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.

852,231,021 the number is ... not 852 Million!

At work I am quite often requested to hold presentations or press conferences with dignitaries of various sorts. Since WFP is completely dependant on donations for any work every day we are becoming quite good salesmen but we are still not catching up it seems.

In all the presentations and conferences there is certain amount of numbers that probably any staff in the organisation can rattle on his five fingers. One of them is 852 Million. That is how many hungry poor there are in the world, or is it? Well first of all the numbers is so huge that we normally only see it in relation to how many millions a company is making in profit for their shareholders, or how much a new movie cashed in at the box office... There simply is no one who can relate to how many people that actually is. But the number is not 852 Million. I know, because it is 852,231,021. The difference is enormous.

I know it is 852,231,021 because I met number 852,231,020. It was a mother in Northern Democratic Republic of Congo in a small village outside Mbandaka. She was so frail that she could barely keep her body to sit upright. She tried her best as she was holding number 852,231,021 in her arms. Her little son who was probably anything between 3 to 12 months. I was not able to tell because the baby boy was so small and exhausted that he could not even let out a sound while crying.

I remember the situation as if it was happening right in front of me even today, 8 years later. On that mission I was the only white man on the whole place. The woman sitting there on the floor, barely able to hold herself up, trying to make herself dignified in front of me while her hollow eyes told a story that I can never forget. She did not utter a word, she didn't have to. Her eyes looked right into my soul with such a presence, I will never forget. I had brought my camera, but I couldn't bring myself to take a picture.

I knew the story already. - Are you the one who can save my baby????? Please help my baby, please give him a chance to live and grow up. She never uttered a word. But from that single moment I knew. There is nothing else that I want to spend my life working with, what could be more important.....

This is why I know the number is 852,231,021 and not 852 million, I have seen it with my own eyes. I have also seen about 329,094 other ones. Yes about!! Because I can simply not get the numbers straight, but I know that the number does not end with one two or even up to 6 zeroes!

Yet every day when I turn on the news I see 2 more dead American soldiers in Iraq, 3 more , 6 more and totals of what 3215 soldiers since the war ended, I dont even recall the number anymore. How come it is not rounded of to "just" about 3000. How come these numbers can be reported day in and day out for several years, as if it was big news. To tell you the truth I have stopped watching the news, I got fed up with the incredibly twisted reporting. I am sure it is important but in the scope of things it really is insignificant. I feel for the families of the dead soldiers. But it can never compare to what I feel for number 852,231,020 and her son 852,231,021.

Every 5 second a child dies. Tomorrow when I hold my 15 minute presentation another 181 children, yes 181 as even the "every 5 second" is rounded of, will have died. Yet it will not be on the news because the slot is taken by a story of someone killed in THE war, as school shooting killing 3 people somewhere or a bridge collapsing with 40 dead..a car crash killing 10 the list goes on. How extremely horrible that it happened, we hear. Hours on end the live broadcasts are going on even if it was "just" one person dead. I say "just" because somehow that this life was worth atleast as much as 5,000 or 10,000 in another Country or Continent. Oh, it was an American or Eurpoean!!! Then it must be news. To show the live coverage of the 25,059 people that die from hunger every day of our life, would be able to cover any news channel 24 hours a day, even if they showed each and every one of them for 3 seconds and just listed a name. Yet that is lumped together as another remote statistic. Just imagine it, a TV channel that every 3 seconds showed a new picture of another dead person. day in, day out, month in month out, year in year out..... the TV channel would have to continue for 93 years doing nothing else to reach the 852,231,021st picture.

I can only hope that 852,231,020 and 852,231,021 is still alive. That they were in the hospital atleast gave them both a head start compared to all the others who are still not able to make it even to such a place. I can only hope as I don't know, never will. What I do know is that this moment changed my life.. forever..

Waterskiing in a warzone

Having worked in the office 4 weeks in a row and finally come to a conclusion on the work, Benoit, one of the expats from the office said we should do something on the final Sunday to celebrate the work well done.

He had a small speedboat at the yacht club in town on lake Tanganyika. While we on several occasion's had lunch at the yacht club we had actually never even made it to the nice beach they have along the lake. As lake Tanganyika is a very deep lake with a lot of mineral deposits in the water the water was very clear and the beaches would make you think you were next to the ocean and not a lake.

