which need more regular updates.
- The short-stories are typically too much of a long-story for a blog-reader. Several of you indicated you wanted shorter stories
On top of all of this, while writing the eBook short-stories, I also discovered that in the grey corners of my memories, many small-stories or anecdotes started to pop up, which were too short to publish as an eBook story. But still interesting enough to publish. So where better than in this blog to publish them?
SO: As my 'ead fell off the bookshelf, I got the idea to separate the blogs and the eBook stories. The latter would get into the eBook directory (appropriately called 'My eBook Chapters' - see top half of the right column on this page), The 'Most Recent Posts' will then show all publications as I am posting them. Most recent first. The non-articles would get a title prefix-ed with the word "Rumble". A nice distinction, no? I tell you, I have my moments of enlightenment!
In all of that, I probably confused you. If so, forget about what I just told you, and continue reading, and giving me feedback.
Things I have to say - Part 2:
I am writing a couple of new short stories, but it might take a while before they are publish-able. The main reason is that I am busy editing another eBook: Verslaafd aan de Horizon or 'Addicted to the Horizon'. I wrote it thirteen years ago as a logbook of my first three expeditions to the Pacific and Antarctica. It is published (in Dutch) in a blog format, and looks pretty cool. I am adding pictures at this moment. So even if you do not speak Dutch, go and have a look at the pictures! Here is a screen shot of the title page:
[i-link] So you will have to excuse me now, as I have more work to do. Enjoy the reading and continue feeding me with comments on the eBooks-stories. Or this blog. And fill in the survey in the right column please....
For the latest eBook story, click here to read " How We Conquered the Mountain "
Read the full post...The Ugly Duckling
I thought Mats was joking in the email he sent me, while I was out on mission. ‘It finally has been put out of its misery, Peter.’, he said, ‘It is done now. Its suffering has ended. Your Landrover is no more.. A wall fell on it.’
I looked at the pictures showing how the seven meter tall wall surrounding our office parking had collapsed. My car was covered with tons of rubble. I could barely see part of the side window and a tire sticking out.
The guys in the Kampala office always took the piss out of my Landrover. They said the car could only make it from the workshop to home and would then break down. “As your house is up a hill, you do not need the engine to come down anyway”, they joked, “Just release the hand break – correction, that does not work anyway -,so pull the stone from underneath the wheel – and let it run off the hill until you reach the workshop. You let them work on it for a day, and in the evening you can make it up the hill again!” They exaggerated a bit, though… It was not that bad! Most of the time, I could make it home twice without a repair pit stop! The funny thing was, as they repaired one thing, something else broke. I suspected they used my car for spare parts. Or took out a working piece, only to put it back again once I returned the car the next day, charging me an arm and a leg for the work done.. The fuel tank always showed ‘empty’ when I picked up the car also. And my light bulbs would disappear.
The car was a challenge, I have to admit. I bought it second hand. Well, fifth-hand was more like it. It was a dirt-blue, 10 year old short-wheel base Landrover 90. It looked sturdy and quite macho with its squared shape and minimum of comfort. The seats were a sheet of plywood covered with foam filled pleather, which always glued to my legs in the heat. There were no electronic car accessories and those few electrical features like the headlights or the windscreen wipers were controlled by sturdy handles, not touch buttons. The gas and break pedals squealed like a piglet readied for the slaughterhouse. I had to refill the brake fluid every other day. I had a spare gas tank installed, as the car consumed so much fuel I had to stop by the gas station every three days. To get the fuel from the spare to the main tank, I had to switch on an electric pump which I think they got from a washing machine. Well, at least the noise resembled that of a washing machine.
The boys and their toys.. I had always dreamed of owning a Landrover. Something to do with the pictures from the Camel Trophy. I often thought of the Camel Trophy, driving around in Kampala with roads flooded from a rain squall and water almost reaching into the cabin. Most of the time I had to take off my shoes and roll up my trousers when driving during the rainy season. Negotiating my way up and down the hill to reach home was no less of a challenge. I did not want to spend money to replace the old tires, which had no more grip - I needed all my money for the mechanical repair anyway. This made driving in the lowest gear, skidding left and right in the slippery mud, in between potholes and ditches the rain had cut through the steep mud track up ‘our hill’, certainly resembled a Camel Trophy challenge. I was always glad I made it home in one piece. You might not believe it, but I always actually looked forward to the adventure of driving home in the evening. Like arriving home in the evening was an achievement.
When Tine joined me in Kampala and saw the car for the first time, she laughed and called it ‘our ugly duckling’. She needed a car as there was not one shop to buy everything that keeps a household running. Even just the food, we would have to buy from different shops, spread all over town. Often the wives of the expats would call each other with the latest shopping news.. ‘You know near Nakasero, there is a small shop on the corner where they had French cheese yesterday.’ or ‘Remember the butcher in Kabalagala? They start selling packed lamb chops as of next week!’. ‘Fresh yoghurt at the Star supermarket near the matatu station today!’. So Tine got the Landrover. I admired her, six months pregnant and racing around town, from shop to shop. She said it took a bit of planning to find a parking spot facing down hill, so she could jump start the car in second gear, as the battery was dead most of the time. She explained in certain flat areas of town, the kids would recognize her – and the car – and hang around until she got out of the shop, as they knew she would ask them to push-start the car. Tine would always give them some change when they helped her.
