Showing posts with label expeditions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label expeditions. Show all posts
Once Upon a Fine Antarctic Morning...
nice dark sunset peter I[i-nice dark sunset peter I]
I kind of wake up. I don’t really want to wake up. I just want to sleep. My body and mind are tired. Tired of days on end working, battling against the snow, wind, cold. Fresh snow slips through the small opening I make in my sleeping bag, trying to take a peek at the inside of the tent. I see the dim light through the tent cover, but that is no indication of time. It is always light this time of the year on the Antarctic. My watch tells me it is 5 o’clock. I have to think a while if that would be 5 AM or 5 PM.. Hmmm, AM it is. Soon my shift will start. I have to get up, but my body refuses. I stare at the side of the tent.
The 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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Nights on Deserted Islands
“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!
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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Rumble: A Lot of Crab -eh Crap?- !
link[i-link] 1. A lot of Crab!
While editing my Dutch eBook, Addicted to the horizon , a lot of memories are coming back. Tine and I were scanning through some old pictures when she reminded me how intriguing some of this stuff was. [there is a lesson here: one gets easily used to the extra-ordinary].
I guess I got used to all of it, having gone over these pictures so many times already. And having been there. Things like the shot above, taken during our expedition to Clipperton, a deserted island in the Pacific. The land crabs were piling up trying to devour the bone of a spare rib. That is a lot of crab! They would eat anything. Plastic, cardboard, sleeping bags, ropes,... This made the island pretty clean!
Human waste was considered a delicacy. While squatting 'au naturel' on the island, shorts around our ankles, we had to scuffle forward as dozens of crabs would be fighting for your waste, piled on top of each other. If you were not scuffling fast enough, they would grab hold of your private parts... Tell ya, there are more pleasant things in life.
2. A lot of Crap!
Read an article today about the amount of garbage the world produces.. As an example, every day, the US [not trying to pick on the US, but it was the only figure I found!] produces enough non-recycable waste to fill the New Orleans Superdome twice. That is 230 million tons of solid waste per year. The amount of pollution and toxic leaching produced by a landfill receiving 1,000 tons per day of waste is 22,000 lbs. After a landfill closes, it is estimated that emissions could remain constant for as long as 30 years.
3. Let's launch "Crabs for Crap"!
I think I will run for prime minister, with only one single programme item: I will introduce the use of Clipperton land crabs in the processing of our waste in 'developed countries'. Think I stand a chance?
How Cigarettes Once Saved My Life
Wednesday February 3 1993, 5 am
My watch beeps me out of my sleep. For a moment, I don’t know anymore where I am. I lay on a hard cotton cot, in a wet sleeping bag. The side of the tent drips. I am cold, wet. My muscles hurt, my skin is sunburned, my head aches. All I want to do is sleep. Just another hour, just another minute, but I know I can not. I fumble under the cot to find my glasses. They fog up. I step through puddles of water in the tent, and grab a flashlight. It is still pitch dark outside. The flashlight beams over our surroundings. Sand, low thorny scrub bushes. Hundreds of tiny hermit crabs with shells on their backs scavenging in between the huge boobies and frigate birds sitting randomly around us. The sound of the waves crashing onto the coral reef and rolling out onto the beach a bit further away. The smell of guano in the damp tropical air. We had a huge storm last night. I remember we were fighting to keep the tents up, and the water out. It was never supposed to rain here. They call it the desert of the Pacific, this place. Howland island. On the crossing of the equator and the dateline. In the middle of bloody nowhere. Emilia Earhart, the first woman to fly around the world was supposed to land here to refuel on July 3 1937, but she disappeared, never to be seen again. They had even flattened part of the island as a make shift landing strip for her, and put a fuel on shore.
For a second I curse the pain I feel in my body, curse my constant urge to ‘go where no man has gone before’. Well few men at least.. Why this constant drive to do the unusual? To take the risks? ‘Adrenaline junky. Peter, you are an adrenaline junky’, I repeat to myself as I walk over to one of the main tents. Well, ‘stumble’ is more like it. Stumbling between the pieces of coral and trying to avoid the thorns of the bushes. My legs are scratched a thousand times already. Every evening, I have to pull the thorns out of the soles of my feet. Everything hurts.
h2[i-h2]I open the flap of the tent, and see Mike sitting at a table in front of the radio. He has his reading glasses on the tip of his red sunburned nose. He looks up and winks at me. I smile at him. The small light, dangling by its electric cord from the top of the tent frame, swings slightly in the wind. The light dims as Mike is transmitting on the radio. I just hear the click-click from his morse key. Randy lays on a couple of plastic bags on the tent floor, amidst puddles of dirty rainwater filled with sand. I pull his shoulder, and tell him my cot is free. Without saying anything, he smiles as if he is still in a dream and shuffles off towards my tent. I take a seat in the plastic chair in front of the second radio and computer, put the headphones on, and listen to the cacophony of noises. It seems like these are people transmitting from Europe.. Let me see if I can create some order in this chaos..
Several hours later, my shift is finished. The sun is already straight above us and has heated up the tent to 40oC. Sweat is dripping off my back. My shirt and trunks are wet. I need a bath. But there is no fresh water. There is nothing on this godforsaken island, unless if we had brought it with us. Bathing is in the sea. Plenty of sea water, though, surrounding this half a square mile island. The sea is wild. The waves created by the immense storm last night thunder over the coral and run deep onto the shore. Where there was a hilly white beach yesterday, the sand is flattened to a perfect spotless even plain today. No traces yet of footsteps. As sand was scooped away by the storm, parts of the remains of a second World War amphibious plane surfaced. I take some soap and shampoo from my tent, and walk to the sea. Kurt, the ship’s cook is standing at the shore line, looking at the Machias, our chartered sailing ship. A wave turned over the dinghy he and Captain Bill were using to deliver our daily rations of water and food. The Captain broke his wrist when he smashed onto the coral. ‘We were supposed to get off this island today. Guess not, hey’, I smile sourly to Kurt. ‘Nope, the waves are too high, man’, Kurt says, ‘No dinghy can get through this’. There is no port on this deserted island. Nothing. All transport between the Machias, anchored outside the reef, and the island is done by shuttling dinghies, riding the waves. But with waves this high, it is pure suicide.. I see Bob and Walt walking towards us, coming from the second radio tent. They say nothing, but think the same as we do: yesterday, we made a huge error. In a hasty effort to start evacuating the island, when we saw the storm clouds gathering, we first ferried water supplies and food rations off the island. We thought: ‘This is the only stuff which can get wet, so let’s see how well it goes’. But the waves got bigger and before we knew it, there was no way we could get through the walls of white foam crashing onto the coral. The waves now run fifty meters deep over the beach and then retract back. What a difference it makes from the babbling waves when we landed two weeks go. The sea had resembled a lake then, compared to this raging madness.
I pull off my T-shirt, sit down in a coral pool filled with 50 centimeters of water, and start rubbing soap over me. The waves come over the pool, filling it up, and a few seconds later, the water gets sucked out as the wave retracts. I feel like a baby in a cradle, rocking to and fro with the waves coming in and out. Kurt pulls off his shirt and shares my pool. ‘Lovely’, he smiles.. A bigger wave comes crashing over the edge of the coral pool and hits us off balance. We giggle, floating in the current. But as the wave retracts, the force is so strong, it sucks us with it. In a flash, our smiles change into disbelief, fear, panic. My heart skips a beat. The wave pulls us over the edge of the pool, into the water. I can not believe water of only 50 cm deep can have this force. We try to stand up, holding on to whatever we can grab, but we are sucked into the sea. We know the edge of the coral is only a few meters away. It has an underwater hole in it. The water gets sucked through the hole, and pulls me with it. My legs get stuck into the hole. Kurt holds on to the coral with his hands. An incoming wave is not strong enough to push me through, back onto the shore. I am stuck in the underwater hole. Kurt gets smashed onto the shore again. I lose my glasses in the thundering whirlpool of white foam. As the wave retracts from the shore I now get sucked underwater. My body is pulled through the coral hole, and I can feel the sharp edges cutting into my legs, arms and back. A few seconds later, I appear above water at the other side of the coral. I don’t feel the bottom anymore, I can not stand up anymore. The water is too deep. Having lost my glasses, I can hardly see. There are waves all around me and the current drags me with it, probably way from the shore. In the background I hear shouting on the beach. I paddle with my legs so I can look around. I can not see Kurt. I look at the Machias, shout at the crew, but don’t hear any reply. Probably they had not seen the accident. Suddenly I realize I still have my soap in one hand and the plastic bottle of shampoo in the other. Here I am floating in a rip current, with my body bleeding, peddling with my feet to stay afloat, but still holding on to my soap and shampoo as if these were the last earthly belongings I wanted to take with me into the next world… I let go of them. They sink. All I can think off is staying afloat. The current is too strong, I can not swim against it. I have to preserve my strength. I kick off my sandals and strip my pants as they hinder my movements. Suddenly I see a reddish colour in the water. I see the scratches on my arms. Can not see the stuff on my back, but it must be bleeding badly. This is not good news.. I know the sea around this island is infested with sharks. Bleeding in between sharks…. I remember people always said to lay still in the water not to attract sharks, and I temper my movements.. Have to, to preserve strength also. My hope is that the guys on the beach have witnessed the accident, and would do something to get me a rope or whatever.. I can not really imagine what this ‘whatever’ might be. I look at the Machias again. I am drifting away from it, towards the open sea. I am now probably 100-150 meters from the shore. And counting.. This current is strong… Suddenly, I hear splashing. Sharks? I am seriously contemplating I might not survive this. Either I will drown or sharks will shred me to pieces. Funny, I am not panicking. I actually think about how in the books people describe how ‘they see flashes of their life passing before their eyes’. I don’t see fuck before my eyes.. Maybe it is because I lost my glasses. The only thing I see is the fucking shoreline disappearing, and the fucking Machias disappearing, and the only fucking thing I feel is that this fucking current is dragging me with it, and that the fucking sharks will have a feast with me. In the best case scenario, I might only loose an arm or a leg. For a moment, I think how Tine would be mad at me, when I would come back home less one arm or a leg. She would tell me ‘And I warned you so many times before you left, to be careful, you fool! I have more problems with you than with a class room of three year olds!’ Tine is a kindergarten teacher.