The only caveat with swimming on the shores though was the crocodiles and hippopotamus that swam around the shores to look for food. The boat ride sounded like an excellent option for us to do some swimming in the lake.

We got the gear ready and that included some ski's for doing water skiing. I had only tried that twice before and then I only managed to actually ski for about 5 minutes on one of the trips.

We steered out in the lake and a friend of Benoit's who knew how to water ski was the first one in the water. being an expert she of course only needed the single ski and was doing tricks in the water. As usual things look so easy when you sit at the side.

After about 15 minutes it was my turn. I jumped in the water and got the two ski's on to my feet and got straightened out with the rope. IT took about 3 attempts for me to get up and out of the water I was already tired in my legs by then.. It is quite a lot of power to get out of the water if you are not used to it. Anyway up and away I went.

Faster and faster while I was holding on for dear life with both my hands. I kept going for a few minutes until I was really tired in my legs and arms. In theory I should have let go with one hand of the rope to signal that they should slow down. In practice I just realized that If I loos grip then for sure I would be falling anyway. I tried to wiggle my head to show them to slow down but who on earth would know that meant slow down. In the end I just thought If I just try to lean back a bit and let go of the rope then in theory I should slow down and keep the balance while sinking in to the water. Well that was the theory! what happened was that one ski went left, the other one right with one of the tips going under. Thus me doing some kind of -10 point somersault in the water. the ski design was made so that they would fall of if this happened to avoid breaking any legs.. If just my big toe had read the instruction book then maybe this would have worked. Well my toe was not broken but it was badly twisted. It was about double size and completely blue by the time I got out of the water.

As usual I kept telling the guys I was OK while holding on for dear life not to start screaming out in the air. It took about 20 minutes then the pain had settled down a bit so I could enjoy the ride anyway.

After another hour cruising around Benoit told us it was time for lunch. He had arranged with some more friends to meet up in the middle of the lake. We saw about 5 boats approaching fast and we just sat there in the middle tying the boats together in a perfect place to enjoy the sun and the lake. There was not a cloud in the blue sky and it was about 28 degrees C.

The newly arrived friends had packed a well equipped lunchbox with cooled French white wine, Champagne and beer. Food wise we had a selection of nice pate's, salads and barbecued chicken.

While we were enjoin our lunch on the lake we started hearing and seeing the mortars flying from the hills around Bujumbura toward town. With loud bangs echoing on the lake when the mortars hit the ground. We had heard them while we worked in the office but this was the first time we could actually see them hit town. They normally hit town about 5 kilometres from our office.

It was just a surreal feeling. Here we are sitting having a very nice lunch on the lake with a war raging between rebels and the government troops. Even though I knew we were in country at war it was like it was still so far away yet we could see and hear the mortars and shooting.

We continued our lunch on the lake as if nothing had happened. The mortar-fire was a daily occasion since several months and since the curfew had just been lifted it was like holiday for the guys who had been there during the worse period... 6 months of not being able to go anywhere but home before it got dark around 1800.

We swam a bit more before heading back in to town again. At least we had been able to see something other than the office and hotel..

The next morning me and JJ took a small flight over to Ngozi in the north of the country, but that is another story.

no froglegs today?

While working in Bujumbura I discovered a new treat. The town having a colonial past have a good mix of french/Belgian cuisine so in several restaurants , even during the embargo it was possible to get very nice food. Good steaks, fish and why not frog legs. "cuisses grenouille" pardon my french! :-)

This was a dish I would never even have considered trying when I was younger but once I got the travel bug in general , part of the excitement was trying the local dishes as well as anything I would potentially not find back home.

After having tried the frog legs once in town I kind of enjoyed munching on these legs :-) and it became a regular starter when I was in town.

Some of my friends from Kampala had arrived and at lunch I suggested them to try this delicacy.

Then the waiter , a bit embarrassed says - Pardon Monsieur, no Frog legs today (in french of course)

- hmm no frog legs and here I have finally convinced my friends to try them?! All my friend of which half from Uganda sighed with relief.

- No monsieur, you know..... the rebels.

- what.. the rebels... What do the rebels have to do with my frog legs??

