Long overdue

I awake at some point in the night to the eerie sound of howling wind whistling thru the window frame and door jam opposite my bed. I lay in my boxer shorts on top the tobacco colored (supposed to be white) sheet and listen to the insistent sound. With my eyes closed I can imagine, in my half asleep and imaginative state, that I’m somewhere in the arctic, on the tundra. I lie inside my tiny wooden shack as an angry blizzard attacks its exterior, yet I remain cozily warm due to my trusty woodstove that cranks out the heat. I mean really cranks it out. Damn that thing is warm, maybe I should crack a window.
I open my eyes again and the obvious greets me: I am not in the arctic, and could not be farther from it in any sense. My trusty woodstove that is causing me to sweat is none other than the balmy 90 degree nighttime temperatures. At least there are no mosquito nets I reassure myself. I roll off the bed and proceed to the window to allow some breeze, and consequently blowing sand, in to stir up the stagnant air. Dropping down onto the hard mattress again I curse whichever housekeeper it was who removed the air conditioning remote from my room. I had done well to keep a hold of it this long, as the disappearance of these useful little buggers has been a recurring phenomenon as of late. Seems they must be fetching quite a price on the Hassi Messaoud black market these days.
The breeze cools it down a bit and my eyes begin their roll back as I drift off again trying to picture myself in that Canadian Arctic cabin with nothing but Douglas Firs, caribou and fluffy white snow outside. Oh, and maybe an elf too. One who is wearing a little red hat and grants me wishes as often as I like. Yet even with this generous offer I make him sleep outside, because just like wild animals, elves do not belong inside. He takes it well though, though sometimes he cries, or makes dreadful sobbing noises like the one he is making right now. Damn elves, I wish he would just stop….
I open my eyes again and find myself being serenaded not by an elf but by a donkey who sounds to be just outside my window. A quick examination reveals this to be the case. Recently a female French pilot has tasked herself into making the AirExpress Algeria base camp a veritable zoo. A dog. A small bird. A kitten. And as of yesterday, a donkey.
“Aww, but he was just wandering around lost outside you zee, I zink he willz be much happiar en ear!” was the explanation offered that afternoon when we all stopped our dirt lot cricket game, (yes, I said cricket, and I was playing it.) and stared open jawed as she led the new found pet towards the only patch of weeds we have in the camp.
And now this new found friendly ass is standing outside my window singing the blues in a way only a donkey could. It is slightly less than wonderful.
For all of you who missed it, Elizabeth and I’s wedding this summer was fantastic. My mouth still contorts into a smile whenever I think of that evening. On August 19th, at around 7:00 PM, with a beautiful setting sun, my Grandfather, who was the Minister, told me “You may now kiss the bride”. It was an incredible night that I will never forget. We had friends and family in from all around the 50 states and the globe. A perfect celebration to make the weekend affair end on a higher note than two nights before when Elizabeth had not taken lightly the fact I thought it a great idea to sleep in the bushes outside in the mist after drinking too much at my bachelor’s party. My affinity for sleeping in bushes when drunk seems to continue to this day.
After the wedding, Elizabeth, or Betsey as most everyone else knows her, and I headed to Nassau for a honeymoon. It was initially scheduled for Mexico, but the first hurricane of the season did it’s best to cancel that one for us, so we rescheduled for the Bahamas at the last minute. Either way it was a lovely vacation filled with nothing but the two of us, swim up bars, lots of sun, good food and drinks. Oh, and a great bed. For napping that is.
And now I sit, without my new, beautiful wife, in Algeria again. Yet the donkey serenaded evenings are counting down, and I have only 11 days remaining until I leave Algeria for the final time. I have taken a job in China, more specifically Beijing, and Elizabeth and I are moving there around November 1st. We are both excited for the opportunity to live together in a house that is not one of our mothers’ (no offense to either of you) and to just be together again on another adventure. It will be great, I’m sure of it.

For Your Information...

When it is 125 degrees every day, sometimes it IS necessary to post such signs. One never can be too cautious against the threat of spontaneous combustion in the desert. I was relieved to see that Algerian authorities have taken such a proactive stance on the matter, as I’ve always wondered whether it's better to stop, drop and roll, or just break for the nearest shower for a refreshing extinguishing. Now I know.

Heat Induced Procastinoia

The illustrious Mr. Murphy was laughing from high above today.

It is known by most who know me even half well that I am one of the world’s finest procrastinators. I can procrastinate like no other, when faced with a decent enough challenge. As of recently, I have been taking online courses to finish a degree I began millennia ago in a galaxy far away. This time I aim to finish, though not today, probably sometime tomorrow…don’t worry, I’ll get to it.
Faced with mounting assignments this week, including a research paper, I did what came most natural: I found every conceivable excuse to not do it until the last day…today. I must admit I tried last night, honestly, but it just didn’t seem right. I, therefore awoke early this morning with the ready to release energy necessary to finish my momentous assignments. But first one must have breakfast, followed by another cup of coffee while talking with another pilot, which is of course followed by the best pre paper mental warm up known to modern man…ping pong. Just one game. Ok, two. Better make it best out of five. Post ping pong exhaustion is best remedied by another cup of coffee while watching a fishing show beamed in over the satellite television, and exchanging trout fishing stories with the Operations manager who has never been trout fishing but can imagine what it’d be like. And then it’s finally time for…oh shit…PANIC.

I made it back to my room and began typing as fast as the words came to my mind. Sometimes this doesn’t work though though because mistakes often I make dog and thoughts sometimes are aardvark random pencil. Yet I had determination on my side this time, and perseverance is a trait I possess when I want to possess it. I was somewhere into my second paragraph when the door rattled with a knock. Thinking it was the local, thieving house cleaning staff (no really, I am down to ½ the clothes I came here with) I shouted over the air conditioner in French that I needed nothing and they could skip the room. A moment passed and then there was another knock. I opened the door and found Mehdi, one of our local staff standing aback from the door in the shade of an overhang smoking a cigarette with a mischievous air about him. He stood staring my way for a moment before quietly, as if on a soft sigh, saying “you must come with me. You must come with me now. We have a…..meeting”. As he finished his last word he began walking off towards an idling car I had never seen in our compound before.

“Hey wait…hold on a second! What is this all about? How long will we be gone?” I shouted after him in stark contrast to the mysterious, sigh like address he had seconds earlier delivered upon me.
“Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes…BP…come, come now” he sighed again, turning slightly.

Annoyed that Mehdi and Mr. Murphy were now ganging up on me, I threw on my sandals, a ball cap and a shirt that did not have salt stains from excessive sweating. Sexy huh? I hopped in the passenger seat of the white, nondescript automobile, next to a silent Algerian who chain smoked and we went rolling off into the desert, on a circuitous and not-so-direct way to downtown Hassi Messaoud. I squinted without my sunglasses, peering off into the sands, making a strange noise I couldn’t repeat again if I tried when we passed a rather bloated camel who lay with eyes wide open and tongue out straight, as if he had been trying to hack one more good lugey at the world before he croaked. I hoped it was Michael (there is only one person who will understand that). It was after a few moments of the awkward, smoky car ride I realized I had no idea where we were, or where we were going. When I inquired, another cigarette was slowly lit and puffed this time with a James Dean demeanor, and Mehdi slid farther across the car, resting against his door, before peering out of his right eye at me. “We are going to BP, for a meeting. But first we need to…uuuhhh…we need to get petrol. That Is why we go this way, do not worry.” Unsatisfied with his answer, and in retaliation to the mounting quasi paranoia I was now beginning to experience, I scanned the desert for functional camels that I might make a daring getaway on if need be. Cmon…there’s gotta be one around here, damnit!!!!

When we hit the outskirts of town again it was in a section of questionable merit. The roads looked as if a war had come and gone in the previous day, and the gas station we stopped at looked as if it had been the main target of the previous day’s war. Mehdi ejected from the driver’s seat and began talking with another man. They both looked at the vehicle, said a few more words, and then disappeared into the fictionally-war ravaged building. A few men in turbans and long beards slowly walked by, staring at me in the car. One walked by again, after throwing something I feared would explode into a trash can. He stared again. I swore I had seen his face on a FBI Most Wanted poster, along with the other 3 guys who had strolled by.

The sudden ridiculousness of the situation began to sink in. I’m not going to a meeting. Well maybe I am, but it’s not with BP damnit, it’s with my MAKER! Screw you Mehdi! Screw you! I scanned the street; no one was anywhere now. I scanned the car and found the only thing that I could make lethal: a Bic pen. I held it tightly in my right hand silently planning my heroic escape if this guy didn’t come back in 3 minutes, keeping in mind that the package just deposited into the trash can would probably ignite the entire block any second, taking out the American and no one else, as they had all been warned and had fled to a safe and pleasurable viewing distance. If the explosion didn’t happen due to a faulty fuse, surely there were men waiting with a black sack to throw over my head. Surely. I eyed my trusty Bic and justly deemed it un-trusty due to the fact it was actually soft from sitting on the dashboard in the heat. “Would’ve survived, but his Bic was flaccid, ma’am” I imagined the men from the State Department telling Elizabeth. “His what????”
I was halfway to giggling over how witty and funny an epitaph it would make when the door flung open. I hadn’t been watching the other side of the car, and someone had snuck upon it. With floppy Bic in hand I turned quickly, ready to attack with lightning speed and leopard like reflexes.