No, the splashing is caused by something else. The first thing I see is something orange. My eye sight really sucks.. Orange. And then I see a head.. It is Kurt. He is wearing an orange lifejacket. ‘I have a rope, hold on’, he shouts. I swim towards him. We touch. I never could have imagined a man’s body could feel that welcoming… ‘Man, I thought, I thought’, I stumble over my words.. Kurt smiles.. He is a strange character. ‘He is a lunatic’, Bob once said. True, Kurt could get these sudden rages, shouting and waving a knife when someone would appear in ‘his’ kitchen while he was preparing the meals. But Kurt and I had a bond. A special bond which had been building for weeks now. I had cigarettes, and he had none. ‘Here, take the rope’, he says smiling, ‘The guys on shore will pull us in. You ok?’. I nod, grabbing the rope knotted at the back of Kurt’s life jacket. We shout and make signs to the shore party they can start pulling and before we know it, we are moving like a speedboat against the current. ‘Watch the coral’, Kurt shouts, spitting out water, ‘Watch the coral as we go in. Protect your head’. We are catching the surf again, as we get closer to the shore. A huge wave towers two meters high behind us, and picks us up. Now it is the white foaming whirl which pushes us onto the shore. Well, it does not push us, it tumbles us, throws us head over heels, literally, as one of my knees bangs my forehead. I grab my head, protecting my face with my arms and elbows while still holding onto the rope. The wave does not hit us onto the coral, but drags us over in a tumbling rage. I try saving whatever parts of my body which were not bleeding yet. The next thing we know, is the feeling of soft sand below us. When I stand up, I realize I am only in 10 cm of water. Kurt tumbles in behind me. I sit on my knees, catching my breath, spitting up water. Kurt comes to me and grabs hold of me.. ‘Hey what a surf, hey?’.. I stand up. Must be a funny sight. I am stark naked, with blood running off from me. Someone found my glasses. I put them on. They are wet and full of sand, but I don’t see anymore.. Blood gushing in my eyes…
The guys help us into the shade of one of the tents. Kurt limps. He has hurt his leg as he was dragged with me into the sea. He said he only made it because I got stuck in the hole, and ‘the hole was not big enough for both of us’, he laughs, with his nutty giggling sound. ‘Yeah, I think he is a nutcase’, I say to myself, ‘but he bloody well saved my life’.
h[i-h]Burt, one of our expedition doctors appears with a white plastic bottle and a rough sponge… ‘You know life coral in your blood stream will kill you. It will consume all the oxygen in your veins and kill you. We have to dissolve it with distilled vinegar.’, he says softly, ‘This might hurt a bit’.. ‘Distilled vinegar on open wounds?’ ‘Yep, and I have to rub it in a bit, to ensure it is all properly cleaned’, Burt says in a calm occasional tone, as if he would be talking about the colour of the sky.. I don’t think I felt pain like that before. Two guys had to hold me onto my chair, while Burt, with no sign of mercy, rubbed all the wounds and poured the damned vinegar over it.. Thousands of needles were pushed into my body.
I cry, I shout.. So does Kurt. With chuckles and sniggers in between. After it is all over, he turns to me, smacks his hand on my shoulder and smile ‘Hey Peter, can I have a cigarette from you now?’. He might be nuts, but he is a hell of a guy.
No, I never felt that kind of pain again. Once it came close. A couple of months later, back in Belgium, when I got a kidney crisis due to the dehydration after being stuck on Howland Island for another week after the incident, without sufficient drinking water, the boat breaking down, the engines of the dinghies failing… Kurt was crucial in getting us off in the end, but that is another story.. It is also another story how I got back to work a week too late. My boss shook his head in disbelief and anger ‘you always want to do weird stuff, don’t you?’. He clearly did not agree with me wanting to take three months off next year to go to the Antarctic. I quit my job a week later.
Why I do all this? I don’t know. Maybe it makes a nice story to tell afterwards.. Maybe it is to learn a few lessons. Lessons for life like “Always listen to your wife’s advise”, or “Soap and shampoo are of no use when drowning” or “Sometimes cigarettes can safe your life”… I don’t know…
My watch beeps me out of my sleep. For a moment, I don’t know anymore where I am. I lay on a hard cotton cot, in a wet sleeping bag. The side of the tent drips. I am cold, wet. My muscles hurt, my skin is sunburned, my head aches. All I want to do is sleep. Just another hour, just another minute, but I know I can not. I fumble under the cot to find my glasses. They fog up. I step through puddles of water in the tent, and grab a flashlight. It is still pitch dark outside. The flashlight beams over our surroundings. Sand, low thorny scrub bushes. Hundreds of tiny hermit crabs with shells on their backs scavenging in between the huge boobies and frigate birds sitting randomly around us. The sound of the waves crashing onto the coral reef and rolling out onto the beach a bit further away. The smell of guano in the damp tropical air. We had a huge storm last night. I remember we were fighting to keep the tents up, and the water out. It was never supposed to rain here. They call it the desert of the Pacific, this place. Howland island. On the crossing of the equator and the dateline. In the middle of bloody nowhere. Emilia Earhart, the first woman to fly around the world was supposed to land here to refuel on July 3 1937, but she disappeared, never to be seen again. They had even flattened part of the island as a make shift landing strip for her, and put a fuel on shore.
For a second I curse the pain I feel in my body, curse my constant urge to ‘go where no man has gone before’. Well few men at least.. Why this constant drive to do the unusual? To take the risks? ‘Adrenaline junky. Peter, you are an adrenaline junky’, I repeat to myself as I walk over to one of the main tents. Well, ‘stumble’ is more like it. Stumbling between the pieces of coral and trying to avoid the thorns of the bushes. My legs are scratched a thousand times already. Every evening, I have to pull the thorns out of the soles of my feet. Everything hurts.
h2[i-h2]I open the flap of the tent, and see Mike sitting at a table in front of the radio. He has his reading glasses on the tip of his red sunburned nose. He looks up and winks at me. I smile at him. The small light, dangling by its electric cord from the top of the tent frame, swings slightly in the wind. The light dims as Mike is transmitting on the radio. I just hear the click-click from his morse key. Randy lays on a couple of plastic bags on the tent floor, amidst puddles of dirty rainwater filled with sand. I pull his shoulder, and tell him my cot is free. Without saying anything, he smiles as if he is still in a dream and shuffles off towards my tent. I take a seat in the plastic chair in front of the second radio and computer, put the headphones on, and listen to the cacophony of noises. It seems like these are people transmitting from Europe.. Let me see if I can create some order in this chaos..
Several hours later, my shift is finished. The sun is already straight above us and has heated up the tent to 40oC. Sweat is dripping off my back. My shirt and trunks are wet. I need a bath. But there is no fresh water. There is nothing on this godforsaken island, unless if we had brought it with us. Bathing is in the sea. Plenty of sea water, though, surrounding this half a square mile island. The sea is wild. The waves created by the immense storm last night thunder over the coral and run deep onto the shore. Where there was a hilly white beach yesterday, the sand is flattened to a perfect spotless even plain today. No traces yet of footsteps. As sand was scooped away by the storm, parts of the remains of a second World War amphibious plane surfaced. I take some soap and shampoo from my tent, and walk to the sea. Kurt, the ship’s cook is standing at the shore line, looking at the Machias, our chartered sailing ship. A wave turned over the dinghy he and Captain Bill were using to deliver our daily rations of water and food. The Captain broke his wrist when he smashed onto the coral. ‘We were supposed to get off this island today. Guess not, hey’, I smile sourly to Kurt. ‘Nope, the waves are too high, man’, Kurt says, ‘No dinghy can get through this’. There is no port on this deserted island. Nothing. All transport between the Machias, anchored outside the reef, and the island is done by shuttling dinghies, riding the waves. But with waves this high, it is pure suicide.. I see Bob and Walt walking towards us, coming from the second radio tent. They say nothing, but think the same as we do: yesterday, we made a huge error. In a hasty effort to start evacuating the island, when we saw the storm clouds gathering, we first ferried water supplies and food rations off the island. We thought: ‘This is the only stuff which can get wet, so let’s see how well it goes’. But the waves got bigger and before we knew it, there was no way we could get through the walls of white foam crashing onto the coral. The waves now run fifty meters deep over the beach and then retract back. What a difference it makes from the babbling waves when we landed two weeks go. The sea had resembled a lake then, compared to this raging madness.
