Once I climbed Mount Makilala, Mindanao

I am sure very few people have a clue about were on earth this mountain is. It's not like it is well known like Mount Everest or Kilimanjaro :-)

We had to set up a new operation in Mindanao to support mainly the Muslim population in the hard to reach areas of the island. Mindanao is a very nice island and could be a tourist paradise but it is instead notoriously known for all the kidnappings of prominent people or foreigners. Either the Abu Sayyaf or some of the other rebels are making sure of this. Most of the time the people were released after paying a ransom. Most of the time!

The UN office in Manila had assigned one of the security officers to join me on the mission as I would not be allowed to travel alone or with a driver only. The risk for kidnapping was too high. After looking at a few of the maps I had identified some of the potential locations for our communication systems and one was Makilala. As most areas are off limits for anyone let alone visitors we made arrangements with the commander on the island to get access on the mountains.

So me and my security officer arrived early in the morning to the local military outpost close to the mountain and greeted the commandos. they were just about to finish their morning briefings when we arrived. They invited us for coffee and we sat just chatting with them. Being all in uniform they wondered if we really planned to climb the mountains. But of course that is what we have to do. Hmmm....

They all looked at me, then at my security officer in despair. Me in my safari vest, shorts and sneakers. My normal field outfit :-) a tad overweight ;-) and with an orange T-shirt. then they looked at my colleague. A retired general still looking fit, but retired.

hmmm.. They did all their calling around to check if we would be allowed on the mountain but found out we did have permission.

We jumped into our car and drove ahead to the meeting point. After about 30 minutes we see two military trucks coming over and stopping. 20 soldiers jumped of and again we were told to wait. They needed to send some troops ahead to clear the tracks for us before we could start climbing.. It was clear that there was potential for threats in the area.

After a few minutes we started walking up toward the mountain in a nice tempo.. I started to remember the trip up the mountain with the Karamojong in Uganda and the speed they walked at... Guess what? The Philippine commandos seem to keep the same speed or maybe it is me who has gotten slower ;-)

We walked and walked and the scenery was spectacular. Village people coming out greeting us on the way. Living very simple in their wooden huts. They for sure did not have a lot of money but their smiley faces would not go away. Most people on the mountain lived on harvesting the rubber from the rubber-trees. After 10 minutes we needed to slow down..again after another 10 again..... It continued like that and our faces were full of sweat. It got steeper and steeper and the track smaller and smaller. We could hear the commandos signalling between each other but we could only see the 6 that we had as close escort. The rest was moving in a very different way.

After almost one hour the retired general was slowing down and could not keep my pace even so we split our group also and I continued. After another 30 minutes of struggling I finally reached the top to the amusement of the commandos who was already preparing their lunch. It had taken just about 3 hours for the climb.

We got word that the general had fainted and been taken to a small hut to rest. But he was ok. He did arrive to the top 30 minutes later.

I did my work and then we just sat there taking in the view. It was spectacular about 1500 meters up. We could see Mt Apo the highest peak 2954m in Mindanao and about 100 km away. The skies were clear and the forests around intensely green. Unfortunately no picture taking in this area for security reasons.

After a bit more checking the site we headed down again. It was more difficult to see the tracks coming down. We also noticed that we had basically gone around one mountain to go up on the next one. Once down we met up with the commander again and then headed back to Davao. Once we reached Davao it was dinner and then straight to bed. It was fun but we had both reached our limit,that day:-) The next morning we drove to mount Malalag and started all over again.

Don't!

6 years ago I moved to Dubai and for most it has been a good experience;-)

- Living in a construction site , ever since.

- Working inside another construction site. It was almost not for about 6 months.

- More and more traffic jams.

Don't get me wrong there are good sides also but they are no part of this story ;-)

There is one thing that drives me bananas. Like in any other place there are rules and regulations when it comes to renting an apartment. Most of the times those rules are quite reasonable but were does it end? With my Landlord here it took about 1 week to feel like I was living in a student dorm in Sweden... Don't do this, don't do that.. If you think I am joking please continue to read.

- Don't have any Pets

- Don't BBQ on the balcony or on common grounds.

