Musing on India - Part 2
All that glitters is not gold
All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgement old
Your answer had not been inscroll'd
Fare you well, your suit is cold.
From "The Merchant of Venice"
by W.Shakespeare
90% of what is to know about a country, you will pick up within the first minute you leave the airport. You will understand 90% of what there is to know about a hotel, within the first minute after you walk through the entrance.
"Mmmmm", says Raj as she looks up the grey facade of the "Nagpal Regency". I agree with her, and we walk in together. Kinda of marble floor. Glitters for the evening's wedding. Staff in uniform. Apparently they don't have any booking for us, but have spare rooms. Which I'd like to see first.
Shady people walk out of the elevator as we're going up. Thin foam mattresses lay against a wall on the third floor, with spotted and torn covers. The floor is covered with a filthy sheet.
The room the receptionist shows us, has no window, the bathroom is as spotless as a Delhi dark alley way, and it looks like the bed covers were white in the 18th century. Which might also be the time they were last changed, according to the spots on it. It does not look like sheets are changed after guests check out.
"Excellent, thank you very much", I say with an acid smile, and walk out as fast as I can.
"And?", my travel companions ask. "Rented by the hour", I answer, as we drive to the next hotel. "Friends Regency" looks much better. And smells better too.
Two days later, we are editing the last videos, as the car is waiting to drive us back to Delhi, an eight hours nighttime ordeal. And as a true storm engulfs Ludhiana into a dark doomsday feeling...
Dust kicks up as high as the fourth floor, while we try to cut the last video scenes. Around us, it looks like heaven got invaded by hell. Lightning crashes around us. Pieces of corrugated metal, cardboard and other undefined flying objects are kicked up by the wind, and battered down by the thick screen of rain.
Inches above us, on the hotel's roof, the huge publicity billboards collapse under the high winds, and a dozen people run around, trying to keep the boards from flying off. All on the roof just above our head.
Those are the times where one has to switch into "Ommmmm"-mode, abstracting one's self from surrounding's reality and concentrate on the task at hand. You do your work step by step, and forget about the rest. There is not much you can do about the storm, the junk on the roof, and the nightly drive.
Even though, for a moment, curiosity got the better of me, and I sneak around the corner to see what's up on the roof. And discover that most of the hotel personnel seems to live on tiny shacks on the roof. Shacks which have all but collapsed in the wind. The empty wine bottles are still neatly stacked in the corner.
False beauty is only skin deep.
(to be continued...) Read the full post...
Musing on India - Part 1
[i-Hyderabad]
Most of the time, I feel inspired when I come back from my field trips. Especially the previous trips to Kenya, Mali, Ghana and Burkina Faso have been inspiring. I had the privilege to talk to dozens of farmers on practical techniques they adopted to cope with the changing environment.
In Africa, most of these stories were encouraging, positive, with a "rolling up our sleeves"-attitude. Not so for my India trip. Not much of that "rolling up our sleeves", and me not feeling invigorated.
I realize I only saw a small part of India, and my views are just snapshots, fragmented and highly subjective. Even though it was my third or fourth trip, the time I spent there was nothing but a mini-flash of the whole picture which India represents.
[i-Map India]
We flew into Hyderabad, where I gave training sessions about social media on the ICRISAT campus, an oasis of calm and peace in a hectic Hyderabad. I loved that part of the trip. Truly inspiring to see the other side of the "food chain": the nonprofit agricultural research.
Then we flew to Delhi, drove to Punjab for interviews with farmers, drove back to Delhi, flew to Bihar for more farmer interviews, and flew back to Delhi.
[i-Man on Indian market]
Much of my impressions are the same as those I retained after my visits ten years ago: hectically busy on the streets, people wherever you look, cars honking endlessly and purposely, smoking chimneys wherever you look, smog, dirt almost everywhere.
I don't think I saw a single river which was not filled with crap. I don't think I stood at any point where I could say "this is rural". High-tension electricity poles, mobile phone towers and factories about everywhere.
[i-Punjab farmer]
Luckily, it was winter, and the temperatures were low to moderate. In Delhi and Punjab, a mist-slash-smog hung over the cities. While we did the interviews with farmers in Punjab, against the bright green wheat fields, topped with a white misty sky, I thought I could be standing in a field back home in Belgium, during spring. Not much of a difference at first glance. At least not on the surface.
But there are things on the surface and then there are things below the surface.
(to be continued...)