I pull off my T-shirt, sit down in a coral pool filled with 50 centimeters of water, and start rubbing soap over me. The waves come over the pool, filling it up, and a few seconds later, the water gets sucked out as the wave retracts. I feel like a baby in a cradle, rocking to and fro with the waves coming in and out. Kurt pulls off his shirt and shares my pool. ‘Lovely’, he smiles.. A bigger wave comes crashing over the edge of the coral pool and hits us off balance. We giggle, floating in the current. But as the wave retracts, the force is so strong, it sucks us with it. In a flash, our smiles change into disbelief, fear, panic. My heart skips a beat. The wave pulls us over the edge of the pool, into the water. I can not believe water of only 50 cm deep can have this force. We try to stand up, holding on to whatever we can grab, but we are sucked into the sea. We know the edge of the coral is only a few meters away. It has an underwater hole in it. The water gets sucked through the hole, and pulls me with it. My legs get stuck into the hole. Kurt holds on to the coral with his hands. An incoming wave is not strong enough to push me through, back onto the shore. I am stuck in the underwater hole. Kurt gets smashed onto the shore again. I lose my glasses in the thundering whirlpool of white foam. As the wave retracts from the shore I now get sucked underwater. My body is pulled through the coral hole, and I can feel the sharp edges cutting into my legs, arms and back. A few seconds later, I appear above water at the other side of the coral. I don’t feel the bottom anymore, I can not stand up anymore. The water is too deep. Having lost my glasses, I can hardly see. There are waves all around me and the current drags me with it, probably way from the shore. In the background I hear shouting on the beach. I paddle with my legs so I can look around. I can not see Kurt. I look at the Machias, shout at the crew, but don’t hear any reply. Probably they had not seen the accident. Suddenly I realize I still have my soap in one hand and the plastic bottle of shampoo in the other. Here I am floating in a rip current, with my body bleeding, peddling with my feet to stay afloat, but still holding on to my soap and shampoo as if these were the last earthly belongings I wanted to take with me into the next world… I let go of them. They sink. All I can think off is staying afloat. The current is too strong, I can not swim against it. I have to preserve my strength. I kick off my sandals and strip my pants as they hinder my movements. Suddenly I see a reddish colour in the water. I see the scratches on my arms. Can not see the stuff on my back, but it must be bleeding badly. This is not good news.. I know the sea around this island is infested with sharks. Bleeding in between sharks…. I remember people always said to lay still in the water not to attract sharks, and I temper my movements.. Have to, to preserve strength also. My hope is that the guys on the beach have witnessed the accident, and would do something to get me a rope or whatever.. I can not really imagine what this ‘whatever’ might be. I look at the Machias again. I am drifting away from it, towards the open sea. I am now probably 100-150 meters from the shore. And counting.. This current is strong… Suddenly, I hear splashing. Sharks? I am seriously contemplating I might not survive this. Either I will drown or sharks will shred me to pieces. Funny, I am not panicking. I actually think about how in the books people describe how ‘they see flashes of their life passing before their eyes’. I don’t see fuck before my eyes.. Maybe it is because I lost my glasses. The only thing I see is the fucking shoreline disappearing, and the fucking Machias disappearing, and the only fucking thing I feel is that this fucking current is dragging me with it, and that the fucking sharks will have a feast with me. In the best case scenario, I might only loose an arm or a leg. For a moment, I think how Tine would be mad at me, when I would come back home less one arm or a leg. She would tell me ‘And I warned you so many times before you left, to be careful, you fool! I have more problems with you than with a class room of three year olds!’ Tine is a kindergarten teacher.
No, the splashing is caused by something else. The first thing I see is something orange. My eye sight really sucks.. Orange. And then I see a head.. It is Kurt. He is wearing an orange lifejacket. ‘I have a rope, hold on’, he shouts. I swim towards him. We touch. I never could have imagined a man’s body could feel that welcoming… ‘Man, I thought, I thought’, I stumble over my words.. Kurt smiles.. He is a strange character. ‘He is a lunatic’, Bob once said. True, Kurt could get these sudden rages, shouting and waving a knife when someone would appear in ‘his’ kitchen while he was preparing the meals. But Kurt and I had a bond. A special bond which had been building for weeks now. I had cigarettes, and he had none. ‘Here, take the rope’, he says smiling, ‘The guys on shore will pull us in. You ok?’. I nod, grabbing the rope knotted at the back of Kurt’s life jacket. We shout and make signs to the shore party they can start pulling and before we know it, we are moving like a speedboat against the current. ‘Watch the coral’, Kurt shouts, spitting out water, ‘Watch the coral as we go in. Protect your head’. We are catching the surf again, as we get closer to the shore. A huge wave towers two meters high behind us, and picks us up. Now it is the white foaming whirl which pushes us onto the shore. Well, it does not push us, it tumbles us, throws us head over heels, literally, as one of my knees bangs my forehead. I grab my head, protecting my face with my arms and elbows while still holding onto the rope. The wave does not hit us onto the coral, but drags us over in a tumbling rage. I try saving whatever parts of my body which were not bleeding yet. The next thing we know, is the feeling of soft sand below us. When I stand up, I realize I am only in 10 cm of water. Kurt tumbles in behind me. I sit on my knees, catching my breath, spitting up water. Kurt comes to me and grabs hold of me.. ‘Hey what a surf, hey?’.. I stand up. Must be a funny sight. I am stark naked, with blood running off from me. Someone found my glasses. I put them on. They are wet and full of sand, but I don’t see anymore.. Blood gushing in my eyes…
The guys help us into the shade of one of the tents. Kurt limps. He has hurt his leg as he was dragged with me into the sea. He said he only made it because I got stuck in the hole, and ‘the hole was not big enough for both of us’, he laughs, with his nutty giggling sound. ‘Yeah, I think he is a nutcase’, I say to myself, ‘but he bloody well saved my life’.
h[i-h]Burt, one of our expedition doctors appears with a white plastic bottle and a rough sponge… ‘You know life coral in your blood stream will kill you. It will consume all the oxygen in your veins and kill you. We have to dissolve it with distilled vinegar.’, he says softly, ‘This might hurt a bit’.. ‘Distilled vinegar on open wounds?’ ‘Yep, and I have to rub it in a bit, to ensure it is all properly cleaned’, Burt says in a calm occasional tone, as if he would be talking about the colour of the sky.. I don’t think I felt pain like that before. Two guys had to hold me onto my chair, while Burt, with no sign of mercy, rubbed all the wounds and poured the damned vinegar over it.. Thousands of needles were pushed into my body.
I cry, I shout.. So does Kurt. With chuckles and sniggers in between. After it is all over, he turns to me, smacks his hand on my shoulder and smile ‘Hey Peter, can I have a cigarette from you now?’. He might be nuts, but he is a hell of a guy.
No, I never felt that kind of pain again. Once it came close. A couple of months later, back in Belgium, when I got a kidney crisis due to the dehydration after being stuck on Howland Island for another week after the incident, without sufficient drinking water, the boat breaking down, the engines of the dinghies failing… Kurt was crucial in getting us off in the end, but that is another story.. It is also another story how I got back to work a week too late. My boss shook his head in disbelief and anger ‘you always want to do weird stuff, don’t you?’. He clearly did not agree with me wanting to take three months off next year to go to the Antarctic. I quit my job a week later.
Why I do all this? I don’t know. Maybe it makes a nice story to tell afterwards.. Maybe it is to learn a few lessons. Lessons for life like “Always listen to your wife’s advise”, or “Soap and shampoo are of no use when drowning” or “Sometimes cigarettes can safe your life”… I don’t know…
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On Earth As It Is In Heaven
[i-Peter I Island - Antarctica, view offshore]Saturday January 29, 1994.
Off the coast of Peter I island, Antarctica
For days now, we have been sailing in between icebergs. Each of them has its own micro-weather system. It looks as if each of them is a little island on its own, each with its own private cloud. The white from the ice, and the white from the clouds above them contrasting very little from the grey sea and the grey overcast clouds much further above it all. Everything is a shade of grey and white. No colours, just shades.
We are getting anxious. Today, after two years of preparation, after two years of logistical challenges, fierce discussions with the Russian Antarctic Division on the chartering of their boats and helicopters, we will arrive at our destination: Peter I Island in the Antarctic, appropriately called ‘the most isolated place on Earth’. There have been more people on the moon than on this island. We were to be the first crew ever to remain on the island without a support ship staying off shore. We almost cancelled the trip several times. Problems with funding, cargo shipments, and above all the endless problems with our transport. It looked hopeless just 14 days before we left, as the Russians wanted to cancel the pick up ship. I had to fly over to St.Petersburg and renegotiate the contract with them.