An outstretched hand was nearing me, with the instrument of destruction gripped tightly within its firm, murderous paw. Not knowing what else to do, I lowered my Bic quickly and raised my hand. Meeting half way in the car, I grabbed the cold metal instrument and removed it from the combatant’s hand.
“Thanks for the Coke, Mehdi.” I said embarrassed.
“Ne pas de problem…you’re welcome” he replied, smiling as he got in. “Je suis desole, the pumps aren’t working, so I will get petrol later.”
We drove to the meeting, which turned out to be a ‘meeting’ in the literal sense of the word. I was asked 2 questions over a 2 hour period. I sat wondering when the paranoia that Mr. Bush touts had ensnared me to the point that I had almost given someone ink poisoning. I was ashamed that I had thought the thoughts I had.

In the car ride back Mehdi apologized for his terse, cold attitude earlier, explaining he had been irritated with BP for demanding a meeting at such short notice and for requiring one of the Captains, myself, be included. We began talking about our families and hometowns. He lives not too far away, in an oasis that is renowned throughout North Africa for its amazing dates He promised to pick up some for me next time he went home. He went on to tell me that he has 5 brothers, and 1 sister, and that they ranged from University English professors to architects, to computer software engineers, and that he was trying to raise money to start his own business.

So Mehdi proved to be just like 95% of all the other Algerians I have met so far: intelligent, thoughtful, polite, and motivated. It might surprise some to learn that this country, that is spoken of in such volatile and fear inspiring ways by many in Washington and elsewhere, is mainly inhabited by peaceful people who have built an amazing society, and who, above all else, enjoy the Simpsons. I say Mr. Bush, REMOVE THEM FROM THE ENEMY LIST, THEY LIKE THE SIMPSONS!

On the way back while discussing our families and Fox Network Cartoons, I caught myself still star out at the desert searching for a camel, that just in case, just if need be, just if…I could hop on and make my Hollywood style getaway on with something a little more lethal than a Bic pen for a weapon. Just in case…

African joys

It was particularly warm last night. Granted ‘warm’ is a relative term around these parts, because, well...ok, hell, ‘warm’ doesn't exist here. This is a land of harsh extremes. So let's start over.

It was freaking hot last night. I spent the evening hours in Hassi Messaoud, our operations hub for the flying we do throughout Algeria. I shoveled down a lovely meal of something indiscernible, smothered in other indiscernible-don't ask, don't tell-loveliness, with a side of curiously unidentifiable mush that I'm fairly sure smiled at me at least once during the course of dinner. You just cannot get African food, in all its glory, elsewhere. Thank God. A few days earlier I entered the company cafeteria for lunch and picked up the menu du jour just as the local attendant came to retrieve my meal coupon. Each day you have a choice of two exquisite entrees and a plethora of randomness laid out on a central table. Glancing at the 2 choices I did a double take. July 5th: Haricot verte avec poisson o Meat love. Surely the menu did not say Meat love. I laughed as the attendant looked on quizzically. "Monsieur?" he asked. "Yes, I'm sorry, ummm, I'll...errr...Je voudrais le Meat Love." "aaah, oui monsieur, le meat love est bon!" "I was afraid you'd say that!" I said laughing. You might wonder why I'd order meat love. It may sound even more risqué than ordering fish with green beans in the middle of the Sahara desert, but I had an urge for the Love. Minutes later I was handed a platter with a ball of ground beef, some parsley scattered ornately on top, and about 5 soggy french fries. "Le meat love, monsieur, bon apetit!" Mmmmm, mmmmm good!

The meat love it turned out was a hard boiled egg wrapped in about 1/4 of a pound of hamburger. It was, to say the very least, interesting. It took me a while to stop giggling like a school girl about the plates name, but once I cut into the mystery that lay before me I started laughing even more. It was a concoction that our cook in Abeche, Nestor, would have been very proud of. Nestor's crowning culinary achievement was his fruit salad, with mangos, canned pineapple and thinly sliced, cold canned hotdogs. He was proud, very proud. The pride lasted until the next morning when our mechanic, Leo, threatened to remove his scrotum with pliers if he ever made the dish again. Maybe I should send him the recipe for Meat Love.

After dinner, with a dangerously rumbling stomach warning of misery to come, I made off to talk to my beautiful fiancé on Skype, the internet telephone program. We recently bought web cams so that we could both see each other while chatting, and it always puts my heart at ease to see her smile live on camera. We spoke for sometime before I retired to my small, single sized mattress in my balmy room. The air conditioning was misbehaving, sending bursts of cold air for a few moments, and then turning itself off for 15 minutes or so. I fell asleep atop the covers after watching 10 minutes of amusing Arabic pop music videos in which women with fully covered faces sang seductive songs. Oh, I’m sorry, did I say amusing? I meant slightly depressing.

Around 5 am I woke up barely enough to realize that the air conditioner had revived itself from its mechanical slumber and that the temperature had dropped significantly. I drew the covers over me and started to drift off again into my dream. Through fading consciousness I heard what sounded like a small rattle coming from the AC and then a fairly loud "THWUMP-POP". The sensory nerves in my eyes produced a bright flash as something hit me square on the forehead, and my eyes rolled immediately to an alert posture. Thinking it was probably a chunk of ice that the unit had finally dislodged, I brushed my face and chest off seeking to swipe the mystery object from my bed. When my hand brushed over my chest I hit something big and cold. It moved.

It actually ran down my chest and stomach towards the sheets below. I simultaneously, and violently jumped from bed shouting something along the lines of "oohaahuuuuuhauah!!!", fumbling for the light switch. After a few moments of terrified searching, I found the switch and flicked it on. As the fluorescent lights flickered slowly on, illuminating the white walled room and my now disheveled bed, I caught glimpse of the culprit.

A cockroach the size a small Jack Russell terrier sat alert on the bed, staring my direction as if taunting me. "Sup buddy? You want a piece of this?" he yelled. I stood dumbfounded for a moment, slightly relieved it wasn't some large, prickly and poisonous black scorpion that I've heard about. Then my anger towards the paratrooper cockroach took hold of me and I answered with a resounding 'Hell yeah I do you bastard!'. After a rather non eventful battle, the cockroach was deposited in the trash bin and I wiped my sandal of bug goo on the rug by the door. As I went back towards my bed I saw little black specks freckling my white sheets and my white pillow. It would seem that my AC had been struggling due to a build up inside its vents. It also would seem that the now deceased, dive bombing perpetrator had been struggling to build a little residence for himself and his 100,000 relatives inside the very AC that sat 4 feet over my head. When the AC finally won and dislodged the pest it also dislodged a million flecks of cockroach shit all over my bed, and me.

I went back to the trash can and hit the cockroach again, just for good measure.

Nothing

I flew today to nowhere.
With me flew only my copilot.
When we arrived in nowhere there was nothing.
To my left: there was nothing.
To my right: there was nothing.
Behind me was the instrument that brought us to nothing in nowhere.
Above me sat the merciless sun that burnt this nothing.
We walked to a trailer.
Inside the trailer a man welcomed us to nowhere.
He told us to be careful.
That there is no one out there, but if there was,
be careful.
No one, but maybe someone, wants this nothing.
Truthfully, no one wants us to have this nothing.
We walked back outside: still nothing.
The sun, a glowing ember just inches away
A thin line, waving in the heat encompassed us
The thin line undulated into forever in all directions of nothing
My thoughts drifted, like the radiation wafting from the nothing
Into nowhere
Where I thought
about

Braveheart Bob

'So I was pulled up at this robot (stoplight) and this bloke walks up to the car with all these sunglasses. He says 'hey mon, how bouts some sunnies (sunglasses)?' and I tell him to piss off. He asks me again and I tell him to piss off. He was a huge guy though. He doesn't leave so I roll down my window and tell em I wanna try on a pair or two. He hands a few in and I'm laughing at how stupid this fella is cause I've got a plan.'

I sighed, half listening to the story from the short South African, while those around us seemed enraptured and glued to his words that were all pronounced in a deep Afrikaans accent.

'So I've managed to get three pairs from the huge bloke and I've got one on and he's asking me questions that I'm ignoring. Stupid questions. Then the light turned green and I shouted at em 'fuck off and go back to your own country!' and jammed on the gas and screeched away. He was running after me yelling and all I could do was laugh...I mean he could've killed me if he caught me, but heh...', he shrugged it off very macho-ly.

I pretended to be studying the bottles of Coca Cola in the glass doored fridge that was to my right, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of falsely thinking I was believing or enjoying his cruel story. A couple of the others at the table all chuckled and traded a few more stories about being bad-asses. I found it hard to bite my lip again when the conversation starter, the guy with the sunglasses story, started telling war stories about flying in Chad.

When the rebels invaded Abeche, for the 145th time, last November, I was conveniently sipping cold beers with Elizabeth on a beach off the coast of Thailand in the Andaman Sea. I wouldn't have it any other way. Not that I had planned it that way by any means, though had I known I probably would have decided it to be an ideal time for a beach cocktail getaway anyway. Yet Steve and Myriam had remained in Abeche along with other AirServ staff and all the other various NGOs staff as well.