Picture of the Day: The loo with the most exciting view
[i-toilet on Antarctica]
Just before leaving home, I found back a box with pictures, randomly mixed. I scanned some of them.
This one was taken in 1994, during our first expedition to Antarctica. I once wrote a couple of shortstories about the landing, "a day in paradise" and the departure on this remote island.
We set up camp on a glacier, a few hundred feet above the ocean with a 270 degree view of the ice bergs floating by.
Not much more than a wooden crate on its side with tarps tied on poles to protect it, it would probably still win the price of "The Loo with the World's Most Exciting View".
Apart from the fact that the outhouse was pretty exposed, so we never spent one second longer than we had too.. Question of preserving body parts.
You've been an aidworker for too long (2)
[i-Red Cross Tshirt]
You've been an aidworker for too long if...
Half of garderobe consist of Tshirts from past emergencies.
[i-UN Tshirt]
UN - Afghanistan 2002/Iraq 2003
[i-UNHCR Tshirt]
UNHCR - Goma 1995
[i-Lifeline Sudan Tshirt]
UN - Lokichoggio 1996
PS: Top Tshirt was IFRC Angola 1994
Snapped: Fall phallus symbol
[i-Palm phallus symbol]
As the palm trees in my neighbourhood get trimmed for the winter, a friend of mine said: "Peter, it looks like you live in the middle of giant phallus symbols".
The Snapped Series: mobile phone shots from the hip.
15 years ago, I was on the most remote place in the world
[i-storm on Peter I island]
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.
[i-Antarctica with Peter I Island]
It took our expedition team 6 days to get there, departing with an ice breaker from the Falklands - by itself not known to be the most frequented tourist destination.
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.
[i-Peter on Peter I]
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.
[i-Honey, I chartered a plane... Our C130 on King George island]
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!
Rumble: Sahara!
cars between rocks[i-cars between rocks]
"Y", a friend of "E" sent me this story. A story of a rally turn love affair with the desert.
It all started with…
It all started with phone call from my brother in law, asking if I wanted to go to the Libya Desert Challenge. The rally is mostly made up of people from Belgium, Holland, and Germany, under the umbrella of the Paris-Dakar Rally. So my answer was “Yes, of course.”
A few weeks later, we walked out of Sebha airport, greeted by plenty of people holding up signs. We found our guides, who grabbed our bags and loaded them in the vehicles. In a few minutes, we were off to what was supposed to be a short trip to the camp…
link[i-link]Around two hours and plenty of check points later, we stopped and asked how much longer we had. We were told: “About 2 more hours”. Ok cool, no biggie. A few hours later, we were getting rather antsy and we were told “Another hour or so”.
We were tired at that point, but still in a good mood and flying down the road.
Eventually what was supposed to be an hour long ride became an eight-hour road trip through the Sahara, ending up near a city called Ghat, along the Algerian-Libyan border. We were trying to find where to branch off the road to go to the camp but at 3:30 am with no street lights or signs, it can be quite difficult.
Next thing I know we start looking for tire tracks. And when we found some, we started counting how tracks, if they were new or not… We finally found some that looked like “a lot of cars” and “recent” and turned off the road, into the Sahara.
The tire tracks were hard to see with only our headlights, and we weren’t going slow. Even though we had a GPS and a satellite phone, I was still a little nervous about getting lost, in the middle of no-where. As we were flying through the desert we saw a bright spot light from the right. We turned around and drove towards it, but it turned out to be several police vehicles. They asked what we were doing and we told them we were looking for the camp. They pointed us in the right direction and we were on our way.
link[i-link]As we drove into the camp, our high was quickly followed by a low, as we realized everyone was dead asleep. It was near zero degrees and we had no tents. Stumbling through the camp revealed no spare shelters, so we threw down a large mat, laid down with a blanket and tried to sleep. The cold was unbearable and if the blanket came up it felt like someone stabbed you with a frozen knife.
The sky was a reward for putting up with the cold though. Since it was around 4:30 am, the Milky Way spread across the desert sky, truly a sight you don’t want to close your eyes for.
After a while, I gave in and dozed off for just a few hours. But since right before sunrise the temperature drops and the cold rises from the sand, it woke us all up. This cold is the worst I have ever experienced. I never imagined this in the Sahara!
The next morning.
link[i-link]We walked around the area to see the sights and meet some of the competitors. We found them all rather dry and boring, so we befriended all the guides, workers and police. They were a funny bunch and never asked too many questions. We found some guys making coffee and tea and we had breakfast with them.