But now, this is all past. Now, we are standing on the bridge of the Kapitan Khlebnikov, a Russian icebreaker converted to a tourist cruise ship touring the Antarctic, looking at the scenery at the edge of the world. Our expedition crew of nine, is almost like one of the many attractions for the sixty tourist passengers on the boat. Over the past two weeks since we left Port Stanley in the Falklands, they have been asking us endless questions about our expedition. The Japanese took pictures of us like we were the 8th wonder of the world..
The weather closes in, a slight fog comes in. The sea closes in too, no more water, the surface is completely covered with ice. Slowly, the Kapitan Khlebnikov pulls itself onto the ice and breaks it apart. The cracking of the ice sounds like fierce artillery shelling as the shelves give in to the mere weight of the ship. Sounds echo bounce off the fog.
p1[i-p1]Very slowly, as we get out of the grey foggy sky, the grey ice covered sea, out of the grey void, specks of black appear. It takes endless minutes before we realize this is not a mirage in the ice desert, we are not imagining this.. We can clearly see pieces of black rock appearing. We have arrived. As by magic, all of sudden, the fog lifts. In one minute, the bright sun pops through and shows us the island in all its glory, 1,700m high. To the north of the island, a long and wide glacier, hundreds of meters high, spreads out and then breaks off with a straight vertical drop, into the sea. This glacier will be our home for the next weeks.
We are spread all over the ship, sweating in our Arctic weather gear, as we pull crates, drag bags of personal stuff and roll barrels of fuel into the helicopter hanger at the aft of the ship. With walkie-talkies, we coordinate the lifting of our cargo from the ship’s hold. There is nothing on the island, so we had to bring shelters, generators, fuel, cooking gear, food, emergency kits with us, in total about ten tons of supplies.
The two small Mil-2 helicopters are being prepared on the helicopter deck. For months now, we have been telling the ship’s crew they had to ensure the helicopters had a cargo hook system, as some of our crates are just too big to be put inside. The Russian pilots always said ‘No problaam’. They just took off the two side doors, put a huge rope through both and put a big knot in the middle. ‘No problaam’.. I hope not. As they hook on half a ton of cargo below, there is no way to release the cargo in case something goes wrong.
One Mil-2 starts its engine, idling the propellers. Bob and Terry, who have the most experience with glaciers, get in, and are ferried to the island. The lack of perspective, of references, in the panorama, has us underestimate the distance to the island and its height. We are alone in this icy world. Only us, and the island. And one helicopter with our two crew on board disappearing in the void. It takes thirty long minutes before we hear the crackling voice from Terry on the walkie-talkie ‘Khlebnikov, this is Peter I, we have landed’.. Ralph, our expedition leader, answers ‘Ok, we will get the second helicopter in the air. Let’s start to get this show on the road. Mark the landing area for the choppers as we agreed last night’.
For the next hours, the two choppers ferry our cargo and crew. I remain as the last one on board to ensure all the crates are lifted in the right sequence. Emergency survival kits first, in case the landing has to be aborted due to a change in the weather. Then a tent kit, a generator, food and cooking gear, followed by the personal stuff. I tag the crates on my list as they lift off.
The ship’s cook has put up a barbeque on the bow. The tourists took deck chairs to sit and watch all the activity as if it was a spectacle set up for them. A circus of helicopters and cranes, balancing crates and barrels . I guess we are an interesting sight.. After all, this is only the third time ever someone will land on this island… But the tourists are an interesting sight also. Almost surreal. A group of tourists from all over the world, sitting in deck chairs, eating barbequed sausages and lamb, in the middle of the absolutely ‘nowhere’.
After three hours, all of a sudden, there is no more cargo, and it is time for me to go. I wave at link[i-link]the tourists, shake hands with the ship’s captain and first mate, thanking them for a job well done, and get into the helicopter, in between bags of clothes and crates of food. We lift off and join the other chopper which has been circling the ship, waiting for us. It has a big cargo load swinging slowly in a net below. Together, we circle the ship for the last time as a sign of goodbye, and parallel to eachother, slowly fly towards the island.It is at this moment, the music which has been in my imagination for two years now, really comes blasting out. While watching the Khlebnikov shrinking and the island growing, towering almost above us, both helicopters are only two specs in the eternal emptiness of the Antarctic, the soundtrack of ‘The Mission’ plays in my head. ‘On Earth as it is in Heaven’, the title track. You should try it… And close your eyes imagining what I see at that very moment, and feel what I feel. For this expedition, I quit my job and worked for a year. But despite all the preparation, the real work was only to start now. Here and now. We are here to set world records, to set examples on radio operations, to experiment with new technology. From this remote place in the world, we will talk to tens of thousands of people all over the world.
pheli[i-pheli]We touch down on Peter I, and I jump out. My boots sink in knee deep snow. The second chopper drops the net, just above the ground. While lifting off, the pilot blinks his landing lights, and rocks the chopper in a short left-right, as to say good bye.
And suddenly, suddenly, after all the hectic activity, the shouting trying to raise our voices above the screaming sounds of the helicopter engines, the frantic to and fro of shifting crates on the boat, suddenly… as the last chopper disappears, there is no sound anymore. Everyone realizes it at the same time. We stop doing whatever we are doing. Bob and Tony with hammers in their hands as they put the plywood for the tent together, Ralph with the craw bar opening the crates. Martin and Tony on their knees, setting up a generator. Suddenly everyone stands up, as if in a prayer. A prayer for the silence which surrounds us. For a moment, only the muffled sounds ‘zwomkrr, zwomkrr’, of our boots in the snow, but then it all stops. There is nothing. nothing. nothing… This is the void… We are standing with a big white mountain behind us, looking over a 250 degrees panorama of the white ice sea, with the Khlebnikov just a tiny speck deep and far away, and the helicopter disappearing towards it. The “voidness” of the panorama, even if it is dotted with huge icebergs, which are only small dots or snow flakes from where we are standing. The grey-white of it all. And the lack of sound as it is absorbed by the huge glacier, and disappears into the thin freezing cold air. This is truly the most isolated deserted place on Earth. There is nothing here. Just us, nine people and some thirty crates. Just us, alone in the world. Alone in the void, in the white grey. This moment, I know, will last in my memory for ever. Of this moment I will tell my grandchildren while holding them on my knee, forty or fifty years from now. This moment, I realize: if there is a heaven, this is how it must feel. This moment, we are in paradise. We all look at eachother. Tears roll over our cheeks. We know we are sharing a moment where it is ‘On Earth as it is in Heaven’.
Off the coast of Peter I island, Antarctica
For days now, we have been sailing in between icebergs. Each of them has its own micro-weather system. It looks as if each of them is a little island on its own, each with its own private cloud. The white from the ice, and the white from the clouds above them contrasting very little from the grey sea and the grey overcast clouds much further above it all. Everything is a shade of grey and white. No colours, just shades.
We are getting anxious. Today, after two years of preparation, after two years of logistical challenges, fierce discussions with the Russian Antarctic Division on the chartering of their boats and helicopters, we will arrive at our destination: Peter I Island in the Antarctic, appropriately called ‘the most isolated place on Earth’. There have been more people on the moon than on this island. We were to be the first crew ever to remain on the island without a support ship staying off shore. We almost cancelled the trip several times. Problems with funding, cargo shipments, and above all the endless problems with our transport. It looked hopeless just 14 days before we left, as the Russians wanted to cancel the pick up ship. I had to fly over to St.Petersburg and renegotiate the contract with them.
But now, this is all past. Now, we are standing on the bridge of the Kapitan Khlebnikov, a Russian icebreaker converted to a tourist cruise ship touring the Antarctic, looking at the scenery at the edge of the world. Our expedition crew of nine, is almost like one of the many attractions for the sixty tourist passengers on the boat. Over the past two weeks since we left Port Stanley in the Falklands, they have been asking us endless questions about our expedition. The Japanese took pictures of us like we were the 8th wonder of the world..
The weather closes in, a slight fog comes in. The sea closes in too, no more water, the surface is completely covered with ice. Slowly, the Kapitan Khlebnikov pulls itself onto the ice and breaks it apart. The cracking of the ice sounds like fierce artillery shelling as the shelves give in to the mere weight of the ship. Sounds echo bounce off the fog.
p1[i-p1]Very slowly, as we get out of the grey foggy sky, the grey ice covered sea, out of the grey void, specks of black appear. It takes endless minutes before we realize this is not a mirage in the ice desert, we are not imagining this.. We can clearly see pieces of black rock appearing. We have arrived. As by magic, all of sudden, the fog lifts. In one minute, the bright sun pops through and shows us the island in all its glory, 1,700m high. To the north of the island, a long and wide glacier, hundreds of meters high, spreads out and then breaks off with a straight vertical drop, into the sea. This glacier will be our home for the next weeks.
We are spread all over the ship, sweating in our Arctic weather gear, as we pull crates, drag bags of personal stuff and roll barrels of fuel into the helicopter hanger at the aft of the ship. With walkie-talkies, we coordinate the lifting of our cargo from the ship’s hold. There is nothing on the island, so we had to bring shelters, generators, fuel, cooking gear, food, emergency kits with us, in total about ten tons of supplies.