- Monsieur, you know the area where the rebels shell the town with mortars.

- Yes

- Pardon monsieur, but that is where the frog farm is and yesterday the military was doing raids so no delivery today.

-!!!!!

There should not be many valid reasons for a restaurant not to have the food written on the menu but who can argue with this reason.!!


Only in Africa

Dont try so hard :-)

I was about to end a mission in West Africa which had seen me covering 5 countries in less than 3 weeks. For once I had the luxury of flying business class. Working for a large humanitarian organisation we normally only get that treat if it is more than 9 hours flight. On this particular trip I would spend an estimated 17 hours in the air.

Routes

Bamako - Paris

Paris - Gatwick

Gatwick - Entebbe

What happened is an entirely different story....

Looking at the above itinerary do note that to get from West Africa to East Africa the fastest and most reliable way is, through Europe or via South Africa!

I boarded the Air France plane in Bamako and settled in fast, drinking some champagne, thinking back at a very interesting mission. As normally expected the takeoff was about 1 hour late. With the 3 hour transit time I would have enough time to make it between the gates even if we were a bit late, so I had my dinner and fell asleep.

The flight was event less and we landed with just over 1.5 hours time to transit. Since I had a full business class ticket all the way I approached the guys at Paris asking if there was a fast way to get me over to the Gatwick flight fast.

But monsieur you arrived on a Air Fraaaaance flight and now you will fly on British Aiiirways.
We do not -ave any shuttle for fast transit when you change airlines... why don't you buy a full air fraaaance ticket all the way, monsieur.

Not going into the details of Paris airport but it is the most confusing airport I have seen. It took me almost 1 hour to get from my arrival gate to the gate I am leaving at. I could not see any transit centres so I went to the gate as time was short.
At the gate they tell me - sorry Monsieur but you can not board as we are closing the gate in 5 minutes and you have to go to transfer desk first.... !!! I am here. I have my ticket. I have no luggage.. I am in business class.... nothing worked.

I look over and see that in 20 minutes there is another flight but to Heathrow.... aha. with my business class tickets I should be able to get on that one and then get between the airports in London within an hour.. It used to be 45 minutes transit...I remembered.

I run down to the transit desk they so kindly pointed out to me.. Well it is a 5 minute run on conveyor belts made of.... rubber...

I inform the lady behind the counter that I need to be on the flight BA 234 leaving in 15 minutes! she looks in the computer and says but the manifest is closed... I less kindly inform her that Airfrance do not want to take action and I was in time for a BA flight and they refuse me to board and I will not have any more of that....

Eventually the lady against all the rules manages to get me on the manifest with some kind of fake booking but with a boarding pass with a handwritten seat number on. She tell me to run to the flight which I did and on arrival the ladies at the check in is already complaining before I can even show my boarding card. Well monsieur but of course you can not board as we have no food on board for you as you are too late. I repeat the story of how I have been treated by Air France and BA in various periods on the flight and am finally allowed on board.

We take off and I sit in my business class seat and had... breakfast.....

On arrival at Heathrow I run out of the plane and grab the first BA person I can find on the ground to get me a boarding pass on the Gatwick flight ;-)

The answer was of course. - there is two hours left to the flight we will not confirm your seat and by the way there is a jam on the roads due to construction so you will not make it.

No one can tell me I wont make the flight, I think to myself, while running through another airport. I had only hand luggage (mind you it weigh about 10 -12 kilos. Exhausted as I was, I found the shuttle bus terminal. I just saw a buss pulling away so it would be 15 minutes to the next one, I was told.

No worries, the taxi stand was just 2 more minutes away and luckily no cue there so I got into one of the standard London taxis.

The driver with his wide Scottish accent kindly informed me that there is a bit of a traffic jam so he thought it would take a while to reach there. I informed him that I only have one hour to spare and even then I would be cutting it close. With the enticement of a bonus :-) he agreed to try avoid the worst jams and we were on our way.

I then turn to organizing my papers to get ready for the arrival at Gatwick only to find that I had lost my national passport. Hmm... now were did that happen. Well nothing to do as I would most likely not find it back even if returning to the airport so did not worry the driver with that fact...

(Tracing my steps back it was clear to me that I had forgotten it at the bus terminal as I was tying my shoelaces while they guy was informing me of the time for the next bus ..)