When I returned, among other stories I heard, was the one about the pilot for WFP (which, ironically does not stand for World Food Program, but actually for We're Fucking Pussies) who had lost it and was sent home. The day after I arrived he was shipped off, and we all bid him a giggly farewell. The story goes that the rebels invaded, and after 24 hours the staff of WFP made a trek across town to seek refuge in the French Military Garrison. When it was clear the rebels had left the town the following evening many NGOs, WFP included, returned briefly to their compounds to survey the damage, if any. When the pilot in question returned to his compound with the rest of the crew he found a single empty cartridge in his bedroom, which had evidently come from a (drum roll please...) gun. Upon seeing a mysterious shell lying on his floor, pilot in question -we'll call him Bob for convenience sake-broke down into hysterical fits and began crying uncontrollably. Hours later when the WFP crew returned to the French Base Bob was still crying to the amusement and confusion of the French soldiers and other NGO staff. Aah, the fearless African bush pilot. Recovery did not come quick for Bob, in fact he and others requested he be removed from his posting and replaced immediately. Poor Bob.
It's funny, to me in a weird way, to see what sets people off, and what makes them crack in this sort of fashion. I don't want to think about what will make me do it, and I hope I never experience an attack of Bobitis.

I sat and thought about how it could be that Bob had forgot that I had known him, and his less that valorous history in Chad, as he sat 3 feet away and bragged about how brave, cunning and adventurous he is, and was. I read more Coke bottle labels instead of ruining his moment of glory. Someday Bobby-boy, someday.

Aaaah, Algeeeeeeeria!

My Beautiful, Kooky, Bullfrog lovin better half during our brief RI stint...

It is Friday, June 22nd, 10am. Outside the dry air is already close to 115 Fahrenheit. It is sweltering. The wind is a steady 20 knots, making the conditions outside comparable to a convection oven.

I sit inside a concrete room with 1 small window and an air-conditioning unit that struggles to keep up with its difficult task blaring away in the corner. From the tiny bathroom I can hear a toilet running continuously, leaking away what in this world is liquid gold. Beside me on the bed lays a novel I’ve been reading which is based in Antarctica, a clime which couldn’t possibly farther away from the reality in which I currently find myself. It is therefore quite surreal, albeit a dream like surprise, when I finish a chapter, walk to the door, and peer into the blinding light and steady wind out towards the beautiful void which is the Sahara desert.



I am somewhere. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The nearest ‘town’ is more than 150 miles away by aircraft, and probably twice that distance by a dirt road which is often times engulfed by the shifting orange sands. Therefore I say I am somewhere. Somewhere about 150 miles SSE of Hassi Messaoud, Algeria and SSW of the sharp end of Tunisia’s pie slice like national border. Around me is nothing, and yet so much.

I left the United States this past Sunday. In all honesty, coming back to Africa was one of the last things I wanted to do. The overwhelming majority of my spirit yearned to evict my tenants in Durango, pack up my stuff on the East Coast, buy two tickets, for Elizabeth and I, and move back to the land of fly-fishing, skiing and gleeful beer consumption. Had it not been for the woeful constraints put on me by my creditors (and myself...) I would most likely have done just that. I spent nearly 10 days with my family and fiancé in Rhode Island running errands, completing wedding preparations(ok, she did most of them, I just smiled and said agreed, because she was correct [honestly honey, you were]), fishing, and just enjoying the spoils of having a great family and momentarily living in a 1st World nation again. Life was good. Yet there was family issues as well that made it very difficult for me to, in good conscious, hop on an airplane and run away again. And yet I did.

When I stepped off the aircraft in Algeria on Tuesday morning, arriving from Madrid I mentioned to my new employer’s representative who had come to fetch me, “It’s actually a lot cooler here than I had expected”. She snorted and sighed “It’s early dear, give it an hour”. I now understand.

SAND
My first day was chaotic, to say the least. To start, after arising at 0330 AM (yes, 3:30am!!!) in Madrid, and hiking nearly 1.5 miles to the subway station, I was more than disappointed to learn that the train was shut down until 0600, which was 40 minutes AFTER the check in for my flight closed. In a panic I considered my options and realized, after staring down the streets devoid of conscious human life forms, that I had few. A slew of beautiful American curses rang thru the streets of Madrid early Tuesday morning, approximately 0400 local time, when I realized my only real options were to walk back to the hotel or hike another 2.5 miles or so to the airport boundary where I’d surely find a cab. Laptop in hand, daypack strapped to my back and a 40lb. duffle bag thrown over my shoulder, I cumbersomely clacked my way down the dark Spanish street in full uniform towards where I presumed the airport should lay. About 10 minutes into my trek, as fate should have it, a cab had stopped to eject a drunk at the drunk’s apartmento. I ran, clack, click, clack, to the car just as the driver was pulling away, slapping the roof with my palm, causing him to stop and let me in. Tossing my belongings inside I said, through heavy breathing, ‘El aeropuerto, PRONTO, por favor!’, knowing I had only 2 euros on me. As I prayed I would be able to find an ATM close to where the cabbie dropped me off, I could still smell the lingering alcohol in the car, which I hoped was from the departed drunkard. I found my ATM and checked in.

After landing in Hassi Messaoud, an oil town in southeastern Algeria, I was picked up by Annette, the operations manager for Air Express Algeria, the company I am ‘third party-ish’ flying Beechcraft 1900Ds for. We arrived at the main base, a large hotel like building housing an operations center and nearly foreign and national pilots. I was immediately given a stack of paperwork to complete, which was followed by briefings, lunch, more briefings, and then a shockingly hasty command that I’d be flying to ‘Bla-bla-bla’ with ‘Boo-bla-boo’.

‘Where, with who?’
‘Bla boo boo bah with Bah Bah Black Sheep.’
‘Oh, I thought so. Any chance I could have a siesta first because I am a jet lagged, borderline narcoleptic, incoherent freak right now...?’

After a nap which I could barely raise myself from, I was taken with Eves, another Captain-from Belgium, to the airport to first do a test flight and then a revenue flight to Bla boo boo bah. Luckily (in an abstract way) the airplane failed the test flight and I was allowed to have the rest of the evening off.

The following morning we arose at the Algerian ass crack of dawn and flew east first to Bir Reeba Nord, where I sit this minute, north to Constantine, which is 20 miles from the Mediterranean, to Algiers, the nation’s coastal capital. At the very least, I was dumbfounded. The coastal area of Algeria was beautiful and could not have been farther from what I had expected. Moderately green, treed mountains tumbled down straight into the aquamarine waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Blonde beaches as wide as Central Park sat below beautiful sheered cliffs for long stretches, and occasionally crashing waves battered offshore sea mounts that rose 100 feet vertically above the azure waters.

‘This is Algeria???’ I asked Eves.
‘Yes, amazing isn’t it?’ he responded, later acknowledging he had been just as shocked the first time he’d caught glimpse of it. Yet later, as we flew back over the endless sands of the desert he mumbled ‘welcome back to the earth’s largest prison’, and I found myself back in the Algeria I had imagined.

MORE SAND...
Since then, just last night actually, they cut me loose and sent me off with a green First Officer, into the world of Algerian-trans-Saharan flying.

I’d be lying again if I said I wasn’t nervous as hell. I’ve seen 6 of the 14 airfields they expect me to fly to, and of those 6, 4 were in populated areas: easy to find and served by instrument approaches. This means the remaining 8 aerodromes are just lonely GPS coordinates in the middle of gigantic, orange sand dunes. They lie, as Eves stated, in the middle of the world’s largest prison. Once your in here, if someone doesn’t come to fetch you out, you’ll most likely stay until you die.

I said I wanted a new adventure, and it sure looks like I got one.

I'm coming home right n....oh wait...when?

Sitting in my own little, hot, stinky, dry, and often times bug infested world, (Chad that is, not my room, though some times those particular adjectives may apply quite nicely) I forgot what it was like to work in the ‘Aviation Business’. What do I mean? A lot of things, but mainly the whole “HURRY UP!….and wait” side of aviation, that anyone who has ever worked in the industry can relate to.

I’m pulling out whatever hair I have left, down here in South Africa. I really shouldn’t be because I’m being treated quite well, but, honestly, I am very homesick. I miss someone beyond belief and I really just want to go home. I sound like a complete baby, I know, but, well….ummm…

For those of you who I haven’t informed yet, I left AirServ about 2 ½ weeks ago and took a job with a South African operator called Solenta Aviation. I have been contracted to fly the Beechcraft 1900D, again, up in lovely….(drum roll please!)….

ALGERIA!

Yes, Algeria. Or as my poetic brother says, ‘Aaaah fuck Jess, Algeria?’. Yes Nick, Algeria.

But for now I sit on my hands in South Africa waiting to ferry an airplane up the lengthy longitudinal axis of the Dark Continent any day now. Tomorrow we will finalize the flight planning but it looks like the trip will have me going from South Africa to Namibia, to Angola to Gabon, to maybe N’djamena-Chad, to Niger and then up over the Sahara to Hassi Messaoud, Algeria. We will take three days to do the trip, sleeping in Luanda, Angola and Agadez, Niger. And then…I get to go home to see a beautiful girl.