The two small Mil-2 helicopters are being prepared on the helicopter deck. For months now, we have been telling the ship’s crew they had to ensure the helicopters had a cargo hook system, as some of our crates are just too big to be put inside. The Russian pilots always said ‘No problaam’. They just took off the two side doors, put a huge rope through both and put a big knot in the middle. ‘No problaam’.. I hope not. As they hook on half a ton of cargo below, there is no way to release the cargo in case something goes wrong.
One Mil-2 starts its engine, idling the propellers. Bob and Terry, who have the most experience with glaciers, get in, and are ferried to the island. The lack of perspective, of references, in the panorama, has us underestimate the distance to the island and its height. We are alone in this icy world. Only us, and the island. And one helicopter with our two crew on board disappearing in the void. It takes thirty long minutes before we hear the crackling voice from Terry on the walkie-talkie ‘Khlebnikov, this is Peter I, we have landed’.. Ralph, our expedition leader, answers ‘Ok, we will get the second helicopter in the air. Let’s start to get this show on the road. Mark the landing area for the choppers as we agreed last night’.
For the next hours, the two choppers ferry our cargo and crew. I remain as the last one on board to ensure all the crates are lifted in the right sequence. Emergency survival kits first, in case the landing has to be aborted due to a change in the weather. Then a tent kit, a generator, food and cooking gear, followed by the personal stuff. I tag the crates on my list as they lift off.
The ship’s cook has put up a barbeque on the bow. The tourists took deck chairs to sit and watch all the activity as if it was a spectacle set up for them. A circus of helicopters and cranes, balancing crates and barrels . I guess we are an interesting sight.. After all, this is only the third time ever someone will land on this island… But the tourists are an interesting sight also. Almost surreal. A group of tourists from all over the world, sitting in deck chairs, eating barbequed sausages and lamb, in the middle of the absolutely ‘nowhere’.
After three hours, all of a sudden, there is no more cargo, and it is time for me to go. I wave at link[i-link]the tourists, shake hands with the ship’s captain and first mate, thanking them for a job well done, and get into the helicopter, in between bags of clothes and crates of food. We lift off and join the other chopper which has been circling the ship, waiting for us. It has a big cargo load swinging slowly in a net below. Together, we circle the ship for the last time as a sign of goodbye, and parallel to eachother, slowly fly towards the island.It is at this moment, the music which has been in my imagination for two years now, really comes blasting out. While watching the Khlebnikov shrinking and the island growing, towering almost above us, both helicopters are only two specs in the eternal emptiness of the Antarctic, the soundtrack of ‘The Mission’ plays in my head. ‘On Earth as it is in Heaven’, the title track. You should try it… And close your eyes imagining what I see at that very moment, and feel what I feel. For this expedition, I quit my job and worked for a year. But despite all the preparation, the real work was only to start now. Here and now. We are here to set world records, to set examples on radio operations, to experiment with new technology. From this remote place in the world, we will talk to tens of thousands of people all over the world.
pheli[i-pheli]We touch down on Peter I, and I jump out. My boots sink in knee deep snow. The second chopper drops the net, just above the ground. While lifting off, the pilot blinks his landing lights, and rocks the chopper in a short left-right, as to say good bye.
And suddenly, suddenly, after all the hectic activity, the shouting trying to raise our voices above the screaming sounds of the helicopter engines, the frantic to and fro of shifting crates on the boat, suddenly… as the last chopper disappears, there is no sound anymore. Everyone realizes it at the same time. We stop doing whatever we are doing. Bob and Tony with hammers in their hands as they put the plywood for the tent together, Ralph with the craw bar opening the crates. Martin and Tony on their knees, setting up a generator. Suddenly everyone stands up, as if in a prayer. A prayer for the silence which surrounds us. For a moment, only the muffled sounds ‘zwomkrr, zwomkrr’, of our boots in the snow, but then it all stops. There is nothing. nothing. nothing… This is the void… We are standing with a big white mountain behind us, looking over a 250 degrees panorama of the white ice sea, with the Khlebnikov just a tiny speck deep and far away, and the helicopter disappearing towards it. The “voidness” of the panorama, even if it is dotted with huge icebergs, which are only small dots or snow flakes from where we are standing. The grey-white of it all. And the lack of sound as it is absorbed by the huge glacier, and disappears into the thin freezing cold air. This is truly the most isolated deserted place on Earth. There is nothing here. Just us, nine people and some thirty crates. Just us, alone in the world. Alone in the void, in the white grey. This moment, I know, will last in my memory for ever. Of this moment I will tell my grandchildren while holding them on my knee, forty or fifty years from now. This moment, I realize: if there is a heaven, this is how it must feel. This moment, we are in paradise. We all look at eachother. Tears roll over our cheeks. We know we are sharing a moment where it is ‘On Earth as it is in Heaven’.
Continue reading The Road to the Horizon's Ebook, jump to the Reader's Digest of The Road. Read the full post...
The Road to the Horizon - Introduction
a[i-a]
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 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!”.
link[i-link]I still carry the memories of the Falklands and the Antarctic deep inside me. You had to be there to believe it. Life on Peter I was so intense you could almost touch it. The beauty of bright white icebergs floating in a dark blue see, with colours so intense that you have to wear sun glasses. And storms that wipe you off your feet. Talking about living your life!
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.
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.
So a few weeks later, I also applied for a telecom job in the relief work. That was April 1994. Three months after our Antarctic expedition, one year after I quit my corporate job, the Red Cross sent me to Angola. I started the ideal job: doing radio stuff, travelling and working with and for people, was all I ever wanted to do. Earning a living out of it made me feel I turned my hobby into my job. It never felt like a job, though. Not even up to today. It became a passion.
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
[i-untitled]We are now fifteen years following that one night when I took my decision to quit my well protected life and to go on a totally different route, Since then, I have done several missions for the IFRC - International Red Cross: twice in Angola, twice in Malawi and one in Ivory Coast. Later on, I took over Paul’s job in Goma, Zaire –now DRC-, working for UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The first two years I worked as a consultant, spending half of my time in Belgium, with Tine and Lana, our first born.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.
A sincere thanks to Els and Ekram for the work they have done on the short stories, for their relentless editing, their encouragement and tips.
Peter.
peter(at)theroadtothehorizon(dot)org
Continue reading The Road to the Horizon's Ebook, jump to the Reader's Digest of The Road. Read the full post...
The Reader's Digest of 'The Road to the Horizon'
Peter in the Solent[i-Peter in the Solent]
For your convenience, here is a short introduction and a quote for each of the eBook chapters. Each story stands by itself, so it does not matter in which sequence you read them.Click on the title to read the short-story.
Introduction to "The Road to the Horizon"
How I made the decision to change my life, how I got in the world of humanitarian aid, and how I started 'walking the Road to the Horizon'
| 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 off. 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. |
The Children of Ambriz
My first humanitarian mission. Angola. Trying to make a difference, even when sleeping with UNITAD rebel graffiti above your head.
| The pilot pushes the plane's nose down and dives towards the landing strip. A hundred meters above ground, he pulls back up, like a Stuka in the second World War: "Iiiiiiiieeeeeeeaaaaaawww". Everyone in the plane looks tensely at the movements on the ground below. Soldiers come out of the bushes. "Did you see anyone shoot", asks the pilot? "No, let's try again!", I answer. |
The Real "Out of Africa"
Malawi. The Africa how I had imagined it, as if taken straight out of the movie "Out of Africa"
| I got enchanted by the hippos in the lake right in front of a lodge along the road, where I stopped for a quick drink. Time went by too fast, and now the darkness took me by surprise. But it does not bring any feeling of danger with it. On the contrary, it is a veil falling over you, inviting you to participate in the secrets of Africa. The road leads me along villages where men sit on branches of fallen boababs, talking to by-passers, while children play hide and seek behind the skirts of their mamas. Some people stand on the road, waving their arm horizontally, asking for a lift. |
Goma, the Scent of Africa
Goma, Africa at its best and Africa at its worse. Dazzling sceneries of the lush green volcanoes, but with valleys filled with hundreds of thousands of refugees. About being able to choose where and how you live, while others do not have that privilege.
| I feel caught between 750,000 refugees, mountain gorillas and two active volcanoes.It is a breathtaking evening in Hotel Karibu, Goma Zaire. The door of my ground floor hotel room is open and gives me a glorious view over a garden with tropical flowers and trees. It rained a bit this afternoon, and with the evening sun playing over the waves of Lake Kivu, just a breath away, the scent of Africa rolls into the room. The scent of the tropical flowers, of the volcanic ground, of the trees. The crickets start their monotonous chirping, and the song of the fishermen on the lake echoes onto the shore. From time to time, you can hear a distant ‘bang’. You never know if this is a sound from rioting in town, an attack in the refugee camp or the fishermen on the lake. They found an efficient way of fishing: they throw in grenades and pick up the dead fish. |
How Cigarettes Once Saved My Life
Something completely different. Howland, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. How the beauty of remote places always holds an element of danger. Trying to stay afloat, bleeding, in a sea filled with sharks.
| Suddenly I realize I still have my soap in one hand and the plastic bottle of shampoo in the other. Here I am floating in a rip current, with my body bleeding, peddling with my feet to stay afloat, but still holding on to my soap and shampoo as if these were the last earthly belongings I wanted to take with me into the next world… I let go of them. They sink. All I can think off is staying afloat. The current is too strong, I can not swim against it. I have to preserve my strength. |
Ambush
The beauty of remote places, and their dangers... This time the danger comes in the form of an ambush in Burundi. Feeling like riding on borrowed luck.
| We are sitting on the porch of a shack, in between tens of villagers and a dozen military. The villagers had done the same as we did: taken refuge with the military. All is pitch dark. There is no moon. We hear the remote cracking of machine guns in a distance, but the military are relaxed. They urge us not to make any light, though. No torches, no lights in the car, and when lighting cigarettes, cover it with your hands. Lights not only attract mosquitoes, but also the attention of the rebels. Mats and I are nervous. And angry in a way. Angry at our own stupidity. Our own complacency with security rules. We, of all people, should have known. |
Wapi Yo?