Looking a the situation I tried to remember if they actually check passports when you leave UK. I knew I had been stamped in to the country. Since I had my UN passport I should be able to get out of a country but there might be some explaining to do as they don't necessarily like UN passports in countries close to home, for some mysterious reasons.

With 45 minutes to spare before planned takeoff I arrived at Gatwick and ran to the check in desk.
- What flight are you on, Sir.
- Entebbe in 42 minute I said I hope I can still make it.
- Well Sir you know you should be here at least 2 hours before.
- Yes Sir I am aware but it seems that there was a slight delay on my BA ticket and no support to get me between the airports, I countered.
- Oh what a pity but let me see. Oh yes it is still possible to check you in if you have no luggage and if you can run to the gate.
- Sure no problem... Running.. that is the only way I have seen airports so far today.

I got my boarding pass and ran to immigration, expecting another battle, but to my surprise there was actually no passport control to exit the country?!

I get to the gate and am the last person to board, drowning in sweat by this time as running with 10 kilos of hand luggage through crowds at three airport kind of does that to you.

Got into my seat and they close the door. Yeah I made it!! I think to my self. The crew is busy getting ready for takeoff and then the pilot comes on the loudspeaker.


" Welcome on board. This flight bound for Entebbe has a technical problem. Not to worry as it is just a small technical problem with one of the lights in the console and the spare part is on the way. Once we get the replacement we should be ready for takeoff. It will though take 30 minutes before we get the piece. Meanwhile sit back and relax and enjoy the in flight entertainment."

Haven't we heard that phrase a few times to many ...

After 1 hour!! the Pilot then announces.

" Dear Passengers. We have now switched the light on the console and everything is in order so we can continue with the flight."

The engine starts reving up on one side of the plane. Then instead of hearing the engines on the other side rev up the initial one is turned off...?!

Once again the captain comes on the loudspeaker with an entirely different voice.

" Dear Passengers. It seems that the indicator light has once more come on as soon as we started the engine. This unfortunately means that the flight will be cancelled. The good news is that we will re-instate this same flight in 24 hours and we will arrange accommodation for you. For those who need to be re-routed sooner please contact the transfer desk. Everyone else please remain in the plane until our shuttle buses has arrived."

Hmmm... What to do I am thinking. I have come this far , lost my passport, paid heavy on the taxi, run through 3 airports only to be waiting 24 hours.... No way was the answer- I am going to Entebbe.

I get out of the plane and in rapid pace, head over to the transit desk and explain to the lady that I have to reach Entebbe in shortest possible time.

Ok we have the following option we can offer, she says.

You take the next plane from Gatwick to Amsterdam which is in 35 minutes then you will have to wait there 1 hour before the flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi. And finally wait another hour for the last leg between Nairobi to Entebbe. I asked if it was the fastest way and she confirmed.

Great now we are rolling, I thought. I would still arrive in the night even though 8 hours later than originally planned.

The flight between Gatwick and Amsterdam was uneventful and for a change, on time!

I get on the flight to Nairobi noting that business class in this plane is not really the same as BA but if it is on time at least there is one plus :-)

The arrival into Nairobi was uneventful even though with a 30 minute delay due to headwind. As we were quite a large number of passengers continuing to Entebbe they announced that the Kenya Airways flight would await our arrival even if we were a bit late.

Once out of the plane the scramble for the Entebbe gate starts only to find that the plane has already left (despite what we had been told)

It is now 0230 in the morning and KLM inform us that they would take us all to a hotel and then return us well in time for the flight at 0900 in the morning.
As luck has it of course they could not arrange transport for so many people and we actually did not arrive at the hotel until 0330, check in took another 30 minutes. Thus fall into bed a 0400 only to wake up again at 0630 as we had to be at the airport at 0700 even if the had all our papers... Thus sitting waiting 2 hours while still being in zombie mode.


The final leg................don't remember anything from the flight but at 1000 I arrive in Entebbe completely exhausted.

The BA plane from Gatwick landed 2 hours after I had arrived in Entebbe, sighhhh.

The lesson learned... When things start going wrong.. don't fight it ... go with the flow and see were it takes you :-) You might get more sleep :-)