One of the bunch was a famous photographer who invited us to join him to a place most Libyans don’t even know about: an area called Mughadat. As he described it, it resembled a picture from Mars, so we jumped in the Land Cruisers and took off.
At first we saw the typical images you think of when you hear about the Sahara: huge sand dunes. The dunes raise and fall with the softest sand I have ever touched. Someone described it as 'powdered gold'. When we reached Mughadat, the scenery was baffling. When we switched off the engines, the silence was every bit as deafening as absolute silence can be. It was a humbling experience to actually feel the Earth’s age. Some things you just take for granted but here you could actually feel the respect the Earth commands much like you feel when meeting an elderly hero.
link[i-link]The sand dunes went in and out of the rocks resembling a stone forest. Some rocks looked like statues, or homes, graves, others were like walls or trees. No one really knew the history. My guess is that the area was below water at some point with the rocks stacking one upon one another.
We made camp and rested. One of the Tuareg, native of the region, made a fire and the work began. They all started making some tuna sandwiches and preparing macaroni. link[i-link]After we ate, they made green tea on the fire. They pour it from one tea pot into another creating a lot of foam. The foam is then poured in a tea glass. This traditional way of making tea is still done throughout much of North Africa. While the green tea ritual was taking place, everyone sat around the fire telling jokes and stories. After a while, we retreated to a shaded area and napped for half an hour. Before we left, we burned our trash not to leave a mark and buried our fire. All the area’s inhabitants take a lot of pride in not trashing the desert.
link[i-link]Our next stop was a huge sand dune. While still debating if we could make it to the top, pushing the gas pedal all the way down, we climbed up a fair distance until the little engines could go no further. We stopped and got out to play in the world’s largest sand hill. A few rolled down the sand, a few raced up and a few just stood with their jaws open. I went as far as my engine would take me and looked down. I have no idea how high we were but it looked no less than 20 stories. We jumped back in the vehicles to head home so we wanted to beat the sunset. No one wanted to be stuck away from camp after sunset.
We finally made it back and this time, we had tents, cots and blankets waiting. They started a camp fire and we all sat around. The green tea came out again and some food was being link[i-link]prepared as well. As the Tuareg was preparing the tea, others began a singing circle while everyone was clapping along, forming a basic drum beat. The songs were old, and usually about love. I actually understood the words, and could engage in most of the conversations until they started a Tuareg poetry slam which was so funny. This is an old ritual using poetry to slam each other. One example is that two of them drove different vehicles, one a Land Cruiser and the other a Land Rover. They would then go back and forth through poetry to talk trash about the other and their vehicle. While this is being done, the last word of each line would be repeated or shouted by everyone around the camp fire. A few would also scream to encourage the person speaking. Surreal…
We finally dozed off in our tents. Mine was - not surprisingly - one foot shy of my height. We ended up freezing again as the temperature dropped to -4 degrees Celsius, but I lived.
Epilogue:
link[i-link]The next day, we had coffee and sandwiches, and jumped in the Land Cruiser to head back to the airport. For eight hours, we just stared into the Sahara as though it was some incredible epic movie that you had to finish.
After we cleared the last town, we drove past this one guy. He was walking alongside the road, in the middle of no-where. A small speck in the background of the yellow void. He wore a typical Tuareg outfit, carrying a woven basket on his back, and a walking stick in his hand. When we passed him he neither waved, tried to ride with us or even look at us for that matter. It looked like, for him, we were from another world. And he was alien to us.
Alien to us, but part of the desert which we savoured for just a few days, stripping us of our garbage, to our bare bone essentials: a human like all other humans.
One[i-One]
With thanks to "Y" for the story and pictures. Thank you, "E" for the editing.
Rumble: A Day in Hell - Part II: Shaken and Stirred...
link[i-link]
This is Part II of the (horror) travel story of my Friend "E" (The Other "E"), trying to fly from Rome via Zurich to Nairobi, last weekend. The only problem was, eh, there was rather a severe storm.
We pick up the story after "E" finally got to Zurich after a forced stop-over in Geneva. One aborted landing, one failed take-off and four gin tonics later:
James Bond always preferred his Martini shaken...not stirred....well, I did not have a choice, I was shaken AND stirred the whole day. As the day went on, things did not start to look any better:
I am kind of looking forward to try out the famous Virgin services on the flight from Heathrow to Nairobi. After a couple more hours of waiting around at Zurich airport, we now move on to Campari Orange (as I thought "enough Gin for the day!"), and we board the flight to London. Free seating on the flight and 400 CHF to anyone who is willing to take a later flight as they are overbooked and the plane is smaller. As we have to catch our connecting flight to Nairobi, we refuse the 400 CHF (in retrospect, we should have known better!) and board the flight. Filled to the brim.