An email sent in 1999. The sorrow of loosing a friend.
| 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. |
The Ugly Duckling
Daily life in Kampala, Uganda. Camel Trophy racing with an old dented Landrover which barely makes it home every evening.
| 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! |
Kadee
How we had to leave a faithful friend behind in Uganda. A friend who had guarded our kids so well throughout the years.
| 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. |
Abby One and Abby Two
Life in Africa is dominated with both the beauty and the joy of living, but seemingly with death always lurking behind the corner. A story of two drivers I worked with in Uganda.
| 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… |
The Man with the Air Conditioner On his Head, Shot at us
It takes decade to build a prospering city, and just a few days to turn it into a devastated, looted ghost town. Entering Brazzaville right after the civil war.
| The ferryboat is cramped with Congolese, who fled the fighting a few weeks ago and now try to go back home. We find a spot on the upper deck, looking at Kinshasa on one side of the Congo river, and Brazzaville on the other. We were safe in Kinshasa, but crossing a river, just a few miles wide, will bring us in a totally different world. Kinshasa behind us was buzzing with activity, as it always is. But looking ahead, we don’t see much movement in Brazzaville, apart from the plumes of smoke raising slowly. Mats and I are one of the first foreigners to enter the city after the civil war. God knows what we will find… Missions like these are always interesting, get the adrenaline pumping, but at the same time, we are aware of the dangers. The swollen cadavers floating by on the water, certainly remind us of it. |
Once, I Went to Mpulungu
Some trips are just one continuous chain of adventures from the beginning until the end. This one takes us with a Belgian Air Force plane to Zambia, where we get lost in the middle of the night, get stuck in the swamp, loose the axle of our car, have people run away from us as probably it was the first time they saw a car with 'white guys', and end up landing right next to AirForce One.
| Mats had taken refuge in the ditch, still throwing up. He was exhausted. It must have been a hilarious sight. Two muzungus, in their big car, stuck in the middle of the swamp, miles away from any sign of civilization. One sitting in the shade of the car, with his legs and clothes full of mud, the other one laying in the ditch, emptying his stomach for the umpth time. |
On Earth As It Is In Heaven
Something completely different: The feeling of landing on the world's most remote spot: Peter I island in the Antarctic.
| And suddenly, suddenly, after all the hectic activity, the shouting trying to raise our voices above the screaming sounds of the helicopter engines, the frantic to and fro of shifting crates on the boat, suddenly… as the last chopper disappears, there is no sound anymore. Everyone realizes it at the same time. We stop doing whatever we are doing. Bob and Tony with hammers in their hands as they put the plywood for the tent together, Ralph with the craw bar opening the crates. Martin and Tony on their knees, setting up a generator. Suddenly everyone stands up, as if in a prayer. A prayer for the silence which surrounds us. For a moment, only the muffled sounds ‘zwomkrr, zwomkrr’, of our boots in the snow, but then it all stops. There is nothing. nothing. nothing… This is the void… We are standing with a big white mountain behind us, looking over a 250 degrees panorama of the white ice sea. |
A World Apart
Sitting in paradise knowing that on the other side of the world, hell is breaking loose. Zanzibar and Kosovo mixed into one.
| ‘Life should always be like that’, I think. Very far away, in between the sound of the small, steady waves breaking onto the sand in a steady cyclic movement, I hear a faint sound, a high pitch tingling, a lovely sound . Tine squeezes my arm and pulls me out of my dream. ‘Phone ! Your phone is ringing!’. Still half asleep, I dig into our bag with beach towels and pampers for Hannah. It was the office. ‘A massive exodus from Kosovo refugees into Macedonia and Albania… Started yesterday.. Need to fly in… Equipment needed… Sorry to disturb your Easter weekend!’. Half awake, I hear everything but only grasp a bit. |
Italians, the Art of Flying and the Laws of Probability
Flying into Kosovo at the end of the war. Stories of flying in the world I work in. Of being lucky, while others are not. About the Laws of Probability that govern our lives.
| The problem with small planes is that you can see and hear everything going on in a cockpit. You’re sitting just a few inches away from reality. In a big commercial jetliner, it looks like all goes automatic. You can ‘Sit back, relax and enjoy your flight’. Our reality is a bit different at this moment. I don’t know why, but pilots that go off cursing and act all agitated don’t inspire a lot of confidence in me. I have no fear of flying, but I do not like to be reminded of the fact that flying an airplane is only part science. The rest is luck, skill, art, habit and experience. All very grey things if you ask me. A thin line between ‘to be or not to be’.. Looking at the co-pilot who is all sweating, I am sure that Shakespeare is not the first thing on his mind. |
Scene of War
Passing the border between Albania and Kosovo amidst thousands of refugees. Why does the world keep on making the same mistakes over and over again?
| A long, slow moving stream starts from far behind us. We can hear it, the random noise. It passes right next to where we stand, and follows bends and curves for as far as we can see. A stream, a steady flow. Not of water, but of people. Tens of thousands. Refugees returning home. Whole families on tractors and donkey pulled carts, with all their belongings stacked as high as they can. Mattresses, cupboards, tables, chairs, cardboard boxes… Mothers holding on to babies, brothers and sisters walking hand in hand. Elderly men with deep grooves in their faces, walking with a stick in their hand, or pushing a wheel barrel. A massive flow of people. |
The Pizza Place on the Corner
Happiness is a coke and a pizza. Even though it sounds like the rest of the world around you is witnessing Doom's day.
| After driving for an hour over a road filled with potholes from the bombing, with Nato checkpoints every few miles, we can finally see Pristina laying in the valley.. It is getting dark, but splashes of light come from the valley. At first I thought it was fireworks, but soon we realize these are tracer bullets. We can hear the machine gun fire coming from town. From afar, we can see cars racing around, and masses of agitated people shouting and shooting in the air. Dozens of Nato helicopters hover low above the buildings with strong searchlights pointing down. Flares leave traces in the sky before floating down slowly, lighting up parts of town as if it were daylight. |
The Adventures of Little Herman in Kosovo
We once hired an Indian generator specialist. Or rather, we thought we hired a generator specialist. Or his brother. Anyway, he was Indian. Who quickly became our own Bollywood mascot..
| The driver dropped him in front of his guesthouse and Herman is complaining to the radio room his key does not fit. I hear the radio room advise him to ring the door bell. After that the radio remains silent. Guess that worked… Still, after half an hour, I get a hunch maybe I’d better check he is OK. I call him via the radio. He confirms, in his funny English: “No, not to worry, Sahib. I got into the apartment.” “How?”, I ask. “Oh, I just kicked in the door… “ |
In Pace
Waiting for the plane in the airport of Kabul, Afghanistan during the Taliban times...
| Golden yellow, golden brown, like a picture on a postcard. Remains of summer, a beautiful early fall evening. The mountain range around Kabul is dry. Not a single tree, just some yellow bushes. ‘Amazing’, says the demining expert. I agree. While sitting on the stairs right at the apron, we have a 180 degree sight of the landing strip, taxi runways and hangers around the airport. With the dry yellow mountains, under the fading yellow sun, with small yellow dust devils whirling up small yellow tubes of sand and dust here and there, in between the wrecks of literally hundreds machines of war. Shot down, missed the runway, blown up, or just dumped and stripped of spare parts. MIL-8 Russian helicopter gunships with big dark ragged edged holes in their light yellow and green camouflaged side. Pieces of old artillery and tipped over radar equipment. Antonov and Ilhutsin cargo planes sticking their tail or wing in the air. Hangers with caved-in roofs, with crashed fuel and supply trucks underneath their vast concrete weight. |
TV Censorship - The Pakistani Way.
A story of daily life in Islamabad, Pakistan. Trying to understand how the TV never showed a naked leg.
| It was real funny, and really frustrating in some TV shows like 'Silk Stalkings'. You know, those pseudo detective series where all the 'good guys' are longlegged shortskirted young ladies. There was so much 'fleshy' stuff going on, the test screen would be shown every 10 seconds or so. Even during the intro-scene:One of the longlegged-shortskirted-good-guys got out of a car and BLOOP. One of the longlegged-shortskirted-good-guys leaned forward a bit and showed a hint of bra, BLOOP. One of the longlegged-shortskirted-good-guys kissed their boyfriend and BLOOP. |
The US Special Forces Have Arrived!