- Don't hang laundry on the balcony

- Don't install a Satellite dish

- Don't litter

- Don't have social functions in the common grounds (mind you they are like 10 football pitches)

- Don't do any kind of alterations to the premises

- Don't park bicycles in the staircase

-Don't live more than 2 adults (Husband and Wife!) and 0 children in a 1 bedroom apartment

- Don't live more than 2 adults (Husband and Wife!) and 1 child if the apartment is 2 bedrooms

- Don't live more than 2 adults (Husband and Wife!) and 2 children if the apartment has 3 bedrooms

- Don't allow relatives coming for visit to stay in your apartment

- Don't move any furniture out or in to the apartment without explicit permission from Landlord

- Don't clean the apartment after 2000

- Don't leave any belongings in common areas

- Don't drill in the walls in the kitchen

- Don't drill in the walls in the bathroom

- Don't sublet a room in your apartment

- Don't share your apartment for free.

- Don't park more than one car in the parking (too bad if both husband and wife actually need one each!)

- Don't distribute flyer's in the buildings (vendors/residents).

I always have a pile of 20 brochures every month... I know exactly how long my neighbours have been gone! However as we have no pigeon holes or any other means of getting mail at the apartment even the landlord is actually leaving contractual documents outside the door! I do have a PO box at the post office.!?

- Don't play loud music.

- Don't smoke in common areas

- Don't use the fire exits for casual entry (mind you the doors are always open.)

Now last week I got two more papers.

Mandatory tenant ID card. (have not filed the papers yet and wont. With copy of passport, residence visa and tenant contract)

-Don't move around in the premises without the mandatory ID card (mind you there is no fence around the compound. just desert, a 2 km long shopping mall and a construction site.....

Mandatory Parking permit (mind you the form explicitly says they have no obligation to guarantee a space even though my apartment number is marked on a parking space?! again with copy of passport, residence visa and tenant contract)

- Don't park your car without the mandatory Parking permit

For both of the above note that to get the tenant contract the same office require the same exact document and if they, the landlord does not have an original signed tenant contract for my apartment ... then who does!!!

Whatever you think... DON'T!

Been there, done that!

That was the print on a T-shirt I bought in Rarotonga, South Cook islands in 1989. I had just been to my 10th country in South pacific at that time. Now I have added a few more countries. This is just a map of places I have been to. Marked dark brown are countries and the green spots are small entities. Click on the map to see more details.

So many countries and so little time ;-) As you can see I am kind of addicted to travelling.


Shanghai last week.


My passport


My official passport

Flying to Africa with 10 dollars in the pockets

As usual I had not been planning our holiday in time. Well we knew we were going down to Kampala but I had not booked the flights. Normally it was not a problem as the flights did not use to be full in June.

I was trying to get the bookings done online but the system kept refusing to do the final booking. Each time I re-tried the price would have gone up another 200 Dirhams.

Over the weekend we had been shopping for stuff we needed but for some reason neither the MasterCard nor the VISA card was working. I knew we had money so there should not be any problem but it did not matter were we went the cards were rejected. I saw other people shopping having the same problem. In the end I had 220 USD in cash left.
Being in Dubai this was a major problem.. Everywhere you go it is always possible to pay with cards so carrying cash was not normal.

Sunday morning I went to DNATA, while my wife was sleeping in, as we still had no bookings. I figured I could get a seat with my gold card and she already had her ticket but no seat.

I arrived at DNATA around 1030. Being in shorts and a T-shirt I was already casual enough :-) The T-shirt being black saying "I am not paid enough to be nice to you". I like T-shirts that are a bit sarcastic every now and then ;-)

It finally came to my turn and the girl at the travel desk start finding us some seats.
"Well Sir. You will have to wait 2 weeks before we can get you a seat." she says. What??? I need to fly sooner than that.. what about in business class.
Well Sir. it looks full but there are two seats on today's flight..
And today's flight is at 1430 so are you sure you can make it to the airport in that time. I said if you can book it fast and let me get back home right now then no problem. It was now 1130 already.

OK sir that will be 210 USD for the taxes and upgrade taxes. Again I tried to pay with the credit cards but they are still being rejected. Sir you will have to go and pay cash at the other counter.

I run over to the other counter and pull out 200 USD and then pay the rest in Dirhams. Leaving 10 USD only in the pocket....

I run back and it takes a while before the tickets are written out. At 1200 I finally run out of the place and start driving home. We live about 20 minutes away from DNATA office and of course about 40 minutes away from the airport. I call my wife "Honey we are flying in 2 and a half hours if not we have to wait 2 weeks, please pack asap I am home in a few minutes."What ? you must be mad" she says. "Well what to do We cant stay 2 more weeks" I counter. She agrees and I continue flying down sheik Zayed Road. Arriving home just before 1230. She was just about ready with all the bags and we pack them into the car. I did not even have time to change as we have to get to the airport within the next 30 minutes. Again we fly down Sheikh Zayed road and manage to get to the airport just after 1300. I drop her and the bags at the entrance and then find a parking for the car. We get our boarding passes and run through the airport. Seems I am always running in airports for some reason!