The problem is that the airplane I am supposed to fly all the way up there is in major surgery right now. I would rather, and I’m sure many other pilots would agree, fly an airplane to a maintenance facility so that needed work can be done, than to fly one fresh out of a (AFRICAN) maintenance facility over some of the most inhospitable territory on the face of the earth. I’d rather not make a sat phone call from the middle of the Angolan bush saying ‘hey guys…do you happen to see some left over parts hanging around the hangar anywhere, because it seems we were missing something!’

My other problem is my worry that Elizabeth will divorce me before even saying, “I do”. Every other day –and I never quite seem to learn- I phone her to tell her I’m coming home in two days. The following day finds me calling and saying ‘umm, honey…maybe 5 more…?’ Yet if anyone can understand the frivolities of working in Africa it would surely be her. Right honey?

Drinking with the wrong crowd

afternoon glow. Beautiful even when one is hungover.



It would seem that at some point in the past 12 months I lost my ‘drinking’ common sense along with my sense of self-preservation. This morning I awoke on a stranger’s carpet somewhere in the vicinity of Johannesburg. A blanket that smelled of mothballs was thrown over my crumpled body and my face was glued to the floor by solidified drool. I wanted nothing more than to be the obliging volunteer/victim of a mercy killing, yet no one offered. No one at all.

My first mistake was to accept an offer to go out ‘for a drink or two’ with Solenta Aviation’s Algeria Program manager. A.D. is his name and he appeared to be a great guy. He has helped me over the past few days secure what I need here in South Africa, e.g.: medical exams, accommodation, Visas, etc, so I assumed he had my best interests at heart when he offered to take me out.

My second mistake was actually drinking all of the shots that A.D. kept sliding my way. There is nothing quite like the taste of Jagermeister going down. There is also nothing quite like the taste of Jagermeister coming back up, again, and again, and again.

My third mistake was forgetting just how much South Africans can drink. It will be quite sometime before my liver, stomach and head all forgive me. I promised them all I would never drink again.

Somewhere in the night, which is very fuzzy to me, I apparently thought it would be a great idea to buy a scotch for one of my new friends. I asked the bartender what he recommended and was told Johnny Walker Blue Label. How much? Eh, 225 Rand. It’s obvious to me now that my division skills and conversion abilities when I drink are very much inferior. So, I happily bought this nice guy who had done nothing but buy me shot, after liver dissolving shot, a $35 dollar splash of whiskey on 4 ice cubes. I sure hope he enjoyed it.

In any case, the night out, and the incredibly insane inebriation that I hope to never repeat again (I did make that promise to my organs you know), did get my mind off of my recently experienced misery. Somewhere in the past 12 months not only did I lose my sense of self-preservation and good common sense, I also lost my ability to function happily when a certain girl is not nearby. It’s been almost 5 weeks since I’ve seen Elizabeth, and it is killing me inside. So now, my aching heart has new empathetic organ allies: my stomach, liver and head.

Wishing I was dead.

Thoughts from the Dog

Last night Not Lloyd and I sat on the back porch listening to the silence that is such an unnatural event around here. Above and to the east, the nearly full moon lit up the night sky, but was being chased by a menacing black wall. Looming in the distance was such a ghastly, black apparition that it nearly gave me the chills watching as it devoured the moon in one swift and graceful movement. The blackness swirled above, black eddies thousands of feet above our heads foretold of the imminent sandstorm that quickly approached. It was a magical moment, one that I think I’ll remember for quite sometime. The stillness of the night, uninterrupted by any generators; the blackness that enshrouded us and that whose swirling eddies were rushing towards us from 3 directions like banshees, screeching silently.

I sat there thinking for a moment. I was reminiscing on all the good times I’ve had in Chad, and all the bad. I was trying to rethink all of the lessons this place has taught me and remember all of the amazing people I’ve met. It’s been one hell of an adventure, there’s no denying that. Yet it is time for me to move on…time for pastures anew.

“I’m going to miss your dumbass, Not Lloyd” I said quietly while stroking his ear and eyeing the storm that was now producing lighting.

He stared ahead, lightly panting. Then, pausing his panting for a brief second, so that I thought he might say something enlightening, he farted.

“I couldn’t have said it any better myself Not Lloyd.”

stuff...

I'm getting tired, to be honest.
I've told many of you this very thing when speaking to you on the phone.
Everyday I am part of some amazingly crazy story, some hectic piece of lawless Central Africa, and yet when I come home I want to write, but I cannot. I try to document what is happening sparingly so that maybe when I come home and regain some of my energy for this I'll be able to write about it.
This place is wearing me thin, and others as well.

The past two weeks have seen some interesting stories brew. Some are sad, some pissed me off to no end (actually most pissed me off to be honest), and some made me laugh. Elizabeth is gone again, evacuated to lovely Paris where she and CCF hope that her mental sanity will return. As for me, being a realist and all, I highly doubt that it will...she's a bit wacky beyond repair. Yet that's why I love her. The recent weeks gone past saw horrible events at CCF, with the military mysteriously targeting one of Elizabeth's assistants, murdering his innocent cousin and setting one of her guards on fire with diesel fuel. This place is beyond repair I think sometimes. In fear for her life (as I was as well) she stayed with us at AirServ for a few days before hopping a UNHCR airplane for N'djamena and subsequently on to Paris. To set her nerves on edge even further, a local figure of authority decided he'd taken a liking to her and began stalking her after mysteriously getting her phone number. Enter the future jealous husband...ME that is. The perpetrating perv in question actually works at the airport here so I had to pay him a visit, doing business the only way the Chadians are responsive to it seems, by me yelling violently. After loudly proclaiming that he had no need for another wife and that she was taken regardless, I demanded he delete her phone number from his phone right then and there...causing enough commotion that fellow employees peeked their heads in to make sure the scrawny white guy wasn't beating up on the boss. It was only after he ceded this request and said 'Ok, ok, ok...I don't see what the problem is...I just wanted to help her with her French!' that I noticed the smirking gendarmerie outside the broken windows with 50 caliber rifles at their finger tips. "Doctor" I think I said to one. No response was noted.





What else? The black day of Friday the 13th was just that. Mechanical difficulties left our airplane disabled on the runway in Abeche for 45 minutes in the morning (elizabeth's fault). While starting the engines up after the repairs were complete I got one of the biggest scares I've had in a few months. Both Lauren and I looked out the windscreen to see a large airplane about to land on top of us. In my periphery vision I noticed everyone running for cover in the scrub brush off the side of the runway. "Oh, crap. Crap, crap, crap!" went my thought process I believe. The airplane, piloted by a complete jackass that I've had run ins with before, missed hitting our vertical stabilizer (tailfin) by maybe 5-8 feet and landed over the top of us. We taxiied the aircraft back to parking once my blood pressure had diminished fairly enough that I wasn't on the verge of a catostropic stroke, and I continued to jump out and run to fight the captain of the other aircraft. Screaming on my part(again...I said I need to leave this place, I'm becoming a bundle of hypersensitive nerves) was greeted by "what? We were cleared to land." Cleared to land is not necessarily synonomous with cleared to swipe the back end of another aircraft off, killing everyone on board. At least it wasn't the last time I checked. As my voice became hoarse I realized this was a wasted argument. I was, and still am in, the NO LOGIC ZONE.




Meetings. More fights. More meetings. Another fight when Lauren and I disarmed the governor of Ouadii Region who felt the unwaivering need to carry his old Berretta on board our flight. He was part of the John Negroponte (Deputy Secretary of State, and a bit of a prick) delegation. Seems we embarassed him when he was forcefully disarmed by a woman. Jackass.

I did get one feel good day. Ok I get many feel good days, but one really struck me. A month and a half ago we airlifted a twelve year old boy who had gotten in the way of a dispute in one of the camps. He had been stabbed deeply in the chest, ripping a gaping hole through his left lung. Onboard the aircraft that day everyone was sure he'd succumb to internal bleeding in no time. We were wrong, and I'm so glad we were, because he made me realize how cynically I've been looking at so much of this. A week ago a boy approached me smiling and beaming with joy. It took me a second but I realized this was the stab victim. We shook hands and he giggled. His father came to Lauren and I and thanked us profusely in Arabic. The anger towards the cluster f*#$ of the local world around me faded and I couldn't keep my eyes off of this child. Here was a kid who was alive and just happy to be that way. We were sending him back to a dusty, mud hut with a thatch and tarpulin roof in the middle of one of Afica's biggest refugee camps. Yet he still smiled, and so did his father. In a world where there seems to me to be no hope...some still find shreds of happiness to fill their hearts. A boy's smile filled mine for the day.



On the flight back to the camp I gave him a headset so that he might listen to the jibber jabber of an incomprehensible foreign language being belched from two bleached figures. He just kept smiling, and so did I.

EGYPT

Concerned emails flood in after I write something negative, as I did the other evening. I appreciate it, because it shows me that people care about me and are keeping up with what is going on in my strange, sometimes foggy head. That being said, everyone has to understand that: 1. There is so much negative around me here that it is hard to stay positive all the time, and I need to vent here and there, and 2. I do, everyday, find the beautiful, funny, sublime, or just smile inducing things in everyday life. I am not a large ball of static negative energy roaming the streets of Chad looking for something to get pissed off about or come close to get myself shot about. A guy deserves to get angry, introspective, or annoyed sometimes, right? Right?