In Islamabad, just after 9/11, we get in the middle of the world's media attention.
| My thoughts are running off. I am thinking of the Afghan staff at dinner last night. They were worried about their families left back home in Mazar, Kabul, Faizabad, Jalalabad… Would the Taliban go nuts, and start murdering and plundering? Or empose an ever stricter regime? They wondered how each of them was going to get back home, as we evacuated all international staff from Afghanistan the day after 9/11. We also suspended the UN flights from Islamabad into Afghanistan… Somewhere, a change of tone in the conversation draws my attention. A lady from one of the agencies starts talking in a low voice. I concentrate again. She is leaning forward and whispers slowly: - ‘Yes, I know we will have problems. The US special forces, the spooks, have already arrived. I saw them last night’. |
Wild Cannabis and 'Oh baby'
Orange bearded guards, wild cannabis and ... making "Love All Night Long" in Islamabad.
Let's make love,all night long ! |
How We Conquered the Mountain
Flying into Kabul right after the defeat of the Taliban.
| In the end, I went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They all said that only the –newly appointed- minister could give me this kind of approval. But he was not in. So I sat on the steps of his building for hours waiting until he arrived. I knew him from television. Dr Abdullah was a well known figure in the ranks of the Northern Alliance. As his convoy drove into the compound, and he got out of the car, I got a hold of him. He looked me up and down. Perhaps I did not look like someone who could conquer mountains, in my grimy sweatshirt and a torn and ragged WFP safari jacket... |
-"M"- Requiem For Baghdad.
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Dubai, Iraq, Belgium.. This story jumps to different places trying to grasp the horrors of war, hatred and 9/11. And the sorrow about a friend, "-M-", lost in the Baghdad bombing.
| Richard and I spent a nice evening in one of the open air restaurants in Baghdad. Even though it was close to midnight and pretty cold outside, there were plenty of people still walking around. I loved the people there, the feeling the whole setting gave me. They were friendly, helpful, many of them very well educated. Never a harsh word. As we were walking the streets that night, people smiled at us, often to say ‘Hey habibi, how are you? Where do you come from? What do you do?’. When we would start talking to them, the subject of children and family would always come up. No matter where people come from, the love for their close ones always seems to be the main thing on their mind. We felt safe, almost at home, without the slightest sense of fear or insecurity. We were amongst good people. |
The Day I Got Deported From the US
Well, the title says it all...
| An armed guard escorts me to a bathroom. Stays outside of the door. I take out my mobile phone, call Gianluca, and explain what happened. I whisper I will not make it to the meeting. I give him a 60 seconds briefing on what my message was going to be in that meeting. The guard bangs on the toilet door saying “It is time, let’s go”. |
The Day the Groom Got Deported From the US
The story within the previous story. But more sad.
| Omar (to him#6): Can I see my wife, so we can discuss what we should do? him#6: No, your wife already passed immigration and customs, she can not come back in. And of course, I can not allow you to go out. Omar: But.. you are sending me back, we are on our honeymoon, and I can not even speak to her? him#6: I am sorry. If you have any message, please pass it on to the airline supervisor. |
Pero. Tears for My Friend
Two days after I left West Timor, senseless violence swept through the village of Atambua. A story of a broken promiss.
| I looked forward to meet him during my current Asia tour, which included West and East Timor. Unfortunately, I had to reschedule my visit to Kupang and Atambua by a few days at the last moment, so Pero and I missed eachother by 2 days. He was on R&R when I had meetings in his office in Atambua two weeks ago and I walked passed the radio room he worked in. Last week we exchanged Emails again saying 'there will always be a next time, people like us always meet again, one side of the earth or another'. Unfortunately, Pero, I will not be able to keep my promise. You parted from us way too soon, in a senseless death. We all know the risks we face while working in emergency relief activities, but your departure due to inhumane and totally absurd violence shocked many of us. |
One Love
Jumping to the other side of the world: a lovely morning scenery on Union Island, in the Caribbean.
| Sydney, who sold us some Tshirts ‘Work less – Sail more, Come to the Tobago Cays’, stayed alongside our boat for over an hour. We talked about Trinidad where he came from originally, and about Africa. He wants to go to Africa and start up a small business there. Tanzania seems to be his favourite place. It is strange imagining Sydney, with his long rasta curls and his colourful knitted hat, doing business in rural Tanzania. |
250 Boats Facing the Same Direction
Escaping the rat race of daily life, to go racing across the Atlantic. The start in the Canary Islands.
| The start was one of the most memorable pictures I will never forget... Over 200 boats starting a race at the same time. And not only a race, a transatlantic crossing but also starting an adventure, chasing dreams. Even though we will often sail hundreds of miles apart from the other boats, we are still connected to one another, because of our common goal, our common dreams, our common interests, all to do with adventure, water, sailing and being addicted to the horizon.. It was an absolute fabulous sight, hundreds of boats and sails, and thousands of crew working on them.. All heading into the same direction: St.Lucia in the Caribbean. |
We Are All Going No-Where
The proof that the art is enjoying 'The Road', rather than reaching the destination. After all, we are all sailing in life from one point to the next. But most of the time, we end up where we are coming from.
| For days, we have not seen another ship and on Saturday, we passed a fishing vessel, in the early afternoon. All of sudden she popped up at the horizon. We locked her on the radar and observed she was not moving at all. It was a fishing vessel, which looked like hovering on one spot. We were speeding on our massive green kite, autopilot set to follow the wind, about 155 degrees off wind, a course that brought us heading straight for the fishing vessel. – is it not odd, that for days on end you don’t see any other ship, and when one is spotted, it always seems to be on a collision course? – |
Yo Man! - The Mother Watch Rap
Sailing across the Atlantic brings all kinds of inspiration. This is a rap song. With compliments from the crew of 'Persuader One'
Wraps, stews, un-i-dent-i-fi-able chow, |
Letter to a Mum: Spoiling Innocence
Making fun about the benjamin of our transatlantic crew in a letter to his mum.
| We run out of dried mushrooms for our soup. We think Tom had something to do with it, as one night, he was rather ‘happy’, smoking weird shaped rolled cigarettes.We also run out of dried soup, and oregano spices. We think he is in his ‘experimental phase’. He does have a dripping nose all the time though..Tom would like to inform the other teenagers on the ARC-boats that the book with the celestial navigation tables works very well to roll cigarettes. |
Have I Lost It Or Just Found It?
Crossing the Atlantic brings out the spiritual stuff in everyone. Well at least, in me it does!
| She loves me, this ship. She loves what I do to her. She loves it when I switch off the autopilot and steer her manually.The crew jokes about it 'she likes her little machine -the autopilot-, but she likes Peter's hand job much, much more!'. |
How Bad Can Your Luck Get?
Too short to quote. The last day in the life of a flying fish
Home - "Le Plat Pays"
How far do we have to travel to enjoy what we have at home? This is an Email for 'E', describing my home turf, my 'Plat Pays'.
| Sometimes the clouds are so heavy the light wind can not carry them anymore, and the moisture sinks down over the land, creating heavy mist, like we had yesterday. The people then say: " 't is voe te snien", literally "you could cut it", so thick the mist could be. It happens you can not even see two meters in front of you. Then the sound would be muffled, echoed, and carries much further than usual. This makes everything confusing. And wet... Especially wet.. The mist would drip off your face and clothes, and off the tree branches. If you are real silent then, you can hear the drops create a weird, short and soft dripdroptiktok, echo-t all around, as if you would be surrounded by thousands of fairytale-d invisible dwarfs tiptoeing around you. It is then, this land of mine whispers its mystic and old stories. Legends about the people who lived there in a dark past. |
The Jihadis - A Close Encounter With the Terrorists
A close encounter of the more scary kind... A self-censored story about how I almost gave a presentation to "The Top 10 Most Wanted terrorist organisations".
| They all look very serious. They have some heavy looking dudes with bulky stuff under their jackets, behind them. “These must be our guests”, I think to myself, and walk towards them, holding out my hand, to greet them. I hear one of our local staff rushing in behind me, whisper-shouting “Peter!?”. At that moment, one of the bulky-jacket dudes leaps forward, pulls me by the hand I held out, and pushes me firmly onto the side of the corridor. I just stand there, perplex, while the whole official delegation rushes past me. The one huge dude keeps standing in front of me, drilling his dark reflective Ray Ban sunglasses deep into my eyes. Nobody else thinks I am worthy of a look. |
From Sand to a City
How we built a humanitarian city with the government of Dubai. A fairytale-like story of real-life Dubai.
| Mohammed said: "Give me a few days."Two days later, he called: "Let’s meet. I want to show you something." He drove us around an old military base: many warehouses, small offices. "Would this do?" he asked. I was not enthusiastic. Too spread out, too old, too small.Mohammed said: "Give me two weeks."After two weeks, he called: "Refurbishment of an old facility would cost too much; we will build from scratch. Give me a few weeks."In August 2003, someone in his office sent me an email: "Have money, will build. But bigger than a humanitarian base. Let’s build a humanitarian city!" |
What's in a Gesture?