Pew, we get on board the plane and finally relax. The air hostesses are looking strange at me each time they pass. I wonder what is going on then I realize that I still have the T-shirt with the nice print on :-) Next time one of the girls serve me a drink I tell them the T-shirt is there to remind me I need to be nice to people. I can hear them discussing and having a laugh in the galley.

We arrive in Uganda and luckily we have someone meeting us as we would not even be able to pay a taxi to get back home.

It took another 3 days before the cards started working and then we managed to have a good holiday.

On my return back in Dubai I get out to the parking and of course the parking ticket were up to about 300 USD. I drive to the exit and try to pay. "Sorry sir we don't take credit cards!" - What?? all places in Dubai take cards. "No sir not us!"
I grab my 300 USD and ask the guy to accept dollars as I have no Dirhams yet. The guy reluctantly accept them, of course at a bad rate.

There simply is no win situation.

A few seconds from horror

The following was published in the news after Valentines day in Uganda a few years back.

"Between 1997 and 2001, suspected ADF operatives detonated a total of 48 bombs in Kampala, Iganga and Jinja, killing 88 people and injuring 268.

The most deadly attacks occurred on July 30, 1997 when a grenade thrown into a crowd on Queen's Way killed 10 and wounded 45, and on August 25, 1998, when bombs exploded in three different buses, killing a total of 20 people and injuring 35.

Many will also remember the 1999 Valentine's Day explosion in Telex Bar in Kabalagala, which claimed five lives and injured 34, and the bomb blast on Kafumbe Mukasa Road on April 24, 1999, which cost the lives of another five and wounded seven."

Me and my wife had been out having dinner and was on the way home. Taking the normal route through Kabalagala on the way to Bunga, both suburbs in Kampala.

We came to the T-junction heading towards the Telex bar and Family shop. Things just did not look normal. People were running up from the Telex bar area and I could not figure out what was going on. Sometimes there are some fight in town if people have caught a thief so we have gotten quite good at detecting trouble. Living in danger zones you have to go by the feelings you get in situations. If it feels bad then act as if it is bad.

Anyway we saw people running up the hill away from the Telex bar area. As I am looking down towards Telex bar a bomb blows up right in front of me. It was the first time I ever saw one actually go of so close, it was an eary feeling. I immediately turn to drive up the hill away from the place and call the incident in to the office.
The radio room is asking if it just happened now-now as they had a report just a few minutes ago also. I told them it was right now and that there must have been 2 blasts in that case. We continue home on the back roads (I know them all by now.) while monitoring the radio.

The rest of the night it was quiet and everyone was told to remain at home. The next morning I come in to the office and have a chat with our technicians. Bjoern one of the Norwegian guys then tell me. "I was sitting there at Telex bar and suddenly there was a bomb. I had dead bodies around me and even more injured people." Yet he did not even have a scratch on him. Obviously he had been protected by one of the dead people without even realizing it. He left the bar and was lucky to have gone away from the second bomb.

Later on I talked to the bouncers at my normal hangout "Capital pub" and they had stopped 2 guys with their bags from coming in as they had refused to show what was in them. The target had most likely been Capital as it was the most frequented place by expats among all the bars in the area.

Two of my wife's friends died in the bombing.

There are many ifs that I have though after that incident.

- What if we had been driving 3 minutes earlier?
- What if we had reached Capital, as the plan was to go there?
- What if the bouncers had not been vigilant?
- What if Bjoern had not been so lucky?

Luckily none of those ifs were the case though. Still touching wood.

My dear cat Sussie remembered

Yesterday my dear cat Sussie died. She was the most affectionate cat you could find.

I already had a cat at that time and my wife found Sussie in the middle of the winter outside in the snow. Scared, freezing and dirty. Just a small kitten maybe 6 months old. We could not imagine someone throwing out a cat so young in that way. But then maybe she had escaped. She was a young cat but very smart. At 6 months she new how to open a door by hanging on the door handle.

The first time I saw here she was so weak. I was in bed while my wife gave her a hot bath. As soon as she was dry she ran straight to bed and just wanted to lie right next to me. I don't know why but she wanted my comfort.

When we moved to Uganda we took the cats with us and Sussie has lived there ever since. From being an indoor cat she became a free cat who never went more than 100 meter or so from the house, by her own choice. She loved being out, lapping up the un, but she never forgot the feeling of being left out in the cold so she would always run back in the house.