Sailing the Nile River by Aswan...notice the massive sand dunes behind the boat!

So, now its out of the way and I can share with you the brief synopsis on our trip to Egypt. Amazing. Amazing but far from restful and reinvigorating. Egypt is a place of constant chaos, hustle and hustlers. You are a constant target for this or that...vendors, taxi drivers, tour guides, camel guys, tea-hookah-falafel and jewel salesmen...they all see you walk by and seemingly get dollar signs in their eyes. "My friend, welcome! Where are you from? Colorado? Aaaah, my brother lives in Denver! Come in, come in!" It's amazing, the geography knowledge these guys have. I think I went through 40 of the 50 states, and the various hawkers could always come up with some city in the state in question. Always there was a brother, sister, cousin or nephew there, usually studying. Sometimes they were just a little too much in your face, preventing you from moving, crowding your personal space, being that Seinfeld close talker (you know who I'm talking about Andy!). In these cases I prayed that I could open my mouth and convince them to move before Elizabeth unleashed a maelstrom of direct, brutally honest, and jaw-dropping explanations on why it was that she would not go into their shops, and why it was that they were annoying her beyond comprehension. After such brutally honest attacks some would look at me and ask "what's the matter with her?" or "what's her problem?", to which my response was usually, "judging by what she said I'm going to go out on a limb here and say YOU. It'd do you good not to stare at her breasts while slipping your hand towards her ass as you try and sell her perfume. Did you here what she said about castration? Have a good day!"


Slaves awaiting smiting from Ramses II, carved into the walls of Abu Simbel

Upon arrival in Egypt we found a travel agency to make our train reservations and wound up being booked for a 9 day long tour of the country. And a tour it was. Everyday our itinerary was laid out and we were shuffled from tomb to tomb, palace to palace, bus station to bus station, hookah bong coffee house to, well you get the point. It was busy. Some nights we only had 4 hours of sleep, and when we politely complained, they looked at us like we had four heads, "don't you want to see all the amazing sights? Is it not beautiful enough?" and suddenly we were guilt tripped back into napping on bus rides and cooperating with the hectic shuffle.



We went from Cairo to Aswan to Abu Simbel, to Luxor to Hurghada, up the Red Sea coast, under the Suez Canal and down the Sinai penninsula past Mt. Sinai to Dahab. By the time we reached Dahab we felt we needed a vacation from our vacation, and we were grateful for the two days spent lounging, eating, snorkelling and diving. And then we went back to Cairo and bought what will hopefully prove to be real gold wedding bands in some crazy hectic inner city market. It's amazing what you can get in a vending machine in Cairo!



In the end, the best offer I received for Elizabeth was 6 million camels, honestly, (I'm not making some snide racist remark) and I seriously debated. I mean camels are fetching a decent price on the Middle Eastern commodities market lately, and well, that could have been a lot of boats and toys. But I kept her. I'm still open to offers though.


Bedouin Camel Herder by Dahab


Backstreets of Cairo...and the area that specializes in wedding bands.

<

I need to go catch a trout...

Each time I leave this corrupt sandbox I find it harder and harder to muster up the motivation to come back. I find myself tired of experiencing and shrugging of the recurring problems that mire Chad, in fact I struggle greatly now not to lose my patience in a violent way when they occur. I'm both ashamed of this and also cognizant that I'm not alone in feeling this way. Elizabeth and I spent many an evening recently discussing the many reasons why we'd never miss this landlocked pit of despair.

If I were reading this right now I'd be thinking the same thing. The two of us are feeding off each other's negativity thus compounding the problem, one-upping each other's annoying story to a degree that we both are at a fevered pitch of aggravation, right? Well maybe, just maybe. However, the problems that we moan to each other about are I think worth moaning about.

About a month ago it became obvious that if either of us wanted to take vacation before our contracts were up we'd have to do it quickly. We planned an impromptu trip to Egypt, a place we mutually longed to see. I was put in charge of tickets. AirFrance...$3,456,234.97 for a roundtrip. Ethiopian...$450! Sweet! Let's go...click! After pressing the BUY button on their website, Ethiopian drops on you the taxes and surcharges, the highest in the galaxy I might add, turning a $450 ticket into a $950 ticket. All well we thought, at least we'll get out of here for a week and unwind. All we had to do now was pick up the tickets in N'djamena and we were free to explore. Two days before departing a colleague went to retrieve the tickets only to find that the reservation had been cancelled. We arrived the next day and spent hours arguing for the seats, and thankfully finally won, just as the power cut out, causing the system to crash and forcing me to return later for the papers.

I returned 4 hours later, parking with other cars along N'djamena's dusty and busy main street, a gravel covered road surrounded by dilapidated archaic buildings and hordes of beggars and peanut selling children. Weaving my way thru the throngs of beggars and falling prey, as I do every time, to one of the peanut selling girls who is absolutely the cutest little girl I've seen here, and who remembers me and hunts me down each time I visit the capital, I finally made it to the Ethiopian Airlines office. I emerged minutes later victorious and gleeful, text messaging Elizabeth that we were on our way to a great vacation. Little did I know, while I was in the airline's office, someone had written in black ink across my forehead, in big letters I never got to see most likely because I sweat them off, the words "Please, Please, Fuck with me!!!"

Hopping thru the traffic and clouds of blue smoke belched from exhaust pipes I came alongside my truck, keys in one hand, airline tickets in the other. A deafening yell came from 3 feet behind me, startling me and causing me to turn around quickly to find a man in full camouflage uniform, a blue beret, and a large automatic rifle strapped across his back, angrily gesturing at me as he stomped his feet. I ignored him, turning my back, knowing all too well that what he wanted was a quick buck. He chose to ignore the fact I was ignoring him, and kept on screaming in my ear, forcing me to turn around and scream back at him. My French is far from adequate, but I understand more than I can vocalize, and so I understood his claim that I was parked illegally, in a spot marked by white lines, alongside 20 other vehicles all parked exactly the same way. 'Hmmm, how strange' thought I. I told him in English to 'Go piss off and find someone else to fuck with', to which he responded 'what is this???!!! what is this????!!!' pointing at my tickets, and before I could do anything else he'd snatched them from my hand and shoved them down his shirt front. The inner voice began begging for calm, and for the most part I followed it's suggestions.

The uniformed bastard went with a smirk plastered across his face and sat down with his fellow cronies, who wore equally impressive corrupt smiles, on a bench in the shade. I followed close behind directing in perfect American English all of the most insidious insults I could muster, at this shithead. When this failed to produce results I moved on to broken French, demanding that he return the tickets that he had no right to, while throwing in an occasional F-bomb for good measure. He laughed and told me the cost for the tickets, which I had already paid for, was 75,000 CFA, or $150. My face grew red and more red and even more red still. I desperately wished a piano would fall from the tree above and kill every one of the soldiers sitting below. It did not. After waiting for about 10 minutes I removed 10,000 CFA from my wallet, had him arise and show me the tickets, and then snatched the tickets from him while throwing the money on the ground beside us both. This, in retrospect, was not the most cool headed thing to do, but I was beyond caring for some strange reason...something inside me had become tainted or broken.

As he screamed and gained the attention of the other soldiers I went for the truck, which was locked. It was then, and only then that I came to the regrettable conclusion that though the truck does lock, it does not unlock with the keys provided. Shit. I did finally get into the truck, but not before half of downtown N'djamena saw a white guy prying a back window open, sweating profusely, as belligerent soldiers with guns yelled at him in broken a mysterious slur of languages. I hopped in, smiled at them, muttered a few more combinations of F#$% you to them, and was off. It was then that I decided I am officially done with Chad.

Elizabeth, that day, also had an anti Chad epiphany. Her organization has taken on an amazingly challenging project, one that she is managing, to retrain and repatriate ex-child soldiers who were captured in last year's rebel attack on the capital. In a center just outside of downtown, 30 something adolescent boys, ranging from 11 to 18 are being taught, thru international pressure, to become normal functioning parts of an abnormal and corrupt society. CCF is trying to help these boys be boys again, helping them to salvage some type of a childhood, or in many cases, trying to teach them a skill that'll help them merge back into the masses peacefully and profitably. While their retraining is to be done by CCF and UNICEF, their nourishment is to be looked after by the 'Ministry of all things fucked' in the Chadian government, which ironically, does anything but keep them nourished. The boys, who are therefore hungry, do what they can to procure food, and consequently disappear, sometimes turning up a night or two later stabbed and mortally injured, which is just what happened the day before we departed. When queried the Ministry OATF shrugs it's shoulders and lets it be known that they care nothing for these small boys who have been enslaved into a war they know nothing about. In all likelihood, many of the boys have actually served on both sides of the conflict as well, being captured and forced to fight their former captors.