At first Lana, two years old then, did not like the Landrover. Having only front seats, we had to fix her baby seat with straps and ropes in the back. But each trip we did, she would cry her heart out. We could never figure out what was wrong, until we noticed she always tried to get up to look through the windows while her shoulder straps would keep her down. So we raise the baby seat by strapping it onto two big aluminum packing crates. Then she was happy. As the car would bounce around over the unpaved roads, we had to fix the seat real well with straps and buckles. It looked a bit like a pilot’s jump seat in a fighter plane. Our two year old in her jump seat…
My Landrover was not only famous for its mechanical problems. I never got its paperwork fixed either. First it took me a year to get the registration papers from the previous owner who had left the country. To get the car officially transferred to me, it had to go through inspection. The official inspection shop was not much more than a shack with a huge pit dug in the ground, and a guy holding out his hand asking for ‘Pesa’ (‘Money’). I always refused to give bribes and would answer him ‘Hakuna pesa’ (‘No money’). So my car never made it through inspection, even though it was in much better shape than the thousands of wrecks driving around in town…
And now the wall killed my car. Finally, the car was put out of its misery. I thought…! However, Edward, the landlord of our office building, felt so guilty about his wall falling on my car, he paid for the repair, in an ultimate attempt to revive it. Call it car-CPR ! The axles and chassis were still ok, it just needed ‘a bit’ of body work. He paid a ‘body work shop’ – another shack with a pit in the ground, to bang out all the dents and put in new windows. To top it all off, he had the car spray painted so it looked better than it ever did before. We towed my Landrover from the body work shop and left it parked in front of the office, as the body work had not solved its engine problems… If it was a human being, we could say, it was kept alive artificially, but could not live without external help…
To be honest with you, I almost gave up on our ugly duckling, by the time I got reassigned to Kosovo and had to sell off all of our belongings. Fred, one of our local technicians, bought the car for about a tenth of what I paid for it. That was not including all the repairs. Months later, my teasing colleagues wrote to me, a modern age miracle had happened: Fred had put a new engine in the Landrover, got the car registered in his name, and the ‘ugly duckling’ was now on the road again. Guess miracles do happen. On the other hand, probably it took a miracle to keep the old Landrover on the road in Uganda. With a bit of bribing. Or maybe it is just the patience needed to sit next to the car as it is being repaired to make sure they don’t steal parts of your engine, siphon off your fuel and run off with your light bulbs…
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Kadee
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.
kd2[i-kd2]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…
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Wapi Yo?
Kampala, October 14 1999.
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
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Abby One and Abby Two
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’.
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The Road to the Horizon - Introduction
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.
link[i-link]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. Ilink[i-link] 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!”.
Making a living
Many a time, life is determined by coincidences. The art of living, I think, is often to catch those coincidences, those signs and to use them as opportunities. One time such a coincidence happened. I am a ham, a radio amateur. At that time, I was a fanatic ham. One weekend, we were operating a ham radio competition from a friend’s home. Paul, one of the other radio operators, was a friend from the Howland expedition. During the contest, he received a phone call from someone offering him a job working for the United Nations as telecom specialist. I had never even heard the UN took civilian telecom people. I thought it was all military. Little did I know. I talked to Paul about it, that weekend. It looked interesting. Was this the road to take? I could put my skills as radio amateur and professional IT expert, to a good use. Travelling, working with people, and at the same time work for the humanitarian cause sparked off a lot of day dreaming in me.
Angola was my first trip to Africa. And it was an eye opener. I had expected a hot and humid savannah, with loads of wild life, and villages made of clay huts. Quiet nights with stars overhead. Instead of all that romantic stuff, I got an flat in the middle of Luanda, with plenty of noise from hundreds of television sets and radios, each one tuned to shout over the other. And machine gunshots blasting in the city the whole night.
But the job was exactly as I expected it to be. Telecommunications. Loads of freedom to plan my job as I wanted. Loads of independent work, with improvisations every day. Meeting lovely people. One day, I was driving off to a town in the middle of the bush, another day I was flown into a shelled and deserted town given a few hours to install a complete radio station from scratch, training people in Portuguese how to operate a radio. And no, I do not speak Portuguese. Talking about challenges... I remember one night I was climbing a tree in the pitch dark to hang up a dipole antenna, thinking how much I enjoyed this work.
Fifteen years later
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.link[i-link]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".
Early 2010, after almost three years in Rome, I went to the Dominican Republic to head the support office for the Haiti Earthquake for six month. It was my first emergency deployment since three years, and I felt like a fish in the water. A great team, a massive workload, and an opportunity to put things into perspective.
In June 2010, I decided to take another sabbatical. Needed to spend more time with the family, and wanted to try out projects I had in mind since a long time: expanding on my experience in social media I am now adventuring into a new world stimulating the use of social media for different non-profit organisations. All while shuttling between the family in Belgium, my base in Rome and several field based assignments.
Once more, I don't know where I will end up, but I trust destiny to show me the right way.
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.
Peter.
peter(at)theroadtothehorizon(dot)org
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