As a cat she lived a very good life. Even if I travelled a lot there was always someone in the house looking after her. We never even rented out the house when moving to Dubai as I wanted her to have a good place to stay even if I could not be there all the time. People thought I was crazy, but I loved my cat!
She would be as independent as a cat can be and if she didn't want to be patted there was no chance to catch her. She however always came to me, jumping up in my lap, purring away.

Some people love dogs and some cats and I am for sure a cat person. While she would not make a sound when there was a threat she was very good as a watch-cat. Any time there was a threat outside I would simply look at were Sussie was looking. Long before anyone else she had already scouted out people coming close to the house, night or day. She was also very good at determining friendly people from not so friendly people. As there is a lot of mice, rats, snakes and other animals crawling around in Africa she had plenty to play with. For us it was very good. We never had any rodents or other animals in the house or even in the garden. The occasional Gecco would not survive for long.

Sussie became 12 years old.

My dear Sussie will always be remembered.

Once I climbed a mountain with the karamojong

I was on my way back from a mission in northeastern Uganda. All the radio installations were succesful and the staff in the suboffices were happy. they had though one request and that was to get them all connected together by radio.. Thus so they would be able to use their handsets to talk from office to office. I had seen the landscape and figured out that it should be no problem to achieve that final goal also. I had found that the perfect location would be Mount Napak or Napak hills as they referred to it. Asking around everyone told me it was an easy climb and that it would be easy to secure a location for a repeater on the top.



The plan was to head back to Kampala but as it was very early in the morning we figured that we could make it to the top and back and still make it to Kampala before sunset. The guys had told me it would take less than an hour to get to the top. We met with the local village council who was all to happy to appoint one of his deputies help us get on the way. We drove to the foot of the mountain were we met up with some Karamojong guys who would guide us up the mountain. The karamojong guys said it was an easy 30 minute walk to the top. Perfect we concluded as that would give us even more time to get back and on our way home.

the karamojong are tribe that roam around in Uganda and into Kenya with their cattle. They rarely build anything permanant. They rather just follow the seasons and the grazing patterns for their cattle. They are a very tall tribe and almost always dressed in a tradition chequered skirt. they dont carry any belongings with them except for the 3 essential things they have. A toothbrush, A walking stick and a woooden T shaped piece that can serve either as a stool or a pillow. that is it.. just the bare essentials. In some cases you will find them with a gun also. the gun is mainly for protection. Since they dont like to shoot their animals they sometimes do targetpractice on passing cars. The intent is not necessarily to kill but on a number of occasion ofcourse this has been the end result !?

The guides we got for the mountain was though not the gun carrying ones which made me more at ease.

We started to walk. As usual I carried a bottle of coke but as the walk was supposed to be like a walk in the park I only had a small bottle. We started of in a good pace withthe karimojong leading the way. I think it took about 10 minutes then all us rookies were tired.. these guys were not walking.. they were running!!! We requested them to take it slower and we managed another 10 minutes then we stopped again and said that maybe it is better we lead the way and they follow our pace.



Slowly we started to realize that this 30 minute walk was probably going to take a bit longer or shall we say much longer! As we felt we were already high up we decided that to eturn without reaching the peak would just be achieving nothing we all agreed that we would continue all the way even if it would take a bit longer time. 3 hours and 45 minutes later we finally reached the peak. The mountain is stnading about 1000 meter above the surrounding areas. On reaching the top we were told that we had passed several villages?! We had not seen any but they had seen us. As the karimojong living on the mountain are very suspicious to visitors they hide and only make themselves known if they know your intent.

The view from the top was spectacular. We could see almost 150 km towards the north or as far as we wanted the radiosignal to reach. We talked to the guys in the Kotido office just on our small radio and they could not believe we were on the mountain top so far away. We located a good site for a repeater and then it was time to head down again. By this time we were exhausted but the local guys had barely even raised the pulse one beat. I found out that it wss not uncommon that they ran up the mountain all the way, or ran between the different villages even if they were as far away as a marathon or two! At the same time I also realized that they actually had no concept of what 30 minutes would be. 30 minutes or 4 hours did not make a difference. You reach when you reach and that was it.

Continuing down we stopped at one of the villages and suddenly we were greated by the villagers. As we had run out of anything to drink they offered us water. Infact they even offered to slaughter a goat for a barbeque. We kindly said not to the goat but drank some very fresh water from the mountain. As they have a serious problem of guinea worm in most of the areas we had to sift the water through a napkin.

After a 20 minutes rest we continued down the mountain. It took almost as much time as going up and we were exhausted. We had though found a good site for our systems so I was happy with the climb.