Days later, this topic came up in a press conference with the Chadian Minister of Defense or Interior. A woman in the audience of press members started by saying something like "Sir, it is a well known fact that the Chadian military uses child soldiers for its..." at which time she was interrupted and corrected by the Minister. "Madame, Madame, we do not use child soldiers. We do, however, have many midgets in our armed forces." Midgets. Midgets? Dear sir, could you not have come up with anything better than this as an explanation, or at least ignored the comment...because now you look depressingly inferior. Where is the piano dropping from above when you need it, damnit???? The woman was however ignored when she completed her question which she intended, inquiring where the masses of young girls who had also been enslaved as child soldiers by the rebels, and then captured by the government, had disappeared to? Its a morbid and depressing thought for me to consider what has become of these little girls, knowing what I know about Chadian men.

Before moving to Chad I held most fellow members of my gender in high esteem. I will admit that maybe I could have even been considered a bit sexist when I compared abilities of the sexes. I have always considered myself open minded, but when Elizabeth would talk of women running the world and why it would be a better place I would scoff it off as a bit silly. Chad has taught me something though that I'll never shake off. The male side of the human species is capable of some of the most despicable and shameful actions. I often look around me here in Abeche, at the way women are treated by ignorant and imbecilic men who claim their inborn dominance and feel angry, disgusted and embarrassed. 'Maybe her idea isn't so bad after all' occasionally pulsates through my brain.

I'll be posting some pictures of Egypt soon, along with something maybe a bit lighter.

A picture is worth...

...a thousand words, and quite frankly, the heat and questions regarding which type of wedding cake I prefer have sapped my creative energy as of lately. Just kidding E. But, with that, I'll leave you with a few pictures to account for the past 2 weeks or so. Lets see here...

There was Angelina's visit: ehhhhh, she's ok. This coming from a guy who has recently taken to drooling on his pillow at night and has suffered from equatorial sun caused hair loss. Ok, so I have no room to talk.




Then there was the Cameroonian Elephant stalking mission with Elizabeth's boss Asa. Nothing quite like shaking hands with your local guide, after he's led you too the sweet spot. Yep, nothing quite like it, because your hand stinks like the elephant shit he's been picking up and rubbing with both hands all along the hike. Mmmmm, a natural aphrodisiac. I had to beat the woman of N'djamena off after that.





Then of course there was the X-Saharan epic camel journey, where we battled for survival on a daily basis, had to hunt our own scorpions to eat for dinner and battle angry Arabic men all along the way! Ok, so we really just walked around in a big circle in the desert while the Muslim men and boys leading our camels probably were vocalizing just how silly we looked. The camels seemed to agree here and then with strange grunts and growns.

You may call me: Archie of Arabia.
Ok, actually you may not.


Ride it baby, ride it!



And after the ride, we had time to experience three Passionate camel emotions:

Happiness, such as after a good ride thru the desert, or after telling a good joke to your camel jockeying buddies:



Horrific Shock, such as when one learns the next oasis' sweet water has been spoiled by the rampant defecation of your adversarial camel brethren!





Or my least favorite of all:
Utter Sublimity: on the the part of the camel, as he releases what proves to be the Chadian version of chemical warfare from his backside. Chalk one up for the camels, 0 for the humans.

SOCKBALL...a light read

Here are some recent pictures of the big Dogdore Sockball Championship. Team Anglophone Funny Looking White Guy VS. Team Dogdore. Needless to say, I kicked some 8 year old butt! Kids...ppphhht.


THE CROWD OF ORNERY ONLOOKERS GATHERS, ROOTING FOR THE HOME TEAM. LITTLE DID THEY KNOW, TEAM SISSY HEAT SENSITIVE FUNNY LOOKING WHITE GUY HAD A PERSONAL SOCKBALL VENDETTA.





STEP ONE...THE RULES OF THE GAME. Discussing the RULES and REGULATIONS with the competitors, they didn't stand a chance!:



STEP TWO...FINDING THE GAME BALL. I present to you, The COMPETITION (sock)BALL :



STEP THREE...MERCILESS SOCK BALL ACTION AGAINST THE UNSUSPECTING CHILDREN OF DOGDORE! Wusses!



STEP FOUR...MUTUAL CELEBRATION AT THE FACT THE WHITE GUY DIDN'T DIE OF HEAT STROKE WHILE MERCILESSLY PUMMELING THE UNSUSPECTING CHILDREN OF DOGDORE AT COMPETITION SOCKBALL!


A GOOD DAY.

Eat this Hallmark!

This is the post that is the post I never thought I'd be writing, at least to all of you from Chad. But so it goes, life defies us, and often times when it does, it's something beautiful:

A while back, oh, let's say about 3 days after arriving in the luxurious wonderland that is Chad, I was dragged along on a 'training' flight by our (now ex) French Chief Pilot. He had me sit in the back as we flew a rotation to the north, so that I might just see how things were done on a regular, daily basis. We visited the lovely towns of Bahai, Iriba and then finally Guerada, before returning to Abeche. Upon our arrival in Guerada (the warring faction capitol of Eastern Chad) Monsieur Peuvion handed me the passenger manifest and instructed me to go practice my incorrigible French with the awaiting NGO passengers.

I walked towards the crowd of dusty, anxious looking onlookers with the paper in hand, scanning it looking for a name I could actually pronounce. Mahammat Ahmet Muhammed, Ndjkour Hissembbkabye, Nelebaye Djimbe Kjousmanete, shit...

Finally I hit on one...Elizabeth Spess. Nationality: American. Organization: CCF.

Alright! I was relieved to find an American on the list, someone who spoke English and whom I could relate to. I checked in the first phonetically impossible individuals, and finally came back to the Elizabeth Spess name, yelled it over the humdrum of ensuing Francophone conversation, and watched as the beautiful girl with really wacky looking sunglasses approached. She didn't smile, she just handed me her American Passport.

"Hi there. So where are you from, Elizabeth?", I matter asked making small talk.

"America.", was the response.

"Umm, yeah, I got that much thank you. Really though, where are you from?"

"Aah, Abeche?" she quasi-question-stated.

"Ok, look, I know you're not a native Chadian, and I know you are from the United States, because you handed me a large blue passport that says United States of America all over it. So, more specifically, where are you from in the United States of America? How bout you just give me a State...I know most of them...I swear"

"Michigan...well, New York."

Who is this girl? And why won't she give me a straight answer to a ridiculously easy question. CIA? NSA? IDIOT?

I harassed her a bit more before handing her the pen and allowing her to sign in the space allotted. One more passenger was checked in and then I was allowed the joyous pleasure of screening all those I had just checked in with the metal detector. This can sometimes be a great time. You wave the detector over a pocket and it beeps. You stop and look at the individual inquisitively, they smile. You make it beep again on the pocket. They smile again. You pat the pocket, before making it beep. They pat the other pocket and smile. "Argh...what's in your bloody pocket?????!?"

So when it came to Elizabeth Ann Spess's turn, she beeped all over. Knives here, bullets there, a grenade(which we do not count as a weapon, because the Chadians argue they are not all the time. They even think it's funny when we point at the picture of a gun with a X over it. "silly white guy...that's a gun, this is a grenade!"), more knives...Ok, I'm kidding. Little did she know though, there's also a button on the metal detector that makes it beep whenever one feels like making it beep. He..he..he.

The flight back we shouted to each other over the hum of the Otter's low pitched engines and air whistling by. I learned she was from Saginaw, Michigan originally, and then spent the past few years in New York City. She had lived and worked all over the world which intrigued me, and she had a nice ass, which intrigued me equally. My voice became hoarse, and soon we reached Abeche which ended the introductory conversation.

Well, I won't bore you with too many more details here and we'll fast forward to last week, more accurately Valentines Day. It was hot, really, really freaking hot...about 47 degrees Centigrade actually. We finished early and Elizabeth and Asa (pronounced Oh-sa) came over mid afternoon to use the internet and so that I might talk to Elizabeth about something that'd been pestering my consciousness. I hemmed and hawed and made all sorts of really weird noises and motions. I asked repeatedly whether Elizabeth might want to go for a walk or go to the market for something. She questioned whether I'd taken up a drug addiction. Finally I succeeded at dragging her for a walk outside the razor wired compound in the 115 degree Fahrenheit blazing sun...and what a beautiful walk it was. 'Oh, look, a goat skull honey!....Mmm, still stinky too!'

I hemmed and hawed some more, and finally came to a resolute decision...in a clearing 1 Chadian block away from my compound, I sat her down on a crumbling mud brick wall. The lizards scattered and the plastic bags rustled in the faint breeze that did little to cool our smoldering bodies. I looked around for onlookers...none. I listened for onlookers...nothing. There was nothing but the sound of scampering lizard claws, the occasional rustle of the Chadian National Flower (plastic bag) and a slightly eerie sounding Arabic tune wafting in from some mud hut who knows where. I knelt down.

"Elizabeth Ann Spess, will yo.....THWUMP!!"

A large dirt ball blew up next to me, followed by a chorus of laughter from a group of 40 or 50 children and adolescents nearby. Next came the tsunami of Cadeaux (gift en francais) requests, as the mob of ragged kids came running at us. I shoved the object in my hand back down into my pocket. The inquisitive group arrived and I had to answer many questions in broken French as to why I, a white guy, was out walking around in these ornery 8yr. olds' soccer fields, with a white woman, nonetheless. 'Ooooooh' washed over the crowd about the time that one of them made a kissy face and imitated me making out with Elizabeth. I got sucked into a quick game of soccer with the duct taped soccer ball they had brought over before Betsey and I were allowed on our way. More laughter at the kid making the obscene kissy faces....I swore revenge on the boy.