We strap in... and are warned that due to severe weather conditions (which now moved further north) all flights to London are delayed for one to one and a half hours. "This means we will miss our connection in London", I say to my colleague. Off I march to see the flight attendant to explain our problem. He goes off to talk to the captain and after a short consultation, the captain orders are to remove our luggage and leave us in Zurich as he cannot guarantee our connection once in London. Another woman bound to Nairobi joins the group of now stranded, tired, and pretty tipsy women.
We are shown to the transfer desk where we join a very very long queue of... well people who wished they were somewhere else. But I was impressed with the people: nobody lost their temper while some had been there the whole day (such as yours truly). Some were looking pretty weak and tired but very composed.
So here we are queuing up and hoping that the lady at the counter (now exhausted as I recognize her from the morning) would find us a flight to Nairobi. We were open to anything. She suggests a flight through Cairo, but then could not confirm the Cairo-Nairobi segment. After a few minutes, she finds another flight via Johannesburg and some other “oh no, please not through there!” places. Or, we have the option to wait two more days for the next Swiss flight. So a quick decision was made: we go back to Rome. There is a flight in two hours. I had to be in Nairobi for the opening of the planning week so the first 2 days were the important ones for me. No point in arriving there three days late.
So, quick, another drink before take off, a couple of phone calls to Nairobi to cancel the airport pick up and to tell the colleagues we will not be there for the
Sunday opening, and we board. The flight to Rome was uneventful but icing on the cake of a Day in Hell: No suitcase when we get to Rome. Another queue to report the lost luggage with the hope they will find it.
Consolation: maybe this was not meant to be, and maybe even worse things awaited me in Nairobi!
Picture courtesy Nasa
Shit No Go, We No Go!
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.
Sleeping crampled in the kitchen tent. Ralph found the best spot: the kitchen table![i-Sleeping crampled in the kitchen tent. Ralph found the best spot: the kitchen table!]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 Two remaining shelters[i-Two remaining shelters]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.
The Mil-8 helicopter from the Akademik Federov is landing. See the orange smoke?[i-The Mil-8 helicopter from the Akademik Federov is landing. See the orange smoke?]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, The Mil-8. But you also see how foggy it is![i-The Mil-8. But you also see how foggy it is!]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.
Digging out crates[i-Digging out crates]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 Loading up the cargo haul of the helicopter[i-Loading up the cargo haul of the helicopter]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. Read the full post...
Ham Radio, Anyone?
November 2001. Somewhere on the road between Bagram and Kabul.
Offloading the C130 earlier that day.[i-Offloading the C130 earlier that day.]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.
ON6TT at AH1A - Howland Island 1993 expedition[i-ON6TT at AH1A - Howland Island 1993 expedition]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…
ON6TT as 5X1T in Uganda 1996-1999[i-ON6TT as 5X1T in Uganda 1996-1999]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
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Once Upon a Fine Antarctic Morning...
nice dark sunset peter I[i-nice dark sunset peter I]
The sleeping tent[i-The sleeping 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 Getting dressed in the morning: Strip one layer and put 5 other layers on...[i-Getting dressed in the morning: Strip one layer and put 5 other layers on...]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 Picture taken the morning after[i-Picture taken the morning after]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 One of the generators. This one actually stalled and froze up in half an hour[i-One of the generators. This one actually stalled and froze up in half an hour]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.
One of the working tents, after we cleared the snow[i-One of the working tents, after we cleared the snow]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.
[i-Another Fine Antarctic Morning. At least on that one, we could SEE something!]
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Doing Good to Others
link[i-link]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!
link[i-link]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.
link[i-link]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!”.
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Nights on Deserted Islands
Lesson #1: Don’t walk between the trees”
link[i-link]Around midnight, I give up. I can not sleep. The cod I lay on is too hard. I don’t have any cover, and there is no space anymore in the tent. Half of us sleep under the sky. Seems romantic, sleeping under the open sky on a Pacific island, but the combination of the wind with my wet T-shirt and shorts, make it too cold to have romantic thoughts.And above all, adrenaline pumps in my veins.
380904113_c4d6982ad4[i-380904113_c4d6982ad4]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.
link[i-link]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!
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