Even though, we are all trying to be culture-sensitive, there are sometimes situations where we, the "Foreigners", the "Falangs", the "Muzungus" come out rather embarrassed...
| Me: "Excuse me, anything wrong? Him: He answers with the (gesture): the fingers folded together, pointing upwards, and slowly moving his hand up and down. I often go to Italy, and that (gesture) means as much as "what the ^^%%** are you talking about?" |
The Dudettes
All too often we, men, forget what it means to be a woman in this men's world. The humanitarian world is no different. It takes a special breed of women to survive in the world of the "Real Dudes". They are called "The Dudettes".
| “Who the f**k has put pink paper in the printer?”, I hear one of the guys shouting in the corridor. Loads the cupboard doors bang as he is looking for the normal plain white paper… Loads of cursing.. I duck.. I did not put the pink paper in the printer, but I know who did.. Well, I kinda know.. I also know she got away with the blue paper, too. And with the light-green. |
My Life in Four Bags
My home is a set of bags. Four bags to be exact. Packed after one year of sabbatical. The full inventory of my life for the new start of my professional life can be summarized on two sheets of paper.
| Once I had a jacket that got repaired so many times, stitched up to the max, cleaned until the linen almost became transparent with small holes from battery acid, and stains from engine oil -or was it that mean ketchup they used to serve in Macedonia?-. That jacket became an icon. Guys in the office used to make jokes about it, but I kept it until I found a suitable replacement. It is not easy to find a jacket with 13 pockets. When I finally found a new one, I dumped the old jacket. My guys secretly retrieved it from my waste basket, framed it, and hung it on the wall in the office… I guess that jacket went through more countries in three years than any normal person would do in three life times.. And somewhere, it does deserve a spot on the wall, as it stands as a symbol for our life as an aid worker. Worn to the bone. Stitched up and repaired to get going again. A soul stained with memories. |
Itanglish: Italian Food in English
The Italian way of cooking is straightforward. The translation of an Italian menu is not...
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The New Woman in My Life
A short lived romance with a sad, sad ending...
| I have a confession to make. I have a new woman in my life. She has a soft, deep erotic voice. She is from the same part of the world as I am. She is Flemish. Never argues with me. Softly gives me hints on the road of life. She is wise. Drives to work with me every morning, and waits in the car until I decide to go home again. Perfect woman. She is always happy, no matter how my mood is. Is always there when I need her, even if I don’t speak to her for days in a row, and keep her locked up. |
Nights on Deserted Islands
A deserted Pacific island. The beech, palmtrees, birds, sunset.. You think you got the picture? Think again!
| 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. |
Doing Good to Others
The more unselfishly you help someone else, the more good will come to you. Always!
| 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. |
Shit no go, we no go!
Everything on the Antarctic is dictated by the laws of nature. Heavy fogged blocked us for days when we tried to get off the island. Landing on the Antarctic was easier than getting off.
| It has been three days now. For three days we are huddled with seven people in the last of two tents we still have up. Two of us sleep on the kitchen table, the rest of either in a chair or on pieces of luggage which we stacked in the corner of what once was our kitchen tent. The other tent is full with our personal gear. All the rest of our equipment is crated and lined up near the helicopter landing site. |
Ham Radio, Anyone?
Might sound melodramatic, but ham radio changed a big part of my life. Now that's deep! Real deep! Especially when coming to that realization in the middle of no-where. :-)
| I am not a happy camper. And that is an understatement. Before we left, I emphasized them to keep a watch for us on our monitor frequency. And now, I call them, and … nothing, nada, ziltch. The sun is already set behind the mountain tops. Even though the sky still has a hint of a dark-blue afterglow, it is already dark. And when I say dark, I mean pitch dark. There is not a single light. The headlights of the trucks in our convoy beam into a void as they negotiate twists and turns of this bombed road. They light up nothing but emptiness. And bomb craters. And little flags marked ‘Mines’ |
Lost Connection.
Just after 9/11, the world was holding in its breath. How was the US going to retaliate against Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda? This story is written the night we found out.
| I step out of the plane and look at my watch. 10 pm. Two hours to shop in the Dubai Tax Free before boarding my connecting flight to Islamabad, Pakistan. I follow the stream of arriving passengers moving along on the first floor of the airport, overlooking the shopping area. I look at the vast crowd below. A dense mix of every possible nationality, religion and ethnicity in the world, expressed through a myriad of dress codes. From formal western suites, the traditional Arab dishdashahs, women in mini skirts mixed with those fully veiled. Rough Afghani chupans, expensive Indian silk sari’s, Berber djellabas, Australian safari shorts, Sudanese turbans, American baseball caps and Arab hijabs. This crowd seems to represent the world within one space. But the crowd is not strolling along from one shop to another in its usual way. The people are talking in groups, some with raised voices and expressive hand gestures, and others whisper. There is no laughing, nor joy but a nervousness makes the tension in the air so thick one could cut it with a knife. You do not have to be a clairvoyant to feel something is wrong. |
This Man...
A truely inspirational story written by my friend "E" while on mission in Khartoum, Sudan.
| I turn towards him and look from up to down. He has no legs - cut a little below the waist. Can you imagine my reaction - my heart leaped out of my chest. My eyes bulged and I looked back up at him and then, figured very quickly that he's got a cab equipped with a basic, Sudanese-style mechanical addition so he can drive. And work. Now, I want to chitchat. But don't even dare push him in that direction. He says "I'm disabled but it doesn't stop me from living and having lived my life.." |
Murphy's Law In Sudan
No-one really understands how frustrating Murphy's Laws can be, until you get stranded in South Sudan. A story by Enrico.
| You start driving and keep wondering whether you are still sane to travel in these weather conditions on a security level-4 road, but you drive on. Two more hours later, you finally reach the convoy meeting point. The convoy should be there by noon. You wait and wait. The convoy is not there. Still, you are hopeful…. Three hours later you are told the convoy has been cancelled. The next one will be on Monday! |
How Deep Is the Deep Field?
For us, aid workers, there is this magical term: the “Deep Field”. It stands for those locations where the real relief work is done. The "Grass Roots Stuff". But the “Deep Field” is relative, depending on where one stands. A short story by Enrico.
| When I reached Bor, I felt this was the end of the “known world”. This must be the “Real Deep Field”, I thought. The office, located in a compound on the west bank of the White Nile, did not comply with any of the standing security and operational standards. Food, sanitation and basic living conditions were a mere illusion. |
The Pit Latrine
When everything else is lacking, the bare necessities are really bare, as we discover in this short story by Enrico.
| At this point, the inexperienced, the optimistic and the careless might think that all their troubles are over.. Or at least, 50% over since the return journey is still awaiting. The rest, though, know that the worst fear is yet to come: the encounter with the Hole! |
Twenty-Four Hours in AweilThe Pit Latrine
From the deep deep bush, Aweil in Southern Sudan, Cyprien writes this story.
| I landed in Aweil, South Sudan on the afternoon of April 20. The landing strip is located in the middle of the village, joining the two sides. When there is no aircraft, the landing strip is a soccer field where kids play football while watching their cows. It is also where trucks from Kisangani and Kampala offload their cargo, filling the strip with cycling villagers and smaller trucks. Before landing the pilot flies over the strip at low altitude to chase away any living creature. Once this warning is given and the "airport" is vacated, the pilot then comes back to land. |
The Theory of Relativity
Einstein did not have South Sudan in his mind when inventing the Theory of Relativity, according to this story by Enrico.
| A young man came to me with a request for a salary advance at the end of another day in the ‘deep field’ - a day full of nuisances and challenges. The form bore two signatures, which gave me some reassurance the request had gone through some initial screening process. I asked him for his name and what he did for WFP. The answer didn’t come immediately, so I repeated my question. After some seconds of hesitation, he uttered a few words in Dinka, the local language. |
The Forces of Nature
Enrico reporting from South Sudan.
| Recently, I was invited by the Government of the State in South Sudan I work in. The Governor reminded everybody that a good administration should always follow a bottom-up approach and that consultations should take place in the “bomas”, the small grass root communities, first. |
The Perfect Balance
Once again, our resident reporter in South Sudan, Enrico...
| Finding the right balance in life is so difficult to achieve that some people choose it as their sole undertaking in life. A common mistake made by many, though, is to think that the perfect balance is an absolute concept. It is not. The perfect balance is a moving target. That goal differs depending on where you live, what you do,.. Working in a remote location in South Sudan, today was one of those days where I felt that target was further away for me than ever. |
The Driver's License
Enrico is now the happy owner of a South Sudanese driver's license.
| I ask him why he had disappeared for a week without permission. “Nothing special”, he tells me, “A chap wanted to marry my younger sister, but couldn’t afford the dowry of 35 cows we’d negotiated. So, he decided to kidnap my sister. My family and I chased them up. We –euh—‘renegotiated’ the dowry and they’ll soon be married,” he concludes, nodding with a satisfied smile. |
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