We arrived back at the romantic retreat compound and I, for some reason, decided that it still must be done. So, on the hood of a broken down vehicle I sat Elizabeth, in the blazing Sahel sun, once again. The generator gurgled and burped next to us, belching noxious black smoke our way. We were sweating profusely and neither had showered for at least 2 days. We both, in all likeliness, stunk enough that we did not smell each other. The growing mass of yelling kids still sat outside the metal gate and our guard was growing irritated with the attention that we had garnered. The wind quit making feeble attempts to stir the air, and so she sat and baked non convection style as I slowly kneeled again.

And in this extremely romantic fashion, and in this extremely romantic place, while we both looked so beautiful and smelled even better....I asked her to marry me. And she said yes. Obviously the effects of heat stroke were beginning to affect her decision making.

Sudanese 'Strategery'

Everyone screws up here and there...everyone. No matter how perfectionist, how focused, how inspired, impressive, or impeccable, sooner or later the individual or individuals will balk, and screw the proverbial pooch. That's why I had to laugh the other day, in a sick, twisted kind of way, when I heard about how those silly, genocide crazed, ethnic cleansing enjoying, blissfully bloodthirsty Sudanese Air Force bombers, working in conjunction with ground militias and (most likely) the Janjaweed, kinda pulled a 'oopsy'.

In Bahai, over the past couple of months, it's been a recurring and common knowledge problem that the Sudanese Air Force, on their day to day bombing runs, trying to eradicate the opposing rebels (who for some reason don't agree with this whole genocide thing), and the opposing rebels' supply routes, have time and time again crossed over the border into Chad. In our morning security briefings it is sometimes thrown in for good measure, and it often arises at UNHCR security meetings orchestrated for the other NGOs, that these aircraft have been sighted again doing these illegal maneuvers and have scared the bejeezes out of a bunch of already paranoid and vulnerable refugees. For its part, and on a different note, I believe the UN has failed to follow it's own rules when dealing with international refugees by leaving them in a camp only about 1 mile from the country that wishes to wipe them off the face of the planet. But anyway...

So on this particular, shining morning, not too long ago we got another report of the mischievous, trespassing Sudanese at it again. This time it came with a sad twist for quadruped lovers around the world.

It would seem that the airplanes came in and targeted a large area just to the east of Bahai, in an effort to accomplish what I had mentioned above regarding the rebels. They bombed and bombed and bombed to their little hearts contents, and then bombed some more for good measure. The dust and smoke mixed together and blew around, presenting the already sand storm prone area with even more condensation nuclei to lower the visibility. The dust settled (a bit) the smoking craters, barely discernible from the rest of the void sand box around, quit smoking. The ground forces moved in to count the dead and review the carnage.

For it's part the government of Sudan on this particular day did a lovely job using it's bombs to kill a total of 142 rebel....(drum roll please!).... goats! Damn terrorist goats, newest members to the international axis of evil. The bombing did produce countless more happy soldiers, however, with the abundance of fresh and piping hot brochettes. Pass the pepper Mahammat, s'il vous plait. Mmm, mmm, good. Strategery at it's finest!

Battin Zero

When the phone rings at 5am, its not a welcome noise to me. And so it was last weekend when at 515 or so my little Nokia began singing electronically to me. First instinct: grab the alarm clock and stare absent mindedly at it trying to gauge just what is happening here. Second instinct: grab the phone and answer.

"aaaarggh, Hello?"
"Jesse, this is Joseph with IRC in Bahai, aaaahhh, look, go back to bed..."

With those last 4 words that tumbled out of this man's mouth came a wave of relief for a brief moment. Excellent, I get to crawl back into bed and cuddle up to her again for another hour and a half. The relief was soon drowned in a flood of guilt.

The evening before, while Lauren and I were at the French military base rubbing elbows with the Francophone elite, quietly making fun of them and their silly short shorts, I received a call from Sheri at IRC (International Rescue Committee) . She stated that one of her Bahai based employee's children, a small boy, had been caught in a grease fire at one of the camps. He suffered serious burns and required immediate evacuation in the morning...could we help? Definitely, you know we can always be counted on for such things (a statement I soon wondered if I should regret). A plan for an early flight to pick up the child and his mother was completed and my sleep would be greatly reduced, a miniscule tradeoff.

"...yes, go back to bed, the boy is dead. Thank you for your help though, we greatly appreciate it."

What kind of monster am I to have the first wave of emotions after learning of an innocent child's death be: 'Sweet, I get to go back to bed.'?

A few days later IRC called in yet another Medevac request from Bahai, this time for a young man with a perforated abdomen. We were exhausted from flying nonstop for 6 days, moving from our old house to the new one, and sorting out personnel problems but we said 'no problem' again. Upon arrival the young man, about 21 years old, looked at me with anguish contorted eyes. A primitive IV bag lay on the colorful mattress we loaded him in on, and he smelled of sweat, urine and feces mixed with isopropyl alcohol and iodine. His father, an elderly man in his 60s, with a Sahel sun wrinkled face and deep brown eyes, watched helplessly as we tied the son down gently and began closing the doors. Every small movement we made seemed to send the otherwise staunch and emotionless face of the young man into an abyss of pain. I taxied slow down the gravel and rock airstrip to a spot where the piling sand dunes make it to bumpy, turned around and took off. One hour later, after flying as gently as possible over the arid desert below we landed in Abeche. Ten minutes later, the young man was dead.

Yesterday, after flying to the north yet again, making our rounds thru Bahai, Iriba and Guerada, and evacuating unnecessary UNHCR staff from Guerada due to the escalating tribal vs. militia warfare we returned home to our compound to have lunch. Five minutes after the feast of PB and J began my phone rang. Guess who. The number on the caller id told me it was a satellite phone, and I could think of only one reason why someone from the field would be calling me on their sat phone right now: another Medevac. Answering with a mouth full of crunchy peanut butter (an absolute jewel of a novelty here), my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, I heard Sheri again on the other line. Sounding as if she was standing in a hurricane, she shouted thru the microphone piece that they were treating a fourteen year old boy who had, very unfortunately, found a landmine. It seems there are a few unexploded devices left in the dunes along the Chadian-Sudanese border left over from a war 20 years ago which the Libyans played a major role in. Back to Bahai.

When we landed the IRC trucks pulled up to the double doors at the Otter's rear. The Land Rover's doors opened up revealing a boy who looked as if he were 10, not 14, who was bundled in bloodied bandages. His face was torn and swollen, his hands and feet were just wadded clots of red gauze.

'He may not make it' one man said in broken English as we gently loaded the fragile cargo onto the airplane. I noted the pool of blood sloshing on the plastic stretcher and agreed silently in my head. Seven months ago my head may have been spinning at the amount of gore that lay in front of me, and while I cannot say I am in immune to it, my skin has thickened. Another weather beaten old man climbed the flimsy aluminum stairs to join us onboard as we all stared at the unfortunate boy, it was the father. From a lasting side glance I took in the man's expression and found that he too, was Chadianized.

The day before, while refueling the aircraft in Abeche, I was joking with one of our employees, Remy, about a certain love potion root he was chewing on, a renowned Chadian aphrodisiac. "Why are you chewing that dirt covered shit???" I asked.

"Aah, to make jiggy-jiggy with his femme! To make more petit Remys!" answered Deni, another local worker standing beside him. We all laughed and took cheap shots at Remy.

"But you already have 2 Remy! Why have more????!! Why do you want anymore than that?"

"Ooh, aah, because you have two annnnnd one die, you have only one. You have tree or four and one or two die, you still have two. Its ok."

Cold statistics. Something that our ancestors living 150 years ago thought about while living on the frontier, but that none of us in the westernized world can truly fathom.

I watched the father as he sat down next to his bloodied boy. A look of concern was in his eye, there was no doubt of that, but that was all I could visibly discern. In a land where death is all around, potentially waiting around each corner for those who call this home, thick skin is a must, and looking at things from a cold statistical point of view might be the only way to survive. Physically and emotionally.
I awoke this morning to another early phone call. This time it was Elizabeth, who was suffering from a nasty bout of food poisoning. I dressed quickly and hopped in the car, loaded with a bottle of Ciproflaxin and some re-hydration salts aimed at fixing the girlfriend. When I neared her compound I had to slow and stop as a Muslim funeral procession crossed the road in front of me. Carried atop the heads of a few mourners was a small coffin, bound for the sand nearby.

Shit, I'm 0 for 3.

W.B.S. = J.E.S.S.E.

It would appear that if a vote were held worldwide, after learning of my not so fearless actions the other evening, I would surely be adorned with the honorary title of "World's Biggest Sissy". Yep, that'd be me, sorry Dad.

My trip home went well, for the most part. It was bittersweet in an odd way. I went to Rhode Island, the tiny, flat, yet family inhabited New England state that kept up with its dreary winter reputation and rained most of the time I was there, reminding me of why I moved away 8 1/2 years ago. It was great to see my family and a few friends while there, but my sense of home is elsewhere now, migrated west, and I couldn't help but continuously thinking "God this weather blows". Clearing customs on New Year's Eve in Boston I walked out into an airport arrival hall filled with some of the finer things in life: Starbucks Coffee, Taco Hell, Manchu Wok, my Mom, and Elizabeth. It was an emotional welcome back into the "free" world. Elizabeth came from Michigan to visit for a few days and I was excited to have the opportunity to show her around a bit here and there, though even that was a bit depressing...

"Ok, if you look out there babe, and if it wasn't rainy and foggy, and sleeting and blowing 35 knots, you'd see the Beavertail Lighthouse, as it is only 30 feet in front of us right now I believe...oooh I think I just saw it's flash thru the mist...can you hear it now?"
"Yep, I sure can....oooh, its so pretty Jesse. I can almost imagine what it looks like."
"I know, I know, its amazing huh!?"

That basically left us to taking stupid pictures.



All in all we made the best of it and had a good time. My family is doing well and my brother is getting too many requests for interviews from too many top Veterinary Colleges that I'm left feeling like the dunce of the family. Thanks Nick. There was much gluttony, beer consumption and rainy day napping.

On one of the last few days of my visit home I woke up in the middle of the night to a pain in my leg. Scratching revealed that a tiny deer tick was lodged in my calf, which I quickly removed and went back to sleep. The next day the bite was swollen and infected, and even later in the afternoon I developed unbelievable heartburn, causing pain even when I drank a glass of water. A doctor prescribed me Amoxicillin at my persistent request, as I thought for sure, and with good reason, this was round two for me with Lyme's disease. The vile, horse sized, pink pills went down the hatch repeatedly, and for 4 days I got worse and worse. I spent a day in Michigan with Elizabeth and her family focusing the whole time on just staying conscious, and wishing she'd find some reason to just deny my ability to get on the Africa bound airplane that night, and keep me there. I even went so far as to begin daydreaming about getting mugged and losing my passport to a thieve outside of Detroit. Aah, yes, its good to have a dream. But Elizabeth failed to come up with a halting reason to keep me there, and no masked mad man in a cape came and violently demanded my passport and cash in a silly French accent. Thanks for nothing to both of you!

One nice January evening in R.I.


So I hopped...actually sluggishly crawled aboard Northwest Flight 50 bound for Paris on Thursday night and began what I hope will be the most painful flight I ever have to experience. I'm sure I had the flight attendants concerned when, shivering uncontrollably, I asked them to turn up the heat while I was wrapped in my winter jacket, a scarf, mittens (thank you Jen!), a hat, and 4 blankets. Everyone else wore short sleeve shirts and I cursed them silently for it. I resolved to drug myself up with sleeping pills and pain relievers, something I never do, and tried, and tried and tried to fall asleep. (Someone ring the big red annoying buzzer please.) Sleep did not visit Jesse that night, instead a fat, hairy black man did, who Jesse feverishly contemplated killing when he pushed Jesse's feet off the seat next to him. Killing someone seems like such a great way to make you feel better when you're sick like that.

Nine hours later we landed in Paris and the drugs, coupled with sickness and sleep deprivation, finally kicked in. I swayed and wobbled thru the people and corridors, practically seeing double, until I got to somewhere close to my gate. I found an empty seat and collapsed, sleeping for almost 5 hours, waking up only, and thankfully, to the sound of my flight's boarding call, finding myself being cautiously regarded and stared at the way 'the bearded man-eating lady from Borneo' might be due to the large pool of drool I'd generously deposited on the seat where my head lay. A "Sorry ladies, he's taken!" sign would have come in real handy. To ice the cake, I was handed the last middle seat between two stinky guys for the 6 hour flight back down over the Sahara to the oh-so-inviting quasi state of Chad.

I slept fitfully that night and woke up late to the ladies arriving in N'djamena with the Otter to pick up groceries, money and me, and was greeted with Georgiana's endearing words of "Wow, you look like shit!". Thanks, its nice to see you too.

My head continued to threaten explosion, my face swelled like a chipmunk (which seemed to kinda turn the monkey on...hmm) my joints ached and my knees gave out at one point causing me to feign a random shoe retying in the middle of our living room. Needless to say, I was in pain and not having fun, wishing I was still in someone's arms. I resolved to take the Malaria Self Test, and disappeared into my room with it.

After struggling to comprehend the directions for what seemed like hours, I finally worked out the complex sequence of events: 1. Prick finger, 2. Drop blood in tiny hole, 3. Wait 15 minutes for two red lines to appear or not appear. No problem.

Wrong. Enter Worlds Biggest Sissy. Even though I felt like I was on the verge of spontaneous combustion, and that my eyes were just itching to try things on their own and pop out of my head, my pansy-ass could not bring itself to prick a significant hole in my finger. For 20 minutes I pricked away at each finger of each hand with a safety pin, just deep enough to make a hole, but not deep enough to draw more than a fleck of blood. When this failed I moved to my arm, first my bicep then my forearm. Then came the back of my hand. I was on the verge of frustrated tears when I had an epiphany...a beam of light burst thru the ceiling and a falsetto chorus sang somewhere nearby. I remembered that I always cut myself shaving, always, and that surely I could get enough blood from that. I ripped off the blankets and hit the bathroom, shivering and shaving as recklessly as I could, hoping my jittery hands would cause a cut deep enough to garnish the much needed home lab sample. It hurt like hell, mainly because in my frenzy I forgot shaving cream, but regardless, January 13th, 2007 marked the first day in his 27 year history that Jesse Archambault has not cut himself in any way, shape or form, while shaving. Depression set in.

A last ditch attempt, to find in the emergency kit, something sharper and more sturdy that I could mount to the wall and impale myself on revealed a hypodermic needle buried beneath band aids. Two minutes later I had the blood sample, and fifteen minutes after that I had the answer: NEGATIVE. Damn! Damn, damn, damn! If I had the energy I’m sure I would’ve punched something. I suddenly had the urge to kill that guy on the airplane again.

Further research revealed that the 'Fisher Price do it at home' kit tested for only one type of malaria, the Plasmodium (P.) falciparum
strain, but that 2 others, the Plasmodium Vivax
and Plasmodium givajessedachills strains existed. After consulting with the French base doctor, the women here and of course, Not Lloyd it was decided that I have one of the other strains and should immediately begin treatment before possible liver damage or worse occurred. I was more than happy to oblige.

About 12 hours after taking my first crazy-toxic, kill all the critters in you bloodstream pills, I noticed an extreme improvement. The drugs made me a bit woozy and lightheaded, though it could have been the heroine I was still doing. Soon I found myself no longer taking 14 Advil a day to prevent my eyeballs from popping out of my head and recovered much of my strength. Long story short, I'm feeling much better now.

The mist that covered most days at home:

A Question For YOU!

I, being that I'm quite frequently on airplanes crisscrossing here or there, am curious why people spend so long in aircraft bathrooms. Granted men have the unsavory reputation for staking a claim with newspaper in hand and camping out for extended periods of time on their mighty porcelain thrones, but an aircraft lavatory is hardly a royal seat. I can think of few more cramped locales, which forcibly cause the user to master some yoga or contortionist pose all the while worrying about turbulence, the putrid layer of water and soap slime on the plastic floor, the restless line of fellow bathroom patrons standing inches away, possible decompression, or just whose dirty ass just touched the dirty horseshoe seat that your dirty ass is about to touch. Yet for some strange reason people go into these places and disappear.

I propose the question to you, because it is all of you...and not me. What do you people do in there? Do you pray? Bow down by the sink or the nasty bowl itself, out of modesty and not wanting to raise concern by praying in the aisle, and pray for a safe journey? Couldn't you have done that before the trip? Do you admire your beautiful visage in the strangely distorted and abnormally unreflective mirror, running your fingers thru your gorgeous locks, or lack thereof? Do you sleep? Do you read? Do you just like watching the freakishly smurf-blood colored blue juice swirl around the bowl making that powerfully pressurized hiss sound? I hear you in there flushing it repeatedly, and unless you've got some serious issues, I know you can't possibly be doing it for the obvious purpose. Are you all terrorists assembling, disassembling, reassembling and disassembling again your weapons in a nervous and aborted attempt to attack the airplane that your conscious just won't let you complete? Are you just craving alone time, away from the masses of foreigners that sit just outside that flimsy 1/2 inch thick, foldable door? I should think there would be more of you who suffer from claustrophobia than xenophobia or agoraphobia.

Well then why? Why do you go into the tiny, cramped cubicle that forces you to crane your neckbackwards just to have a leak and stay there....for 15 minutes at a time? If you were all Chadian Muslim men I wouldn’t have to ask, because I already know. You see, they, in a rather upsetting but simultaneously comical way for the next bathroom patron, have this fetish for trying to wash their entire bodies in a tiny 4 inch wide sink, starting with their feet. It’s an arduous and sometimes catastrophous process that can take quite sometime and which leaves the bathroom looking as if Hurricane Katrina recently made a guest appearance. But most of you are not Chadian Muslim men, so why, I ask,...why? And how bout this, if you cannot come up with a good reason...then quit it! Go in, do what you must, and get the hell out. No more of this time-warp, losing consciousness and all worldly senses shit, taking 20 minutes to have a piss. It doesn’t take that long, ever...never ever ever.